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67-452: Cane Ridge Meeting House is a historic church building on Cane Ridge near Paris, Kentucky built in 1791. It is one of the oldest church buildings in Kentucky and the largest one room log structure. The church was the site of a large frontier Christian revival in 1801 hosted by the local Presbyterian congregation that met in the building, with nearly 10,000 people attending. According to

134-484: 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

201-540: 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

268-726: 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

335-479: A local barn, where it had served as a hay loft for more than a century. The meeting house continues to be used as a living church. A curator is available for guided tours by appointment. The Barton Warren Stone Museum contains artifacts of the congregation, Barton W. Stone and his family, the Stone-Campbell movement , and antique farm and household equipment. The museum is open only in the summer. It also houses

402-481: 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

469-405: 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

536-493: 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

603-708: 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 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

670-448: 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

737-422: A stone shrine to surround and protect it. The restoration of the original slave gallery in the meetinghouse was the oldest documented such restoration in the United States. In the 1820s, the congregation had removed the slave gallery, because they supported abolitionism . When preservationists began restoration work in the 1930s, they re-installed the original cherry-railed gallery. It was found and returned from

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804-615: 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, 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,

871-549: Is among the largest in the country. A Christian church congregation met on the site for many years after the 1801 revival meeting, and the congregation's leaving the Presbyterian Church in 1804. Barton W. Stone was its minister and one of the leading ministers of the Christian Church. This place was so dear to him that at his request, several years after his death, his remains were reinterred there. Led by Barton Stone,

938-586: 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

1005-573: The Christian Churches (independent) of the Stone-Campbell movement trace their origins here. This movement is often noted as the first one indigenous to American soil." In the 1930s a stone building was constructed around the original log structure. The church is still used for worship. 38°12′46″N 84°07′09″W  /  38.2126389°N 84.1191667°W  / 38.2126389; -84.1191667 Cane Ridge Cane Ridge

1072-643: The Churches of Christ and the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada , and several smaller groups. The Christian Church used a log building as their meeting house ; it was modernized many times. When the congregation ceased to meet there regularly in the 1920s, the building fell into disuse. Later, historically minded persons, predominantly from the Disciples, restored the building and preserved it by building

1139-619: 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

1206-575: 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

1273-530: 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

1340-578: 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

1407-431: 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 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

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1474-521: 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

1541-757: 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

1608-576: The 20th century became more associated with the Pentecostal movement. Cane Ridge is located in Bourbon County, Kentucky , near Paris . The ridge was named by the explorer Daniel Boone , who had noticed a form of bamboo growing there. The Cane Ridge building and grounds had many unusual aspects. The 1791 Cane Ridge Meeting House is believed to be the largest single-room log structure in North America. The burial ground contains an unmarked section that

1675-716: 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

1742-671: The Cane Ridge Revival is associated with the development of what became known as the Restoration Movement . Stone and several other ministers left the Presbyterian Church in 1804 and established the Christian Church . Another element of the Restoration Movement was Alexander Campbell's Disciples of Christ . In 1832, Stone and Campbell agreed to combine their efforts in the Restoration Movement. Later groups developed as

1809-796: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1780). The Quaker Quarterly Meeting of Chester, Pennsylvania , made its first protest in 1711. Within 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 ,

1876-416: 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

1943-743: 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

2010-446: 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

2077-622: 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

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2144-628: 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, 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

2211-731: 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 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

2278-582: 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

2345-428: 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

2412-457: 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

2479-464: 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

2546-466: 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

2613-639: 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

2680-600: 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

2747-743: 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

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2814-510: 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

2881-452: 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

2948-460: 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

3015-503: The museum "[i]n 1804, a small group of Presbyterian ministers from Kentucky and Ohio... penned and signed a document, "The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery", at Cane Ridge that resulted in the birth of a movement seeking unity among Christians along non-sectarian lines. They would call themselves simply " Christians . The Christian Church ( Disciples of Christ ), the Churches of Christ (non-instrumental), and

3082-555: The office of the Cane Ridge Preservation Projects and a book shop. Abolitionism in the United States In the United States, abolitionism , the movement that sought to end slavery in 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

3149-527: 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

3216-536: 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

3283-485: 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

3350-509: 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

3417-424: 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 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

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3484-469: 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

3551-526: 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 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

3618-496: 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

3685-492: 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

3752-599: 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

3819-399: 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

3886-445: 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

3953-461: 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

4020-580: 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

4087-402: 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

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4154-467: 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

4221-410: 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

4288-490: Was the site of a huge camp meeting in 1801, the Cane Ridge Revival , that drew thousands of people and had a lasting influence as one of the landmark events of the Second Great Awakening , which took place largely in frontier areas of the United States. The event was led by eighteen Presbyterian ministers, but numerous Methodist and Baptist preachers also spoke and assisted. Many of the "spiritual exercises", such as glossolalia and ecstatic attendees, were exhibited that in

4355-429: Was to stop slavery within the Quaker community, where 70% of Quakers owned slaves between 1681 and 1705. It acknowledged 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

4422-419: 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

4489-402: Was written in 1688 by the Religious Society of Friends . On 18 February 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius , 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

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