SURVEY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ASSIGNMENT

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The Abolitionist Movement Module Introduction

During the first half of the nineteenth-century, a vocal if marginalized abolitionist movement developed in the

United States. It was a diverse and occasionally fractious movement. Slaves fought for their freedom, and the

end of slavery, by organizing and leading rebellions or running away to freedom in the North or Canada. Some

of those former slaves, like Frederick Douglass, became leaders in the abolitionist movement by the force of

their oratory and writing.

The transatlantic religious revivals of the early nineteenth-century, often referred to as the Second Great

Awakening in the United States, inspired others, including some white men and women, to become

abolitionists. They saw slavery as a grave American sin that the nation must purge to redeem itself and to

prepare the way for Christ’s return and 1,000-year rule on Earth. Rather than just relying on natural rights

arguments, nineteenth-century abolitionists often used moral arguments – moral suasion – to highlight the

immorality of slavery. In keeping with the religious fervor of the era, abolitionists hoped to bring about a mass

conversion in public opinion to end slavery. Nevertheless, the vast majority of white Americans, even in the

North, saw abolitionism as a radical, irrational, and dangerous threat, not only to slavery but to white supremacy

and the union.

Though abolition would only come about because of the Civil War, the abolitionist movement left behind a

revolutionary legacy. It used new means of communication, including mass printing presses, and new forms of

literature in America, such as the slave narrative and novel, to organize its movement and spread ideas that

indelibly changed the nation and the world. (1)

Learning Outcomes

This module addresses the following Course Learning Outcomes listed in the Syllabus for this course:

• To provide students with a general understanding of the history of African Americans within the context

of American History.

• To motivate students to become interested and active in African American history by comparing current

events with historical information.(1)

Additional learning outcomes associated with this module are:

• The student will be able to discuss the origins, evolution, and spread of racial slavery.

• The student will be able to describe the creation of a distinct African-American culture and how that

culture became part of the broader American culture. (1)

Module Objectives

Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to:

Use primary historical resources to analyze the Abolitionist Movement. (1)

Readings and Resources

• Learning Unit: The Abolitionist Movement (see below) (1)

• Primary Source Documents (see below)

o David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, 1829

o William Lloyd Garrison Introduces The Liberator

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Slave Uprisings

Abolitionism in North America began when enslaved Africans ran away from their masters or organized

rebellions in name of freedom. Well before a religiously motivated, transatlantic, and interracial abolitionist

movement developed in the nineteenth-century, numerous slave rebellions and insurrections occurred during the

preceding centuries. Rebellions were rooted in the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system. There is

evidence of more than 250 uprisings or attempted uprisings, each involving 10 or more slaves from the

seventeenth-century up to the Civil War.

One of the largest slave rebellions in U.S. history took place in 1811. The German Coast Uprising took place

outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, and involved some 500 slaves, according to accounts; however, it only was

responsible for the casualties of two white men. Volunteer militias and a detachment of the U.S. Army

suppressed the rebellion. Ninety-five black people were killed as a result of executions and direct confrontations

with opposing militia forces. In the weeks following the uprising, an additional forty-four accused insurgents

were captured, tried, and executed.(12)

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Wood-cut depiction of the various stages of Nat

Turner’s Rebellion from the first massacres to the

search and capture of Turner’s conspirators.Figure 6-

1: Horrid Massacre in Virginia by Library of

Congress has no known copyright restriction.

Another large slave uprising, Nat Turner’s Rebellion,

took place in 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia.

Like many slaves, Nat Turner was inspired by the

evangelical Protestant fervor sweeping the republic. He

preached to fellow slaves in Southampton County,

gaining a reputation among them as a prophet. He

organized them for rebellion, awaiting a sign to begin,

until an eclipse in August signaled that the appointed

time had come.

Turner and as many as seventy other slaves killed their

masters and their masters’ families, murdering a total of around sixty-five people. Turner eluded capture until

late October, when he was tried, hanged, and then beheaded and quartered. Virginia put to death fifty-six other

slaves whom they believed to have taken part in the rebellion. White vigilantes killed two hundred more as

panic swept through Virginia and the rest of the South.

