The Slave Power or Slavocracy was the perceived political power in the U.S. federal government held by slave owners during the 1840s and 1850s, prior to the Civil War. Antislavery campaigners, led by Frederick Douglass,
during this period bitterly complained about what they saw as
disproportionate and corrupt influence wielded by wealthy Southerners.
The argument was that this small group of rich slave owners had seized
political control of their own states and were trying to take over the
federal government in an illegitimate fashion in order to expand and
protect slavery. The argument was later widely used by the Republican Party that formed in 1854–55 to oppose the expansion of slavery.
The main issue expressed by the term slave power was distrust of the political power of the slave-owning class. Such distrust was shared by many who were not abolitionists;
those who were motivated more by a possible threat to the political
balance or the impossibility of competing with unwaged slave labor, than
by concern over the treatment of slaves. Those who differed on many
other issues (such as hating Black people or liking them, denouncing
slavery as a sin or promising to guarantee its protection in the Deep South) could unite to attack the slavocracy. The "Free Soil"
element emphasized that rich slave owners would move into new
territory, use their cash to buy up all the good lands, then use their
slaves to work the lands, leaving little opportunity room for free
farmers. By 1854 the Free Soil Party had largely merged into the new Republican Party.
The existence of a Slave Power was dismissed by
Southerners at the time, and rejected as false by many historians of the
1920s and 1930s, who stressed the internal divisions in the South
before 1850. The idea that the Slave Power existed has partly come back at the hands of neoabolitionist
historians since 1970, and there is no doubt that it was a powerful
factor in the Northern anti-slavery belief system. It was standard
rhetoric for all factions of the Republican Party.
This power extended to American ambassadors and consuls:
That was the time when slavery
ruled all. There was scarce an American consul or political agent in any
quarter of the globe, or on any island of the seas, who was not a
supporter of the slave power. I saw a large portion of these national
representatives in my circumnavigation of the globe, and it was
impossible to find at any oflice over which the American flag waved a
newspaper that was not in the interests of slavery. No copy of the New York Tribune or Evening Post
was tolerated under an American official roof. Each embassy and
consulate, the world over, was a centre of influences for slavery and
against freedom. We ought to take this into account when we blame
foreign nations for not accepting at once the United States as an
antislavery power, bent on the destruction of slavery, as soon as our
civil war broke out. For twenty years foreign merchants, shipmasters, or
travellers had seen in American officials only trained and devoted
supporters of the slave power, and the only evidences of public opinion
at home to be found at those official seats, so much resorted to and
credited, were all of the same character.
Background
Massachusetts, Wooster Republican, February 2, 1859 (Reproduction)
The problem posed by slavery,
according to many Northern politicians, was not so much the
mistreatment of slaves (a theme that abolitionists emphasized), but
rather the political threat to American republicanism, especially as embraced in Northern free states. The Free Soil Party first raised this warning in 1848, arguing that the annexation of Texas as a slave state was a terrible mistake. The Free Soilers' rhetoric was taken up by the Republican party as it emerged in 1854.
The Republicans also argued that slavery was economically
inefficient, compared to free labor, and was a deterrent to the
long-term modernization of America. Worse, said the Republicans, the
Slave Power, deeply entrenched in the South, was systematically seizing
control of the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. Senator and governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was an articulate enemy of the Slave Power, as was Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.
Southern power
Southern power derived from a combination of factors. The "three-fifths clause"
(counting 100 slaves as 60 people for seats in the House and thus for
electoral votes) gave the South disproportionate representation at the
national level.
With less than a third of the free
population, and less than a third of the wealth, they had eleven
Presidents out of sixteen; seventeen Judges of the Supreme Court out of
twenty-eight; fourteen Attorney Generals out of nineteen; sixty-one
Presidents of the Senate out of seventy-seven; twenty-one Speakers of
the House of Representitves out of thirty-three; eighty-four foreign
ministers out of a hundred thirty-four; with a like disparity running
through all the [illegible] of the General Government.
Parity in the Senate was critical, whereby a new slave state was
admitted in tandem with a new free state. Regional unity across party
lines was essential on key votes. In the Democratic party, a
presidential candidate had to carry the national convention by a
two-thirds vote to get nominated. It was also essential for some
Northerners—"Doughfaces"—to collaborate with the South, as in the debates surrounding the three-fifths clause itself in 1787, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the gag rule in the House (1836–1844), and the wider subject of the Wilmot Proviso and slavery expansion in the Southwest after the Mexican war of 1846–1848.
However, the North was adding population—and House seats—much faster
than the South, so the handwriting was on the wall. With the implacable
Republicans gaining every year, the secession option became more and
more attractive to the South. Secession was suicidal, as some leaders
realized, and as John Quincy Adams had long prophesied. Secession, argued James Henry Hammond of South Carolina, reminded him of "the Japanese who when insulted rip open their own bowels."
And yet when secession came in 1860 Hammond followed. Historian
Leonard Richards concludes, "It was men like Hammond who finally
destroyed the Slave Power. Thanks to their leading the South out of the
Union, seventy-two years of slaveholder domination came to an end."
Threat to republicanism
From the point of view of many Northerners, the supposedly definitive Compromise of 1850 was followed by a series of maneuvers (such as the Kansas–Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott
decision, etc.) in which the North gave up previously-agreed gains
without receiving anything in return, accompanied by ever-escalating and
more extreme Southern demands. Many northerners who had no particular
concern for blacks concluded that slavery was not worth preserving if
its protection required destroying or seriously compromising democracy
among whites. Such perceptions led to the Anti-Nebraska movement of 1854–1855, followed by the organized Republican Party.
Opponents
Historian
Frederick J. Blue (2006) explores the motives and actions of those who
played supportive but not central roles in antislavery politics—those
who undertook the humdrum work of organizing local parties, holding
conventions, editing newspapers, and generally animating and agitating
the discussion of issues related to slavery. They were a small but
critical number of voices who, beginning in the late 1830s, battled the
institution of slavery through political activism. In the face of great
odds and powerful opposition, activists insisted that emancipation and
racial equality could only be achieved through the political process.
Representative activists include: Alvan Stewart, a Liberty party organizer from New York; John Greenleaf Whittier, a Massachusetts poet, journalist, and Liberty activist; Charles Henry Langston, an Ohio African-American educator; Owen Lovejoy, a congressman from Illinois, whose brother Elijah was killed by a pro-slavery mob; Sherman Booth, a journalist and Liberty organizer in Wisconsin; Jane Grey Swisshelm, a journalist in Pennsylvania and Minnesota; George W. Julian, a congressman from Indiana; David Wilmot, a congressman from Pennsylvania, whose Wilmot proviso tried to stop the expansion of slavery in the Southwest; Benjamin Wade and Edward Wade, a senator and a congressman, respectively, from Ohio; and Jessie Benton Frémont of Missouri and California, wife of the Republican 1856 presidential nominee John C. Frémont.
Impact of Democratic Free Soilers
The Democrats who rallied to Martin Van Buren's Free Soil Party
in 1848 have been studied by Earle (2003). Their views on race occupied
a wide spectrum, but they were able to fashion new and vital arguments
against slavery and its expansion based on the Jacksonian Democracy's
long-standing commitment to egalitarianism and hostility to centralized
power. Linking their antislavery stance to a land-reform agenda that
pressed for free land for poor settlers—realized by the Homestead Law of
1862—in addition to land free of slavery, Free Soil Democrats forced
major political realignments in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
and Ohio. Democratic politicians such as Wilmot, Marcus Morton, John Parker Hale,
and even former president Van Buren were transformed into antislavery
leaders. Many entered the new Republican party after 1854, bringing
along Jacksonian ideas about property and political equality, helping
transform antislavery from a struggling crusade into a mass political
movement that came to power in 1860.
The only solution, Republicans insisted, was a new commitment to
free labor, and a deliberate effort to stop any more territorial
expansion of slavery. Northern Democrats answered that it was all an
exaggeration and that the Republicans were paranoid. Their Southern
colleagues spoke of secession, arguing that the John Brown raid of 1859 proved that the Republicans were ready to attack their region and destroy their way of life.
In congratulating President-elect Lincoln in 1860, Salmon P.
Chase exclaimed, "The object of my wishes and labors for nineteen years
is accomplished in the overthrow of the Slave Power", adding that the
way was now clear "for the establishment of the policy of
Freedom"—something that would come only after four destructive years of Civil War.
Cult of domesticity
Jessie Fremont,
the wife of the first Republican presidential candidate, wrote campaign
poetry for the 1856 election. Grant says her poems bind the period's cult of domesticity
to the new party's emerging ideology. Her poems suggested that
Northerners who conciliated the Slave Power were spreading their own
sterility, while virile men voting Republican were reproducing, through
their own redemption, a future free West. The code of domesticity,
according to Grant, thus helped these poems to define collective
political action as building upon the strengths of free labor.
