Abolitionists definition of Abolitionists in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

abolitionists, in U.S. history, particularly in the three decades before the Civil War, members of the movement that agitated for the compulsory emancipation of the slaves. Abolitionists are distinguished from free-soilers, who opposed the further extension of slavery, but the groups came to act together politically and otherwise in the antislavery cause. The abolitionist movement was one of high moral purpose and courage; its uncompromising temper made the slavery question the prime concern of national politics and hastened the demise of slavery in the United States (see also slavery slavery, institution based on a relationship of dominance and submission, whereby one person owns another and can exact from that person labor or other services.
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Evangelical Influences

Although antislavery sentiment had existed during the American Revolution, and abolitionist Benjamin Lundy Lundy, Benjamin, 1789–1839, American abolitionist, b. Sussex co., N.J., of Quaker parentage. A pioneer in the antislavery movement, Lundy founded (1815) the Union Humane Society while operating a saddlery in Ohio.
..... Click the link for more information. began his work early in the 19th cent., the abolition movement did not reach crusading proportions until the 1830s. One of its mainsprings was the growing influence of evangelical religion, with its religious fervor, its moral urgency to end sinful practices, and its vision of human perfection. The preaching of Lyman Beecher and Nathaniel Taylor in New England and the religious revivals that began in W New York state in 1824 under Charles G. Finney Finney, Charles Grandison, 1792–1875, American evangelist, theologian, and educator, b. Warren, Conn. Licensed to the Presbyterian ministry in 1824, he had phenomenal success as a revivalist in the Eastern states, converting many who became noted abolitionists .
..... Click the link for more information. and swept much of the North, created a powerful impulse toward social reform—emancipation of the slaves as well as temperance, foreign missions, and women's rights. Outstanding among Charles Finney's converts were Theodore D. Weld and the brothers Arthur Tappan Tappan, Arthur (tăp`ən), 1786–1865, American abolitionist, b. Northampton, Mass.
..... Click the link for more information. and Lewis Tappan Tappan, Lewis, 1788–1873, American abolitionist, b. Northampton, Mass. He became a partner in his brother Arthur's New York mercantile house in 1828 and in 1841 founded the first agency for rating commercial credit in the United States.
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The Antislavery Movement

The Tappan brothers and William Lloyd Garrison Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805–79, American abolitionist, b. Newburyport, Mass. He supplemented his limited schooling with newspaper work and in 1829 went to Baltimore to aid Benjamin Lundy in publishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation.
..... Click the link for more information. , who began publishing an abolitionist journal, The Liberator, in 1831, were the principal organizers in Dec., 1833, at Philadelphia, of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The primary concern of the society was the denunciation of slavery as a moral evil; its members called for immediate action to free the slaves. In 1835 the society launched a massive propaganda campaign. It flooded the slave states with abolitionist literature, sent agents throughout the North to organize state and local antislavery societies, and poured petitions into Congress demanding the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

The abolitionists were at first widely denounced and abused. Mobs attacked them in the North; Southerners burned antislavery pamphlets and in some areas excluded them from the mails; and Congress imposed the gag rule gag rules, in parliamentary procedure, rules limiting or prohibiting free debate on a particular issue. In U.S. history, the term is applied especially to procedural rules in force in the House of Representatives from 1836 to 1844.
..... Click the link for more information. to avoid considering their petitions. These actions, and the murder of abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837, led many to fear for their constitutional rights. Abolitionists shrewdly exploited these fears and antislavery sentiment spread rapidly in the North. By 1838, more than 1,350 antislavery societies existed with almost 250,000 members, including many women.

Although abolitionists united in denouncing the African venture of the American Colonization Society American Colonization Society, organized Dec., 1816–Jan., 1817, at Washington, D.C., to transport free blacks from the United States and settle them in Africa.
..... Click the link for more information. , they disagreed among themselves as to how their goal might be best reached. Garrison believed in moral suasion as the only weapon; he and his followers also argued that women be allowed to participate fully in antislavery societies, thus disturbing more conservative members. When the Garrisonians passed such a resolution at the society's 1840 convention, a large group led by the Tappan brothers withdrew and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The abolitionists were never again united as a single movement.

Advocates of direct political action founded (1840) the Liberty party; James G. Birney Birney, James Gillespie (bûr`nē), 1792–1857, American abolitionist, b. Danville, Ky.
..... Click the link for more information. was its presidential candidate in 1840 and 1844. Writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier Whittier, John Greenleaf (hwĭt`ēər), 1807–92, American Quaker poet and reformer, b. near Haverhill, Mass.
..... Click the link for more information. and orators such as Wendell Phillips Phillips, Wendell, 1811–84, American reformer and orator, b. Boston, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1831; LL.B., 1834). He was admitted to the bar in 1834 but, having sufficient income of his own, he abandoned his law practice to devote his life to fighting for sound
..... Click the link for more information. gave their services to the cause, while Frederick Douglass Douglass, Frederick (dŭg`ləs), c.1817–1895, American abolitionist, b. near Easton, Md.
..... Click the link for more information. and other freed or escaped slaves also took to the lecture platform.

An antislavery lobby was organized in 1842, and its influence grew under Weld's able direction. Abolitionists hoped to convert the South through the churches, until the withdrawal of Southern Methodists (1844) and Baptists (1845) from association with their Northern brethren. After the demise of the Liberty party, the political abolitionists supported the Free-Soil party Free-Soil party, in U.S. history, political party that came into existence in 1847–48 chiefly because of rising opposition to the extension of slavery into any of the territories newly acquired from Mexico.
..... Click the link for more information. in 1848 and 1852, and in 1856 they voted with the Republican party.

The passage of more stringent fugitive slave laws in 1850 increased abolitionist activity on the Underground Railroad Underground Railroad, in U.S. history, loosely organized system for helping fugitive slaves escape to Canada or to areas of safety in free states. It was run by local groups of Northern abolitionists , both white and free blacks.
..... Click the link for more information. . Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811–96, American novelist and humanitarian, b. Litchfield, Conn. With her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, she stirred the conscience of Americans concerning slavery and thereby influenced the course of American history.
..... Click the link for more information. , became an effective piece of abolitionist propaganda, and the Kansas Kansas (kăn`zəs), midwestern state occupying the center of the coterminous United States.
..... Click the link for more information. question further aroused both North and South. The culminating act of extreme abolitionism occurred in the raid of John Brown Brown, John, 1800–1859, American abolitionist, b. Torrington, Conn. He spent his boyhood in Ohio. Before he became prominent in the 1850s, his life had been a succession of business failures in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York.
..... Click the link for more information. on Harpers Ferry. After the opening of the Civil War insistent abolitionist demands for immediate freeing of the slaves, supported by radical Republicans in Congress, pushed President Lincoln in his decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation Emancipation Proclamation, in U.S. history, the executive order abolishing slavery in the Confederate States of America.

Desire for Such a Proclamation

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Bibliography

See L. Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830–1860 (1960); D. L. Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (1961, repr. 1964); L. Lader, The Bold Brahmins: New England's War against Slavery (1961); M. Duberman, ed., The Antislavery Vanguard (1965); A. Lutz, Crusade for Freedom: Women in the Antislavery Movement (1968); A. S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism (1969); B. Quarles, Black Abolitionists (1969); L. Perry and M. Fellman, ed., Antislavery Reconsidered (1979); R. J. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall (1983); H. Aptheker, Abolitionism: A Revolutionary Movement (1989); P. Goodman, Of One Blood (1998).

Abolitionists

activist group working to free slaves. [Am. Hist.: Jameson, 1]

See : Antislavery