CHAPTER 9The Anti-Slavery Movement

Statue of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston

Main Idea A small but committed antislavery

movement arose in the early- to mid-1800s.

Leaders, both blacks and whites, used a variety of tactics to combat slavery, facing great dangers in their struggle.

An Anti-Slavery Movement Arises

An Anti-Slavery Movement Arises

David Walker

An Anti-Slavery Movement Arises The abolitionist movement gained

momentum in the 1830s. The debate over ending slavery created

increasing tensions between the North and the South.

During the late 1700s, several antislavery societies formed in the North, while abolitionist newspapers appeared in both the North and the South.

From 1777 to 1807, every state north of Maryland passed laws that gradually abolished slavery.

The legal importing of slaves to the United States also ended in 1808.

Colonization of Liberia In the early 1800s, some

abolitionists favored colonization, a program to send free blacks and emancipated slaves to Africa.

Convinced that African Americans would never receive equal treatment in American society, these antislavery advocates founded the American Colonization Society in 1817.

To pursue their plan of colonization, the society established the West African country of Liberia (its name taken from liberty) in 1822.

Liberia cont. In this treaty of May 1825,

African King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land in return for 500 bars of tobacco, three barrels of rum, five casks of powder, five umbrellas, ten iron posts, and ten pairs of shoes, among other items

In six years, they created a government and a set of laws.

Liberia's first black governor was Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a free black man born in Virginia in 1809.

Some southern planters backed colonization as a way to eliminate the threat of free blacks who might encourage slaves to revolt.

Liberia’s Flag

Liberia cont. The colonization plan offended most

African Americans. They considered themselves and their

children to be as American as any white people.

They wanted to improve their lives in their homeland, not on a faraway continent they had never seen.

Such opposition hurt the colonization effort.

By 1831, only about 1,400 free blacks and former slaves had migrated to Liberia.

By that time, both black and white abolitionists were adopting a more aggressive tone in their fight against slavery.

Radical Abolition One of the most famous of the

radical abolitionists was a white Bostonian named William Lloyd Garrison.

In 1831, Garrison began publishing The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper supported largely by free African Americans

In 1833, with the support of both white and African American abolitionists, Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society.

William Lloyd Garrison

· Garrison also started the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

William Lloyd Garrison

· Garrison was a white abolitionist who started the anti-slavery newspaper the Liberator.

Radical Abolition-William Lloyd Garrison

As the decade progressed, more middle-class white Northerners began to support the immediate end of slavery.

With agents traveling throughout the North, the society distributed more than one million antislavery pamphlets a year

In the very first issue of his anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison stated, "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."

Frederick Douglas One of the most popular speakers

and a key leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society was a former slave, Frederick Douglass.

The son of a white father whom he did not know and a slave mother from whom he was separated as an infant

Douglass was raised by his grandmother

At age 8 he was sent to Baltimore as a house slave.

Although Maryland law prohibited the education of slaves, his new owner's wife disregarded the law and tutored the intelligent young boy

Frederick Douglas cont. Cruel experiences under slavery toughened

Douglass's will and would later make him the nation's most influential African American abolitionist.

At 17, he was considered unruly, so he was sent to a “slave breaker,” a man skilled in punishing slaves to make them passive and cooperative.

Subjected to whippings and backbreaking labor for endless hours and days

But after one brutal beating, Douglass reached what he called a “turning point” in his life.

He fought back, attacking the slave-breaker with such ferocity that the man never again laid a whip to him.

This, Douglass said later, was the story of “how a man became a slave and a slave became a man.”

Frederick Douglas cont. In 1838, the 21-year-old Douglass,

working in a shipyard, disguised himself as a sailor and escaped to New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Asked to describe his experiences as a slave to an antislavery convention in 1841, Douglass spoke, unprepared, with passion and eloquence.

The event launched Douglass's career with the American Anti-Slavery Society.

He wrote and spoke publicly, enduring verbal and physical threats from opponents of abolition

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)

1845 The Narrative of the Life Of Frederick Douglass1847 “The North Star”

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Douglas cont. Douglass published his

autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

The book named his former master, so to avoid capture, Douglass went to Europe to continue raising support for the abolitionist movement.

He then started an abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, which he published from 1847 to 1860.

Although Douglass opposed the use of violence, he also believed that slavery should be fought with deeds as well as words

Divisions Among Abolitionists

Sarah and Angelina Grimke

Divisions Among Abolitionists cont.

