Abolitionists Summary & Analysis
If You Pretend It's Not An Issue, It's Not An Issue...Right?
It's super depressing to hear, but America wasn't even born yet and we were struggling with slavery.
We dilly-dallied abolishing the system for a couple hundred years, so of course, it continued to be a monumental issue after independence. The good news is, abolitionists have been piping up since those colonial times. The independent, idealistic, and often deeply pious thought that had spurred so many immigrant journeys to the New World also prompted a smorgasbord of antislavery sentiments—religion, politics, and philosophy all spurred antislavery activism throughout America's relationship with the institution.
(a) Quakers were the most outspoken Christian group against slavery. Benjamin Lay advocated for the Golden Rule and scolded "pretend" Christians who owned slaves (source), while Elihu Embree published the first U.S. newspaper devoted to abolishing slavery.
(b) Slavery became a political issue more so when party lines coincided with geographical lines. But as early as 1735, Georgia banned slavery. To jump on the economic boom fueled by slavery, that only lasted until 1751.
(c) And yet, French philosopher Montesquieu confronted slavery as a political issue, without natural origins. He was straight and to the point and said slavery "is not good in its nature." Yep, no good. (Source)
Southerners would later mobilize these same forces to defend slavery during the nineteenth century.
(a) Christian slaveowners used biblical lines like "Slaves, obey your masters" (Colossians 3:22) to prove that slavery was God-approved, beneficial, and justified. In his 1837 "Slavery a Positive Good" speech, statesman John C. Calhoun said, "Never before has the black race [...] attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually" (source).
(b) Political defenses of slavery were largely tied to economic reasons like providing employment (but...where's the paycheck at?), producing exports, and supporting Britain's industries. When immigrants moved to Northern states over Southern states, government representation—a.k.a. voices to protect slavery—became a huge issue.
(c) Robert Marsh's Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain utilized the necessary-evil philosophy and basically said, "Slaves, you can't handle the freedom!" Hoh-kay.
Another super depressing thing was that antislavery activists were always the minority, encountering heavy opposition from the majority that either supported slavery outright or wanted to avoid making slavery a divisive political issue. For nearly a decade, Congress even enforced a "gag rule" that banned antislavery legislators from raising the subject.
A.k.a. for more than a decade, slavery was just the big elephant in the room.
So, the opposition only galvanized the antislavery activists. Abolitionists endured violent mob attacks on their lecture halls and printing presses, and made martyrs out of the murdered editor Elijah Lovejoy, the beaten Senator Charles Sumner, and the possibly insane John Brown. They didn't want to just end slavery—they wanted to reconfigure the terms by which Americans applied their concepts of liberty and equality. They wanted to create a society that embodied the values of the Revolution for all of its citizens, Black and white, male and female.
P.S. Thanks for getting the ball rolling, abolitionists, but we're still workin' on that.
It's Not All Black and White
Abolitionists were the unsung heroes of democracy, but they were hardly perfect. Differing attitudes and opinions on racial characteristics, roles, and responsibilities abounded within the mixed classes, genders, and races of the abolitionist movement.
In terms of leadership positions, money, and raw numbers (since there weren't that many free Blacks in the country), whites like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Arthur and Lewis Tappan, dominated the abolitionist movement of the 1830s. Some white activists wanted Black runaway slaves to censor their comments about Northern racism and simply deliver speeches on the horrors of slavery in the South. Frederick Douglass discussed urging from Garrison, George Foster, and John Collins to basically just "state the facts, man" in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. On the flip side, Black abolitionists like David Walker often took a more radical approach and called for an immediate end to slavery. They were harshly criticized by some white abolitionists who wanted a gradual emancipation, and who feared that such radicalism could scare away potential supporters or hurt the entire movement.
And abolition was never going to happen overnight, so abolitionists had plenty of time to think about it.
The racial rift even intercepted differing theories, as seen with Garrison, who was actually considered the most radical abolitionist of his time. He called for immediate emancipation of slaves, and claimed the Constitution was a proslavery document, but also believed the Union should be dissolved. He was a close mentor to Frederick Douglass, but Douglass later claimed their relationship was that of "a child to a parent" and distanced himself from Garrisonian views. Taking an opposite, more moderate view, Douglass ultimately believed the Constitution could be used as a vehicle to dismantle slavery. Scathing accusations passed between the two on the public stage of their newspapers, and their relationship was never the same. (Source)
Though they constituted a tiny minority of the total population, even in the North, abolitionists proved to be a highly successful pressure group. They made slavery an urgent political issue, framing the question of bondage as a moral imperative that could and must be addressed by the American people to redeem the true calling and potential of their nation. Abolitionist political parties never won a majority of the vote, but they captured enough votes that the major parties were forced to take notice.
By the 1850s, Northern politicians were forced to display resistance to Southern influence in Congress if they wished to remain politically popular at home. Unfortunately, most Northern whites held little sympathy for Blacks and remained overwhelmingly committed to the notion of white supremacy. But the threat of a "Southern oligarchy" was rapidly unfolding. Alarmed white Northerners were passionate about their democratic system and wary of disproportionately influential factions.
This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Two of Us
The country's rapid spread westward exacerbated sectional conflict, as both antislavery Northerners and proslavery Southerners sought to extend their respective, incompatible systems into the same western territories. Politicians sought to resolve the sectional crisis over the future of the West through a series of tenuous national compromises that tended to inflame both sides, only heightening the stakes for all involved.
The resulting political disarray led to the rise of the new Republican Party, which by the late 1850s, became the North's dominant party behind its antislavery platform. The slavery issue led to outright violence between Northerners and Southerners in places like "Bleeding Kansas," Harper's Ferry, and even the floor of the Senate. Ultimately, the conflict would engulf the country in Civil War.
From the ashes of that conflict, the abolitionists' objective of emancipation was finally achieved. Yet it would take another century (and then some) to bring their larger goal into fruition: the establishment of a truly colorblind democracy for men and women in which all the nation's citizens enjoyed complete protection for their rights and true equality.
And yet, it's easy to argue that this ideal remains elusive even today.