162-540: The American Anti-Slavery Society ( AASS ) was an abolitionist society in the United States . AASS formed in 1833 in response to the nullification crisis and the failures of existing anti-slavery organizations, such as the American Colonization Society . AASS formally dissolved in 1870. AASS was founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan . Frederick Douglass , an escaped slave, had become
324-484: A lecture against slavery while dressed as a soldier, after which he plunged a sword into a bible containing a bladder of fake blood ( pokeberry juice) that splattered those nearby. On September 9, 1739, a literate slave named Jemmy led a rebellion against South Carolina slaveholders in an event referred to as the Stono Rebellion (also known as Cato's Conspiracy and Cato's Rebellion.) The runaway slaves involved in
486-482: A treaty with Ashmun. The treaty negotiated land to Ashmun and in return, the natives received three barrels of rum , five casks of powder, five umbrellas , ten pairs of shoes , ten iron posts, and 500 bars of tobacco , as well as other items. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819—40%—were alive in 1843. The ACS knew of the high death rate, but continued to send more people to
648-517: A "racist scheme of the ACS to rid the United States of free blacks". He proposed instead Central and South America as "the ultimate destination and future home of the colored race on this continent" (see Linconia ). A recent (2014) writer on Connecticut African Americans summarizes the attitude amongst them: African Americans viewed colonization as a means of defrauding them of the rights of citizenship and
810-625: A National Anti-Slavery Convention in Philadelphia . Beriah Green presided over the Convention — no one else was willing to—, with Lewis Tappan and John Greenleaf Whittier serving as secretaries. One Convention committee drafted an American Anti-Slavery Society Constitution and Declaration of Sentiments . The principal author of both was the publisher of the fledgling Boston-based Liberator , William Lloyd Garrison . The new American Anti-Slavery Society charged William Lloyd Garrison with writing
972-540: A concern for Black civil rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of abolition and anti-slavery prior to the Civil War: While instructive, the distinction [between anti-slavery 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
1134-670: A crime, in 1865. This was a direct result of the Union victory in the American Civil War . The central issue of the war was slavery. 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 immediacy. Thus he does not include opponents of slavery such as Abraham Lincoln or
1296-562: A few German Quakers issued the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , which marked the beginning of the American abolitionist movement. Before the Revolutionary War , evangelical colonists were the primary advocates for the opposition to slavery and the slave trade, doing so on the basis of humanitarian ethics. Still, others such as James Oglethorpe , the founder of the colony of Georgia , also retained political motivations for
1458-651: A few decades the entire slave trade was under attack, being opposed by such Quaker leaders as William Burling, Benjamin Lay , Ralph Sandiford, William Southby, John Woolman , and Anthony Benezet . Benezet was particularly influential, inspiring a later generation of notable anti-slavery activists, including Granville Sharp , John Wesley , Thomas Clarkson , Olaudah Equiano , Benjamin Franklin , Benjamin Rush , Absalom Jones , and Bishop Richard Allen , among others. Samuel Sewall ,
1620-507: A few thousand African Americans, out of millions, emigrated to what would become Liberia , while the increase in Black population in the U.S. during those same years was about 500,000. By 1833, the Society had transported only 2,769 individuals out of the U.S. According to Zephaniah Kingsley, the cost of transporting the Black population of the United States to Africa would exceed the annual revenues of
1782-438: A group for women's rights, though it garnered little success initially. Garrison arrived to the convention late and, upon hearing of the decision not to allow women to participate, he chose not to enter the Convention. He viewed the proceedings with the women in the gallery. This became the genesis for the women's suffrage movement. From the beginning, women held a marginal role in the organization. Only white women were invited to
SECTION 10
#17328513343851944-408: A highly profitable business. Central to the business was the setting up of plantations, staffed by enslaved laborers. Due to the increased demand, imports of African slaves grew until legal importation was barred in 1808, after which time Maryland and Virginia openly bred slaves, "producing" children for sale "South", through brokers such as Franklin and Armfield , to plantation owners. This resulted in
2106-459: A less time thousands were set free". In the second number of The Liberator , Garrison reprinted this commentary from the Boston Statesman , We were, however, rather surprised to see the proposal of sending the free negroes to Africa as returning them to their native land. It would be as well at least to talk of sending these reverend gentlemen back to England as their native land. The negro
2268-481: 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. Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in
2430-677: A political threat. From 1790 to 1800, the number of free black people increased from 59,467 to 108,398, and by 1810 there were 186,446 free black people. In 1786, a British organization, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor , launched its efforts to establish the Sierra Leone Province of Freedom , a colony in West Africa for London 's "black poor". This enterprise gained the support of
2592-424: A practical approach to slavery, saying economically it did not make sense. Wright used the rhetoric of religion to elicit empathy toward African Americans, and presented slavery as a moral sin. Frederick Douglass had seen the frustration that Garrison felt toward those who disagreed with him, but wrote many letters to Garrison describing to him the details of the prejudices that slavery had caused. One in particular
2754-405: 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
2916-493: A prominent Bostonian, wrote The Selling of Joseph (1700) 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. 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
3078-813: A prominent abolitionist and was a key leader in AASS, who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown , also a freedman, also often spoke at meetings. By 1838, AASS had 1,346 local chapters. In 1840, AASS claimed about 200,000 members. Prominent members included Susan B. Anthony , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Theodore Dwight Weld , Lewis Tappan , James G. Birney , Lydia Maria Child , Maria Weston Chapman , Nathan Lord , Augustine Clarke , Samuel Cornish , George T. Downing , James Forten , Abby Kelley Foster , Stephen Symonds Foster , Henry Highland Garnet , Beriah Green , Lucretia Mott , Wendell Phillips , Robert Purvis , Charles Lenox Remond , Sarah Parker Remond , Lucy Stone , and John Greenleaf Whittier , among others. By
3240-519: A protest pamphlet. Now—after the Colonization Society has been formed without the consent of the colored people[,] after the enterprise has been violently pushed, against their reiterated protests, tor seventeen years—after its friends acknowledged that coercion has been used in getting away its victims—and so long as they would persuade us that this is not the native country of colored Americans; and that we ought not to let them remain here—what
