Antislavery Movement In America
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In the United States,
abolitionism Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, but it was later used in its colonies. ...
, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the
colonial era Colonial period (a period in a country's history where it was subject to management by a colonial power) may refer to: Continents *European colonization of the Americas * Colonisation of Africa * Western imperialism in Asia Countries * Col ...
until the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime, through the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished Slavery in the United States, slavery and involuntary servitude, except Penal labor in the United States, as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed ...
(ratified 1865). The anti-slavery movement originated during the
Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
, focused on ending the
transatlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
. In Colonial America, a few German Quakers issued the
1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and the three other Quakers living ...
, which marked the beginning of the American abolitionist movement. Before the Revolutionary War,
evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...
colonists were the primary advocates for the opposition to
slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
and the slave trade, doing so on the basis of humanitarian ethics. Still, others such as
James Oglethorpe Lieutenant-General James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30 June 1785) was a British Army officer, Tory politician and colonial administrator best known for founding the Province of Georgia in British North America. As a social refo ...
, the founder of the colony of Georgia, also retained political motivations for the removal of slavery. Prohibiting slavery through the 1735 Georgia Experiment in part to prevent Spanish partnership with Georgia's runaway slaves, Oglethorpe eventually revoked the act in 1750 after the Spanish's defeat in the
Battle of Bloody Marsh The Battle of Bloody Marsh took place on July 18, 1742 (new style) between Spanish and British forces on St. Simons Island, part of the Province of Georgia, resulting in a victory for the British. Part of the War of Jenkins' Ear, the battle wa ...
eight years prior. During the Revolutionary era, all states abolished the international slave trade, but
South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...
reversed its decision. Between the Revolutionary War and 1804, laws, constitutions, or court decisions in each of the Northern states provided for the gradual or immediate abolition of slavery. No Southern state adopted similar policies. In 1807, Congress made the importation of slaves a crime, effective January 1, 1808, which was as soon as Article I, section 9 of the Constitution allowed. A small but dedicated group, under leaders such as
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
and
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
, agitated for abolition in the mid-19th century. John Brown became an advocate and militia leader in attempting to end slavery by force of arms. In the Civil War, immediate emancipation became a war goal for the Union in 1861 and was fully achieved in 1865.


History


In Colonial America

American abolitionism began well before the United States was founded as a nation. In 1652, Rhode Island made it illegal for any person, black or white, to be "bound" longer than ten years. The law, however, was widely ignored, and Rhode Island became involved in the slave trade in 1700. The first act of resistance against an upper-class white colonial government by enslaved people can be seen in
Bacon's Rebellion Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American India ...
in 1676. Occurring in Virginia, the rebellion saw European indentured servants and African people (of indentured, enslaved, and free negroes) band together against William Berkeley because of his refusal to fully remove Native American tribes in the region. At the time, Native Americans in the region were hosting raids against lower-class settlers encroaching on their land after the Third Powhatan War (1644–1646), which left many white and black indentured servants and slaves without a sense of protection from their government. Led by Nathaniel Bacon, the unification that occurred between the white lower class and blacks during this rebellion was perceived as dangerous and thus was quashed with the implementation of the
Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 The Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 (formally entitled An act concerning Servants and Slaves), were a series of laws enacted by the Colony of Virginia's House of Burgesses in 1705 regulating the interactions between slaves and citizens of the crow ...
. Still, this event introduced the premise that blacks and whites could work together towards the goal of self-liberation, which became increasingly prevalent as abolition gained traction within America. The first statement against slavery in
Colonial America The colonial history of the United States covers the period of European colonization of North America from the late 15th century until the unifying of the Thirteen British Colonies and creation of the United States in 1776, during the Re ...
was written in 1688 by the
Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
. On 18 February 1688,
Francis Daniel Pastorius Francis Daniel Pastorius (September 26, 1651) was a German-born educator, lawyer, poet, and public official. He was the founder of Germantown, Philadelphia, Germantown, Pennsylvania, now part of Philadelphia, the first permanent German-American ...
, the brothers Derick and
Abraham op den Graeff Abraham Isaacs op den Graeff, also ''Op den Graff'', ''Opdengraef'' as well as ''Op den Gräff'' (c. 1649 – c. 1731) was one of the so-called Original 13, the first closed group of German emigrants to North America, and an original founder of ...
and Gerrit Hendricksz of Germantown, Pennsylvania, drafted the
1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and the three other Quakers living ...
, a two-page condemnation of slavery, and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church. The intention of the petition was to stop slavery within the Quaker community, where 70% of Quakers owned slaves between 1681 and 1705. It acknowledged the universal rights of all people. While the Quaker establishment did not take action at that time, the unusually early, clear, and forceful argument in the petition initiated the spirit that finally led to the end of slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
(1780). The Quaker Quarterly Meeting of
Chester, Pennsylvania Chester is a city in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the Philadelphia metropolitan area (also known as the Delaware Valley) on the western bank of the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. ...
, made its first protest in 1711. Within a few decades the entire slave trade was under attack, being opposed by such Quaker leaders as William Burling,
Benjamin Lay Benjamin Lay (January 26, 1682 – February 8, 1759) was an English-born writer, farmer and activist. Born in Copford, Essex into a Quakers, Quaker family, he underwent an apprenticeship as a glovemaker before running away to London and finding ...
, Ralph Sandiford, William Southby,
John Woolman John Woolman (October 19, 1720 ( O.S.)/October 30, 1720 ( N.S.)– October 7, 1772) was an American merchant, tailor, journalist, Quaker preacher, and early abolitionist during the colonial era. Based in Mount Holly, New Jersey, near Philadelp ...
, and
Anthony Benezet Anthony Benezet (January 31, 1713May 3, 1784) was a French-born American abolitionist and teacher who was active in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A prominent member of the Abolitionism, abolitionist movement in North America, Benezet founded one of ...
. Benezet was particularly influential, inspiring a later generation of notable anti-slavery activists, including
Granville Sharp Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 – 6 July 1813) was an English scholar, philanthropist and one of the first campaigners for the Abolitionism in the United Kingdom, abolition of the slave trade in Britain. Born in Durham, England, Durham, he ...
,
John Wesley John Wesley ( ; 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a principal leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies ...
,
Thomas Clarkson Thomas Clarkson (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846) was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (also known ...
,
Olaudah Equiano Olaudah Equiano (; c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa (), was a writer and abolitionist. According to his memoir, he was from the village of Essaka in present day southern Nigeria. Enslaved as a child in ...
,
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
,
Benjamin Rush Benjamin Rush (April 19, 1813) was an American revolutionary, a Founding Father of the United States and signatory to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and a civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social refor ...
,
Absalom Jones Absalom Jones (November 7, 1746February 13, 1818) was an African-American abolitionist and clergyman who became prominent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Disappointed at the racial discrimination he experienced in a local Methodist church, he foun ...
, and Bishop Richard Allen, among others. Samuel Sewall, a prominent Bostonian, wrote ''The Selling of Joseph'' (1700) in protest of the widening practice of outright slavery as opposed to indentured servitude in the colonies. This is the earliest-recorded anti-slavery tract published in the future United States. Slavery was banned in the colony of Georgia soon after its founding in 1733. The colony's founder,
James Edward Oglethorpe Lieutenant-General James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30 June 1785) was a British Army officer, Tory politician and colonial administrator best known for founding the Province of Georgia in British North America. As a social reform ...
, fended off repeated attempts by South Carolina merchants and land speculators to introduce slavery into the colony. His motivations included tactical defense against Spanish collusion with runaway slaves, and prevention of Georgia's largely reformed criminal population from replicating South Carolina's
planter class The planter class was a Racial hierarchy, racial and socioeconomic class which emerged in the Americas during European colonization of the Americas, European colonization in the early modern period. Members of the class, most of whom were settle ...
structure. In 1739, he wrote to the Georgia Trustees urging them to hold firm: In 1737, Quaker abolitionist
Benjamin Lay Benjamin Lay (January 26, 1682 – February 8, 1759) was an English-born writer, farmer and activist. Born in Copford, Essex into a Quakers, Quaker family, he underwent an apprenticeship as a glovemaker before running away to London and finding ...
published ''All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates'', which was printed by his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The following year, during the 1738
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, or PYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States area, including parts of Pen ...
in
Burlington, New Jersey Burlington is a City (New Jersey), city situated on the banks of the Delaware River in Burlington County, New Jersey, Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a suburb of Philadelphia. As of the 2020 United States census, the c ...
, Lay gave a lecture against slavery while dressed as a soldier, after which he plunged a sword into a bible containing a bladder of fake blood ( pokeberry juice) that splattered those nearby. On September 9, 1739, a literate slave named Jemmy led a rebellion against South Carolina slaveholders in an event referred to as the Stono Rebellion (also known as Cato's Conspiracy and Cato's Rebellion.) The runaway slaves involved in the revolt intended to reach Spanish-controlled Florida to attain freedom, but their plans were thwarted by white colonists in Charlestown, South Carolina. The event resulted in 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves killed, as well as the implementation of the 1740 Negro Act to prevent another slave uprising. In her book, "The Slave's Cause" by Manisha Sinha, Sinha considers the Stono Rebellion to be an important act of abolition from the perspective of the slave, recognizing their agency and subsequent humanity as cause for self-liberation. Slave revolts following the Stono Rebellion were a present mode of abolition undertaken by slaves and were an indicator of black agency that brewed beneath the surface of the abolitionist movement for decades and eventually sprouted later on through figures such as Frederick Douglass, an escaped black freeman who was a popular orator and essayist for the abolitionist cause. The struggle between Georgia and South Carolina led to the first debates in
Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
over the issue of slavery, occurring between 1740 and 1742.
Rhode Island Rhode Island ( ) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Is ...
Quakers, associated with Moses Brown, were among the first in America to free slaves.
Benjamin Rush Benjamin Rush (April 19, 1813) was an American revolutionary, a Founding Father of the United States and signatory to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and a civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social refor ...
was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved African Americans appeared before the Massachusetts courts in
freedom suit Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by enslaved people against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free sta ...
s, spurred on the decision made in the '' Somerset v. Stewart'' case, which although not applying the colonies was still received positively by American abolitionists. Boston lawyer Benjamin Kent represented them. In 1766, Kent won a case (''Slew v. Whipple'') to liberate Jenny Slew, a mixed-race woman who had been kidnapped in Massachusetts and then handled as a slave. According to historian
Steven Pincus Steven Pincus is the Thomas E. Donnelly Professor of British History at the University of Chicago, where he specializes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and European history. Education and career In 1990, Pincus received a PhD in hi ...
, many of the colonial legislatures worked to enact laws that would limit slavery. The Provincial legislature of
Massachusetts Bay Massachusetts Bay is a bay on the Gulf of Maine that forms part of the central coastline of Massachusetts. Description The bay extends from Cape Ann on the north to Plymouth Harbor on the south, a distance of about . Its northern and sout ...
, as noted by historian Gary B. Nash, approved a law "prohibiting the importation and purchase of slaves by any Massachusetts citizen." The
Loyalist Loyalism, in the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and its former colonies, refers to the allegiance to the British crown or the United Kingdom. In North America, the most common usage of the term refers to loyalty to the British Cr ...
governor of Massachusetts The governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the head of government of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The governor is the chief executive, head of the state cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the commonw ...
, Thomas Hutchinson, vetoed the law, an action that prompted angered reaction from the general public. American abolitionists were cheered by the decision in ''
Somerset v Stewart ''Somerset v Stewart'' (177298 ER 499(also known as ''Sommersett v Steuart'', Somersett's case, and the Mansfield Judgment) is a judgment of the English Court of King's Bench (England), Court of King's Bench in 1772, relating to the right of an ...
'' (1772), which prohibited slavery in the United Kingdom, though not in its colonies. In 1774, the influential
Fairfax Resolves The Fairfax Resolves were a set of resolutions adopted by a committee in Fairfax County in the Colony of Virginia on July 18, 1774, in the early stages of the American Revolution. Written at the behest of George Washington and others, they were ...
called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural"
Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
.