Thomas R. Gray was a lawyer in Southampton, Virginia, where he visited Nat Turner in jail. He published THE

CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, THE LEADER OF THE LATE INSURRECTION IN SOUTHAMPTON,

VA., AS FULLY AND VOLUNTARILY MADE TO THOMAS R. GRAY in November 1831, after Turner

had been executed:

“For as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of

sinners, and was now returning to earth again in the form of dew… it was plain to me that the Saviour was

about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and the great day of judgment was at hand…

And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me

and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and

that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, … Ques. Do you not find yourself mistaken now? Ans.

Was not Christ crucified. And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should

commence the great work—and on the appearance of the sign, (the eclipse of the sun last February) I should

arise and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”

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“Discovery of Nat Turner”Figure 6-2: Nat Turner Captured by

William Henry Shelton is in the Public Domain .

Nat Turner’s Rebellion provoked a heated discussion in Virginia

over slavery. The Virginia legislature was already in the process

of revising the state constitution, and some delegates advocated

for an easier manumission process. The rebellion, however, made

that reform impossible. Virginia and other slave states

recommitted themselves to the institution of slavery, and

defenders of slavery in the South increasingly blamed northerners

for provoking their slaves to rebel. (12)

One of those northerners who instilled fear among white

southerners was David Walker, a free black man who, like

Turner, advocated for rebellion if slavery did not immediately

end. Walker was born a free in North Carolina in 1796. He moved to Boston in the 1820s, lectured on slavery,

and promoted the first African American newspaper, FREEDOM’S JOURNAL . (11) In 1829, he published AN

APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD , one of the most radical and impassioned

abolitionist pleas in American history. Walker highlighted the nation’s hypocrisies, including its promise of

freedom and its sanctioning of slavery. He also called out some of the nation’s Christians for their complicity in

the system of slavery and their willingness to use and distort scripture from the Bible to sanction it. Walker also

warned whites who practiced or tolerated slavery that their day of reckoning was close at hand. There is no

evidence Nat Turner ever read AN APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD , but Walker’s

apocalyptic words foreshadowed Turner’s looming rebellion. (1)

Frontispiece from the 1830 edition of David Walker’s

AppealFigure 6-3: David Walker Appeal by Britannica

Encyclopedia is in the Public Domain .

“I count my life not dear unto me, but I am ready to be

offered at any moment. For what is the use of living, when

in fact I am dead. But remember, Americans, that as

miserable, wretched, degraded and abject as you have

made us in preceding, and in this generation, to support

you and your families, that some of you, (whites) on the

continent of America, will yet curse the day that you ever

were born. You want slaves, and want us for your slaves!!!

My colour will yet, root some of you out of the very face

of the earth!!!!!!” (13)

Walker died months after the publication of his Appeal, and

debate continues to this day over the cause of his death.

Many believe he was murdered. Regardless, Walker

became a symbol of hope to free people in the North and a

symbol of the terrors of literate, educated blacks to the

slaveholders of the South. (11)

Atlantic Origins of Reform

A broader, interracial abolitionist movement, one connected

to the era’s religious revivalism and reform campaigns that

were designed to rid the nation of its moral sins, began to

grow in the years after Walker published his APPEAL .

Like Walker, these abolitionists rejected attempts to gradually end slavery by colonizing black people in West

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Africa. They took a far more radical approach using moral arguments and persuasion to advocate slavery’s

immediate elimination. They publicized the atrocities committed under slavery and aimed to create a society

characterized by equality of blacks and whites. In a world of intense religious fervor, they hoped to bring about

a mass awakening in the United States of the sin of slavery, confident that they could transform the national

conscience against the South’s peculiar institution. (11)

The reform movements that emerged in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century were not

American inventions, however. Instead, these movements were rooted in a transatlantic world where both sides

of the ocean faced similar problems and together collaborated to find similar solutions. Many of the same

factors that spurred American reformers to action equally affected Europe. Reformers on both sides of the

Atlantic visited and corresponded with one another. Exchanging ideas and building networks proved crucial to

shared causes such as abolition.

Improvements in transportation, including the introduction of the steamboat, canals, and railroads, connected

people not just across the United States, but also with other like-minded reformers in Europe. (Ironically, the

same technologies also helped ensure that even after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the British

remained heavily invested in slavery, both directly and indirectly.) Equally important, the reduction of

publication costs created by new printing technologies in the 1830s allowed reformers to reach new audiences

across the world.