3402-464: A rapid increase in the number of free African Americans in the United States in the first two decades after the Revolutionary War, which they perceived as threatening. Although the ratio of white people to black people overall was 4:1 between 1790 and 1800, in some Southern counties black people were the majority. Slaveholders feared that free black people destabilized their slave society and created
SECTION 20
#17328513343853564-428: A reason for removing black people from America. Since there were no attempts to improve the conditions of black people who lived in the United States, it is unlikely that white people would watch out for their interests thousands of miles away. William Lloyd Garrison began publication of his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator , in 1831, followed in 1832 by his Thoughts on African Colonization, which discredited
3726-503: A serviceable organ and member of the Slave Power ". It was "an extreme case of sham reform". He claimed that the ACS had "ripened into the unmeasured calumniator of the abolitionist, ...the unblushing defender of the slaveholder, and the deadliest enemy of the colored race". In November 1835, he sent the Society a letter with a check, to conclude his existing commitments, and said there would not be any more from him, because: The Society
3888-456: A significant number of opponents, including Black Americans in prominent cities of America, found inequality towards the Society because according to him, they were the ones who had remarkably contributed and fought to protect this country as their home through a historical period of generations. However, this Society was then trying to forcefully send them back to their ancestors' lands as, by that time, they were considered at risk for rebellion in
4050-448: 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 Loyalist governor of Massachusetts , Thomas Hutchinson , vetoed the law, an action that prompted angered reaction from
4212-414: A way of tightening the grip of slavery. ...The tragedy was that African Americans began to view their ancestral home with disdain. They dropped the use of "African" in names of their organizations...and used instead [of African American] "The Colored American." While claiming to aid African Americans, in some cases, to stimulate emigration, it made conditions for them worse. For example, "the Society assumed
4374-486: Is it better than gross mockery to talk about consent? Frederick Douglass condemned colonization: "Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here—have lived here—have a right to live here, and mean to live here". Martin Delany , who believed that Black Americans deserved "a new country, a new beginning", called Liberia a "miserable mockery" of an independent republic,
4536-534: Is just as much a native here as are these reverend gentlemen themselves.—Here the negro was born, here bred, here are his earliest and pleasantest associations—here is all that binds him to earth and makes life valuable. If the welfare of the negro, and not a new scheme for begging, be really the object in view, we desire the reverend gentlemen to step forward and vindicate the rights of the negroes trampled upon by their brethren in Park Street. If they would really promote
4698-485: Is now, and has been for some time, far more interested in the question of slavery, than in the work of Colonization—in the demolition of the Anti-Slavery Society, than in the building up of its Colony. I need not go beyond the matter and spirit of the last few numbers of its periodical for the justification of this remark. Were a stranger to form his opinion by these numbers, it would be, that the Society issuing them
4860-472: Is the dismissal of additional intentions and considerations, including finalization of Second Amendment semantics by federal Senators, not Madison in the House of Representatives. As of September 2024, according to one historian of the politics of chattel slavery and gun control, a "comprehensive treatment that can handle slavery, arms, constitutionalism, and the rest of political culture is still needed." In perusing
5022-770: The African Civilization Society . In 1821, Lt. Robert Stockton had pointed a pistol to the head of King Peter , which allowed Stockton to persuade King Peter to sell Cape Montserrado (or Mesurado) and to establish Monrovia. In 1825 and 1826, Jehudi Ashmun , Stockton's successor, took steps to lease, annex, or buy tribal lands in Africa along the coast and along major rivers leading inland in Africa to establish an American colony. Stockton's actions inspired Ashmun to use aggressive tactics in his negotiations with King Peter and in May 1825, King Peter and other native kings agreed to
American Anti-Slavery Society - Misplaced Pages Continue
5184-627: The American Colonization Society became the early antebellum locus of anti-slavery activity, presided over by James Madison in his last three years of life (until 1836). In 1789, Madison had expressed his belief that blacks and whites could not integrate into society together, and proposed a policy of separation. Madison argued that integration (at the time called "amalgamation") was impossible, because there would always be oppression, hatred, and hostility between former slaves and former slave holders. He also claimed, in his so-called "Memorandum on an African Colony for Freed Slaves", that " freedmen retained
5346-535: The American Revolutionary War and was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president. 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 Constitution included several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used
5508-462: The American Revolutionary War , from 60,000 in 1790 to 300,000 by 1830. Slave owners feared that these free Black people might help their slaves to escape or rebel . The African-American community and the abolitionist movement overwhelmingly opposed the project. According to "the colored citizens of Syracuse," headed by Rev. Jermain Loguen , We recognize in it ["the scheme of African Colonization"]
5670-619: 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 Kent represented 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
5832-575: 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
5994-653: The Reverend Robert Finley , his brother-in-law and a Presbyterian minister, who endorsed the plan. On December 21, 1816, the society was officially established at the Davis Hotel in Washington, D.C. Among the Society's supporters were Charles Fenton Mercer (from Virginia), Henry Clay (Kentucky), John Randolph (Virginia), Richard Bland Lee (Virginia), Francis Scott Key (Washington, D.C., and Maryland), and Bushrod Washington (Virginia). Slaveholders in
6156-560: The Second Amendment . The scope of the Amendment potentially included slave patrols , stemming from Madison's attempts to ameliorate Antifederal proponents of state police powers in the Virginia ratification convention. Scholarly attempts to establish such a Second Amendment "original intent" have been roundly criticized because of, at best, "circumstantial" evidence. Another principal concern
6318-690: The Seneca Falls Convention as well. During Reconstruction, Douglass retracted support for the inclusion of women in the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , fearing that a female suffrage clause would preclude ratification in several states. Francis Jackson , grandfather of John Brown's raider Francis Jackson Meriam , was a president of the Society. According to the Encyclopedia of Slavery and Abolition in
6480-530: 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
6642-578: 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
American Anti-Slavery Society - Misplaced Pages Continue
6804-521: 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 . All U.S. states abolished
