182-597: William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an American abolitionist , journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator , which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was partially abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Garrison promoted "no-governmentism" and rejected
364-491: A lecture against slavery while dressed as a soldier, after which he plunged a sword into a bible containing a bladder of fake blood ( pokeberry juice) that splattered those nearby. On September 9, 1739, a literate slave named Jemmy led a rebellion against South Carolina slaveholders in an event referred to as the Stono Rebellion (also known as Cato's Conspiracy and Cato's Rebellion.) The runaway slaves involved in
546-487: A treaty with Ashmun. The treaty negotiated land to Ashmun and in return, the natives received three barrels of rum , five casks of powder, five umbrellas , ten pairs of shoes , ten iron posts, and 500 bars of tobacco , as well as other items. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819—40%—were alive in 1843. The ACS knew of the high death rate, but continued to send more people to
728-464: A "racist scheme of the ACS to rid the United States of free blacks". He proposed instead Central and South America as "the ultimate destination and future home of the colored race on this continent" (see Linconia ). A recent (2014) writer on Connecticut African Americans summarizes the attitude amongst them: African Americans viewed colonization as a means of defrauding them of the rights of citizenship and
910-591: A 2018 publication, American philosopher and anarchist Crispin Sartwell wrote that the works by Garrison and his other Christian anarchist contemporaries like Ballou directly influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. , as well. Abolitionism in the United States In the United States, abolitionism , the movement that sought to end slavery in the country , was active from
1092-548: A concern for Black civil rights. However, James Stewart advocates a more nuanced understanding of the relationship of abolition and anti-slavery prior to the Civil War: While instructive, the distinction [between anti-slavery and abolition] can also be misleading, especially in assessing abolitionism's political impact. For one thing, slaveholders never bothered with such fine points. Many immediate abolitionists showed no less concern than did other white Northerners about
1274-469: A copy of the Constitution, condemning it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell," referring to the three-fifths compromise that had written slavery into the Constitution. In 1855, his eight-year alliance with Frederick Douglass disintegrated when Douglass converted to classical liberal legal theorist and abolitionist Lysander Spooner's view (dominant among political abolitionists) that
1456-687: A crime, in 1865. This was a direct result of the Union victory in the American Civil War . The central issue of the war was slavery. Historian James M. McPherson in 1964 defined an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional and total abolition of slavery in the United States". He notes that many historians have used a broader definition without his emphasis on immediacy. Thus he does not include opponents of slavery such as Abraham Lincoln or
1638-446: A fever and severe bronchitis , was unable to join the service. Wendell Phillips gave a eulogy and many of Garrison's old abolitionist friends joined him upstairs to offer their private condolences. Garrison recovered slowly from the loss of his wife and began to attend Spiritualist circles in the hope of communicating with Helen. Garrison last visited England in 1877, where he met with George Thompson and other longtime friends from
1820-663: A few decades the entire slave trade was under attack, being opposed by such Quaker leaders as William Burling, Benjamin Lay , Ralph Sandiford, William Southby, John Woolman , and Anthony Benezet . Benezet was particularly influential, inspiring a later generation of notable anti-slavery activists, including Granville Sharp , John Wesley , Thomas Clarkson , Olaudah Equiano , Benjamin Franklin , Benjamin Rush , Absalom Jones , and Bishop Richard Allen , among others. Samuel Sewall ,
2002-516: A few thousand African Americans, out of millions, emigrated to what would become Liberia , while the increase in Black population in the U.S. during those same years was about 500,000. By 1833, the Society had transported only 2,769 individuals out of the U.S. According to Zephaniah Kingsley, the cost of transporting the Black population of the United States to Africa would exceed the annual revenues of
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#17327661288932184-408: A highly profitable business. Central to the business was the setting up of plantations, staffed by enslaved laborers. Due to the increased demand, imports of African slaves grew until legal importation was barred in 1808, after which time Maryland and Virginia openly bred slaves, "producing" children for sale "South", through brokers such as Franklin and Armfield , to plantation owners. This resulted in
2366-424: A jail term of six months. He was released after seven weeks when the anti-slavery philanthropist Arthur Tappan paid his fine. Garrison decided to leave Maryland, and he and Lundy amicably parted ways. In 1831, Garrison, fully aware of the press as a means to bring about political change, returned to New England, where he co-founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator , with his friend Isaac Knapp . In
2548-629: A leading role in the May 30, 1850, meeting that called the first National Woman's Rights Convention, saying in his address to that meeting that the new movement should make securing the ballot to women its primary goal. At the national convention held in Worcester the following October, Garrison was appointed to the National Woman's Rights Central Committee, which served as the movement's executive committee, charged with carrying out programs adopted by
2730-467: A less time thousands were set free". In the second number of The Liberator , Garrison reprinted this commentary from the Boston Statesman , We were, however, rather surprised to see the proposal of sending the free negroes to Africa as returning them to their native land. It would be as well at least to talk of sending these reverend gentlemen back to England as their native land. The negro
2912-511: A means for ending slavery, his critics saw him as a dangerous fanatic because he demanded immediate and total emancipation, without compensation to the slave owners . Nat Turner 's slave rebellion in Virginia just seven months after The Liberator started publication fueled the outcry against Garrison in the South. A North Carolina grand jury indicted him for distributing incendiary material, and
3094-602: A means to reduce the number of already free blacks in the United States. Southern members thought reducing the threat of free blacks in society would help preserve the institution of slavery. By late 1829–1830, "Garrison rejected colonization, publicly apologized for his error, and then, as was typical of him, he censured all who were committed to it." He stated that anti-colonialism activist and fellow abolitionist William J. Watkins had influenced his view. In 1829, Garrison began writing for and became co-editor with Benjamin Lundy of
3276-541: A memorial service in a church in Washington, D.C., saying, "It was the glory of this man that he could stand alone with the truth, and calmly await the result." Garrison's namesake son, William Lloyd Garrison Jr. (1838–1909), was a prominent advocate of the single tax , free trade, women's suffrage, and of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act . His third son, Wendell Phillips Garrison (1840–1907),
3458-437: A moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – 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 . The apathy of
3640-501: A national creed." Garrison spent more time at home with his family. He wrote weekly letters to his children and cared for his increasingly ill wife, Helen. She had suffered a small stroke on December 30, 1863, and was increasingly confined to the house. Helen died on January 25, 1876, after a severe cold worsened into pneumonia . A quiet funeral was held in the Garrison home. Garrison, overcome with grief and confined to his bedroom with
3822-493: A political movement is usually dated from 1 January 1831, when Wm. Lloyd Garrison (as he always signed himself) published the first issue of his new weekly newspaper, The Liberator (1831), which appeared without interruption until slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865, when it closed. Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in
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#17327661288934004-707: A political threat. From 1790 to 1800, the number of free black people increased from 59,467 to 108,398, and by 1810 there were 186,446 free black people. In 1786, a British organization, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor , launched its efforts to establish the Sierra Leone Province of Freedom , a colony in West Africa for London 's "black poor". This enterprise gained the support of
4186-484: A price was on Garrison's head; he was burned in effigy and gallows were erected in front of his Boston office. Later on, Garrison would emerge as a leading advocate of women's rights, which prompted a split in the abolitionist community. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement . Garrison was born on December 10, 1805, in Newburyport, Massachusetts , the son of immigrants from