Centralization
Historian Henry Brooks Adams (grandson of "Slave-Power" theorist John Quincy Adams) explained that the Slave Power was a force for centralization:
Between the slave power and states' rights there was no
necessary connection. The slave power, when in control, was a
centralizing influence, and all the most considerable encroachments on
states' rights were its acts. The acquisition and admission of Louisiana; the Embargo; the War of 1812; the annexation of Texas "by joint resolution" [rather than treaty]; the war with Mexico, declared by the mere announcement of President Polk; the Fugitive Slave Law; the Dred Scott decision—all
triumphs of the slave power—did far more than either tariffs or
internal improvements, which in their origin were also Southern
measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights
as they existed in 1789. Whenever a question arose of extending or
protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized
power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in
fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself,
but it required to control the centralized machine; it needed despotic
principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own
use. Thus, in truth, states' rights were the protection of the free
states, and as a matter of fact, during the domination of the slave
power, Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and
almost as loudly as South Carolina.
Vascular dementia (VaD) is dementia caused by problems in the supply of blood to the brain, typically a series of minor strokes, leading to worsening cognitive abilities, the decline occurring step by step. The term refers to a syndrome consisting of a complex interaction of cerebrovascular disease and risk factors that lead to changes in brain structures due to strokes and lesions, resulting in changes in cognition. The temporal relationship between a stroke and cognitive deficits is needed to make the diagnosis.
Signs and symptoms
Differentiating
dementia syndromes can be challenging, due to the frequently
overlapping clinical features and related underlying pathology. In
particular, Alzheimer's disease often co-occurs with vascular dementia.
People with vascular dementia present with progressive cognitive impairment, acutely or sub-acutely as in mild cognitive impairment,
frequently step-wise, after multiple cerebrovascular events (strokes).
Some people may appear to improve between events and decline after
further silent strokes. A rapidly deteriorating condition may lead to death from a stroke, heart disease, or infection.
The disease is described as both a mental disorder and behavioural disorder within the International Classification of Diseases. Signs and symptoms are cognitive, motor, behavioral, and for a significant proportion of patients, also affective. These changes typically occur over a period of 5–10 years. Signs are typically the same as in other dementias,
but mainly include cognitive decline and memory impairment of
sufficient severity as to interfere with activities of daily living,
sometimes with presence of focal neurologic signs, and evidence of
features consistent with cerebrovascular disease on brain imaging (CT or
MRI). The neurologic signs localizing to certain areas of the brain that can be observed are hemiparesis, bradykinesia, hyperreflexia, extensor plantar reflexes, ataxia, pseudobulbar palsy, as well as gait problems and swallowing difficulties. People have patchy deficits in terms of cognitive testing. They tend to have better free recall and fewer recall intrusions when compared with patients with Alzheimer's disease. In the more severely affected patients, or patients affected by infarcts in Wernicke's or Broca's areas, specific problems with speaking called dysarthria and aphasias may be present.
In small vessel disease,
the frontal lobes are often affected. Consequently, patients with
vascular dementia tend to perform worse than their Alzheimer's disease
counterparts in frontal lobe tasks, such as verbal fluency, and may present with frontal lobe problems: apathy, abulia (lack of will or initiative), problems with attention, orientation, and urinary incontinence. They tend to exhibit more perseverative behavior. VaD patients may also present with general slowing of processing ability, difficulty shifting sets, and impairment in abstract thinking. Apathy early in the disease is more suggestive of vascular dementia.
Rare genetic disorders that cause vascular lesions in the brain
have other presentation patterns. As a rule, they tend to occur earlier
in life and have a more aggressive course. In addition, infectious
disorders, such as syphilis, can cause arterial damage, strokes, and bacterial inflammation of the brain.
Causes
Vascular dementia can be caused by ischemic or hemorrhagic infarcts affecting multiple brain areas, including the anterior cerebral artery territory, the parietal lobes, or the cingulate gyrus. On rare occasion, infarcts in the hippocampus or thalamus are the cause of dementia.
A history of stroke increases the risk of developing dementia by around
70%, and recent stroke increases the risk by around 120%. Brain vascular lesions can also be the result of diffuse cerebrovascular disease, such as small vessel disease.
Vascular dementia can sometimes be triggered by cerebral amyloid angiopathy, which involves accumulation of beta amyloid
plaques in the walls of the cerebral arteries, leading to breakdown and
rupture of the vessels. Since amyloid plaques are a characteristic
feature of Alzheimer's disease,
vascular dementia may occur as a consequence. Cerebral amyloid
angiopathy can, however, appear in people with no prior dementia
condition. Amyloid beta accumulation is often present in cognitively normal elderly people.
Two reviews of 2018 and 2019 found potentially an association between celiac disease and vascular dementia.
The recommended investigations for cognitive impairment include:
blood tests (for anemia, vitamin deficiency, thyrotoxicosis, infection,
etc.), chest X-Ray, ECG,
and neuroimaging, preferably a scan with a functional or metabolic
sensitivity beyond a simple CT or MRI. When available as a diagnostic
tool, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) neuroimaging may be used to confirm a diagnosis of multi-infarct dementia in conjunction with evaluations involving mental status examination.
In a person already having dementia, SPECT appears to be superior in
differentiating multi-infarct dementia from Alzheimer's disease,
compared to the usual mental testing and medical history analysis. Advances have led to the proposal of new diagnostic criteria.
Mixed dementia is diagnosed when people have evidence of Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease, either clinically or based on neuro-imaging evidence of ischemic lesions.
Pathology
Gross
examination of the brain may reveal noticeable lesions and damage to
blood vessels. Accumulation of various substances such as lipid deposits
and clotted blood appear on microscopic views. The white matter is most affected, with noticeable atrophy (tissue loss), in addition to calcification of the arteries. Microinfarcts may also be present in the gray matter (cerebral cortex), sometimes in large numbers.
Although atheroma of the major cerebral arteries is typical in vascular dementia, smaller vessels and arterioles are mainly affected.
Prevention
Early detection and accurate diagnosis are important, as vascular dementia is at least partially preventable. Ischemic changes in the brain are irreversible, but the patient with vascular dementia can demonstrate periods of stability or even mild improvement. Since stroke is an essential part of vascular dementia, the goal is to prevent new strokes. This is attempted through reduction of stroke risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high blood lipid levels, atrial fibrillation, or diabetes mellitus.
Meta-analyses have found that medications for high blood pressure are
effective at prevention of pre-stroke dementia, which means that high
blood pressure treatment should be started early. These medications include angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, diuretics, calcium channel blockers, sympathetic nerve inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor antagonists or adrenergic antagonists. Elevated lipid levels, including HDL, were found to increase risk of vascular dementia. However, six large recent reviews showed that therapy with statin drugs was ineffective in treatment or prevention of this dementia. Aspirin
is a medication that is commonly prescribed for prevention of strokes
and heart attacks; it is also frequently given to patients with
dementia. However, its efficacy in slowing progression of dementia or
improving cognition has not been supported by studies.
Smoking cessation and Mediterranean diet have not been found to help
patients with cognitive impairment; physical activity was consistently
the most effective method of preventing cognitive decline.
Treatment
Currently,
there are no medications that have been approved specifically for
prevention or treatment of vascular dementia. The use of medications for
treatment of Alzheimer's dementia, such as cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine, has shown small
improvement of cognition in vascular dementia. This is most likely due
to the drugs' actions on co-existing AD-related pathology. Multiple
studies found a small benefit in VaD treatment with: memantine, a non-competitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist; cholinesterase inhibitors galantamine, donepezil, rivastigmine; Studies have shown that an extract of Ginkgo biloba EGb761
improves cognition, daily activities, and quality of life in treating
vascular dementia, and is seen to be effective regardless of the
severity of symptoms.
In those with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, a strict gluten-free diet may relieve symptoms of mild cognitive impairment.
It should be started as soon as possible. There is no evidence that a
gluten free diet is useful against advanced dementia. People with no
digestive symptoms are less likely to receive early diagnosis and
treatment.
General management of dementia includes referral to community
services, aid with judgment and decision-making regarding legal and
ethical issues (e.g., driving, capacity, advance directives), and
consideration of caregiver stress.
Behavioral and affective symptoms deserve special consideration in this
patient group. These problems tend to resist conventional
psychopharmacological treatment, and often lead to hospital admission
and placement in permanent care.
Prognosis
Many
studies have been conducted to determine average survival of patients
with dementia. The studies were frequently small and limited, which
caused contradictory results in the connection of mortality to the type
of dementia and the patient's gender. A very large study conducted in
Netherlands in 2015 found that the one-year mortality was three to four
times higher in patients after their first referral to a day clinic for
dementia, when compared to the general population. If the patient was hospitalized for dementia, the mortality was even higher than in patients hospitalized for cardiovascular disease. Vascular dementia was found to have either comparable or worse survival rates when compared to Alzheimer's Disease; another very large 2014 Swedish study found that the prognosis for VaD patients was worse for male and older patients.