Almost immediately after its publication in the United States, for instance, the escaped slave and abolitionist

Frederick Douglass’s autobiography was republished in Europe and translated into French and Dutch,

galvanizing Douglass’s supporters across the Atlantic.

Abolitionist and anti-slavery work had a decidedly transatlantic cast from its very beginnings. American

Quakers began to question slavery as early as the late seventeenth century, and worked with British reformers in

the successful campaign that ended the slave trade. Before, during, and after the Revolution, many Americans

continued to admire European thinkers. Influence extended both east and west. By foregrounding questions

about rights, the American Revolution helped inspire British abolitionists, who in turn offered support to their

American counterparts. American antislavery activists developed close relationships with abolitionists on the

other side of the Atlantic, such as Thomas Clarkson, Daniel O’Connell, and Joseph Sturge. Prominent American

abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld, Lucretia Mott, and William Lloyd Garrison were converted to the

antislavery idea of immediatism—that is, the demand for emancipation without delay—by British abolitionists

Elizabeth Heyrick and Charles Stuart.

Although Anglo-American antislavery networks reached back to the late eighteenth century, they dramatically

grew in support and strength over the antebellum period, as evidenced by the General Antislavery Convention

of 1840. This antislavery delegation consisted of more than 500 abolitionists, mostly coming from France,

England, and the United States. All met together in England, united by their common goal of ending slavery in

their time. Although abolitionism was not the largest American reform movement of the antebellum period (that

honor belongs to temperance), it did foster greater cooperation among reformers in England and the United

States. (2)

Antislavery and Abolitionism

The revivalist doctrines of salvation, perfectionism, and benevolence led many evangelical reformers to believe

that slavery was the most God-defying of all sins and the most terrible blight on the moral virtue of the United

States. While white interest in and commitment to abolition had existed for several decades, organized

antislavery advocacy had been largely restricted to models of gradual emancipation (seen in several northern

states following the American Revolution) and conditional emancipation (seen in colonization efforts to remove

black Americans to settlements in Africa).

The colonization movement of the early nineteenth century had drawn together a broad political spectrum of

Americans with its promise of gradually ending slavery in the United States by removing the free black

population from North America. By the 1830s, however, a rising tide of anti-colonization sentiment among

northern free black Americans and middle-class evangelicals’ flourishing commitment to social reform

radicalized the movement. Baptists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Congregational revivalists like Arthur and

Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld, and radical Quakers including Lucretia Mott and John Greenleaf

Whittier helped push the idea of immediate emancipation onto the center stage of northern reform agendas.

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Inspired by a strategy known as “moral suasion,” these young abolitionists believed they could convince

slaveholders to voluntarily release their slaves by appealing to their sense of Christian conscience. (2) Moral

suasion relied on dramatic narratives, often from former slaves, about the horrors of slavery, arguing that

slavery destroyed families, as children were sold and taken away from their mothers and fathers. Moral suasion

resonated with many women, who condemned the sexual violence against slave women and the victimization of

southern white women by adulterous husbands. (11)

William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolitionist Movement in America

William Lloyd Garrison’s early life and career famously illustrated this transition toward immediatism . As a

young man immersed in the reform culture of antebellum Massachusetts, Garrison had fought slavery in the

1820s by advocating for both black colonization and gradual abolition. Fiery tracts penned by black northerners

David Walker and James Forten, however, convinced Garrison that colonization was an inherently racist project

and that African Americans possessed a hard-won right to the fruits of American liberty. So, in 1831, he

established a newspaper called The Liberator, through which he organized and spearheaded an unprecedented

interracial crusade dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation and black citizenship. (2)

The Liberator. Volume VII. 1837. Edited by William

Lloyd Garrison. Published by Isaac Knapp, Cornhill,

Boston, MassachusettsFigure 6-4: 1837 Liberator

Cornhill Boston by William Lloyd Garrison is in

the Public Domain .

In Garrison’s first edition of THE LIBERATOR he

declared:

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my

language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be

as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On

this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write,

with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is

on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately

rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the

mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into

which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation

in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not

equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.” (14)

White Virginians blamed Garrison for stirring up slaves and instigating slave rebellions like Nat Turner’s.

