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ANTI-SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM

UNIT I he antislavery feeling that was to play such an important role in the politics of the 1840s and 1850s also had its roots in the religious reform movements that began in the 1820s and 1830s. Three groups—free African Americans, Quakers, and militant white reformers—worked to bring an end to slavery, but each in different ways. Their efforts eventually turned a minor reform movement into the dominant political issue of the day. Antislavery activity was not new. For free African Americans the freedom of other black people had always been a major goal, but in order to achieve legal change they needed white allies. In 1787 antislavery advocates had secured in the Constitution a clause specifying a date after which American participation in the international slave trade could be made illegal, and Congress outlawed it in 1808. By 1800 slavery had been abolished or gradual emancipation enacted in most northern states. In 1820 the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in most of the Louisiana Purchase lands. None of these measures, however, addressed the continuing reality of slavery in the South.

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The American Colonization Society

The first attempt to “solve” the problem of slavery was a plan for gradual emancipation of slaves (with compensation to their owners) and their resettlement in Africa. This plan was the work of the American Colonization Society, formed in 1817 by northern religious reformers (Quakers prominent among them) and a number of southern slave owners, most from the Upper South and the border states (Kentuckian Henry Clay was a supporter). Northerners were especially eager to send the North’s 250,000 free black people back to Africa, describing them, in the words of the society’s 1829 report, as “notoriously ignorant, degraded and miserable, mentally diseased, [and] broken-spirited,” a characterization that completely ignored the legal and social discrimination they faced. Some northern members of the society also supported laws disenfranchising and restricting the rights of free African Americans. The American Colonization Society was remarkably ineffective; by 1830, it

had managed to send only 1,400 black people to a colony in Liberia, West Africa. Critics pointed out that more slaves were born in a week than the society sent back to Africa in a year. African Americans’ Fight against Slavery

Most free African Americans rejected colonization, insisting instead on a commitment to the immediate end of slavery and the equal treatment of black people in America. “We are natives of this country,” an African American minister in New York pointed out. Then he added bitterly, “We only ask that we be treated as well as foreigners.” By 1830 there were at least fifty black abolitionist societies in the North. These organizations held yearly national conventions, where famous African American abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth spoke. The first African American newspaper, founded in 1827 by John Russwurm and Samuel Cornish, announced its antislavery position in its title, Freedoms Journal. In 1829 David Walker, a free African American in Boston, wrote a widely distributed pamphlet, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, that encouraged slave rebellion. “We must and shall be free . . . inspite of you,” Walker warned whites. “And woe, woe will be it to you if we have to obtain our freedom by fighting.” White Southerners blamed pamphlets such as these and the militant articles of African American journalists for stirring up trouble among southern slaves, and in particular for Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831. The vehemence of white southern reaction testifies to the courage of that handful of determine free African Americans who persisted in speaking fortheir enslaved brothers and sisters long before most white Northerners even noticed. Abolitionists

The third and best-known group of antislavery reformers was headed by William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831 Garrison broke with the gradualist persuade of the American Colonization Society and began publishing his own paper, the Liberator. In the first issue Garrison declared, “I am in earnest—

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR

I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.” Garrison, the embodiment of moral indignation, was totally incapable of compromise. His approach was to mount a sweeping crusade condemning slavery as sinful and demanding its immediate abolishment. Garrison’s crusade, like evangelical religion, was personal and moral. In reality, Garrison did not t expect that all slaves would be freed immediately, but he did want and expect everyone to acknowledge the immorality of slavery. On the other hand, Garrison took the truly radical step of demanding full social equality for African Americans, referring to them individually as “a man and a brother” and “a woman and a sister.” Garrison’s determination electrified the antislavery movement, but his inability to compromise limited his effectiveness as a leader. Garrison’s moral vehemence radicalized northern antislavery religious groups. Theodore Weld, an evangelical minister, joined Garrison in 1833 in forming the American Anti-Slavery Society. The following year, Weld encouraged a group of students at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati to form an antislavery society. When the seminary’s president, Lyman Beecher, sought to suppress it, the students moved en masse to Oberlin College in northern Ohio, where they were joined by revivalist Charles Finney, who became president of the college. Oberlin soon became known as the most liberal college in the country, not only for its antislavery stance but for its acceptance of African American students and of women students as well. Moral horror over slavery engaged many Northerners deeply in the abolitionist movement. They flocked to hear firsthand accounts of slavery by Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, and by the white sisters from South Carolina, Angelina and Sarah Grimké. Northerners eagerly read slave narratives and books such as Theodore Weld’s 1839 American Slavery As It Is (based in part on the recollections of Angelina Grimké, whom Weld had married) that provided graphic details of abuse. Lyman Beecher’s daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was to draw on the Grimké-Weld book for her immensely popular anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852. The style of abolitionist writings and speeches was similar to the oratorical style of the religious revivalists. Northern abolitionists believed that a full description of the evils of slavery would force southern slave owners to confront their wrongdoing and lead to a true act of repentance—freeing their slaves. They were confrontational, denunciatory, and personal in their message, much like the evangelical preachers. Southerners, however, re-

