Page 315 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Racism was a major cause of anti-abolitionist violence in the North. Rumors that
12.1 abolitionists advocated or practiced interracial marriage could easily incite an urban
crowd. If it could not find white abolitionists, the mob was likely to turn on local blacks.
Working-class whites tended to fear that economic and social competition with blacks
12.2 would increase if abolitionists freed the slaves and made them citizens. But “gentlemen
of property and standing” dominated many of the mobs. Solid citizens resorted to
violence, it would appear, because abolitionism threatened their conservative notions

12.3 of social order and hierarchy.
By the end of the 1830s, the abolitionist movement was under stress. Besides the
burden of external repression, there was internal dissension. Becoming an abolition-
ist required an exacting conscience and an unwillingness to compromise. These traits
also made it difficult for abolitionists to work together and maintain a united front.
During the late 1830s, Garrison, the most visible abolitionist, began to adopt positions
that other abolitionists found extreme and divisive. He embraced the nonresistant or
“no-government” philosophy of Henry C. Wright and urged abolitionists to abstain
from voting or participating in a corrupt political system. He attacked the clergy and
the churches for refusing to take an antislavery stand and encouraged his followers to
“come out” of the established denominations rather than work within them.
These positions alienated members of the Anti-Slavery Society who hoped that
abolitionists could influence or take over organized religion and the political sys-
tem. But Garrison’s stand on women’s rights led to an open break at the national
convention of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. Following their leader’s
principle that women should be equal partners in the crusade, a Garrison-led major-
ity elected a woman to the society’s executive committee. A minority, led by Lewis
Tappan, then formed a competing organization—the American and Foreign Anti-
Slavery Society.
The new organization never amounted to much, but the schism weakened Garrison’s
influence. When he repudiated the Constitution as a proslavery document and called for
Quick Check northern secession from the Union, few antislavery supporters in the Middle Atlantic or
Who were the leading opponents Midwestern states went along. Outside New England, most abolitionists worked within
of slavery, and What different the churches and avoided controversial side issues such as women’s rights and nonresis-
approaches did they take to politics tant pacifism. Some antislavery advocates became political activists. The Liberty party,
as they put forward demands for organized in 1840, was their first attempt to enter the electoral arena under their own
slavery’s immediate abolition?
banner; it signaled a new effort to turn antislavery sentiment into political power.

black Abolitionists
From the beginning, the abolitionist movement depended on the northern free black com-
munity. Most of the early subscribers to Garrison’s Liberator were African Americans.
Black orators, especially escaped slaves such as Frederick Douglass, brought home the
realities of bondage to northern audiences. But relations between white and black abo-
litionists were often tense. Blacks protested that they did not have their fair share of
leadership positions or influence over policy. Eventually a black antislavery movement
emerged that was largely independent of the white-led crusade. In addition to Douglass,
prominent black male abolitionists were Charles Remond, William Wells Brown, Robert
Purvis, and Henry Highland Garnet. Outspoken women such as Sojourner Truth, Maria
Stewart, and Frances Harper also played a significant role in black antislavery activity.
The Negro Convention movement, which sponsored national meetings of black leaders
beginning in 1830, provided an important forum for independent black expression. Their
most eloquent statement came in 1854, when black leaders met in Cleveland to declare
their faith in a separate identity, proclaiming, “We pledge our integrity to use all honor-
able means, to unite us, as one people, on this continent.”
Black newspapers, such as Freedom’s Journal, first published in 1827, and the North
Star, founded by Douglass in 1847, enabled black writers to preach liberation to black
readers. African American authors also wrote books and pamphlets attacking slavery,
refuting racism, and advocating resistance. One of the most influential publications
was David Walker’s Appeal . . . to the Colored Citizens of the World, which appeared in
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