Unlike Alzheimer's disease, which weakens the patient, causing them to succumb to bacterial infections like pneumonia, vascular dementia can be a direct cause of death due to the possibility of a fatal interruption in the brain's blood supply.
Epidemiology
Vascular dementia is the second-most-common form of dementia after Alzheimer's disease (AD) in older adults. The prevalence
of the illness is 1.5% in Western countries and approximately 2.2% in
Japan. It accounts for 50% of all dementias in Japan, 20% to 40% in
Europe and 15% in Latin America. 25% of stroke patients develop
new-onset dementia within one year of their stroke. One study found that
in the United States, the prevalence of vascular dementia in all people
over the age of 71 is 2.43%, and another found that the prevalence of
the dementias doubles with every 5.1 years of age. The incidence peaks between the fourth and the seventh decades of life and 80% of patients have a history of hypertension.
A recent meta-analysis identified 36 studies of prevalent stroke
(1.9 million participants) and 12 studies of incident stroke (1.3
million participants). For prevalent stroke, the pooled hazard ratio for all-cause dementia was 1.69 (95% confidence interval: 1.49–1.92; P < .00001; I2 = 87%). For incident stroke, the pooled risk ratio was 2.18 (95% confidence interval: 1.90–2.50; P < .00001; I2
= 88%). Study characteristics did not modify these associations, with
the exception of sex, which explained 50.2% of between-study
heterogeneity for prevalent stroke. These results confirm that stroke is
a strong, independent, and potentially modifiable risk factor for
all-cause dementia.
During the Revolutionary era, all states abolished the
international slave trade, but South Carolina reversed its decision.
Acting as soon as the Constitution allowed, in 1807 Congress made the
importation of slaves a crime. From the Revolutionary War to 1804, all Northern
states abolished slavery either immediately or gradually. No Southern
state did so. Immediate emancipation became a war goal for the Union in
1862 and was fully achieved in 1865.
Slavery was banned in the colony of Georgia soon after its founding in 1733. The colony's founder, James Edward Oglethorpe,
fended off repeated attempts by South Carolina merchants and land
speculators to introduce slavery into the colony. In 1739, he wrote to
the Georgia Trustees urging them to hold firm:
If we allow slaves we act against
the very principles by which we associated together, which was to
relieve the distresses. Whereas, now we should occasion the misery of
thousands in Africa, by setting men upon using arts to buy and bring
into perpetual slavery the poor people who now live there free.
Benjamin Kent, lawyer that freed a slave in America (1766)
The struggle between Georgia and South Carolina led to the first debates in Parliament over the issue of slavery, occurring between 1740 and 1742. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved African-Americans appeared the Massachusetts courts in freedom suits, spurred on the decision made in the Somerset v. Stewart case, which although not applying the colonies was still received positively by American abolitionists. Boston lawyer Benjamin Kentrepresented them. In 1766, Kent won a case (Slew v. Whipple) to liberate Jenny Slew, a mixed-race woman who had been kidnapped in Massachusetts and then handled as a slave.
According to historian Steven Pincus, many of the colonial legislatures worked to enact laws that would limit slavery. The Provincial legislature of Massachusetts Bay, as noted by historian Gary B. Nash, approved a law "prohibiting the importation and purchase of slaves by any Massachusetts citizen." The Loyalistgovernor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, vetoed the law, an action that prompted angered reaction from the general public. In 1774, the influential Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade.
American abolitionists were cheered by the decision in Somerset v Stewart (1772), which prohibited slavery in the United Kingdom, though not in its colonies.
During the formation of the country
Thomas Paine's 1775 article "African Slavery in America" was one of the first to advocate abolishing slavery and freeing slaves.
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage
(Pennsylvania Abolition Society) was the first American abolition
society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers.
The society suspended operations during the American Revolutionary War and was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president. Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown, were among the first in America to free slaves. Benjamin Rush
was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of
his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery
along with other Quakers. One of the first articles advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery was written by Thomas Paine. Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser.
The Constitution had several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used the word. Passed unanimously by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory,
a vast area (the future Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin) in which slavery had been legal, but population was sparse.
Samuel Sewall (1652–1730), judge who wrote The Selling of Joseph (1700) which denounced the spread of slavery in the American colonies.
American abolitionism began very early, well before the United States was founded as a nation. An early law passed by Roger Williams and Samuel Gorton because it contradicted their Protestant beliefs abolished slavery (but not temporary indentured servitude) in Rhode Island in 1652; however, it floundered within 50 years, and Rhode Island became involved in the slave trade in 1700. Samuel Sewall, a prominent Bostonian and one of the judges at the Salem Witch Trials, wrote The Selling of Joseph
in protest of the widening practice of outright slavery as opposed to
indentured servitude in the colonies. This is the earliest-recorded
anti-slavery tract published in the future United States.
In 1777, independent Vermont,
not yet a state, became the first polity in North America to prohibit
slavery: slaves were not directly freed, but masters were required to
remove slaves from Vermont. The first state to begin a gradual abolition
of slavery was Pennsylvania, in 1780. All importation of slaves was
prohibited, but none were freed at first, only the slaves of masters who
failed to register them with the state, along with the "future
children" of enslaved mothers. Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the
1780 law went into effect were not freed until 1847.
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin, a slaveholder for most of his life, was a leading member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the first recognized organization for abolitionists in the United States.
An animation showing when states and territories forbade or admitted slavery 1789–1861
Massachusetts took a much more radical position. In 1783, its Supreme Court, in the case of Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison,
reaffirmed the case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley, which held that even
slaves were people that had a constitutional right to liberty. This gave
freedom to slaves, effectively abolishing slavery. States with a
greater economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey,
passed gradual emancipation laws. While some of these laws were gradual, these states enacted the first abolition laws in the entire "New World". In New Jersey, slavery was not prohibited until the Thirteenth Amendment.
Abolition of slavery in the various states of the US over time:
Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution
The Northwest Ordinance, 1787
Gradual emancipation in New York (starting 1799) and New Jersey (starting 1804)
The Missouri Compromise, 1821
Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican or joint US/British authority
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1861
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862ff.
Emancipation Proclamation as originally issued, 1 Jan 1863
Subsequent operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865
Thirteenth Amendment to the US constitution, 18 Dec 1865
Territory incorporated into the US after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment
All of the other states north of Maryland
began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the
Pennsylvania model and by 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws
to abolish it.
Some slaves continued in involuntary, unpaid "indentured servitude" for
two more decades, and others were moved south and sold to new owners in
slave states.
Some individual slaveholders, particularly in the upper South,
freed slaves, sometimes in their wills. Many noted they had been moved
by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free
blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South
increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and
1810 as a result of these actions. Some slave owners, concerned about
the increase in free blacks, which they viewed as destabilizing, freed
slaves on condition that they emigrate to Africa.
In 1780, during the Revolution, Massachusetts ratified its constitution and included within it a clause that declared all men equal. Based upon this clause, several freedom suits were filed by enslaved African Americans living in Massachusetts, which eventually led to the de facto abolition of the institution in the state. In the State of New York, the enslaved population was transformed into indentured servants
before being granted full emancipation in 1827. In other states,
abolitionist legislation provided freedom only for the children of the
enslaved. In the American South, similar freedom suits were rejected by the courts, which held that the rights in the state constitutions did not apply to African Americans. All U.S. states abolished the transatlantic slave trade by 1790. South Carolina, which had abolished the slave trade in 1787, reversed that decision in 1803. During the ensuing decades, the abolitionist movement grew in Northern states, and Congress regulated the expansion of slavery as new states were admitted to the Union. The federal government
abolished the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, prohibited the slave
trade in the District of Columbia in 1850, and made slavery unconstitutional altogether in 1865. This was a direct result of the Union victory in the American Civil War. The central issue of the war was slavery.
Motives
Historian James M. McPherson
in 1964 defined an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had
agitated for the immediate, unconditional and total abolition of slavery
in the United States". He notes that many historians have used a
broader definition without his emphasis on immediate. Thus he does not
include opponents of slavery such as Abraham Lincoln or the Republican Party; they called for the immediate end to expansion of slavery before 1861.
The religious component of American abolitionism was great. It
began with the Quakers, then moved to the other Protestants with the Second Great Awakening
of the early 19th century. Many leaders were ministers. Saying slavery
was sinful made its evil easy to understand, and tended to arouse fervor
for the cause. The debate about slavery was often based on what the
Bible said or didn't say about it. John Brown, who had studied the Bible for the ministry, proclaimed that he was "an instrument of God".