6966-524: The 1820s, the controversy surrounding the Missouri Compromise had quieted considerably but was revived by a series of events near the end of the decade. Serious debates over abolition took place in the Virginia legislature in 1829 and 1831. (See Thomas Roderick Dew#Dew and slavery .) In the North, discussion began about the possibility of freeing slaves and "resettling" them in Africa (a proposal that, under
7128-757: 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 anti-slavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with
7290-618: The AFASS. Their rejoinders, rebuttals, and dialectics, proffered within AASS meetings and in the pages of The Liberator , framed arguments and ideas later appropriated by male and female anti-suffragists , the Liberal Republicans , and northeastern supporters for the Compromise of 1877 . The progenitors of such ideas frequently shifted positions and retracted statements in the postbellum era, often to no avail. Along with differing opinions about
7452-536: The American Anti-Slavery Society included Arthur Tappan (President), Abraham L. Cox (Recording Secretary), William Greene (Treasurer), Elizur Wright (Secretary of Domestic Correspondence), and William Lloyd Garrison (Secretary of the Foreign Correspondence). William Lloyd Garrison was one of the original founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Two years before founding
7614-604: The American Anti-Slavery Society was invited to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London , England, to meet and network with other abolitionists of the time. Additionally, it served to strengthen each group's commitment to racial equality. At this convention, female delegates were not allowed to participate in the event, but rather observe only, from a gallery. The ruling to exclude female abolitionists caused feminists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to form
7776-540: The American Anti-Slavery Society. The formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association and ethno-racial "lower orders" arguments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in her weekly The Revolution substantiated these fears, to a certain degree, for a number of these men. Frederick Douglass was one of the black activists who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society shortly after the internal schism and appointment of Garrison as Society President. Douglass
7938-532: The American Anti-slavery Society. Attitudes of equalitarianism were more widely accepted and women were viewed as "coworkers, not subordinates". Women not only held leadership positions, but also attended various societies and conventions. In contrast, women's participation in the American Anti-slavery Society became a quite contentious issue in the eastern United States. Women who were publicly passionate about abolition were seen as fanatics. In 1839,
8100-716: 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 anti-slavery convention in Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia) . Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist
8262-632: The British government, which also offered relocation to Black Loyalists who had been resettled in Nova Scotia , where they were subject to harsh weather and discrimination from some white Nova Scotians. Jamaica maroons were also deported to the British colony, alongside former slaves freed by the Royal Navy after the Atlantic slave trade was abolished by Britain in 1807. Paul Cuffe or Cuffee (1759–1817)
SECTION 50
#17328513343858424-700: The Christianization of Africa. The Society raised money by selling memberships. The Society's members pressured Congress and the President for support. In 1819, they received $ 100,000 from Congress, and on February 6, 1820, the first ship, the Elizabeth , sailed from New York for West Africa with three white ACS agents and 86 African-American emigrants aboard. The approaches for selecting people and funding travel to Africa varied by state. According to Benjamin Quarles ,
8586-597: The Colonization Society, to send free colored people to Africa, enhances the value of the slave left on the soil". ) The Society appeared to hold contradictory ideas: free Blacks should be removed because they could not benefit America; on the other hand, free Blacks would prosper and thrive under their own leadership in another land. On the other hand, a coalition made up mostly of evangelicals , Quakers , philanthropists , and abolitionists supported abolition of slavery. They wanted slaves to be free and believed Blacks would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in
8748-416: 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
8910-561: The Constitution, they were drawn to supporting the Liberty Party. The disruption of the American Anti-Slavery Society, however, caused little damage to abolitionism. At the annual Society meeting in New York, on May 12, 1840, the first item of business was the appointment of a Committee of Business. Eleven people were chosen, with William Garrison the chairman. One of them was a woman, Abby Kelley . "The vote appointing Miss Kelley being doubted,
9072-624: The June 14 issue of The Liberator to it. ) From the beginning, "the majority of black Americans regarded the Society [with] enormous disdain", a "fixed hatred". Black activist James Forten immediately rejected the ACS, writing in 1817 that "we have no wish to separate from our present homes for any purpose whatever". As soon as they heard about it, 3,000 black protestors packed a church in Philadelphia, "the bellwether city for free blacks," and "bitterly and unanimously" denounced it. They published
9234-633: The North, where slavery was being abolished, discrimination against free black people was rampant and often legal. Few states extended citizenship rights to free black people prior to the 1860s and the Federal government, largely controlled by Slave Power , never showed any inclination to challenge the racial status quo. Even in the North, free black people were often seen as unwelcome immigrants, taking jobs away because they would work for cheap. Some slave owners decided to support emigration following an aborted slave rebellion headed by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, and
9396-695: 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
9558-547: The Revolutionary War and 1804, laws, constitutions, or court decisions in each of the Northern states provided for the gradual or immediate abolition of slavery. No Southern state adopted similar policies. In 1807, Congress made the importation of slaves a crime, effective January 1, 1808, which was as soon as Article I, section 9 of the Constitution allowed. A small but dedicated group, under leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass , agitated for abolition in
9720-563: The Second Federal Congress, Madison corresponded with manumitter Robert Pleasants , confirming their mutual support for conscientious religious objection to a Virginia state militia, premised on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution . The correspondence belied arguments that Madison completely capitulated to Virginia Antifederalist demands for an individual and state "right" to organize militias, in what would become
9882-537: The Society published the African Repository and Colonial Journal . Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797–1872), who headed the Society until 1844, edited the journal, which in 1850 simplified its title to the African Repository . The journal promoted both colonization and Liberia. Included were articles about Africa, lists of donors, letters of praise, information about emigrants, and official dispatches that espoused
SECTION 60
