MOVEMENTS TO END SLAVERYChapter 16 section 2

EMANCIPATION 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.

EMANCIPATION 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.

LIBERIA

LIBERIAN FLAG

ABOLITION MOVEMENT 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.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

FEMALE ABOLITIONISTS 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.

AFRICAN AMERICAN ABOLITIONISTS 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.

SOJOURNER TRUTH

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD 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.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD 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.

HARRIET TUBMAN

FEAR OF ABOLITIONISTS 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.