The same year Garrison started publishing THE LIBERATOR he founded the New England Anti-Slavery

Society. Two years later, he founded the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). The AASS rested their

mission for immediate emancipation “upon the Declaration of our Independence, and upon the truths of Divine

Revelation,” binding their cause to both national and Christian redemption. Abolitionists fought to save slaves

and their nation’s soul. (2) By 1838, the AASS had 250,000 members, sometimes called Garrisonians. (11)

In order to spread their arguments against slavery based on moral suasion, abolitionists employed every method

of outreach and agitation. At home in the North, abolitionists established hundreds of other antislavery societies

and worked with long-standing associations of black activists to establish schools, churches, and voluntary

associations. Women and men of all colors were encouraged to associate together in these spaces to combat

what they termed “color phobia.”

Harnessing the potential of steam-powered printing and mass communication, abolitionists also blanketed the

free states with pamphlets and antislavery newspapers. They blared their arguments from lyceum podiums and

broadsides. Prominent individuals such as Wendell Phillips and Angelina Grimké saturated northern media with

shame-inducing exposés of northern complicity in the return of fugitive slaves, and white reformers

sentimentalized slave narratives that tugged at middle-class heartstrings. Abolitionists used the United States

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Postal Service in 1835 to inundate southern slaveholders’ with calls to emancipate their slaves in order to save

their souls, and, in 1836, they prepared thousands of petitions for Congress as part of the “Great Petition

Campaign.” In the six years from 1831 to 1837, abolitionist activities reached dizzying heights.

Such efforts encountered fierce opposition, however, as most Americans did not share abolitionists’ particular

brand of nationalism. In fact, abolitionists remained a small, marginalized group detested by most white

Americans in both the North and the South. Immediatists were attacked as the harbingers of disunion, rabble-

rousers who would stir up sectional tensions and thereby imperil the American experiment of self-government.

Particularly troubling to some observers was the public engagement of women as abolitionist speakers and

activists. Fearful of disunion and outraged by the interracial nature of abolitionism, northern mobs smashed

abolitionist printing presses and inflicted violence on the movement’s leaders. (2)

Garrison nearly lost his life in 1835 when a Boston anti-abolitionist mob dragged him through the city streets. A

mob in Illinois killed an abolitionist named Elijah Lovejoy in 1837, and the following year, ten thousand

protestors destroyed the abolitionists’ newly built Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, burning it to the

ground. (11) White southerners, believing that abolitionists had incited Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831,

aggressively purged antislavery dissent from the region.

Violent harassment threatened abolitionists’ personal safety. In Congress, Whigs and Democrats joined forces

in 1836 to pass an unprecedented restriction on freedom of political expression known as the “gag rule,”

prohibiting all discussion of abolitionist petitions in the House of Representatives. Two years later, mobs

attacked the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, throwing rocks through the windows and burning

the newly constructed Pennsylvania Hall to the ground.

In the face of such substantial external opposition, the abolitionist movement began to splinter. In 1839, an

ideological schism shook the foundations of organized antislavery. Moral suasionists, led most prominently by

William Lloyd Garrison, felt that the United States Constitution was a fundamentally pro-slavery document, and

that the present political system was irredeemable. They dedicated their efforts exclusively towards persuading

the public to redeem the nation by re-establishing it on antislavery grounds. However, many abolitionists,

reeling from the level of entrenched opposition met in the 1830s, began to feel that moral suasion was no longer

realistic. Instead, they believed, abolition would have to be effected through existing political processes. So, in

1839, political abolitionists formed the Liberty Party under the leadership of James G. Birney. This new

abolitionist society was predicated on the belief that the U.S. Constitution was actually an antislavery document

that could be used to abolish the stain of slavery through the national political system.

Another significant shift stemmed from the disappointments of the 1830s. Abolitionists in the 1840s

increasingly moved from agendas based on reform to agendas based on resistance. Moral suasionists continued

to appeal to hearts and minds, and political abolitionists launched sustained campaigns to bring abolitionist

agendas to the ballot box. Meanwhile the entrenched and violent opposition of both slaveholders and the

northern public encouraged abolitionists to find other avenues of fighting the slave power. Increasingly, for

example, abolitionists focused on helping and protecting runaway slaves, and on establishing international

antislavery support networks to help put pressure on the United States to abolish the institution. (2)

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass is one prominent example of how these trends: helping and protecting runaway slaves; and

establishing international antislavery support networks to help put pressure on the United States to abolish the

institution, came together. (2) Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in 1818 and escaped to New York in 1838.