4368-405: A principle was far more than just the wish to prevent the expansion of slavery. After 1840, abolitionists rejected this because it let sin continue to exist; they demanded that slavery end everywhere, immediately and completely. John Brown was the only abolitionist to have actually planned a violent insurrection, though David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by
4550-493: A prominent Bostonian, wrote The Selling of Joseph (1700) in protest of the widening practice of outright slavery as opposed to indentured servitude in the colonies. This is the earliest-recorded anti-slavery tract published in the future United States. Slavery was banned in the colony of Georgia soon after its founding in 1733. The colony's founder, James Edward Oglethorpe , fended off repeated attempts by South Carolina merchants and land speculators to introduce slavery into
4732-581: A proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States affirming the divinity of Jesus Christ on the basis of religious freedom, writing that "no one can fail to see that the Jew, Unitarian, or Deist could not worship in his own way, as an American citizen, precisely because the Constitution, under which his citizenship exists, would make faith in the New Testament and the divinity of Jesus Christ
4914-528: A protest pamphlet. Now—after the Colonization Society has been formed without the consent of the colored people[,] after the enterprise has been violently pushed, against their reiterated protests, tor seventeen years—after its friends acknowledged that coercion has been used in getting away its victims—and so long as they would persuade us that this is not the native country of colored Americans; and that we ought not to let them remain here—what
5096-472: A rapid increase in the number of free African Americans in the United States in the first two decades after the Revolutionary War, which they perceived as threatening. Although the ratio of white people to black people overall was 4:1 between 1790 and 1800, in some Southern counties black people were the majority. Slaveholders feared that free black people destabilized their slave society and created
5278-428: A reason for removing black people from America. Since there were no attempts to improve the conditions of black people who lived in the United States, it is unlikely that white people would watch out for their interests thousands of miles away. William Lloyd Garrison began publication of his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator , in 1831, followed in 1832 by his Thoughts on African Colonization, which discredited
5460-654: A rope around his waist, and pulled him through the streets towards Boston Common , calling for tar and feathers . The mayor intervened and Garrison was taken to the Leverett Street Jail for protection. Gallows were erected in front of his house, and he was burned in effigy . Garrison's appeal for women's mass petitioning against slavery sparked controversy over women's right to a political voice. In 1837, women abolitionists from seven states convened in New York to expand their petitioning efforts and repudiate
5642-509: A serviceable organ and member of the Slave Power ". It was "an extreme case of sham reform". He claimed that the ACS had "ripened into the unmeasured calumniator of the abolitionist, ...the unblushing defender of the slaveholder, and the deadliest enemy of the colored race". In November 1835, he sent the Society a letter with a check, to conclude his existing commitments, and said there would not be any more from him, because: The Society
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5824-456: A significant number of opponents, including Black Americans in prominent cities of America, found inequality towards the Society because according to him, they were the ones who had remarkably contributed and fought to protect this country as their home through a historical period of generations. However, this Society was then trying to forcefully send them back to their ancestors' lands as, by that time, they were considered at risk for rebellion in
6006-448: A slave. According to historian Steven Pincus , many of the colonial legislatures worked to enact laws that would limit slavery. The Provincial legislature of Massachusetts Bay , as noted by historian Gary B. Nash , approved a law "prohibiting the importation and purchase of slaves by any Massachusetts citizen." The Loyalist governor of Massachusetts , Thomas Hutchinson , vetoed the law, an action that prompted angered reaction from
6188-595: A small-town newspaper writer, Garrison acquired skills he would later use as a nationally known writer, speaker, and newspaper publisher. In 1828, he was appointed editor of the National Philanthropist in Boston, Massachusetts , the first American journal to promote legally-mandated temperance . He became involved in the anti-slavery movement in the 1820s, and over time he rejected both the American Colonization Society and
6370-486: A son and a daughter died as children. The threat posed by anti-slavery organizations and their activity drew violent reactions from slave interests in both the Southern and Northern states, with mobs breaking up anti-slavery meetings, assaulting lecturers, ransacking anti-slavery offices, burning postal sacks of anti-slavery pamphlets, and destroying anti-slavery presses. Healthy bounties were offered in Southern states for
6552-470: A suit for libel in Maryland against both Garrison and Lundy; he thought to gain support from pro-slavery courts. The state of Maryland also brought criminal charges against Garrison, quickly finding him guilty and ordering him to pay a fine of $ 50 and court costs. (Charges against Lundy were dropped because he had been traveling when the story was printed.) Garrison refused to pay the fine and was sentenced to
6734-414: A way of tightening the grip of slavery. ...The tragedy was that African Americans began to view their ancestral home with disdain. They dropped the use of "African" in names of their organizations...and used instead [of African American] "The Colored American." While claiming to aid African Americans, in some cases, to stimulate emigration, it made conditions for them worse. For example, "the Society assumed
6916-490: Is it better than gross mockery to talk about consent? Frederick Douglass condemned colonization: "Shame upon the guilty wretches that dare propose, and all that countenance such a proposition. We live here—have lived here—have a right to live here, and mean to live here". Martin Delany , who believed that Black Americans deserved "a new country, a new beginning", called Liberia a "miserable mockery" of an independent republic,
7098-540: Is just as much a native here as are these reverend gentlemen themselves.—Here the negro was born, here bred, here are his earliest and pleasantest associations—here is all that binds him to earth and makes life valuable. If the welfare of the negro, and not a new scheme for begging, be really the object in view, we desire the reverend gentlemen to step forward and vindicate the rights of the negroes trampled upon by their brethren in Park Street. If they would really promote
7280-494: Is now, and has been for some time, far more interested in the question of slavery, than in the work of Colonization—in the demolition of the Anti-Slavery Society, than in the building up of its Colony. I need not go beyond the matter and spirit of the last few numbers of its periodical for the justification of this remark. Were a stranger to form his opinion by these numbers, it would be, that the Society issuing them
7462-547: The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , which marked the beginning of the American abolitionist movement. Before the Revolutionary War , evangelical colonists were the primary advocates for the opposition to slavery and the slave trade, doing so on the basis of humanitarian ethics. Still, others such as James Oglethorpe , the founder of the colony of Georgia , also retained political motivations for
William Lloyd Garrison - Misplaced Pages Continue
7644-740: The African Civilization Society . In 1821, Lt. Robert Stockton had pointed a pistol to the head of King Peter , which allowed Stockton to persuade King Peter to sell Cape Montserrado (or Mesurado) and to establish Monrovia. In 1825 and 1826, Jehudi Ashmun , Stockton's successor, took steps to lease, annex, or buy tribal lands in Africa along the coast and along major rivers leading inland in Africa to establish an American colony. Stockton's actions inspired Ashmun to use aggressive tactics in his negotiations with King Peter and in May 1825, King Peter and other native kings agreed to
7826-553: The American Revolutionary War and was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president. In 1777, independent Vermont , not yet a state, became the first polity in North America to prohibit slavery: slaves were not directly freed, but masters were required to remove slaves from Vermont. The Constitution included several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used
8008-466: The American Revolutionary War , from 60,000 in 1790 to 300,000 by 1830. Slave owners feared that these free Black people might help their slaves to escape or rebel . The African-American community and the abolitionist movement overwhelmingly opposed the project. According to "the colored citizens of Syracuse," headed by Rev. Jermain Loguen , We recognize in it ["the scheme of African Colonization"]
8190-674: The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. He was a major figure in New England's woman suffrage campaigns during the 1870s. In 1873, he healed his long estrangements from Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips , affectionately reuniting with them on the platform at an AWSA rally organized by Abby Kelly Foster and Lucy Stone on the one-hundredth anniversary of