Abolitionism during and after the Revolutionary War

One of the first articles advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery was written by
Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In ...
. Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the '' Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser''. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage (Pennsylvania Abolition Society) was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers. The society suspended operations during the
American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...
and was reorganized in 1784, with
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
as its first president. In 1777, independent
Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provinces and territories of Ca ...
, not yet a state, became the first polity in North America to prohibit slavery: slaves were not directly freed, but masters were required to remove slaves from Vermont. The
Constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...
included several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used the word. Passed unanimously by the
Congress of the Confederation The Congress of the Confederation, or the Confederation Congress, formally referred to as the United States in Congress Assembled, was the governing body of the United States from March 1, 1781, until March 3, 1789, during the Confederation ...
in 1787, the
Northwest Ordinance The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Co ...
forbade slavery in the
Northwest Territory The Northwest Territory, also known as the Old Northwest and formally known as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, was formed from part of the unorganized western territory of the United States after the American Revolution. Established ...
, a vast area (the future Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) in which slavery had been legal, but population was sparse. The first state to begin a gradual abolition of slavery was Pennsylvania, in 1780. All importation of slaves was prohibited, but none were freed at first, only the slaves of masters who failed to register them with the state, along with the "future children" of enslaved mothers. Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law went into effect were not freed until 1847. Massachusetts took a much more radical position. In 1780, during the Revolution, Massachusetts ratified its constitution and included within it a clause that declared all men equal. Based upon this clause, several
freedom suit Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by enslaved people against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free sta ...
s were filed by enslaved African Americans living in Massachusetts. In 1783, its Supreme Court, in the case of '' Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison'', reaffirmed the case of ''Brom and Bett v. Ashley'', which held that even slaves were people who had a constitutional right to liberty. This gave freedom to slaves, effectively abolishing slavery. States with a greater economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey, passed gradual emancipation laws. While some of these laws were gradual, these states enacted the first abolition laws in the entire "
New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
". In the State of New York, the enslaved population was transformed into
indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for a prepaid lump sum, as payment for some good or ser ...
before being granted full emancipation in 1827. In other states, abolitionist legislation provided freedom only for the children of the enslaved. In New Jersey, slavery was not fully prohibited until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. All of the other states north of
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the Pennsylvania model and by 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws to gradually or immediately abolish it. Some slaves continued in involuntary, unpaid "indentured servitude" for two more decades, and others were moved south and sold to new owners in
slave states In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave s ...
. Some individual slaveholders, particularly in the
upper South The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, economics, demographics, ...
, freed slaves, sometimes in their wills. Many noted they had been moved by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions. Some slave owners, concerned about the increase in free blacks, which they viewed as destabilizing, freed slaves on condition that they emigrate to Africa. All U.S. states abolished the transatlantic slave trade by 1798.
South Carolina South Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders North Carolina to the north and northeast, the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, and Georgia (U.S. state), Georg ...
, which had abolished the slave trade in 1787, reversed that decision in 1803. In the
American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is census regions United States Census Bureau. It is between the Atlantic Ocean and the ...
, freedom suits were rejected by the courts, which held that the rights in the state constitutions did not apply to
African Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...
.


The South after 1804

The institution of slavery remained solid in the South, and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a growing anti-slavery stance in the North. In 1835 alone, abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature to the South, giving rise to the
gag rule A gag rule is a rule that limits or forbids the raising, consideration, or discussion of a particular topic, often but not always by members of a legislative or decision-making body. A famous example of gag rules is the series of rules concerni ...
s in Congress, after the theft of mail from the
Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the List of municipalities in South Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint of South Carolina's coastline on Charleston Harbor, an inlet of the Atla ...
, post office, and much back-and-forth about whether postmasters were required to deliver this mail. According to the
Postmaster General A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. History The practice of having a government official ...
, they were not. Under the Constitution, the importation of enslaved persons could not be prohibited until 1808 (20 years). As the end of the 20 years approached, an
Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the U ...
sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Jefferson signed it, and it went effect on January 1, 1808. In 1820, the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy was passed. This law made importing slaves into the United States a death penalty offense. The
Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America (CSA), also known as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or Dixieland, was an List of historical unrecognized states and dependencies, unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United State ...
continued this prohibition with the sentence of death and prohibited the import of slaves.


Abolitionism's re-emergence

In 1830, most Americans were, at least in principle, opposed to slavery. However, opponents of slavery deliberated on how to end the institution, as well as what would become of the slaves once they were free. As put in '' The Philanthropist'':
If the chain of slavery can be broken,... we may cherish the hope... that proper means will be devised for the disposal of the blacks, and that this foul and unnatural crime of holding men in bondage will finally be rooted out from our land.
In the 1830s there was a progressive shift in thinking in the North. Mainstream opinion changed from gradual emancipation and resettlement of freed blacks in Africa, sometimes a condition of their
manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...
, to immediatism: freeing all the slaves immediately and sorting out the problems later. This change was in many cases sudden, a consequence of the individual's coming in direct contact with the horrors of American slavery, or hearing of them from a credible source. As it was put by Amos Adams Lawrence, who witnessed the capture and return to slavery of
Anthony Burns Anthony Burns (May 31, 1834 – July 17, 1862) was an African-American man who escaped from slavery in Virginia in 1854. His capture and trial in Boston, and transport back to Virginia, generated wide-scale public outrage in the North and incre ...
, "we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists."


Garrison and immediate emancipation

The American beginning of abolitionism as a political movement is usually dated from 1 January 1831, when Wm. Lloyd Garrison (as he always signed himself) published the first issue of his new weekly newspaper, '' The Liberator'' (1831), which appeared without interruption until slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, when it closed.


=Immediate abolition

= Abolitionists included those who joined the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist society in the United States. AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, ...
or its auxiliary groups in the 1830s and 1840s, as the movement fragmented. The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society; the
American Missionary Association The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and ...
; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society. Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate anti-slavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with a concern for Black civil rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of abolition and anti-slavery prior to the Civil War:
While instructive, the distinction etween anti-slavery and abolitioncan also be misleading, especially in assessing abolitionism's political impact. For one thing, slaveholders never bothered with such fine points. Many immediate abolitionists showed no less concern than did other white Northerners about the fate of the nation's "precious legacies of freedom". Immediatism became most difficult to distinguish from broader anti-Southern opinions once ordinary citizens began articulating these intertwining beliefs.
Nearly all Northern politicians, such as
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
, rejected the "immediate emancipation" called for by the abolitionists, seeing it as "extreme". Indeed, many Northern leaders, including Lincoln,
Stephen Douglas Stephen Arnold Douglas ( né Douglass; April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. As a U.S. senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party to run for president in the 1860 ...
(the Democratic nominee in 1860),
John C. Frémont Major general (United States), Major-General John Charles Frémont (January 21, 1813July 13, 1890) was a United States Army officer, explorer, and politician. He was a United States senator from California and was the first History of the Repub ...
(the Republican nominee in 1856), and
Ulysses S. Grant Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant; April 27, 1822July 23, 1885) was the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877. In 1865, as Commanding General of the United States Army, commanding general, Grant led the Uni ...
married into slave-owning Southern families without any moral qualms. Anti-slavery as a principle was far more than just the wish to prevent the expansion of slavery. After 1840, abolitionists rejected this because it let sin continue to exist; they demanded that slavery end everywhere, immediately and completely. John Brown was the only abolitionist to have actually planned a violent insurrection, though David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free African Americans, especially in the
Black church The Black church (sometimes termed Black Christianity or African American Christianity) is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are led by, African Americans, ...
, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the
New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...
. African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the Black community. However, they were tremendously influential on a few sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
, who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, ''
North Star Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris ( Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude t ...
''. In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether the
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
did or did not protect slavery. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of ''The Unconstitutionality of Slavery'' by
Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tr ...
. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and
Wendell Phillips Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 – February 2, 1884) was an American abolitionist, labor reformer, temperance activist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney. According to George Lewis Ruffin, a black attorney, Phillip ...
, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by
Lysander Spooner Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphleteer, political philosopher, and writer often associated with the Boston anarchist tr ...
,
Gerrit Smith Gerrit Smith (March 6, 1797 – December 28, 1874), also spelled Gerritt Smith, was an American social reformer, abolitionist, businessman, public intellectual, and philanthropist. Married to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, Smith was a candidate for P ...
, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. Using an argument based upon
Natural Law Natural law (, ) is a Philosophy, philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts ...
and a form of
social contract In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is an idea, theory, or model that usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Conceptualized in the Age of Enlightenment, it ...
theory, they said that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished. Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of
Robert Dale Owen Robert Dale Owen (7 November 1801 – 24 June 1877) was a Scottish-born Welsh-American social reformer who was active in Indiana politics as member of the Democratic Party in the Indiana House of Representatives (1835–39 and 1851–53) and re ...
and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to the politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist
Arthur Tappan Arthur Tappan (May 22, 1786 – July 23, 1865) was an American businessman, philanthropist and abolitionist. He was the brother of Ohio Senator Benjamin Tappan and abolitionist Lewis Tappan, and nephew of Harvard Divinity School theologian ...
and his evangelist brother
Lewis Lewis may refer to: Names * Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname Music * Lewis (musician), Canadian singer * " Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohe ...
. While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129–130) Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the
Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was an organized network of secret routes and safe houses used by freedom seekers to escape to the abolitionist Northern United States and Eastern Canada. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery ...
. This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, arguably the most hated and most openly evaded federal legislation in the nation's history. Nevertheless, participants like
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, us ...
,
Henry Highland Garnet Henry Highland Garnet (December 23, 1815 – February 13, 1882) was an American abolitionist, minister, educator, orator, and diplomat. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he grew up in New York City. He was ed ...
, Alexander Crummell, Amos Noë Freeman, and others continued with their work. Abolitionists were particularly active in
Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
, where some worked directly in the Underground Railroad. Since only the
Ohio River The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...
separated free Ohio from slave Kentucky, it was a popular destination for fugitive slaves. Supporters helped them there, in many cases to cross
Lake Erie Lake Erie ( ) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest avera ...
by boat, into Canada. The
Western Reserve The Connecticut Western Reserve was a portion of land claimed by the Colony of Connecticut and later by the state of Connecticut in what is now mostly the northeastern region of Ohio. Warren, Ohio was the Historic Capital in Trumbull County. T ...
area of northeast Ohio was "probably the most intensely antislavery section of the country." The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue got national publicity. Abolitionist John Brown grew up in
Hudson, Ohio Hudson is a city in northern Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 23,110 at the 2020 census. It is a suburban community in the Akron metropolitan area. John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery here and the ci ...
. In the South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing
slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
were often targets of lynch mob violence before the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. Numerous known abolitionists lived, worked, and worshipped in
downtown Brooklyn Downtown Brooklyn is the third-largest central business district in New York City (after Midtown Manhattan, Midtown and Lower Manhattan), and is located in the northwestern section of the borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. The neighb ...
, from
Henry Ward Beecher Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the Abolitionism, abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery ...
, who auctioned slaves into freedom from the pulpit of Plymouth Church, to Nathaniel Eggleston, a leader of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, who also preached at the Bridge Street
African Methodist Episcopal Church The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the AME Church or AME, is a Methodist denomination based in the United States. It adheres to Wesleyan theology, Wesleyan–Arminian theology and has a connexionalism, connexional polity. It ...
, and lived on Duffield Street. His fellow Duffield Street residents Thomas and Harriet Truesdell were leading members of the abolitionist movement. Mr. Truesdell was a founding member of the Providence Anti-slavery Society before moving to Brooklyn in 1838. Harriet Truesdell was also very active in the movement, organizing an anti-slavery convention in
Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia) Pennsylvania Hall, "one of the most commodious and splendid buildings in the city," was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist venue in Philadelphia, built in 1837–38. It was a "Temple of Free Discussion," where antislavery, women's ...
. Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist was Rev. Joshua Leavitt, trained as a lawyer at Yale, who stopped practicing law in order to attend
Yale Divinity School Yale Divinity School (YDS) is one of the twelve graduate and professional schools of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Congregationalist theological education was the motivation at the founding of Yale, and the professional school has ...
, and subsequently edited the abolitionist newspaper '' The Emancipator'' and campaigned against slavery, as well as advocating other social reforms. In 1841, Leavitt published ''The Financial Power of Slavery'', which argued that the South was draining the national economy due to its reliance on enslaved workers. In 2007, Duffield Street was given the name Abolitionist Place, and the Truesdells' home at 227 Duffield received landmark status in 2021.


