all right this is openstax u.s history chapter 13 section 4 addressing slavery so in terms of all the antebellum reform movements this one is going to be the most important in terms of its immediate impact with the civil war looming on the horizon but as like other issues in the country temperance is a good example it wasn't that slavery never existed it's the fact that it's changing recall that with cotton slavery is expanding kind of two ways expanding in terms of you know we might say geography right especially being pushed further south and further west and expanding in just you know numbers the sheer number of slaves leading up to the civil war is increasing at the time of the civil war maybe 4.5 million enslaved people so the urge to get rid of slavery or at least to address it becomes more imminent right as time goes by now the important or one of the most important groups here are the abolitionists we'll talk about specifically what the abolitionist movement is but we'd already talked a little bit about some of the ways that people began speaking out against slavery we might call this uh anti-slavery and this is kind of a you know it's a very small distinction but the distinction that i want to make you know the difference between what we might consider an abolitionist movement which is very particular to the era in the united states before the civil war versus somebody that we might consider to be anti-slavery the textbook doesn't always stick to those terms in particular but you know they are sort of separate so some examples of what we might consider anti-slavery movements would be those who are in favor of colonization or those who are in favor of violence we might also consider another sort of group into this equation that we talked about previously that would be a religious group like the quakers again recall the whole purpose of the quakers is not to get rid of slavery they're a religious group but their religious beliefs lead them to be against slavery so we might sort of consider them as an anti-slavery movement other organizations we might consider anti-slavery would be the acs or the american colonization society this is an organization that favored getting rid of slavery but recolonizing and we'll say that just because the term colonization three blacks three blacks outside of the u.s of us the acs helped create liberia which was a colony in west africa this was a colony for free blacks and emancipated slaves to move to three blacks say free slaves to move to and this is one way that we would consider the colonization society different than the abolitionists the abolitionists as a movement were not in favor of recolonization so the colonization society had in fact a lot of popularity at this time most i would say that most people who favored getting rid of slavery uh wanted to get rid of it with the condition that people of african descent would not be living in the united states that preservation of the united states as a white republic um and not open to anybody else so it's not abolitionists in that sense you know the abolitionists favor emancipating slaves but also creating a biracial or multi-racial society but this was probably one of the more well-funded and well-supported anti-slavery organizations essentially viewing slavery as a sin it needs to be you know gotten rid of in the united states but really no intention of allowing those you know free blacks to live in the united states or you know give them american rights for example other people who would consider under this anti-slavery umbrella would also be those who favored violence nat turner's rebellion in 1831 is a good example nat turner was a slave that led a violent rebellion that led to the deaths of a number of white people in virginia and david walker who was a free black in the north in the north who also advocated violence violence so with that being said we can now kind of narrow down our definition of what you know the abolitionist movement as a social movement in the antebellum era um really is and that will you know we'll just sort of add these caveats to it that the abolitionists want to integrate that means to make part of and extend rights to former slaves and they also advocate for non-violence right now again these sort of terms get kind of uh you know these terms get sort of jumbled up together but if you wanted to draw kind of a line between what separates the abolitionist antebellum abolitionist movement and what would just be a general anti-slavery movement or anti-slavery organization that pretty much is it the abolitionists you know looked at slavery as immoral you know that was really what the justification was for getting rid of it we might also add that it contradicted uh you know u.s values or american values uh you know expressed in places like the declaration of independence the notion that people are created equal and so you can see with that um you know if you look at it from a sort of perspective of christianity if you look at it from a perspective of you know thinking about the united states values of equality well then it makes logical sense then to hold this view right that former slaves that they truly are equal in the eyes of god if you know thomas jefferson's words are actually correct then it means not just abolishing slavery but also integrating former slaves into u.s society and extending full citizenship and full rights and so for this reason you know and on top of it we might also say that the abolitionists advocated for immediate abolitionism that means to get rid of slavery of slavery right now right immediately no compromising on it and this also has to do with the point about uh you know slavery being a sin very clearly it's either right or wrong and if it's wrong you need to stop doing it now um you know in a sense that you know other behaviors you know the enslaving of people is like other sins it's like you know if we compare it to something like murder it wouldn't make sense to say something like well i'll just gradually stop murdering people that would still be immoral in the same sense slavery was immoral right it wouldn't make sense to just say