Sectionalism & Abolition
Abolitionists, in U.S. history, particularly in the three decades before the Civil War,
members of the movement that agitated for the compulsory emancipation of the slaves.
Abolitionists are distinguished from free-soilers, who opposed the further extension
of slavery, but the groups came to act together politically and otherwise in the antislavery
cause. The abolitionist movement was one of high moral purpose and courage; its
uncompromising temper made the slavery question the prime concern of national
politics and hastened the demise of slavery in the United States.
EVANGELICAL INFLUENCES
Antislavery sentiment had existed before and during the American Revolution.
Philadelphia Quakers founded the world's first antislavery society in 1775, Vermont
outlawed slavery in 1777, and abolitionist Benjamin Lundy began his work early in the
19th century. However, the abolition movement did not reach crusading proportions
until the 1830s. One of its mainsprings was the growing influence of evangelical
religion, with its religious fervor, its moral urgency to end sinful practices, and its
vision of human perfection. The preaching of Lyman Beecher and Nathaniel Taylor in
New England and the religious revivals that began in western New York state in 1824
under Charles G. Finney and swept much of the North, created a powerful impulse
toward social reform—emancipation of the slaves as well as temperance, foreign missions,
and women's rights. Outstanding mong Charles Finney's converts were Theodore D. Weld
and the brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan.
THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT
The Tappan brothers and William Lloyd Garrison, who began publishing an abolitionist
journal, The Liberator, in 1831, were the principal organizers in Dec., 1833, at Philadelphia,
of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The primary concern of the society was the
denunciation of slavery as a moral evil; its members called for immediate action to free
the slaves. In 1835 the society launched a massive propaganda campaign. It flooded the slave
states with abolitionist literature, sent agents throughout the North to organize state and local
antislavery societies, and poured petitions into Congress demanding the abolition of slavery
in the District of Columbia.
The abolitionists were at first widely denounced and abused. Mobs attacked them in the North;
Southerners burned antislavery pamphlets and in some areas excluded them from the mails; and
Congress imposed the gag rule to avoid considering their petitions. These actions, and the murder
of abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837, led many to fear for their constitutional rights.
Abolitionists shrewdly exploited these fears and antislavery sentiment spread rapidly in the North.
By 1838, more than 1,350 antislavery societies existed with almost 250,000 members, including
many women.
Although abolitionists united in denouncing the African venture of the American Colonization :
Society, they disagreed among themselves as to how their goal might be best reached. Garrison
believed in moral suasion as the only weapon; he and his followers also argued that women be
allowed to participate fully in antislavery societies, thus disturbing more conservative members.
When the Garrisonians passed such a resolution at the society's 1840 convention, a large group led
by the Tappan brothers withdrew and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.
The abolitionists were never again united as a single movement.
Advocates of direct political action founded (1840) the Liberty Party; James G. Birney was its
presidential candidate in 1840 and 1844. Writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and orators
such as Wendell Phillips gave their services to the cause, while Frederick Douglass and other
freed or escaped slaves also took to the lecture platform.
An antislavery lobby was organized in 1842, and its influence grew under Weld's able direction.
Abolitionists hoped to convert the South through the churches, until the withdrawal of Southern
Methodists (1844) and Baptists (1845) from association with their Northern brethren. After the
demise of the Liberty party, the political abolitionists supported the Free-Soil party in 1848 and
1852, and in 1856 they voted with the Republican party.
The passage of more stringent fugitive slave laws in 1850 increased abolitionist activity on the
Underground Railroad. Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, became an effective piece
of abolitionist propaganda, and the Kansas question further aroused both North and South. The
culminating act of extreme abolitionism occurred in the raid of John Brown on Harpers Ferry.
After the opening of the Civil War, insistent abolitionist demands for immediate freeing of the
slaves, supported by radical Republicans in Congress, pushed President Lincoln in his decision
to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
("Abolitionists." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013, in History Resource Center, provided by DISCUS.)
Additional Web Resources:
• Abolitionist Movement (History Channel Black History page)
• American Abolitionism (Indiana University / Perdue University Indianapolis page)
• The African-American Mosaic: Abolition (Library of Congress page)
members of the movement that agitated for the compulsory emancipation of the slaves.
Abolitionists are distinguished from free-soilers, who opposed the further extension
of slavery, but the groups came to act together politically and otherwise in the antislavery
cause. The abolitionist movement was one of high moral purpose and courage; its
uncompromising temper made the slavery question the prime concern of national
politics and hastened the demise of slavery in the United States.
EVANGELICAL INFLUENCES
Antislavery sentiment had existed before and during the American Revolution.
Philadelphia Quakers founded the world's first antislavery society in 1775, Vermont
outlawed slavery in 1777, and abolitionist Benjamin Lundy began his work early in the
19th century. However, the abolition movement did not reach crusading proportions
until the 1830s. One of its mainsprings was the growing influence of evangelical
religion, with its religious fervor, its moral urgency to end sinful practices, and its
vision of human perfection. The preaching of Lyman Beecher and Nathaniel Taylor in
New England and the religious revivals that began in western New York state in 1824
under Charles G. Finney and swept much of the North, created a powerful impulse
toward social reform—emancipation of the slaves as well as temperance, foreign missions,
and women's rights. Outstanding mong Charles Finney's converts were Theodore D. Weld
and the brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan.
THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT
The Tappan brothers and William Lloyd Garrison, who began publishing an abolitionist
journal, The Liberator, in 1831, were the principal organizers in Dec., 1833, at Philadelphia,
of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The primary concern of the society was the
denunciation of slavery as a moral evil; its members called for immediate action to free
the slaves. In 1835 the society launched a massive propaganda campaign. It flooded the slave
states with abolitionist literature, sent agents throughout the North to organize state and local
antislavery societies, and poured petitions into Congress demanding the abolition of slavery
in the District of Columbia.
The abolitionists were at first widely denounced and abused. Mobs attacked them in the North;
Southerners burned antislavery pamphlets and in some areas excluded them from the mails; and
Congress imposed the gag rule to avoid considering their petitions. These actions, and the murder
of abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837, led many to fear for their constitutional rights.
Abolitionists shrewdly exploited these fears and antislavery sentiment spread rapidly in the North.
By 1838, more than 1,350 antislavery societies existed with almost 250,000 members, including
many women.
Although abolitionists united in denouncing the African venture of the American Colonization :
Society, they disagreed among themselves as to how their goal might be best reached. Garrison
believed in moral suasion as the only weapon; he and his followers also argued that women be
allowed to participate fully in antislavery societies, thus disturbing more conservative members.
When the Garrisonians passed such a resolution at the society's 1840 convention, a large group led
by the Tappan brothers withdrew and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.
The abolitionists were never again united as a single movement.
Advocates of direct political action founded (1840) the Liberty Party; James G. Birney was its
presidential candidate in 1840 and 1844. Writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and orators
such as Wendell Phillips gave their services to the cause, while Frederick Douglass and other
freed or escaped slaves also took to the lecture platform.
An antislavery lobby was organized in 1842, and its influence grew under Weld's able direction.
Abolitionists hoped to convert the South through the churches, until the withdrawal of Southern
Methodists (1844) and Baptists (1845) from association with their Northern brethren. After the
demise of the Liberty party, the political abolitionists supported the Free-Soil party in 1848 and
1852, and in 1856 they voted with the Republican party.
The passage of more stringent fugitive slave laws in 1850 increased abolitionist activity on the
Underground Railroad. Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, became an effective piece
of abolitionist propaganda, and the Kansas question further aroused both North and South. The
culminating act of extreme abolitionism occurred in the raid of John Brown on Harpers Ferry.
After the opening of the Civil War, insistent abolitionist demands for immediate freeing of the
slaves, supported by radical Republicans in Congress, pushed President Lincoln in his decision
to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
("Abolitionists." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Sep2013, in History Resource Center, provided by DISCUS.)
Additional Web Resources:
• Abolitionist Movement (History Channel Black History page)
• American Abolitionism (Indiana University / Perdue University Indianapolis page)
• The African-American Mosaic: Abolition (Library of Congress page)
The Abolitionists national politics, Southerners chiefly sought protection and enlargement of the interests represented by the cotton-slavery system. Expansion was considered a necessitybecause the wastefulness of cultivating a single crop, cotton, rapidly exhausted the soil, increasing the need for new fertile lands. Moreover, the South believed it needed new territory for additional slave states to offset the admission of new free states. Antislavery Northerners saw in the Southern view a conspiracy for proslavery aggrandizement, and in the 1830s their opposition became fierce.An earlier antislavery movement, an offshoot of the American Revolution, had won its last victory in 1808 when Congress abolished the slave trade with Africa. Thereafter, opposition was largely by the Quakers, who kept up a mild but ineffectual protest, while the cotton gin and westward expansion into the Mississippi delta region were creating an increasing demand for slaves.
The abolitionist movement that emerged in the early 1830s was combative, uncompromising and insistent upon an immediate end to slavery. This approach found a leader in William Lloyd Garrison, a young man from Massachusetts, who combined the heroism of a martyr with the crusading zeal of a demagogue. On January 1, 1831, Garrison produced the first issue of his newspaper, The Liberator, which bore the announcement: "I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.... On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation.... I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch AND I WILL BE HEARD."
Garrison's sensational methods awakened Northerners to the evil in an institution many had long come to regard as unchangeable. He sought to hold up to public gaze the most repulsive aspects of slavery and to castigate slave holders as torturers and traffickers in human life. He recognized no rights of the masters, acknowledged no compromise, tolerated no delay. Other abolitionists, unwilling to subscribe to his law-defying tactics, held that reform should be accomplished by legal and peaceful means. Garrison was joined by another powerful voice, that of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who galvanized Northern audiences as a spokesman for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and later as the eloquent editor of the abolitionist weekly newspaper, Northern Star.
One phase of the antislavery movement involved helping slaves escape to safe refuges in the North or over the border into Canada. Known as the "Underground Railroad," an elaborate network of secret routes was firmly established in the 1830s in all parts of the North, with its most successful operation being in the old Northwest Territory. In Ohio alone, it is estimated that from 1830 to 1860 no fewer than 40,000 fugitive slaves were helped to freedom. The number of local antislavery societies increased at such a rate that by 1840 there were about 2,000 with a membership of perhaps 200,000.
