Believed to have helped some slaves to escape, she was noted for warning those she was assisting that she would shoot any of them who turned back, because they would endanger herself and others she was assisting. The trip might begin by hiding in the home, barn or other location owned by a Southerner opposed to slavery, and continuing from place to place until reaching safe haven in a free state or Canada. Those who reached Canada did not have to fear being returned under the Fugitive Slave Act.
In , what may have been the seminal event of the abolition movement occurred. It presented a scathing view of Southern slavery, filled with melodramatic scenes such as that of the slave Eliza escaping with her baby across the icy Ohio River:. The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;—stumbling,—leaping,—slipping—springing upwards again!
Her shoes are—gone her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank. Critics pointed out that Stowe had never been to the South, but her novel became a bestseller in the North banned in the South and the most effective bit of propaganda to come out of the abolitionist movement.
It galvanized many who had been sitting on the sidelines. Slave owners or their representatives traveling north to reclaim captured runaways were sometimes set upon on abolitionists mobs; even local lawmen were sometimes attacked.
In the South, this fueled the belief that the North expected the South to obey all federal laws but the North could pick and choose, further driving the two regions apart. The abolition movement became an important element of political parties. So did many Whigs and the Free Soil Party. In , these coalesced into the Republican Party. Four years later, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency of the United States.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of allowed the citizens of those territories to determine for themselves whether the state would be slave or free. Proponents of both factions poured into the Kansas Territory, with each side trying to gain supremacy, often through violence. After pro-slavery groups attacked the town of Lawrence in , a radical abolitionist named John Brown led his followers in retaliation, killing five pro-slavery settlers.
The decision of the U. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford denied citizenship to anyone of African blood and held the Missouri Compromise of to be unconstitutional. Abraham Lincoln revived his personal political career, coming out of a self-imposed semi-retirement to speak out against the Dred Scott decision.
The year saw two events that were milestones in the history of slavery and abolition in America. The ship Clotilde landed in Mobile, Alabama. Though the importation of slaves had been illegal in America since , Clotilde carried to African slaves. The last slave ship ever to land in the United States, it clearly demonstrated how lax the enforcement of the anti-importation laws was.
Nearly 1, miles northeast of Mobile, on the night of October 16, , John Brown—the radical abolitionist who had killed proslavery settlers in Kansas—led 21 men in a raid to capture the U. He and his followers, 16 white men and five black ones, holed up in the arsenal after they were discovered, and were captured there by a group of U.
Marines commanded by an Army lieutenant colonel, Robert E. Convicted of treason against Virginia, Brown was hanged December 2. Initial reaction in the South was that this was the work of a small group of fanatics, but when Northern newspapers, authors and legislators began praising him as a martyr—a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier eulogizing Brown was published in the New York Herald Tribune less than a month after the execution—their actions were taken as further proof that Northern abolitionists wished to carry out genocide of white Southerners.
The flames were fanned higher as information came out that Brown had talked other abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, about his plans and received financial assistance from some of them. But he adamantly opposed its expansion into territories where it did not exist, and slave owners were determined that they had to be free to take their human property with them if they chose to move into those territories. Less than two years into the civil war that began over Southern secession, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
It freed all slaves residing in areas of the nation currently in rebellion. It also effectively prohibited European nations that had long since renounced slavery from entering the war on the side of the South. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.
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You cannot download interactives. The nineteenth century was a time for social reform in the United States. Explore key reform movements of the s with this curated collection of classroom resources. From the s until the start of the U.
Civil War, abolitionists called on the federal government to prohibit the ownership of people in the Southern states. The amendment officially abolished slavery, and immediately freed more than , enslaved people, from Kentucky to Delaware.
Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Skip to content. Photograph by Bettmann. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom. Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. Constitution making slavery illegal. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
Media If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Text Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. As it gained momentum, the abolitionist movement caused increasing friction between states in the North and the slave-owning South. Critics of abolition argued that it contradicted the U.
Constitution , which left the option of slavery up to individual states. Postal Service from delivering any publications that supported the movement.
In , a white student at Lane Theological Seminary named Amos Dresser was publicly whipped in Nashville, Tennessee, for possessing abolitionist literature while traveling through the city. In , a pro-slavery mob attacked a warehouse in Alton , Illinois, in an attempt to destroy abolitionist press materials. During the raid, they shot and killed newspaper editor and abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of was passed, both pro- and anti-slavery groups inhabited the Kansas Territory.
In , a pro-slavery group attacked the town of Lawrence, which was founded by abolitionists from Massachusetts. In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown organized a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers. Then, in , Brown led 21 men to capture the U. He and his followers were seized by a group of Marines and convicted of treason. Brown was hanged for the crime.
President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but was cautious about fully supporting the more radical ideas of the abolitionists. As the power struggle between the North and the South reached its peak, the Civil War broke out in As the bloody war waged on, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of , calling for the freeing of enslaved people in areas of the rebellion.
And in , the Constitution was ratified to include the Thirteenth Amendment , which officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States. Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Amendment , ratified in , granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former enslaved people. Abolition and the Abolitionists. National Geographic. Early abolition. Khan Academy.
Abolitionist Sentiment Grows. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. In , a group of prominent Black intellectuals led by W. Du Bois met in Erie, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, to form an organization calling for civil and political rights for African Americans.
With its comparatively aggressive approach to combating racial discrimination
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