As such, abolitionism in the United States has been identified by historians as an expression of moralism, It often operated in tandem with another social reform effort, the temperance movement.
Slavery was also attacked, to a lesser degree, as harmful on economic
grounds. Evidence was that the South, with many enslaved African
Americans on plantations, was definitely poorer than the North, which had few.
The South after 1804
The
institution remained solid in the South, and that region's customs and
social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to
the rise of a stronger anti-slavery stance in the North. In 1835 alone,
abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature
to the South, giving rise to the gag rules in Congress, after the theft of mail from the Charleston, South Carolina, post office, and much back-and-forth about whether postmasters were required to deliver this mail. According to the Postmaster General, they were not.
Under the Constitution, the importation of enslaved persons could
not be prohibited until 1808 (20 years). As the end of the 20 years
approached, an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Jefferson supported it, and it went effect on January 1, 1808.
In
1830 most Americans were, at least in principle, opposed to slavery.
The problem was how to end it, and what would become of the slaves once
they were free: "we cherish the hope...that proper means will be devised
for the disposal of the blacks", as it was tactlessly put in The Philanthropist.
In the 1830s there was a progressive shift in thinking in the North.
Mainstream opinion changed from gradual emancipation and resettlement of
freed blacks in Africa, sometimes a condition of their manumission,
to immediatism: freeing all the slaves immediately and sorting out the
problems later. This change was in many cases sudden, a consequence of
the individual's coming in direct contact with the horrors of American
slavery, or hearing of them from a credible source. As it was put by Amos Adams Lawrence, who witnessed the capture and return to slavery of Anthony Burns, "we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists."
The American beginning of abolitionism as a political movement is usually dated from 1 January 1831, when Wm. Lloyd Garrison (as he always signed himself) published the first issue of his new weekly newspaper, The Liberator (1831), which appeared without interruption until slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, when it closed.
Immediate abolition
Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in the 1830s and 1840s, as the movement fragmented. The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society; the American Missionary Association; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society.
Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate antislavery
reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of
slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for
unconditional emancipation often merged with a concern for Black civil
rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of
the relationship of abolition and antislavery prior to the Civil War:
While instructive, the distinction [between antislavery
and abolition] can also be misleading, especially in assessing
abolitionism's political impact. For one thing, slaveholders never
bothered with such fine points. Many immediate abolitionists showed no
less concern than did other white Northerners about the fate of the
nation's "precious legacies of freedom". Immediatism became most
difficult to distinguish from broader anti-Southern opinions once
ordinary citizens began articulating these intertwining beliefs.
Wood engraving of proslavery riot in Alton, Illinois, on 7 November 1837, which resulted in the murder of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802–1837).
Anti-slavery advocates were outraged by the murder on 7 November 1837 of Elijah Parish Lovejoy,
a white man and editor of an abolitionist newspaper, by a pro-slavery
mob in Illinois. This was soon followed by the destruction by arson,
three days after it opened, of abolition's great new building, Pennsylvania Hall. Except for the burning of the U.S. Capitol and the White House by the British during the War of 1812,
it was the worst case of arson in the country up to that date. Fire
companies were prevented by violence from saving the building.
Nearly all Northern politicians, such as Abraham Lincoln,
rejected the "immediate emancipation" called for by the abolitionists,
seeing it as "extreme". Indeed, many Northern leaders, including
Lincoln, Stephen Douglas (the Democratic nominee in 1860), John C. Frémont (the Republican nominee in 1856), and Ulysses S. Grant married into slave-owning Southern families without any moral qualms.
Antislavery as a principle was far more than just the wish to prevent the expansion of slavery.
After 1840, abolitionists rejected this because it let sin continue to
exist; they demanded that slavery end everywhere, immediately and
completely. John Brown was the only abolitionist to have actually planned a violent insurrection, though David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free African Americans, especially in the Black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament.
African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard
outside the Black community. However, they were tremendously influential
on a few sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white
activist to reach prominence, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass,
who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right.
Eventually, Douglass would publish his own widely distributed
abolitionist newspaper, North Star.
In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether the United States Constitution did or did not protect slavery. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural Law and a form of social contract theory, they said that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to the politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother Lewis. While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129–30).
Idealized portrait of John Brown being adored by an enslaved mother and child as he walks to his execution.
Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, arguably the most hated and most openly evaded federal legislation in the nation's history. Nevertheless, participants like Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Amos Noë Freeman, and others continued with their work. Abolitionists were particularly active in Ohio, where some worked directly in the Underground Railroad. Since only the Ohio River
separated free Ohio from slave Kentucky, it was a popular destination
for fugitive slaves. Supporters helped them there, in many cases to
cross Lake Erie by boat, into Canada. The Western Reserve area of northeast Ohio was "probably the most intensely antislavery section of the country." The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue got national publicity. Abolitionist John Brown grew up in Hudson, Ohio. In the South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing slavery were often targets of lynch mob violence before the American Civil War.
Numerous known abolitionists lived, worked, and worshipped in downtown Brooklyn, from Henry Ward Beecher, who auctioned slaves into freedom from the pulpit of Plymouth Church, to Nathan Egelston, a leader of the African and Foreign Antislavery Society, who also preached at the Bridge Street African Methodist Episcopal Church,
and lived on Duffield Street. His fellow Duffield Street residents
Thomas and Harriet Truesdell were leading members of the abolitionist
movement. Mr. Truesdell was a founding member of the Providence Anti-slavery Society
before moving to Brooklyn in 1838. Harriet Truesdell was also very
active in the movement, organizing an antislavery convention in Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia). Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist was Rev. Joshua Leavitt, trained as a lawyer at Yale, who stopped practicing law in order to attend Yale Divinity School, and subsequently edited the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and campaigned against slavery, as well as advocating other social reforms. In 1841, Leavitt published The Financial Power of Slavery,
which argued that the South was draining the national economy due to
its reliance on enslaved workers. In 2007, Duffield Street was given the
name Abolitionist Place, and the Truesdells' home at 227 Duffield received landmark status in 2021.
Abolitionism at colleges
Western Reserve College
Both Garrison's newspaper The Liberator and his book Thoughts on African Colonization (1832) arrived shortly after publication at Western Reserve College, in Hudson, Ohio, which was briefly the center of abolitionist discourse in the United States. (John Brown grew up in Hudson.) The readers, including college president Charles Backus Storrs,
found Garrison's arguments and evidence convincing. Abolition versus
colonization rapidly became the primary issue on the campus, to the
point that Storrs complained in writing that nothing else was being
discussed.
The college's chaplain and theology professor Beriah Green said that "his Thoughts and his paper (The Liberator) are worthy of the eye and the heart of every American."
Green delivered in the college chapel in November and December 1832
four sermons supporting immediate abolition of slavery. These so
offended the college's trustees, more conservative than either the
students or the faculty, that Green resigned, expecting that he would be
fired. Elizur Wright, another professor, resigned soon afterwards and became the first secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which Green was the first president. Storrs contracted tuberculosis, took a leave of absence, and died within six months. This left the school with only one of its four professors.
Oneida Institute for Science and Industry
Green was soon hired as the new president of the Oneida Institute. Under the previous president, George Washington Gale, there had been a mass walkout of students; among the issues was Gale's lack of support for abolition.
He accepted the position on conditions that 1) he be allowed to
preach "immediatism", immediate emancipation, and 2) that
African-American students be admitted on the same terms as white
students. These were accepted, and we know the names of 16 Blacks who studied there. Native American students, of whom we know the names of two, were openly accepted as well.
Under Green, Oneida became "a hotbed of anti-slavery activity." It was "abolitionist to the core, more so than any other American college."
For Presbyterian minister and Bible professor Green, slavery was not
just an evil but a sin, and abolitionism was what Christ's principles
mandated. Under him a cadre of abolitionists was trained, who then
carried the abolitionist message, via lectures and sermons, throughout
the North.
Many future well-known black leaders and abolitionists were students at
Oneida while Green was president. These include William Forten (son of James Forten), Alexander Crummell, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet and Rev. Amos Noë Freeman.
The Oneida Institute did not have an incident, like that of Western
Reserve, which brought national attention to it. Its successor, Lane Theological Seminary, in Cincinnati, did.
"Lane was Oneida moved west." Leading the exodus from Oneida was a former Oneida student, and private student of Gale before that, Theodore Dwight Weld. He greatly impressed the philanthropist brothers and abolitionists Arthur and Lewis Tappan. They hired him to report on the movement nationally, and specifically to find a new location for their funding, since Oneida, a manual labor school,
was a disappointment, according to Weld and his student followers. (The
manual labor school movement had students work about 3 hours a day on
farms or in small factories or plants, such as Oneida's printing shop,
and was intended to provide needy students with funds for their
education – a form of work-study – while at the same time providing them the newly recognized physical and psychological (spiritual) benefits of exercise.)