Summary of progress

The
federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...
prohibited the
transatlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
in 1808, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia in 1850, outlawed
slavery in the District of Columbia In the District of Columbia, the slave trade was legal from its creation until it was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850. That restrictions on slavery in the District were probably coming was a major factor in the retrocession of the Vir ...
in 1862, and, with the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished Slavery in the United States, slavery and involuntary servitude, except Penal labor in the United States, as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed ...
, made slavery unconstitutional altogether, except as punishment for a crime, in 1865. This was a direct result of the Union victory in the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. The central issue of the war was slavery.


Abolitionism at colleges


Western Reserve College

Both Garrison's newspaper ''The Liberator'' and his book ''Thoughts on African Colonization'' (1832) arrived shortly after publication at Western Reserve College, in
Hudson, Ohio Hudson is a city in northern Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 23,110 at the 2020 census. It is a suburban community in the Akron metropolitan area. John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery here and the ci ...
, which was briefly the center of abolitionist discourse in the United States. ( John Brown grew up in Hudson.) The readers, including college president Charles Backus Storrs, found Garrison's arguments and evidence convincing. Abolition versus colonization rapidly became the primary issue on the campus, to the point that Storrs complained in writing that nothing else was being discussed. The college's chaplain and theology professor Beriah Green said that "his ''Thoughts'' and his paper (''The Liberator'') are worthy of the eye and the heart of every American." Green delivered in the college chapel in November and December 1832 four sermons supporting immediate abolition of slavery. These so offended the college's trustees, more conservative than either the students or the faculty, that Green resigned, expecting that he would be fired. Elizur Wright, another professor, resigned soon afterwards and became the first secretary of the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist society in the United States. AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, ...
, of which Green was the first president. Storrs contracted tuberculosis, took a
leave of absence The labour law concept of leave, specifically paid leave or, in some countries' long-form, a leave of absence, is an authorised prolonged absence from work, for any reason authorised by the workplace. When people "take leave" in this way, they ar ...
, and died within six months. This left the school with only one of its four professors.


Oneida Institute for Science and Industry

Green was soon hired as the new president of the
Oneida Institute The Oneida Institute ( ) was a short-lived Presbyterianism, Presbyterian school in Whitesboro, New York, United States, that was a national leader in the emerging Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist movement. Existing from 1827 to 18 ...
. Under the previous president,
George Washington Gale George Washington Gale (December 13, 1789 – September 13, 1861) was an American Presbyterian minister who founded the Oneida Institute of Science and Industry. He later purchased land in Illinois that became Galesburg, Illinois, named in h ...
, there had been a mass walkout of students; among the issues was Gale's lack of support for abolition. He accepted the position on conditions that 1) he be allowed to preach "immediatism", immediate emancipation, and 2) that African-American students be admitted on the same terms as white students. These were accepted, and we know the names of 16 Blacks who studied there. Native American students, of whom we know the names of two, were openly accepted as well. Under Green, Oneida became "a hotbed of anti-slavery activity." It was "abolitionist to the core, more so than any other American college." For Presbyterian minister and Bible professor Green, slavery was not just an evil but a sin, and abolitionism was what Christ's principles mandated. Under him a cadre of abolitionists was trained, who then carried the abolitionist message, via lectures and sermons, throughout the North. Many future well-known black leaders and abolitionists were students at Oneida while Green was president. These include William Forten (son of
James Forten James Forten (September 2, 1766March 4, 1842) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A free-born African American, he became a sailmaker after the American Revolutionary War. ...
), Alexander Crummell, Rev.
Henry Highland Garnet Henry Highland Garnet (December 23, 1815 – February 13, 1882) was an American abolitionist, minister, educator, orator, and diplomat. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he grew up in New York City. He was ed ...
and Rev. Amos Noë Freeman.


Lane Seminary

The Oneida Institute did not have an incident, like that of Western Reserve, which brought national attention to it. Its successor, Lane Seminary, in Cincinnati, did. "Lane was Oneida moved west." Leading the exodus from Oneida was a former Oneida student, and private student of Gale before that,
Theodore Dwight Weld Theodore Dwight Weld (November 23, 1803 – February 3, 1895) was one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years from 1830 to 1844, playing a role as writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. He is best kno ...
. He greatly impressed the philanthropist brothers and abolitionists
Arthur Arthur is a masculine given name of uncertain etymology. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. A common spelling variant used in many Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages is Artur. In Spanish and Ital ...
and
Lewis Tappan Lewis Tappan (May 23, 1788 – June 21, 1873) was an American abolitionist who in 1841 helped to secure freedom for the enslaved Africans aboard the '' Amistad''. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, into a Calvinist household. Tappan w ...
. They hired him to report on the movement nationally, and specifically to find a new location for their funding, since Oneida, a manual labor school, was a disappointment, according to Weld and his student followers. (The manual labor school movement had students work about 3 hours a day on farms or in small factories or plants, such as Oneida's printing shop, and was intended to provide needy students with funds for their education – a form of work-study – while at the same time providing them the newly recognized physical and psychological (spiritual) benefits of exercise.) At the same time that Weld was scouting a location for a new school, the barely-functioning Lane Seminary was looking for students. Based on Weld's recommendation, the Tappans started giving Lane the financial support they had previously given Oneida. Weld, though on paper enrolled as a student at Lane, was de facto its head, choosing, through his recommendations to the Tappans, the president (
Lyman Beecher Lyman Beecher (October 12, 1775 – January 10, 1863) was an American Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Presbyterian minister and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. Father of 13 children, many of them became writer ...
, after
Charles Grandison Finney Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was a controversial American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Old Christian revival, Revivalism ...
, who became later the second president of Oberlin, turned it down), and telling the trustees whom to hire. The group of students led by Weld constituted the first student movement in the history of the country. He left Oneida, and they did. He chose Lane, and they followed him there. When he soon left Lane for another new, struggling institution, Oberlin, they did so too, as a group. Students, many of whom considered him the real leader of Lane, responded to Weld's announcement of the new school in Cincinnati. Lane ended up with about 100 students, the most of any seminary in America. One of Weld's key contentions (and of Puritan abolition sentiment in general) was that slavery was inherently anti-family. While slave marriage was illegal, it happened frequently. Slave owners expected their slaves to have many children to replace their numbers; Virginia and Maryland "exported" slaves to the
Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, plant ...
—they were an asset like cattle—after Congress had banned the importation of slaves in 1808. Since slaves were property they were frequently bought and sold, ripping apart families. In his 1839 book '' American Slavery as It Is'', Weld showed just how brutal the slave trade was towards families. To the very family-focused Puritans, this was one of the greatest crimes of slavery. Weld's descriptions of families destroyed would later serve as the basis for scenes in ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two Volume (bibliography), volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans ...
'', including Uncle Tom's being sold and separated from the children.


=Lane Seminary debates

= No sooner had this disparate group of former Oneida students and others arrived at Lane, under the leadership of Weld, than they formed an anti-slavery society. They then proceeded to hold a well-publicized series of debates on abolition versus African colonization, lasting 18 evenings, and decided that abolition was a much better solution to slavery. In fact no real debate took place, since no one appeared to defend colonization. These "debates", which were well publicized, alarmed Lane's president
Lyman Beecher Lyman Beecher (October 12, 1775 – January 10, 1863) was an American Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Presbyterian minister and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. Father of 13 children, many of them became writer ...
and the school's trustees. Adding to their alarm were the classes the students were holding in the Black community, teaching Blacks to read. Fearing violence, since Cincinnati was strongly anti-abolitionist (see
Cincinnati riots of 1829 The Cincinnati race riots of 1829 were triggered by competition for jobs between Irish immigrants and native blacks and former slaves, in Cincinnati, Ohio but also were related to white fears given the rapid increases of free and fugitive blacks i ...
), they immediately prohibited any future such "off-the-topic" discussions and activities. The students, again led by Weld, felt that abolitionism was so important – it was their responsibility as Christians to promote it – and they resigned ''en masse'', joined by
Asa Mahan Asa Mahan (; November 9, 1799April 4, 1889) was an American Congregational minister and educator and the first president of both the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) and Adrian College. He described himself as "a religious te ...
, a trustee who supported the students. With support from the Tappans, they briefly tried to establish a new seminary, but as this did not prove a practical solution they accepted a proposal that they move as a group to the new
Oberlin Collegiate Institute Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second-oldest continuously operatin ...
.


Oberlin Collegiate Institute

Due to its students' anti-slavery position, Oberlin soon became one of the most liberal colleges and accepted African-American students. Along with Garrison, Northcutt and Collins were proponents of immediate abolition. Abby Kelley Foster became an "ultra abolitionist" and a follower of William Lloyd Garrison. She led Susan B. Anthony as well as
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
into the anti-slavery cause. After 1840, "abolition" usually referred to positions similar to Garrison's. It was largely an ideological movement led by about 3,000 people, including free blacks and
free people of color In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color (; ) were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who we ...
, many of whom, such as
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
in
Rochester, New York Rochester is a city in and the county seat, seat of government of Monroe County, New York, United States. It is the List of municipalities in New York, fourth-most populous city and 10th most-populated municipality in New York, with a populati ...
, and Robert Purvis and
James Forten James Forten (September 2, 1766March 4, 1842) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A free-born African American, he became a sailmaker after the American Revolutionary War. ...
in Philadelphia, played prominent leadership roles. Douglass became legally free during a two-year stay in England, as British supporters raised funds to purchase his freedom from his American owner Thomas Auld, and also helped fund his abolitionist newspapers in the United States. Abolitionism had a strong religious base including Quakers, and people converted by the revivalist fervor of the
Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a k ...
, led by
Charles Finney Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was a controversial American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Old Revivalism". Finney reject ...
in the North, in the 1830s. Belief in abolition contributed to the formation of Christian denominations, such as the
Free Methodist Church The Free Methodist Church (FMC) is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement, based in the United States. It is Evangelicalism, evangelical in nature and is Wesleyan theology, Wesleyan–Arminian in theology. The Free Met ...
.
Evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...
abolitionists founded some colleges, most notably
Bates College Bates College () is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian ...
in
Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
and
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...
in
Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...
. The movement attracted such figures as Yale president
Noah Porter Noah Thomas Porter III (December 14, 1811 – March 4, 1892)''Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University'', Yale University, 1891-2, New Haven, pp. 82-83. was an American Congregational minister, academic, philosopher, author, lexicographer ...
and Harvard president Thomas Hill. In the North, most opponents of slavery supported other modernizing reform movements such as the
temperance movement The temperance movement is a social movement promoting Temperance (virtue), temperance or total abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and ...
, public schooling, and prison- and asylum-building. They were split on the issue of women's activism and their political role, and this contributed to a major rift in the Society. In 1839, brothers
Arthur Tappan Arthur Tappan (May 22, 1786 – July 23, 1865) was an American businessman, philanthropist and abolitionist. He was the brother of Ohio Senator Benjamin Tappan and abolitionist Lewis Tappan, and nephew of Harvard Divinity School theologian ...
and
Lewis Tappan Lewis Tappan (May 23, 1788 – June 21, 1873) was an American abolitionist who in 1841 helped to secure freedom for the enslaved Africans aboard the '' Amistad''. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, into a Calvinist household. Tappan w ...
left the Society and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women. Other members of the Society, including Charles Turner Torrey, Amos Phelps, Henry Stanton, and Alanson St. Clair, in addition to disagreeing with Garrison on the women's issue, urged taking a much more activist approach to abolitionism and consequently challenged Garrison's leadership at the Society's annual meeting in January 1839. When the challenge was beaten back, they left and founded the New Organization, which adopted a more activist approach to freeing slaves. Soon after, in 1840, they formed the Liberty Party, which had as its sole platform the abolition of slavery. By the end of 1840, Garrison himself announced the formation of a third new organization, the Friends of Universal Reform, with sponsors and founding members including prominent reformers Maria Chapman, Abby Kelley Foster, Oliver Johnson, and Bronson Alcott (father of
Louisa May Alcott Louisa May Alcott (; November 29, 1832March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet best known for writing the novel ''Little Women'' (1868) and its sequels ''Good Wives'' (1869), ''Little Men'' (1871), and ''Jo's Boys'' ...
). Abolitionists such as
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
repeatedly condemned slavery for contradicting the principles of freedom and equality on which the country was founded. In 1854, Garrison wrote:
I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form – and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing – with indignation and abhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defense, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any institution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may rightfully make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration of Independence. Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire. I do not know how to espouse freedom and slavery together.


