Unit 5/Target 2: I can describe the formation and development of the abolition movement
through the roles of key leaders and the responses of northerners and southerners.
By the mid-1800s, the United States had changed- many would argue for the better. The
economy was booming. The North had developed factories and a transportation system that
included canals, railroads and steamboats to move people and goods from place to place.
Immigrants provided labor, and brought ideas and traditions which were changing the culture.
Southern plantation owners, fueled by the demand from textile factories in the North, were
planting more and more acres in cotton and buying more slaves. Settlers pushed west into
Oregon Territory, Texas, and land won in the Mexican -American War. America was quickly
becoming one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
The Abolition Movement
The idea that slavery was wrong had two separate elements; one political and one religious. The
political reason went back to the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson had written
that “All men are created equal,” and yet slavery was spreading in the United States. The
religious reason started with Quakers who had always spoken out against slavery. They believed
that all men and women were equal in the eyes of God; therefore it was a sin for one human
being to own another. With the Second Great Awakening, this idea began to spread among other
religious groups in the country. From these two ideas began the social movement known as
abolition. To abolish means to end or get rid of something; and that is what they wanted to endslavery.
Key Leaders of the Abolition Movement
People who fought for the abolition of slavery were men and women of all races and
backgrounds. They endured much opposition from northerners and southerners in their fight to
end slavery.
William Lloyd Garrison published an abolitionist newspaper called the Liberator
and demanded slavery be ended immediately. He also started a group called the New
England Anti-Slavery Society. When speaking out about his abolition beliefs he was
almost killed by an anti-abolition mob in Boston.
In 1833, a Quaker named Lucretia Mott and other white and black women founded the
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Like many Quakers, she refused to use
cotton cloth, sugar, and other goods produced with slave labor. She attended anti-slavery
conventions throughout the country and even spoke at public meetings. During an 1838
convention Mott was attending in Philadelphia, a mob set fire to Pennsylvania Hall, a
newly opened meeting place built by abolitionists. Later the mob targeted her home and Black
institutions and neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. He taught himself to read by picking
newspapers out of the gutter, escaped, and began speaking at anti-slavery meetings.
Later, he lectured throughout Britain and the United States against slavery and
published an abolitionist newspaper called the North Star.
Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who made 19 trips into the South to bring 300
slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. For this, she was given the nickname,
Moses. On the last trip, she led her parents to freedom. She later became Union spy
during the Civil War.
When she was born a slave in New York State, Sojourner Truth was given the name
Isabella Baumfree. She was freed by a New York law that banned slavery there. She
changed her name and became a powerful speaker for the abolition and suffrage
movements. Her most famous speech was titled Ain’t I a Woman?
John Brown was an abolitionist who was active on the Underground Railroad. Unlike
most abolitionists, Brown came to accept violence as a means of ending slavery. In the
1850s, he became a part of the bloody fight over slavery in Kansas Territory and was
accused of murdering pro-slavery settlers there. Later, he would devise a failed plan to
take over a federal arsenal in Virginia in order to arm slaves from the surrounding
communities and lead a massive rebellion.
Responses in the North and South to the Abolition Movement
When the Abolition Movement began, the people who wrote and spoke out about ending slavery
were not well received. Many times their newspaper offices and printing presses were destroyed
by pro-slavery mobs. People who spoke openly about ending slavery were heckled, beaten, and
even killed by pro-slavery mobs. In the North, much of this opposition arose from the economic
ties the North shared with the South and a fear that freed slaves would come to the North and
compete for jobs. Southerners were afraid of losing their labor force and upsetting the social
order of southern society.