8372-518: The Boston Tea Party . When Charles Sumner died in 1874, some Republicans suggested Garrison as a possible successor to his Senate seat; Garrison declined on grounds of his moral opposition to taking office. Garrison called the ancient Jews an exclusivist people "whose feet ran to evil" and suggested that the Jewish diaspora was the result of their own "egotism and self-complacency." When
8554-642: The Massachusetts courts in freedom suits , spurred on the decision made in the Somerset v. Stewart case, which although not applying the colonies was still received positively by American abolitionists. Boston lawyer Benjamin Kent represented them. In 1766, Kent won a case ( Slew v. Whipple ) to liberate Jenny Slew , a mixed-race woman who had been kidnapped in Massachusetts and then handled as
8736-584: The Quaker newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation , published at that time in Baltimore, Maryland . With his experience as a printer and newspaper editor, Garrison changed the layout of the paper and handled other production issues. Lundy was freed to spend more time touring as an anti-slavery speaker. Garrison initially shared Lundy's gradualist views, but while working for the Genius , he became convinced of
8918-598: The Republican Party ; they called for the immediate end to expansion of slavery before 1861. The religious component of American abolitionism was great. It began with the Quakers , then moved to the other Protestants with the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Many leaders were ministers. Saying slavery was sinful made its evil easy to understand, and tended to arouse fervor for
9100-675: The Reverend Robert Finley , his brother-in-law and a Presbyterian minister, who endorsed the plan. On December 21, 1816, the society was officially established at the Davis Hotel in Washington, D.C. Among the Society's supporters were Charles Fenton Mercer (from Virginia), Henry Clay (Kentucky), John Randolph (Virginia), Richard Bland Lee (Virginia), Francis Scott Key (Washington, D.C., and Maryland), and Bushrod Washington (Virginia). Slaveholders in
9282-543: The Underground Railroad . This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 , arguably the most hated and most openly evaded federal legislation in the nation's history. Nevertheless, participants like Harriet Tubman , Henry Highland Garnet , Alexander Crummell , Amos Noë Freeman , and others continued with their work. Abolitionists were particularly active in Ohio , where some worked directly in
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#17327661288939464-534: The United States Constitution did or did not protect slavery. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner . The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips , publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner , Gerrit Smith , and eventually Douglass, considered
9646-540: The colonial era until the American Civil War , the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime , through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified 1865). The anti-slavery movement originated during the Age of Enlightenment , focused on ending the transatlantic slave trade . In Colonial America, a few German Quakers issued
9828-521: The upper South , freed slaves, sometimes in their wills. Many noted they had been moved by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions. Some slave owners, concerned about the increase in free blacks, which they viewed as destabilizing, freed slaves on condition that they emigrate to Africa . All U.S. states abolished
10010-550: The "woman question," Garrison announced in December 1837 that The Liberator would support "the rights of woman to their utmost extent." The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society appointed women to leadership positions and hired Abby Kelley as the first of several female field agents. In 1840, Garrison's promotion of woman's rights within the anti-slavery movement was one of the issues that caused some abolitionists, including New York brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan , to leave
10192-438: The 1826 book of Presbyterian Reverend John Rankin , Letters on Slavery , for attracting him to the cause. For a brief time, he became associated with the American Colonization Society , an organization that promoted the "resettlement" of free blacks to a territory (now known as Liberia ) on the west coast of Africa. Although some members of the society encouraged granting freedom to enslaved people, others considered relocation
10374-793: The 1830s and 1840s, as the movement fragmented. The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party ; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society ; the American Missionary Association ; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society . Historians traditionally distinguish between moderate anti-slavery reformers or gradualists, who concentrated on stopping the spread of slavery, and radical abolitionists or immediatists, whose demands for unconditional emancipation often merged with
10556-606: The AAS and form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society , which did not admit women. In June of that same year, when the World Anti-Slavery Convention meeting in London refused to seat America's women delegates, Garrison, Charles Lenox Remond , Nathaniel P. Rogers , and William Adams refused to take their seats as delegates as well and joined the women in the spectators' gallery. The controversy introduced
10738-537: The American Anti-Slavery Society was the conversion of all Americans to the philosophy that "Slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God" and that "duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned, require its immediate abandonment without expatriation." Meanwhile, on September 4, 1834, Garrison married Helen Eliza Benson (1811–1876), the daughter of a retired abolitionist merchant. The couple had five sons and two daughters, of whom
10920-755: The Bridge Street African Methodist Episcopal Church , and lived on Duffield Street. His fellow Duffield Street residents Thomas and Harriet Truesdell were leading members of the abolitionist movement. Mr. Truesdell was a founding member of the Providence Anti-slavery Society before moving to Brooklyn in 1838. Harriet Truesdell was also very active in the movement, organizing an anti-slavery convention in Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia) . Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist
11102-570: The British abolitionist movement. Suffering from kidney disease , Garrison continued to weaken during April 1879. He moved to New York to live with his daughter Fanny's family. In late May, his condition worsened, and his five surviving children rushed to join him. Fanny asked if he would enjoy singing some hymns. Although he was unable to sing, his children sang favorite hymns while he beat time with his hands and feet. On May 24, 1879, Garrison lost consciousness and died just before midnight. Garrison
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#173276612889311284-425: The British colony of New Brunswick , in present-day Canada. Under An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen , his father Abijah Garrison, a merchant-sailing pilot and master, had obtained American papers and moved his family to Newburyport in 1806. The U.S. Embargo Act of 1807 , intended to injure Great Britain, caused a decline in American commercial shipping. The elder Garrison became unemployed and deserted
11466-599: The British government, which also offered relocation to Black Loyalists who had been resettled in Nova Scotia , where they were subject to harsh weather and discrimination from some white Nova Scotians. Jamaica maroons were also deported to the British colony, alongside former slaves freed by the Royal Navy after the Atlantic slave trade was abolished by Britain in 1807. Paul Cuffe or Cuffee (1759–1817)
11648-723: The Christianization of Africa. The Society raised money by selling memberships. The Society's members pressured Congress and the President for support. In 1819, they received $ 100,000 from Congress, and on February 6, 1820, the first ship, the Elizabeth , sailed from New York for West Africa with three white ACS agents and 86 African-American emigrants aboard. The approaches for selecting people and funding travel to Africa varied by state. According to Benjamin Quarles ,
11830-597: The Colonization Society, to send free colored people to Africa, enhances the value of the slave left on the soil". ) The Society appeared to hold contradictory ideas: free Blacks should be removed because they could not benefit America; on the other hand, free Blacks would prosper and thrive under their own leadership in another land. On the other hand, a coalition made up mostly of evangelicals , Quakers , philanthropists , and abolitionists supported abolition of slavery. They wanted slaves to be free and believed Blacks would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in
12012-419: The Constitution could be interpreted as being anti-slavery. The events in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry , followed by Brown's trial and execution , were closely followed in The Liberator . Garrison had Brown's last speech, in court, printed as a broadside, available in the Liberator office. Garrison's outspoken anti-slavery views repeatedly put him in danger. Besides his imprisonment in Baltimore and
12194-416: The Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural Law and a form of social contract theory, they said that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished. Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to
12376-440: The Garrisonian traitors for the fairly expressed opinions of the North." After the United States abolished slavery, Garrison announced in May 1865 that he would resign the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and offered a resolution declaring victory in the struggle against slavery and dissolving the society. The resolution prompted a sharp debate, however, led by his long-time friend Wendell Phillips , who argued that
