Abolitionist Movement

A

Revolutionary Abolitionism

The American Revolution invigorated the abolitionist movement. It became difficult for white Americans, who had fought for independence from Britain in the name of liberty and universal natural rights, to justify the continuation of slavery. These ideas, black service in American armies during the revolution, black abolitionist petitions for emancipation, and the actions of white antislavery societies, motivated all of the Northern states by 1804 either to end slavery within their borders or to provide for its gradual abolition. In 1787 Congress had banned slavery in the Northwest Territory (a region comprising the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota, ceded to the United States by the British after the American Revolution). Also, during the 1780s and 1790s large numbers of slaveholders in the Southern states of Maryland and Virginia freed their slaves.

Despite these early successes, by the mid-1780s the revolutionary abolitionist movement was in decline. Beyond the freeing of slaves in Maryland and Virginia, the movement had a negative impact on the South, where the large majority of American slaves lived. The Haitian Slave Revolt in 1791 and an aborted revolt conspiracy led by the slave Gabriel in Virginia in 1800 convinced Southern whites—who feared they could not control free blacks—that the slave system had to be strengthened rather than abolished. Meanwhile, the growth of the cotton industry, fueled by the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, made slavery a vital part of both the Southern and the national economies. At the same time, the development of scientific racism, the idea that blacks were biologically inferior to whites and were intellectually and morally incapable of self-government, encouraged state and national legislation that limited the rights of free blacks.

B

The Colonization Movement

This deteriorating situation made schemes to colonize black Americans in Africa, Haiti, and other locations beyond the borders of the United States attractive to whites and—in the beginning at least—to substantial numbers of blacks. Massachusetts Quaker Paul Cuffe became the most prominent black advocate of migration to West Africa. Despite early enthusiasm, by the 1810s most African Americans questioned the justice of mass expatriation, coming to the conclusion that it was less a movement to emancipate slaves than an attempt to rid America of its free blacks.

In contrast, white abolitionists during these years supported the program of the American Colonization Society (ACS), a group established in 1816 in Washington, D.C., by such prominent slaveholders as Henry Clay and Francis Scott Key. This organization proposed to abolish slavery gradually in the United States and relieve white fear of free blacks by transporting emancipated slaves to West Africa and giving them their own country. Five years after its founding, the ACS purchased land for a colony in West Africa and began transporting African Americans there. Named Liberia, the colony would eventually become the destination for more than 12,000 African Americans. Faced with increasing black opposition and the insurmountable logistical difficulties involved in transporting an exponentially rising American slave population to Africa, the ACS had no chance for success. As these shortcomings became clear during the late 1820s, Northern abolitionists formed a more radical movement.

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VI

Abolitionism in the United States: Later Movements

Two factors account for the radicalization of American abolitionism during the late 1820s and early 1830s. First, the growing agitation of black abolitionists and signs of black unrest in the South inspired urgency among white abolitionists, who feared that maintaining slavery would lead to more violence. In 1822 free black Denmark Vesey unsuccessfully conspired to lead a massive slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina; in 1829 David Walker of Boston published his inflammatory Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World; and in 1831 Nat Turner launched a short-lived but bloody slave uprising in Virginia.

Second, a wave of evangelical revivalism called the Second Great Awakening inspired a reform spirit in the North. The revivalists argued that America was in need of moral regeneration by dedicated Christians. They channeled their fervor into a series of reforms designed to eliminate evils in American society. These reforms included women’s rights, temperance, educational improvements, humane treatment for the mentally ill, and the abolition of slavery. Although not all revivalists were abolitionists, during the mid-19th century the abolitionist movement acquired a new urgency and energy because of their support.

These two developments influenced the extraordinary career of William Lloyd Garrison, a white New Englander who became the leading American abolitionist. Garrison began publishing a weekly abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator in 1831. In 1833 Garrison, convinced that slavery was a sin and hoping to avoid more violence, brought together Quaker abolitionists, evangelical abolitionists, and his New England associates to form the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). It aimed at immediate, uncompensated emancipation and equal rights for blacks. Among early leaders of the AASS were white abolitionists such as Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Theodore Weld, and Lydia Maria Child, and black abolitionists such as James Forten and Robert Purvis.

