Abstract
The thesis deals with the abolitionist movement in the United States of America and
approaches it as an internally disunited movement. It focuses on the conflicts between its most
influential representatives, including William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Different
motives of the anti-slavery leaders’ involvement in the matter are analyzed and used to explain
the arguments among these. Attention is given to the problem of racial oppression as one of the
main forces having determined not only the development of the abolitionist movement but also
the events following the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, mostly
the rise of the Black nationalism movement and of black racism. Even though many abolitionists
saw slavery as based on racism and, therefore, endeavored to reach its abolition, in practice,
many of them refused to acknowledge racial equality between white and African American
people. This paradox is one of the central problems of American abolitionism examined in the
thesis.
The first three chapters discuss abolitionist ideas of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick
Douglass, and David Walker with focus on their distinct and opposing views. The fourth chapter
deals with the emancipation of women as it was closely linked to the emancipation of slaves; the
approach towards the abolitionist matter as interconnected with the women’s rights question had
its supporters as well as opponents, which caused many disagreements in the movement. In the
fifth chapter, the African colonization idea is discussed and attention is paid to the racist
tendencies of the colonizationists. It was often claimed that the motive for their advocacy of the
idea proposed by the American Colonization Society was their refusal to live alongside freed
slaves. Hand in hand with this goes the accusation of the former ones that they were reluctant to
strive for a solution of the oppression of former slaves. The last chapter explores a possible
connection between the oppression of African Americans during slavery and the years following
its abolition and the rise of Black nationalism. The consequences, such as black racism, which
the phenomena analyzed in this text had upon modern American society are dealt with in the last
part of the thesis.