#173285133438510044-414: The Society's stated goals. "For the fourteen years preceding 1834, the receipts of that society, needing millions for its proposed operations, had averaged only about twenty-one thousand dollars a year. It had never obtained the confidence of the American people". Three of the reasons the movement never became very successful were lack of interest by free black people, opposition by some abolitionists, and
10206-418: The Society, Garrison began publishing The Liberator. This abolitionist paper argued for the immediate freedom of all slaves and operated under the motto of "Our country is the world – our countrymen are mankind." Within two years of the 1840 Society schism over the appointment of Abby Kelley to the Society business committee and efforts to wed abolition with first-wave feminism (and, to a lesser extent, over
10368-408: The Society. According to President Lincoln, it was "the logic and moral power of Garrison and the antislavery people of the country" that put emancipation on the country's political agenda. Garrison himself had earlier joined the Society in good faith. All the important white future abolitionists supported the Society: besides Garrison, Gerrit Smith, the Tappans, and many others, as can be seen in
10530-446: 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 Nathaniel Eggleston, a leader of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society , who also preached at
10692-405: The U.S. and then to remove them to Africa after their military service. Others, such as the historian Michael Lind , believe that as late as 1864, Lincoln continued to hold out hope for colonization, noting that he allegedly asked Attorney General Edward Bates if the Reverend James Mitchell could stay on as "your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of Congress relating to
10854-459: 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
11016-596: The Union, or to violate the constitution and laws of the country, or to ask of Congress any act transcending their constitutional powers, which the abolition of slavery by Congress in any state would plainly do. July 12, 1834. ARTHUR TAPPAN. JOHN RANKIN The black clergyman Theodore S. Wright was a significant founding member and served on the executive committee until 1840. A Presbyterian minister, Wright, together with well-known spokesmen such as Tappan and Garrison, agitated for temperance, education, black suffrage, and land reform. According to Wright: I will say nothing about
11178-399: The United States , Weld held the positions of Manager, 1833–1835, and Corresponding Secretary, 1839–1840. Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography states that "in 1836 he...was appointed by the American Anti-slavery Society editor of its books and pamphlets." Abolitionism in the United States In the United States, abolitionism , the movement that sought to end slavery in
11340-425: The United States, since they were not welcome in the South or North. The two opposed groups found common ground in support of what they called "repatriation". When founded, the ACS was "accepted everywhere as 'a most glorious Christian enterprise'." Every church in the land devoted one Sunday a year for a colonization sermon and offering. The presidents of the ACS tended to be Southerners . The first president
11502-410: The United States. Finley meant to colonize "(with their consent) the free people of color residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress may deem most expedient". The organization established branches throughout the United States, mostly in Southern states. It was instrumental in establishing the colony of Liberia . The ACS was founded by groups otherwise opposed to each other on
11664-522: The Virginia Piedmont region in the 1820s and 1830s comprised many of its most prominent members; slave-owning United States presidents Thomas Jefferson , James Monroe , and James Madison were among its supporters. Madison served as the Society's president in the early 1830s. At the inaugural meeting of the Society, Reverend Finley suggested that a colony be established in Africa to take free people of color, most of whom had been born free, away from
11826-534: 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
11988-520: The aims of the society appear to have been misrepresented in the prelude to the Farren Riots in New York, which resulted in attacks on the homes and properties of abolitionists. After the riots were quelled, the society issued a public disclaimer: The undersigned, in behalf of the Executive Committee of the 'American Anti-Slavery Society' and of other leading friends of the cause, now absent from
12150-554: The auspices of the American Colonization Society , led to the founding of Liberia ). Agitation increased with the publication of David Walker 's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in 1829, Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831, and Andrew Jackson 's handling of the nullification crisis that same year. According to Louis Ruchame, The Turner rebellion was only one of about 200 slave uprisings between 1776 and 1860, but it
12312-465: The brothers Derick and Abraham op den Graeff and Gerrit Hendricksz of Germantown, Pennsylvania , drafted the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , a two-page condemnation of slavery, and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church. The intention of the document was to stop slavery within the Quaker community, where 70% of Quakers owned slaves between 1681 and 1705. It acknowledged
12474-428: The case of Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison , reaffirmed the case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley , which held that even slaves were people who 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
12636-457: The cause. The debate about slavery was often based on what the Bible said or did not 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 was identified by historians as an expression of moralism , it often operated in tandem with another social reform effort, the temperance movement . Slavery
12798-548: The city, beg the attention of their fellow-citizens to the following disclaimer:— 1. We entirely disclaim any desire to promote or encourage intermarriages between white and coloured persons. 2. We disclaim and entirely disapprove the language of a handbill recently circulated in this city, the tendency of which is thought to be to excite resistance to the laws. Our principle is, that even hard laws are to be submitted to by all men, until they can by peaceable means be altered. We disclaim, as we have already done, any intention to dissolve
12960-528: The colonization movement "originated abolitionism", by arousing the free Black people and other opponents of slavery. The following summary by Judge James Hall , editor of the Cincinnati-based Western Monthly Magazine , is from May 1834: The plan of colonizing free blacks, has been justly considered one of the noblest devices of Christian benevolence and enlightened patriotism, grand in its object, and most happily adapted to enlist
13122-604: The colony. It is an oversimplication to say simply that the American Colonization Society founded Liberia. Much of what would become Liberia was a collection of settlements sponsored by state colonization societies: Mississippi in Africa , Kentucky in Africa , the Republic of Maryland , and several others. The most developed of these, the Republic of Maryland, had its own constitution, and statutes. Beginning in 1825,
13284-464: The colony. His motivations included tactical defense against Spanish collusion with runaway slaves, and prevention of Georgia's largely reformed criminal population from replicating South Carolina's planter class structure. 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
