Walker’s Appeal (1829)

 

“Most notorious document in American history” that had called for violent revolt against slave masters

 

Frightened Southerners and Northerners as “gradual abolition” was still practiced in the North until 1847

 

Robert A. Young, Ethiopian Manifesto (1829)

 

Less militant than Walker, but invoked religious themes; supported universal freedom

 

Frederick Douglass (pictured left)

 

Became hugely popular orator

 

Used his newspaper to recount the horrors of enslavement

 

Black Abolitionists

 

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Anti-slavery societies

 

Approximately 50 black-controlled organizations by 1825

 

Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society

 

Robert Purvis, President

 

Philadelphia Vigilance Committee

 

Massachusetts General Colored Association

 

Maria Stewart, member

 

1830—1st American anti-slavery convention

 

Black-controlled and operated

 

Visible and active in interracial societies

 

1833—American Anti-Slavery Society

 

African Americans led in fundraising, promoting and organizing for abolition

 

VERY classist—most visible people were elite and middle class black Northerners

 

Made a difference in the co-ed quality of the movement, too

 

Organizers and Activists

 

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Controversial Women: Black Femininity and Abolition

 

“Cult of Domesticity”

 

The Home: a virtuous safe haven free from the dirtiness of politics and business that was “men’s work”

 

Women were responsible for keeping the home, for morality and early childhood education

 

This is how the temperance movement started—to keep vice out of homes!

 

Working-class women DO NOT enjoy this idealized style of women’s roles

 

“Cult of Domesticity” is a middle and upper class white province

 

Educated women, married to professional men

 

Middle and upper class BLACK women also espoused these “traditional” values as seen in their reform and welfare work!

 

ABOLITION is an extension of the “Cult of Domesticity” because it dealt with social welfare!!!

 

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Black Femininity and Activism

 

Black Feminists, Black Abolitionists

 

Maria Stewart

 

Public Speaker, Organizer

 

Criticized middle class black men for not doing more to help women; criticized working-class black people for social shortcomings

 

Mary Ann Shad

 

Journalist, editor

 

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

 

Intellectual, writer

 

Sojourner Truth

 

Freed woman, public speaker—the exception to these middle and upper class women

 

“Ain’t I a Woman?” speech reflected how white Americans dismissed black womanhood and challenged who had the right to be called “woman”

 

Black women were largely invisible in the antebellum feminist movement because white feminists splintered over the issues of abolition and possibility of all black men getting the vote over any women

 

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Spreading the Gospel–Print Culture

 

All abolitionists used newspapers, pamphlets and writing to spread the message of immediate freedom across the nation

 

The Colored American, The North Star

 

John Brown Russwurm

 

Colonization supporter; point of contention among African American intellectuals

 

Founder of Freedom’s Journal

 

1st black-owned/operated paper

 

Published David Walker’s Appeal

 

1831—considered real beginning of 2nd abolitionist movement

 

2nd Great Awakening

 

Bible became number one tool of abolitionists to argue against slavery on moral principles

 

Abolitionist mail campaign

 

Terrified Southerners who did not want enslaved people to know of abolition through the “Grapevine”

 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

 

Published in 1851; most important piece of abolitionists literature in American history

 

National Politics

 

Fugitive Slave Act (1793)

 

Federal law—Northerners must return “lost property” to Southerners

 

Irony—”suspects” brought before judges to confirm identity

 

Late 1830s—free states argue full courts are necessary for this process

 

More irony—do this under the mantra of “states’ rights”

 

Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842)—fugitive slaves win right to jury trial in federal courts, not state courts

 

Assorted Crises

 

Underground Railroad!

 

TEXAS

 

1845—secedes from Mexico to join US as slave state

 

1848—Mexican-American War

 

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (CA)

 

Wilmont Proviso

 

Rep. David Wilmont (PA)—legislation banned slavery in all lands acquired from Mexico

 

Between 1848 and 1861:

 

Five free states enter the Union with NO enslaved counterparts

 

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1848

 

Wow

 

Such Year

 

Very Panic

 

Anti-Slavery?