At the same time that Weld was scouting a location for a new school, the barely-functioning Lane Theological Seminary
was looking for students. Based on Weld's recommendation, the Tappans
started giving Lane the financial support they had previously given
Oneida. Weld, though on paper enrolled as a student at Lane, was de facto its head, choosing, through his recommendations to the Tappans, the president (Lyman Beecher, after Charles Grandison Finney, who became later the second president of Oberlin, turned it down), and telling the trustees whom to hire.
The group of students led by Weld constituted the first student
movement in the history of the country. He left Oneida, and they did. He
chose Lane, and they followed him there. When he soon left Lane for
another new, struggling institution, Oberlin, they did so too, as a group.
Students, many of whom considered him the real leader of Lane, responded to Weld's announcement of the new school in Cincinnati.
[Y]oung men gathered in Cincinnati "as from the hives of the north". Most of them were from western New York. H. B. Stanton
and a few others from Rochester floated down the Ohio from Pittsburgh
on a raft. More than a score came from Oneida Institute. Even more
arrived from Utica and Auburn, Finney's converts all. From Tennessee
came Weld's disciple, Marius Robinson, and across the Ohio from Kentucky
came James Thome, scion of a wealthy planting family. Up from Alabama
journeyed two others of Weld's disciples, the sons of the Rev. Dr.
Allan. From Virginia came young Hedges; and from Missouri, Andrew, of the famous family of Benton. From the South came another, James Bradley,
a Negro who had bought his freedom from slavery with the earnings of
his own hands. Most of these students were mature; only eleven were less
than twenty-one years old; twelve of them had been agents for the
national benevolent societies, and six were married men with families.
The theological class was the largest that had ever gathered in America,
and its members were deeply conscious of their importance.
Lane ended up with about 100 students, the most of any seminary in America.
One of Weld's key contentions (and of Puritan abolition sentiment
in general) was that slavery was inherently anti-family. While slave marriage
was technically illegal, it happened frequently. Slave owners expected
their slaves to have many children to replace their numbers; Virginia
and Maryland "exported" slaves to the Deep South;
they were an asset like cattle. after the import of slaves had been
banned in 1808. Since slaves were property they were frequently bought
and sold, ripping apart families. In his 1839 book American Slavery As It Is,
Weld showed just how brutal the slave trade was towards families. To
the very family-focused Puritans, this was one of the greatest crimes of
slavery. Weld's descriptions of families destroyed would later serve
the basis for scenes in Uncle Tom's Cabin, including Uncle Tom being sold and separated from the children.
Lane Seminary debates
No
sooner had this disparate group of former Oneida students and others
arrived at Lane, under the leadership of Weld, they formed an
anti-slavery society. They then proceeded to hold a well-publicized series of debates
on abolition versus African colonialism, lasting 18 evenings, and
decided that abolition was a much better solution to slavery. In fact no
real debate took place, since no one appeared to defend colonialism.
These "debates", which were well publicized, alarmed Lane's president Lyman Beecher
and the school's trustees. Adding to their alarm were the classes the
students were holding in the Black community, teaching Blacks to read.
Fearing violence, since Cincinnati was strongly anti-abolitionist (see Cincinnati riots of 1829),
they immediately prohibited any future such "off-the-topic" discussions
and activities. The students, again led by Weld, felt that abolitionism
was so important–it was their responsibility as Christians to promote
it–that they resigned en masse, joined by Asa Mahan,
a trustee who supported the students. With support from the Tappans,
they briefly tried to establish a new seminary, but as this did not
prove a practical solution they accepted a proposal that they move as a
group to the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute.
Oberlin Collegiate Institute
Due
to its students' anti-slavery position, Oberlin soon became one of the
most liberal colleges and accepted African-American students. Along with
Garrison, Northcutt and Collins were proponents of immediate abolition.
Abby Kelley Foster became an "ultra abolitionist" and a follower of William Lloyd Garrison. She led Susan B. Anthony as well as Elizabeth Cady Stanton into the anti-slavery cause.
After 1840, "abolition" usually referred to positions similar to
Garrison's. It was largely an ideological movement led by about 3,000
people, including free blacks and free people of color, many of whom, such as Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, and Robert Purvis and James Forten
in Philadelphia, played prominent leadership roles. Douglass became
legally free during a two-year stay in England, as British supporters
raised funds to purchase his freedom from his American owner Thomas
Auld, and also helped fund his abolitionist newspapers in the United
States. Abolitionism had a strong religious base including Quakers, and people converted by the revivalist fervor of the Second Great Awakening, led by Charles Finney in the North, in the 1830s. Belief in abolition contributed to the breaking away of some small denominations, such as the Free Methodist Church.
In the North, most opponents of slavery supported other modernizing reform movements such as the temperance movement, public schooling,
and prison- and asylum-building. They were split on the issue of
women's activism and their political role, and this contributed to a
major rift in the Society. In 1839, brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan left the Society and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women. Other members of the Society, including Charles Turner Torrey, Amos Phelps, Henry Stanton,
and Alanson St. Clair, in addition to disagreeing with Garrison on the
women's issue, urged taking a much more activist approach to
abolitionism and consequently challenged Garrison's leadership at the
Society's annual meeting in January 1839. When the challenge was beaten
back,
they left and founded the New Organization, which adopted a more
activist approach to freeing slaves. Soon after, in 1840, they formed
the Liberty Party, which had as its sole platform the abolition of slavery. By the end of 1840, Garrison himself announced the formation of a third new organization, the Friends of Universal Reform, with sponsors and founding members including prominent reformers Maria Chapman, Abby Kelley Foster, Oliver Johnson, and Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott).
Charles Turner Torrey, c. 1840, from Memoir of Rev. Charles T. Torrey, Joseph P. Lovejoy, ed. (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co.), 1847
Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison
repeatedly condemned slavery for contradicting the principles of
freedom and equality on which the country was founded. In 1854, Garrison
wrote:
I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of
American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident
truths, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist.
Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form – and most of all,
that which turns a man into a thing – with indignation and abhorrence.
Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who
desire me to be dumb on the subject of slavery, unless I will open my
mouth in its defense, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to
degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a
poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect,
to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any
institution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may
rightfully make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to
the Declaration of Independence. Convince me that liberty is not the
inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or
clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire. I do not
know how to espouse freedom and slavery together.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin inflamed public opinion in the North and Europe against the personified evils of slavery.
The most influential abolitionist publication was Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), the best-selling novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had attended the anti-slavery debates at Lane, of which her father, Lyman Beecher, was the president. Outraged by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
(which made the escape narrative part of everyday news), Stowe
emphasized the horrors that abolitionists had long claimed about
slavery. Her depiction of the evil slave owner Simon Legree, a
transplanted Yankee who kills the Christ-like Uncle Tom, outraged the
North, helped sway British public opinion against the South, and
inflamed Southern slave owners who tried to refute it by showing that
some slave owners were humanitarian. It inspired numerous anti-Tom, pro-slavery novels, several written and published by women.
The Constitution and ending slavery
The Republican strategy of using the Constitution
Two
diametrically opposed anti-slavery positions emerged regarding the
United States Constitution. The Garrisonians emphasized that the
document permitted and protected slavery, and was therefore "an
agreement with hell" that had to be rejected in favor of immediate
emancipation. The mainstream anti-slavery position adopted by the new
Republican party argued that the Constitution could and should be used
to eventually end slavery. They assumed that the Constitution gave the
government no authority to abolish slavery directly. However, there were
multiple tactics available to support the long-term strategy of using
the Constitution as a battering ram against the peculiar institution.
First Congress could block the admission of any new slave states. That
would steadily move the balance of power in Congress and the electoral
college in favor of freedom. Congress could abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories. Congress could use the Commerce Clause
to end the interstate slave trade, thereby crippling the steady
movement of slavery from the southeast to the southwest. Congress could
recognize free blacks as full citizens and insist on due process rights
to protect fugitive slaves from being captured and returned to bondage.
Finally the government could use patronage powers to promote the
anti-slavery cause across the country, especially in the border states.
Pro-slavery elements considered the Republican strategy to be much more
dangerous to their cause than radical abolitionism. Lincoln's election
was met by secession. Indeed, the Republican strategy mapped the
"crooked path to abolition" that prevailed during the Civil War.
Events leading to emancipation
In the 1850s, the slave trade remained legal in all 16 states of the American South.
While slavery was fading away in the cities and border states, it
remained strong in plantation areas that grew cash crops such as cotton,
sugar, rice, tobacco or hemp. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million. American abolitionism, after Nat Turner's revolt ended its discussion in the South, was based in the North, and white Southerners alleged it fostered slave rebellion.
