Discussion Posts

STUDY GUIDE: Ending Slavery HIS 1110, Dr. G. J. Giddings

Given the key characteristics of enslavement and the challenges of being a Black person in antebellum

U.S., it makes sense that this enslavement holocaust was naturally/constantly resisted and could not last

forever. Indeed, the enslaved and their allies would have it no other way.

F&H chapter 9 (our optional textbook) describes 3 events/personalities which sparked the “militant

abolitionist movement.” These events were: David Walker’s “Appeal …” of 1829; William Lloyd

Garrison’s publication of The Liberator in 1831; and the Nat Turner Revolt in 1831.

This early and radical civil rights/abolitionist movement resulted from years of resistance by Blacks and

white anti-slavery allies. Blacks were tired of being enslaved and/or second class citizens, and anti-

slavery white folks were frustrated that although the “slave trade” was legally prohibited in 1808,

“slaves” were still being smuggled into the U.S., and the “internal trade” between southern states,

including Washington, DC continued and actually grew!

Frustrations over slavery expanding, including westward as the country grew wider west, was illustrated

in several major national events mainly in the 1850s which eventually caused most of the southern

states to secede from the U.S. Union in 1861, to form the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) and

sparked the Civil War (C.S.A. versus the U.S.A., 1861-1865). At least 4 of the events which sparked this

cataclysmic Civil War were:

1850 Compromise: Strict fugitive law, CA admitted as a free state, end of slave trade in DC…

1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act: repealed Missouri Compromise of 1820; popular vote determines if

territory turn state would have slavery labor …

1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court Decision: enslaved Missourian Scott traveled to IL and MN for 4 years,

married there; returned to MO and sued for freedom; SC ruled Blacks are not citizens …

1859 John Brown Raid: October 16, seized federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, VA (WV); consulted with F.

Douglass and Harriet Tubman; less than 50 posse; 5 blacks: 2 killed, 2 hanged and 1 escaped; 5 whites

killed; Brown made martyr …

Consider the impact of militant abolitionists and the subsequent national events of the 1850s on the

decision of 11 southern states to secede from the U.S. union. As a system that was always resisted while

being maintained by force and violence, laws, contradictions, and myths, it is not surprising that this

system would end through violence and cataclysm. A cataclysmic Civil War was required to defeat such

an evil as slavery. But would slavery just end overnight, with so many whites accustomed to having

most Blacks in bondage and without rights?