Understanding the Complexity of
Abolitionism and Anti-Slavery
movements
Paradox:
• Being Anti-Slavery did not necessarily
make you a friend of the Slave.
• Americans opposed slavery for various
reasons and used various methods in their
opposition.
Southerners Lamenting Slavery
• In the early republic, even southerners
questioned the future and morality of
slavery (Like Washington)
• Ideology of the revolution
• Evangelical influence (Second Great
Awakening) – blunted by 1820
• Southern abolitionism dies out about
1830-1832. Virginia assembly meets to
discuss prospect / Nat Turner’s rebellion.
Abolition the Political Issue
• North vs. South in struggle for political
mastery
• “Political Abolitionism” – not so much
opposed to slavery on moral grounds, but
that the slave state voting bloc and 3/5’s
Compromise puts South in driver’s seat.
• Focused on stopping the spread of
slavery.
• Like “red state/blue state politics”
Abolition Politics as a Labor Issue
• By 1840s, “Free Soil” movement emerges
• White laboring classes (farmers,
mechanics) who want to stop the spread
of slavery
• They don’t want to compete with unfree
labor.
• They don’t care about slavery where it
already exists
The political threat posed by
containing slavery
• The South feared abolition movements that
threatened to stop the spread of slavery
because such movements would inhibit the
South’s ability to maintain a political parity with
the North
• In time, the South would become a political
minority, and as such, subject to the whim of
Northern will.
• For the South to defend slavery politically, it
HAD to expand.
The economic threat of containing
slavery
• Stopping slavery’s expansion eliminated
(in theory) the market for future
generations of slaves
Abolition the Moral Issue
• By far the most threatening because it
challenges the persistence of slavery
where it exists.
• Far less common than “political
abolitionism”
Early Moral Abolition: Gradualism
• Abolition within the conventions of a racist
culture: Inability to see slaves as Americans.
• Emphasis on resettlement, deportation
• American Colonization Society
• Liberia, “Monrovia”
• Respect for southern property rights
• Sensitive to racial attitudes of white Americans,
North and South
• Sensitive to preserving racial hierarchy
Intellectual Changes in the North:
“Perfectionism”
• Transcendentalism and other
“perfectionist” ideals take root, particularly
in New England 1820s – 1830s
• Belief in reform and “perfectability of
mankind”
• Temperance, anti-prostitution, and antislavery
• Involvement of women in moral crusade
Moral Abolition: Immediatism
•
•
•
•
The rise of William Lloyd Garrison
Starts Liberator in 1831
Calls for the immediate end to slavery
Not only is slavery wrong, but slaveholders
are immoral.
• Enrages slaveholders
• Enrages a lot of northerners too
• A minority view for many years
William Lloyd Garrison
Garrison and Southern
Conceptions of Honor
• Garrison made abolitionism a personal attack
upon the honor of southerners by charging them
with a unconscionable crime.
• Undermines southern claims to honor and
patriarchy
• Immediatist abolition movement small but vocal.
• Hardens defenses of slavery.
• Encourages the development of pro-slavery
rhetoric from southern intellectuals and clergy.
Women and Moral Abolitionism
• As part of the antebellum period’s move
toward moral improvement, women
become involved in abolitionism.
• Religious overtones
• The fictional “Uncle Tom” character
• The imperiling of white morality
Northern Women
• Harriett Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s
Cabin
• Representative of white northern women
from elite backgrounds who take up the
cause of abolition.
• Both moral and emotional suasion
Southern White Women
• The Grimke Sisters of
South Carolina
• Become sought-after
speakers
• Credibility as
beneficiaries of slave
system
• Focus: Slavery’s
damage to white
morality
The Slave Narrative
• Harriett Jacobs and
Incidents in the Life of
a Slave Girl
• Shocking forcefulness
• Narrative of sexual
exploitation
Jacobs’ hiding place
Imagery and Abolitionism
Some images did not
need to be fabricated:
Here an actual
advertisement for the
sale of slaves strikes
most normal modern
observers as inherently
sinister.
Imagery and Auctions
Imagery and the limits of white
compassion: “tragic mulattas”
Photograph of “nearly
white” slave girl
“auctioned” by Henry
Ward Beecher to raise
funds for abolitionist
causes in Boston