William Lloyd Garrison
“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or
complexion.” – William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison, the American anti-slavery leader, was born in Newburyport,
Massachusetts, on December 10, 1805. Both of his parents were British born. His father
died when he was young and his mother sent him off to learn to be a shoemaker. He had a
taste for books which he made the most of to further his career. His self-studies took him to
Baltimore where he became an apprentice to a newspaper owner. Here he learned to run a
newspaper by performing odds and ends type jobs. Eventually he put his self-discipline to
work and began writing anonymously for the paper. When his apprenticeship was over,
Garrison borrowed money from his former employer and purchased The Newburyport Essex
Courant. After that newspaper went out of business he moved to Boston. He began reading
and became friends with the antislavery editors of the Genius of Emancipation: an antislavery publication. One of those editors offered Garrison another editor’s position at
Genius of Emancipation in Vermont. Garrison eagerly accepted. The job marked Garrison’s
initiation into the Abolitionist movement. Garrison soon realized that the abolitionist
movement needed to be better organized. In 1832 he helped form the New England
Antislavery Society. This became one of the foremost abolitionist societies until members
began to disagree. While many abolitionists were pro-Union, Garrison, who viewed the
Constitution as pro-slavery, believed that the Union should be dissolved. He argued that
Free states and slave states should in fact be made separate. Garrison was strongly against
the annexation of Texas and strongly objected to the Mexican American War. His pacifist
attitude changed when the Civil War broke out and his newspaper supported Lincoln’s war
policies. When the Civil War came to a close in 1865, Garrison at last saw his dream come to
fruition: With the 13th Amendment, slavery was outlawed throughout the United States—in
both the North and South.
Sojourner Truth
“But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between a hawk
and a buzzard.” – Sojourner Truth
Born Isabella Baumfree circa 1797, Sojourner Truth was one of as many as 12 children born
to James and Elizabeth Baumfree. Truth's date of birth was not recorded, as was typical of
children born into slavery, but historians estimate that she was likely born around 1797.
The 9-year-old Truth, known as "Belle" at the time, was sold at an auction with a flock of
sheep for $100. Her new owner was a man named John Neely, whom Truth remembered as
harsh and violent. She would be sold twice more over the following two years, finally coming
to reside on the property of John Dumont at West Park, New York. Her frequent selling can
be attributed to her thin build and feisty attitude. It was during these years that Truth
learned to speak English for the first time. Previously she spoke Dutch. The state of New
York, which had begun to negotiate the abolition of slavery in 1799, emancipated all slaves
on July 4, 1827. The shift did not come soon enough for Truth. After John Dumont reneged
on a promise to emancipate Truth in late 1826, she escaped to freedom with her infant
daughter, Sophia. In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and
Industry in Northampton, Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization
supported an agenda including women's rights and pacifism. Members lived together on 500
acres as a self-sufficient community. Here she learned to write in her second language,
English. In 1850 her memoirs were published under the title The Narrative of Sojourner
Truth: A Northern Slave. Abolitionists quickly found that her speeches were particularly
moving and used her to spread the word on the Anti-slavery movement. Many of her
speeches were written down and survive today. Sojourner Truth put her reputation to work
during the Civil War, helping to recruit black troops for the Union Army. After the war she
concentrated her efforts on woman’s suffrage.
Dred Scott
He has “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” –US Supreme Court
Dred Scott was born in Virginia around 1800; birth records were spotty even among the
white population and much more so where slaves were concerned. He is often described as
mid mannered and soft spoken. His owner, Peter Blow, moved to Alabama and then, in
1830, to St. Louis, Missouri, taking his slaves with him. Blow died two years later, and Scott
was sold to an army surgeon, Dr. John Emerson. Dred Scott’s fame centers around the
Supreme Court case baring his name. Dred Scott vs. Sanford is commonly referred to as the
“Dred Scott Case.” The Dred Scott vs. Sanford case is a monumental moment in the antislavery movement. In the case, Dred Scott was the plaintiff. Both Scott and his owner lived in
the state of Missouri; slavery was allowed in the state of Missouri. John Emerson moved to
the state of Illinois and took Dred Scott with him. The case is rooted in this move because
Illinois was a state where slavery was outlawed. After spending over a decade in Illinois and
other Midwestern states, Dred Scott refused to move with Emerson when the man wanted to
return to Missouri. Dred Scott claimed that he was no longer a slave because Illinois did not
allow slavery. Dred Scott then sued Emerson’s estate— Dred Scott claimed that he was freed
from being a slave because of Illinois’s laws. In March 1857, the US Supreme Court stated
that because of Scott’s race he was not a citizen and had no right to sue under the
Constitution. In other words, he was forced back into slavery. Because Scott was illiterate
like most slaves he wasn’t able to write about his experiences. Instead the media did it for
him. The south praised the decision and the north vilified it. He became an abolitionist by
his own circumstances. This decision made war inevitable. Northern abolitionist got
together and negotiated a deal to purchase Scott and set him free. Dred Scott did not get to
enjoy his freedom very long. He died nine months later, September 17, 1858.