''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' and ''The Impending Crisis of the South''

The most influential abolitionist publication was ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two Volume (bibliography), volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans ...
'' (1852), the best-selling novel by
Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
, who had attended the anti-slavery debates at Lane, of which her father,
Lyman Beecher Lyman Beecher (October 12, 1775 – January 10, 1863) was an American Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Presbyterian minister and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. Father of 13 children, many of them became writer ...
, was the president. Outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (which made the escape narrative part of everyday news), Stowe emphasized the horrors that abolitionists had long claimed about slavery. Her depiction of the evil slave owner Simon Legree, a transplanted Yankee who kills the Christ-like Uncle Tom, outraged the North, helped sway British public opinion against the South, and inflamed Southern slave owners who tried to refute it by showing that some slave owners were humanitarian. Although incredibly influential to the abolitionist struggle, it also proved during this time period, as a white woman's retelling of American slavery became more influential during this time than several black abolitionist newspaper's depictions of slavery. It inspired numerous anti-Tom, pro-slavery novels, several written and published by women. According to a book reviewer, "Next to ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), Hinton Helper's critique of slavery and the Southern class system, '' The Impending Crisis of the South'' (1857), was arguably the most important antislavery book of the 1850s." According to historian George M. Fredrickson, "it would not be difficult to make a case for ''The Impending Crisis'' as the most important single book, in terms of its political impact, that has ever been published in the United States." Helper was a Southerner and a virulent racist, but he was nevertheless an abolitionist, because, as he argued in ''The Impending Crisis of the South'', slavery hurt the economic prospects of non-slaveholders and was an impediment to the growth of the entire region of the South.


The Constitution and ending slavery


The Republican strategy of using the Constitution

Two diametrically opposed anti-slavery positions emerged regarding the
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
. The Garrisonians emphasized that the document permitted and protected slavery and was therefore "an agreement with hell" that had to be rejected in favor of immediate emancipation. The mainstream anti-slavery position adopted by the new Republican party argued that the Constitution could and should be used to eventually end slavery. They assumed that the Constitution gave the government no authority to abolish slavery directly. However, there were multiple tactics available to support the long-term strategy of using the Constitution as a battering ram against the peculiar institution. First Congress could block the admission of any new slave states. That would steadily move the balance of power in Congress and the Electoral College in favor of freedom. Congress could abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories. Congress could use the
Commerce Clause The Commerce Clause describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution ( Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and amon ...
to end the interstate slave trade, thereby crippling the steady movement of slavery from the southeast to the southwest. Congress could recognize free blacks as full citizens and insist on due process rights to protect fugitive slaves from being captured and returned to bondage. Finally, the government could use patronage powers to promote the anti-slavery cause across the country, especially in the border states. Pro-slavery elements considered the Republican strategy to be much more dangerous to their cause than radical abolitionism. Lincoln's election was met by secession. Indeed, the Republican strategy mapped the "crooked path to abolition" that prevailed during the Civil War.


Events leading to emancipation

In the 1850s, the slave trade remained legal in all 16 states of the
American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is census regions United States Census Bureau. It is between the Atlantic Ocean and the ...
. While slavery was fading away in the cities and border states, it remained strong in plantation areas that grew cash crops such as cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco or hemp. By the 1860 United States census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million. American abolitionism, after
Nat Turner Nat Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an enslaved Black carpenter and preacher who led a four-day rebellion of both enslaved and free Black people in Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831. Nat Turner's Rebellion res ...
's revolt ended its discussion in the South, was based in the North, and white Southerners alleged it fostered slave rebellion. The white abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers, especially
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
, founder of the
American Anti-Slavery Society The American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) was an Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist society in the United States. AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, ...
, and writers such as
John Greenleaf Whittier John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Frequently listed as one of the fireside poets, he was influenced by the Scottish poet ...
and
Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
. Black activists included former slaves such as
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
, and free blacks such as the brothers Charles Henry Langston and
John Mercer Langston John Mercer Langston (December 14, 1829 – November 15, 1897) was an African-American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician. He was the founding dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the d ...
, who helped to found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Some abolitionists said that slavery was criminal and a sin; they also criticized slave owners for using black women as
concubines Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between two people in which the couple does not want to, or cannot, enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar, but mutually exclusive. During the e ...
and taking sexual advantage of them.


Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 attempted to resolve issues surrounding slavery caused by the War with Mexico and the admission to the Union of the slave
Republic of Texas The Republic of Texas (), or simply Texas, was a country in North America that existed for close to 10 years, from March 2, 1836, to February 19, 1846. Texas shared borders with Centralist Republic of Mexico, the Republic of the Rio Grande, an ...
. The
Compromise of 1850 The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states during the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designe ...
was proposed by "The Great Compromiser"
Henry Clay Henry Clay (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate, U.S. Senate and United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives. He was the seventh Spea ...
; support was coordinated by Senator
Stephen A. Douglas Stephen Arnold Douglas (né Douglass; April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. As a United States Senate, U.S. senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party (United States) ...
. Through the compromise, California was admitted as a free state after its state convention unanimously opposed slavery there, Texas was financially compensated for the loss of its territories northwest of the modern state borders, and the
slave trade Slave trade may refer to: * History of slavery - overview of slavery It may also refer to slave trades in specific countries, areas: * Al-Andalus slave trade * Atlantic slave trade ** Brazilian slave trade ** Bristol slave trade ** Danish sl ...
(not slavery) was abolished in the District of Columbia. The
Fugitive Slave Law The fugitive slave laws were laws passed by the United States Congress in 1793 and 1850 to provide for the return of slaves who escaped from one state into another state or territory. The idea of the fugitive slave law was derived from the Fugi ...
was a concession to the South. Abolitionists were outraged, because the new law required Northerners to help in the capture and return of runaway slaves.


Republican Party

In 1854, Congress passed the
Kansas–Nebraska Act The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 () was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law b ...
, which opened those territories to slavery if the local residents voted that way. The anti-slavery gains made in previous compromises were reversed. A firestorm of outrage brought together former Whigs, Know-Nothings, and former Free Soil Democrats to form a new party in 1854–56, the Republican Party. It included a program of rapid modernization involving the government promotion of industry, railroads, banks, free homesteads, and colleges, all to the annoyance of the South. The new party denounced the
Slave Power The Slave Power, or Slavocracy, referred to the perceived political power held by American slaveholders in the federal government of the United States during the Antebellum period. Antislavery campaigners charged that this small group of wealth ...
– that is the political power of the slave owners who supposedly controlled the national government for their own benefit and to the disadvantage of the ordinary white man. The Republicans wanted to achieve the gradual extinction of slavery by market forces, because its members believed that free labor was superior to slave labor. Southern leaders said the Republican policy of blocking the expansion of slavery into the West made them second-class citizens, and challenged their autonomy. With the 1860 presidential victory of
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
, seven Deep South states whose economy was based on cotton and slavery decided to secede and form a new nation. The
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
broke out in April 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, four more slave states seceded. The crisis in
Kansas Territory The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the United States, Union as the Slave and ...
and the neighboring slave state of Missouri turned bloody during what was known as the
Bleeding Kansas Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War, was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the ...
crisis of the 1850s. Proslavery ''
border ruffian Border ruffians were Proslavery thought, proslavery raiders who crossed into the Kansas Territory from Missouri during the mid-19th century to help ensure the territory entered the United States as a Slave states and free states, slave state. ...
s'' and ''
Bushwhacker Bushwhacking was a form of guerrilla warfare common during the American Revolutionary War, War of 1812, American Civil War and other conflicts in which there were large areas of contested land and few governmental resources to control these tra ...
s'' fought antislavery " free-staters" and ''
Jayhawker Jayhawker and red leg are terms that came to prominence in Kansas Territory during the Bleeding Kansas period of the 1850s; they were adopted by militant bands affiliated with the free-state cause during the American Civil War. These gangs were ...
s''. Paramilitary
guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include recruited children, use ambushes, sabotage, terrori ...
became widespread in the area, as a prelude to the Civil War. The violence would spread to many other places, including the Senate Chamber of the U.S. Capitol where a Southern Democrat attacked a Northern Republican with a cane as his political allies watched. Explorer, army veteran, and abolitionist
John C. Frémont Major general (United States), Major-General John Charles Frémont (January 21, 1813July 13, 1890) was a United States Army officer, explorer, and politician. He was a United States senator from California and was the first History of the Repub ...
ran as the first Republican nominee for president in 1856. The new party crusaded on the slogan: "Free soil, free silver, free men, Frémont and victory!" Although he lost, the party showed a strong base. It dominated in Yankee areas of New England, New York and the northern Midwest, and had a strong presence in the rest of the North. It had almost no support in the South, where it was roundly denounced in 1856–60 as a divisive force that threatened civil war. The newly-formed Republican Party gained quite a standing in the 1856 to 1857 election cycle in the U.S. House and Senate, cementing its status as the primary party for abolitionists and northerners for some time. Without using the term "
containment Containment was a Geopolitics, geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term ''Cordon sanitaire ...
", the new Party in the mid-1850s proposed a system of containing slavery once it gained control of the national government. Historian James Oakes explains the strategy:
The federal government would surround the south with free states, free territories, and free waters, building what they called a "cordon of freedom" around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own internal weaknesses forced the slave states one by one to abandon slavery.
Militant abolitionists demanded ''immediate'' emancipation, not a slow-acting containment. Some rejected the new party, and in turn its leaders reassured voters they were not trying to abolish slavery in the U.S. altogether, which was politically impossible, and were just working against its spread.


John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

John Brown has been called "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans". When Brown was hanged after his attempt to start a slave rebellion in 1859, church bells rang across the North, there was a 100-gun salute in
Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River. Albany is the oldes ...
, large memorial meetings took place throughout the North, and famous writers such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionism, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalism, Transcendentalist movement of th ...
and
Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon sim ...
joined other Northerners in praising Brown. Whereas Garrison was a pacifist, Brown believed violence was unfortunately necessary to end slavery. The raid, though unsuccessful in the short term, may have helped Lincoln get elected and moved the Southern states to secede, leading to the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
. Some historians regard Brown as a crazed lunatic, while David S. Reynolds hails him as the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded civil rights". His raid in October 1859 involved a band of 22 men who seized the Federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (since 1863,
West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...
), knowing it contained tens of thousands of weapons. Brown believed the South was on the verge of a gigantic slave uprising and that one spark would set it off. Brown's supporters George Luther Stearns, Franklin B. Sanborn,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823May 9, 1911), who went by the name Wentworth, was an American Unitarianism, Unitarian minister, author, Abolitionism, abolitionist, politician, and soldier. He was active in abolitionism in the United ...
, Theodore Parker,
Samuel Gridley Howe Samuel Gridley Howe (November 10, 1801 – January 9, 1876) was an American physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824, he had gone to Greece to ...
, and
Gerrit Smith Gerrit Smith (March 6, 1797 – December 28, 1874), also spelled Gerritt Smith, was an American social reformer, abolitionist, businessman, public intellectual, and philanthropist. Married to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, Smith was a candidate for P ...
were all abolitionists, members of the so-called Secret Six who provided financial backing for Brown's raid. Brown's raid, says historian David Potter, "was meant to be of vast magnitude and to produce a revolutionary slave uprising throughout the South". The raid did not go as expected. Brown hoped to have quickly a small army of runaway slaves, but made no provision to inform these potential runaways, although he got a little local support. Lt. Colonel
Robert E. Lee Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a general officers in the Confederate States Army, Confederate general during the American Civil War, who was appointed the General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate ...
of the U.S. Army was dispatched to put down the raid, and Brown was quickly captured. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, murder, and inciting a slave revolt, was found guilty of all charges, and was hanged. At his trial, Brown exuded a remarkable zeal and single-mindedness that played directly to Southerners' worst fears. Under Virginia law there was a month between the sentencing and the hanging, and in those weeks Brown spoke gladly with reporters and anyone else who wanted to see him, and wrote many letters. Few individuals did more to cause secession than John Brown, because Southerners believed he was right about an impending slave revolt. The day of his execution, Brown prophesied, "the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."


