University of Kwazulu-Natal

Resistance And Abolitionism In The United States Duke University

Bonisiwe Shabane
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resistance and abolitionism in the united states duke university

Text of Fugitive Slave Bill (Fugitive Slave Act), "as penned by the Senate and House of Representatives, Sept. 12, 1850, and approved Sept. 18, 1850 by President Fillmore. Anonymous manuscript text of abolitionist speech. The author criticized the American Colonization Society; addressed the issue of compensation of slaveholders for the price of slaves; condemned churches condoning slavery; and stated that interracial sexual relations were the product of slavery. Issues raised appear to concern the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, particularly the author's anger over the imprisonment of fugitive slaves without trial and the requirement that citizens assist in the return of fugitive...

The idea for the suffrage movement began at an anti-slavery conference and borrowed much of its methodology from the abolition movement. Though much of the present and historical narrative around the suffrage movement has focused on its white leaders, the fight for suffrage was diverse from its inception. Many African American women like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Mary Church Terrell fought for human rights through their work in women’s clubs, churches, and suffrage organizations. These groups were concerned not just with suffrage, but also with life and death issues such as lynching. At the same time, white suffragists and anti-suffragists upheld racist arguments, often dividing the movement and excluding Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. The objects in this section recount the abolitionist roots of the suffrage movement and the efforts of Black women to secure universal suffrage in spite of the racism within the movement and the continued...

This albumen photograph depicts prominent women’s rights and abolition activist Sojourner Truth. She sold this cabinet card, depicting her “shadow,” to provide income for herself. One of the era’s most progressive activists, Truth once commented she “used to be sold for other people’s benefit, but now she sold herself for her own.” This broadside advertises a speech by formerly enslaved woman and activist Sojourner Truth. Truth’s image and the testimonials from other renowned activists such as suffragist Susan B. Anthony and abolitionist Frederick Douglass attest to Truth’s ability to inspire others to fight for abolition and suffrage, and to recognize their shared goals.

This diary, written by abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott and edited by Frederick Tolles, recounts the World’s Anti-Slavery Conference of 1840 and its decision to exclude women from participating as delegates. At the Conference, Mott met fellow activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Angered by the Conference’s decision, the two women first considered the beginnings of a women’s rights movement based on the abolition movement. Letter to Mrs. Minnie C. Rodey - Full letters

Although it was the law of the land for more than 300 years, American slavery was challenged and resisted every day, by its victims, by its survivors, and by those who found it morally... The long campaign to abolish the trade in human beings was one of the great moral crusades in U.S. history, and its success was the result of decades of organization and agitation by African Americans and their European American allies. Daily life in a slave workplace was marked by countless acts of everyday resistance. Although their freedom was denied by the law, enslaved African Americans used a wide variety of strategies to contest the authority of slaveholders and to assert their right to control their own lives. Slaveholders depended on involuntary labor to keep their businesses solvent, and enslaved workers often used work slowdowns and absenteeism to negotiate some of the terms of their labor.

Many enslaved African Americans defied the slave system by leaving it. Escape attempts were dangerous and uncertain, and slaveholders posted substantial rewards for captured fugitives, but every year thousands of enslaved people fled to free states or territories. On the way, they were aided by enslaved people on nearby farms and plantations and by networks of free African Americans and European Americans. By 1860, an estimated 400,000 people had escaped from slavery. The form of resistance most feared by slaveholders, however, was violent insurrection. Throughout the history of slavery, African captives and enslaved African Americans had taken up arms and fought back against their captors.

In the early 19th century there came a series of armed revolts in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, punctuated by the rebellion led by Nat Turner in Southampton, Virginia, in which more than 50... Slaveholders were haunted by the possibility of a large-scale uprising, and they publicized lurid accounts of the Turner uprising and other, sometimes fictional, conspiracies in the hopes of increasing public vigilance. In the North, however, their efforts found a much different audience than they expected. From the rise of Atlantic slavery through the rise of radical abolitionism in the nineteenth century. Slave rebellion and resistance influences white and black abolitionists alike. In “Short Account of That Part of Africa,” published in Philadelphia in 1762, Anthony Benezet quoted Captain Thomas Phillips, who wrote that “the Negroes are loath to leave their own country, that they have...

For black reformers, slave resistance and rebellion was a fundamental component of their activism. No sooner had the American Revolution started that black runaways sought to link their struggle for freedom to the American quest for liberty. We have already heard the story of Charity Castle and Ona Judge, but countless others protested slavery through the Underground Railroad. At the close of the eighteenth century, black activists in the United States cited enslaved peoples resistance in San Domingue that ended in the Revolution of Haiti. This Revolution ended with the creation of the first black republic in the western hemisphere. In Boston, Prince Hall referred specifically to black uprising in Haiti as a positive example of black militant antislavery.