Divisions Among Abolitionists cont.

The Underground Railroad Risking arrest, and their

lives, abolitionists created the Underground Railroad, a network of escape routes that provided protection and transportation for slaves fleeing north to freedom.

The term railroad referred to the paths that Africans Americans traveled, either on foot or in wagons, across the North-South border and finally into Canada, where slave-hunters could not go.

Leading Escaping Slaves Along the Underground Railroad

Underground RR cont. Underground meant

that the operation was carried out in secret, usually on dark nights in deep woods.

Men and women known as conductors acted as guides.

They opened their homes to the fugitives and gave them money, supplies, and medical attention.

the number of slaves rescued vary widely, from about 40,000 to 100,000.

Harriet Tubman By far the most famous conductor on

the Underground RR was a courageous former slave named Harriet Tubman.

Tubman herself escaped from a plantation in Maryland in 1849 and fled north on the Underground Railroad.

She returned the next year to rescue family members and lead them to safety.

Thereafter, she made frequent trips to the South, rescuing more than 300 slaves and gaining the nickname “the Black Moses.”

(The name refers to the Bible story of the prophet Moses leading Jewish slaves out of captivity in Egypt.)

The River Route One of those pathways came from the

West, where the Mississippi River valley offered a natural escape route.

Some slaves managed to get a ticket for riverboat passage northward.

The Mississippi River route was dangerous, however.

Slave hunters, who often received generous payments for their work, stalked the riverboat towns and boarded the ships looking for slaves on the run.

Eastern Swamp Routes The East Coast had a string of low-lying

swamps stretching along the Atlantic Coast from southern Georgia to southern Virginia.

Fugitives who traveled north through the swamps could link up with one of the eastern Underground Railroad routes to Canada.

The travelers faced hazards, however, such as poisonous snakes and disease-bearing mosquitoes.

The Mountain Route The physical feature that most influenced the

choice of a route was the Appalachian Mountains.

The mountain chain has narrow, steep-sided valleys separated by forested ridges.

The Appalachians served as an escape route for two reasons.

First, the forests and limestone caves sheltered fugitives as they avoided capture on their way north.

Second, the Appalachians acted as a barrier for western runaways, leading them northward into a region of intense Underground Railroad activity.

A Refuge for Runaways The center of

Underground Railroad activity included Ohio and two states that border it, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

This region shared a long boundary with two slave states, Virginia and Kentucky.

Once the fugitives crossed into Ohio, they felt much safer.

Southern Ohio was home to Quakers and others who volunteered their houses as depots, or stations.

A Refuge for Runaways cont. Southern Illinois, on the other hand, was

an even more dangerous region for fugitives.

Settled largely by Southerners, this region remained proslavery.

Abolitionists in that area often provided tickets for fugitives on a real railroad, the Illinois Central, for transit to Chicago.

From there they continued on toward Canada, often on foot, following the North Star as it marked their route to freedom.

Resistance to Abolition The abolition movement provoked intense

opposition in both the North and the South. Opposition even came from the north-

merchants, for example, worried that the antislavery movement would further sour relations between the North and South, harming trade between the two regions.

White workers and labor leaders feared competition from escaped slaves willing to work for lower wages.

Most Northerners, including some who opposed slavery, did not want African Americans living in their communities.

They viewed blacks as socially inferior to whites.

Resistance to Abolition cont. In 1835, an angry

Boston mob assaulted William Lloyd Garrison and paraded him around the city with a rope around his neck.

A new hall built by abolitionists in Philadelphia was burned down, as were homes of black residents.

The most brutal act occurred in Alton, Illinois, where Elijah P. Lovejoy edited the St. Louis Observer, a weekly Presbyterian newspaper.

In his editorials, Lovejoy denounced slavery and called for gradual emancipation. Opponents repeatedly destroyed his printing presses, but each time Lovejoy resumed publication. On the night of November 7, 1837, rioters again attacked the building. Lovejoy, trying to defend it, was shot and killed.

Opposition in the South Public officials in the South

also joined in the battle against abolitionism.

Southern postmasters, for example, refused to deliver abolitionist literature.

In 1836, moreover, Southerners in Congress succeeded in passing what Northerners called the gag rule.

It prohibited antislavery petitions from being read or acted upon in the House for the next eight years.

Abolitionists pointed to the gag rule as proof that slavery threatened the rights of all Americans, white as well as black.