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Abolitionist Movement
I. Introduction
Abolitionist Movement, reform movement during the 18th and 19th centuries. Often called the
antislavery movement, it sought to end the enslavement of Africans and people of African
descent in Europe, the Americas, and Africa itself (see Slavery in Africa). It also aimed to end
the Atlantic slave trade carried out in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa, Europe, and the
Americas.
The historical roots of abolitionism lay in black resistance to slavery. Such resistance began
during the 15th century as Africans enslaved by Europeans often sought to kill their captors or
themselves. By the late 1700s Christian morality, new ideas about liberty and human rights that
came about as a result of the American and French revolutions, and economic changes led to
an effort among blacks and whites to end human bondage. Those who employed slave labor in
the Americas resisted abolitionist efforts. First, slaveholders believed that their economic
prosperity demanded the continuation of slavery. In order to work the large plantations in the
Americas, huge amounts of labor were required. African slaves were cheaper and more readily
available than white indentured laborers from Europe, and because they already had some
immunity to European diseases, Africans were less likely to die from those diseases than were
Native Americans. Second, employers of slave labor feared for their own safety if the slaves
were freed. Due to the large number of slaves brought to the Americas, several regions had
slave majorities. Slave owners worried that if slaves were suddenly freed, they might take over
or exact revenge on their former masters. Although abolitionism existed in Europe and in the
American colonies of several European nations, the struggle between antislavery and
proslavery forces was most protracted, bitter, and bloody in the United States.
As a result of the abolitionist movement, the institution of slavery ceased to exist in Europe and
the Americas by 1888, although it was not completely legally abolished in Africa until the first
quarter of the 20th century. While the abolitionist movement's greatest achievement was
certainly the liberation of millions of black people from servitude, it also reflected the triumph of
modern ideas of freedom and human rights over older social forms based on privileged elites
and social stratification.
II. Background
The Atlantic slave trade began in Africa in the mid-1400s and lasted into the 19th century.
Initially, Portuguese traders purchased small numbers of slaves from kingdoms on the western
coast of Africa and transported them for sale in Portugal and Spain. The Atlantic slave trade did
not become a huge enterprise until after European nations began colonizing the Americas
during the 1500s. During the 1600s the Dutch pushed the Portuguese out of the trade and then
contested the British and French for control of it. By 1713 Britain had emerged as the dominant
slave-trading nation. In all, the trade brought more than 10 million Africans to America, and at
least another 1 million Africans died in passage.
The brutality of the Atlantic slave trade and of slavery itself played an important role in the
origins of the abolitionist movement. Those subjected to the trade suffered horribly: They were
chained, branded, crowded onto disease-ridden slave ships, and abused by ship's crews. Many
Africans died on the ships well before they arrived in the Americas. Once in the colonies, slaves
were deprived of their human rights, made to endure dreadful conditions, and forced to perform
backbreaking labor. Despite the horrors of the slave trade and slavery, white opposition to the
institution developed slowly. The economies of many of the colonies were based on huge
plantations that required large labor forces in order to be profitable. Also, views of society at the
time were very hierarchical, and many people simply accepted the fact that classes of people
they considered lower than themselves should be enslaved. In addition, the widespread
perception that blacks were culturally, morally, and intellectually inferior to whites contributed to
the longevity of the system. It was not until the early 18th century that attitudes began to
change.
III. Early Influences On Abolitionism
Black resistance to enslavement, Christian humanitarianism, economic change, and intellectual
developments all contributed to the rise of abolitionist movements in European countries—most
notably Great Britain—and in the colonial Americas. Black resistance was the most important of
these factors. Since the 1500s Africans and persons of African descent had attempted to free
themselves from slavery by force. Revolts were most common in the West Indies and Brazil,
where the majority of the population was black. But there were also uprisings in Mexico,
Venezuela, and the British colonies in North America.