13446-413: The combined influence, and harmonious cooperation, of different classes of society. It reconciles, and brings together some discordant interests, which could not in any other plan be brought to meet in harmony. The Christian and the statesman here act together, and persons having entirely different views from each other in reference to some collateral points connected with the great subject, are moved towards
13608-457: The community from religious privileges men are made infidels. What, they demand, is your Christianity? How do you regard your brethren? How do you treat them at the Lord's table? Where is your consistency in talking about the heathen, traversing the ocean to circulate the Bible everywhere, while you frown upon them at the door? These things meet us and weigh down our spirits.... Many founding members used
13770-474: The conflict. It sent 2,492 people of African descent to Liberia in the five years following the war. The federal government provided a small amount of support for these operations through the Freedmen's Bureau . Some scholars believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea by 1863, following the use of black troops. Biographer Stephen B. Oates has observed that Lincoln thought it immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for
13932-684: The continent of Africa . It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C. The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 to address the prevailing view that free people of color could not integrate into U.S. society; their population had grown steadily following
14094-418: The correspondence with Pleasants, later ACS members heeded Madison's warning that immediate abolition proposals could lead to protracted Congressional debates. Lengthy deliberations and Congressional sessions, in turn, allowed proslavery delegates sufficient time to propose the repeal of individual manumission codes in the several states, ostensibly in anticipation of federal abolition. A corollary to this concern
14256-521: The country , was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War , the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime , through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified 1865). The anti-slavery movement originated during the Age of Enlightenment , focused on ending the transatlantic slave trade . In Colonial America,
14418-462: The country. Mortality was the highest since accurate record-keeping began: close to half the arrivals in Liberia died from tropical diseases, especially malaria ; during the early years, 22% of immigrants died within one year. Moreover, the provisioning and transportation of requisite tools and supplies proved very expensive. Starting in the 1830s, the society was met with great hostility from abolitionists, led by Gerrit Smith , who had supported
14580-417: The disposal of the blacks, and that this foul and unnatural crime of holding men in bondage will finally be rooted out from our land." 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
14742-605: The dissolution of the organization. Another issue was whether abolitionists should enter politics as a distinct party. One of the more irreconcilable differences between the two internal AASS factions resulted in an external rivalry between dual anti-slavery societies. A minority of anti-feminist delegates left the AASS, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society . Wright was among them. They were more conservative, supporting organized religion and traditional forms of governance, and excluding women from leadership. Recent studies examine remaining AAAS members who sympathized with
14904-639: 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. In 1737, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay published All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates , which was printed by his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The following year, during the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in Burlington, New Jersey , Lay gave
15066-468: The emigration or colonizing of the freed Blacks". By late into his first term as president, Lincoln had publicly abandoned the idea of colonization after speaking about it with Frederick Douglass , who objected harshly to it. On April 11, 1865, with the war drawing to a close, Lincoln gave a public speech at the White House supporting suffrage for blacks, a speech that led actor John Wilkes Booth , who
15228-600: The end of the 20 years approached, an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Jefferson signed it, and it went effect on January 1, 1808. In 1820, the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy was passed. This law made importing slaves into the United States a death penalty offense . The Confederate States of America continued this prohibition with
15390-743: 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. 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. Anti-slavery as
15552-448: The first abolition laws in the entire " New World ". 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 New Jersey, slavery was not fully prohibited until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment . All of
15714-514: The forcible relocation of about one million enslaved people to the Deep South . The Africans and African Americans became well established and had children, and the total number of the enslaved reached four million by the mid-19th century. Due in part to manumission efforts sparked by revolutionary ideals, Protestant preachers, and the abolitionist movement , there was an expansion in the number of free black people , many of them born free. Even in
15876-452: The formulation of abolitionist ideology in the United States. The federal government prohibited the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia in 1850, outlawed slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, and, with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , made slavery unconstitutional altogether, except as punishment for
16038-460: The general public. American abolitionists were cheered by the decision in Somerset v Stewart (1772), which prohibited slavery in the United Kingdom, though not in its colonies. In 1774, the influential Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade . One of the first articles advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery
16200-549: The groundwork for the American Colonization Society. The ACS had its origins in 1816, when Charles Fenton Mercer , a Federalist member of the Virginia General Assembly , discovered accounts of earlier legislative debates on black colonization in the wake of Gabriel Prosser 's rebellion. Mercer pushed the state to support the idea. One of his political contacts in Washington City, John Caldwell, in turn contacted
16362-555: The growing American debate over slavery and marked an increase in violence against abolitionists in the United States. American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society ( ACS ), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America , was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to
16524-594: The happiness of the negro, let their efforts be directed to raise the oppressed black in the scale of moral elevation here. Let them admit him to more rights in the social world;—but unless they desire to be laughed at by all sincere and thinking men, they had better abandon the Quixotic plan of colonizing the Southern negroes at the cost of the North, until we can free our own borders from poverty, ignorance and distress. The philanthropist and public intellectual Gerrit Smith ,
16686-418: The house was divided, and on a count there appeared 557 in favor and 451 against her election. Lewis Tappan, Amos A. Phelps , and Charles W. Denison successively asked to be excused from serving on the committee, for reasons assigned; having reference to the appointment of Miss Kelly as a member. They were excused." After the AASS schism in national leadership, the bulk of AASS activity in the 1840s and 1850s