Some abolitionists said that slavery was criminal and a sin; they also criticized slave owners for using black women as concubines and taking sexual advantage of them.
The Compromise of 1850 attempted to resolve issues surrounding
slavery caused by the War with Mexico and the admission to the Union of
the slave Republic of Texas. The Compromise of 1850 was proposed by "The Great Compromiser" Henry Clay; support was coordinated by Senator Stephen A. Douglas.
Through the compromise, California was admitted as a free state after
its state convention unanimously opposed slavery there, Texas was
financially compensated for the loss of its territories northwest of the
modern state borders, and the slave trade (not slavery) was abolished in the District of Columbia. The Fugitive Slave Law
was a concession to the South. Abolitionists were outraged, because the
new law required Northerners to help in the capture and return of
runaway slaves.
In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas–Nebraska Act,
which opened those territories to slavery if the local residents voted
that way. The antislavery gains made in previous compromises were
reversed. A firestorm of outrage brought together former Whigs, Know-Nothings, and former Free Soil
Democrats to form a new party in 1854–56, the Republican Party. It
included a program of rapid modernization involving the government
promotion of industry, railroads, banks, free homesteads, and colleges,
all to the annoyance of the South. The new party denounced the Slave Power
– that is the political power of the slave owners who supposedly
controlled the national government for their own benefit and to the
disadvantage of the ordinary white man.
The Republicans wanted to achieve the gradual extinction of
slavery by market forces, because its members believed that free labor
was superior to slave labor. Southern leaders said the Republican policy
of blocking the expansion of slavery into the West made them
second-class citizens, and challenged their autonomy. With the 1860 presidential victory of Abraham Lincoln, seven Deep South states whose economy was based on cotton and slavery decided to secede and form a new nation. The American Civil War
broke out in April 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter in South
Carolina. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, four
more slave states seceded.
This Democratic editorial cartoon links Republican candidate John Frémont (far right) to temperance, feminism, Fourierism, free love, Catholicism, and abolition.
Explorer and abolitionist John C. Frémont
ran as the first Republican nominee for president in 1856. The new
party crusaded on the slogan: "Free soil, free silver, free men, Frémont
and victory!" Although he lost, the party showed a strong base. It
dominated in Yankee areas of New England, New York and the northern
Midwest, and had a strong presence in the rest of the North. It had
almost no support in the South, where it was roundly denounced in
1856–60 as a divisive force that threatened civil war.
Without using the term "containment",
the new Party in the mid-1850s proposed a system of containing slavery,
once it gained control of the national government. Historian James Oakes explains the strategy:
The federal government would surround the south with free
states, free territories, and free waters, building what they called a
"cordon of freedom" around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own
internal weaknesses forced the slave states one by one to abandon
slavery.
Abolitionists demanded immediate emancipation, not a
slow-acting containment. They rejected the new party, and in turn its
leaders reassured voters they were not trying to abolish slavery in the
U.S. altogether, which was politically impossible, and were just working
against its spread.
John Brown
(1800–1859), abolitionist who advocated armed rebellion by slaves. He
slaughtered pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and in 1859 was hanged by the
state of Virginia for leading an unsuccessful slave insurrection at
Harpers Ferry.
Bells rung in Ravenna, Ohio, at the hour of John Brown's execution.
Historian Frederick Blue called John Brown "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans".
When Brown was hanged after his attempt to start a slave rebellion in
1859, church bells rang across the North, there was a 100-gun salute in Albany, New York, large memorial meetings took place throughout the North, and famous writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau joined other Northerners in praising Brown. Whereas Garrison was a pacifist, Brown believed violence was unfortunately necessary to end slavery.
The raid, though unsuccessful in the short term, helped Lincoln
get elected, and moved the Southern states to secede, bringing as
consequence the Civil War.
Some historians regard Brown as a crazed lunatic, while David S.
Reynolds hails him as the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil
war, and seeded civil rights".
His raid in October 1859 involved a band of 22 men who seized the Federal armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia),
knowing it contained tens of thousands of weapons. Brown believed the
South was on the verge of a gigantic slave uprising and that one spark
would set it off. Brown's supporters George Luther Stearns, Franklin B. Sanborn, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Gerrit Smith were all abolitionists, members of the so-called Secret Six
who provided financial backing for Brown's raid. Brown's raid, says
historian David Potter, "was meant to be of vast magnitude and to
produce a revolutionary slave uprising throughout the South".
The raid did not go as expected. He hoped to have quickly a small army
of runaway slaves, but made no provision to inform these potential
runaways, although he got a little local support. Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee
of the U.S. Army was dispatched to put down the raid, and Brown was
quickly captured. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of
Virginia, murder, and inciting a slave revolt, was found guilty of all
charges, and was hanged. At his trial, Brown exuded a remarkable zeal
and single-mindedness that played directly to Southerners' worst fears.
Under Virginia law there was a month between the sentencing and the
hanging, and in those weeks Brown spoke gladly with reporters and anyone
else who wanted to see him, and wrote many letters. Few individuals did
more to cause secession than John Brown, because Southerners believed
he was right about an impending slave revolt. The day of his execution,
Brown prophesied, "the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged
away but with blood. I had as I now think vainly flattered myself that
without very much bloodshed it might be done."
American Civil War
This photo of Gordon was widely distributed by abolitionists.
The American Civil War
began with the stated goal of preserving the Union, and Lincoln said
repeatedly that on the topic of slavery, he was only opposed to its
spread to the Western territories. This view of the war progressively
changed, one step at a time, as public sentiment evolved, until by 1865
the war was seen in the North as primarily concerned with ending
slavery. The first federal act taken against slavery during the war
occurred on 16 April 1862, when Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which abolished slavery in Washington, D.C. A few months later, on June 19, Congress banned slavery in all federal territories, fulfilling Lincoln's 1860 campaign promise.
Meanwhile, the Union suddenly found itself dealing with a steady stream
of thousands of escaped slaves, achieving freedom, or so they hoped, by
crossing Union lines. In response, Congress passed the Confiscation Acts,
which essentially declared escaped slaves from the South to be
confiscated war property, and thus did not have to be returned to their
Confederate owners. Although the initial act did not mention
emancipation, the second Confiscation Act, passed on 17 July 1862,
stated that escaped or liberated slaves belonging to anyone who
participated in or supported the rebellion "shall be deemed captives of
war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as
slaves." Pro-Union forces gained control of the border states of Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia; all three states would abolish slavery before the end of the war. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, effective 1 January 1863, which carefully declared only those slaves in Confederate states to be free. The United States Colored Troops began operations in 1863. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was repealed in June 1864. Eventually support for abolition was enough to pass the Thirteenth Amendment,
ratified in December 1865, which abolished slavery everywhere in the
United States, freeing more than 50,000 people still enslaved in
Kentucky and Delaware, in 1865 the only states in which slavery still
existed. The Thirteenth Amendment also abolished slavery among the Native American tribes.
There is quite a bit of confusion about the dates in which
slavery was abolished in the Northern states, because "abolishing
slavery" meant different things in different states. (Theodore Weld, in his pamphlet opposing slavery in the District of Columbia, gives a detailed chronology.) It is true that beginning with the independent Republic of Vermont in 1777, all states north of the Ohio River and the Mason–Dixon line
that separated Pennsylvania from Maryland passed laws that abolished
slavery, although in some cases this did not apply to existing slaves,
only their future offspring. These included the first abolition laws in
the entire New World: the Massachusetts Constitution,
adopted in 1780, declared all men to have rights, making slavery
unenforceable, and it disappeared through the individual actions of both
masters and slaves. However what the abolition forces passed in 1799 in New York state was an Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804, but in 1860 a dozen blacks were still held as "perpetual apprentices".
At the Constitutional Convention
of 1787, slavery was the most contentious topic. Outright prohibition
of slavery was impossible, as the Southern states (Georgia, South
Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware) would never
have agreed. The only restriction on slavery that could be agreed on was
the prohibition of the importation of slaves, and even that prohibition
was postponed for 20 years. By that time, all the states except South
Carolina had laws abolishing or severely limiting the importation of
slaves. When 1808 approached, then-President Thomas Jefferson, in his 1806 annual message to Congress (State of the Union),
proposed legislation, approved by Congress with little controversy in
1807, prohibiting the importation of slaves into the United States
effective the first day the Constitution permitted, 1 January 1808. As
he put it, this would "withdraw the citizens of the United States from
all further participation in those violations of human rights...which
the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been
eager to proscribe". However, about 1,000 slaves per year continued to be illegally brought (smuggled) into the United States; see Wanderer and Clotilda. This was primarily via Spanish Florida and the Gulf Coast; the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819, effective 1821, in part as a slave-control measure: no imports coming in, and certainly no fugitives escaping into a refuge.
Congress declined to pass any restriction on the lucrative
interstate slave trade, which expanded to replace the supply of African
slaves.
