Abolitionism

Abolitionism was British and American movement to end the institution of slavery and the worldwide slave trade. It originated with the Quakers in Briatin and the US around 1750, and attracted mostly evangelicals. The abolitionists were those who were actively against slavery. The term usually refers to the abolitionist movement in the United States and in Britain. The international slave trade was made illegal around 1810, and enforced by the British Navy. All the northern states in the U.S. abolished slavery 1777-1803, and the British Empire abolished it in the 1830s in its Caribbean colonies and Canada.

Slavery died out peacefully in most countries because it was unprofitable, as in the Roman Empire and in Brazil in the 1880s.

Although slavery is outlawed in most countries today, it is still practiced by Arabs in parts of Africa in secret.

U.S.

Politics

In American politics, "abolition" was only a small part of the much larger Anti-Slavery movement. The latter included the Free Soil Party of 1848 and, especially, the Reopublican Party, founded in 1854. Abolitionists demanded the immediate abolition of slavery regardless of consequences. Republicans rejected that idea until 1862; their goal was to kill slavery eventually by preventing it from expanding. That is, the Republicans had a "containment" policy (much like the one in the Cold War against the Soviet Union). The idea was that slavery had to expand to survive. There was bad blood between abolitionists (who denounced the Republicans as soft on slavery), and the republicans (who denounced the abolitionists as dangerous radicals. Democrats north and south repeatedly denounced the Republican Party, falsely, as the party of abolition.

Abolitionists

The first abolition organization formed in the United States was the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, originally known as the Society for the "Relief for Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage", in 1775. Organizations such as these made use of the Underground Railroad, a loosely organized system for secretly transporting a few hundred slaves into Canada.

The American abolitionist movement reached its peak 1840-1865; it avchieved success during the American Civil War when slavery was ended and outlawed. The forces that were lined up for the continuation of slavery were strong and numerous; the abolitionists were few in number and had no political power before 1860 but were guided by a strong religious belief and the moral need to right a horrible wrong.

Abolitionists argued that the action of capturing Africans and selling them as slaves was as bad as the capture and selling of Joseph had been. Pro-slavery spokesmen pointed out that the Bible repeatedly endorsed slavery and denounced the abolitionists for trying to start a race war that would kill many thousands of blacks and whites, as happened in Haiti in the 1790s.

Historians debate whether the abolitionists ignited a frenzy that led to a war with 600,000 deaths that could have been avoided. Neoabolitionists are 20th century historians who used the moral themese of the original abolitionists to rewrite history in terms of the evils of slavery and racism.

Famous Abolitionists

• John Brown, terrorist who tried to start a race war in 1859
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin a novel that promoted abolitionism in the 1850s
• Levi Coffin
• Frederick Douglass, black leader
• Sojourner Truth, black leader
• Harriet Tubman, black leader
• Charles Finney, evangelist
• William Lloyd Garrison, the most influential leader
• William Wilberforce, British leader

Further reading

• Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (1997) excerpt and text search
• Lowance, Mason, ed. Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader (2000) 384pp; primary sources excerpt and text search

See Also

• Slavery
• American Civil War
• Second Great Awakening

Links

• The Abolition of Slavery - from Brits at Their Best