APUSH
Heasman
Assignments
Abolitionist timeline
1770’s: Anti-slavery movements founded in Britain, France, Netherlands, in 1770’s
1791: Haitian Revolution – Slaves and free blacks overthrow French colonial rule
1807: Slave Trade outlawed in US
1808: Slave Trade outlawed in British Empire
1828: New York State abolishes slavery.
1829: David Walker’s Appeal.
1831: William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator.
Nat Turner Slave Rebellion.
1833: American Anti-slavery Society formed.
1834: Slavery outlawed across the British Empire
1837: Abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy is murdered.
1838: Frederick Douglass escapes slavery and becomes active in the abolitionist cause.
1840: Formation of the Liberty Party which ran presidential candidates in 1840 and 1844
1840: World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London
1844: John Quincy Adams finally wins repeal of the Gag Rule in Congress.
1846: Wilmot Proviso, prohibiting slavery in any territory taken from Mexico, is passed
in the House, but defeated in the Senate.
1847: Frederick Douglass begins publication of the North Star.
1848: Mexican Cession of western territory to the United States; North and South
resume struggle over the status of slavery in federal territory.
1850: Compromise of 1850; passage of Fugitive Slave Act.
1852: Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
1854: Passage of Kansas-Nebraska Act which determines the status of slavery in these
two territories according to the principle of “popular sovereignty.”
“Bleeding Kansas.”
Formation of the Republican Party.
1857: Dred Scott Court Decision which stated that the Missouri Compromise was
unconstitutional, and that slaves were not citizens but the property of their owners
1858: Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
1859: Abolitionist John Brown’s raid at the federal arsenal inHarper’s Ferry, Virginia.
1860: Presidential election of Republican Party candidate, Abraham Lincoln, and the
start of southern secession.
1861: The beginning of the Civil War.
1863: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
1865: Thirteenth Amendment is added to the Constitution, which abolishes slavery.
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APUSH
Heasman
Assignments
Document A
“The abolitionists were irresponsible fanatics who bear the responsibility for the secession of the
South and the outbreak of war in 1861. By their unceasing opposition to ‘sin’ and their unyielding
attacks on the morals of slaveholders, the abolitionists succeeded only in convincing most
Northerners that the South was a dangerous ‘slave power’ bent on destroying the American
dream . . . . They created a psychological climate, North and South, where fear, hatred, and hysteria
rather than reason prevailed. Civil War was then in the making.”
----- Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War, Illinois: University of Chicago Press,
1957
Document B
“I believe when two races come together which have different origins, colors, and
physical and intellectual characteristics, that slavery is instead of an evil, a good – a
positive good . . . There is and has always been, in an advanced state of wealth and
civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. Slavery exempts Southern society
from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict. This explains why the
political condition of the slaveholding states has been so much more stable and
quiet than that of the North.”
----- John C. Calhoun, southern senator, February 6, 1837
Document C
“The laboring classes enjoy more material comfort, are better fed, clothed and
housed as slaves than as freemen. The statistics of crime demonstrate that the
moral superiority of the slave over the free laborer is still greater . . . . There never
can be among slaves a class so degraded as is found about the wharves and
suburbs of cities. The master requires and enforces ordinary morality and industry.
How slavery could degrade men lower than universal liberty has done, it is hard to
conceive . . . . The free laborer rarely has a house and home of his own; he is
insecure of employment . . . .”
- George Fitzhugh, author, Sociology for the South or the Failure of Free Society
(1854)
Document D
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to
him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which
he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty,
an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing
are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence;
your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your
sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to
Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up
crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than are the people of the United States at this very hour. . . Go where you may,
search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old
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Heasman
Assignments
World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have
found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation,
and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy,
America reigns without a rival.”
---Frederick Douglass, Independence Day Speech at Rochester, NY, 1841
Document E
“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter.
I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking
about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here
talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and
lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me
into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a
woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered
into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much
and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And
ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery,
and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a
woman?”
--- Sojourner Truth, “Ain't I A Woman?” Delivered 1851, Women's Convention, Akron, Ohio
Document F
“Slavery is sin before God. Individually, or as political communities, men have no
more right to enact slavery, than they have to enact murder or blasphemy, or incest
or adultery.”
----- James G. Birney in 1835, Liberty Party presidential candidate
Document G
“We will do all . . . to overthrow the most execrable system of slavery that has ever
been witnessed upon earth; to deliver our land from its deadliest curse; to wipe out
the violent stain which rests upon our national coat of arms; and to secure to the
colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges which belong to
them as Americans – come what may to our persons, our interests, or our
reputations, whether we live to witness the triumph of LIBERTY, JUSTICE, AND
HUMANITY, or perish ultimately as martyrs in this great, benevolent and holy
cause.”
----- Declaration of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1834)
Document H
“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I
answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an
instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s
government also . . . . if the law is of such a nature that it requires you to be an
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APUSH
Heasman
Assignments
agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law . . . .”
----- Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849)
Document I
“I am determined at every hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes
of the nation . . . till every chain be broken and every bondman set free! Let
southern oppressors tremble; let their secret abettors tremble; let their northern
apologists tremble; let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. . . . I will be
as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I don’t wish
to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on
fire to give a moderate alarm . . . but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like
the present. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat
a single inch – AND I WILL BE HEARD.”
----- William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, January 1, 1831.
Document J
“I tell you Americans! That unless you speedily alter your course, you and your
country are gone!!!!!! For God Almighty will tear up the very face of the earth!!! . . . .
But I am afraid that they have done us so much injury, and are so firm in their
belief that our Creator made us to be an inheritance to them forever, that their
hearts will be hardened so that their destruction may be sure. But O Americans! I
warn you . . . to repent and reform, or you are ruined!!!
----- David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World
(1829)
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