12558-425: The Georgia Legislature offered a $ 5,000 reward (equivalent to $ 152,600 in 2023) for his capture and conveyance to the state for trial. Knapp parted from The Liberator in 1840. Later in 1845, when Garrison published a eulogy for his former partner and friend, he revealed that Knapp "was led by adversity and business mismanagement, to put the cup of intoxication to his lips," forcing the co-authors to part. Among
12740-438: The Jewish-American sheriff and writer Mordecai Manuel Noah defended slavery, Garrison attacked Noah as "the miscreant Jew" and "the enemy of Christ and liberty." On other occasions, Garrison described Noah as a "Shylock" and as "the lineal descendant of the monsters who nailed Jesus to the cross." However, Garrison acknowledged prejudice against Jews in Europe, which he compared to prejudice against African-Americans, and opposed
12922-522: The June 14 issue of The Liberator to it. ) From the beginning, "the majority of black Americans regarded the Society [with] enormous disdain", a "fixed hatred". Black activist James Forten immediately rejected the ACS, writing in 1817 that "we have no wish to separate from our present homes for any purpose whatever". As soon as they heard about it, 3,000 black protestors packed a church in Philadelphia, "the bellwether city for free blacks," and "bitterly and unanimously" denounced it. They published
13104-690: The North, where slavery was being abolished, discrimination against free black people was rampant and often legal. Few states extended citizenship rights to free black people prior to the 1860s and the Federal government, largely controlled by Slave Power , never showed any inclination to challenge the racial status quo. Even in the North, free black people were often seen as unwelcome immigrants, taking jobs away because they would work for cheap. Some slave owners decided to support emigration following an aborted slave rebellion headed by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, and
13286-666: The North. In 1835 alone, abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature to the South, giving rise to the gag rules in Congress, after the theft of mail from the Charleston, South Carolina , post office, and much back-and-forth about whether postmasters were required to deliver this mail. According to the Postmaster General , they were not. Under the Constitution, the importation of enslaved persons could not be prohibited until 1808 (20 years). As
13468-552: The Revolutionary War and 1804, laws, constitutions, or court decisions in each of the Northern states provided for the gradual or immediate abolition of slavery. No Southern state adopted similar policies. In 1807, Congress made the importation of slaves a crime, effective January 1, 1808, which was as soon as Article I, section 9 of the Constitution allowed. A small but dedicated group, under leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass , agitated for abolition in
13650-553: The Society published the African Repository and Colonial Journal . Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797–1872), who headed the Society until 1844, edited the journal, which in 1850 simplified its title to the African Repository . The journal promoted both colonization and Liberia. Included were articles about Africa, lists of donors, letters of praise, information about emigrants, and official dispatches that espoused
13832-414: The Society's stated goals. "For the fourteen years preceding 1834, the receipts of that society, needing millions for its proposed operations, had averaged only about twenty-one thousand dollars a year. It had never obtained the confidence of the American people". Three of the reasons the movement never became very successful were lack of interest by free black people, opposition by some abolitionists, and
14014-518: The Society. According to President Lincoln, it was "the logic and moral power of Garrison and the antislavery people of the country" that put emancipation on the country's political agenda. Garrison himself had earlier joined the Society in good faith. All the important white future abolitionists supported the Society: besides Garrison, Gerrit Smith, the Tappans, and many others, as can be seen in
14196-446: The South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing slavery were often targets of lynch mob violence before the American Civil War . Numerous known abolitionists lived, worked, and worshipped in downtown Brooklyn , from Henry Ward Beecher , who auctioned slaves into freedom from the pulpit of Plymouth Church, to Nathaniel Eggleston, a leader of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society , who also preached at
14378-434: The U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document, abolitionists should not participate in politics and government. A growing number of abolitionists, including Stanton, Gerrit Smith , Charles Turner Torrey , and Amos A. Phelps , wanted to form an anti-slavery political party and seek a political solution to slavery. They withdrew from the AAS in 1840, formed the Liberty Party , and nominated James G. Birney for president. By
14560-481: The U.S. and then to remove them to Africa after their military service. Others, such as the historian Michael Lind , believe that as late as 1864, Lincoln continued to hold out hope for colonization, noting that he allegedly asked Attorney General Edward Bates if the Reverend James Mitchell could stay on as "your assistant or aid in the matter of executing the several acts of Congress relating to
14742-641: The Underground Railroad. Since only the Ohio River separated free Ohio from slave Kentucky, it was a popular destination for fugitive slaves. Supporters helped them there, in many cases to cross Lake Erie by boat, into Canada. The Western Reserve area of northeast Ohio was "probably the most intensely antislavery section of the country." The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue got national publicity. Abolitionist John Brown grew up in Hudson, Ohio . In
14924-425: The United States, since they were not welcome in the South or North. The two opposed groups found common ground in support of what they called "repatriation". When founded, the ACS was "accepted everywhere as 'a most glorious Christian enterprise'." Every church in the land devoted one Sunday a year for a colonization sermon and offering. The presidents of the ACS tended to be Southerners . The first president
15106-616: The United States. By January 1832, he had attracted enough followers to organize the New-England Anti-Slavery Society which, by the following summer, had dozens of affiliates and several thousand members. In December 1833, abolitionists from ten states founded the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS). Although the New England society reorganized in 1835 as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, enabling state societies to form in
15288-410: The United States. Finley meant to colonize "(with their consent) the free people of color residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress may deem most expedient". The organization established branches throughout the United States, mostly in Southern states. It was instrumental in establishing the colony of Liberia . The ACS was founded by groups otherwise opposed to each other on
15470-530: The Virginia Piedmont region in the 1820s and 1830s comprised many of its most prominent members; slave-owning United States presidents Thomas Jefferson , James Monroe , and James Madison were among its supporters. Madison served as the Society's president in the early 1830s. At the inaugural meeting of the Society, Reverend Finley suggested that a colony be established in Africa to take free people of color, most of whom had been born free, away from
15652-515: The abolitionist John Brown . Leo Tolstoy was greatly influenced by the works of Garrison and his contemporary Adin Ballou , as their writings on Christian anarchism aligned with Tolstoy's burgeoning theo-political ideology. Along with Tolstoy publishing a short biography of Garrison in 1904, he frequently cited Garrison and his works in his non-fiction texts like The Kingdom of God Is Within You . In
15834-545: The activities of free African Americans, especially in the Black church , who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament . African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the Black community. However, they were tremendously influential on a few sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, Wm. Lloyd Garrison , who
16016-630: The anti-slavery essays and poems which Garrison published in The Liberator was an article in 1856 by a 14-year-old Anna Elizabeth Dickinson . The Liberator gradually gained a large following in the Northern states. It printed or reprinted many reports, letters, and news stories, serving as a type of community bulletin board for the abolition movement. By 1861 it had subscribers across the North, as well as in England, Scotland, and Canada. After
16198-469: The brothers Derick and Abraham op den Graeff and Gerrit Hendricksz of Germantown, Pennsylvania , drafted the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery , a two-page condemnation of slavery, and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church. The intention of the document was to stop slavery within the Quaker community, where 70% of Quakers owned slaves between 1681 and 1705. It acknowledged
16380-580: The capture of Garrison, "dead or alive". On October 21, 1835, "an assemblage of fifteen hundred or two thousand highly respectable gentlemen", as they were described in the Boston Commercial Gazette , surrounded the building housing Boston's anti-slavery offices, where Garrison had agreed to address a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society after the fiery British abolitionist George Thompson
