Blacks played a leading role in the abolitionist movement. Northern blacks attracted to Garrison’s opposition to colonization and his demand for equal rights were half of The Liberator’s subscribers. Several blacks were leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and northern-born blacks and fugitive slaves such as Frederick Douglass quickly became major organizers and speakers. Many fugitive slaves published accounts of their experience of slavery, which became powerful tools in communicating the reality of slavery to northern audiences. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, was based on one fugitive slave’s life and sold more than 1 million copies in only a few years.
Even though abolitionism was the first …show more content…
Black communities, barred from celebrating Independence Day in many northern communities, instead celebrated January 1, the day the foreign slave trade was abolished, or August 1, the anniversary of West Indian emancipation. Blacks openly praised Great Britain as a nation of freedom, contrasting it with America as a land of tyranny. More than white counterparts, black abolitionists forged an ideal of color-blind citizenship. They also argued that black poverty was caused by slavery and that freedom had an economic dimension as …show more content…
Led by “gentlemen of property and standing,” usually merchants with economic ties to the South, mobs disrupted abolitionist meetings, destroyed abolitionists’ printing presses, and assaulted abolitionist activists. William Lloyd Garrison was nearly lynched by one Boston mob. In 1837, antislavery editor Elijah Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Illinois while defending the printing press for his newspaper from assault, for the fifth and final time. Andrew Jackson’s attorney general allowed abolitionist literature to be removed from the mails. In 1836, when abolitionists flooded the House of Representatives with petitions calling for emancipation in Washington, D.C., the House adopted the “gag rule,” which prohibited that body from considering the petitions. The rule was repealed in 1844, in great part due to the efforts of former president John Quincy
Even though abolitionism was the first …show more content…
Black communities, barred from celebrating Independence Day in many northern communities, instead celebrated January 1, the day the foreign slave trade was abolished, or August 1, the anniversary of West Indian emancipation. Blacks openly praised Great Britain as a nation of freedom, contrasting it with America as a land of tyranny. More than white counterparts, black abolitionists forged an ideal of color-blind citizenship. They also argued that black poverty was caused by slavery and that freedom had an economic dimension as …show more content…
Led by “gentlemen of property and standing,” usually merchants with economic ties to the South, mobs disrupted abolitionist meetings, destroyed abolitionists’ printing presses, and assaulted abolitionist activists. William Lloyd Garrison was nearly lynched by one Boston mob. In 1837, antislavery editor Elijah Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Illinois while defending the printing press for his newspaper from assault, for the fifth and final time. Andrew Jackson’s attorney general allowed abolitionist literature to be removed from the mails. In 1836, when abolitionists flooded the House of Representatives with petitions calling for emancipation in Washington, D.C., the House adopted the “gag rule,” which prohibited that body from considering the petitions. The rule was repealed in 1844, in great part due to the efforts of former president John Quincy