Abolitionists

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ABOLITIONISTS

In colonial North America, the nonviolent Society of Friends stood almost alone in condemning slavery, which has led to the common misperception that the American antislavery movement was ideologically committed to nonviolence. In fact, decades of frustrating campaigning eventually led most American abolitionists to accept the proposition that slavery could not be ended peacefully.

violence and nonviolence

The post-Revolutionary antislavery movement got its start in the early 1830s and condemned slavery largely on evangelically inspired moral grounds. Although it represented a minority of the population, its cause and tactics played a significant role in the outbreak of war in 1861. By means of lecturing agents, petition drives, and a wide variety of printed materials, the American Anti-Slavery Society promoted the cause of immediate emancipation and racial equality. The targets of abolitionist efforts, the individual slaveholders and the national religious institutions, rejected antislavery appeals and attempted to suppress the abolitionist agitation by mob violence and by legal and ecclesiastical enactments.

The widespread rejection of the antislavery program forced abolitionists to reconsider their strategy. Many followed the lead of the Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and abandoned the churches as hopelessly corrupted by slavery. These Garrisonians adopted pacifist political practices and counseled Northerners to withhold their sanction from the U.S. Constitution by refusing to vote, since the Constitution contained clauses supporting slavery. The Garrisonians also actively championed women's rights and a program of "universal reform," which led them into quarrels with abolitionists who wanted to focus strictly on freeing the slaves. The Garrisonians won control of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 when opponents quit in protest over the election of a female officer.

Some non-Garrisonian abolitionists continued their attempts to reform the churches, but others shifted their energies to the political arena, launching the Liberty Party in 1840. Like the original antislavery societies, the Liberty Party called for an immediate abolition of slavery wherever constitutionally possible and for the repeal of all racially discriminatory legislation. The Liberty Party's presidential candidate, James G. Birney, received just 7,000 votes (0.29 percent) in 1840 and only 62,000 (2.31 percent) in 1844—an indication that the single issue of slavery was not yet strong enough to sway many voters.

The dismissal of antislavery arguments by every major American institution forced abolitionists to reconsider their original nonviolent strategy. Black abolitionists already had been employing violent means to assist runaway slaves and to thwart the capture of fugitive slaves. A small but active minority of white abolitionists also began condoning more militant ways of combating slavery. In the 1840s, public controversy over such issues as the congressional gag rule that tabled all antislavery petitions, the annexation of Texas as a new slaveholding state, and the disposition of territory won in the Mexican War made opposition to slavery more respectable in Northern circles. The Liberty Party merged with Northern Whigs and Democrats who opposed the further spread of slavery into the western territories, creating first the Free Soil Party in 1848 and then the Republican Party in 1854.

violent abolitionism

In the 1850s, the apparent inability of antislavery politicians in the newly formed Republican Party to block Democratic Party efforts to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state spurred the growth of violent abolitionism. A well-organized effort recruited and armed hundreds of antislavery activists to settle in Kansas and thwart proslavery statehood settlers, who were also armed. Out of the guerrilla skirmishes in "bleeding Kansas" emerged John Brown, who killed several proslavery Kansas settlers. In October 1859, leading a small, integrated company, which was financed by a clandestine group of wealthy Northern abolitionists, Brown attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in the forlorn hope of sparking a slave insurrection. Such militant abolitionist agitation helped fan the flames of sectionalism and provoke Southern secession in 1861.

The Civil War caused considerable alterations in abolitionist strategies. All abolitionist factions realized that Southern secession made slavery preeminently a political question. In particular, they recognized that the war gave them an unprecedented opportunity to press the federal government to adopt an emancipation policy. Longtime pacifists joined veteran political abolitionists in endorsing the war and in calling on the government for decisive antislavery action. When the Republican Congress and the Lincoln administration hesitated to take such a revolutionary step, abolitionists worked to embolden them by producing evidence of Northern public support for emancipation.

emancipation

The culmination of this agitation came when Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862. Although it exempted at least one million slaves from its provisions and was surrounded with an aura of expediency, most abolitionists responded favorably to Lincoln's actions. A few, however, complained that Lincoln still shrank from immediate and complete emancipation, and they unsuccessfully attempted to replace Lincoln as the Republican nominee with a more committed antislavery candidate. After Lincoln's reelection in 1864, abolitionists worked for permanent emancipation by lobbying Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery everywhere.

Abolitionists also actively advocated the use of African-American troops in the Union army. When Lincoln belatedly began recruiting African Americans in 1863, many younger abolitionists volunteered as officers for black units. After the war, abolitionists argued that since African Americans had served in the military they deserved equal rights. Some abolitionists went south to work for Freedmen's Aid societies, and later the Freedman's Bureau, to assist the former slaves in their transition to freedom.

Although Garrison believed the Thirteenth Amendment had fulfilled the American Anti-Slavery Society's original goals, the organization remained active until two additional amendments ensured African Americans' citizenship and (male) suffrage. When Southern white resistance during postwar Reconstruction nullified many of the hard won gains African Americans had made, abolitionists vainly attempted to pressure Northern politicians not to sacrifice racial equality for the sake of sectional reconciliation. The sectional passions unleashed by the Civil War had enabled abolitionists to achieve the partial victory of emancipation, but true racial equality would require additional generations of struggle.

Abolitionism began as a small, idealistic protest movement against slavery, and its proponents used moral suasion, political power, civil disobedience, and in some cases violence to promote their cause. But it was the Civil War that brought their movement to power by adding to the original purpose of the war, which was to restore and preserve the Union, the abolition of slavery and the granting of citizenship to African Americans. With the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, the abolitionists successfully codified the ideals of the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution and helped lay the groundwork for a multiracial society. The success of the abolitionists' struggle marked the end of that movement but also the beginning of a nearly 100 years of struggle by African Americans to achieve the equal rights promised under the law.

bibliography

Dillon, Merton L. Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies, 1619–1865. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001.

McPherson, James M. The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964.

John R. McKivigan

Americans at War