Encyclopedia
Abolitionism was a political movement that sought to abolish the practice of
slavery and the worldwide
slave trade. It began during the period of the
Enlightenment and grew to large proportions in several nations during the 19th century, largely succeeding in its goals.
Abolitionism in Britain and the British Empire
See also Abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.Slavery in Britain
The trade in slaves in England was made illegal in 1102, and the last form of enforced servitude had disappeared in Britain by the beginning of the 17th century. However, by the 18th century black slaves began to be brought into
London and
Edinburgh as personal servants. They were not bought or sold, and their legal status was unclear until 1772, when the case of a runaway slave named
James Somerset forced a legal decision. The owner, Charles Steuart, had attempted to abduct him and send him to
Jamaica to work on the sugar plantations. While in London Somerset had been
baptised and his godparents issued a writ of
habeas corpus. As a result Lord Chief Justice
William Murray, Lord Mansfield, of the Court of King's Bench had to judge whether the abduction was legal or not under English Common Law as there was no legislation for slavery in England. In his judgement of 22 June 1772 he declared: "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." It was thus declared that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law. This judgement emancipated the 10 to 14 thousand slaves in England and also laid down that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions could not be enforced in England.
After reading of the Somerset case, a black slave in Scotland, Joseph Knight, left his master, John Wedderburn. A similar case to Steuart's was brought by Wedderburn in 1776, with the same result: that chattel slavery did not exist under the
law of Scotland .
First steps towards abolition
Despite the disappearance of slavery in Great Britain, in the American and West Indian
colonies of the
British Empire, slavery was a way of life.
By 1783, an anti-slavery movement was beginning among the British public. Dr Beilby Porteus,
Bishop of Chester and later Bishop of London, used the opportunity afforded by preaching the 1783 Anniversary sermon of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts at
St Mary-le-Bow,
Cheapside,
London to issue a call to the
Church of England to cease its involvement in the
slave trade and to formulate a workable policy to draw attention to and improve the conditions of the Afro-Caribbean slaves on the society's
plantations in
Barbados. The same year, the first English abolitionist organisation was founded by a group of
Quakers. The Quakers continued to be extremely influential throughout the lifetime of the movement, in many ways leading the way for the campaign. On June 17, 1783 the issue was formally brought to government by Sir Cecil Wray , who presented the Quaker petition to parliament.
The movement for abolition gains momentum
In May 1787, the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed, referring to the
Atlantic slave trade, the trafficking in slaves by British merchants operating in
West African British colonies and other
Caribbean countries by means of the so-called
Triangle trade. Influenced by James Ramsay, who had seen the cruelty of the trade at first-hand,
Granville Sharp,
Thomas Clarkson, and other members of the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers were among the 12 committee members, most of whom were
Quakers. Because they were Dissenters, Quakers were not eligible to become MPs, so
William Wilberforce was persuaded to become the leader of the
parliamentary campaign. Clarkson was the group's researcher who gathered vast amounts of information about the slave trade, gaining first-hand accounts by interviewing sailors and former slaves at British ports such as
Bristol,
Liverpool and
London.
Largely due to Clarkson's efforts, a network of local abolition groups was established across the country. They campaigned through public meetings, the publication of
pamphlets and petitions. The movement had support from Quakers,
Baptists,
Methodists and others, and reached out for support from the new
industrial workers of the cities in the midlands and north of England. Even women and children, previously un-politicised groups, became involved in the campaign.
One particular project of the abolitionists was the establishment of
Sierra Leone as a settlement for former slaves of the
British Empire back in west
Africa.
In 1796, John Gabriel Stedman published the memoirs of his five-year voyage to
Surinam as part of a military force sent out to subdue bosnegers, former slaves living in the inlands. The book is critical of the treatment of slaves and contains many images by
William Blake and Francesco Bartolozzi depicting the cruel treatment of runaway slaves. It became part of a large body of abolitionist literature.
Slave Trade Act 1807
The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by the
British Parliament on March 25, 1807. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the
British Empire, but the trade continued and captains in danger of being caught by the
Royal Navy would often throw slaves into the sea to reduce the fine. In 1827, Britain declared that participation in the slave trade was piracy and punishable by death.
Slavery Abolition Act 1833
After the 1807 act, slaves were still held, though not sold, within the British Empire. In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement again became active, this time campaigning against the institution of slavery itself. The Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1827. Many of the campaigners were those who had previously campaigned against the slave trade.