16562-428: The case of Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison , reaffirmed the case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley , which held that even slaves were people who had a constitutional right to liberty. This gave freedom to slaves, effectively abolishing slavery. States with a greater economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey, passed gradual emancipation laws. While some of these laws were gradual, these states enacted
16744-461: The cause. The debate about slavery was often based on what the Bible said or did not say about it. John Brown , who had studied the Bible for the ministry, proclaimed that he was "an instrument of God". As such, abolitionism in the United States was identified by historians as an expression of moralism , it often operated in tandem with another social reform effort, the temperance movement . Slavery
16926-491: The causes of civil rights for blacks and woman's rights, particularly the campaign for suffrage. He contributed columns on Reconstruction and civil rights for The Independent and The Boston Journal . In 1870, he became an associate editor of the women's suffrage newspaper, the Woman's Journal , along with Mary Livermore , Thomas Wentworth Higginson , Lucy Stone , and Henry B. Blackwell . He served as president of both
17108-544: The colonization movement "originated abolitionism", by arousing the free Black people and other opponents of slavery. The following summary by Judge James Hall , editor of the Cincinnati-based Western Monthly Magazine , is from May 1834: The plan of colonizing free blacks, has been justly considered one of the noblest devices of Christian benevolence and enlightened patriotism, grand in its object, and most happily adapted to enlist
17290-626: The colony. It is an oversimplication to say simply that the American Colonization Society founded Liberia. Much of what would become Liberia was a collection of settlements sponsored by state colonization societies: Mississippi in Africa , Kentucky in Africa , the Republic of Maryland , and several others. The most developed of these, the Republic of Maryland, had its own constitution, and statutes. Beginning in 1825,
17472-472: The colony. His motivations included tactical defense against Spanish collusion with runaway slaves, and prevention of Georgia's largely reformed criminal population from replicating South Carolina's planter class structure. In 1739, he wrote to the Georgia Trustees urging them to hold firm: If we allow slaves we act against the very principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve
17654-413: The combined influence, and harmonious cooperation, of different classes of society. It reconciles, and brings together some discordant interests, which could not in any other plan be brought to meet in harmony. The Christian and the statesman here act together, and persons having entirely different views from each other in reference to some collateral points connected with the great subject, are moved towards
17836-479: The conflict. It sent 2,492 people of African descent to Liberia in the five years following the war. The federal government provided a small amount of support for these operations through the Freedmen's Bureau . Some scholars believe that Lincoln abandoned the idea by 1863, following the use of black troops. Biographer Stephen B. Oates has observed that Lincoln thought it immoral to ask black soldiers to fight for
18018-643: The continent of Africa . It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C. The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 to address the prevailing view that free people of color could not integrate into U.S. society; their population had grown steadily following
18200-399: The conventions, raising funds, printing proceedings and tracts, and organizing annual conventions. In 1849, Garrison became involved in one of Boston's most notable trials of the time. Washington Goode , a black seaman, had been sentenced to death for the murder of a fellow black mariner, Thomas Harding. In The Liberator Garrison argued that the verdict relied on "circumstantial evidence of
18382-462: The country. Mortality was the highest since accurate record-keeping began: close to half the arrivals in Liberia died from tropical diseases, especially malaria ; during the early years, 22% of immigrants died within one year. Moreover, the provisioning and transportation of requisite tools and supplies proved very expensive. Starting in the 1830s, the society was met with great hostility from abolitionists, led by Gerrit Smith , who had supported
18564-417: The disposal of the blacks, and that this foul and unnatural crime of holding men in bondage will finally be rooted out from our land." In the 1830s there was a progressive shift in thinking in the North. Mainstream opinion changed from gradual emancipation and resettlement of freed blacks in Africa, sometimes a condition of their manumission , to immediatism: freeing all the slaves immediately and sorting out
18746-658: The distresses. Whereas, now we should occasion the misery of thousands in Africa, by setting men upon using arts to buy and bring into perpetual slavery the poor people who now live there free. In 1737, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay published All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage: Apostates , which was printed by his friend, Benjamin Franklin. The following year, during the 1738 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in Burlington, New Jersey , Lay gave
18928-485: The efforts of Garrison and many other prominent figures of the time, Goode was hanged on May 25, 1849. Garrison became famous as one of the most articulate, as well as most radical, opponents of slavery. His approach to emancipation stressed "moral suasion," non-violence, and passive resistance. While some other abolitionists of the time favored gradual emancipation, Garrison argued for the "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves." On July 4, 1854, he publicly burned
19110-474: The emigration or colonizing of the freed Blacks". By late into his first term as president, Lincoln had publicly abandoned the idea of colonization after speaking about it with Frederick Douglass , who objected harshly to it. On April 11, 1865, with the war drawing to a close, Lincoln gave a public speech at the White House supporting suffrage for blacks, a speech that led actor John Wilkes Booth , who
19292-551: The end of 1840, Garrison announced the formation of a third new organization, the Friends of Universal Reform , with sponsors and founding members including prominent reformers Maria Chapman , Abby Kelley Foster , Oliver Johnson , and Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott ). Although some members of the Liberty Party supported woman's rights, including women's suffrage , Garrison's Liberator continued to be
19474-612: The end of the 20 years approached, an Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through Congress with little opposition. President Jefferson signed it, and it went effect on January 1, 1808. In 1820, the Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy was passed. This law made importing slaves into the United States a death penalty offense . The Confederate States of America continued this prohibition with
19656-555: The end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment , Garrison published the last issue (number 1,820) on December 29, 1865, writing a "Valedictory" column. After reviewing his long career in journalism and the cause of abolitionism, he wrote: The object for which the Liberator was commenced – the extermination of chattel slavery – having been gloriously consummated, it seems to be especially appropriate to let its existence cover
19838-430: The family in 1808. Garrison's mother was Frances Maria Lloyd, reported to have been tall, charming, and of a strong religious character. She started referring to their son William as Lloyd, his middle name, to preserve her family name; he later printed his name as "Wm. Lloyd". She died in 1823, in the city of Baltimore, Maryland . Garrison sold homemade lemonade and candy as a youth, and also delivered wood to help support
20020-537: The family. In 1818, at 13, Garrison began working as an apprentice compositor for the Newburyport Herald . He soon began writing articles, often under the pseudonym Aristides . (Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general, nicknamed "the Just".) He could write as he typeset his writing, without the need for paper. His most significant contribution to the paper, during the final year of his apprenticeship,
20202-755: The fate of the nation's "precious legacies of freedom". Immediatism became most difficult to distinguish from broader anti-Southern opinions once ordinary citizens began articulating these intertwining beliefs. Nearly all Northern politicians, such as Abraham Lincoln , rejected the "immediate emancipation" called for by the abolitionists, seeing it as "extreme". Indeed, many Northern leaders, including Lincoln, Stephen Douglas (the Democratic nominee in 1860), John C. Frémont (the Republican nominee in 1856), and Ulysses S. Grant married into slave-owning Southern families without any moral qualms. Anti-slavery as
20384-452: The first abolition laws in the entire " New World ". In the State of New York, the enslaved population was transformed into indentured servants before being granted full emancipation in 1827. In other states, abolitionist legislation provided freedom only for the children of the enslaved. In New Jersey, slavery was not fully prohibited until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment . All of
