ABOLITION
Members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (seated, far right, William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper).
The destruction, annihilation, abrogation, orextinguishment of anything, but especially thingsof a permanent nature—such as institutions,usages, or customs, as in the abolition of SLAVERY.
In U.S. LEGAL HISTORY, the concept of abolition generally refers to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movement to abolish the slavery of African Americans. As a significant political force in the pre-Civil War United States,the abolitionists had significant effect on the U.S. legal and political landscape. Their consistent efforts to end the institution of slavery culminatedin 1865 with the ratification of the Constitution’s THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT, which outlawed slavery. The abolitionist ranks encompassed many different factions and people of different backgrounds and viewpoints, including European and African Americans, radicals and moderates. The motives of the abolitionists spanned a broad spectrum, from those who opposed slavery as unjust and inhumane tothose whose objections were purely economicand focused on the effects that an unpaid Southern workforce had on wages and prices in the North.
This frontispiece illustration, entitled “A Slave Father Sold Away from His Family,” is from the Child’s Antislavery Book (1860). The book was distributed by the Sunday School Union in an effort to alert children to the horrors of slavery.
Efforts to abolish slavery in America beganwell before the Revolutionary War and wereinfluenced by similar movements in GreatBritain and France. By the 1770s and 1780s,many antislavery societies, largely dominated byQuakers, had sprung up in the North. Early American leaders such as BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, ALEXANDER HAMILTON, JOHN JAY, and THOMASPAINE made known their opposition to slavery.
The early abolitionists played an importantrole in outlawing slavery in Northern states bythe early nineteenth century. Vermont outlawedslavery in 1777, and Massachusetts declared itinconsistent with its new state constitution, ratifiedin 1780. Over the next three decades, otherNorthern states, including Pennsylvania, NewYork, and New Jersey, passed gradual emancipationlaws that freed all future children of slaves.By 1804, every Northern state had enacted someform of emancipation law.
In the South, where slavery played a fargreater role in the economy, emancipationmoved at a much slower pace. By 1800, allSouthern states except Georgia and South Carolinahad passed laws that eased the practice ofprivate manumission—or the freeing of slavesby individual slaveholders. Abolitionists won afurther victory in the early 1800s when theUnited States outlawed international trade inslaves. However, widespread SMUGGLING ofslaves continued.
During the first three decades of the 1800s,abolitionists continued to focus largely on gradualemancipation. As the nation expanded westward,they also opposed the introduction ofslavery into the western territories. Althoughabolitionists had won an early victory on thisfront in 1787, when they succeeded in prohibitingslavery in the Northwest Territory, theirefforts in the 1800s were not as completely successful. The MISSOURI COMPROMISE OF 1820 (3Stat. 545), for example, stipulated that slavery would be prohibited only in areas of the LOUISIANA PURCHASE north of Missouri’s southern boundary, except for Missouri itself, which would be admitted to the Union as a slave state. Slavery in the territories remained one ofthe most divisive issues in U.S. politics until theend of the Civil War in 1865.
Beginning in the 1830s, evangelical Christiangroups, particularly in New England,brought a new radicalism to the cause of abolition.They focused on the sinfulness of slaveryand sought to end its practice by appealing tothe consciences of European Americans whosupported slavery. Rather than endorsing agradual emancipation, these new abolitionistscalled for the immediate and complete emancipationof slaves without compensation to slaveowners.Leaders of this movement includedWILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, founder of the abolitionistnewspaper the Liberator; FREDERICKDOUGLASS, a noted African American writer andorator; the sisters Sarah Moore Grimké andAngelina Emily Grimké, lecturers for the American Anti-Slavery Society and pioneers forWOMEN’S RIGHTS; Theodore Dwight Weld,author of an influential antislavery book, AmericanSlavery as It Is (1839); and later, HARRIETBEECHER STOWE, whose 1852 novel Uncle Tom’sCabin was another important abolitionist tract.
In 1833, this new generation of abolitionistsformed the American Anti-Slavery Society(AAS). The organization grew quickly, particularlyin the North, and by 1840 had reached aheight of 1,650 chapters and an estimated130,000 to 170,000 members. Nevertheless, abolitionismremained an unpopular cause even inthe North, and few mainstream politiciansopenly endorsed it.
To achieve its goals, the AAS undertook anumber of large projects, many of which werefrustrated by Southern opposition. For example,the organization initiated a massive postal campaigndesigned to appeal to the moral scruplesof Southern slaveowners and voters. The campaignflooded the South with antislavery tractssent through the mails. Although a law thatwould have excluded antislavery literature fromthe mails was narrowly defeated in Congress in1836, pro-slavery forces, with the help of PresidentAndrew Jackson’s administration and localpostmasters, effectively ended the disseminationof abolitionist literature in the South. The AASwas similarly frustrated when it petitioned Congresson a variety of subjects related to slavery.Congressional gag rules rendered the many abolitionistpetitions impotent. These rules of legislativeprocedure allowed Congress to table andeffectively ignore the antislavery petitions.
