• ​Religious leaders gave speeches and published pamphlets that moved many Americans to support abolition.

• Other abolitionists referred to the Declaration of Independence.

  • They reminded people that the American Revolution had been fought in the name of liberty.

• ​Antislavery reformers did not always agree on the details.

  • They differed over how much equality they thought African Americans should have.

    • Some believed that African Americans should receive the same treatment as white Americans.

    • Other abolitionists were against full political and social equality.

​Spreading the Abolitionist Message

• ​Abolitionists found many ways to further their cause.

  • Some went on speaking tours or wrote pamphlets and newspaper articles.

  • William Lloyd Garrison published an abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.

  • In 1833 he also helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society.

    • Its members wanted immediate emancipation and racial equality for African Americans.

• ​Angelina and Sarah Grimké, two white southern women, were antislavery activists of the 1830s.

• They came from a South Carolina slaveholding family but disagreed with their parents’ support of slavery.

• Angelina Grimké tried to recruit other white southern women in a pamphlet called Appeal to the Christian Women of the South in 1836.

​African American Abolitionist

• ​Many former slaves were active in the antislavery cause.

  • Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery when he was 20 and went on to become one of the most important African American leaders of the 1800s.

  • Douglass secretly learned to read and write as a boy, despite a law against it.

  • He was a great public speaker and gave many speeches opposing slavery.

• ​Another former slave, Sojourner Truth, also contributed to the abolitionist cause.

  • With her deep voice and quick wit, Truth became legendary in the antislavery movement for her fiery and dramatic speeches.

​The Underground Railroad

• ​By the 1830s a group had begun helping slaves escape from the South.

  • Free African Americans, former slaves, and a few white abolitionists worked together.

  • They created what became known as the Underground Railroad.

  • The organization was not an actual railroad but was a network of people who arranged transportation and hiding places for fugitives, or escaped slaves.

• ​The most famous and daring conductor on the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman.

  • Tubman returned to the South 19 times, successfully leading her family and more than 300 other slaves to freedom.