Slavery and Abolitionism

SLAVERY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ABOLITIONISM

American slavery began when wealthy Southern aristocrats replaced their indentured servants with African slaves, held in perpetual bondage for generations. When the Constitution was written in 1787, with a significant portion of its authors slave owners themselves, several concessions were made to the slaveholding South. Most infamous of these was the three-fifths clause, which counted 60% of the state’s enslaved (and disenfranchised) population when determining representation in the House of Representatives, granting the Southern states disproportionate political power.

The overseas slave trade was outlawed in 1808, but trade of slaves between states flourished. The enslaved population increased by about 65% between 1790 and 1830, reaching 2,000,000.

“[Female slaves] must be entirely subservient to the will of their owner, on pain of being whipped…quite to death, if it suit his pleasure. Those who know human nature would be able to conjecture the unavoidable result, even if it were not betrayed by the amount of mixed population.” — Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, 1833.

United States Slave Trade, engraving, 1830. [Courtesy of the Library of Congress.] 

In the North, where every state except New Jersey had abolished slavery by 1800, slavery was generally viewed as a necessary evil. Northerners benefitted economically from the products of slave labor without witnessing its daily horrors and consequences. The political balance between North and South, and the preservation of the union itself, was entangled with slavery’s hold on the nation. In another compromise, in 1820, all land in the Louisiana territory below latitude 36° 30’ was surrendered to slavery. The South prohibited all discussion of limiting slavery—and the North largely complied.

The earliest organizations addressing the institution of slavery, the “Colonization” societies, had as their primary aim the removal of blacks from America, not emancipation. A zealous young Colonizationist, William Lloyd Garrison, eventually denounced the movement and argued for the immediate emancipation of all enslaved people and equal rights for all races. Giving impassioned speeches, organizing anti-slavery societies, and publishing his weekly newspaper The Liberator, Garrison created a small but growing force of like-minded Northerners, centered in Boston.

Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson, 1851, Southworth and Hawes. [Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.]

"Downfall of Abolition" [Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.]

Cartoon depicting the 1835 Garrison riot.

As part of a larger wave of anti-abolitionist violence in 1835, thousands of ‘respectable’ Bostonians interrupted a ladies’ antislavery meeting, and targeted Garrison, who had to be held in prison to protect him from the mob. Despite his four years of effort, Garrison had inspired mainly ridicule and contempt in his fellow Northerners. Abolitionists were viewed as dangerous radicals. It became increasingly clear that Northerners themselves would be nearly as great an obstacle to emancipation as the implacable slave owners themselves.

William Lloyd Garrison, "To the Public," The Liberator, 1 Jan 1831. Read by Maielle Merriam.

A New York merchant, speaking to Samuel J. May. Read by Maielle Merriam.