American Civil War

The
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
began with the stated goal of preserving the Union, and Lincoln said repeatedly that on the topic of slavery, he was only opposed to its spread to the Western territories. This view of the war progressively changed, one step at a time, as public sentiment evolved, until by 1865 the war was seen in the North as primarily concerned with ending slavery. The first federal act taken against slavery during the war occurred on 16 April 1862, when Lincoln signed the
District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act An Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia, 37th Cong., Sess. 2, ch. 54, , known colloquially as the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act or simply Compensated Emancipation Act, ...
, which abolished slavery in Washington, D.C. A few months later, on June 19, Congress banned slavery in all federal territories, fulfilling Lincoln's 1860 campaign promise. Meanwhile, the Union suddenly found itself dealing with a steady stream of thousands of escaped slaves, achieving freedom, or so they hoped, by crossing Union lines. In response, Congress passed the Confiscation Acts, which essentially declared escaped slaves from the South to be confiscated war property, and thus did not have to be returned to their Confederate owners. Although the initial act did not mention emancipation, the Second Confiscation Act, enacted on 17 July 1862, stated that escaped or liberated slaves belonging to anyone who participated in or supported the rebellion "shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves." Pro-Union forces gained control of the border states of Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia; all three states would abolish slavery before the end of the war. Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War. The Proclamation had the eff ...
, effective 1 January 1863, which declared only those slaves in Confederate states to be free. The
United States Colored Troops United States Colored Troops (USCT) were Union Army regiments during the American Civil War that primarily comprised African Americans, with soldiers from other ethnic groups also serving in USCT units. Established in response to a demand fo ...
began operations in 1863. The
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 The Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law was a law passed by the 31st United States Congress on September 18, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850 between Southern interests in slavery and Northern Free-Soilers. The Act was one ...
was repealed in June 1864. Eventually support for abolition was enough to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, which abolished slavery everywhere in the United States, freeing more than 50,000 people still enslaved in Kentucky and Delaware, in 1865 the only states in which slavery still existed. The Thirteenth Amendment also abolished slavery among the Native American tribes.


Variations by area


Abolition in the North

The abolitionist movement began about the time of the United States' independence.
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...
played a big role. The first abolition organization was the
Pennsylvania Abolition Society The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society. It was founded April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and held four meetings. Seventeen of the 24 men who attended initia ...
, which first met in 1775;
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
was its president. The
New York Manumission Society The New York Manumission Society was founded in 1785. The term "manumission" is from the Latin meaning "a hand lets go," inferring the idea of freeing a slave. John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States as well as stat ...
was founded in 1785 by powerful politicians:
John Jay John Jay (, 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American statesman, diplomat, signatory of the Treaty of Paris (1783), Treaty of Paris, and a Founding Father of the United States. He served from 1789 to 1795 as the first chief justice of the United ...
,
Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 dur ...
, and
Aaron Burr Aaron Burr Jr. (February 6, 1756 – September 14, 1836) was an American politician, businessman, lawyer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third vice president of the United States from 1801 to 1805 d ...
. There is quite a bit of confusion about when slavery was abolished in the Northern states, because "abolishing slavery" meant different things in different states. ( Theodore Weld, in his pamphlet opposing
slavery in the District of Columbia In the District of Columbia, the slave trade was legal from its creation until it was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850. That restrictions on slavery in the District were probably coming was a major factor in the retrocession of the Vir ...
, gives a detailed chronology.) It is true that beginning with the independent Republic of Vermont in 1777, all states north of the Ohio River and the
Mason–Dixon line The Mason–Dixon line, sometimes referred to as Mason and Dixon's Line, is a demarcation line separating four U.S. states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia. It was Surveying, surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason ...
that separated Pennsylvania from Maryland passed laws that abolished slavery, although in some cases this did not apply to existing slaves, only their future offspring. These included the first abolition laws in the entire
New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
: the
Massachusetts Constitution The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the fundamental governing document of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 individual states that make up the United States of America. It consists of a preamble, declaration ...
, adopted in 1780, declared all men to have rights, making slavery unenforceable, and it disappeared through the individual actions of both masters and slaves. However, what the abolition forces passed in 1799 in New York State was an Act for the ''gradual'' abolition of slavery. Slavery in New York did not officially end until 1827, and more than 70 enslaved people in New York appeared on the 1830 decennial census. No slaves appeared in the state's 1840 census. New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804, but in 1860 a dozen black people were still held as "perpetual apprentices". In the
Northwest Ordinance The Northwest Ordinance (formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio and also known as the Ordinance of 1787), enacted July 13, 1787, was an organic act of the Congress of the Co ...
of 1787, the
Congress of the Confederation The Congress of the Confederation, or the Confederation Congress, formally referred to as the United States in Congress Assembled, was the governing body of the United States from March 1, 1781, until March 3, 1789, during the Confederation ...
prohibited slavery in the territories northwest of the
Ohio River The Ohio River () is a river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its river mouth, mouth on the Mississippi Riv ...
. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, slavery was the most contentious topic. Outright prohibition of slavery was impossible, because the Southern states (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware) would never have agreed to it. The only restriction on slavery that was agreed to was to allow Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves, and even that was postponed for 20 years. By that time, all the states except South Carolina had laws abolishing or severely limiting the importation of slaves. When 1808 approached, then-President Thomas Jefferson, in his 1806 annual message to Congress (
State of the Union The State of the Union Address (sometimes abbreviated to SOTU) is an annual message delivered by the president of the United States to a Joint session of the United States Congress, joint session of the United States Congress near the beginning ...
), proposed legislation, approved by Congress with little controversy in 1807, prohibiting the importation of slaves into the United States effective the first day the Constitution permitted, January 1, 1808. As he put it, this would "withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights...which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe". However, about 1,000 slaves per year continued to be illegally brought (smuggled) into the United States; see
Wanderer Wanderer, Wanderers, or The Wanderer may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film, television, and theater * The Wanderer (1913 film), ''The Wanderer'' (1913 film), a silent film * The Wanderer (1925 film), ''The Wanderer'' (1925 film), a silen ...
and Clotilda. This was primarily via
Spanish Florida Spanish Florida () was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern America during the European Age of Discovery. ''La Florida'' formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and th ...
and the
Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...
; the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819, effective 1821, in part as a slave-control measure: no imports coming in, and certainly no fugitives escaping into a refuge. Congress declined to pass any restriction on the lucrative interstate slave trade, which expanded to replace the supply of African slaves (see Slavery in the United States#Slave trade).


Manumission by Southern owners

After 1776,
Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
and Moravian advocates helped persuade numerous slaveholders in the
Upper South The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, economics, demographics, ...
to free their slaves.
Manumission Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...
s increased for nearly two decades. Many individual acts by slaveholders freed thousands of slaves. Slaveholders freed slaves in such numbers that the percentage of free black people in the
Upper South The Upland South and Upper South are two overlapping cultural and geographic subregions in the inland part of the Southern United States. They differ from the Deep South and Atlantic coastal plain by terrain, history, economics, demographics, ...
increased from 1 to 10 percent, with most of that increase in
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
,
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
and
Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...
. By 1810 three-quarters of blacks in Delaware were free. The most notable of men offering freedom was Robert Carter III of Virginia, who freed more than 450 people by "Deed of Gift", filed in 1791. This number was more slaves than any single American had freed before or after. Often slaveholders came to their decisions by their own struggles in the Revolution; their wills and deeds frequently cited language about the equality of men supporting the decision to set slaves free. The era's changing economy also encouraged slaveholders to release slaves. Planters were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco to mixed-crop cultivation and needed fewer slaves.Peter Kolchin, ''American Slavery, 1619–1877'', New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, pp. 78, 81–82. By 1860, 91.7% of the blacks in Delaware and 49.7% of those in Maryland were free. Such early free families often formed the core of artisans, professionals, preachers, and teachers in future generations. However, this did not signal racial equality. Though free from slavery, blacks still faced immense discrimination. For example, Delaware affirmed and reaffirmed black disenfranchisement several times throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries. Delaware's General Assembly enacted harsh black codes throughout the 19th century that restricted travel, property ownership, expression, and socialization for African Americans.


Western territories

During Congressional debate in 1820 on the proposed
Tallmadge Amendment The Tallmadge Amendment was a proposed amendment to a bill regarding the admission of the Territory of Missouri as a state, under which Missouri would be admitted as a free state. The amendment was submitted in the U.S. House of Represent ...
, which sought to limit slavery in
Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
as it became a state,
Rufus King Rufus King (March 24, 1755April 29, 1827) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father, lawyer, politician, and diplomat. He was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convent ...
declared that "laws or compacts imposing any such condition laveryupon any human being are absolutely void, because contrary to the law of nature, which is the law of God, by which he makes his ways known to man, and is paramount to all human control". The amendment failed and Missouri became a slave state. According to historian
David Brion Davis David Brion Davis (February 16, 1927 – April 14, 2019) was an American intellectual and cultural historian, and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, ...
, this may have been the first time in the world that a political leader openly attacked slavery's perceived legality in such a radical manner. Beginning in the 1830s, the U.S.
Postmaster General A Postmaster General, in Anglosphere countries, is the chief executive officer of the postal service of that country, a ministerial office responsible for overseeing all other postmasters. History The practice of having a government official ...
refused to allow the mails to carry abolition pamphlets to the South. Northern teachers suspected of abolitionism were expelled from the South, and abolitionist literature was banned. One Northerner,
Amos Dresser Amos Dresser (December 17, 1812 – February 4, 1904) was an abolitionist and pacifist minister who was one of the founders of Olivet College. His name was well known in the Antebellum period due to a well-publicized incident: in 1835 he was arre ...
(1812–1904), in 1835 was tried in
Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...
, for possessing anti-slavery publications, convicted, and as punishment was whipped publicly. Southerners rejected the denials of Republicans that they were abolitionists. They pointed to John Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a slave uprising as proof that multiple Northern conspiracies were afoot to ignite slave rebellions. Although some abolitionists did call for slave revolts, no evidence of any other Brown-like conspiracy has been discovered. The North felt threatened as well, for as Eric Foner concludes, "northerners came to view slavery as the very antithesis of the good society, as well as a threat to their own fundamental values and interests". The famous, "fiery" abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster, from
Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...
, was considered an "ultra" abolitionist who believed in full civil rights for all black people. She held to the view that the freed slaves would colonize Liberia. Parts of the anti-slavery movement became known as "Abby Kellyism". She recruited Susan B Anthony and
Lucy Stone Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) was an American orator, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and Suffrage, suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer of promoting Women's rights, rights for women. In 1847, ...
to the movement. Effingham Capron, a cotton and textile scion, who attended the Quaker meeting where Abby Kelley Foster and her family were members, became a prominent abolitionist at the local, state, and national levels. The local anti-slavery society at
Uxbridge, Massachusetts Uxbridge is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States, first colonized in 1662 and incorporated in 1727. It was originally part of the town of Mendon, and named for the Earl of Uxbridge. The town is located southwest of Boston an ...
, had more than 25% of the town's population as members.


Abolitionist viewpoints

Historian James M. McPherson in 1964 defined an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional and total abolition of slavery in the United States". He notes that many historians have used a broader definition without his emphasis on immediacy. Thus he does not include opponents of slavery such as
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
or the Republican Party; they called for the immediate end to expansion of slavery before 1861. As such, abolitionism in the United States was identified by historians as an expression of
moralism Moralism is a philosophy that arose in the 19th century that concerns itself with imbuing society with a certain set of morals, usually traditional behaviour, but also "justice, freedom, and equality". It has strongly affected North American and ...
, it often operated in tandem with another social reform effort, the
temperance movement The temperance movement is a social movement promoting Temperance (virtue), temperance or total abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and ...
. Slavery was also attacked, to a lesser degree, as harmful on economic grounds. Evidence was that the South, with many enslaved African Americans on
plantations Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tobacco ...
, was definitely poorer than the North, which had few.


