Isabella Carter
The abolitionist movement was an organised effort to end slavery in the United States. It was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The movement was influenced by the Age of Enlightenment, with early abolitionist efforts led by religious groups such as the Quakers, who saw slavery as a notorious sin. In the early 1850s, the movement split into two camps over the question of whether the US Constitution protected or opposed slavery. This divide was influenced by Lysander Spooner's publication, 'The Unconstitutionality of Slavery', with some abolitionists burning copies of the Constitution, and others arguing that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Time period | c. 1783–1888 |
| Location | United States |
| Goal | To end slavery |
| Motivations | Humanitarian ethics, religious beliefs, moralism, economic grounds |
| Methods | Petitions, running for political office, anti-slavery literature, speeches, music, boycotts, legal suits, violent means |
| Opponents | Slave-owning Southern states |
| Opponents' motivations | Economic reliance on slavery, social beliefs |
| Opponents' methods | Gag rules, censorship, violence |
| Supporters | Quakers, evangelicals, other religious groups, escaped slaves, women's rights advocates |
| Key figures | James Oglethorpe, Orange Scott, Benjamin Titus Roberts, Benjamin Lay, William Lloyd Garrison, Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott |
| Key laws and amendments | Fugitive Slave Clause, Thirteenth Amendment, Fifteenth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment |
| Key events | American Civil War, Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Dred Scott v. Sandford |
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What You'll Learn
- The Garrisonians, led by William Lloyd Garrison, publicly burned copies of the US Constitution, believing it to be a pact with slavery
- Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document
- The Fugitive Slave Clause in Article IV, Section 2, asserted that a slave remained a slave even if they fled to a non-slavery state
- The Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 undermined the abolitionist's use of the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery
- The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished all forms of slavery in the United States
The Garrisonians, led by William Lloyd Garrison, publicly burned copies of the US Constitution, believing it to be a pact with slavery
The abolitionist movement in the United States was an organised effort to end the practice of slavery. It was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The anti-slavery movement was born during the Age of Enlightenment, with a focus on ending the transatlantic slave trade.
In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether the US Constitution protected slavery. The Garrisonians, led by William Lloyd Garrison, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, believing it to be a pact with slavery and demanding its abolition and replacement. They refused to participate in American electoral politics, as doing so would mean supporting "the pro-slavery, war-sanctioning Constitution of the United States". Instead, they advocated for a dissolution of the Union under the slogan "No Union with Slaveholders".
Garrison, who had been fighting for the abolition of slavery for 25 years, believed that the Republic had been corrupted from the start. In a dramatic act of protest, he burned copies of the US Constitution, declaring it to be "the source and parent of all the other atrocities: 'a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.' So perish all compromises with tyranny!". This event took place at a Fourth of July rally sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1854, where noted abolitionists including Garrison, Sojourner Truth, and Henry David Thoreau addressed the crowd.
The other camp, led by Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Frederick Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. They argued that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and, therefore, should be abolished. This split in the abolitionist movement was not only along ideological lines but also along class lines.
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Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document
The abolitionist movement in the United States was an organised effort to end the practice of slavery. It was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The movement caused increasing friction between the North and the slave-owning South, and critics argued that it contradicted the US Constitution, which left the option of slavery up to individual states.
In the 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether the US Constitution protected slavery. One camp, the Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, calling it a pact with slavery and demanding its abolition and replacement.
Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. Spooner was an American abolitionist, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, and political philosopher. He is best known for his book "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery", published in 1845, which contributed to a controversy among abolitionists over whether the Constitution supported the institution of slavery. In the book, Spooner challenged the claim that the text of the Constitution permitted slavery. He used a complex system of legal and natural law arguments to show that the Constitutional clauses usually interpreted as adopting or at least implicitly accepting the practice of slavery did not, in fact, support it. He argued that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
Spooner's work has been cited by influential legal theorists such as Randy Barnett and Justice Antonin Scalia, who have found his ideas on constitutional interpretation and the role of consent persuasive. Spooner also argued that the national Congress should dissolve and let citizens rule themselves, as he believed that individuals should make their own fates. This belief extended to his defence of the right to bear arms, which he saw as necessary for those who wanted to take a stand against slavery.
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The Fugitive Slave Clause in Article IV, Section 2, asserted that a slave remained a slave even if they fled to a non-slavery state
The Fugitive Slave Clause, also known as the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labour Clause, is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. It states that a "Person held to Service or Labour" (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who escapes to another state must be returned to their master in the state from which they fled. This clause was proposed by Pierce Butler and Charles Pinckney of South Carolina during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and it remained in effect until the abolition of slavery under the Thirteenth Amendment.