Maroonage
Until the end of the 18th century, rebellious slaves did not really challenge the institution of
slavery itself. Instead, they simply sought to free themselves from it. While this rebellion
occasionally took the form of slave revolts or uprisings, more frequently slaves tried to free
themselves by escape. Sometimes, especially in the West Indies and Latin America, escaped
slaves formed maroon communities. These settlements were located in inaccessible areas, to
prevent recapture by the authorities, and were usually heavily fortified. Maroon communities,
many of which endured for years or decades, became havens for escaped slaves and bases for
attacks on plantations and passersby. In a way, these communities encouraged antislavery
sentiment among whites: The inability of local authorities to recapture escaped slaves and the
periodic violent raids by members of maroon communities made some whites disturbingly aware
of their vulnerability in a slave society. In addition, whites became more aware of the inherent
cruelty of slavery because slaves were willing to risk severe punishment and even death to
escape from their masters or to rise up against them. If slaves had submitted meekly to their
masters, slavery would not have been perceived to be oppressive and sinful.
The Quakers
The first whites to denounce slavery in Europe and the European colonies were members of the
Society of Friends—commonly known as Quakers. Unlike the prevailing idea of the time that
blacks were inferior to whites, Quakers believed that all people, regardless of race, had a divine
spark inside them and were equal in the eyes of God. These beliefs led them in the mid-18th
century to take steps against slavery in Great Britain and the British colonies in North America.
The first goal of the Quaker abolitionists was to end slave trading among fellow Quakers
because the barbarity of the buying and selling of slaves was more obvious than that of the
institution of slavery as a whole. It was also generally assumed that if the slave trade was
abolished slavery itself would soon cease to exist. After slave trading among Friends had been
stopped, during the 1760s Quaker congregations began expelling slaveholders. Under the
influence of Quakers in the American colonies, British Quakers established Britain's first
antislavery society, the London Committee to Abolish the Slave Trade, in 1783.
Revolutionary Ideas
In the late 18th century an age of revolution began to bring ideas about equal rights to the
forefront, ideas that became a powerful force against slavery in the Atlantic world. In the past,
servitude and slavery had been taken for granted as part of a class system where the rich
dominated the poor and those of the lower classes were prevented from social advancement.
But the Industrial Revolution, which brought increased economic opportunity and power to the
lower and middle classes, began to undermine this system. Also, an 18th-century European
intellectual movement known as the Age of Enlightenment asserted that all human beings had
natural rights. The American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799),
widely seen as revolutions by citizens against oppressive rulers, transformed this Enlightenment
assertion into a call for universal liberty and freedom.
The successful slave revolt that began in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791 was part
of this revolutionary age. Led by François Dominique Toussaint-L'Ouverture, black rebels
overthrew the colonial government, ended slavery in the colony, and in 1804 established the
republic of Haiti, the first independent black republic in the world (see Haitian Slave Revolt). The
revolt frightened slaveholders everywhere, inspired other slaves and free blacks to action, and
convinced religiously motivated whites that only peaceful emancipation could prevent more
bloodshed.
IV. Abolitionism in Europe and the European Colonies
Eighteenth Century
In Europe, Great Britain had the strongest abolitionist movement. The major turning point in its
development came in 1787 when Evangelical Christians (see Evangelicalism) joined Quakers in
establishing the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Led by William Wilberforce, an
Evangelical member of the British Parliament, and Thomas Clarkson, a Quaker skilled in mass
organization, the society initiated petition drives, mass propaganda efforts, and lobbying in an
attempt to end British involvement in slave trafficking. Although opposed by English merchants,
West Indian planters, and King George III—who equated abolitionism with political radicalism—
the society nevertheless managed to achieve its goal. In 1807 the British Parliament abolished
the slave trade and the British, through diplomacy and the creation of a naval squadron to patrol
the West African coast, began forcing other European nations to give up the trade as well.
Abolitionism fared less well in continental Europe in the 18th century. Antislavery societies in
continental Europe were narrow, ineffective, elitist organizations. In France, Jacques Pierre
Brissot, a supporter of the French Revolution, established the Société des Amis des Noirs
(Society of the Friends of Blacks) in 1788, but this group failed in its effort against the slave
trade. Despite its complete lack of success, the French antislavery effort was the strongest in
continental Europe.