By the 1840s, the evangelical abolitionistmovement had begun to break up into differentfactions. These factions differed on the issue ofgradual versus radical change and on the inclusionof other causes, including women’s rights,in their agendas. Some abolitionists decided toform a political party. The Liberty party, as theynamed it, nominated James G. Birney for U.S.president in 1840 and 1844. When differenceslater led to the dissolution of the Liberty party,many of its members created the FREE SOILPARTY, which took as its main cause oppositionto slavery in the territories newly acquired fromMexico. They were joined by defecting Democratswho were disgruntled with the increasingdomination of Southern interests in their party.In 1848, the Free Soil party nominated as itscandidate for U.S. president MARTIN VANBUREN, who had served as the eighth presidentof the United States from 1837 to 1841, but VanBuren did not win. (ZACHARY TAYLOR won theelection.)
After passage of the FUGITIVE SLAVE ACTOF 1850 (9 Stat. 462), which required Northernstates to return escaped slaves and imposedpenalties on people who aided such runaways,abolitionists became actively involved in theUnderground Railroad, a secretive network thatprovided food, shelter, and direction to escapedslaves seeking freedom in the North. This networkwas largely maintained by free AfricanAmericans and is estimated to have helped50,000 to 100,000 slaves to freedom. HarrietTubman, an African American and ardent abolitionist,was one organizer of the UndergroundRailroad. During the 1850s, she bravely traveledinto Southern states to help other African Americansescape from slavery, just as she had escapedherself.
Whereas the vast majority of abolitionistseschewed violence, JOHN BROWN actively participatedin it. In response to attacks led by proslaveryforces against the town of Lawrence,Kansas, Brown, the leader of a Free Soil militia,led a REPRISAL attack that killed five pro-slaverysettlers in 1856. Three years later, he undertookan operation that he hoped would inspire a massiveslave rebellion. Brown and 21 followersbegan by capturing the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Federalforces under Robert E. Lee promptly recapturedthe arsenal, and Brown was hanged shortlythereafter, becoming a martyr for the cause.
In 1854, abolitionists and Free Soilers joinedwith a variety of other interests to form theREPUBLICAN PARTY, which successfully stoodABRAHAM LINCOLN for president in 1860.Although the party took a strong stand againstthe introduction of slavery in the territories, itdid not propose the more radical option ofimmediate emancipation. In fact, slavery endedas a result of the Civil War, which lasted from1861 to 1865. Not a true abolitionist at the startof his presidency, Lincoln became increasinglyreceptive to antislavery opinion. In 1863, heannounced the EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION,which freed all slaves in areas still engaged inrevolt against the Union. The proclamationserved as an important symbol of the Union’snew commitment to ending slavery. Lincolnlater supported the ratification of the ThirteenthAmendment, which officially abolished slaveryin the United States.
After the war, former abolitionists, includingradical Republicans such as Senator CHARLESSUMNER (R-Mass.), continued to lobby for constitutionalamendments that would protect therights of the newly freed slaves, including the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, ratified in 1868,which guaranteed citizenship to former slavesand declared that no state could “deprive anyperson of life, liberty, or property, without DUEPROCESS OF LAW; nor deny to any person . . . the EQUAL PROTECTION of the laws.” Former abolitionistsalso lobbied, albeit unsuccessfully, forland redistribution that would have given exslavesa share of their former owners’ land.
FURTHER READINGS
Edwards, Judith. 2004. Abolitionists and Slave Resistance:Breaking the Chains of Slavery. Berkeley Heights, N.J.:Enslow.Greenburg,Martin H., and Charles G.Waugh, eds. 2000. ThePrice of Freedom: Slavery and the Civil War. Nashville,Tenn.: Cumberland House.Hessler, Katherine. 1998. “Early Efforts to Suppress Protest:Unwanted Abolitionist Speech.” Boston University PublicInterest Law Journal 7 (spring).Kingaman,William K. 2001. Abraham Lincoln and the Roadto Emancipation, 1861–1865. New York: Viking.Merrill,Walter M. 1971. Against the Wind and Tide: A Biographyof William Lloyd Garrison. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard.Tackach, James. 2002. The Abolition of American Slavery. SanDiego, Calif.: Lucent Books.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Compromise of 1850; Dred Scott v. Sandford; Emancipation Proclamation; Fourteenth Amendment; Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; Lincoln, Abraham; Missouri Compromise of 1820; Prigg v. Pennsylvania; Slavery; Sumner, Charles; Thirteenth Amendment.