Manumission by Southern owners
After 1776, Quaker and Moravian advocates helped persuade numerous slaveholders in the Upper South to free their slaves. Manumissions
increased for nearly two decades. Many individual acts by slaveholders
freed thousands of slaves. Slaveholders freed slaves in such numbers
that the percentage of free black people in the Upper South increased from 1 to 10 percent, with most of that increase in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. By 1810 three-quarters of blacks in Delaware were free. The most notable of men offering freedom was Robert Carter III
of Virginia, who freed more than 450 people by "Deed of Gift", filed in
1791. This number was more slaves than any single American had freed
before or after.
Often slaveholders came to their decisions by their own struggles in
the Revolution; their wills and deeds frequently cited language about
the equality of men supporting the decision to set slaves free. The
era's changing economy also encouraged slaveholders to release slaves.
Planters were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco to mixed-crop
cultivation and needed fewer slaves.
Together with African Americans freed before the Revolution, the newly free black families began to thrive.
By 1860, 91.7% of the blacks in Delaware and 49.7% of the those in
Maryland were free. Such early free families often formed the core of
artisans, professionals, preachers, and teachers in future generations.
Western territories
This
anti-slavery map shows the slave states in black, with black-and-white
shading representing the threatened spread of slavery into Texas and the
western territories.
During Congressional debate in 1820 on the proposed Tallmadge Amendment, which sought to limit slavery in Missouri as it became a state, Rufus King
declared that "laws or compacts imposing any such condition [slavery]
upon any human being are absolutely void, because contrary to the law of
nature, which is the law of God, by which he makes his ways known to
man, and is paramount to all human control". The amendment failed and
Missouri became a slave state. According to historian David Brion Davis,
this may have been the first time in the world that a political leader
openly attacked slavery's perceived legality in such a radical manner.
Beginning in the 1830s, the U.S. Postmaster General refused to allow the mails to carry abolition pamphlets to the South.
Northern teachers suspected of abolitionism were expelled from the
South, and abolitionist literature was banned. One Northerner, Amos Dresser (1812–1904), in 1835 was tried in Nashville, Tennessee, for possessing anti-slavery publications, convicted, and as punishment was whipped publicly. Southerners rejected the denials of Republicans that they were abolitionists. They pointed to John Brown'sattempt in 1859 to start a slave uprising
as proof that multiple Northern conspiracies were afoot to ignite slave
rebellions. Although some abolitionists did call for slave revolts, no
evidence of any other Brown-like conspiracy has been discovered.
The North felt threatened as well, for as Eric Foner concludes,
"Northerners came to view slavery as the very antithesis of the good
society, as well as a threat to their own fundamental values and
interests". The famous, "fiery" abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster, from Massachusetts,
was considered an "ultra" abolitionist who believed in full civil
rights for all black people. She held to the view that the freed slaves
would colonize Liberia. Parts of the anti-slavery movement became known
as "Abby Kellyism". She recruited Susan B Anthony and Lucy Stone to the movement. Effingham Capron,
a cotton and textile scion, who attended the Quaker meeting where Abby
Kelley Foster and her family were members, became a prominent
abolitionist at the local, state, and national levels. The local anti-slavery society at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, had more than 25% of the town's population as members.
Abolitionist viewpoints
Religion and morality
The Second Great Awakening
of the 1820s and 1830s in religion inspired groups that undertook many
types of social reform. For some that included the immediate abolition
of slavery as they considered it sinful to hold slaves as well as to
tolerate slavery. Opposition to slavery, for example, was one of the works of piety of the Methodist Churches, which were established by John Wesley. "Abolitionist" had several meanings at the time. The followers of William Lloyd Garrison, including Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass,
demanded the "immediate abolition of slavery", hence the name, also
called "immediatism". A more pragmatic group of abolitionists, such as Theodore Weld and Arthur Tappan, wanted immediate action, but were willing to support a program of gradual emancipation, with a long intermediate stage.
"Antislavery men", such as John Quincy Adams,
did not call slavery a sin. They called it an evil feature of society
as a whole. They did what they could to limit slavery and end it where
possible, but were not part of any abolitionist group. For example, in
1841, John Quincy Adams represented the Amistad African slaves in the Supreme Court of the United States and argued that they should be set free. In the last years before the war, "antislavery" could refer to the Northern majority, such as Abraham Lincoln, who opposed expansion of slavery or its influence, as by the Kansas–Nebraska Act or the Fugitive Slave Act. Many Southerners called all these abolitionists, without distinguishing them from the Garrisonians.
Historian James Stewart (1976) explains the abolitionists' deep
beliefs: "All people were equal in God's sight; the souls of black folks
were as valuable as those of whites; for one of God's children to
enslave another was a violation of the Higher Law, even if it was
sanctioned by the Constitution."
Irish Catholics
in the United States seldom challenged the role of slavery in society
as it was protected at that time by the U.S. Constitution. They viewed
the abolitionists as anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. Irish Catholics were
generally well received by Democrats in the South.
In contrast, most Irish Nationalists and Fenians supported the abolition of slavery. Daniel O'Connell,
the Catholic leader of the Irish in Ireland, supported abolition in the
United States. He organized a petition in Ireland with 60,000
signatures urging the Irish of the United States to support abolition. John O'Mahony, a founder of the Irish Republican Brotherhood was an abolitionist and served as colonel in the 69th Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.
The Irish Catholics in the United States were recent immigrants;
most were poor and very few owned slaves. They had to compete with free
blacks for unskilled labor jobs. They saw abolitionism as the militant
wing of evangelical anti-Catholic Protestantism.
The Catholic Church in the United States had long ties
in slaveholding Maryland and Louisiana. Despite a firm stand for the
spiritual equality of black people, and the resounding condemnation of
slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in his bull In supremo apostolatus
issued in 1839, the American church continued in deeds, if not in
public discourse, to avoid confrontation with slave-holding interests.
In 1861, the Archbishop of New York wrote to Secretary of War Cameron:
"That the Church is opposed to slavery ... Her doctrine on that subject
is, that it is a crime to reduce men naturally free to a condition of
servitude and bondage, as slaves." No American bishop supported
extra-political abolition or interference with states' rights before the Civil War.
The secular Germans of the Forty-Eighter immigration were largely anti-slavery. Prominent Forty-Eighters included Carl Schurz and Friedrich Hecker. German Lutherans seldom took a position on slavery, but German Methodists were anti-slavery.
Black abolitionist rhetoric
Historians
and scholars have largely overlooked the work of black abolitionists,
instead, they have focused much of their scholarly attention on a few
black abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass. Black abolitionists, though like Martin Delany and James Monroe Whitfield
to name only two others, played an undeniably large role in shaping the
movement. Although it is impossible to generalize an entire rhetorical
movement, black abolitionists can largely be characterized by the
obstacles that they faced and the ways in which these obstacles informed
their rhetoric. Black abolitionists had the distinct problem of having
to confront an often hostile American public, while still acknowledging
their nationality and struggle. As a result, many black abolitionists "intentionally adopted aspects of British, New England, and Midwestern cultures".
Furthermore, much of abolitionist rhetoric, and black abolitionist
rhetoric in particular, were influenced by the Puritan preaching
heritage.
Abolitionist women
Like many Quakers, Lucretia Mott considered slavery an evil to be opposed.
William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newsletter the Liberator
noted in 1847, "the Anti-Slavery cause cannot stop to estimate where
the greatest indebtedness lies, but whenever the account is made up
there can be no doubt that the efforts and sacrifices of the WOMEN, who
helped it, will hold a most honorable and conspicuous position."As the Liberator states, women played a crucial role as leaders in the anti-slavery movement.
Plaque commemorating the founding of the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833
Angelina and Sarah Grimké
were the first female antislavery agents, and played a variety of roles
in the abolitionist movement. Though born in the South, the Grimké
sisters became disillusioned with slavery and moved North to get away
from it. Perhaps because of their birthplace, the Grimké sisters'
critiques carried particular weight and specificity. Angelina Grimké
spoke of her thrill at seeing white men do manual labor of any kind.
Their perspectives as native Southerners as well as women, brought a
new important point of view to the abolitionist movement. In 1836, they
moved to New York and began work for the Anti-Slavery Society, where they met and were impressed by William Lloyd Garrison.
The sisters wrote many pamphlets (Angelina's "Appeal to the Christian
Women of the South" was the only appeal directly to Southern women to
defy slavery laws) and played leadership roles at the first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in 1837.
The Grimkés later made a notable speaking tour around the north, which
culminated in Angelina's February 1838 address to a Committee of the
Legislature of Massachusetts.
Lucretia Mott was also active in the abolitionist movement. Though well known for her women's suffrage
advocacy, Mott also played an important role in the abolitionist
movement. During four decades, she delivered sermons about abolitionism,
women's rights, and a host of other issues. Mott acknowledged her Quaker
beliefs' determinative role in affecting her abolitionist sentiment.