Nineteenth Century
During the 19th century British abolitionism became more radical. Wilberforce, Clarkson, and
their associates had assumed that ending the slave trade would lead directly to general
emancipation (freeing of all slaves). When it became clear that this would not happen, Clarkson
joined with Thomas Fowell Buxton in 1823 to form the British Anti-Slavery Society, which at first
advocated a gradual abolition of slavery. However, when West Indian planters refused to make
concessions, the abolitionists hardened their stance, and by the late 1820s abolitionists were
demanding immediate slave emancipation. The great pressure they exerted, combined with
continuing slave unrest, led Parliament to pass the Emancipation Act in 1833. This enacted
gradual, compensated emancipation, which meant that slaves were freed but were forced to
work for their former masters for a period to compensate them for monetary loss. By 1838 all
slaves in the British Empire were free. Thereafter, British abolitionism fragmented into efforts
against the illegal slave trade, slavery in Africa, and slavery in the United States. During the
19th century abolitionist societies in other European countries were far less significant than
abolitionist societies in Britain. British abolitionists influenced The Netherlands and especially
France, where they inspired the creation of Société Française pour l'Abolition de l'Esclavage
(French Society for the Abolition of Slavery) in 1834. This tiny organization had some success in
lobbying the French government. However, it was the overthrow of the French monarchy and
the establishment of a republic in February 1848, followed three months later by a major slave
revolt in the French colony of Martinique in the Caribbean, that led to the emancipation of all
slaves within the French empire in 1848.
In a similar manner, a domestic revolution and colonial unrest led Spain to abolish slavery in its
colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba, in 1873 and 1886 respectively. Earlier, negotiations between
government officials and planters had produced emancipation in the Swedish (1847), Danish
(1848), and Dutch (1863) colonies in the West Indies.
V. Abolitionism in the United States: Early Movements
Abolitionism in the British colonies in North America developed within the broader Atlantic
antislavery movement. But, unlike the case in Europe, slavery was a domestic institution in the
United States and was primarily under local (state) control. In addition, slaveholders often
dominated the country's national government.
As elsewhere, black slaves in colonial America encouraged abolitionism by seeking to free
themselves. Although maroon settlements like those in the Caribbean existed in colonial
America, they were much smaller and less widespread. Slave rebellions, however, were
frequent. A major uprising took place in New York City in 1712, when black and Native
American slaves killed nine whites and wounded seven more. In 1739 a much larger rebellion
took place near Charleston, South Carolina. About one hundred slaves marched along the
Stono River, destroying plantations and killing a few whites. Slaveholders with the aid of Native
Americans put down the rebellion, killing 44 of the rebels.
American Quakers, like their British counterparts, responded to these uprisings by advocating
gradual abolition. By the 1740s Quaker abolitionists John Woolman and Anthony Benezet were
urging other Quakers to cease their involvement in the slave trade and to break all connections
with slavery. It was not until the American Revolution began in 1775, however, that abolitionism
spread beyond the Society of Friends.
Revolutionary Abolitionism
The American Revolution invigorated the abolitionist movement. It became difficult for white
Americans, who had fought for independence from Britain in the name of liberty and universal
natural rights, to justify the continuation of slavery. These ideas, black service in American
armies during the revolution, black abolitionist petitions for emancipation, and the actions of
white antislavery societies, motivated all of the Northern states by 1804 either to end slavery
within their borders or to provide for its gradual abolition. In 1787 Congress had banned slavery
in the Northwest Territory (a region comprising the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota, ceded to the United States by the
British after the American Revolution). Also, during the 1780s and 1790s large numbers of
slaveholders in the Southern states of Maryland and Virginia freed their slaves.
Despite these early successes, by the mid-1780s the revolutionary abolitionist movement was in
decline. Beyond the freeing of slaves in Maryland and Virginia, the movement had a negative
impact on the South, where the large majority of American slaves lived. The Haitian Slave
Revolt in 1791 and an aborted revolt conspiracy led by the slave Gabriel in Virginia in 1800
convinced Southern whites—who feared they could not control free blacks—that the slave
system had to be strengthened rather than abolished. Meanwhile, the growth of the cotton
industry, fueled by the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, made slavery a vital
part of both the Southern and the national economies. At the same time, the development of
scientific racism, the idea that blacks were biologically inferior to whites and were intellectually
and morally incapable of self-government, encouraged state and national legislation that limited
the rights of free blacks.
