The Anti-Slavery and Women’s Reform Movement of the 19th

Century America

Abolition Movement of American Slavery

part one

• By the 1820s, more than 100 antislavery societies were advocating that African

Americans be resettled in Africa. Other abolitionists demanded that African Americans remain in the U.S. as free

citizens.

Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society

• White abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison established , The Liberator, a newspaper

committed to abolition of slavery.

• In 1835, an angry Boston mob paraded Garrison through town at the end of a rope. Nevertheless, Garrison enjoyed widespread black support; 3 out of 4 early subscribers to

The Liberator were African Americans.

• Frederick Douglass escaped bondage to become a leading advocate for the

abolition of slavery.

• In 1847, Douglass began his own antislavery newspaper called The North

Star, named after the star that guided runaway slaves to freedom.

• Most slaves worked as house servants, farm hands, or in the fields. Some states allowed masters to free their slaves and even allowed slaves to purchase their

freedom over time. These “manumitted” free slaves were very few.

• The majority of African Americans in the South were enslaved and endured

lives of suffering and constant degradation.

• Some slaves rebelled against their condition of bondage. In August 1831, a Virginia slave Nat Turner and more than 50 followers attacked four plantations

and killed about 60 whites.

• Whites eventually captured and executed many members of the group, including Turner. The Turner Rebellion frightened and outraged slaveholders.

• In some states, people argued that the only way to prevent slave revolts was

through emancipation.

• Others chose to tighten restrictions (slave codes) on all African Americans

to prevent them form plotting insurrections.

• Some proslavery advocates began to argue that slavery was a benevolent

(caring) institution. They used the Bible to defend slavery and cited passages

that taught servants to obey their masters.

• Nevertheless, opposition to slavery refused to disappear. Much of the strength of the abolition movement came from the

efforts of women, many of whom contributed to the women’s rights

movement.

The Women’s Reform Movement

• In the early 19th century, women faced limited options. Society encouraged

women to restrict their activities after marriage to the home and family. Women were denied full participation in American

society.

• The most important reform effort that women participated in was abolition. Women abolitionists raised money, distributed literature, and collected

signatures for antislavery petitions to Congress.

Sojourner Truth was a early abolitionist and women’s rights

advocate.

• Women played key roles in the temperance movement (the effort to

prohibit the drinking of alcohol.)

• Some women like Dorothea Dix fought to improve treatment for the mentally

disabled. Dix joined others in the effort to reform the nation’s harsh and

inhumane prison system.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton convened the Seneca Falls Convention 1848 to promote women’s rights and abolition (including

the right to vote.)

The Seneca Falls Convention was the first formal women’s rights gathering in the United States.