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garded abolitionist attacks as libelous and abusive. Abolitionists adopted another tactic of revivalists and temperance workers when, to enhance their powers of persuasion, they began to publish great numbers of antislavery tracts. In 1835 alone they mailed more than a million pieces of antislavery literature to southern states. This tactic also drew a backlash: southern legislatures banned abolitionist literature, encouraged the harassment and abuse of anyone distributing it, and looked the other way when (as in South Carolina) proslavery mobs seized and burned it. The Georgia legislature even offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who would kidnap William Lloyd Garrison and bring him to the South to stand trial for inciting rebellion. Most seriously, most southern states reacted by toughening laws concerning emancipation, freedom of movement, and all aspects of slave behavior. Hoping to prevent the spread of the abolitionist message, most southern states reinforced laws making it a crime to teach a slave how to read. Ironically, then, the immediate impact of abolitionism in the South was to stifle dissent and make the lives of slaves harder. Even in the North, controversy over abolitionism was common. Some places were prone to antiabolitionist violence. The Ohio alley, settled largely by Southerners, was one such lace, as were northern cities experiencing the strains of rapid growth, such as Philadelphia. Immigrant Irish, who found themselves pitted against free black people for jobs, were often violently antiabolitionist. A tactic that abolitionists borrowed from revivalists—holding large and emotional meetings—opened the door to mob action. Crowds of people often disrupted such meetings, especially those addressed by Theodore Weld, whose oratorical style earned him the title of “the Most Mobbed Man in the United States.” William Lloyd Garrison was stoned, dragged through the streets, and on one occasion almost hanged by a Boston mob. In the three-day New York riot of 1834, abolitionist Arthur Tappan’s home and store were sacked at the same time that black churches and homes were damaged and free blacks attacked. In 1837, antislavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy of Alton, Illinois, was killed and his press destroyed. In 1838, a mob threatened a meeting of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society one night and, the next night, burned down the hall in which they had met. Abolitionism and Politics

Abolitionism began as a social movement but soon intersected with sectional interests and became a national political issue. In the 1830s, massive abo-

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR

litionist petition drives gathered a total of nearly 700,000 petitions requesting the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia but were rebuffed by Congress. At southern insistence and with President Andrew Jackson’s approval, Congress passed a “gag rule” in 1836 that prohibited discussion of antislavery petitions. Many Northerners viewed the gag rule and censorship of the mails, which Southerners saw as necessary defenses against abolitionist frenzy, as alarming threats to free speech. First among them was Massachusetts representative John Quincy Adams, the only former president ever to serve in Congress after leaving the executive branch. Adams so publicly and persistently denounced the gag rule as a violation of the constitutional right to petition that it was repealed in 1844. Less wellknown Northerners like the thousands of women who canvassed their neighborhoods with petitions made personal commitments to abolitionism that they did not intend to abandon. John Quincy Adams was also a key figure in the abolitionists’ one undoubted victory, the fight to free the fifty-three slaves on the Spanish ship Amistad and return them to Africa. Although the Africans successfully mutinied against the Amistad’s crew in 1839, when the ship was found in American waters a legal battle over their ownership ensued, during which the Africans themselves were held in jail. Prominent abolitionists, most notably Lewis Tappan, financed the legal fight which went all the way to the Supreme Court, where Adams won the case for the Amistad defendants against the American government, which supported the Spanish claim. Although abolitionist groups raised the nation’s emotional temperature, they failed to achieve the moral unity they had hoped for, and they began to splinter. One perhaps inevitable but nonetheless distressing split was between white and black abolitionists. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison parted ways when Douglass, refusing to be limited to a simple recital of his life as a slave, began to make specific suggestions

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for improvements in the lives of free African Americans. When Douglass chose the path of political action, Garrison denounced him as “ungrateful.” Douglass and other free African Americans worked under persistent discrimination, even from antislavery whites; some of the latter refused to hire black people or to meet with them as equals. For example, some Philadelphia Quaker meetings, though devoted to the antislavery cause, maintained segregated seating for black people in their churches. While many white reformers eagerly pressed for civil equality for African Americans, they did not accept the idea of social equality. On the other hand, black and white “stations” worked closely in the risky enterprise of passing fugitive slaves north over the famous Underground Railroad, as the various routes by which slaves made their way to freedom were called. Contrary to abolitionist legend, however, it was free African Americans, rather than white people, who played the major part in helping the fugitives. Among white abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison remained controversial, especially after 1837, when he espoused a radical program that included women’s rights, pacifism, and the abolition of the prisons and asylums that other reformers were working to establish. In 1840 the abolitionist movement formally split. The majority moved toward party politics (which Garrison abhorred), founding the Liberty Party and choosing James G. Birney (whom Theodore Weld had converted to abolitionism) as their presidential candidate. Thus the abolitionist movement, which began as an effort at moral reform, took its first major step into politics, and this step in turn led to the formation of the Republican Party in the 1850s and to the Civil War. For one particular group of antislavery reformers, the abolitionist movement opened up new possibilities for action. Through their participation in anti- slavery activity, some women came to a vivid realization of the social constraints on their activism.