 

Much Expansion

 

Such No

 

Southern Paranoid?

 

What Mexico

 

Guadalupe Hidalgo?

 

Northern Scream

 

Wow

 

Very Loud

 

All the States

 

Wilmont Proviso?

 

White Progressives

 

Approximately 200K white Northerners belonged to anti-slavery societies

 

Not as big a number as it seems; 200K of 14 million Northerners

 

Abolition was NEVER popular in the North

 

National white supremacy, remember?

 

Working-class whites feared job and land competition from African Americans

 

Still….some important white progressives!

 

William Lloyd Garrison

 

Editor of The Liberator, BFF to Frederick Douglass

 

RADICAL abolitionist and FEMINIST

 

James Birney

 

Kentuckian, former slave holder

 

Liberty Party presidential nominee (1840)

 

Sarah and Angelina Grimké (pictured)

 

Daughters of South Carolina planters

 

Became abolitionists after witnessing slavery first hand

 

Became ardent Quakers and feminists

 

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By 1848, the entire nation cares about enslavement, actually.

 

Racism in the North

 

Widespread among elite and working-class whites

 

Very few progressives; abolitionists are the social minority

 

But…EXPANSIONISM makes white Northerners very anti-slavery

 

“Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”—becomes mantra of working-class white Northerners

 

Millions of white, working-class Northern men resented their job opportunities and land opportunities being threatened by slavery and by freed African Americans in newly acquired western land as well as at home

 

Southerners had legitimate fears that their economic livelihoods were being challenged on all fronts.

 

Who Cares?

 



 

Pro-Slavery Arguments: A Variety of Excuses

 

Scientific Darwinism—strongest intellectual defense by whites for slavery

 

Black intellectuals combat this by celebrating their own intellectual and social achievements

 

Pro-slavery advocates stated the institution was necessary for white civilization & economic gain

 

Planters argued that slavery was a “positive good” for black people because all of their needs were “cared for”

 

Social moderates said African-descent people had “always” been subordinate to whites

 

Religious people argued that the “Curse of Ham” was reason enough to keep black Americans enslaved (recall David Brion Davis’ book!)

 

All of these arguments reflected Southern fears that the nation was challenging the institution in a way that had never been done before; until now most Americans had accepted that slavery was necessary to the economy

 

Pro-Slavery Backlash

 



 

South v. North

 

The entire South became openly hostile to anti-slavery/abolitionist rhetoric

 

“The Crackers”: Poor White Southerners and Social Paradox

 

Poor whites did not want to lose their social position as “not slaves” in the Southern social order

 

ALSO—did not want to face job competition from freed people; poor Southern whites shared this with working-class white Northerners

 

The Second Great Awakening split churches regionally decades before the Civil War

 

1845—First official Southern Baptist Convention held in Richmond, Virginia; Northern Baptists become known as “American Baptists”

 

Southern universities become resolutely pro-slavery

 

Ole Miss (1848)—founded as a university and as an example of planter ideology

 

Southerners also violently lashed out against abolitionist rhetoric

 

Bounties on black and white abolitionists

 

Southern abolitionist/anti-slavery sympathizers horribly abused

 

The Grimke sisters were threatened with jail, rape, beatings and death if they ever came home to South Carolina

 

Underground Railroad

 

Existed since 1819, partly as a response to the Missouri Compromise proceedings

 

Operated by black and white “conductors”

 

John Fairfield—son of Virginia slaveholders who smuggled people from the Deep South to Canada

 

Harriet Tubman—former Maryland field hand who made 14 successful trips into the South to help runaways to freedom

 

Across the South, white mobs attacked post offices to seize & burn abolitionist literature

 

Especially narratives written by former enslaved people that disproved the paternalist narrative

 

Southern Hyper-Violence

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