The Anti-Slavery and Women’s Reform Movement of the 19 th Century America

Abolition Movement of American Slavery part one

By the 1820s, more than 100 antislavery societies were advocating that African Americans be resettled in Africa. Other abolitionists demanded that African Americans remain in the U.S. as free citizens. Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society

White abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison established, The Liberator, a newspaper committed to abolition of slavery.

In 1835, an angry Boston mob paraded Garrison through town at the end of a rope. Nevertheless, Garrison enjoyed widespread black support; 3 out of 4 early subscribers to The Liberator were African Americans.

Frederick Douglass escaped bondage to become a leading advocate for the abolition of slavery.

In 1847, Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper called The North Star, named after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom.

Most slaves worked as house servants, farm hands, or in the fields. Some states allowed masters to free their slaves and even allowed slaves to purchase their freedom over time. These “manumitted” free slaves were very few.

The majority of African Americans in the South were enslaved and endured lives of suffering and constant degradation.

Some slaves rebelled against their condition of bondage. In August 1831, a Virginia slave Nat Turner and more than 50 followers attacked four plantations and killed about 60 whites.

Whites eventually captured and executed many members of the group, including Turner. The Turner Rebellion frightened and outraged slaveholders.

In some states, people argued that the only way to prevent slave revolts was through emancipation.

Others chose to tighten restrictions (slave codes) on all African Americans to prevent them form plotting insurrections.

Some proslavery advocates began to argue that slavery was a benevolent (caring) institution. They used the Bible to defend slavery and cited passages that taught servants to obey their masters.

Nevertheless, opposition to slavery refused to disappear. Much of the strength of the abolition movement came from the efforts of women, many of whom contributed to the women’s rights movement.

The Women’s Reform Movement

In the early 19 th century, women faced limited options. Society encouraged women to restrict their activities after marriage to the home and family. Women were denied full participation in American society.

The most important reform effort that women participated in was abolition. Women abolitionists raised money, distributed literature, and collected signatures for antislavery petitions to Congress.

Sojourner Truth was a early abolitionist and women’s rights advocate.

Women played key roles in the temperance movement (the effort to prohibit the drinking of alcohol.)

Some women like Dorothea Dix fought to improve treatment for the mentally disabled. Dix joined others in the effort to reform the nation’s harsh and inhumane prison system.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton convened the Seneca Falls Convention 1848 to promote women’s rights and abolition (including the right to vote.)

The Seneca Falls Convention was the first formal women’s rights gathering in the United States.