2. Chapter 16 section 2

3.  In the 1800’s there was an increasing call for emancipation.  Emancipation-freeing of slaves  One idea was to settle free slaves in Africa. The American Colonization Society, founded in 1817, urged slave owners to free their slaves and send them to Africa.

4.  The American Colonization Society obtained land in West Africa and named it Liberia, from the Latin word for freedom.  However, most African-Americans wanted to stay and be treated as equals in American society. No more than 15,000 people moved to Liberia before the Civil War.

7.  In the 1820’s a strong anti-slavery movement began. Influenced by revivals and ideals of democracy, reformers called for abolition.  Abolition-putting an end to slavery  Anti-slavery newspapers, such as William Lloyd Garrison’s, “The Liberator” and anti-slavery societies sprang up.

9.  Women, like the Grimke sisters, spoke and wrote against slavery. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were daughters of a wealthy South Carolina slaveholder who turned against slavery after becoming Quakers. They published anti- slavery pamphlets and made speeches.

10.  African-American leaders, such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, spoke and wrote against slavery as well.  Some leaders urged slaves to use force to gain freedom. Thousands of slaves escaped with the help of a secret network of people called the Underground Railroad.

13.  This “railroad” had nothing to do with trains. It was a secret network of people who would shelter and feed escaping slaves on their way to freedom. “Conductors”, many of them former slaves, risked their freedom and their lives to help slaves escape.

14.  One of the most famous conductors was Harriet Tubman. She guided more than 300 slaves north to freedom. In northern states, free blacks and sympathetic whites directed escaping slaves to secret hiding places in homes or barns. “Stations” of the Underground Railroad were places to sleep, get food, and clothes before going on. Escaping slaves often slept by day and traveled by night, following the North Star. No one knows the actual number of slaves who used the Underground Railroad because everything about it was a secret. Some historians estimate 100,000 African- Americans used it to escape from the South.

16.  The abolitionist movement caused fear in some whites. Mobs attacked abolitionists. Congress passed a “gag rule” barring the debate of antislavery petitions in the House. The movement kept growing, however, and would soon widen the split between the North and the South.