Although the so-called immediate abolitionists were never more than a tiny minority of Americans, the AASS spread rapidly across the North. By 1838 the society claimed 1,350 affiliates and 250,000 members. It employed speakers, sent petitions to the U.S. Congress, and mailed abolitionist propaganda into the South. These efforts produced a fierce reaction. North and South, angry white mobs opposed changes in race relations. Southern postmasters refused to deliver antislavery literature, and in 1835 President Andrew Jackson unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to ban the mailing of abolitionist pamphlets. The following year, the House of Representatives passed the gag rule (see Gag Rules), which banned the introduction of abolitionist petitions in that body. In 1837 abolitionist newspaper publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed in Illinois while trying to protect his printing press from a mob.

By the late 1830s, the AASS also faced internal division. Fierce resistance to abolitionism convinced Garrison and his associates that the entire nation—not just the South—had to be cleansed of oppression. In addition to their abolitionist activities, so-called Garrisonians became advocates of women's rights, denounced organized religion as proslavery, and condemned all governments for their use of force. It was sinful, Garrisonians contended, to vote or to hold office. Other abolitionists had a more traditional view of women, hoped to get the churches to join the abolitionist cause, sought to engage in politics, and were not entirely opposed to using violent means.

The result was the fracturing of the AASS. While the Garrisonians retained control of a much-reduced version of that organization, two new groups emerged. In 1840 Lewis Tappan led evangelical abolitionists of both races in forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to foster abolitionism in the nation's churches. The same year, other non-Garrisonians formed the Liberty Party to nominate abolitionist candidates for public office.

The Liberty abolitionists were themselves divided into two factions. The radical political abolitionists of western New York, under the leadership of Gerrit Smith, declared slavery to be illegal everywhere and urged Northerners to go to the South to help slaves escape. A more numerous Liberty group, centered in Cincinnati, rejected these provocative tactics. It contended that Northerners must concentrate on ending slavery where Congress had jurisdiction—in the territories and the District of Columbia—while encouraging the formation of abolitionist political parties in the Southern states.

A

The Underground Railroad

It was the radical political abolitionists who were most attractive to prominent black leaders, including former slaves Henry Highland Garnet and—by 1851—Frederick Douglass. Garnet and Douglass worked closely with the radicals, especially in their support for the Underground Railroad—the collective name for a variety of regional semisecret networks that helped slaves escape into the North and Canada. Many other blacks and whites joined in such work, among the more famous were Charles T. Torrey, a white Northerner who helped slaves escape from Virginia and Maryland; John Rankin of Ohio, a white man who sheltered slaves escaping from Kentucky; and Harriet Tubman, a former slave who led bands of escapees northward from Maryland.

The Underground Railroad probably aided around 1,000 slaves per year in escaping. Its success helped raise awareness in the North about slavery and pushed supporters of slavery into defensive measures that contributed to worsening relations between North and South. One of these measures was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which made it a crime to help slaves escape and made it easier for masters to reclaim escapees.

B

Territorial Disputes

The annexation to the United States of the slaveholding state of Texas in 1845 and of the Mexican provinces of California and New Mexico in 1848 led to an irrevocable division between North and South. The question of the extension of slavery into new territories, not abolition itself, became the most prominent issue and in 1848 led most Liberty abolitionists to merge into the larger Free-Soil Party, which opposed the extension. In 1854 the opening of Kansas Territory to slavery led to the formation of the even larger Republican Party as the defender of Northern antislavery interests.

Although overshadowed by political developments, abolitionists remained active. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe, the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a forceful indictment of slavery. The book quickly became one of the most popular works of the time, and it was important in spreading antislavery sentiment in the North. At the same time, black and white abolitionists violently resisted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. When fighting broke out between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas, abolitionists helped arm the latter group. Most of them became convinced that slavery could not be abolished peacefully. Acting on this belief, white abolitionist John Brown led a tiny biracial band in a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in October 1859, hoping to spark a slave rebellion. Although Virginia militia and United States troops easily thwarted his plan, Brown’s actions and his subsequent trial and execution aroused great sympathy in the North. Along with the victory of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Brown's raid and the Northern reaction to it convinced Southern whites that their proslavery interests were no longer secure within the United States.

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