okay we're going to gradually get rid of slavery it needs to be gotten rid of now and for that reason the abolitionist movement was a small small but loud organization it was also in some cases one of the first multi-racial movements in the united states you know really bringing in a lot of a lot of different groups it was men and women it was rich and poor um however one thing that did sort of make it uh you know maybe not as not as broad you know reaching was that as mostly in the north right is mostly located in the north in some of the urban areas probably one of the most famous abolitionists was william lloyd garrison he was a newspaper publisher in the north he wrote the liberator this was probably the say the most known abolitionists a newspaper and you know like other reform movements it you know involved printing various publications to try and spread the message here we see an anti-slavery depiction here says am i not a man and a brother am i not a woman and a sister and what the abolitionists sought to do was to really play on moral suasion we might also say to appeal to emotion right that is to talk about the morality of slavery to tell the story to tell the narrative it wasn't sort of a calculated logistic or calculated yeah a logical argument it was to play on people's emotions to talk and stress more on the morality of it again like i mentioned before garrison and other abolitionists favored immediatism right that is to end slavery now and slavery now we might think of think of okay well what would be an example that contradicts that well let's you know recall the idea of popular sovereignty right if that's a term that doesn't immediately come to mind it's a good term to go back and review popular sovereignty i'll do the hard work for you popular sovereignty is the idea of letting people vote on the legality of slavery or the abolitionists that's unacceptable right to even leave it up to a vote is still wrong it needs to be gotten rid of immediately abolitionists like william lloyd garrison and some of the more um you know some of the more uh people who are in that camp may even refrain from politics believing that that is corrupt garrison himself burned copies of the constitution he was very much a controversial figure almost got killed in boston for his views um but there were others who came to oppose slavery for different reasons maybe they were people who you know maybe there are people who did not call for an immediate ending to it but certainly had a perspective on it various political parties were created the liberty party and the free soil party these are anti-slavery parties you know so for example the um free soil party came to oppose slavery on purely economic ground so it really you know the morality didn't really matter that much to the free soilers they saw slavery as an impediment to the ability for white workers to earn wages um and so they created a different party as the second party system really became a um you know it just wasn't as effective as of answering this particular question right the democrats and the whigs were in a tough position to try and find a position on slavery because they had members from the north and members from the south so abolitionists if they did participate in politics uh you know threw their votes in with either the liberty party or the free soil parties these were you know these were third parties so they weren't very popular but they were a growing political voice really leading up to the civil war some of the other strategies that the abolitionists used included creating abolitionist literature it also meant sending literature to congress so much so that congress actually passed a rule that prohibited the reading of abolitionists you know petitions or whatever we may call the gag rule you might say prohibited congressional fresh uh getting sloppy here congressional um conversation on abolition that was because you know especially in this era and especially leading up to the civil war you know slavery was that issue which threatened to tear the nation apart you know for the most part congress could talk about tariffs and foreign policy and all these other issues without people you know getting at each other's throats but once the issue of slavery was brought up then it was an increasingly uncompromised line between north and south so you know this was a small but loud group of people the abolitionists were and they were viewed as dangerous because they were talking about and bringing up the issue that could could potentially tear the country apart um abolitionists also had to face a popular um you know popular resistance elijah lovejoy he was an abolitionist news we'll call him newsprinter he published an abolitionist newspaper who was murdered by a mob killed by a mob and um he's considered to be a martyr that movement now in addition to william lloyd garrison uh frederick douglass is probably arguably i would say probably the most well-known abolitionist frederick douglass who you see pictured right here um was someone who experienced slavery firsthand right william lloyd garrison he was a white guy born in the north had never been a slave himself frederick douglass was a slave and wrote his accounts in what was called the narrative of the life of frederick douglass so this was a personal account of of slavery uh douglas uh became free he dedicated the rest of his life to the abolitionist movement and um you know he arguably is the most well-known abolitionist in the united states really united states history he also helped publish the north star which again was uh maybe not again but the north star which was a newspaper and abolitionist newspaper and um you know one of the most effective aspects of the abolitionist movement was these personal accounts right you know it was one thing or somebody like garrison to burn copies of the constitution and talk about the evils of slavery but to see someone who experienced it firsthand and have them explain their own life account that could play on people's emotions and really convince people in a way that um you know that that others who hadn't personally experienced it could