Religion and morality

The religious component of American abolitionism was great. It began with the
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestantism, Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally ...
, then moved to the other Protestants with the
Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a k ...
of the early 19th century. Many leaders were ministers. Saying slavery was sinful made its evil easy to understand, and tended to arouse fervor for the cause. The debate about slavery was often based on what the Bible said or did not say about it. John Brown, who had studied the Bible for the ministry, proclaimed that he was "an instrument of God". The
Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the late 18th to early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a k ...
of the 1820s and 1830s in religion inspired groups that undertook many types of social reform. For some that included the immediate abolition of slavery as they considered it sinful to hold slaves as well as to tolerate slavery. Opposition to slavery, for example, was one of the
works of piety "Works of piety", in Methodism, are certain spiritual disciplines that along with the " works of mercy", serve as a means of grace, in addition to being manifestations of growing in grace and of having received Christian perfection (entire sa ...
of the
Methodist Church Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...
es, which were established by
John Wesley John Wesley ( ; 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a principal leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies ...
. "Abolitionist" had several meanings at the time. The followers of
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
, including
Wendell Phillips Wendell Phillips (November 29, 1811 – February 2, 1884) was an American abolitionist, labor reformer, temperance activist, advocate for Native Americans, orator, and attorney. According to George Lewis Ruffin, a black attorney, Phillip ...
and
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
, demanded the "immediate abolition of slavery", hence the name, also called "immediatism". A more pragmatic group of abolitionists, such as Theodore Weld and
Arthur Tappan Arthur Tappan (May 22, 1786 – July 23, 1865) was an American businessman, philanthropist and abolitionist. He was the brother of Ohio Senator Benjamin Tappan and abolitionist Lewis Tappan, and nephew of Harvard Divinity School theologian ...
, wanted immediate action, but were willing to support a program of gradual emancipation, with a long intermediate stage. The formation of Christian denominations that heralded abolitionism as a moral issue occurred, such as the organization of
Wesleyan Methodist Connection The Wesleyan Methodist Church was a Methodist denomination in the United States organized on May 13, 1841. It was composed of ministers and laypeople who withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church because of disagreements regarding slavery a ...
by
Orange Scott Orange Scott (February 13, 1800 – July 31, 1847) was an American Methodist Episcopal minister, Presiding Elder, and District President. He presided over the convention that organized the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion in 1843, having separat ...
in 1843, and the formation of the
Free Methodist Church The Free Methodist Church (FMC) is a Methodist Christian denomination within the holiness movement, based in the United States. It is Evangelicalism, evangelical in nature and is Wesleyan theology, Wesleyan–Arminian in theology. The Free Met ...
by Benjamin Titus Roberts in 1860 (which is reflected in the name of Church). The ''True Wesleyan'' a periodical founded by
Orange Scott Orange Scott (February 13, 1800 – July 31, 1847) was an American Methodist Episcopal minister, Presiding Elder, and District President. He presided over the convention that organized the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion in 1843, having separat ...
and Jotham Horton was used to disseminate abolitionist views. The Methodist and Quaker branches of Christianity played an integral part in the formulation of abolitionist ideology in the United States. "Anti-slavery men", such as
John Quincy Adams John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth president of the United States, serving from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States secretary of state from 1817 to 1825. During his long diploma ...
, did not call slavery a sin. They called it an evil feature of society as a whole. They did what they could to limit slavery and end it where possible, but were not part of any abolitionist group. For example, in 1841, John Quincy Adams represented the '' Amistad'' African slaves in the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
and argued that they should be set free. In the last years before the war, "anti-slavery" could refer to the Northern majority, such as
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
, who opposed expansion of slavery or its influence, as by the
Kansas–Nebraska Act The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 () was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law b ...
or the Fugitive Slave Act. Many Southerners called all these abolitionists, without distinguishing them from the Garrisonians. Historian James Stewart (1976) explains the abolitionists' deep beliefs: "All people were equal in God's sight; the souls of black folks were as valuable as those of whites; for one of God's children to enslave another was a violation of the Higher Law, even if it was sanctioned by the Constitution."
Irish Catholics Irish Catholics () are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland, defined by their adherence to Catholic Christianity and their shared Irish ethnic, linguistic, and cultural heritage.The term distinguishes Catholics of Irish descent, particul ...
in the United States seldom challenged the role of slavery in society as it was protected at that time by the U.S. Constitution. They viewed the abolitionists as anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. Irish Catholics were generally well received by Democrats in the South. In contrast, most Irish Nationalists and Fenians supported the abolition of slavery.
Daniel O'Connell Daniel(I) O’Connell (; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Irelan ...
, the Catholic leader of the Irish in Ireland, supported abolition in the United States. He organized a petition in Ireland with 60,000 signatures urging the Irish of the United States to support abolition.
John O'Mahony John Francis O'Mahony (1815 – 7 February 1877) was an Irish scholar and the founding member of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, sister organisation to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Despite coming from a reasonably wealthy fa ...
, a founder of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB; ) was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland between 1858 and 1924.McGee, p. 15. Its counterpart in the United States ...
was an abolitionist and served as colonel in the 69th Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. The Irish Catholics in the United States were recent immigrants; most were poor and very few owned slaves. They had to compete with free blacks for unskilled labor jobs. They saw abolitionism as the militant wing of evangelical anti-Catholic Protestantism. The Catholic Church in the United States had long ties in slaveholding Maryland and Louisiana. Despite a firm stand for the spiritual equality of black people, and the resounding condemnation of slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in his bull '' In supremo apostolatus'' issued in 1839, the American church continued in deeds, if not in public discourse, to avoid confrontation with slave-holding interests. In 1861, the Archbishop of New York wrote to Secretary of War Cameron: "That the Church is opposed to slavery ... Her doctrine on that subject is, that it is a crime to reduce men naturally free to a condition of servitude and bondage, as slaves." No American bishop supported extra-political abolition or interference with
states' rights In United States, American politics of the United States, political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments of the United States, state governments rather than the federal government of the United States, ...
before the Civil War. The secular Germans of the Forty-Eighter immigration were largely anti-slavery. Prominent Forty-Eighters included
Carl Schurz Carl Christian Schurz (; March 2, 1829 – May 14, 1906) was a German-American revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer. He migrated to the United States after the German revolutions of 1848–1849 and became a prominent ...
and
Friedrich Hecker Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker (September 28, 1811 – March 24, 1881) was a German lawyer, politician and revolutionary. He was one of the most popular speakers and agitators of the 1848 Revolution. After moving to the United States, he served a ...
. German
Lutherans Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched the Reformation in 15 ...
seldom took a position on slavery, but German Methodists were anti-slavery.


Black abolitionists

Historians and scholars have largely overlooked the work of black abolitionists; instead, they have focused on only a few black abolitionists, such as
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
. Yet lesser-known black abolitionists, such as
Martin Delany Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812January 24, 1885) was an American abolitionist, journalist, physician, military officer and writer who was arguably the first proponent of black nationalism. Delany is credited with the Pan-African slogan of "Af ...
and James Monroe Whitfield, also played an undeniably large role in shaping the movement. Black abolitionists had the distinct problem of having to confront an often-hostile American public, while still acknowledging their nationality and struggle.Thomas O. Sloane
"Abolitionist Rhetoric"
, ''Encyclopedia of Rhetoric'', Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 8.
As a result, many black abolitionists "intentionally adopted aspects of British, New England, and Midwestern cultures". Furthermore, much of abolitionist rhetoric, and black abolitionist rhetoric in particular, were influenced by the Puritan preaching heritage.


Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...
was a notable black abolitionist, who significantly contributed to the transnational abolitionist movement through his lecture tours of the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
from 1845-1847. In particular, he had an interesting connection with
Daniel O'Connell Daniel(I) O’Connell (; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Irelan ...
. Both O'Connell and Douglass strongly opposed slavery, which represented oppression and injustice more generally. On the 4th October 1845, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society gave Douglass a Bible bound in gold. Therefore, African-Americans, with Douglass being a key example, were involving themselves in US Foreign Relations and influencing British anti-slavery rhetoric. Douglass was known best for his speeches and verbal communication, and he completed 280 lectures across the UK and
Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...
in the 19 months that he was there. Black abolitionist rhetoric discussed relationships between power, race and popular imagination, showing the complexities of the morality and representation of the abolitionist debate. Douglass and other black nationalists capitalised on pre-existing political and ideological debates among the UK to reassert the need for abolitionism. Therefore, Douglass shows black abolitionists did play a role in the transatlantic anti-slavery movement through engaging with US Foreign Relations.


Black Women

In general, Black female abolitionists had separate motives and rhetorical strategies than White female abolitionists. They were often middle class and members of literary societies; the ones to which they belonged were often made up of solely Black women. In their activist efforts, they held themselves to high moral standards to be viewed as legitimate by others. Sarah Mapps Douglass, a free-born Quaker who wrote articles for ''The Liberator'' on abolition also served as the secretary for a literary society for women in Philadelphia, where she emphasized the importance of education and morality for Black women. Black women that escaped slavery would sometimes write and publish their slave narratives as a way to argue for abolition. In opposition to male slave narratives, like Frederick Douglass’s, which highlighted literacy, Black women emphasized the communities and relationships they formed as keys to their humanity and right to freedom. They were also keen to highlight their relationship to motherhood, so as to emphasize their shared traits with white women and the ways in which they too could meet traditional expectations of white women. Harriet Jacobs’s ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'' showcases her grandmother as the matriarch of her family, which shows how enslaved mothers are capable of nurturing like valued white women. Black women also played their role in the abolitionist movement, both domestically and internationally, showing involvement in US Foreign Relations. One notable example was
Harriet Jacobs Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897) was an African-American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'', published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Bre ...
, who produced letters in England reflecting on her experiences as a slave in the USA to challenge the pro-slavery movement in the
USA The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...
. The London Emancipation Committee published her letters into a book, titled: The Deeper Wrong: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. The book was not just noticed in reform journals, but in the mainstream press. Lengthy British reviews show how the book helped abolitionists win public support in Britain. Black abolitionist rhetoric could be done in literary form, a way for black women to have influence in an international abolitionist movement.


Black Abolitionist Rhetoric in the Caribbean and South America

Black abolitionist rhetoric was not only a transatlantic movement between Britain and the USA, it also had influence in the
Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...
and
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
. The 1833 legal case Mundrucu v Barker also carried international importance in the abolitionist campaign. In taking a stand against segregation, a black Brazilian
immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...
had focused worldwide attention on racism in slaveholding US society. Here there was division between white Philadelphians who saw black Saint Dominguan refugees as a threat to the city and country's racial order, their way of trying to justify slavery. This shows the connection between attitudes towards segregation and slavery helped shape black abolitionist rhetoric. This led to domestic organisations being established by interracial communities, such as the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Working as Jamaican-based writers for New York newspapers between 1840-1851, the two black US-Jamaican brothers, Henry and George Davison provided inter-American perspectives on abolitionism. Henry wrote letters to the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Black Americans had opportunities to write for newspapers, providing publicity and discussion of abolitionist rhetoric. Slavery was moving beyond internal US divisions, but reaching influence outside of the USA. Black abolitionist rhetoric was not simply an African-American activity, but involved South American and Caribbean individuals too, showing an international movement.