Despite the efforts of active abolitionists to make slavery a question of conscience, most Northerners held themselves aloof from the antislavery movement or actively opposed it. In 1837, for example, a mob attacked and killed the antislavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. But certain Southern actions allowed the abolitionists to link the slavery issue with the cause of civil liberties for whites. In 1835 an angry mob destroyed abolitionist literature in the Charleston, South Carolina, post office. When the postmaster stated he would not enforce delivery of abolitionist material, bitter debates ensued in Congress. In addition, abolitionists decided to flood Congress with petitions calling for a ban on slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1836 the House voted to table such petitions automatically, thus effectively killing them. Former President John Quincy Adams, elected to the House of Representatives in 1830, fought this so-called "gag rule" as a violation of the First Amendment. The House repealed the gag rule in 1844.
The abolitionist movement that emerged in the early 1830s was combative, uncompromising and insistent upon an immediate end to slavery. This approach found a leader in William Lloyd Garrison, a young man from Massachusetts, who combined the heroism of a martyr with the crusading zeal of a demagogue. On January 1, 1831, Garrison produced the first issue of his newspaper, The Liberator, which bore the announcement: "I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population.... On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation.... I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch AND I WILL BE HEARD."
Garrison's sensational methods awakened Northerners to the evil in an institution many had long come to regard as unchangeable. He sought to hold up to public gaze the most repulsive aspects of slavery and to castigate slave holders as torturers and traffickers in human life. He recognized no rights of the masters, acknowledged no compromise, tolerated no delay. Other abolitionists, unwilling to subscribe to his law-defying tactics, held that reform should be accomplished by legal and peaceful means. Garrison was joined by another powerful voice, that of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who galvanized Northern audiences as a spokesman for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and later as the eloquent editor of the abolitionist weekly newspaper, Northern Star.
One phase of the antislavery movement involved helping slaves escape to safe refuges in the North or over the border into Canada. Known as the "Underground Railroad," an elaborate network of secret routes was firmly established in the 1830s in all parts of the North, with its most successful operation being in the old Northwest Territory. In Ohio alone, it is estimated that from 1830 to 1860 no fewer than 40,000 fugitive slaves were helped to freedom. The number of local antislavery societies increased at such a rate that by 1840 there were about 2,000 with a membership of perhaps 200,000.
Despite the efforts of active abolitionists to make slavery a question of conscience, most Northerners held themselves aloof from the antislavery movement or actively opposed it. In 1837, for example, a mob attacked and killed the antislavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois. But certain Southern actions allowed the abolitionists to link the slavery issue with the cause of civil liberties for whites. In 1835 an angry mob destroyed abolitionist literature in the Charleston, South Carolina, post office. When the postmaster stated he would not enforce delivery of abolitionist material, bitter debates ensued in Congress. In addition, abolitionists decided to flood Congress with petitions calling for a ban on slavery in the District of Columbia. In 1836 the House voted to table such petitions automatically, thus effectively killing them. Former President John Quincy Adams, elected to the House of Representatives in 1830, fought this so-called "gag rule" as a violation of the First Amendment. The House repealed the gag rule in 1844.
Reflection:
I think that Sectionalism and Abolition is an important thing to know about. It is a big part of American history and affected many. William Lloyd Garrison, from Massachusetts, led the abolitionist movement emerged in the early 1830's that wanted to put an immediate end to slavery everywhere. In my opinion, it is very important to know the facts about these great events in history to know how today's society was formed.
Fredrick Douglass, an escaped slave, also joined into the voice of Garrison and left a powerful message to the people for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In the anti slavery movement, they helped slaves escape to safe refuges in the North or take them to Canada. From 1830 to 1860 there were 40,000 slaves saved and taken away from slavery. The number of local anti slavery societies increased so much that by 1840 there were 2,000 with 200,000 members.
This anti slavery movement and the abolitionists made a huge impact on slavery in the 1800's. Fredrick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were great men who fought for their rights and what they believe in. It is important for people to know these facts and know about Aboltion and the Anti-Slavery movement that went on in the slavery times.
I think that Sectionalism and Abolition is an important thing to know about. It is a big part of American history and affected many. William Lloyd Garrison, from Massachusetts, led the abolitionist movement emerged in the early 1830's that wanted to put an immediate end to slavery everywhere. In my opinion, it is very important to know the facts about these great events in history to know how today's society was formed.
Fredrick Douglass, an escaped slave, also joined into the voice of Garrison and left a powerful message to the people for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In the anti slavery movement, they helped slaves escape to safe refuges in the North or take them to Canada. From 1830 to 1860 there were 40,000 slaves saved and taken away from slavery. The number of local anti slavery societies increased so much that by 1840 there were 2,000 with 200,000 members.
This anti slavery movement and the abolitionists made a huge impact on slavery in the 1800's. Fredrick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison were great men who fought for their rights and what they believe in. It is important for people to know these facts and know about Aboltion and the Anti-Slavery movement that went on in the slavery times.