Abolitionist Movement Essay

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African Americans have had a long and burdened history in the United States, beginning with the institution of slavery and continuing on to the widespread racial injustice that they persevered and still endure today. As we look deep into the historical backdrop of America we cannot deny that African Americans have had a profound effect on the character of the United States of America. They helped to change the face of not just America, but of themselves. They called out for liberty and equality wherever the opportunity had arisen; battling ardently for the proclaimed equality that the Declaration of Independence decreed. This fight has been going on even before the U.S. was formed, through violent and bloody slave revolts to passionate and …show more content…
Intellectual and sophisticated individuals such as Frederick Douglass, David Walker, and Sojourner Truth all made their bid for freedom and the liberation of others. The objective of the Abolitionist movement was the abrupt end of slavery and racial discrimination. The abolitionists were quite different from the opposition of slavery’s expansion into the west because of their passionate embrace of ending slavery in the entire nation. Black abolitionists worked with white abolitionists to justify the end of slavery by labeling it a moral evil. They said that slavery was a sinful practice which was against God’s will. The religious opposition to slavery led to the Second Great Awakening which stimulated the Abolitionist movement. They also provided arguments asserting that slavery was economically unsound and threatened the culture and civilization of the South. Additionally, it threatened the peace and safety of the entire nation. Furthermore, Blacks pointed to the numerous pamphlets and essays as evidence that African Americans were capable of reading and writing. Accordingly, they did this to show that blacks were human beings, not subservient …show more content…
This is coupled with William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper The Liberator in 1831 which rejected gradual emancipation and the colonization of blacks. Slave revolts such as Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831 foreshadowed a different strain of abolitionism, a more radical kind. Consequently, fears of slave revolts led to stringent laws being passed in Southern states. One later supporter of militant abolitionism was Frederick Douglass, who adopted this rhetoric after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of

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