The Abolition Movement

Question 1

American Colonization Society

Answer 1

Brinkley (p. 334)
DEF: In 1817, this group of prominent white Virginians worked carefully to challenge slavery without challenging property rights or southern sensibilities by proposing gradual manumission (or freeing) of slaves, with masters receiving compensation through funds raised by private charity or appropriated by state legislatures. The Society would then transport liberated slaves out of the country and help them to establish a new society of their own elsewhere.
SIG: Although the society received some funding from private donors, Congress, and the legislaturess of Virginia and Maryland, and arranged the shipment of several groups of African Americans to the west coast of Africa–founding the independent nation of Liberia in 1846 with the capital of Monrovia–, the ACS was essentially a negligible force. No amount of funding would have been sufficient to transport the majority of slaves in America, not to mention the resistance the movement met from African Americans themselves, many of whom were now three or more generations from Africa and had no wish to move to a land of which they knew almost nothing.

Question 2

William Lloyd Garrison

Answer 2

Brinkley (p. 334)
DEF: Born in Massachusetts in 1805, Garrison held an abhorrence toward slavery and so founded his own weekly newspaper, the Liberator, in Boston. Garrison also helped found the American Anti-slavery Society in 1833. Was once seized on the streets of Boston in 1835 when anti-abolitionists threatened to hang him before authorities saved him from death by locking him in jail.
SIG: Garrison’s simple philosphy was genuinely revolutionary. He proposed that opponents of slavery view the institution from the point of view of the black man, not the white slaveowner. They should talk about the damage the system did to Africans rather than the evil influence it had on society. And therefore, they should reject gradualism and demand the immediate, unconditional, universal abolition of slavery. Immediatist. Abolitionist.

Question 3

Liberator

Answer 3

Brinkley (p. 334)
DEF: A weekly newspaper founded by William Lloyd Garrison in Boston in 1831 to convey strong abolitionist ideals which urged the complete and immediate abolition of slavery by extending to African Americans all the rights and privileges of American citizenship which constitute full equality.

Question 4

American Anti-Slavery Society

Answer 4

Brinkley (p. 335)
Princeton Review (p. 115)
DEF: Group founded by William Lloyd Garrison at a convention in Philadelphia in 1833 to support his beliefs. As Garrison's following was rapidly multiplying, membership in the new organizations mushroomed. By 1835, there were more than 400 chapters of the societies; by 1838, there were more than 1,350 chapters, with more than 250,000 members. 
SIG: The rapid growth of Garrison's following demonstrated how the Antislavery sentiment was developing a strength and assertiveness greater than any other point in the Marion's history.

Question 5

Sojourner Truth

Answer 5

Brinkley (p. 336)
Princeton Review (p. 115)
DEF: A freed black woman who, after spending several years involved in a strange religious cult in update New York, emerged as a powerful and eloquent spokeswoman for the abolition of slavery. A prominent black abolitionist and charismatic speaker who campaigned for emancipation and women's rights.

Question 6

Frederick Douglas

Answer 6

Brinkley (p. 336)
Princeton Review (p.115)
DEF: The greatest African American abolitionist of all, and one of the most electrifying orators of his time. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts in 1838, became an outspoken leader of Antislavery sentiment, and spent 2 years lecturing in England, where members of that country's vigorous Antislavery movement lionized him. On his return to the United States in 1846, Douglass purchased his freedom from his Maryland owner and founded an Antislavery newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. He also achieved wide renown for his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), in which he presented a damning picture of slavery.
SIG: Douglass demanded for African Americans not only freedom but full social and economic equality as well. Black abolitionists had been active for years before Douglass emerged as a leader of their cause; they had held their fort national convention in 1830. But with Douglass' leadership, they became a more influential force; and they began, too, to forge alliances with white Antislavery leaders such as Garrison.

Question 7

North Star

Answer 7

Brinkley (p. 336)
Princeton Review (p. 115)
DEF: An Antislavery newspaper founded by the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York.

Question 8

Anti- Abolitionists

Answer 8

Brinkley (p. 336)
To its critics, the abolitionist crusade was a dangerous and frightening threat to the existing social system. The result was an escalating wave of violence directed against abolitionists in the 1830s. This time period saw repeated instances of mob violence.

Question 9

Prudence Crandall

Answer 9

Brinkley (p. 336)
DEF: When she attempted to admit several African American girls to her private school in Connecticut, local citizens had her arrested, threw filth into her well, and forced her to close down the school.
SIG: Part of the Anti-abolitionist movement.

Question 10

Elijah Lovejoy

Answer 10

Brinkley (p. 336)
DEF: The editor of an abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois, was a repeated victim of mob violence. Three times angry whites invaded his offices and mashed his presses. Three times Lovejoy installed new machines and began publishing again. When a mob attacked his office a fourth time, late in 1837, he tried to defend his press. The attackers set fire to the building and, as Lovejoy fled, shot and killed him.
SIG: Victim of the anti-abolitionist movement.

Question 11

Moderate and Extreme Abolitionists

Answer 11

Brinkley (p. 338)
The abolitionist crusade had begun to experience serious internal strains and divisions. One reason was the violence of the anti-abolitionists, which persuaded some members of the movement that a more moderate approach was necessary. Another reason was the growing radicalism of William Lloyd Garrison, who shocked even many of his own allies (including Frederick Douglass) by attacking not only slavery but the government itself.
SIG: From 1840 on, therefore, abolitionism moved in many channels and spoke with many different voices. The Garrisonians remained influential, with their uncompromising moral stance. Others operated in more moderate ways, arguing that abolition could be accomplished only as a result of a long, patient, peaceful struggle.