The Colonization Movement
This deteriorating situation made schemes to colonize black Americans in Africa, Haiti, and
other locations beyond the borders of the United States attractive to whites and—in the
beginning at least—to substantial numbers of blacks. Massachusetts Quaker Paul Cuffe
became the most prominent black advocate of migration to West Africa. Despite early
enthusiasm, by the 1810s most African Americans questioned the justice of mass expatriation,
coming to the conclusion that it was less a movement to emancipate slaves than an attempt to
rid America of its free blacks.
In contrast, white abolitionists during these years supported the program of the American
Colonization Society (ACS), a group established in 1816 in Washington, D.C., by such
prominent slaveholders as Henry Clay and Francis Scott Key. This organization proposed to
abolish slavery gradually in the United States and relieve white fear of free blacks by
transporting emancipated slaves to West Africa and giving them their own country. Five years
after its founding, the ACS purchased land for a colony in West Africa and began transporting
African Americans there. Named Liberia, the colony would eventually become the destination
for more than 12,000 African Americans. Faced with increasing black opposition and the
insurmountable logistical difficulties involved in transporting an exponentially rising American
slave population to Africa, the ACS had no chance for success. As these shortcomings became
clear during the late 1820s, Northern abolitionists formed a more radical movement.
VI. Abolitionism in the United States: Later Movements
Two factors account for the radicalization of American abolitionism during the late 1820s and
early 1830s. First, the growing agitation of black abolitionists and signs of black unrest in the
South inspired urgency among white abolitionists, who feared that maintaining slavery would
lead to more violence. In 1822 free black Denmark Vesey unsuccessfully conspired to lead a
massive slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina; in 1829 David Walker of Boston published
his inflammatory Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World; and in 1831 Nat Turner launched
a short-lived but bloody slave uprising in Virginia.
Second, a wave of evangelical revivalism called the Second Great Awakening inspired a reform
spirit in the North. The revivalists argued that America was in need of moral regeneration by
dedicated Christians. They channeled their fervor into a series of reforms designed to eliminate
evils in American society. These reforms included women's rights, temperance, educational
improvements, humane treatment for the mentally ill, and the abolition of slavery. Although not
all revivalists were abolitionists, during the mid-19th century the abolitionist movement acquired
a new urgency and energy because of their support.
These two developments influenced the extraordinary career of William Lloyd Garrison, a white
New Englander who became the leading American abolitionist. Garrison began publishing a
weekly abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator in 1831. In 1833 Garrison, convinced that
slavery was a sin and hoping to avoid more violence, brought together Quaker abolitionists,
evangelical abolitionists, and his New England associates to form the American Anti-Slavery
Society (AASS). It aimed at immediate, uncompensated emancipation and equal rights for
blacks. Among early leaders of the AASS were white abolitionists such as Arthur and Lewis
Tappan, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Theodore Weld, and Lydia Maria Child, and black abolitionists
such as James Forten and Robert Purvis.
Although the so-called immediate abolitionists were never more than a tiny minority of
Americans, the AASS spread rapidly across the North. By 1838 the society claimed 1,350
affiliates and 250,000 members. It employed speakers, sent petitions to the U.S. Congress, and
mailed abolitionist propaganda into the South. These efforts produced a fierce reaction. North
and South, angry white mobs opposed changes in race relations. Southern postmasters refused
to deliver antislavery literature, and in 1835 President Andrew Jackson unsuccessfully
petitioned Congress to ban the mailing of abolitionist pamphlets. The following year, the House
of Representatives passed the gag rule (see Gag Rules), which banned the introduction of
abolitionist petitions in that body. In 1837 abolitionist newspaper publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy was
killed in Illinois while trying to protect his printing press from a mob.
