The Causes of the Civil War—Week 1 Notes
The Abolitionist Movement
1. Abolitionists were people in the early 1800’s that wanted to abolish or end slavery in America.
2. Their efforts to end slavery became known as the Abolitionist Movement.
William Lloyd Garrison
1. William Lloyd Garrison was a famous abolitionist and his newspaper, The Liberator, inspired the
growth of the abolitionist movement.
2. The Liberator awakened Northerners to the evils of slavery and became the nation’s leading
antislavery publication for 34 years.
The Grimke Sisters
1. Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two white southern women, were antislavery activists in the
1830’s.
2. Their parents owned slaves in South Carolina, but they disagreed with slavery.
3. The Grimke sisters wrote pamphlets and essays to encourage white southern women to help
end slavery.
4. They were forced to move up North because Southerners could not accept their views.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
1. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a novel called Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
2. The novel describes life for African-Americans under slavery.
3. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist movement in the 1850’s.
4. It energized abolitionist forces in the North, while provoking widespread anger in the South.
5. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century.
6. When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the
little lady who started this great war.
Frederick Douglass
1. Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was an African-American leader of the Abolitionist
Movement.
2. Douglass secretly learned to read and write as a boy, despite the law against it.
3. He escaped from slavery at age 20 and published a newspaper called the North Star.
4. Douglass became an author and a forceful speaker that often moved his listeners to tears with
his message.
The Abolitionist Movement
1. Most Northerners feared the Abolitionist Movement could bring a destructive war between the
North and South.
2. Southerners opposed the Abolitionist Movement because they believed it threatened their way
of life which depended on slave labor.
The Underground Railroad
1. The Underground Railroad was not underground and was not a real railroad!
2. The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses which slaves used to
escape to free states in the North, with the help of Abolitionists.
3. Runaway slaves, referred to as fugitives, moved along the “railroad” at night, led by people
known as “conductors.”
4. Fugitives used the stars to guide them at night.
5. They stopped to hide and rest during the day at safe houses or “stations,” which were often
barns and attics owned by abolitionists called “station masters.”
6. Songs such as “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd” encouraged the fugitives on their way to freedom.
7. It is estimated that about 100,000 people successfully escaped slavery between 1790 and 1860.
8. Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave from Maryland who became known as the "Moses of her
people" because over the course of 10 years, and at great personal risk, Tubman led over 300
slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad.
9. Tubman proudly told Fredrick Douglass, that in 19 trips to the South she “never lost a single
passenger.”