Abolitionist women

William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newsletter the ''Liberator'' noted in 1847, "the Anti-Slavery cause cannot stop to estimate where the greatest indebtedness lies, but whenever the account is made up there can be no doubt that the efforts and sacrifices of the WOMEN, who helped it, will hold a most honorable and conspicuous position." As the ''Liberator'' states, women played a crucial role as leaders in the anti-slavery movement. Angelina and Sarah Grimké were the first female anti-slavery agents, and played a variety of roles in the abolitionist movement. Though born in the South, the Grimké sisters became disillusioned with slavery and moved North to get away from it. Perhaps because of their birthplace, the Grimké sisters' critiques carried particular weight and specificity. Angelina Grimké spoke of her thrill at seeing white men do manual labor of any kind. Their perspectives as native Southerners as well as women, brought a new important point of view to the abolitionist movement. In 1836, they moved to New York and began work for the Anti-Slavery Society, where they met and were impressed by
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
. The sisters wrote many pamphlets (Angelina's "Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" was the only appeal directly to Southern women to defy slavery laws) and played leadership roles at the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in 1837. The Grimkés later made a notable speaking tour around the north, which culminated in Angelina's February 1838 address to a Committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts.
Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (née Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quakers, Quaker, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position ...
was also active in the abolitionist movement. Though well known for her
women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
advocacy, Mott also played an important role in the abolitionist movement. During four decades, she delivered sermons about abolitionism, women's rights, and a host of other issues. Mott acknowledged her Quakers, Quaker beliefs' determinative role in affecting her abolitionist sentiment. She spoke of the "duty (that) was impressed upon me at the time I consecrated myself to that Gospel which anoints 'to preach deliverance to the captive, to set at liberty them that are bruised ..." Mott's advocacy took a variety of forms: she worked with the Free produce movement, Free Produce Society to boycott slave-made goods, volunteered with the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, and helped slaves escape to free territory. Abby Kelley Foster, with a strong
Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
heritage, helped lead Susan B. Anthony and
Lucy Stone Lucy Stone (August 13, 1818 – October 18, 1893) was an American orator, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and Suffrage, suffragist who was a vocal advocate for and organizer of promoting Women's rights, rights for women. In 1847, ...
into the abolition movement, and encouraged them to take on a role in political activism. She helped organize and was a key speaker at the first National Women's Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. (The better-known Seneca Falls Convention, held in 1848, was not national). She was an "ultra" abolitionist who believed in immediate and complete civil rights for all slaves. Since 1841, however, she had resigned from the Quakers over disputes about not allowing anti-slavery speakers in meeting houses (including the Uxbridge monthly meeting where she had attended with her family), and the group disowned her. Abby Kelley became a leading speaker and the leading fundraiser for the American Anti-slavery Society. Radical abolitionism became known as "Abby Kelleyism". Other leaders in the abolitionist movement were Lydia Maria Child,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
, Susan B. Anthony,
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. After escaping slavery, Tubman made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including her family and friends, us ...
, and Sojourner Truth. But even beyond these well-known women, abolitionism maintained impressive support from white middle-class and some black women. It was these women who performed many of the logistical, day-to-day tasks that made the movement successful. They raised money, wrote and distributed propaganda pieces, drafted and signed petitions, and lobbied the legislatures. Though abolitionism sowed the seeds of the women's rights movement, most women became involved in abolitionism because of a gendered religious worldview, and the idea that they had feminine, moral responsibilities. For example, in the winter of 1831–1832, women sent three petitions to the Virginia legislature, advocating emancipation of the state's slave population. The only precedent for such action was Catharine Beecher, Catharine Beecher's organization of a petition protesting the Cherokee removal. The Virginia petitions, while the first of their kind, were by no means the last. Similar backing increased leading up to the
Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
. Even as women played crucial roles in abolitionism, the movement simultaneously helped stimulate women's-rights efforts. A full 10 years before the Seneca Falls Convention, the Grimké sisters were travelling and lecturing about their experiences with slavery. As Gerda Lerner says, the Grimkés understood their actions' great impact. "In working for the liberation of the slave," Lerner writes, "Sarah and Angelina Grimké found the key to their own liberation. And the consciousness of the significance of their actions was clearly before them. 'We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down. Women gained important experiences in public speaking and organizing that stood them in good stead going forward. The Grimké sisters' public speaking played a critical part in legitimizing women's place in the public sphere. Some Christian women created cent societies to benefit abolition movements, where many women in a church would each pledge to donate one cent a week to help abolitionist causes. Even though women weren’t allowed full access to political and religious spaces, they still played a big role in the abolitionist movement through both public activism and behind-the-scenes activism. As historian Julie Roy Jeffrey explains, a lot of women relied on their religious faith and authority to speak out against slavery and challenge male-led church systems that tried to keep them quiet. They believed slavery went against Christian values and saw it as a deep moral wrong. In their speeches and writing, they made it clear that true faith couldn’t exist alongside a system that discriminated against people. Women like Sarah Otis Ernst and Maria Child used persuasive writing, public speeches, and organizing work to fight not just slavery, but also the powerful systems that kept it going. Ernst was a strong Garrisonian who got frustrated when mainstream abolitionists started watering down their message. She didn’t like that people in the movement were trying to be more politically strategic instead of sticking to the original beliefs, like full racial equality, immediate emancipation, and refusing to work with pro-slavery systems. At the 1852 American and Foreign Antislavery Society convention, around two-thirds of the 2,000 people there were women. That says a lot about how involved women were, even though they often got written out of the story. They couldn’t vote, but they used writing, speeches, and journalism to influence politics and public opinion. Their activism was real, public, and tied directly into national conversations. But not all women approached the movement the same way. There were clear differences between how white and Black women operated, and sometimes those differences caused conflict. White women, especially ones who were more religious, focused a lot on the moral and spiritual arguments. They used Christian values to call out slavery as a sin and tried to appeal to other white Americans by framing it as a moral crisis. For example, Lydia Maria Child wrote about Christian duty and compassion to get people on board. But that type of activism didn’t always connect with what Black women were facing every day. And even inside the abolitionist circles, Black women were still often pushed to the side. They weren’t always given speaking time, leadership roles, or space in published work. Sojourner Truth had to fight just to speak at some events, and even then, people questioned her. White women could usually speak and be heard if they used moral language. Black women had to work twice as hard just to get into the room. They faced racism from inside the movement and also from the outside world, which made it even harder for their voices to be heard. Stephanie J. Richmond talks about how central Black women were to abolition, even though they’ve been left out of most of the history. “Women like Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, and Harriet Tubman struggled not only for the abolition of slavery but for gender and racial equality as well”. They weren’t just giving speeches, they were founding antislavery groups, organizing communities, and building transatlantic networks. They were working through both racism and sexism and still finding ways to be powerful voices. Truth’s line “Ain’t I a Woman?” and Stewart saying she had to “stand for justice wherever I find it” show how they were calling out not just slavery, but the whole system that tried to silence them. Harriet Tubman took a different route; she led people to freedom through the Underground Railroad and even worked for the Union Army. Black women’s abolitionism looked different from that of white women. It was rooted in their personal experience and often more direct and action-focused. They made sure the fight for abolition wasn’t just about ending slavery, but also about achieving full equality and justice. The July 1848 Seneca Falls Convention grew out of a partnership between
Lucretia Mott Lucretia Mott (née Coffin; January 3, 1793 – November 11, 1880) was an American Quakers, Quaker, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position ...
and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Cady Stanton ( Cady; November 12, 1815 – October 26, 1902) was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 ...
that blossomed while the two worked, at first, on abolitionist issues. Indeed, the two met at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in the summer of 1840. Mott brought oratorical skills and an impressive reputation as an abolitionist to the nascent women's rights movement. Abolitionism brought together active women and enabled them to make political and personal connections while honing communication and organizational skills. Even Sojourner Truth, commonly associated with abolitionism, delivered her first documented public speech at the National Women's Rights Convention#1850 in Worcester, 1850 National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester. There, she argued for women's reform activism.


Transatlantic aspects to abolition

In the mid nineteenth century, American abolitionism was shaped by British ideological and organisational influences. A key part of this exchange was the intersection of abolitionism and free trade ideology. British reformers such as Richard Cobden and the Anti Corn Law League inspired American abolitionists to promote free trade arguing that it was morally and economically aligned to abolition in the United States. Leaders like Joshua Leavitt, campaigner for the Liberty Party, argued that repealing British tariffs would reduce US reliance on Southern slave grown cotton and open markets to free labour goods from the North. Another prominent British activist was George Thompson (abolitionist), George Thompson, who toured the US several times where he delivered speeches connecting Free Trade to the American abolition cause. Figures like Cobden and Thompson were a direct influence on the ideology of Lloyd Garrison. Another movement called the Free-produce movement extended across the Atlantic. This movement aimed to boycott goods produced by enslaved Africans. The movement was connected to British activist Joseph Sturge and the idea that a free market allowed for consumer morality. Sociologist Cecilia Walsh-Russo developed the term 'mutual brokerage' to refer to the interchange of ideas within UK-US abolitionist movements . She refers to the interactions which allowed ideas and political strategy to co-develop, rather than suggesting one learned from the other. Walsh-Russo cites the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London as an example of mutual brokerage. She claims the exclusion of women as delegates, despite their presence at the events forced transatlantic abolitionist to re-asses their understanding of political participation and democracy, often leading to more progressive views in UK and US activism. Despite exclusion from the conference women asserted their right to participate in the abolitionist cause by using informal setting such as salons to promote abolition.


Abolitionism and Ireland

William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
also engaged in Irish politics. He communicated with key figures like
Daniel O'Connell Daniel(I) O’Connell (; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilisation of Catholic Irelan ...
, which shaped his understanding of abolition as 'universal emancipation'. O'Connell was outspoken in his opposition to slavery and was Frequently quoted in The Liberator because Garrison O'Connell as a model activist, both embracing 'agitation' as a non-violent but forceful political strategy, and emphasising the power of public speech and print in mobilising mass opinion. Garrisonian abolitionists also used Ireland and the Irish as tools of comparison especially in combatting the American Colonization Society. The Liberator frequently juxtaposed the situation of free black Americans with that of Irish immigrants, arguing that while Irish immigrants are welcomed into American society despite being stereotyped as ignorant and degraded, because of the colonial suffering, black Americans were pushed out through colonisation projects. However, efforts to forge direct relations between Irish Americans and African Americans largely failed. The 1842 Address from the People of Ireland to Their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America, written by Irish abolitionists and signed by O'Connell, urged Irish Americans to support abolition and racial equality. Garrisonians hoped this would foster diasporic responsibility among the Irish but it was rejected by most. Irish immigrants, perhaps due to a desire to assimilate in the US, were overall not supportive of the abolitionist cause.


Anti-abolitionist viewpoints


Anti-abolitionism in the North

It is easy to overstate the support for abolitionism in the North. "From Maine to Missouri, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, crowds gathered to hear mayors and aldermen, bankers and lawyers, ministers and priests denounce the abolitionists as amalgamationists, dupes, fanatics, foreign agents, and incendiaries." The whole abolitionist movement, the cadre of anti-slavery lecturers, was primarily focused on the North: convincing Northerners that slavery should be immediately abolished, and freed slaves given rights. A majority of white Southerners, though by no means all, supported slavery; there was a growing feeling in favor of emancipation in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, until the panic resulting from
Nat Turner Nat Turner (October 2, 1800 – November 11, 1831) was an enslaved Black carpenter and preacher who led a four-day rebellion of both enslaved and free Black people in Southampton County, Virginia in August 1831. Nat Turner's Rebellion res ...
's 1831 revolt put an end to it. But only a minority in the North supported abolition, seen as an extreme, "radical" measure. (See Radical Republicans.) Horace Greeley remarked in 1854 that he had "never been able to discover any strong, pervading, over-ruling Anti Slavery sentiment in the Free States." Free blacks were subject in the North as well as in the South to conditions almost inconceivable today (2019). Although the picture is neither uniform nor static, in general free blacks in the North were not citizens and could neither vote nor hold public office. They could not give testimony in court and their word was never taken against a white man's word, as a result of which white crimes against blacks were rarely punished. Black children could not study in the public schools, even though Black taxpayers helped support them, and there were only a handful of schools for Black students, like the African Free School in New York, the Abiel Smith School in Boston, and the William J. Watkins, Sr., Watkins Academy for Negro Youth in Baltimore. When schools for negroes were set up in Ohio in the 1830s, the teacher of one slept in it every night "for fear whites would burn it", and at another, "a vigilante, vigilance committee threatened to tarring and feathering, tar and feather [the teacher] and ride her on a rail if she did not leave". "Black education was a dangerous pursuit for teachers." Most colleges would not admit blacks. (
Oberlin Collegiate Institute Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the United States and the second-oldest continuously operatin ...
was the first college that survived to admit them by policy; the
Oneida Institute The Oneida Institute ( ) was a short-lived Presbyterianism, Presbyterian school in Whitesboro, New York, United States, that was a national leader in the emerging Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist movement. Existing from 1827 to 18 ...
was a short-lived predecessor.) In wages, housing, access to services, and transportation, separate but equal or Jim Crow treatment would have been a great improvement. The proposal to create the country's first college for negros, in New Haven, Connecticut, got such strong local opposition (New Haven Excitement) that it was quickly abandoned. Schools in which blacks and whites studied together in Noyes Academy, Canaan, New Hampshire, and Canterbury Female Boarding School, Canterbury, Connecticut, were physically destroyed by Crowd, mobs. Southern actions against white abolitionists took legal channels:
Amos Dresser Amos Dresser (December 17, 1812 – February 4, 1904) was an abolitionist and pacifist minister who was one of the founders of Olivet College. His name was well known in the Antebellum period due to a well-publicized incident: in 1835 he was arre ...
was tried, convicted, and publicly whipped in Knoxville, and Trial of Reuben Crandall, Reuben Crandall, Prudence Crandall's younger brother, was arrested in Washington D.C., and was found innocent, although he died soon of tuberculosis he contracted in jail. (The prosecutor was Francis Scott Key.) In Savannah, Georgia, the mayor and alderman protected an abolitionist visitor from a mob.


