Understanding the Complexity of Abolitionism and Anti-Slavery movements

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Understanding the Complexity of Abolitionism and
Anti-Slavery movements
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Paradox

• Being Anti-Slavery did not necessarily make you a
  friend of the Slave.
• Americans opposed slavery for various reasons and
  used various methods in their opposition.

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Southerners Lamenting Slavery

• In the early republic, even southerners
  questioned the future and morality of slavery
  (Like Washington)
• Ideology of the revolution
• Evangelical influence (Second Great Awakening)
  blunted by 1820
• Southern abolitionism dies out about 1830-1832.
  Virginia assembly meets to discuss prospect / Nat
  Turners rebellion.

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Abolition the Political Issue

• North vs. South in struggle for political mastery
• Political Abolitionism not so much opposed to
  slavery on moral grounds, but that the slave
  state voting bloc and 3/5s Compromise puts South
  in drivers seat.
• Focused on stopping the spread of slavery.
• Like red state/blue state politics

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Abolition Politics as a Labor Issue

• By 1840s, Free Soil movement emerges
• White laboring classes (farmers, mechanics) who
  want to stop the spread of slavery
• They dont want to compete with unfree labor.
• They dont care about slavery where it already
  exists

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The political threat posed by containing slavery

• The South feared abolition movements that
  threatened to stop the spread of slavery because
  such movements would inhibit the Souths ability
  to maintain a political parity with the North
• In time, the South would become a political
  minority, and as such, subject to the whim of
  Northern will.
• For the South to defend slavery politically, it
  HAD to expand.

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The economic threat of containing slavery

• Stopping slaverys expansion eliminated (in
  theory) the market for future generations of
  slaves

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Abolition the Moral Issue

• By far the most threatening because it challenges
  the persistence of slavery where it exists.
• Far less common than political abolitionism

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Early Moral Abolition Gradualism

• Abolition within the conventions of a racist
  culture Inability to see slaves as Americans.
• Emphasis on resettlement, deportation
• American Colonization Society
• Liberia, Monrovia
• Respect for southern property rights
• Sensitive to racial attitudes of white Americans,
  North and South
• Sensitive to preserving racial hierarchy

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Intellectual Changes in the North Perfectionism

• Transcendentalism and other perfectionist
  ideals take root, particularly in New England
  1820s 1830s
• Belief in reform and perfectability of mankind
• Temperance, anti-prostitution, and anti-slavery
• Involvement of women in moral crusade

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Moral Abolition Immediatism

• The rise of William Lloyd Garrison
• Starts Liberator in 1831
• Calls for the immediate end to slavery
• Not only is slavery wrong, but slaveholders are
  immoral.
• Enrages slaveholders
• Enrages a lot of northerners too
• A minority view for many years

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William Lloyd Garrison
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Garrison and Southern Conceptions of Honor

• Garrison made abolitionism a personal attack upon
  the honor of southerners by charging them with a
  unconscionable crime.
• Undermines southern claims to honor and
  patriarchy
• Immediatist abolition movement small but vocal.
• Hardens defenses of slavery.
• Encourages the development of pro-slavery
  rhetoric from southern intellectuals and clergy.

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Women and Moral Abolitionism

• As part of the antebellum periods move toward
  moral improvement, women become involved in
  abolitionism.
• Religious overtones
• The fictional Uncle Tom character
• The imperiling of white morality

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Northern Women

• Harriett Beecher Stowe and Uncle Toms Cabin
• Representative of white northern women from elite
  backgrounds who take up the cause of abolition.
• Both moral and emotional suasion

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Southern White Women

• The Grimke Sisters of South Carolina
• Become sought-after speakers
• Credibility as beneficiaries of slave system
• Focus Slaverys damage to white morality

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The Slave Narrative

• Harriett Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a
  Slave Girl
• Shocking forcefulness
• Narrative of sexual exploitation

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Jacobs hiding place
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Imagery and Abolitionism
Some images did not need to be fabricated Here
an actual advertisement for the sale of slaves
strikes most normal modern observers as
inherently sinister.
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Imagery and Auctions
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Imagery and the limits of white compassion
tragic mulattas
Photograph of nearly white slave girl
auctioned by Henry Ward Beecher to raise funds
for abolitionist causes in Boston