Speeches like Hall’s had to be subtle. Read Hall’s 1797 address, and see how he uses Haiti to embolden African Americans in the United States. In Philadelphia in the 1820s, Richard Allen’s Mother Bethel Church hosted envoys from Haiti and corresponded with President Boyer. Throughout the 19th century, black activists ranging from Alexander Crummel to Martin Delaney cited the power of Haiti’s example. In 1852, Frederick Douglass made his only attempt at writing fiction. His short story, “The Heroic Slave” drew heavily on the historical events which surrounded the actual rebellion led by Madison Washington on the slave ship Creole.

Read Douglass’s moving story here. Douglass, David Walker, Harriet Tubman, and many more black activists highlighted slave resistance as a way to illustrate African American peoples longing for freedom. Right up through the Civil War, abolitionists linked their struggle to those of enslaved people. In short, it is impossible to understand abolitionism without reference to the resistance and rebellion of slaves. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has begun work on a new digital history project about the Underground Railroad. The project will weave new connections between the manuscript journal and published book of William Still, known as the “Father of the Underground Railroad.” This effort will provide extraordinary insight into the experiences of...

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. abolitionism, (c. 1783–1888), in western Europe and the Americas, the movement chiefly responsible for creating the emotional climate necessary for ending the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. The intensification of slavery as a system, which followed Portuguese trafficking of enslaved Africans beginning in the 15th century, was driven by the European colonies in North America, South America, and the West Indies,... Between the 16th and 19th centuries an estimated total of 12 million enslaved Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas. The brutality of slavery, made increasingly visible by the scale of its practice, sparked a reaction that insisted on its abolition altogether.

The abolition movement began with criticism by rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment of slavery’s violation of the “rights of man.” Quaker and other, evangelical religious groups condemned it for its un-Christian qualities. By the late 18th century moral disapproval of slavery was widespread, and antislavery reformers won a number of deceptively easy victories during this period. In Britain, Granville Sharp secured a legal decision in 1772 that West Indian planters could not hold slaves in Britain, because slavery was contrary to English law. In the United States, all the states north of Maryland abolished slavery between 1777 and 1804. But antislavery sentiments had little effect on the centres of slavery themselves: the massive plantations of the Deep South, the West Indies, and South America. Turning their attention to these areas, British and American abolitionists began working in the late 18th century to prohibit the importation of enslaved Africans into the British colonies and the United States.

Under the leadership of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, these forces succeeded in getting the slave trade to the British colonies abolished in 1807. The United States prohibited the importation of slaves that same year, though widespread smuggling continued until about 1862. Antislavery forces then concentrated on winning the emancipation of those populations already in slavery. They were triumphant when slavery was abolished in the British West Indies by 1838 and in French possessions 10 years later. This module focuses on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the system which forced the enslavement of Africans who were transported to the western world. Enslaved Africans faced some of the most brutal treatment in human history, enduring a journey across the Atlantic Ocean that lasted anywhere between 4-10 weeks on ships with two hundred to eight hundred people...

Some revolted, some took their own lives, some fell sick and died on the journey. But for those that survived, arriving in ports and trading cities in the Caribbean, South America, and the US was only the first step of the rest of their lives. These three documents in the boxes below are a small sample of the Rubenstein Library's archives of the trade but provide an important window into understanding the legacy of the trade and the people... Follow the instructions accompanied with each document and use the Document Analysis Worksheet (located in the Analysis and Evaluation box on the left) to reflect on what you observed. Ascention Insurance Account, 1793 - (pay close attention to page 3) Context/Summary: Account detailing the value of the ship Ascention and its cargo including 52 slaves.

Apparently, the ship was lost in the slaves' insurrection in 1793. Information was gathered for the purpose of collecting insurance. Citation: Ascention Insurance Account, 1793, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University By 1804, all of the northern states had passed laws to abolish slavery, almost all through gradual means. In some cases, the emancipation was so gradual that some people were still enslaved in those states at the end of the Civil War.

The rights of free Black people were uncertain and subject to infringement. Some white anti-slavery advocates proposed establishing foreign colonies, first in Africa and later in the Caribbean and Central America, to remove newly freed Black people from the United States. Kentucky politician Henry Clay was one of the leading proponents of linking emancipation and colonization, and Lincoln followed in his footsteps. Most Black Americans firmly rejected colonization and fought for birthright citizenship and equality under the law. Lincoln would continue to advocate for colonization until he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The abolitionist movement that arose in the 1820s and 1830s was a branch within the larger anti-slavery movement.

Abolitionism was an interracial movement that called for an immediate end to slavery, rejected reimbursements for enslavers, rejected colonization, and envisioned a biracial nation. By the 1840s, abolitionists had succeeded in moving slavery from the political wings to the center stage. They introduced the argument that the founders held anti-slavery views—a position Lincoln would later adopt. They also called for birthright citizenship, which later would become law in the Fourteenth Amendment. Lincoln repeatedly denied any association with abolitionism and condemned the violence and law-breaking associated with its activism. He opposed slavery but did not espouse racial equality.

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