He later moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, with his wife.

After escaping from slavery, Douglass soon came to the forefront of the abolitionist movement as a gifted orator

and a powerful narrator of his experiences as a slave. Douglass’s commanding presence and powerful speaking

skills electrified his listeners when he began to provide public lectures on slavery. He came to the attention of

William Lloyd Garrison and others who encouraged him to write his story. In 1845, he published his

autobiography, NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF , in which he told about his life of slavery in Maryland. It was perhaps the most

powerful and famous piece of African American literature from the nineteenth century. It was so widely read

that it was reprinted in nine editions and translated into several languages. In it, Douglass identified by name the

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whites who had brutalized him, and for that reason, along with the mere act of publishing his story, Douglass

had to flee the United States to avoid being murdered. (11) He traveled to Great Britain and met with famous

British abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson, drumming up moral and financial support from British and Irish

antislavery societies. He was neither the first nor the last runaway slave to make this voyage, but his great

success abroad contributed significantly to rousing morale among weary abolitionists at home. (2)

British abolitionist friends ultimately bought his freedom from his Maryland owner, and Douglass returned to

the United States. He began to publish his own abolitionist newspaper, NORTH STAR , in Rochester, New

York. During the 1840s and 1850s, Douglass fought to bring about the end of slavery by telling the story of his

life and highlighting how slavery destroyed families, both black and white. (11)

In this excerpt from NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS , he explains the

consequences for the children fathered by white masters and slave women:

“Slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases

follow the condition of their mothers… this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make

a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable… the slaveholder, in cases not a few,

sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father… Such slaves [born of white masters] invariably

suffer greater hardships… They are… a constant offence to their mistress… she is never better pleased than

when she sees them under the lash, … The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out

of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to

sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, … for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them

himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker … and ply the

gory lash to his naked back.” (11)

Other abolitionists also spread word of the horrors of slavery in an attempt to win more supporters for their

cause. A prominent example of this is Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN , or LIFE

AMONG THE LOWLY . Stowe, a white woman from a pious Connecticut family, had strong moral

convictions that slavery as an institution was evil and unnatural. Her book depicted the harsh conditions in

which slaves lived, the danger they were willing to place themselves in to escape, and the detrimental ways in

which the institution of slavery effected slave owners.UNCLE TOM’S CABIN was a success in the North,

selling more than 300,000 copies in the first nine months of its publication, and more than a million copies by

1853. Nonetheless, it was met with protest and alarm in the South. (12)

The Underground Railroad

Many American abolitionists also took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground

Railroad. Though illegal under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, participants such as former slaves Harriet

Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Amos Noë Freeman, and others put themselves at risk

to help slaves escape to freedom. (12)

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by nineteenth-century black

slaves in the United States to escape to Northern free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and those

sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists—black and white, free and enslaved—

who aided the fugitives. Some routes led to Mexico or overseas. The network was formed in the early

nineteenth century and reached its height between 1850 and 1860. One estimate suggests that by 1850, 100,000

slaves had escaped via the “Railroad.”

The origins of the Underground Railroad go back to the Compromise of 1850, passed by Congress after the

Mexican-American War, which created a more stringent Fugitive Slave Act. The Fugitive Slave Act compelled

officials of free states to assist slave catchers if there were runaway slaves in the area and granted slave catchers

national immunity when in free states to do their job. Additionally, it made it possible that free blacks of the

North could be forced into slavery even if they had been freed earlier or never been slaves at all because

suspected slaves were unable to defend themselves in court and it was difficult to prove a free status. As a de

facto bribe, judges were paid more ($10) for a decision that forced a suspected slave back into slavery than for a

decision finding the slave to be free ($5). Thus, many Northerners who would have otherwise been able and

content to ignore the persistence of slavery in the South chafed under what they saw as a national sanction on

slavery, comprising one of the primary grievances of the Union cause during the Civil War.

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The various routes to freedom on the Underground

Railroad.Figure 6-5: Underground Railroad by

Unknown is in the Public Domain .