On August 23, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery in the
British colonies. On August 1, 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838. £20 million was paid in compensation to plantation owners in the
Caribbean.
Campaigning after the act
From 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society worked to outlaw slavery in other countries and to pressure the government to help enforce the suppression of the slave trade by declaring
slave traders pirates and pursuing them. This organization continues today as
Anti-Slavery International.
Abolitionism in France
As in other "New World" colonies, the
Atlantic slave trade provided the French colonies with manpower for the
sugar cane plantations. The French West Indies included
Anguilla ,
Antigua and Barbuda ,
Dominica,
Dominican Republic,
Grenada,
Haïti,
Montserrat ,
Saint Lucia,
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,
Sint Eustatius ,
St Kitts and Nevis ,
Trinidad and Tobago ,
Saint Croix , and the current French overseas
départements of
Martinique and
Guadeloupe ) in the Caribbean sea.
The slave trade was regulated by
Louis XIV's 177777
Code Noir. The institution of slavery was first repealed following the
Haïtian Revolution led by
Toussaint L'Ouverture, which started in 1791. The rebels imposed to the First Republic the repeal of slavery on February 4, 1794. The
Abbé Grégoire and the Society of the Friends of the Blacks , led by
Jacques Pierre Brissot, were part of the abolitionist movement, which had laid important groundwork in building anti-slavery sentiment in the metropole. The first article of the law stated that "Slavery was repealed" in the French colonies, while the second article stated that "slave-owners would be indemnified", with a financial compensation. On May 10, 1802, colonel Delgrès signed a public notice, which was a call to Guadeloupe for insurgency against general Richepanse, sent by
Napoleon to reestablish slavery. The rebellion was repressed, and slavery reestablished. Then, on April 27, 1848, under the
Second Republic , the decree-law Schœlcher repealed once again slavery. Slaves were bought back to the colons and then freed by the state. At the same time, France started colonizing Africa, transferring the population to the
mines, the
forestry and
rubber plantations.
Debates about the value of colonialism continue to this day. On May 10, 2001, the Taubira law officially recognized slavery and the Atlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity. Between various propositions, May 10 was finally chosen as day dedicated to the recognition of the crime of slavery. Anti-colonialist activists also want the African Liberation Day to be recognized by the Republic. Although slavery was recognized by this law, four years later, the vote of the February 23, 2005 law by the conservative
Union for a Popular Movement , asking teachers and textbooks to "acknowledge and recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa", was met with public uproar and accusations of
historic revisionism, both inside France and abroad.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria, refused to sign the envisioned "friendly treaty" with France because of this law. Famous writer Aimé Césaire, leader of the
Négritude movement, also refused to meet UMP leader
Nicolas Sarkozy, leading the later to cancel his visit to Martinique. The controversial law was finally repealed by president
Jacques Chirac at the beginning of 2006.
Abolitionism in Romania
The slavery of the Rroma , which lasted for over five centruries, was abolished in Romania between 1843 and 1855. Over a quarter of a million slaves were liberated, most of which left for Western Europe and North America.
Abolitionism in Russia
In the 15th -17th centuries
Imperial Russia had a complicated system of slavery, including hereditary slavery and "limited service contract slavery." Under the latter system, when living conditions were bad a man might sell himself and his family to an owner for one year for a loan. Failure to repay the loan meant hereditary slavery. Peter the Great abolished the slavery, but serfdom remained.
The condition of the
serfs deteriorated after 1720, reaching a low point around 1800. The serfs were technically not slaves, since they could not be bought or sold. However they were locked to a specific piece of land and were under the firm control of the landowners. Household serfs were kept under the constant and complete control of their masters, and their condition could barely be distinguished from slavery. The Russian emancipation of the serfs on March 3, 1861 by Tsar
Alexander II of Russia abolished the system.
Abolitionism in United States
Gradual Abolition
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society, formed April 14, 1775, in
Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers who had a strong religious objection. It ceased to operate during the Revolution and the British occupation of Philadelphia; it was reorganized in 1784, with
Benjamin Franklin as first president.
Benjamin Rush was a leader, as were many Quakers.
African Slavery in America was one of the earliest calls for abolition; it appeared in the
Pennsylvania Magazine and some scholars believe
Thomas Paine wrote it.
