The Anti-Slavery Movement Essay, Research Paper

Slavery was an event that has been going on for many years. It caused many problems, therefore some people knew it had to be stopped. The Anti-Slavery Movement began during the 1700s in Europe and later on it spread to the United States. In the U.S. there were many abolitionist leaders that were aiming to abolish slavery and some also aimed to give the slaves their rights. Many of those abolitionist leaders formed anti-slavery societies that included people who were against slavery. There was a very important event that happened during the anti-slavery movement. This event is the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass was a very important African-American figure during the anti-slavery movement. The document that ended slavery was the Emancipation Proclamation. Slavery had persisted for many years. It caused protest, rebellion, and social and civil war because many people were against slavery and wanted to end it.

Before the eighteenth century, the Quakers questioned the morality of slavery. Their religion declared that slavery was unfair. In 1775, the Quakers made the first American anti-slavery group. The Quakers led a very strong-held ban against slavery. Many abolitionists were inspired from the Quakers fight against slavery. By the 1830s abolitionism became a major political issue in the U.S. The Quakers began to fight against slavery in the 1600s, and so did the beginning of the anti-slavery movement also known as the abolitionist movement. They debated, made speeches, and preached to many people. 1 Although many Quaker leaders opposed slavery, they owned slaves. In 1780, Pennsylvania passed An Act for the Gradual Abolishment of slavery, and during this time all Quakers became against slavery and they joined the abolishment movement. The abolishment movement began because of the Quaker s involvement in anti-slavery.

The first anti-slavery newspaper was Genius of Universal Emancipation . It was published in 1821 by Benjamin Lundy. Following it, there were many other anti-slavery newspapers that concentrated on the issue of slavery and civil rights. These newspapers are, The Liberator (William Lloyd Garrison and Maria Weston Chapman), The Free Enquirer (Fanny Wright and Robert Dale Owen), The Philanthropist (James Birney), North Star (Frederick Douglass), Freedom’s Journal (Samuel E. Cornish), The Mystery (Martin Robinson Delany), Emancipator and Public Morals and Mirror of Liberty (David Ruggles), Commonwealth (Julia Ward Howe and Samuel Gridley Howe), Colored American (James W. Pennington), St. Louis Observer (Elijah P. Lovejoy), National Anti-Slavery Standard (Lydia Maria Child), Palladium of Liberty (Charles Langston), National Watchman (Henry Highland Garnet), Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter and St. Cloud Visiter (Jane Grey Swisshelm), Cleveland True Democrat and the Aliened American (William Howard Day) and Pennsylvania Freeman (John Greenleaf Whittier). These papers received support from the Anti-Slavery Society. These papers included speeches from republicans, passage from sermons, quotations from slave stories, and reports on anti-slavery meetings. Editors of these newspapers were often attacked and on 7th November, 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed while attempting to protect his printing press from a pro-slavery mob. 2

In 1823 the Anti-Slavery Society which they formed that year, and which superseded the transitional African Institution, was led in the Parliamentary phase of its labors by Thomas Fowell Buxton, wealthy brewer and brother-in-law of Elizabeth Fry, the Quaker prison reformer. 3 In 1831, the first Anti-Slavery Society in New York was formed by Arthur Tappan. The purpose of the Anti-Slavery Society was to abolish slavery on the United States, and improve the mental, moral, and political condition of the colored people . Two years later it became a national organization and Tappan was elected as its first president. The first women to lecture for the Anti-Slavery Society were the two sisters, Angelina Grimke and Sarah Grimke. There were many attacks by religious leaders who did not accept women to speak in public. Later on, many women became very active in the Anti-Slavery Society. The Anti-Slavery Society organised meetings, arranged the signing of petitions, printed and distributed anti-slavery propaganda and employed people to go on lecture tours of the United States. 4 The society had 250,000 members by 1840, and it also published 20 journals and 2,000 local chapters. After passing the 14th Amendment and the Reconstruction Acts in 1867, the Anti-Slavery Society had ended.

The Underground Railroad was a system in which escaped slaves from the South were helped on their way to the North. It began in 1787 by Isaac T. Hopper who is a Quaker that began to organize a system for hiding and helping fugitive slaves. John Parker, a fugitive slave who had escaped from Kentucky and settled in Ripley, Ohio. Once free, he became an inventor, industrialist and foundry owner. He was also an abolitionist and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. 5 In 1850 about 3000 people were working on the Underground Railroad. By the 19th century about over 50000 slaves had escaped from the South using the Underground Railroad. In 1850, plantation owners persuaded the Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Act. This act could not stop the Underground Railroad.

Frederick Washington Bailey was the son of a white man and a black slave. He was a Maryland-born mulatto of fine frame and intelligence. 6 He was born in Tukahoe, Maryland on February 7, 1817. He lived on a plantation with his grandmother, until he was eight years old. Then he got sent to Hugh Auld in Baltimore. The wife of Auld taught him how to read. In 1833 Frederick returned to his Maryland plantation after Auld had died. He escaped to New York in 1838 and then changed his name to Frederick Douglass. Later, he moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he worked as a laborer. When William Lloyd Garrison heard Douglass make a speech at a meeting in 1841, he arranged for him to become an agent and lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1845, he published his autobiography, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Fearing to be recaptured by his former owner, Douglass traveled to Britain where he lectured on slavery. In Britain he raised enough money to establish his own anti-slavery newspaper, the North Star. During the Civil War Douglass, a Radical Republican, tried to persuade President Abraham Lincoln that former slaves should be allowed to join the Union Army. 7 In 1881 he published, the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. On the 20th of February, 1895, he died in Washington. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by the President of the United States on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation freed all the slaves who are in the states that are under Confederate control. It was a step towards the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery in all of the United States. The Anti-Slavery Movement is now over and all slaves are free.

Slavery had persisted for many years. It has caused protest, rebellion, and social and civil war because some people realized that everybody is equal and slaves should be free. All through the Anti-Slavery Movement people kept fighting for the abolishment of slavery. Many events happened to help this happen, like the anti-slavery newspapers, the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation Proclamation. All this fighting was worth it and in the end everybody involved in the Anti-Slavery Movement got what they wanted.