Americans Oppose Slavery

• Abolitionist movement: worked to end slavery

  • Not all anti-slavery reformers agreed on the details, they all agreed

  • The Quakers were amongst the first to to challenge slavery

  • Other religious leaders made speeches and wrote pamphlets

  • Declaration of Independence supported the movement- American Revolution had been fought in the name of liberty

Abolitionists

• William Lloyd Garrison: abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator he also helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society: wanted immediate emancipation and racial equality for African Americans.

• Angelina and Sarah Grimke: southern white women who wrote Appeal to the Christian Women of the South and Slavery As It Is which was one of the more important antislavery works of the time

African American Abolitionists

• Frederick Douglass: escaped from slavery, famous speaker, activist, and anti-slavery writer of the Abolition movement

• Sojourner Truth: a former slave who became famous for her fiery and dramatic anti-slavery speeches

• Harriet Tubman:​ a courageous conductor of the underground railroad, a network of people who arranged transportation and hiding places for fugitives, or escaped slaves

Oppostition to Ending Slavery

• Although the abolitions movement was centered in the North, there were many who opposed the movement for fear free Africans would take their jobs

• Federal government obstructed abolitionists using the gag rule which forbade members of congress from discussing the anti-slavery petitions.

  • John Quincy Adams overturned this

• Southerners saw slavery as essential to the economy