By the late 1830s, the AASS also faced internal division. Fierce resistance to abolitionism
convinced Garrison and his associates that the entire nation—not just the South—had to be
cleansed of oppression. In addition to their abolitionist activities, so-called Garrisonians became
advocates of women's rights, denounced organized religion as proslavery, and condemned all
governments for their use of force. It was sinful, Garrisonians contended, to vote or to hold
office. Other abolitionists had a more traditional view of women, hoped to get the churches to
join the abolitionist cause, sought to engage in politics, and were not entirely opposed to using
violent means. The result was the fracturing of the AASS. While the Garrisonians retained
control of a much-reduced version of that organization, two new groups emerged. In 1840 Lewis
Tappan led evangelical abolitionists of both races in forming the American and Foreign Anti-
Slavery Society to foster abolitionism in the nation's churches. The same year, other nonGarrisonians formed the Liberty Party to nominate abolitionist candidates for public office. The
Liberty abolitionists were themselves divided into two factions. The radical political abolitionists
of western New York, under the leadership of Gerrit Smith, declared slavery to be illegal
everywhere and urged Northerners to go to the South to help slaves escape. A more numerous
Liberty group, centered in Cincinnati, rejected these provocative tactics. It contended that
Northerners must concentrate on ending slavery where Congress had jurisdiction—in the
territories and the District of Columbia—while encouraging the formation of abolitionist political
parties in the Southern states.
The Underground Railroad
It was the radical political abolitionists who were most attractive to prominent black leaders,
including former slaves Henry Highland Garnet and—by 1851— Frederick Douglass. Garnet
and Douglass worked closely with the radicals, especially in their support for the Underground
Railroad—the collective name for a variety of regional semisecret networks that helped slaves
escape into the North and Canada. Many other blacks and whites joined in such work, among
the more famous were Charles T. Torrey, a white Northerner who helped slaves escape from
Virginia and Maryland; John Rankin of Ohio, a white man who sheltered slaves escaping from
Kentucky; and Harriet Tubman, a former slave who led bands of escapees northward from
Maryland.
The Underground Railroad probably aided around 1,000 slaves per year in escaping. Its
success helped raise awareness in the North about slavery and pushed supporters of slavery
into defensive measures that contributed to worsening relations between North and South. One
of these measures was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which made it a crime to help slaves
escape and made it easier for masters to reclaim escapees.
Territorial Disputes
The annexation to the United States of the slaveholding state of Texas in 1845 and of the
Mexican provinces of California and New Mexico in 1848 led to an irrevocable division between
North and South. The question of the extension of slavery into new territories, not abolition itself,
became the most prominent issue and in 1848 led most Liberty abolitionists to merge into the
larger Free-Soil Party, which opposed the extension. In 1854 the opening of Kansas Territory to
slavery led to the formation of the even larger Republican Party as the defender of Northern
antislavery interests. Although overshadowed by political developments, abolitionists remained
active. In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe, the daughter of a Connecticut clergyman, published
Uncle Tom's Cabin, a forceful indictment of slavery. The book quickly became one of the most
popular works of the time, and it was important in spreading antislavery sentiment in the North.
At the same time, black and white abolitionists violently resisted enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave Law. When fighting broke out between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas,
abolitionists helped arm the latter group. Most of them became convinced that slavery could not
be abolished peacefully. Acting on this belief, white abolitionist John Brown led a tiny biracial
band in a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in October 1859, hoping to spark
a slave rebellion. Although Virginia militia and United States troops easily thwarted his plan,
Brown's actions and his subsequent trial and execution aroused great sympathy in the North.
Along with the victory of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Brown's
raid and the Northern reaction to it convinced Southern whites that their proslavery interests
were no longer secure within the United States.
The Civil War and Emancipation
During the months following Lincoln's election, most of the slaveholding states seceded from the
Union and formed the Confederate States of America. As the American Civil War began in April
1861, President Lincoln aimed only to return those states to the Union. From the start of the
war, however, abolitionists pressured him not only to make abolition an objective of the war but
to enlist black troops as well. Military necessity had the most influence on Lincoln's actions, but
abolitionist efforts contributed to his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, which
declared the freedom of slaves within the bounds of the Confederacy. Meanwhile, Southern
slaves used the war as an opportunity to leave their masters in large numbers. Over 180,000
black men—most of them former slaves—served in the Union Army, which had conquered the
South by the spring of 1865. The Northern victory and continuing abolitionist agitation led in
December 1865 to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, which banned involuntary servitude throughout the country. With that achievement, the
American abolitionist movement disintegrated, allowing white southerners to replace slavery
with a caste system that persisted for decades. Although technically free, the great majority of
black southerners remained impoverished agricultural workers well into the 20th century. They
faced systematic segregation, inadequate schools, political disenfranchisement, and lynching.