Abolition in northern states
The Revolution set in motion actions in every state to abolish slavery. This succeeded in every northern state by 1804; although the emancipation was so gradual that there were still a dozen "permanent apprentices" in the 1860 census.
The principal organized bodies to advocate this reform were the
Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, and the New York Manumission Society. The latter was headed by powerful Federalist politicians, John Jay,
Alexander Hamilton, and republican
Aaron Burr. Thanks to the considerable efforts of the NYMS,
New York abolished slavery in 1799. In terms of numbers of slaves, this was the largest emancipation in American history . New Jersey in 1804 was the last northern state to abolish slavery . At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, however, agreement was reached that allowed the Federal government to abolish the international slave trade in 1808, which it did. By then all the states had passed individual laws abolishing or severely limiting the trade, all but
Georgia by 1798.
Colonization to Liberia
In the 1820s and 1830s the American Colonization Society was the main vehicle for proposals to eventually do away with slavery. It had broad support nationwide, with leaders like
Henry Clay. It created an American colony in Africa,
Liberia and assisted thousands of blacks to move there. The disease environment was extreme, and most of the migrants died quickly, but enough survived to rule Liberia into the 1980s. African Americans lost interest in the venture, as abolitionists influenced by Garrison denounced it after 1840.
Garrison and immediate emancipation
A radical shift came in the 1830s, led by
William Lloyd Garrison, who demanded "immediate emancipation, gradually achieved.". That is he demanded that slave-owners repent immediately, and set up a system of emancipation. After 1840 "abolition" usually referred to positions like Garrison's; it was largely an ideological movement led by about 3000 people, including freed blacks. Abolitionism had a strong religious base including Quakers, and people converted by the revivalist fervor of the
Second Great Awakening in the North in the 1830s. Belief in abolition contributed to the breaking away of some small denominations, such as the
Free Methodist Church.
Evangelical abolitionists founded some colleges, most notably
Bates College in
Maine and
Oberlin College in
Ohio. The well established colleges, such as
Harvard,
Yale and
Princeton, generally opposed abolition, although the movement did attract such figures as Yale president
Noah Porter and Harvard president Thomas Hill.
In the North most opponents of slavery supported other modernizing reform movements such as the
temperance movement,
public schooling, and prison- and asylum-building. They split bitterly on the role of women's activism.
Daniel O'Connell, the
Roman Catholic leader of the Irish in Ireland, supported the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and in America. O'Connell had played a leading role in securing
Catholic Emancipation and he was one of
William Lloyd Garrison's models. Garrison recruited him to the cause of American abolitionism and O'Connell, the black abolitionist
Charles Lenox Remond, and Theobold Mayhew, the temperance priest, organized a petition with 60,000 signatures urging the Irish of America to support abolition. O'Connell also spoke in America for abolition.
Nevertheless, the Repeal Associations in the United States largely took a proslavery position. Several reasons have been suggested for this: that the Irish, who were in any case competing with blacks for jobs, disliked having the same arguments used for Irish and for black freedom; that they were loyal to the
United States Constitution, which defended
their liberties, and disliked the fundamentally extraconstitutional position of the Abolitionists, and that they perceived abolitionism as Protestant. In addition, the slaveholders had no hesitation in voicing support for the freedom of Ireland, a white nation outside the United States.
Radical Irish nationalists - those who broke with O'Connell over his refusal to contemplate the violent overthrow of British rule in Ireland - had a diversity of views about slavery.
John Mitchel, who spent the years 1853 to 1875 in America, was a passionate propagandist slavery; three of his sons fought in the
Confederate Army. On the other hand, his former close associate
Thomas Francis Meagher served as a
Brigadier General in the
United States Army during the
American Civil War.
The Roman Catholic church in America was centered in slaveholding Maryland, and, despite a firm stand for the spiritual equality of blacks, supported slavery. The Bishop of New York denounced O'Connell's petition as a forgery, and if genuine, unwarranted foreign interference; the Bishop of Charleston declared that, while Catholic tradition opposed slave trading, it had nothing against slavery. No American bishop supported abolition before the Civil War; even while that war went on, they freely communicated with slave-owners. One historian observed that ritualist churches separate themselves from heretics rather than sinners; he observes the same acceptance of slavery among the Episcopalians and the Lutherans.