The inclusion of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the US Constitution was a compromise made during the debates on slavery at the Constitutional Convention. While some delegates objected to the provision, arguing that it would oblige the state to seize fugitive slaves at public expense, it was ultimately approved unanimously. The clause was revised to replace "legally held to service or labour in one state" with "held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof", thus removing any implication that the Constitution legally sanctioned slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Clause formed the basis for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which gave slave owners the right to capture their enslaved persons who had escaped. This Act was strengthened as part of the Compromise of 1850, leading to increased conflict between free states and slave states. The Fugitive Slave Clause and the Fugitive Slave Act were particularly important to South Carolina, which seceded from the Union in 1860, citing Northern states' violations of the Clause as one of the main reasons for secession.
The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery in the United States and rendered the Fugitive Slave Clause mostly irrelevant. However, it is important to note that the Amendment included an exception for slavery as punishment for criminal acts. This exception has been used to justify the continued existence of certain modern-day practices that resemble slavery, such as forced prison labour.
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The Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 undermined the abolitionist's use of the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery
The abolitionist movement in the United States was an organised effort to end the practice of slavery. It was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. The movement was identified by historians as an expression of moralism, and it often operated in tandem with the temperance movement.
In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether the US Constitution protected slavery. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, calling it a pact with slavery. Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. They argued that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
The Dred Scott v. Sandford case in 1857 involved an enslaved black man, Dred Scott, who sued for his freedom in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County with the help of his legal advisers. The case reached the United States Supreme Court, which held that the US Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent. The Court ruled that Scott was not an American citizen and, therefore, could not establish the "diversity of citizenship" required for a federal court to exercise jurisdiction over his case.
In addition to ruling on the issues surrounding Scott, the Court assessed the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery in US territories north of the 36°30′ parallel. The Court found that the Missouri Compromise interfered with slave owners' property rights under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Court's decision, led by Chief Justice Taney, concluded that the right to property in a slave was "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in the Constitution and that any law depriving a slave owner of that property was unconstitutional.
The Dred Scott v. Sandford case undermined the abolitionists' arguments against slavery by interpreting the Fifth Amendment as protecting slave owners' property rights. The decision also de facto nationalised slavery, playing a crucial role in the events leading up to the American Civil War. While it did not directly address the abolitionists' use of the Fifth Amendment, the case weakened their position by prioritising slave owners' property rights over the freedom and rights of enslaved people.
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The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished all forms of slavery in the United States
The abolitionist movement in the United States was an organized effort to end the practice of slavery. It was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War. The movement caused increasing friction between the North and the slave-owning South, with critics arguing that abolition contradicted the U.S. Constitution, which left the option of slavery up to individual states. In the early 1850s, American abolitionists split into two camps over whether the Constitution protected slavery. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, calling it a "pact with slavery" and demanding its abolition and replacement. The other camp, led by Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document. They argued that slavery fell outside the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
The abolitionist movement was initially driven by moral and religious convictions, with the Methodist and Quaker branches of Christianity playing an integral part in the formulation of abolitionist ideology. Most early abolitionists were white, religious Americans, but some prominent leaders were Black men and women who had escaped slavery. Black and white abolitionists in the first half of the nineteenth century waged a biracial assault against slavery, sending petitions with thousands of signatures to Congress, holding abolition meetings, and inundating people in the South with anti-slavery literature.
The movement's efforts caused a rift that threatened to destroy the unity of the nation. In 1835, abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature to the South, leading to gag rules in Congress and the banning of the U.S. Postal Service from delivering publications that supported the movement. As the power struggle between the North and the South escalated, the Civil War broke out in 1861. During the war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, declaring the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas to be free.
Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War, but it faced initial resistance in the House of Representatives. Lincoln took an active role to ensure its passage through Congress, and his efforts met with success when the House passed the bill in January 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States, marking a significant victory for the abolitionist movement.
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Frequently asked questions
The abolitionist movement was an organised effort to end the practice of slavery in the United States. It was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the question of whether the US Constitution protected slavery. The Garrisonians, led by William Lloyd Garrison, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, calling it a "covenant with death". Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, considered the Constitution to be an anti-slavery document, arguing that slavery fell outside its scope of legitimate authority.
The abolitionist movement caused increasing friction between states in the North and the slave-owning South, leading to violent and even deadly confrontations. This divisiveness, along with other factors, fuelled the Civil War and ultimately ended slavery in America.