20566-499: The first issue, Garrison stated: In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this moment to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen,
20748-520: The forcible relocation of about one million enslaved people to the Deep South . The Africans and African Americans became well established and had children, and the total number of the enslaved reached four million by the mid-19th century. Due in part to manumission efforts sparked by revolutionary ideals, Protestant preachers, and the abolitionist movement , there was an expansion in the number of free black people , many of them born free. Even in
20930-457: The formulation of abolitionist ideology in the United States. The federal government prohibited the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, prohibited the slave trade in the District of Columbia in 1850, outlawed slavery in the District of Columbia in 1862, and, with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , made slavery unconstitutional altogether, except as punishment for
21112-424: The founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society and promoted immediate and uncompensated, as opposed to gradual and compensated, emancipation of slaves in the United States . Garrison was a typesetter , which aided him in running The Liberator , and when working on his own editorials for the paper, Garrison would set them in type without first writing them out on paper. Much like the martyred Elijah Lovejoy ,
21294-467: The general public. American abolitionists were cheered by the decision in Somerset v Stewart (1772), which prohibited slavery in the United Kingdom, though not in its colonies. In 1774, the influential Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade . One of the first articles advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery
21476-433: The gradualist views of most others involved in the movement. Garrison co-founded The Liberator to espouse his abolitionist views, and in 1832 he organized out of its readers the New-England Anti-Slavery Society . This society expanded into the American Anti-Slavery Society , which espoused the position that slavery should be immediately abolished. At the age of 25, Garrison joined the anti-slavery movement, later crediting
21658-567: The groundwork for the American Colonization Society. The ACS had its origins in 1816, when Charles Fenton Mercer , a Federalist member of the Virginia General Assembly , discovered accounts of earlier legislative debates on black colonization in the wake of Gabriel Prosser 's rebellion. Mercer pushed the state to support the idea. One of his political contacts in Washington City, John Caldwell, in turn contacted
21840-566: The growing American debate over slavery and marked an increase in violence against abolitionists in the United States. American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society ( ACS ), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America , was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to
22022-548: The happiness of the negro, let their efforts be directed to raise the oppressed black in the scale of moral elevation here. Let them admit him to more rights in the social world;—but unless they desire to be laughed at by all sincere and thinking men, they had better abandon the Quixotic plan of colonizing the Southern negroes at the cost of the North, until we can free our own borders from poverty, ignorance and distress. The philanthropist and public intellectual Gerrit Smith ,
22204-414: The historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalities, (of which I hope to avail myself,) under new auspices, with more abundant means, and with millions instead of hundreds for allies. In addition to publishing The Liberator , Garrison spearheaded the organization of a new movement to demand the total abolition of slavery in
22386-553: The ideology of staying and fighting for the equality of civil rights of Frederick Douglass . He believed the transition was to exit the rising of slavery and racism toward African Americans in the US. Other destinations he suggested were Central America, the West Indies, or Mexico, where Black people could be more likely to thrive and emphasize their freedom against the influence of White people. Toward this end, in 1858, Delany cofounded
22568-461: The inherent validity of the American government on the basis that its engagement in war, imperialism , and slavery made it corrupt and tyrannical. He initially opposed violence as a principle and advocated for Christian pacifism against evil; at the outbreak of the American Civil War , he abandoned his previous principles and embraced the armed struggle and the Lincoln administration. He was one of
22750-456: The issue of slavery. Slaveholders, such as those in the Maryland branch and elsewhere, believed that so-called repatriation was a way to remove free Blacks from slave societies and avoid slave rebellions. Free black people, many of whom had been in the United States for generations, also encouraged and assisted slaves to escape, and depressing their value. ("Every attempt by the South to aid
22932-456: The leading advocate of woman's rights throughout the 1840s, publishing editorials, speeches, legislative reports, and other developments concerning the subject. In February 1849, Garrison's name headed the women's suffrage petition sent to the Massachusetts legislature, the first such petition sent to any American legislature, and he supported the subsequent annual suffrage petition campaigns organized by Lucy Stone and Wendell Phillips. Garrison took
23114-445: The mid-19th century. John Brown became an advocate and militia leader in attempting to end slavery by force of arms. In the Civil War, immediate emancipation became a war goal for the Union in 1861 and was fully achieved in 1865. American abolitionism began well before the United States was founded as a nation. In 1652, Rhode Island made it illegal for any person, black or white, to be "bound" longer than ten years. The law, however,
23296-424: The mission of the AAS was not fully completed until black Southerners gained full political and civil equality. Garrison maintained that while complete civil equality was vitally important, the special task of the AAS was at an end, and that the new task would best be handled by new organizations and new leadership. With his long-time allies deeply divided, however, he was unable to muster the support he needed to carry
23478-466: The most flimsy character ..." and feared that the determination of the government to uphold its decision to execute Goode was based on race. As all other death sentences since 1836 in Boston had been commuted, Garrison concluded that Goode would be the last person executed in Boston for a capital offense writing, "Let it not be said that the last man Massachusetts bore to hang was a colored man!" Despite
23660-447: The most intense hatred of the colored race, clad in the garb of pretended philanthropy; and we regard the revival of colonization societies...as...manifestations of a passion fit only for demons to indulge in. In most cases, African American families had lived in the United States for generations, and their prevailing sentiment was that they were no more African than white Americans were British . Contrary to claims that their emigration
23842-468: The name of emancipation. In contrast, the new Europeans who had not been part of this country in such events were instead welcomed to settle here. From 1850 to 1858, according to Martin Delany , a supporter of African Americans' emigration from the United States to other regions, the creation of a republic was a significant movement to gain independence for the free Black people in America, in contrast to
24024-458: The need to demand immediate and complete emancipation. Lundy and Garrison continued to work together on the paper despite their differing views. Each signed his editorials. Garrison introduced "The Black List," a column devoted to printing short reports of "the barbarities of slavery – kidnappings, whippings, murders." For instance, Garrison reported that Francis Todd, a shipper from Garrison's home town of Newburyport, Massachusetts ,
24206-477: The news as "a great Moral demonstration of the propriety and necessity of state action!" During the 1850s, the Society also received several thousand dollars from the New Jersey , Pennsylvania , Missouri , and Maryland legislatures . Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Mississippi set up their own state societies and colonies on the coast next to Liberia. However, the funds that ACS took in were inadequate to meet
24388-543: The organization of Wesleyan Methodist Connection by Orange Scott in 1843, and the formation of the Free Methodist Church by Benjamin Titus Roberts in 1860 (which is reflected in the name of Church). The True Wesleyan a periodical founded by Orange Scott and Jotham Horton was used to disseminate abolitionist views. The Methodist and Quaker branches of Christianity played an integral part in
24570-540: The other New England states, it remained the hub of anti-slavery agitation throughout the antebellum period. Many affiliates were organized by women who responded to Garrison's appeals for women to take an active part in the abolition movement. The largest of these was the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society , which raised funds to support The Liberator , publish anti-slavery pamphlets, and conduct anti-slavery petition drives. The purpose of
24752-491: The other states north of Maryland began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the Pennsylvania model and by 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws to gradually or immediately abolish it. Some slaves continued in involuntary, unpaid "indentured servitude" for two more decades, and others were moved south and sold to new owners in slave states . Some individual slaveholders, particularly in