16848-544: The ideology of staying and fighting for the equality of civil rights of Frederick Douglass . He believed the transition was to exit the rising of slavery and racism toward African Americans in the US. Other destinations he suggested were Central America, the West Indies, or Mexico, where Black people could be more likely to thrive and emphasize their freedom against the influence of White people. Toward this end, in 1858, Delany cofounded
17010-406: The inconvenience which I have experienced myself, and which every man of color experiences, though made in the image of God. I will say nothing about the inconvenience of traveling; how we are frowned upon and despised. No matter how we may demean ourselves, we find embarrassments everywhere. But, this prejudice goes farther. It debars men from heaven. While sir, slavery cuts off the colored portion of
17172-451: The issue of slavery. Slaveholders, such as those in the Maryland branch and elsewhere, believed that so-called repatriation was a way to remove free Blacks from slave societies and avoid slave rebellions. Free black people, many of whom had been in the United States for generations, also encouraged and assisted slaves to escape, and depressing their value. ("Every attempt by the South to aid
17334-445: The mid-19th century. John Brown became an advocate and militia leader in attempting to end slavery by force of arms. In the Civil War, immediate emancipation became a war goal for the Union in 1861 and was fully achieved in 1865. American abolitionism began well before the United States was founded as a nation. In 1652, Rhode Island made it illegal for any person, black or white, to be "bound" longer than ten years. The law, however,
17496-447: The most intense hatred of the colored race, clad in the garb of pretended philanthropy; and we regard the revival of colonization societies...as...manifestations of a passion fit only for demons to indulge in. In most cases, African American families had lived in the United States for generations, and their prevailing sentiment was that they were no more African than white Americans were British . Contrary to claims that their emigration
17658-463: The name of emancipation. In contrast, the new Europeans who had not been part of this country in such events were instead welcomed to settle here. From 1850 to 1858, according to Martin Delany , a supporter of African Americans' emigration from the United States to other regions, the creation of a republic was a significant movement to gain independence for the free Black people in America, in contrast to
17820-408: The national organization split over basic differences of approach: Garrison and his followers were more radical than other members. They denounced the U.S. Constitution as supportive of slavery, were against established religion, and insisted on sharing organizational responsibility with women. Disagreement regarding the formal involvement of women became one of the principal factors which contributed to
17982-471: The news as "a great Moral demonstration of the propriety and necessity of state action!" During the 1850s, the Society also received several thousand dollars from the New Jersey , Pennsylvania , Missouri , and Maryland legislatures . Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Mississippi set up their own state societies and colonies on the coast next to Liberia. However, the funds that ACS took in were inadequate to meet
18144-527: The organization of Wesleyan Methodist Connection by Orange Scott in 1843, and the formation of the Free Methodist Church by Benjamin Titus Roberts in 1860 (which is reflected in the name of Church). The True Wesleyan a periodical founded by Orange Scott and Jotham Horton was used to disseminate abolitionist views. The Methodist and Quaker branches of Christianity played an integral part in
18306-554: The organization's new declaration. The document condemns the institution of slavery and accuses slave owners of the sin of being a "man-stealer". It calls for the immediate abolition of slavery without conditions, and is critical of the efforts of the American Colonization Society . At the same time, it declares the group to be pacifist , and the signers agree, if necessary, to die as martyrs . Beginning in January 1834 and ending in August of
18468-440: The original 1833 gathering of the organization, and even they were not allowed to participate in an active role. Lucretia Mott , Lydia White, Esther Moore, and Sidney Ann Lewis attended on December 4, 1833, but none were able to sign the Constitution that day. Their exclusion from this convention contributed to female-led organizations that formed shortly thereafter. In the western United States, women held more important roles in
18630-536: 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 gradually or immediately 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
18792-446: The pages of the Society's magazine, the African Repository . Garrison objected to the colonization scheme because rather than eliminating slavery, its key goal, as he saw it, was to remove free black people from America, thereby avoiding slave rebellions . Besides not improving the lot of enslaved Africans, the colonization had made enemies of native people of Africa. Both he and Gerrit Smith were horrified when they learned that alcohol
18954-620: The persons of its members, on the right of discussion, (and astonishing as it is, some of the suggestions for invading this right are impliedly countenanced in the African Repository ,) I have looked to it, as being also the rallying point of the friends of this right. To that Society yours is hostile. In the meeting of forming British African Colonization Society held in London in July 1833, Nathaniel Paul , an abolitionist in support of William Lloyd Garrison 's " Thoughts on African Colonization ," argued that
19116-485: The perspective of the slave, recognizing their agency and subsequent humanity as cause for self-liberation. Slave revolts following the Stono Rebellion were a present mode of abolition undertaken by slaves and were an indicator of black agency that brewed beneath the surface of the abolitionist movement for decades and eventually sprouted later on through figures such as Frederick Douglass, an escaped black freeman who
19278-509: 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, 129–130) Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting
19440-469: 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
19602-498: The prosperity and continued growth of the colony. After 1919, the society essentially ended, but it did not formally dissolve until 1964, when it transferred its papers to the Library of Congress . Early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlement of the kind the ACS supported, but each arrangement failed. The ACS continued to operate during the American Civil War and colonized 168 black people during
19764-433: The rebellion, and 60 whites lay dead. While the uprising led some Southerners to consider abolition, the reaction in all Southern states was to tighten the laws governing slave behavior. That same year, South Carolina's opposition to the federal tariff led the legislature to declare that the law was null and void in the state , and the state's leaders spoke of using the militia to prevent federal customs agents from collecting
19926-469: The region. At the time, Native Americans in the region were hosting raids against lower-class settlers encroaching on their land after the Third Powhatan War (1644–1646), which left many white and black indentured servants and slaves without a sense of protection from their government. Led by Nathaniel Bacon , the unification that occurred between the white lower class and blacks during this rebellion
