Why abolitionists opposed slavery

A number of Americans who opposed slavery including Abraham Lincoln for a time and the aforementioned Delany felt that the two races could never live successfully together, and the best hope for Negroes was to return them to freedom in Africa.

However, the slave trade between Africa and the Western Hemisphere the Caribbean and South America had never ended, and many American ship owners and captains were enjoying something of a golden era of slave-trading while the U. Even if freed slaves had been sent to Africa, many would have wound up back in slavery south of the United States. Only in the late s did Britain step up its anti-slavery enforcement on the high seas, leading America to increase its efforts somewhat.

When the federal government passed a second, even more stringent fugitive slave act in , several states responded by passing personal liberty laws. Born a slave in New York, she walked away from her owner after she felt she had contributed enough to him. While Sojourner Truth, Douglass, Delaney and others wrote and spoke to end slavery, a former slave named Harriet Tubman, nee Harriet Ross, was actively leading slaves to freedom. After escaping from bondage herself, she made repeated trips into Dixie to help others.

Believed to have helped some slaves to escape, she was noted for warning those she was assisting that she would shoot any of them who turned back, because they would endanger herself and others she was assisting. The trip might begin by hiding in the home, barn or other location owned by a Southerner opposed to slavery, and continuing from place to place until reaching safe haven in a free state or Canada.

Those who reached Canada did not have to fear being returned under the Fugitive Slave Act. In , what may have been the seminal event of the abolition movement occurred. It presented a scathing view of Southern slavery, filled with melodramatic scenes such as that of the slave Eliza escaping with her baby across the icy Ohio River:. The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it but she stayed there not a moment.

With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;—stumbling,—leaping,—slipping—springing upwards again! Her shoes are—gone her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank. Critics pointed out that Stowe had never been to the South, but her novel became a bestseller in the North banned in the South and the most effective bit of propaganda to come out of the abolitionist movement.

It galvanized many who had been sitting on the sidelines. Slave owners or their representatives traveling north to reclaim captured runaways were sometimes set upon on abolitionists mobs; even local lawmen were sometimes attacked. In the South, this fueled the belief that the North expected the South to obey all federal laws but the North could pick and choose, further driving the two regions apart.

The abolition movement became an important element of political parties. So did many Whigs and the Free Soil Party. In , these coalesced into the Republican Party. Four years later, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency of the United States. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of allowed the citizens of those territories to determine for themselves whether the state would be slave or free. Proponents of both factions poured into the Kansas Territory, with each side trying to gain supremacy, often through violence.

After pro-slavery groups attacked the town of Lawrence in , a radical abolitionist named John Brown led his followers in retaliation, killing five pro-slavery settlers. The decision of the U. If that were impossible, it was thought, then the North and South should part ways. Moderates believed that slavery should be phased out gradually, in order to ensure the economy of the Southern states would not collapse.

On the more extreme side were figures like John Brown, who believed an armed rebellion of enslaved people in the South was the quickest route to end human bondage in the United States. Harriet Tubman was like Douglass, she too had escaped enslavement and became a prominent abolitionist. She was active in the Underground Railroad , the clandestine network of safe houses and abolitionists that helped escapees reach freedom in the North. In the late s, she assisted Brown in his planning for the disastrous raid on a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

The threat of an armed revolt alarmed Americans on both sides of the debate over slavery. In the presidential election, voters chose Republican Party candidate Abraham Lincoln. The senator from Illinois opposed slavery but was cautious about supporting the abolitionists. Thirty-nine days after Lincoln's inauguration , the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, which marked the onset of the U.

Civil War. Five years later the war ended and the ratification of the 13 th Amendment formally ended slavery in December The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society.

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They will best know the preferred format. During the raid, they shot and killed newspaper editor and abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of was passed, both pro- and anti-slavery groups inhabited the Kansas Territory. In , a pro-slavery group attacked the town of Lawrence, which was founded by abolitionists from Massachusetts. In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown organized a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers.

Then, in , Brown led 21 men to capture the U. He and his followers were seized by a group of Marines and convicted of treason. Brown was hanged for the crime. President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but was cautious about fully supporting the more radical ideas of the abolitionists. As the power struggle between the North and the South reached its peak, the Civil War broke out in As the bloody war waged on, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of , calling for the freeing of enslaved people in areas of the rebellion.

And in , the Constitution was ratified to include the Thirteenth Amendment , which officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States. Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Amendment , ratified in , granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former enslaved people. Abolition and the Abolitionists.

National Geographic. Early abolition. Khan Academy. Abolitionist Sentiment Grows. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. In , a group of prominent Black intellectuals led by W. Du Bois met in Erie, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, to form an organization calling for civil and political rights for African Americans. Abolitionists believed that slavery was a national sin, and that it was the moral obligation of every American to help eradicate it from the American landscape by gradually freeing the slaves and returning them to Africa..

Not all Americans agreed. Views on slavery varied state by state, and among family members and neighbors.