The Abolitionist Movement: The Antislavery Movement

Throughout the history of the United States there have been many reform movements that have molded the culture we live in today. The rights that we as Americans enjoy today can be credited to the people who fought for more rights and a better way of life. Two reform movements that have changed America for the better are the Abolitionist Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. Around the 1820’s the feeling of legal slavery was changing in the United States.

The Abolitionist movement during the Antebellum period, was a critical time in American history. The goal of this movement was to emancipate all slaves immediately, and end discrimination, as well as segregation. The brave men and women involved in this movement were called abolitionists and antislavery advocates. The antislavery advocates stood for freeing slaves gradually, and abolitionists wanted slavery gone immediately. No matter how fast, these people all wanted to spread opposition against slavery across the United States. Northern churches started liking this whole idea of abolishing slavery, which started conflict between the North and South. These arguments led up to the Civil War.

In the editorial, “Why Establish This Paper?”, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, an abolitionist and African American writer, asserts that her newspaper, Provincial Freeman, will give fugitive slaves representation within the new country. Cary validates this claim by establishing a need for a voice, emphasizing a lack of freedom, and confirming a lack of a current voice. Cary empowers and unites fugitive slaves in order to give them a voice. Cary writes to the fugitive slaves of Canada with a didactic yet inspiring tone to establish the necessity of her newspaper, which would give the slaves a new freedom they deserve.

The instant emancipation of slaves and the end of racial discrimination, segregation, and abuse were the goals of the American abolitionist movement. Unlike moderate anti-slavery advocates who pushed or gradual emancipation as well as other activists who argued to restrict slavery to certain areas in hopes to avoid slavery being spread west, the call for immediate emancipation is was set abolitionist apart. This movement was mainly fueled by the religious excitement of the Second Great Awakening. This awakening motivated many people to support the emancipation of slavery. These ideas increasingly became popular in northern churches and even in politics in the 1830s. This also contributed to animosity between the north and the south, leading to the Civil War.

Being an abolitionist was not a popular stance in pre-civil war America. Levi Coffin and his wife were abolitionists who assisted thousands of slaves make their way to freedom threw the Underground Railroad. The Coffins were radical, they risked their own freedom to help strangers have theirs. Levi was middle class white business owner, he had no incentive to speak out against slavery. In contrast to society the Coffins not only opposed slavery, but they took action against it. They begin housing run a way slaves in their own home. This was extremely risky because if they were caught they would be imprisoned and lose all they owned. Once they had a very close encounter with law. When questioned they refused to deny that they had slaves hidden,

These people were known as abolitionists, popular leaders included Charles G. Finney, William L. Garrison, and Fredrick Douglas. Document 3 features a kneeling black woman whose wrists are bound in chains and she is asking if she is not a woman. It can be interpreted from this document that abolitionists felt that blacks were also people, not property as slave owners felt. Americans were now taking a stand and even succeeded in earning rights for black citizens. The main goal of abolitionists was to end slavery, but they also wanted to prevent slavery spreading into the west. The American Anti-Slavery Society, founded by William L. Garrison in 1833, hung up propaganda opposing slavery to advertise the issues with the mistreatment of blacks. They also signed

The goal of the abolitionist movement was to achieve immediate emancipation for all slaves in the United States and to end the discrimination of African Americans in the United States (Foner, Give Me Liberty 445). Of the many leaders of the abolitionist movement, some of the prominent leaders were David Walker, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Different abolitionists used different methods to achieve their mutual goal of achieving emancipation of all slaves. During a time when slavery was thriving, their idea was regarded by many as completely absurd; but it was this absurd idea that freed the people of America.

Frederick Douglass once said, “No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.” Throughout the history of America his words have proven true seeing that those of African descent have been faced with a tremendous amount of prejudice. Whether that be in terms of the basic rights vital to African americans, or the freedom of expression that should be allotted to every human being. They were subjected to endless economic and social prejudice. While at the same time being refused the decencies all American citizen deserved. But most importantly, African Americans were denied the right to decide how their country was controlled and in turn their “liberty”. These atrocities prove that the reform introduced during the Reconstruction era did little to resolve the problems plaguing African Americans or improve their quality of life.

They [African American abolitionists] reckoned that remaining at home and demonstrating African American capacity for social and economic improvement would discredit charges of racial inferiority and undermine slavery"(pp15-35) (Riply, 1993).

Free blacks, they insisted were a degraded group whose presence posed a danger to white society. Slavery and racism were so deeply embedded in America life that black could never achieve equality if free and allowed to remain in the country. African American adamantly opposed the idea of colonization, galvanized free black to claim their rights as American resolutions insisted that blacks were American same freedom and right enjoyed by whites, by removed the word “African” from their name to eliminate a possible reason for not being deported from the land of their birth. ( chapter 12, page,

The Freedom’s Journal was the very first newspaper runned and owned by two free born African Americans, Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, in the United States. It was found on March 16, 1827, the same year that slavery was abolished in New York City. This weekly four page, four column paper was started by a group of free African Americans in New York City and its purpose was to go against the racist articles in the main newspaper and to let its reader know news from all over the world while also entertaining them and educating them. This journal was not just a place of news but they also tried to inspire their readers by publishing biographies of black figures, they tried to better their readers by having a column for job listings African American people can apply to, and they advocated for the basic rights for African Americans like voting, political rights, and to stop the lynching. The columns and articles that were written were so popular and well liked that the newspaper began to circulate in eleven different states in the United States, Europe, Canada, the District of Columbia, and Haiti,

Abolitionism is the act or action of abolishing a system, practice, or institution. The movement that is referred to as the Abolitionist Movement, was a movement that was formed to eliminate slavery completely. The early movement, that took place between 1770 and 1830, focused on eliminating the African Slave Trade. The early abolitionist believed they would be able to eliminate slavery altogether if they could eliminate the slave trade.

This essay seeks to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the abolitionist perspectives in the Singaporean context. The critique of abolitionism in this essay is targeted at specific elements of the criminal justice system. Four common themes of the abolitionist perspectives will be applied to the Singaporean case: domestic violence, interactions with youth crime, discretionary capital punishment, and racialization of imprisonment. The value of the abolitionists argument stems from the criticism made to hegemonies about penal institutions, practices, and processes. Discretionary capital punishment presents itself as the most compelling argument for abolitionism in this respect.

The Civil War was one of the biggest wars and with it being one of the biggest wars it had the most U.S. casualties. Most people thought that the war was fought over the issue of slavery. Then there are others that think that the war was fought about States’ Rights, and I believe that slavery was the reason why the war actually started.

The United States of America is known for its claims of democracy, equality, and freedom for all of it’s citizens. These claims are the foundation of America’s independence and essentially its entire history. But “claims” are simply all they were in history. While many achieved equal democracy and freedom, the African-American population of the US was exempt from these “inalienable rights” and heavily oppressed by society. The cruelty of slavery and oppression as a whole reached its peak in the 19th century bringing upon the abolitionist movement, which eventually aided in the historic removal of slavery and the continued fight for equal right of citizenship for African-Americans. Of the many abolitionists who fought for