John Brown
“I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with
blood.” – John Brown
John Brown was born on May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, to Ruth Mills and Owen
Brown. Owen, who was a Calvinist and worked as a tanner, ardently believed that slavery
was wrong. As a 12-year-old boy traveling through Michigan, John would witness an
enslaved African-American boy be beaten, haunting him for years to come and informing his
own abolitionism. Brown worked in a number of vocations and moved around quite a bit
from the 1820s to 1850s, experiencing great financial difficulties. Tall, thin, and older
looking than he was, Brown gained fame in the 1850’s. Brown took part in the Underground
Railroad, gave land to free African Americans and eventually established the League of
Gileadites, a group formed with the intention of protecting black citizens from slave hunters.
In 1855 Brown moved to Kansas, where five of his sons had relocated as well. With the
passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, there was conflict over whether the territory
would be a free or slave state. Brown, who believed in using violent means to end slavery,
became involved in the conflict; in 1856, he and several of his men killed five pro-slavery
settlers in a retaliatory attack at Pottawatomie Creek. On the evening of October 16, 1859,
Brown led a party of 21 men on a raid of the federal armory of Harpers Ferry in Virginia
(now West Virginia), holding dozens of men hostage with the plan of inspiring a slave
insurrection. He thought that arming slaves in Virginia plantations will be their only route to
freedom. Once word on the revolt spread, more slaves would arm themselves and continue
the revolution. Brown's plan seemed to be working, his forces held out for two days; they
were however eventually defeated by military forces led by Robert E. Lee. Many of Brown's
men were killed, including five of his sons, and he was captured. Brown's case went to trial
quickly, and on November 2 he was sentenced to death. He was quickly hanged and
remembered as a terrorist in the south and a martyr in the north.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." – Abraham Lincoln (alleged)
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Harriet Beecher was the seventh child of the Reverend
Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote Beecher. She was schooled at the Pierce Academy and
the Hartford Female Seminary, where she also taught and developed into the well-spoken,
highly intelligent woman for which she is remembered. She moved with the family to
Cincinnati in 1832, when her father was appointed president of Lane Theological Seminary.
The sight of slavery across the Ohio River in Kentucky and the willingness of white
Cincinnati business owners to exploit them moved her deeply. By 1850, the family had
moved to Maine, where, in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of that year, Stowe wrote Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (1852), her most celebrated work. Sentimental and realistic, the novel
explored the cruelties of slavery in the Upper and Lower South and exposed the moral issues
in the legal, religious, and social arguments of white defenders. The immense impact of the
novel (it sold 300,000 copies in its first year) was unexpected. The only book in the 19th
century to sell more copies was the Bible. Antislavery fiction had never sold well; Stowe was
not an established writer, and few would have expected a woman to gain a popular hearing
on the great political question of the day. Some female abolitionists had shocked politicallycorrectness in the 1840s by speaking at public gatherings, but they were widely resented.
The success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin went far toward legitimizing, if not indeed creating, a role
for women in public affairs. The south burned copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and led to
several anti-Tom novels from southern writers. Her words increased tensions on both sides
of the slavery debate and made the debate much more personal for all involved. Although
its authenticity is questioned, Lincoln is attributed to saying “So you're the little woman who
wrote the book that made this great war” when they met. Later in life Harriet wrote more
books, most of which sold modestly. Nothing in her career would reach the magnitude of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Frederick Douglass
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made
to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property
will be safe." – Frederick Douglass
The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey"
was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He spent his early years with his
grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he
was seven. (All Douglass knew of his father was that he was white.) During this time he was
exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings and spending much
time cold and hungry. When he was eight he was sent to Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter
named Hugh Auld. His large, solid build suited him for the job. On January 1, 1836, Douglass made a
resolution that he would be free by the end of the year. He planned an escape. But early in April he
was jailed after his plan was discovered. Two years later, while living in Baltimore and working at a
shipyard, Douglass would finally realize his dream: he fled the city on September 3, 1838.
Travelling by train, then steamboat, then train, he arrived in New York City the following day.
Several weeks later he had settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, under his new name, Frederick
Douglass. Being literate helped him escape. He attended Abolitionists' meetings. He subscribed to
William Lloyd Garrison's weekly journal. Douglass was asked to become a lecturer for the AntiSlavery Society for three years. It was the launch of a career that would continue throughout
Douglass' long life. Despite apprehensions that the information might endanger his freedom,
Douglass published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, Written by Himself which at the time was simply unheard of. Three years later, after a
speaking tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland, Douglass published the first issue of the North Star,
a four-page weekly, out of Rochester, New York. Frederick Douglass would continue his active
involvement to better the lives of African Americans. He conferred and debated with Abraham
Lincoln during the Civil War and recruited northern blacks for the Union Army. His conversations
with Lincoln centered on African life during and after the war. After the War he fought for the
rights of women and African Americans alike.