Question 12

Amistad Case

Answer 12

Brinkley (p. 339)
DEF: Africans destined for slavery in Cuba had seized the Spanish slave vessel Amistad from its crew in 1839 and tried to return it to Africa. The U.S. Navy had seized the ship and held the Africans as pirates. But with abolitionist support, legal efforts to declare the Africans free (because the international slave trade had been illegal in the United States since 1808) finally reached the Supreme Court, where the Antislavery position was argued for by former president John Quincy Adams. The court declared the Africans free in 1842, and Antislavery groups funded their passage back to Africa.

Question 13

Prigg vs. Pennsylvania (1842)

Answer 13

Brinkley (p. 339)
DEF: The Supreme Court ruled that states need not aid in enforcing the 1793 law requiring the return of fugitive slaves to their owners, abolitionists secured the passage of “personal liberty laws” in several northern states. These laws forbade state officials to assist in the capture and return of runaways.

Question 14

Political Abolitionism

Answer 14

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: The Antislavery societies petitioned Congress to abolish slavery in places where the federal government had jurisdiction–in the territories and in the District of Columbia– and to prohibit the interstate slave trade. However, few members of Congress could constitutionally interfere with a domestic institution such as slavery within the individual states themselves. Although the abolitionists engaged in pressure politics, they never actually formed a political party.
SIG: The frustrations of political abolitionism drove some critics of slavery to embrace more drastic measures.

Question 15

Liberty Party

Answer 15

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: The formation of which in 1840 saw Antislavery sentiment as an underlying factor when it offered the Kentucky Antislavery leader James G. Birney the position as its presidential candidate.
SIG: But this party, and it’s successors, never campaigned for outright abolition (an illustration of the important fact that Antislavery and abolition were not always the same thing). They stood instead for “free soil”, for keeping slavery out of the territories. Some free-soilers were concerned about the welfare of African-Americans; others cared nothing about the slaves but simply wanted to keep the West a country for whites. Garrison dismissed free-socialism as “whitemanism.” But the free-soil position would ultimately do what abolitionism never could accomplish: attract the support of large numbers, even a majority, of the white population of the North.

Question 16

John Brown

Answer 16

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: A few frustrated political abolitionists began to advocate violence, so a group of prominent abolitionists in New England, for example, funneled money and arms to John Brown to enable bloody uprisings in Kansas and Virginia.

Question 17

Theodore Dwight Weld

Answer 17

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: Other frustrated abolitionists attempted to arouse widespread public anger through propaganda. This co-author of of American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839) presented an abolitionist description of slavery in what the authors claimed were careful, factual pictures of slavery, but what were in fact highly polemical, often wildly distorted images.

Question 18

Angelina Grimke

Answer 18

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: Other frustrated abolitionists attempted to arouse widespread public anger through propaganda. This co-author of of American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839) presented an abolitionist description of slavery in what the authors claimed were careful, factual pictures of slavery, but what were in fact highly polemical, often wildly distorted images.

Question 19

American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses

Answer 19

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: An abolitionist description of slavery, written by Theodore Dwight Weld and Angelina Grimke in 1838, which presented what the authors claimed were careful, factual pictures of slavery, but what were in fact highly polemical, often wildly distorted images.

Question 20

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Answer 20

Brinkley (p. 340)

DEF: Author of the most powerful document of abolitionist propaganda, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Question 21

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Answer 21

Brinkley (p. 340)
DEF: The most powerful document of abolitionist propaganda, however, was a work of fiction. Written by Harriet Beacher Stowe, the novel appeared first, in 1851-1852, as a serial in an Antislavery weekly. Then, in 1852, it was published as a book. It rocked the nation, selling more than 300,000 copies within a year of publication, and was later issued again and again to become one of the most remarkable best-sellers in American history.
SIG: Stowe’d novel emerged not just out of abolitionist politics, but also out of a popular tradition of sentimental novels written by, and largely for, women. Stowe combined the emotional conventions of the sentimental novel with the political ideas of the abolition movement, and to sensational effect. Her novel, by embedding the Antislavery message within a familiar and popular literary form, succeeded in bringing the message of abolitionism to an enormous new audience–not only those who read the book but also those who watched dramatizations of its story by countless theatre companies throughout the nation. The novel’s emotional portrayal of good, kindly slaves victimized by a cruel system; of the loyal, trusting Uncle Tom; of the vicious overseer Simon Legree (described as a New Englander so as to prevent the book from seeming to be an attack on southern whites); of the escape of the beautiful Eliza; of the heart-rending death of Little Eva–all became a part of American popular legend. Reviled throughout the South, Stowe became a hero to many in the North. And in both regions, her novel helped to inflame sectional tensions to a new level of passion. Few books in American history have had so great an impact on the course of public events.

Question 22

David Walker

Answer 22

Brinkley (p. 335)
DEF: One of the most militant and important African American leaders who expressed the aspirations of his race. A free black from Boston, who in 1829 published a harsh pamphlet: Walker’s Appeal… to the Colored Citizens. In it he declared that America belonged to the blacks who had worked hard to produce the success of the great nation, and even urged a violent revolt of all slaves against their masters.

Question 23

Harriet Tubman

Answer 23

Princeton Review (p.115)
A prominent black abolitionist who escaped slavery and then returned to the South repeatedly to help more than 300 slaves escape via the Underground Railroad. (a network of hiding places and "safe" trails)