She spoke of the "duty (that) was impressed upon me at the time I
consecrated myself to that Gospel which anoints 'to preach deliverance
to the captive, to set at liberty them that are bruised ..." Mott's advocacy took a variety of forms: she worked with the Free Produce Society
to boycott slave-made goods, volunteered with the Philadelphia Female
Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, and helped slaves escape to
free territory.
Abby Kelley Foster, with a strong Quaker heritage, helped lead Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone
into the abolition movement, and encouraged them to take on a role in
political activism. She helped organize and was a key speaker at the
first National Women's Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850. (The better-known Seneca Falls Convention, held in 1848, was not national).
She was an "ultra" abolitionist who believed in immediate and complete
civil rights for all slaves. Since 1841, however, she had resigned from
the Quakers over disputes about not allowing anti-slavery speakers in
meeting houses (including the Uxbridge monthly meeting where she had
attended with her family), and the group disowned her. Abby Kelley became a leading speaker and the leading fundraiser for the American Anti-slavery Society. Radical abolitionism became known as "Abby Kelleyism".
Other leaders in the abolitionist movement were Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth.
But even beyond these well-known women, abolitionism maintained
impressive support from white middle-class and some black women. It was
these women who performed many of the logistical, day-to-day tasks that
made the movement successful. They raised money, wrote and distributed
propaganda pieces, drafted and signed petitions, and lobbied the
legislatures. Though abolitionism sowed the seeds of the women's rights
movement, most women became involved in abolitionism because of a
gendered religious worldview, and the idea that they had feminine, moral
responsibilities.
For example, in the winter of 1831–1832, women sent three petitions to
the Virginia legislature, advocating emancipation of the state's slave
population. The only precedent for such action was Catharine Beecher's organization of a petition protesting the Cherokee removal. The Virginia petitions, while the first of their kind, were by no means the last. Similar backing increased leading up to the Civil War.
Even as women played crucial roles in abolitionism, the movement
simultaneously helped stimulate women's-rights efforts. A full 10 years
before the Seneca Falls Convention, the Grimké sisters
were travelling and lecturing about their experiences with slavery. As
Gerda Lerner says, the Grimkés understood their actions' great impact.
"In working for the liberation of the slave," Lerner writes, "Sarah and
Angelina Grimké found the key to their own liberation. And the
consciousness of the significance of their actions was clearly before
them. 'We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.'"
Women gained important experiences in public speaking and
organizing that stood them in good stead going forward. The Grimké
sisters' public speaking played a critical part in legitimizing women's
place in the public sphere. Some Christian women created cent societies
to benefit abolition movements, where many women in a church would each
pledge to donate one cent a week to help abolitionist causes.
The July 1848 Seneca Falls Convention grew out of a partnership between Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton that blossomed while the two worked, at first, on abolitionist issues. Indeed, the two met at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in the summer of 1840. Mott brought oratorical skills and an impressive reputation as an abolitionist to the nascent women's rights movement.
Abolitionism brought together active women and enabled them to
make political and personal connections while honing communication and
organizational skills. Even Sojourner Truth, commonly associated with abolitionism, delivered her first documented public speech at the 1850 National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester. There, she argued for women's reform activism.
Anti-abolitionist viewpoints
Anti-abolitionism in the North
It
is easy to overstate the support for abolitionism in the North. "From
Maine to Missouri, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, crowds gathered to
hear mayors and aldermen, bankers and lawyers, ministers and priests
denounce the abolitionists as amalgamationists, dupes, fanatics, foreign
agents, and incendiaries."
The whole abolitionist movement, the cadre of anti-slavery lecturers,
was primarily focused on the North: convincing Northerners that slavery
should be immediately abolished, and freed slaves given rights.
A majority of white Southerners, though by no means all,
supported slavery; there was a growing feeling in favor of emancipation
in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, until the panic resulting from Nat Turner's 1831 revolt put an end to it. But only a minority in the North supported abolition, seen as an extreme, "radical" measure. Horace Greeley
remarked in 1854 that he had "never been able to discover any strong,
pervading, over-ruling Anti Slavery sentiment in the Free States." Free blacks were subject in the North as well as in the South to conditions almost inconceivable today (2019).
Although the picture is neither uniform nor static, in general free
blacks in the North were not citizens and could neither vote nor hold
public office. They could not give testimony in court and their word was
never taken against a white man's word, as a result of which white
crimes against blacks were rarely punished. Black children could not study in the public schools, even though Black taxpayers helped support them, and there were only a handful of schools for Black students, like the African Free School in New York, the Abiel Smith School in Boston, and the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth
in Baltimore. When schools for negroes were set up in Ohio in the
1830s, the teacher of one slept in it every night "for fear whites would
burn it", and at another, "a vigilance committee threatened to tar and feather [the teacher] and ride her on a rail if she did not leave". "Black education was a dangerous pursuit for teachers."
Southern actions against white abolitionists took legal channels: Amos Dresser was tried, convicted, and publicly whipped in Knoxville, and Reuben Crandall, Prudence Crandall's
younger brother, was arrested in Washington D.C., and was found
innocent, although he died soon of tuberculosis he contracted in jail.
(The prosecutor was Francis Scott Key.) In Savannah, Georgia, the mayor and alderman protected an abolitionist visitor from a mob.
Giving to blacks the same rights that whites had, as Garrison
called for, was "far outside the mainstream of opinion in the 1830s." Some opposed even allowing blacks to join abolitionist organizations. The one time that Garrison defended Southern slave-owners was when he compared them with anti-abolitionist Northerners:
I found [in the North] contempt
more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless,
prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave owners
themselves.
[T]he prejudice of race appears to
be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery, than in those
where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as In those
States where servitude has never been known.
Similarly, Harriet Beecher Stowe
stated that "The bitterness of Southern slaveholders was tempered by
many considerations of kindness for servants born in their houses, or
upon their estates; but the Northern slaveholder traded in men and women
whom he never saw, and of whose separations, tears, and miseries he
determined never to hear."
Slave owners were angry over the attacks on what some Southerners (including the politician John C. Calhoun) referred to as their "peculiar institution" of slavery. Starting in the 1830s, Southerners developed a vehement and growing ideological defense of slavery. Slave owners claimed that slavery was not a necessary evil, or an evil of any sort; slavery was a positive good
for masters and slaves alike, and it was explicitly sanctioned by God.
Biblical arguments were made in defense of slavery by religious leaders
such as the Rev. Fred A. Ross and political leaders such as Jefferson Davis. Southern Biblical interpretations contradicted those of the abolitionists; a popular one was that the curse on Noah's son Ham
and his descendants in Africa justified enslaving blacks. Abolitionists
responded, denying that neither God nor the Bible endorses slavery, at
least as practiced in the Antebellum South.
In the early 19th century, a variety of organizations were
established that advocated relocation of black people from the United
States, most prominently the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816. The ACS enjoyed the support of prominent Southern leaders such as Henry Clay and James Monroe
who saw it as a convenient means of relocating free blacks whom they
perceived as a threat to their control over enslaved blacks. Starting in
the 1820s, the ACS and affiliated state societies assisted a few
thousand free blacks to move to the newly established colonies in West
Africa that were to form the Republic of Liberia.
From 1832 onward most of the migrants were enslaved people who had been
freed on the condition that they go to Liberia. Many migrants died of
local diseases, but enough survived for Liberia to declare independence in 1847. The Americo-Liberians
formed a ruling elite whose treatment of the native population followed
the lines of disdain for African culture they had acquired in America.
Most African Americans opposed colonization, and simply wanted to
be given the rights of free citizens in the United States. One notable
opponent of such plans was the wealthy free black abolitionist James Forten of Philadelphia.
In 1832, prominent white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison published his book Thoughts on African Colonization,
in which he attacked severely the policy of sending blacks to (not
"back to") Africa, and specifically the American Colonization Society.
The Colonization Society, which he had previously supported, is "a
creature without heart, without brains, eyeless, unnatural,
hypocritical, relentless and unjust."
"Colonization", according to Garrison, was not a plan to eliminate
slavery, but to protect it. As it was put by a Garrison supporter:
It
is no object of the Colonization Society to ameliorate the condition of
the slave.... The thing is, to get them out of the way; the welfare of
the negro is not consulted at all.
Garrison also pointed out that a majority of the colonists died of
disease, and the number of free blacks actually resettled in the future
Liberia was minute in comparison to the number of slaves in the United
States. As put by the same supporter:
As
a remedy for slavery, it must be placed amongst the grossest of all
delusions. In fifteen years it has transported less than three thousand
persons to the African coast; while the increase on their numbers, in the same period, is about seven hundred thousand!"
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