24934-446: The pages of the Society's magazine, the African Repository . Garrison objected to the colonization scheme because rather than eliminating slavery, its key goal, as he saw it, was to remove free black people from America, thereby avoiding slave rebellions . Besides not improving the lot of enslaved Africans, the colonization had made enemies of native people of Africa. Both he and Gerrit Smith were horrified when they learned that alcohol
25116-448: The people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. Paid subscriptions to The Liberator were always fewer than its circulation. In 1834 it had two thousand subscribers, three-fourths of whom were black people. Benefactors paid to have the newspaper distributed free of charge to state legislators, governor's mansions, Congress, and the White House. Although Garrison rejected violence as
25298-575: The persons of its members, on the right of discussion, (and astonishing as it is, some of the suggestions for invading this right are impliedly countenanced in the African Repository ,) I have looked to it, as being also the rallying point of the friends of this right. To that Society yours is hostile. In the meeting of forming British African Colonization Society held in London in July 1833, Nathaniel Paul , an abolitionist in support of William Lloyd Garrison 's " Thoughts on African Colonization ," argued that
25480-492: The perspective of the slave, recognizing their agency and subsequent humanity as cause for self-liberation. Slave revolts following the Stono Rebellion were a present mode of abolition undertaken by slaves and were an indicator of black agency that brewed beneath the surface of the abolitionist movement for decades and eventually sprouted later on through figures such as Frederick Douglass, an escaped black freeman who
25662-517: The politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother Lewis . While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129–130) Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting
25844-455: The price placed on his head by the state of Georgia , he was the object of vituperation and frequent death threats. On the eve of the Civil War, a sermon preached in a Universalist chapel in Brooklyn, New York , denounced "the bloodthirsty sentiments of Garrison and his school; and did not wonder that the feeling of the South was exasperated, taking as they did, the insane and bloody ravings of
26026-469: The problems later. This change was in many cases sudden, a consequence of the individual's coming in direct contact with the horrors of American slavery, or hearing of them from a credible source. As it was put by Amos Adams Lawrence , who witnessed the capture and return to slavery of Anthony Burns , "we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists." The American beginning of abolitionism as
26208-503: The prosperity and continued growth of the colony. After 1919, the society essentially ended, but it did not formally dissolve until 1964, when it transferred its papers to the Library of Congress . Early in his presidency, Abraham Lincoln tried repeatedly to arrange resettlement of the kind the ACS supported, but each arrangement failed. The ACS continued to operate during the American Civil War and colonized 168 black people during
26390-541: The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted voting rights to black men. (According to Henry Mayer , Garrison was hurt by the rejection, and remained peeved for years; "as the cycle came around, always managed to tell someone that he was not going to the next set of [AAS] meetings" [594].) After his withdrawal from AAS and ending The Liberator , Garrison continued to participate in public reform movements. He supported
26572-477: The region. At the time, Native Americans in the region were hosting raids against lower-class settlers encroaching on their land after the Third Powhatan War (1644–1646), which left many white and black indentured servants and slaves without a sense of protection from their government. Led by Nathaniel Bacon , the unification that occurred between the white lower class and blacks during this rebellion
26754-584: The removal of slavery. Prohibiting slavery through the 1735 Georgia Experiment in part to prevent Spanish partnership with Georgia's runaway slaves, Oglethorpe eventually revoked the act in 1750 after the Spanish's defeat in the Battle of Bloody Marsh eight years prior. During the Revolutionary era, all states abolished the international slave trade , but South Carolina reversed its decision. Between
26936-400: The resolution, and it was defeated 118–48. Declaring that his "vocation as an Abolitionist, thank God, has ended," Garrison resigned the presidency and declined an appeal to continue. Returning home to Boston , he withdrew completely from the AAS and ended publication of The Liberator at the end of 1865. With Wendell Phillips at its head, the AAS continued to operate for five more years, until
27118-502: The revolt intended to reach Spanish-controlled Florida to attain freedom, but their plans were thwarted by white colonists in Charlestown, South Carolina. The event resulted in 25 colonists and 35 to 50 African slaves killed, as well as the implementation of the 1740 Negro Act to prevent another slave uprising. In her book, "The Slave's Cause" by Manisha Sinha, Sinha considers the Stono Rebellion to be an important act of abolition from
27300-427: The right to make their own decisions about where they lived. They recommended that if black people wish to leave the United States, they consider Canada or Mexico, where they would have civil rights and a climate that is similar to what they are accustomed to. The United States was large enough to accommodate a colony, and would be much cheaper to implement. They question the motives of ACS members who cite Christianity as
27482-530: The same point by a diversity of motives. It is a splendid conception, around which are gathered the hopes of the nation, the wishes of the patriot, the prayers of the Christian, and we trust, the approbation of Heaven. (As Hall refused to publish Theodore Weld 's lengthy reply, he did so in the Cincinnati Journal . It became known nationally because Garrison devoted almost the entire front page of
27664-500: The sentence of death and prohibited the import of slaves. In 1830, most Americans were, at least in principle, opposed to slavery. However, opponents of slavery deliberated on how to end the institution, as well as what would become of the slaves once they were free. As put in The Philanthropist : "If the chain of slavery can be broken, ... we may cherish the hope ... that proper means will be devised for
27846-605: The slaves of masters who failed to register them with the state, along with the "future children" of enslaved mothers. Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law went into effect were not freed until 1847. Massachusetts took a much more radical position. In 1780, during the Revolution, Massachusetts ratified its constitution and included within it a clause that declared all men equal. Based upon this clause, several freedom suits were filed by enslaved African Americans living in Massachusetts. In 1783, its Supreme Court, in
28028-618: The social mores that proscribed their participation in public affairs. That summer, sisters Angelina Grimké and Sarah Grimké responded to the controversy aroused by their public speaking with treatises on woman's rights – Angelina's "Letters to Catherine E. Beecher" and Sarah's "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Condition of Woman" – and Garrison published them first in The Liberator and then in book form. Instead of surrendering to appeals for him to retreat on
28210-430: The society financially, and William Lloyd Garrison , author of Thoughts on African Colonization (1832), in which he proclaimed the society a fraud. According to Garrison and his many followers, the society was not a solution to the problem of American slavery —it actually was helping, and was intended to help, to preserve it. After the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the growth and export of cotton became
28392-583: The task of resuscitating the Ohio Black Codes of 1804 and 1807. ...Between 1,000 and 1,200 free blacks were forced from Cincinnati". A meeting was held in Cincinnati on January 17, 1832, to discuss colonization, which resulted in a series of resolutions. First, they had a right to freedom and equality. They felt honor-bound to protect the country, the "land of their birth", and the Constitution . They were not familiar with Africa, and should have
28574-462: The transatlantic slave trade by 1798. South Carolina , which had abolished the slave trade in 1787, reversed that decision in 1803. In the American South , freedom suits were rejected by the courts, which held that the rights in the state constitutions did not apply to African Americans . The formation of Christian denominations that heralded abolitionism as a moral issue occurred, such as
28756-508: The universal rights of all people. While the Quaker establishment did not take action at that time, the unusually early, clear, and forceful argument in the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery initiated the spirit that finally led to the end of slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1780). The Quaker Quarterly Meeting of Chester, Pennsylvania , made its first protest in 1711. Within
28938-499: The wealthiest man in New York State, had been "among the most munificent patrons of this Society," as put by Society Vice-President Henry Clay . This support changed to furious and bitter rejection when he realized, in the early 1830s, that the society was "quite as much an Anti-Abolition, as Colonization Society". "This Colonization Society had, by an invisible process, half conscious, half unconscious, been transformed into