VII. Abolitionism in Latin America
In addition to the Caribbean island colonies of European nations and the United States, slavery
existed throughout Latin America. Local circumstances varied widely in this vast region. Except
in Brazil, formal abolitionist movements played a minor role in the emancipation of blacks.
Instead, a variety of circumstances gradually pushed slavery toward extinction.
The Former Spanish Colonies
There were 1.5 million slaves in Brazil—a former Portuguese colony—in 1870, but otherwise
slave populations in independent Latin American countries never approached the numbers of
those in Caribbean colonies or in the United States. There were only 3,000 people to be freed in
Mexico in 1823 when that country abolished slavery and only 13,000 in Venezuela when it
abolished the institution in 1854. These small numbers reflected a gradual decline in the
profitability of slave labor and a corresponding decline in the political influence of slaveholders.
This decline was a result of changing economic ideas, as well as the introduction of cheap labor
in the form of contract workers from China. All of these circumstances contrasted with those in
the United States and the Caribbean colonies.
Several other factors contributed to the decline of slavery in Latin America. As elsewhere, black
resistance to enslavement played an important role. Escape, maroon settlements, and rebellion
all weakened Latin American slavery. Unlike in the United States, the slave population in Latin
America had never sustained itself through natural reproduction, so the abolition of the Atlantic
slave trade struck a telling blow. Other important factors were the new ideas of equality arising
from the Age of Enlightenment and the revolutions of the late 18th century. During the early 19th
century, such revolutionaries as Simón Bolívar fought for independence from Spain for the
region's Spanish colonies and endorsed universal freedom. The independent governments they
created either weakened slavery or abolished it entirely. Chile and Mexico in 1823 and the
United Provinces of Central America in 1824 abolished slavery as a direct result of their
independence movements. Economic and political forces led Uruguay in 1842, Bolivia and
Colombia in 1851, Ecuador in 1852, Argentina in 1853, and Peru and Venezuela in 1854 to
terminate the institution. When Brazilian troops invaded and occupied Paraguay in the 1860s at
the end of the War of the Triple Alliance, the government they established abolished slavery.
Since by then the United States had also abolished slavery, this left Brazil as the only
independent slaveholding nation in the western hemisphere.
Brazil
Although it started at a later date, the Brazilian struggle for abolition had more in common with
the British and American movements than with the movements in other Latin American
countries. In Brazil politically powerful sugar and coffee planters staunchly defended slave labor,
while abolitionists established organizations to achieve their goals. It was emancipation in the
United States that inspired a determined Brazilian antislavery movement. In 1868 Joaquim
Nabuco, Rui Barbosa, and former slave Luis Gama led an effort that prodded the Brazilian
government to undertake gradual abolition. In 1871 legislation was passed that called for freeing
the children of slaves. However, the process began to stall in the late 1870s, leading Nabuco to
organize the Sociedade Brasileira contra a Escravidão (Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society) in 1880,
which secured the emancipation of elderly slaves after 1885. The society grew into an
increasingly radical movement, and by 1888 unrest on plantations and the refusal of the army to
step in to halt the flight of slaves from their masters brought the slave system to the brink of
chaos. This resulted in the total abolition of slavery in Brazil later that year.
VIII. Significance and Legacy
With emancipation in Brazil, legal slavery disappeared from the western hemisphere, although it
lingered in Africa into the 20th century. The abolition of slavery also did not end comparable
systems of labor exploitation, such as contract labor, sharecropping, child labor, and
sweatshops. Nor did abolitionism succeed in ending racism or in establishing equal political and
social rights for people of African descent in the Americas. Nevertheless, in the United States,
the various European empires, and the independent states of Latin America, abolitionism
destroyed human bondage as an acceptable institution. It established equal rights principles
that have outlasted post-emancipation efforts by former slaveholders to create caste systems,
and provided a basis for more recent efforts countering racial segregation and supporting racial
justice.
Contributed By: Stanley Harrold, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Professor of History, South Carolina State
University. Author of The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861, Gamaliel Bailey and
Antislavery Union, and other books. See an outline for this article. Further Reading HOW TO
CITE THIS ARTICLE "Abolitionist Movement," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000
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