Violence against abolitionists

In the North there was far more serious violence by mobs, what the press sometimes called "mobocracy". In 1837 Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, who published an abolitionist newspaper, was killed by a mob in Illinois. Only six months later, the large, modern, and expensive new hall which the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society built in Philadelphia in 1838, Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia), was burned by a mob three days after it opened. There were other anti-abolitionist riots in Anti-abolitionist riots (1834), New York (1834), Cincinnati (Cincinnati riots of 1829, 1829, Cincinnati Riots of 1836, 1836, and Cincinnati riots of 1841, 1841), Norwich, Connecticut (1834), Snow Riot, Washington, D.C. (1835), Lombard Street riot, Philadelphia (1842), and Granville, Ohio (following the Ohio State Anti-Slavery Convention, 1836), although there was also a Abolition Riot of 1836, pro-abolition riot (more precisely a pro-fugitive slave riot) in Boston in 1836 (and see Jerry Rescue). Between 1835 and 1838, anti-abolitionist violence "settled into a routine feature of public life in virtually all the major northern cities". Giving to blacks the same rights that whites had, as Garrison called for, was "far outside the mainstream of opinion in the 1830s." Some opposed even allowing blacks to join abolitionist organizations. The one time that Garrison defended Southern slave-owners was when he compared them with anti-abolitionist Northerners: Alexis de Tocqueville, in ''Democracy in America'' said: Abolitionists nationwide were outraged by the murder of white abolitionist and journalist Elijah Parish Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois on 7 November 1837. Six months later, Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania Hall, an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia, was burnt to the ground by another proslavery mob on May 17, 1838. Both events contributed to the growing American debate over slavery and marked an increase in violence against abolitionists in the United States.
Amos Dresser Amos Dresser (December 17, 1812 – February 4, 1904) was an abolitionist and pacifist minister who was one of the founders of Olivet College. His name was well known in the Antebellum period due to a well-publicized incident: in 1835 he was arre ...
, a participant in the Lane Debates, was publicly whipped in Nashville. A gallows with a note from "Judge Lynching, Lynch" was erected in front of Garrison's office. He, along with the Tappans, was hung in effigy in Charleston, S.C. Southern post offices burned rather than delivered abolitionist publications, in which they were supported by the national Post Office. President Andrew Jackson called the abolitiinists' tracts "unconstitutional and wicked." Similarly,
Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (185 ...
stated that "The bitterness of Southern slaveholders was tempered by many considerations of kindness for servants born in their houses, or upon their estates; but the Northern slaveholder traded in men and women whom he never saw, and of whose separations, tears, and miseries he determined never to hear."


The pro-slavery reaction to abolitionism

Slave owners were angry over the attacks on what some Southerners (including the politician John C. Calhoun) referred to as their "peculiar institution" of slavery. Starting in the 1830s, Southerners developed a vehement and growing ideological defense of slavery. Slave owners claimed that slavery was not a necessary evil, or an evil of any sort; slavery as a positive good, slavery was a positive good for masters and slaves alike, and it was explicitly sanctioned by God. Biblical arguments were made in defense of slavery by religious leaders such as the Rev. Fred A. Ross and political leaders such as Jefferson Davis. Southern Biblical interpretations contradicted those of the abolitionists; a popular one was that the Curse of Ham, curse on Noah's son Ham and his descendants in Africa justified enslaving blacks. Abolitionists responded, denying that either God or the Bible endorses slavery, at least as practiced in the Antebellum South.


Colonization and the founding of Liberia

In the early 19th century, a variety of organizations were established that advocated relocation of black people from the United States, most prominently the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816. The ACS enjoyed the support of prominent Southern leaders such as
Henry Clay Henry Clay (April 12, 1777June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate, U.S. Senate and United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives. He was the seventh Spea ...
and James Monroe, who saw it as a convenient means of relocating free blacks, whom they perceived as a threat to their control over enslaved blacks. Starting in the 1820s, the ACS and affiliated state societies assisted a few thousand free blacks to move to the newly established colonies in West Africa that were to form the Republic of Liberia. From 1832 onward most of the migrants were enslaved people who had been freed on the condition that they go to Liberia. Many migrants died of local diseases, but enough survived for History of Liberia, Liberia to declare independence in 1847. The Americo-Liberians formed a ruling elite whose treatment of the native population followed the lines of disdain for African culture they had acquired in America. Most African Americans opposed colonization, and simply wanted to be given the rights of free citizens in the United States. One notable opponent of such plans was the wealthy free black abolitionist
James Forten James Forten (September 2, 1766March 4, 1842) was an American Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist and businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A free-born African American, he became a sailmaker after the American Revolutionary War. ...
of Philadelphia. In 1832, prominent white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison published his book ''Thoughts on African Colonization'', in which he attacked severely the policy of sending blacks to (not "back to") Africa, and specifically the American Colonization Society. The Colonization Society, which he had previously supported, is "a creature without heart, without brains, eyeless, unnatural, hypocritical, relentless and unjust." "Colonization", according to Garrison, was not a plan to eliminate slavery, but to protect it. As it was put by a Garrison supporter: Garrison also pointed out that a majority of the colonists died of disease, and the number of free blacks actually resettled in the future Liberia was minute in comparison to the number of slaves in the United States. As put by the same supporter:


See also

* History of African Americans in Boston#Abolitionism, Abolitionism in Boston, Massachusetts * Abolitionism in Brazil * Abolitionism in France * Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts * Abolitionism in the United Kingdom * Abraham Lincoln and slavery * African American founding fathers of the United States * Compensated emancipation * George Washington and slavery * History of slavery ** History of slavery in the United States * James Redpath * John Quincy Adams and abolitionism * List of opponents of slavery * Slavery among Native Americans in the United States * Slavery in the colonial United States * Thomas Jefferson and slavery * Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom * Treatment of the enslaved in the United States


Explanatory notes


Citations


General and cited references

* *


Further reading

* Abzug, Robert H. ''Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination''. Oxford University Press, 1994. . * * Bacon, Jacqueline. ''The Humblest May Stand Forth: Rhetoric, Empowerment, and Abolition''. University of South Carolina Press, 2002. . * Barnes, Gilbert H. ''The Anti-Slavery Impulse 1830–1844''. Reprint, 1964. . * Berlin, Ira and Leslie Harris, eds. ''Slavery in New York''. New Press, 2005. . * Blue, Frederick J. ''No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics.'' Louisiana State University Press, 2004. . * Bordewich, Fergus M. ''Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America.'' HarperCollins, 2005. . * Carey, Brycchan. ''From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. * Cirillo, Frank J. ''The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union''. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2023. * David Brion Davis, Davis, David Brion, ''Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World'' Oxford, 2006. . * Andrew Delbanco, Delbanco, Andrew. ''The Abolitionist Imagination.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. * * Filler, Louis. ''The Crusade Against Slavery 1830–1860''. 1960. . * David Hackett Fischer, Fischer, David Hackett. ''African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals'' (Simon & Schuster, 2022). * . * Gellman, David Nathaniel. ''Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery And Freedom, 1777–1827''. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2006. . * Hammond, John Craig and Matthew Mason, eds. ''Contesting Slavery: The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation''. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011. * Stanley Harrold, Harrold, Stanley. ''The Abolitionists and the South, 1831–1861''. University Press of Kentucky, 1995. . * Harrold, Stanley. ''The American Abolitionists''. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2000. . * Harrold, Stanley. ''The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves''. University Press of Kentucky, 2004. . * Harrold, Stanley. ''American Abolitionism: Its Direct Political Impact from Colonial Times into Reconstruction''. University of Virginia Press, 2019
online
* Horton, James Oliver. "
Alexander Hamilton Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the first U.S. secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 dur ...
: Slavery and Race in a Revolutionary Generation", ''New-York Journal of American History'' 2004 65(3): 16–24. * Huston, James L. "The Experiential Basis of the Northern Antislavery Impulse", ''Journal of Southern History'' 56:4 (November 1990): 609–640. * * James, E. Wyn, 'Robert Everett (1791–1875): "An Honourable Exception"', Ninnau: The North American Welsh Newspaper, 48:5 (September/October 2023), 24. , for the abolition movement among the Welsh in the USA. * Henry Mayer (historian), Mayer, Henry. ''All on Fire:
William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison (December , 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionist, journalist, and reformism (historical), social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper ''The ...
and the Abolition of Slavery''. St. Martin's Press, 1998. . * McKivigan, John R. ''The War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830–1865''. Cornell University Press, 1984. . * James M. McPherson, McPherson, James M. ''The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP''. Princeton University Press, 1975. . * James Oakes (historian), Oakes, James. ''The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution''. W. W. Norton, 2021. * Oakes, James. ''Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865''. W. W. Norton, 2012. * Osofsky, Gilbert. "Abolitionists, Irish Immigrants, and the Dilemmas of Romantic Nationalism" ''American Historical Review'' 1975 80(4): 889–912. * Perry, Lewis and Michael Fellman, eds. ''Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists''. Louisiana State University Press, 1979. . * Peterson, Merrill D. ''John Brown: The Legend Revisited''. University Press of Virginia, 2002. . * Pierson, Michael D. ''Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics''. University of North Carolina Press, 2003. . * Benjamin Quarles, Quarles, Benjamin. "Sources of Abolitionist Income", ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' (1945) 32#1 pp. 63–7
in JSTOR
* Quarles, Benjamin. ''Black Abolitionists''. Oxford University Press, 1969. * Schafer, Judith Kelleher. ''Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862''. Louisiana State University Press, 2003. . * Salerno, Beth A. ''Sister Societies: Women's Antislavery Organizations in Antebellum America''. Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. . * Speicher, Anna M. ''The Religious World of Antislavery Women: Spirituality in the Lives of Five Abolitionist Lecturers''. Syracuse University Press, 2000. . * John Stauffer (professor), Stauffer, John. ''The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race''. Harvard University Press, 2002. . * Vorenberg, Michael. ''Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment''. Cambridge University Press, 2001. . * Wilson, Thomas D. ''The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond''. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2012. . * Yee, Shirley J. ''Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism, 1828–1860''. University of Tennessee Press, 1992
online
* Zilversmit, Arthur. ''The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North''. University of Chicago Press, 1967. .


External links


The Abolitionist Seminar
summaries, lesson plans, documents and illustrations for schools; focus on United States
Original Document Proposing Abolition of Slavery 13th Amendment
by Ari Kelman: a review in th
TLS
14 February 2007.
Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
*
Elijah Parish Lovejoy: A Martyr on the Altar of American Liberty
''
Teaching resources about Slavery and Abolition on blackhistory4schools.comAmerican Abolitionism
* James Monroe Whitfield black Abolitionist poet iarchive:americaotherpoem00whit/page/n6/mode/2up, "America and other poems" 1853
American Abolitionists and Antislavery Activists
comprehensive list of abolitionist and anti-slavery activists and organizations in the United States, including historic biographies and anti-slavery timelines, bibliographies, etc.

at scholastic.com
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
in Cincinnati, Ohio
''The Liberator'' Files
Horace Seldon's collection and summary of research of William Lloyd Garrison's ''The Liberator (anti-slavery newspaper), The Liberator'' original copies at the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
University of Detroit Mercy Black Abolitionist Archive
a collection of over 800 speeches by antebellum blacks and approximately 1,000 editorials from the period.
Maps about "Slavery" in the U.S. at the Persuasive Cartography, The PJ Mode Collection
Cornell University Library {{Juneteenth Abolitionism in the United States, American abolitionists, Origins of the American Civil War Human rights in the United States