20088-568: The removal of slavery. Prohibiting slavery through the 1735 Georgia Experiment in part to prevent Spanish partnership with Georgia's runaway slaves, Oglethorpe eventually revoked the act in 1750 after the Spanish's defeat in the Battle of Bloody Marsh eight years prior. During the Revolutionary era, all states abolished the international slave trade , but South Carolina reversed its decision. Between
20250-496: The revolt intended to reach Spanish-controlled Florida to attain freedom, but their plans were thwarted by white colonists in Charlestown, South Carolina. The event resulted in 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves killed, as well as the implementation of the 1740 Negro Act to prevent another slave uprising. In her book, "The Slave's Cause" by Manisha Sinha, Sinha considers the Stono Rebellion to be an important act of abolition from
20412-427: The right to make their own decisions about where they lived. They recommended that if black people wish to leave the United States, they consider Canada or Mexico, where they would have civil rights and a climate that is similar to what they are accustomed to. The United States was large enough to accommodate a colony, and would be much cheaper to implement. They question the motives of ACS members who cite Christianity as
20574-506: The role of women, the Liberty Party emerged as a separate anti-slavery organization that broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 in order to pursue an abolitionist agenda through the political process. As a radical, Garrison did not believe it prudent to fight the system from the inside. Because women in the West had a more fluid approach to their political involvement, particularly when it came to Garrison's staunch disagreement with
20736-403: The roles of African-American leaders), the former Society President, his brother, and their adherents had seceded from the American Anti-Slavery Society. These men subsequently established the rival American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society . Six African-American men also apostatized to the oppositional Society, principally due to a potential conflation of female leadership with white feminism in
20898-517: The same point by a diversity of motives. It is a splendid conception, around which are gathered the hopes of the nation, the wishes of the patriot, the prayers of the Christian, and we trust, the approbation of Heaven. (As Hall refused to publish Theodore Weld 's lengthy reply, he did so in the Cincinnati Journal . It became known nationally because Garrison devoted almost the entire front page of
21060-609: The same year, the society published the American Anti-Slavery Reporter , a monthly periodical containing professional essays regarding the subject of slavery. The society was considered controversial and its activities were sometimes met with violence. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica , "The society's antislavery activities frequently met with violent public opposition, with mobs invading meetings, attacking speakers, and burning presses." In July 1834
21222-492: The sentence of death and prohibited the import of slaves. In 1830, most Americans were, at least in principle, opposed to slavery. However, opponents of slavery deliberated on how to end the institution, as well as what would become of the slaves once they were free. As put in The Philanthropist : "If the chain of slavery can be broken, ... we may cherish the hope ... that proper means will be devised for
21384-599: 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. Massachusetts took a much more radical position. 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. In 1783, its Supreme Court, in
21546-430: The society financially, and William Lloyd Garrison , author of Thoughts on African Colonization (1832), in which he proclaimed the society a fraud. According to Garrison and his many followers, the society was not a solution to the problem of American slavery —it actually was helping, and was intended to help, to preserve it. After the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the growth and export of cotton became
21708-623: The task of resuscitating the Ohio Black Codes of 1804 and 1807. ...Between 1,000 and 1,200 free blacks were forced from Cincinnati". A meeting was held in Cincinnati on January 17, 1832, to discuss colonization, which resulted in a series of resolutions. First, they had a right to freedom and equality. They felt honor-bound to protect the country, the "land of their birth", and the Constitution . They were not familiar with Africa, and should have
21870-509: The tax. President Andrew Jackson swept aside the states' rights arguments and threatened to use the army to enforce federal laws. In the face of Jackson's determination, the state backed down, but the episode raised fears throughout the South that it was only a matter of time before Congress would begin to tamper with slavery. Southern anxiety increased in 1833 with the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Louisiana . Beginning in 1816,
22032-455: The transatlantic slave trade by 1798. South Carolina , which had abolished the slave trade in 1787, reversed that decision in 1803. In the American South , freedom suits were rejected by the courts, which held that the rights in the state constitutions did not apply to African Americans . The formation of Christian denominations that heralded abolitionism as a moral issue occurred, such as
22194-502: The universal rights of all people. While the Quaker establishment did not take action at that time, the unusually early, clear, and forceful argument in the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery initiated the spirit that finally led to the end of slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1780). The Quaker Quarterly Meeting of Chester, Pennsylvania , made its first protest in 1711. Within
22356-477: The vices and habits of slaves." He advocated "resettlement" of former slaves to the west coast of Africa, where the Society acquired land and founded what became Liberia . The ACS idea of colonization aligned with Madisonian perspectives on immediate abolition bills proposed to the Federal Congress. In 1791, Madison had observed that, in his experience, such proposals resulted in "harm rather than good." During
22518-492: The wealthiest man in New York State, had been "among the most munificent patrons of this Society," as put by Society Vice-President Henry Clay . This support changed to furious and bitter rejection when he realized, in the early 1830s, that the society was "quite as much an Anti-Abolition, as Colonization Society". "This Colonization Society had, by an invisible process, half conscious, half unconscious, been transformed into
22680-409: The white members had been served. Then he drew a long breath, and looking out towards the door, exclaimed, "Come up, colored friends, come up! for you know God is no respecter of persons!" I haven't been there to see the sacraments taken since. Douglass hoped his letters would remind Garrison why slavery should be abolished. Douglass's reminder did not ease the minds of those against Garrison. In 1840,
22842-673: 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. 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
23004-523: Was Bushrod Washington , the nephew of U.S. President George Washington and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States . From 1836 to 1849 the statesman Henry Clay of Kentucky , a planter and slaveholder, was ACS president. John H. B. Latrobe served as president of the ACS from 1853 until his death in 1891. The colonization project, which had multiple American Colonization Society chapters in every state, had three goals. One
23166-461: 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
