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.

C.

The Civil War and Emancipation

During the months following Lincoln's election, most of the slaveholding states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. As the American Civil War began in April 1861, President Lincoln aimed only to return those states to the Union. From the start of the war, however, abolitionists pressured him not only to make abolition an objective of the war but to enlist black troops as well. Military necessity had the most influence on Lincoln's actions, but abolitionist efforts contributed to his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, which declared the freedom of slaves within the bounds of the Confederacy.

Meanwhile, Southern slaves used the war as an opportunity to leave their masters in large numbers. Over 180,000 black men—most of them former slaves—served in the Union Army, which had conquered the South by the spring of 1865. The Northern victory and continuing abolitionist agitation led in December 1865 to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which banned involuntary servitude throughout the country. With that achievement, the American abolitionist movement disintegrated, allowing white southerners to replace slavery with a caste system that persisted for decades. Although technically free, the great majority of black southerners remained impoverished agricultural workers well into the 20th century. They faced systematic segregation, inadequate schools, political disenfranchisement, and lynching.