Abolitionism in the United States of America is a movement for the liberation of black slaves in the United States before the Civil War.
The beginning of the mass movement is usually attributed to the 30s. XIX century when the Liberator newspaper began to be published and the American Society for the Fight against Slavery was founded. By 1840, two movements developed in the movement. Most abolitionists, led by W. Harrison, believed that slavery should be fought without resorting to force. The minority, led by F. Douglas , advocated the use of armed force. John Brown made a failed armed attempt to free the slaves in 1859 .
Throughout the life of the republic, abolitionists, although they kept aloof from practical politics, through energetic and principled agitation , had an extremely important influence on the development of free institutions in the United States. But at the same time, the American abolitionists were accused of the fact that their activities endangered the union of the North and the South, contrary to the US Constitution, which left the decision on slavery to the discretion of individual states.
American supporters of abolitionism, many of which were members of the American Colonization Society , bought land on the African coast in 1816 and founded the state of Liberia [1] [2] . Slaves purchased by abolitionists, and thereby free, slaves were transported to this state. However, this idea did not receive such a large-scale development, which the supporters of American abolitionism hoped for, although they managed to send tens of thousands of former slaves to Liberia in several decades. The planters of the southern states did not intend to abandon the cheap slave labor, which brought them huge profits. Moreover, a large number of slaves born in America considered it their homeland and did not want to leave the United States.
In the 1850s the United States called the Underground Railroad a secret organization of abolitionists who transported fugitive Negroes from South to North, where there was no slavery.
A sharp breakthrough in the fight against slavery is associated with the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the outbreak of the Civil War.
Abolitionism as a political movement has exhausted itself after the Proclamation of Liberation Act was adopted on September 22, 1862 and the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution on December 18, 1865 . On March 30, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment also gave former slaves the right to vote .
See also Ableman v. Booth , a case-law in the US Supreme Court (1859).
Notes
- ↑ historynet.com “Abolitionist Movement” . Date of treatment June 13, 2014.
- ↑ teachushistory.org “Colonization: the“ respectable ”way to be anti-slavery in early New England” . Date of treatment June 13, 2014.