Chapter 8
Opposition to Slavery 18001833
I. A Country in Turmoil

Late 1820s was a time of great change
– Transportation and market revolution
– Industrialization and immigration
– Banking and money influence public policy

Fears
– People felt threatened
– Paranoia
Political Paranoia
Corrupt bargain
 Democratic party

– Protected workers and farmers from the
“money power”
– States’ rights
• Protected slavery from national
government interference
– Supported expanding slavery into new
regions
Political Paranoia (cont.)

Democratic party
– Traditional view of women’s role in society
• Subservient
– Advocated white supremacy
– African Americans designed by God to be slaves
– “Slave power”
Political Paranoia (cont.)

Whigs
– Opposed Jackson and the Democrats
– Anti-Masonic party
• Believed Freemasons wanted to destroy government
– Supported active, nationalist government
– Greater emphasis on morality and Protestantism
• Reformers
• Opposed territorial expansion
– Attracted opponents to slavery
The Second Great Awakening

Government and heaven becoming
democratic
– Take control in religion away from established
clergy
– People have a role in their own salvation
– Influenced black churches that emerged in 1800s1810s
– Charles G. Finney
• Perfectionism
• Reform movements
The Benevolent Empire

Practical Christianity
– Reform: public education, temperance,
prison reform, mentally and physically
handicapped
– Antislavery societies
Abolitionism Begins in America
Pre-revolutionary
 Southern slaves sought to free
themselves

– Received help from free blacks and a few whites
– Did not seek to destroy slave labor system
Abolitionism Begins in America
(cont.)

Post-revolutionary
– Black and white abolitionists from the North
– Quakers
• Organized first antislavery society, 1775
– Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery,
1784
» Attracted non-Quakers
• Gradual emancipation
• Not equal rights
• Little emphasis on southern slavery
– Emotionalism and Action
• Second Great Awakening and Benevolent Empire
From Gabriel to
Denmark Vesey

Gabriel’s Conspiracy, 1800
– Haitian refugees
– Revolutionary rhetoric
– Revolutionary spirit
– Insurrectionary network lived on
From Gabriel to
Denmark Vesey (cont.)

Gabriel’s Conspiracy, 1800
– Consequences
• Chesapeake antislavery societies declined
• Ended hope to abolish slavery in Maryland,
Virginia, and North Carolina
– Fears of race war
• Rebellions
– Not caused by slavery
– Black people were suited and content
– Free black people
» Free black people were dangerous and criminal
» Economic threat to white people
From Gabriel to
Denmark Vesey (cont.)

Denmark Vesey, 1822
– Familiar with revolutionary rhetoric
– Haitian revolts
– French Revolution
– Missouri Crisis
• Antislavery speeches
From Gabriel to
Denmark Vesey (cont.)

Denmark Vesey: Consequences
– Charleston
•
•
•
•
•
Destroyed AME church
Improved slave patrols
Outlawed slave assemblages
Banned teaching slaves to read
Black seaman jailed until ships ready to leave
port
• Increasingly suspicious of
– Free African-Americans
– White Yankee visitors
III. The American Colonization
Society

ACS, 1816
– Proposed gradual emancipation
• With compensation
– Sending ex-slaves and freed people to
Liberia
• Support of southern slaveholders
• Northern supporters preferred giving a choice
Black Nationalism

White prejudice denied blacks full
citizenship
– Liberia
– Haiti
– Prince Hall
– Paul Cuffe
– Henry Highland Garnet
– Alexander Crummel
Opposition to Colonization
– Americans not Africans
– Preferred to improve conditions in America
– Worried that “voluntary” colonization would be
forced
• Most southern states required the expulsion of slaves
individually freed by masters
• Efforts to expel all free black people or return them to
slavery
– Arkansas, 1858
• ACS considered a proslavery scheme to force free black
people to choose between reenslavement or
banishment.
IV. Black Women Abolitionists
– 19th century rigid gender hierarchy
• Denied women access to law, politics,
business,
– Most black women poor, lacked education
– Slave and free risked all harboring fugitive slaves
– Used meager savings to purchase freedom
– Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society,
1833
• Maria Stewart (See PROFILE)
– First women to address male audiences in public
V. The Baltimore Alliance

Benjamin Lundy
– Quaker
– Genius of Universal Emancipation
 William Watkins (See VOICES)
– Freedom’s Journal

William Lloyd Garrison
– The Liberator
– Immediate emancipation without compensation or
expatriation
– Equal rights
– Altered abolition in America
VI. David Walker’s Appeal

David Walker
– Appeal . . . to the Colored Citizens of the
World, 1829
• Aggressively attacked slavery and white racism
• Advocated violence
– Frightened white southerners
– Pamphlet was regarded as dangerous in the
Old South
» Found among slaves in southern parts
• See PROFILE
VII. Nat Turner
– Nat Turner
• Learned to read as a child
• Studied the Bible
• Saw visions
– Believed God intended him to lead people to freedom
– Revolt, August 1831
– Virginia state constitutional convention, 1829
• Class tensions
– Emancipation
Nat Turner (cont.)

Turner’s Revolt
– Shaped a new era in American abolition
• Whites everywhere blamed abolitionists
• Northern abolitionists asserted hope for peaceful
struggle
• Accorded heroic stature by northern abolitionists
VIII. Conclusion

The Second Great Awakening and Reform
Movement
– Shaped slavery

Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner
– Employed violence

Northern abolitionists
– Employed newspapers, books, petitions, and
speeches

Slaves’ resistance
– Influenced northern abolitionists