29120-487: The woman's rights question not only to England but also to future woman's rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton , who attended the convention as a spectator, accompanying her delegate-husband, Henry B. Stanton . Although Henry Stanton had cooperated in the Tappans' failed attempt to wrest leadership of the AAS from Garrison, he was part of another group of abolitionists unhappy with Garrison's influence – those who disagreed with Garrison's insistence that because
29302-703: The word. Passed unanimously by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory , a vast area (the future Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin) in which slavery had been legal, but population was sparse. The first state to begin a gradual abolition of slavery was Pennsylvania, in 1780. All importation of slaves was prohibited, but none were freed at first, only
29484-530: Was Bushrod Washington , the nephew of U.S. President George Washington and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States . From 1836 to 1849 the statesman Henry Clay of Kentucky , a planter and slaveholder, was ACS president. John H. B. Latrobe served as president of the ACS from 1853 until his death in 1891. The colonization project, which had multiple American Colonization Society chapters in every state, had three goals. One
29666-461: Was Rev. Joshua Leavitt , trained as a lawyer at Yale, who stopped practicing law in order to attend Yale Divinity School , and subsequently edited the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and campaigned against slavery, as well as advocating other social reforms. In 1841, Leavitt published The Financial Power of Slavery , which argued that the South was draining the national economy due to its reliance on enslaved workers. In 2007, Duffield Street
29848-638: Was a popular orator and essayist for the abolitionist cause. The struggle between Georgia and South Carolina led to the first debates in Parliament over the issue of slavery, occurring between 1740 and 1742. Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown , were among the first in America to free slaves. Benjamin Rush was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers. Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen enslaved African Americans appeared before
30030-416: Was a severe repudiation of American Writers by John Neal . This started a years-long feud. After his apprenticeship ended, Garrison became the sole owner, editor, and printer of the Newburyport Free Press, acquiring the rights from his friend Isaac Knapp , who had also apprenticed at the Herald . One of their regular contributors was poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier . In this early work as
30212-555: Was a successful Quaker ship owner and activist in Boston. His parents were of Ashanti (African) and Wampanoag (Native American) heritage. He advocated settling freed American slaves in Africa and gained support from the British government, free Black leaders in the United States, and members of Congress to take emigrants to the British colony of Sierra Leone . In 1815, he financed a trip himself. The following year, Cuffe took 38 American black people to Freetown , Sierra Leone. He died in 1817 before undertaking other voyages. Cuffe laid
30394-402: Was also attacked, to a lesser degree, as harmful on economic grounds. Evidence was that the South, with many enslaved African Americans on plantations , was definitely poorer than the North, which had few. The institution remained solid in the South, and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a growing anti-slavery stance in
30576-448: Was being sold in Liberia. He questioned the wisdom of sending African Americans, along with white missionaries and agents, to such an unhealthy place. In addition, it meant that fewer slaves achieved their freedom: "it hinders the manumission of slaves by throwing their emancipation upon its own scheme, which in fifteen years has occasioned the manumission of less than four hundred slaves, while before its existence and operations during
30758-427: Was buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood on May 28, 1879. At the public memorial service, eulogies were given by Theodore Dwight Weld and Wendell Phillips . Eight abolitionist friends, both white and black, served as his pallbearers. Flags were flown at half-staff all across Boston . Frederick Douglass , then employed as a United States Marshal , spoke in memory of Garrison at
30940-467: Was given the name Abolitionist Place , and the Truesdells' home at 227 Duffield received landmark status in 2021. Abolitionists nationwide were outraged by the murder of white abolitionist and journalist Elijah Parish Lovejoy by a proslavery mob in Alton, Illinois on 7 November 1837. Six months later, Pennsylvania Hall , an abolitionist venue in Philadelphia , was burnt to the ground by another proslavery mob on May 17, 1838. Both events contributed to
31122-420: Was involved in the domestic slave trade , and that he had recently had slaves shipped from Baltimore to New Orleans in the coastwise trade on his ship the Francis . (This was completely legal. An expanded domestic trade, "breeding" slaves in Maryland and Virginia for shipment south, replaced the importation of African slaves, prohibited in 1808; see Slavery in the United States#Slave trade .) Todd filed
31304-410: Was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass , who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, North Star . In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether
31486-415: Was literary editor of The Nation from 1865 to 1906. Two other sons (George Thompson Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, his biographer and named after abolitionist Francis Jackson ) and a daughter, Helen Frances Garrison (who married Henry Villard ), survived him. Fanny's son Oswald Garrison Villard became a prominent journalist, a founding member of the NAACP , and wrote an important biography of
31668-483: Was perceived as dangerous and thus was quashed with the implementation of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705 . Still, this event introduced the premise that blacks and whites could work together towards the goal of self-liberation, which became increasingly prevalent as abolition gained traction within America. The first statement against slavery in Colonial America was written in 1688 by the Religious Society of Friends . On 18 February 1688, Francis Daniel Pastorius ,
31850-409: Was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September 1829. My conscience is now satisfied. I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give
32032-413: Was quite as much an Anti-Abolition, as Colonization Society. ...It has come to this, however, that a member of the Colonization Society cannot advocate the deliverance of his enslaved fellow men, without subjecting himself to such charges of inconsistency, as the public prints abundantly cast on me, for being at the same time a member of that Society and an Abolitionist. ...Since the late alarming attacks, in
32214-438: Was to provide a place for former slaves, freedmen , and their descendants to live, where they would be free and not subject to racism. Another goal was to ensure that the colony had what it needed to succeed, such as fertile soil to grow crops. A third goal was to suppress attempts to engage in the Atlantic slave trade , such as by monitoring ship traffic on the coast. Presbyterian clergyman Lyman Beecher proposed another goal:
32396-406: Was unable to keep his engagement with them. Mayor Theodore Lyman persuaded the women to leave the building, but when the mob learned that Thompson was not within, they began yelling for Garrison. Lyman was a staunch anti-abolitionist but wanted to avoid bloodshed and suggested Garrison escape by a back window while Lyman told the crowd Garrison was gone. The mob spotted and apprehended Garrison, tied
32578-569: Was vigorously opposed to emancipation and black suffrage, to assassinate him three days later. Colonizing proved expensive; under the leadership of Henry Clay the ACS spent many years unsuccessfully trying to persuade the U.S. Congress to fund emigration. The ACS did have some success, in the 1850s, with state legislatures, such as those of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. In 1850, the state of Virginia set aside $ 30,000 (~$ 853,047 in 2023) annually for five years to aid and support emigration. The Society, in its Thirty-fourth Annual Report, acclaimed
32760-429: Was voluntary, many African Americans, both free and enslaved, were pressured into emigrating. Indeed, enslavers, such as Zephaniah Kingsley , sometimes freed their slaves on condition that the freedmen leave the country immediately. According to historian Marc Leepson , "Colonization proved to be a giant failure, doing nothing to stem the forces that brought the nation to Civil War ." Between 1821 and 1847, only
32942-462: Was widely ignored, and Rhode Island became involved in the slave trade in 1700. The first act of resistance against an upper-class white colonial government from slaves can be seen in Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Occurring in Virginia, the rebellion saw European indentured servants and African people (of indentured, enslaved , and free negroes ) band together against William Berkeley because of his refusal to fully remove Native American tribes in
33124-419: Was written by Thomas Paine . Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser . The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage (Pennsylvania Abolition Society) was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers. The society suspended operations during
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