2. The rise of black abolitionism and global antislavery struggles

As a new century loomed, black activists pushed abolition forward across the Atlantic world. The greatest example came in Saint-Domingue, where a slave rebellion in the 1790s compelled the French government to issue a broad emancipation decree. “The rise of black abolitionism and global antislavery struggles” explains how a more assertive brand of abolitionism also developed in the United States, as free black communities rebuked American statesmen for allowing racial oppression to prosper, arguing that slavery and segregation violated the American creed of liberty and justice for all. Several European and American nations banned the slave trade in the early 1800s, but slavery proved to be a resilient institution in the 19th century.

4. The abolitionist crossroads

After the turbulent 1830s, doubt and discord haunted the antislavery ranks. Facing opposition in the North and South, immediate abolitionists quarrelled not only with their opponents but also with each other. A series of questions loomed: Should abolitionists moderate their protest or become even more radical? Should they form a political party or separate from corrupt civil and religious institutions? Should they aid fugitive slaves or embrace nonviolence? Should women and African Americans take more or less prominent roles in the antislavery movement? “The abolitionist crossroads” explains how the 1840s were a time of dynamism and change for abolitionism not just in America but around the world.

3. The time is now

Organized abolitionism had been in operation for nearly fifty years when it took a radical turn during the 1830s. “The time is now: The rise of immediate abolition” describes how a new generation of Anglo-American abolitionists made immediate emancipation the movement’s standard, spawning wide-ranging debates about abolitionist radicalism. Led by a diverse and multicultural constellation of activists, abolition’s second wave embraced a crusading brand of reform that refused to defer to slaveholders’ or politicians’ concerns. Experimenting with new tactics—from mail campaigns that bombarded slaveholders with antislavery literature to the physical defense of fugitive slaves—abolitionists became full-time activists and professional reformers. It was an explosive era of activism.

Epilogue

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, American abolitionists began writing memoirs, histories, and reminiscences of the grand struggle for freedom. Part of a battle over Civil War memory, they sought not only to claim a piece of history but also to combat Lost Cause narratives that already denigrated emancipation. Even though American slavery was history, abolitionist battles continued. The epilogue describes how across the Atlantic world abolitionists realized that their struggle was not over. British abolitionists focused on the perils of illegal slave trading while Iberian and Latin American abolitionists renewed their struggle against bondage itself. In the U.S. South, abolitionists fought against new forms of discrimination that seemed very much like slavery.

6. American emancipations

Even before the election of 1860, abolition made national headlines with John Brown’s failed raid at Harpers Ferry. Though he hoped to foment a slave rebellion in western Virginia, Brown’s raid ended with his capture and execution. “American emancipations: Abolitionism in the Civil War era” describes how Brown’s death put a spotlight on slaveholders too. While southern masters and their northern allies vilified abolitionists, some Republicans joined abolitionists in using Brown’s memory to focus on slave power outrages. No one could have predicted that this tactic would lead to a civil war, or slavery’s complete destruction, in a just a few years. Abolitionists were ready to exploit events to their advantage.

1. Early abolitionism

Among the first documented slave rebellions was a 1522 uprising of captive Africans in the Spanish Caribbean. “Early abolitionism: prophets versus profits” describes how new allies of enslaved people helped put abolition on the Atlantic World’s political and cultural radar during the late-1600s and early-1700s. However, as European empires built New World economies, they created massive labor needs. The first formal challenge to bondage in colonial America was the Quakers’ Germantown Protest in 1688. The work of influential abolitionist figures such as Anthony Benezet is described along with the progress of abolitionism during the Age of Revolution. American abolitionists had to overcome political fears about disunion as well as pro-slavery arguments about bondage’s economic importance.

5. The abolitionist renaissance and the coming of the Civil War

Although abolitionists never enjoyed widespread popularity in the United States, they found that northerners were more interested in their critiques of slavery during the 1850s. “The abolitionist renaissance and the coming of the Civil War” explains how the passage of a stronger fugitive slave law, which turned white citizens into would-be slave catchers, raised new questions about the slave power and allowed abolitionist arguments to resonate more deeply, resulting in an abolitionist renaissance. From politics to pop culture, abolitionist ideas were diffused widely through American society. Even if most northerners did not join antislavery societies, the abolitionist struggle seemed ascendant in ways not seen since the late eighteenth century, a development that had profound consequences for sectionalism, disunion, and civil war.

Introduction

This brief survey of abolitionism focuses mostly on Anglo-American reformers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it also surveys Atlantic-wide movements that began with slave rebels in the 1500s and ended with Brazilian emancipation in the 1880s. The introduction explains that wherever it took shape, abolitionism was both a meditation and a movement: a meditation on “big ideas” about freedom and equality and a complex movement of people, organizations, and events designed to bring those ideas to fruition. Abolitionism was a social movement—an activist struggle akin to the twentieth-century civil rights movement—that focused on political and social agitation. Abolitionist ideas and actions reframed how people understood slavery, race, global freedom, and multicultural democracy.