Historical
Background for Abolitionist Movement
“…the most
important threat to slavery came from abolitionists who denounced slavery as
immoral.”
(“Gilder Lehrman History Online,” Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History)
The anti-slavery movement didn’t gain
much headway until after 1830. The cotton boom in the South only helped to
increase the planters resolve to retain their “peculiar” labor system
(slavery).
One man, William
Lloyd Garrison, dramatically helped to change this situation. “Garrison’s
philosophy was so simple as to be genuinely revolutionary. Opponents of
slavery, he said, should view the institution from the view of the black man,
not the white slave owner…They should…demand the immediate, unconditional, universal
abolition of slavery.” (Brinkley, American History, A Survey)
Garrison soon attracted a large group
of followers through the North, enough to enable him to found the New England AntiSlavery
Society in 1832 and a year later…., the American Antislavery Society.
Membership in the new organization mushroomed. By 1835, there were more than
400 chapters of the societies; by 1838, there were 1,350 with more than 250,000
members. Antislavery sentiment was developing a strength…greater than at any
point in the nation’s history.
Theodore Dwight Weld, a prominent New
England abolitionist (husband of Angelina Grimke) in a letter to Garrison wrote
that slavery was a sin because…”no condition of birth, no shade of color, no
mere misfortune of circumstances can annul the birthright charter, which God
has bequeathed (given) to every being upon whom he has stamped his own image,
by making him a free moral agent.” (Brinkley, American History, A Survey)
The question raised by the
Abolitionists did not only deal directly with moral issues. Some opponents of
slavery questioned how the Northerners could openly oppose slavery and yet
still purchase southern goods.
“About the year
1844 I became so strongly impressed with the horrors of slavery, and its
results, which were ever before me, that I was led to reflect more deeply on
the subject than I had done before, and to view it in all its practical
bearings. I read the testimony of John Woolman and other writers, and became
convinced that it was wrong to use the product of slave labor. I felt that it
was inconsistent to condemn slaveholders for withholding from their fellow-men
their just, natural and God-given rights, and then, by purchasing the fruits of
the labor of their slaves, give them the strongest motive for continuing their
wickedness and oppression.
Knowing so well
the sad realities of life on the Southern plantations, I felt that in
purchasing and using cloth made from cotton, grown by slaves, I made use of a
product which had been planted by an oppressed laborer, fanned by sighs,
watered with tears, and perhaps dressed with the blood of the victim. The words
of John Woolman found an echo in my heart: ‘Seed sown with the tears of a
confined, oppressed people-harvests cuts down by an overborne, discontented
reaper, make bread less sweet to the taste of an honest man, than that which is
the produce or just reward of such voluntary action as is a proper part of the
business of human creatures.’
The free States
furnished a good market for the products of the South, and made slave labor
valuable to the master. If it had not been so, then John Randolph’s prophecy
would have been fulfilled—the slave would not have runaway from his master, but
the master from his slaves, for they would have been a burden and expense to
him. The object of the slaveholder was to make money by selling the cotton,
sugar, etc., produced by this slaves, and without a market for these he would
have been deprived of the great motive for holding the negroes in bondage.
Northern consumers, by their demand for articles thus produced, stimulated the
system by which they were produced, and furnished the strongest incentive for
its continuance.
I felt by
purchasing the products of slave labor, I was lending my individual
encouragement to the system by which, in order to get their labor without
wages, the slaves were robbed of everything else. In the language of Charles
Stuart: ‘Their bodies are stolen, their liberty, their right to their wives and
children, their right to cultivate their minds and to worship God and they
please, their reputation, hope, all virtuous motives, are taken away by a
legalized system of most merciless and consummate iniquity. Such is the expense
at which articles produced by slave labor are attained. They are always heavy
with the groans and often met with the blood of the guiltless and suffering
poor’ ‘If our moral sense would revolt at holding a slave ourselves and using
his unpaid labor, it should also revolt at using his unpaid toil when held by
another.’
With these strong
convictions, I determined, as a matter of conscience, to abstain so far as I
could from the products of slavery.