Abolitionism in Black and White Jennica Schoppenhorst

AFAS200 Summer 2013

Abolition: the action of abolishing a system, practice, or institution.

Abolition Movement: sought to end the enslavement of African Americans and people

of African descent in Europe, the Americas, and Africa itself. It also aimed to end the

Atlantic Slave Trade.

Background • The Atlantic Slave Trade

• Brutality

• Arrival to the Colonies

Beginning of Abolitionism • Black resistance to slavery.

• Christian Morality in the late 1700’s.

• Economic changes

• Intellectual movement

Marooning – Black Opposition • Until late 18th century, slaves merely sought to free themselves from

slavery rather than to challenge the institution itself.

• Freedom through escape

• Marooned Communities

White Opposition • Slow development.

Economies based on plantations that required large labor forces to be profitable.

Hierarchical views of society.

The Quakers • First whites to denounce slavery in Europe and European

colonies.

• Believed that all people had a divine spark in them and were equal in the eyes of God.

• First Goal: End slave trading among fellow Quakers; if the slave trade was

abolished, slavery itself would soon cease to exist.

Revolutionary Ideas • Late 18th century, the age of revolution, brought ideas about equal rights to the

forefront.

Industrial revolution brought economic opportunity and power to the lower and middle classes, which undermined the previous system in which slavery was a part of being lower class and accepted.

Age of Enlightenment

The American Revolution and the French Revolution

The Haitian Revolt

Abolition in Europe and European Colonies • Evangelical Christians joined the Quakers in establishing the

Society for the Slave Trade.

• In 1807, British Parliament abolished the slave trade and set up a naval watch of the African coast, forcing other European nations to give up the trade as well.

Emancipation in Europe and European Countries • Abolishment of the trade did not lead to the emancipation of all

slaves.

• British abolitionists inspired other European countries and the emancipation of slaves continued to spread.

Abolitionism in the U.S. • Frequent slave rebellions in which the lives of whites were lost and plantations

were ruined, fueled the fire.

• American Quakers responded to these uprising by advocating a gradual emancipation.

• It was not until the American Revolution that abolitionism began to spread.

Negative Impact in the South • Successful slave revolts and black abolitionists convinced white

Southerners that slaves could not be freed rather the system needed to be strengthened.

• Migration to West Africa

Southern Resistance • Slaveholders Excuses

Economic prosperity demanded the continuation of slavery. Disease Safety

White Abolitionists in the U.S. • American Colonization Society

• Northern Abolitionists

Radical Abolition Movements in the U.S. • William Lloyd Garrison

Underground Railroad • The collective name for a variety of regional semisecret networks that

helped slaves escape into the North and Canada.

• The Underground Railroad aided around 1,000 slaves per year in escaping and its success helped raise awareness in the North about slavery and pushed supporters of slavery into defensive measures.

Territorial Dispute • Division between the North and the South

• Along with the victory of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Brown's raid and the Northern reaction to it convinced Southern whites that their proslavery interests were no longer secure within the United States.

The Civil War and Emancipation • Most slaveholding states succeeded from the nation and formed the

Confederate States of America.

• President Abraham Lincoln

• Southern Slaves

The 13th Amendment • The Northern victory and continuing abolitionist agitation led to the

ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which banned involuntary servitude throughout the country.

• Although technically free, the great majority of black southerners remained impoverished agricultural workers well into the 20th century. They faced systematic segregation, inadequate schools, political disenfranchisement, and lynching.

Significance and Legacy • The abolition of slavery did not end comparable systems of labor

exploitation, such as contract labor, sharecropping, child labor, and sweatshops. Nor did abolitionism succeed in ending racism or in establishing equal political and social rights for people of African descent in the Americas.

• It established equal rights principles that have outlasted post-emancipation efforts by former slaveholders to create caste systems, and provided a basis for more recent efforts countering racial segregation and supporting racial justice.