23328-632: Was a popular orator and essayist for the abolitionist cause. The struggle between Georgia and South Carolina led to the first debates in Parliament over the issue of slavery, occurring between 1740 and 1742. 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. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved African Americans appeared before
23490-604: Was a successful Quaker ship owner and activist in Boston. His parents were of Ashanti (African) and Wampanoag (Native American) heritage. He advocated settling freed American slaves in Africa and gained support from the British government, free Black leaders in the United States, and members of Congress to take emigrants to the British colony of Sierra Leone . In 1815, he financed a trip himself. The following year, Cuffe took 38 American black people to Freetown , Sierra Leone. He died in 1817 before undertaking other voyages. Cuffe laid
23652-512: Was active within the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society between 1841 and 1842. He engaged with the American Anti-Slavery Society lecture circuit beginning 1843. Born into chattel slavery, Douglass escaped and made his way to New Bedford, Boston, and New York. He developed written and verbal skills that resulted in his becoming a prominent spokesman of the abolitionist movement. He endorsed a federal women's suffrage resolution at
23814-402: 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 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 growing anti-slavery stance in
23976-448: Was being sold in Liberia. He questioned the wisdom of sending African Americans, along with white missionaries and agents, to such an unhealthy place. In addition, it meant that fewer slaves achieved their freedom: "it hinders the manumission of slaves by throwing their emancipation upon its own scheme, which in fifteen years has occasioned the manumission of less than four hundred slaves, while before its existence and operations during
24138-474: Was called for December 4, 1833, at the Adelphi Building in Philadelphia. The convention had 62 delegates, of which 21 were Quakers . At this point, the American Anti-Slavery Society formed to appeal to the moral and practical circumstances that, at this point, propped up a pro-slavery society. Between December 4–6, 1833, sixty delegates from New England , Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and New Jersey convened
24300-469: Was carried on by state and local societies. The antislavery issue entered the mainstream of American politics through the Free Soil Party (1848–1854) and subsequently the Republican Party (founded in 1854). In 1870, the American Anti-Slavery Society was formally dissolved, after the Civil War , Emancipation and the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution . The inaugural Executive Committee of
24462-557: Was directed toward the church. According to Douglass: In the South I was a member of the Methodist Church . When I came north, I thought one Sunday I would attend communion, at one of the churches of my denomination, in the town I was staying. The white people gathered round the altar, the blacks clustered by the door. After the good minister had served out the bread and wine to one portion of those near him, he said, "These may withdraw, and others come forward"; thus he proceeded till all
24624-567: Was given the name Abolitionist Place , and the Truesdells' home at 227 Duffield received landmark status in 2021. Abolitionists nationwide were outraged by the murder of white abolitionist and journalist Elijah Parish Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois on 7 November 1837. Six months later, Pennsylvania Hall , an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia , was burnt to the ground by another proslavery mob on May 17, 1838. Both events contributed to
24786-410: 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
24948-478: Was one of the bloodiest, and thus struck fear in the hearts of many white southerners. Nat Turner and more than 70 enslaved and free blacks spontaneously launched a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia , in August 1831. They moved from farm to farm, indiscriminately killing whites along the way and picking up additional slaves. By the time the militia put down the insurrection, more than 80 slaves had joined
25110-662: Was perceived as dangerous and thus was quashed with the implementation of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 . Still, this event introduced the premise that blacks and whites could work together towards the goal of self-liberation, which became increasingly prevalent as abolition gained traction within America. The first statement against slavery in Colonial America was written in 1688 by the Religious Society of Friends . On 18 February 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius ,
25272-413: Was quite as much an Anti-Abolition, as Colonization Society. ...It has come to this, however, that a member of the Colonization Society cannot advocate the deliverance of his enslaved fellow men, without subjecting himself to such charges of inconsistency, as the public prints abundantly cast on me, for being at the same time a member of that Society and an Abolitionist. ...Since the late alarming attacks, in
25434-517: Was that proslavery delegates, in the context of individual manumission codes, had hitherto demanded "a condition that the persons freed should be removed from the Country." For Madison, federal colonization legislation proved more prudent, practical, and feasible because proslavery representatives were already amenable to it. Madisonian colonization would ultimately be compulsory, not voluntary, which again aligned with ACS goals. A convention of abolitionists
25596-488: Was to provide a place for former slaves, freedmen , and their descendants to live, where they would be free and not subject to racism. Another goal was to ensure that the colony had what it needed to succeed, such as fertile soil to grow crops. A third goal was to suppress attempts to engage in the Atlantic slave trade , such as by monitoring ship traffic on the coast. Presbyterian clergyman Lyman Beecher proposed another goal:
25758-569: Was vigorously opposed to emancipation and black suffrage, to assassinate him three days later. Colonizing proved expensive; under the leadership of Henry Clay the ACS spent many years unsuccessfully trying to persuade the U.S. Congress to fund emigration. The ACS did have some success, in the 1850s, with state legislatures, such as those of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. In 1850, the state of Virginia set aside $ 30,000 (~$ 853,047 in 2023) annually for five years to aid and support emigration. The Society, in its Thirty-fourth Annual Report, acclaimed
25920-429: Was voluntary, many African Americans, both free and enslaved, were pressured into emigrating. Indeed, enslavers, such as Zephaniah Kingsley , sometimes freed their slaves on condition that the freedmen leave the country immediately. According to historian Marc Leepson , "Colonization proved to be a giant failure, doing nothing to stem the forces that brought the nation to Civil War ." Between 1821 and 1847, only
26082-509: Was widely ignored, and Rhode Island became involved in the slave trade in 1700. The first act of resistance against an upper-class white colonial government from slaves can be seen in Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Occurring in Virginia, the rebellion saw European indentured servants and African people (of indentured, enslaved , and free negroes ) band together against William Berkeley because of his refusal to fully remove Native American tribes in
26244-583: 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 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
#384615