The escape network of the Underground Railroad

was not literally underground or a railroad. It was

figuratively “underground” in the sense of being a

covert form of resistance. It came to be referred to as

a “railroad” due to the use of rail terminology in the

code used by its participants. The Underground

Railroad consisted of meeting points, secret routes,

transportation, safe houses, and assistance provided

by abolitionists and sympathizers. Individuals were often organized in small, independent groups. These small

groups helped to maintain secrecy because individuals knew some connecting “stations” along the route but few

details of their immediate area. Escaped slaves would move north along the route from one way station to the

next. “Conductors” on the railroad came from various backgrounds and included free-born blacks, white

abolitionists, former slaves (both runaways and manumitted), and Native Americans. Churches often played a

role, especially the Society of Friends (Quakers), Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and Reformed Presbyterians,

as well as certain sects of mainstream denominations such as the Methodist church and American Baptists.

To reduce the risk of infiltration, many people associated with the Underground Railroad knew only their part

of the operation and little to nothing of the whole scheme. Written directions were discouraged for the same

reason. Additionally, because many freedom seekers could not read, visual and audible clues such as patterns in

quilts, song lyrics, and star positions provided directional cues along the way. Conductors moved the runaways

from station to station. Often the conductor would pretend to be a slave to enter a plantation. Once a part of a

plantation, the conductor would direct the runaways to the North. Slaves would travel at night around 10 to 20

miles to each station or “depot,” resting spots where the runaways could sleep and eat. The stations were out of

the way places such as barns and were held by “station masters” who would provide assistance such as sending

messages to other stations and directing fugitives on the path to take to their next stop. There were also those

known as “stockholders” who gave money or supplies for assistance.

Figure 6-6: A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive

Slaves by Eastman Johnson has no known

copyright restrictions.

Due to the risk of discovery, information about

routes and safe havens was passed along by word

of mouth. Southern newspapers of the day were

often filled with pages of notices soliciting

information about escaped slaves and offering

sizable rewards for their capture and return.

Federal marshals and professional bounty hunters

known as “slave catchers” pursued fugitives as

far as the Canadian border.

The risk was not limited solely to actual

fugitives. Because strong, healthy black people in

their prime working and reproductive years were

treated as highly valuable commodities, it was

not unusual for free blacks—both freedmen and

those who had never been slaves—to be kidnapped and sold into slavery. “Certificates of freedom”—signed,

notarized statements attesting to the free status of individuals—easily could be destroyed and thus afforded their

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holders little protection. Under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, when suspected fugitives were

seized and brought to a special magistrate known as a “commissioner,” they had no right to a jury trial and

could not testify on their own behalf. The marshal or private slave catcher needed only to swear an oath to

acquire a writ of replevin for the return of property.

Estimates vary widely, but at least 30,000 slaves, and potentially more than 100,000, escaped to Canada via the

Underground Railroad. The largest group settled in Upper Canada, called Canada West from 1841 and known

today as Southern Ontario, where numerous black Canadian communities developed. Upon arriving at their

destinations, many fugitives were disappointed. Despite the British colonies’ abolition of slavery in 1834,

discrimination was still common.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in the United States, many black refugees enlisted in the Union Army, and

while some later returned to Canada, many remained in the United States. Thousands of others returned to the

American South after the war ended. The desire to reconnect with friends and family was strong and most were

hopeful about the changes emancipation and Reconstruction would bring. (12)

Conclusion

As the 1850s progressed, abolitionist reform took a backseat as armed mobs protected runaway slaves in the

North and fortified abolitionists engaged in bloody skirmishes in the West. Culminating in John Brown’s raid

on Harper’s Ferry in 1859, the violence of the 1850s convinced many Americans that the issue of slavery was

pushing the nation to the brink of sectional cataclysm. After two decades of immediatist agitation, the idealism

of revivalist perfectionism had given way to a protracted battle for the moral soul of the country.

For all of the problems that abolitionism faced, the movement was far from a failure. The prominence of

African Americans in abolitionist organizations offered a powerful, if imperfect, model of interracial

coexistence. While immediatists always remained a minority, their efforts paved the way for the moderately

antislavery Republican Party to gain traction in the years preceding the Civil War. It is hard to imagine that

Abraham Lincoln could have become president in 1860 without the ground prepared by antislavery advocates

and without the presence of radical abolitionists against whom he could be cast as a moderate alternative.

Though it ultimately took a civil war to break the bonds of slavery in the United States, the evangelical moral

compass of revivalist Protestantism provided motivation for the embattled abolitionists. (2)

Primary Source Document: David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World 1829

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Primary Source Document: William Lloyd Garrison Introduces The Liberator

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