The Crusade Against Slavery: Antebellum Culture and Reform

1. CHAPTER TWELVEAntebellum Culture and Reform SPRING 2012 HISTORY 3401 AMERICA TO 1877 BROOKLYN COLLEGE BRENDAN O’MALLEY, INSTRUCTOR THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY Frederick Douglass in 1848

2. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY • Early Opposition: The anti-slavery movement was not new by the 1840s and 1850s. It had begun in the early 1800s, but took on new energy around 1830. But before that time, there were some important antecedents. • American Colonization Society: In the early 1800s, the anti-slavery opinions were expressed publicly by a group of genteel whites, but who did little else. In 1817, a new group called the American Colonization Society was founded by elite white Virginians: John Randolph, Richard Bland Lee, and Henry Clay (he represented Kentucky, but was born in Virginia). It proposed freeing slaves gradually, compensating the former owners for their loss property, and then shipping freed African Americans back to Africa. It received some funding from Congress, the legislatures of Maryland and Virginia, and private donations, mostly from the Quaker community. The first ship departed in 1820. • Liberia: A colony was formally established in 1822, and Liberia declared itself an independent black republic in 1846. But the ACS proved incapable of sending many people to Africa as many blacks were very reluctant to leave the U.S. By the 1840s, the ACS was fading from prominence, and under attack by black leaders and abolitionists.

3. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY William Lloyd Garrison painted by Nathaniel Jocelyn in 1833

4. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY • William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879): This Massachusetts-born radical had been an assistant to William Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker who in 1821 started publishing the era’s leading anti-slavery newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation. But Garrison, who started working with Lundy in 1829, grew tired of Lundy’s gradualist approach to emancipation and left after one year, moving back to Boston to start his own paper, the Liberator, which was far more militant, in 1831. Garrison had been briefly been involved with the ACS, but by the time he founded the Liberator, he had become a harsh critic of it. • Garrison’s Revolutionary Philosophy: Most previous anti-slavery activists had focused on the corrupting influence that slavery had on whites. But Garrison instead focused on the harsh treatment and degradation of blacks. His philosophy led him to reject the “gradualism” of Lundy and the ACS, and to call for the immediate emancipation of blacks without compensation to their owners. He also called for the extension of U.S. citizenship rights to all blacks. Garrison attracted a group of followers throughout the North, allowing him to create the American Antislavery Society in 1833. Yet radical abolitionists like Garrison and his followers remained a fairly small minority in the North.

5. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY THE LIBERATOR Right: Famed statement in the first issue Below: Masthead from 1855

6. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY Black Abolitionists • David Walker (1785-1830): This free black man who had moved from North Carolina to Boston; he had been born to a free mother and enslaved father. He called for the immediate abolition of slavery several years before Garrison. In 1829, he published a pamphlet, An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, that described slavery as a terrible sin that would bring divine punishment if it was not immediately abolished. See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your won language? Hear your languages, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776 -- "We hold these truths to be self evident -- that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! ! that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! !" Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us -- men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation! ! ! ! ! !

7. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY Black Abolitionists • Sojourner Truth (c. 1793-1883; born Isabella Baumfree): Born as a slave in upstate New York, this powerful antislavery orator stood almost six feet tall. She escaped to freedom in 1826, and soon afterward became a devout Christian and abolitionist activist. She became one of the most effective abolitionist orators, giving her most famous speech, later known as “Ain’t I a Woman,” in 1851. • Frederick Douglass (1818-1895): Born a slave in Maryland, this formidable man escaped to freedom by boarding a train in 1838 dressed as a sailor. He made his way to through Philadelphia and New York, spending some time in David Ruggle’s safe house in the latter city, eventually settling with his wife Anna in the port city of New Bedford, Massachusetts. He subscribed to the Liberator, and later met Garrison face-to-face, who encouraged him to become an abolitionist speaker. He quickly gained confidence as a speaker, participating in a American Antislavery Society tour of the North in 1843. He published A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845, and then lectured in England for two years. In 1847, he moved to Rochester, New York, and began publishing a newspaper called the North Star.

8. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY Anti-Abolitionism • Provoking a Backlash: The rise of the abolitionists, a small but very vocal minority, prompted a strong backlash. Most white Southerners bitterly opposed the movement, but so did many whites in the North. Many northerners believed that abolitionists would cause a bloody civil war, while others feared an influx of blacks that would ensue after emancipation. • Anti-Abolitionist Violence: A mob in Philadelphia attacked the abolitionist headquarters in that city in 1834, burning it to the ground and then starting a race riot. In 1835, an anti-abolitionist mob in Boston seized and beat Garrison, and threatened to hang him, but he escaped death by being locked in jail. • Elijah Lovejoy (1802-1837): This minister and editor of an abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois, who was shot to death by a pro-slavery mob in 1837; no one was convicted of his murder. He became a revered martyr to the abolitionist movement. Being a committed abolitionist activist often meant facing public abuse, beatings, and even death.

9. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY Abolitionism Divided • Radicals and Moderates: By the 1830s, a split was emerging in the abolitionist movement. Violence of the anti-abolitionists convinced some that a more moderate approach was necessary, while the growing radicalism of William Lloyd Garrison pushed many to more a moderate position. • Garrison’s Radicalism: Garrison shocked and alienated many by condemning the government of the United States for tolerating slavery, famously calling the Constitution “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” In 1840, he also split abolitionists by demanding that women be able to participate in the movement on a totally equal footing with men. He also embraced an extreme form of pacifism, rejecting all forms of war; he began to speak out against all forms of coercion, including asylums and prisons; and by 1843, was calling for disunion from the South. • Moderates: The moderates assisted the Garrisonians in helping runway slaves, but they did not reject the idea that government means could be used to help the abolitionist cause, pursuing state and federal legislation. (Garrisonians preferred to remain morally pure and not compromise with what they viewed as an evil political system.)

10. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY The Amistad Case • The Amistad Mutiny: In 1839, Africans on a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, seized control of the vessel from its crew, using sugar-cane machetes they found on the ship. They demanded to be taken back to Africa, but the ship’s navigator guided the vessel to the eastern tip of Long Island, where the it was taken into custody by a U.S. revenue cutter. The Africans were taken to New Haven, Connecticut, to stand trial for piracy. • On Trial: A legal fight to free the Africans was funded by abolitionists, and the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court in 1841. Former president and gifted lawyer John Quincy Adams argued the case for the Africans’ freedom. The court declared them free, and abolitionists paid for their return trip to Africa. • Anti-Slavery Laws: In 1841, the Supreme Court decided that states did not have to aid in executing a 1793 law requiring the return of escaped slaves to their owners. Several northern states passed “personal liberty laws” after that decision, which forbade state officials from assisting in the return of state slaves. Antislavery groups also pressured the federal government to pass legislation in areas that it controlled, like Washington, D.C.

11. CHAPTER ELEVENAntebellum Culture and Reform THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY The Anti-Slavery outside of Abolitionism • Liberty Party: In the 1840, a new small party, the Liberty Party, ran Kentucky antislavery leader James G. Birney, for president. The Liberty Party did not stand for outright abolition, but instead focused on “Free Soil,” meaning that they wanted to keep slavery out of the western territories. Some Free-Soilers had moral qualms about slavery, but most just wished to keep these areas open to economic development by non-slaveholding white men. • Uncle Tom’s Cabin: In 1852, the Connecticut abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) published a novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that sold roughly 300,000 copies in its first year, and unprecedented figure. It brought a powerful abolitionist message to a far wider audience than ever before, especially when touring theatrical companies began adopting it for the stage.