After O'Connell's failure, the American Repeal Associations broke up; but the Garrisonians rarely relapsed into the "bitter hostility" of American Protestants towards the Roman Church. Some antislavery men joined the Know Nothings, in the collapse of the parties; but Edmund Quincy ridiculed it as a mushroom growth, a distraction from the real issues; and although the Know-Nothing legislature of Massachusetts honored Garrison, he continued to oppose them as violators of fundamental rights to freedom of worship.
Even the evangelical Protestants
William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, however, regarded the
United States Declaration of Independence as being as important as the Bible. In 1854, Garrison wrote:
I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form – and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing – with indignation and abhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defense, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any institution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may rightfully make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration of Independence. Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire. I do not know how to espouse freedom and slavery together.
History of American abolition
- In detail: Origins of the American Civil War, History of slavery in the United States
Although there were several groups that opposed slavery , at the time of the founding of the Republic, there were few states which prohibited slavery outright. The Constitution had several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used the word.
All of the states north of
Maryland began to gradually abolish slavery between 1781 and 1804; all the states abolished or severely limited the slave trade,
Rhode Island in 1774 , all the others by 1786, Georgia in 1798. These northern emancipation acts typically provided that slaves born before the law was passed would be freed at a certain age, and so remnants of slavery lingered; in
New Jersey, a dozen "permanent apprentices" were recorded in the 1860 census. The first state to abolish slavery outright was
Massachusetts, where a court decision in 1781 interpreted the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 as an abolition of slavery. This was later explicitly codified in a new version of the Massachusetts Constitution written by
John Adams.
The institution remained solid in the South, however, and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a stronger anti-slavery stance in the North. The anti-slavery sentiment, which existed before 1830 among many people in the North, was joined after 1840 by the vocal few of the abolitionist movement. The majority of Northerners rejected the extreme positions of the abolitionists;
Abraham Lincoln, for example. Indeed many northern leaders including Lincoln,
Stephen Douglas ,
John C. Fremont , and
Ulysses S. Grant married into slaveowning southern families without any moral qualms.
Abolitionism as a principle was far more than just the wish to limit the extent of slavery. Most Northerners recognized that slavery existed in the South and the Constitution did not allow the federal government to intervene there. Most Northerners favored a policy of gradual and compensated emancipation. After 1849 abolitionists rejected this and demanded it ended immediately and everywhere. John Brown was the only abolitionist known to have actually planned a violent insurrection, thought David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free
African-Americans, especially in the black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the
New Testament. African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the black community; however, they were tremendously influential to some sympathetic whites, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence,
William Lloyd Garrison, who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave
Frederick Douglass, who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own, widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, the
North Star.
In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the issue of the
United States Constitution. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by
Lysander Spooner. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and
Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by
Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an antislavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural Law and a form of social contract theory, they said that slavery existed outside of the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
Another split in the abolitionist movement was along
class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Owen and
Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to the politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother
Lewis. While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense.
Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the
Underground Railroad. This was made illegal by the federal
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, but participants like
Harriet Tubman,
Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Amos Noë Freeman and others continued regardless with the final destination for slaves moved to
Canada. Two landmark events for the movement were the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and John Brown's raid on
Harpers Ferry.
After the issuance of the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, abolitionists continued to pursue the freedom of slaves in the remaining slave states, and to better the conditions of black Americans generally. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 officially ended slavery. See
Reconstruction for details.
National abolition dates
Slavery was abolished in these nations in these years:
England [i] and Wales [i] are home nations [i] of the United Kingdom [i] and, because t...
: In practice, 1772, as a result of Somersett's case; although the legal effect of this was much more limited; see Slavery at common law
- Scotland: 1776 as a result of Wedderburne's case
- Haiti: 1791, due to a revolt among nearly half a million slaves
- Upper Canada: 1793, by Act Against Slavery
- France : 1794-1802, including all colonies
- Argentina: 1813
- Gran Colombia : 1821, through a gradual emancipation plan
- Chile: 1823
- Mexico: 1829
- British Empire: 1833, including all colonies
- Mauritius: 1 Feb 1835, under the British government. This day is a public holiday.
- Denmark: 1848, including all colonies
- France : 1848, including all colonies
- Peru: 1851
- Romania: 1855
- The Netherlands: 1863, including all colonies
- The United States: 1865, after the U.S. Civil War
- Puerto Rico 1873 and Cuba: 1880
- Brazil: 1888
- Korea
One of the world's oldest civilization [i]s, Korea began with the founding of Gojoseon [i] in 2333 ...
: 1894
