Essential Question

Did militancy help or hinder the abolitionist movement?

Materials

Document Excerpts (pdf)
Abolition Timeline (pdf)

Background

Although the original Constitution of the United States did not mention the word “slavery” in its text, it recognized the existence and legality of this institution. It protected the rights of slaveholders with regard to the return of runaway slaves, and by increasing representation for slaveholders through the three-fifths compromise, even the slave trade would be continued for twenty years (until 1808). As the United States developed so did the national debate over slavery. The belief that slavery would gradually disappear in the decades after the American Revolution decreased as cotton production increased, and the nation became more reliant on the textile industry. Westward expansion and the settlement of new lands only fueled the growing debate over slavery.

By the 1830s, many Southerners who had once defended slavery as a “necessary evil” now asserted that it was a “positive good.” An increasing number of abolitionists, on the other hand, came to believe that slavery was a grave sin and an evil institution which should be ended immediately. In his denunciations of slavery, William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death” and “an agreement with hell.” In response, Southerners used their influence to pass a “gag rule” in Congress which prohibited antislavery petitions, restricted antislavery speech, and censored the U.S. mail by prohibiting abolitionist literature from being sent to Southern states. As both the abolitionists and the supporters of slavery became more entrenched in their positions, tempers flared, emotions heightened, and the fabric of the nation frayed into threats of secession and clouds of disunion.

Did the agitation and activities of the abolitionists advance or defeat their objective? The “essential question” posed as the aim of this lesson presents students with an open-ended, thought-provoking historical issue for their analysis and assessment.

Objectives

As a result of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. Analyze the methods and goals of the Abolitionists in their crusade against slavery.
   
2. Compare and contrast opinions of supporters and opponents of abolitionism.
   
3. Evaluate the extent to which militancy helped or hindered the abolitionist cause.

“Abolitionism was an organized moral crusade centered in New England . . . to rid the nation of the sin of slavery. But the slaveholders, refusing to be moved by moral suasion and the principles if ‘true religion,’ made compromise impossible. Slavery, at war with the laws of God and nature, thus perished by the sword.”
----- James Ford Rhodes, Lectures on the American Civil War, New York: Macmillan, 1913

“The abolitionists were irresponsible fanatics who bear the responsibility for the secession of the South and the outbreak of war in 1861. By their unceasing opposition to ‘sin’ and their unyielding attacks on the morals of slaveholders, the abolitionists succeeded only in convincing most Northerners that the South was a dangerous ‘slave power’ bent on destroying the American dream . . . . They created a psychological climate, North and South, where fear, hatred, and hysteria rather than reason prevailed. Civil War was then in the making.”
----- Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1957

As an additional motivation, ask students to describe an issue or a situation today in which they would be eager and willing to participate in a protest activity and how this type of protest might affect the situation.

Procedure

Students should read and discuss the significance of the following excerpts (for a pdf version of these document excerpts, click here). Teachers can decide whether the initial reading and discussion should be in small groups or general class discussion. Following these document excerpts there is a menu of thought-provoking questions to stimulate student discussion on the role and impact of the abolitionist movement.

Document A:

“I believe when two races come together which have different origins, colors, and physical and intellectual characteristics, that slavery is instead of an evil, a good – a positive good . . . There is and has always been, in an advanced state of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. Slavery exempts Southern society from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict. This explains why the political condition of the slaveholding states has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North.”
----- John C. Calhoun, southern senator, February 6, 1837

Document B:

“The laboring classes enjoy more material comfort, are better fed, clothed and housed as slaves than as freemen. The statistics of crime demonstrate that the moral superiority of the slave over the free laborer is still greater . . . . There never can be among slaves a class so degraded as is found about the wharves and suburbs of cities. The master requires and enforces ordinary morality and industry. How slavery could degrade men lower than universal liberty has done, it is hard to conceive . . . . The free laborer rarely has a house and home of his own; he is insecure of employment . . . .”
----- George Fitzhugh, author, Sociology for the South or the Failure of Free Society (1854)

Document C:

“The slaves in the United States are treated with barbarous inhumanity; that they are overworked, underfed, wretchedly clad and lodged, and have insufficient sleep; . . . that they are frequently flogged with terrible severity; . . . their flesh branded with red hot irons; that they are maimed, mutilated and burned to death over slow fires. . . . We will establish all these facts by the testimony of scores and hundreds of eye witnesses. . . . We shall show, not merely that such deeds are committed, but that they are frequent . . . not in one of the slave states, but in all of them.”
----- Theodore D. Weld, Slavery As It Is (1839)

Document D:

“Slavery is sin before God. Individually, or as political communities, men have no more right to enact slavery, than they have to enact murder or blasphemy, or incest or adultery.”
----- James G. Birney in 1835, Liberty Party presidential candidate

Document E:

“We will do all . . . to overthrow the most execrable system of slavery that has ever been witnessed upon earth; to deliver our land from its deadliest curse; to wipe out the violent stain which rests upon our national escutcheon; and to secure to the colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges which belong to them as Americans – come what may to our persons, our interests, or our reputations, whether we live to witness the triumph of LIBERTY, JUSTICE, AND HUMANITY, or perish ultimately as martyrs in this great, benevolent and holy cause.”
----- Declaration of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1834)

Document F:

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also . . . . if the law is of such a nature that it requires you to be an agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law . . . .”
----- Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849)

Document G:

“I am determined at every hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation . . . till every chain be broken and every bondman set free! Let southern oppressors tremble; let their secret abettors tremble; let their northern apologists tremble; let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. . . . I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I don’t wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm . . . but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL BE HEARD.”
----- William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, January 1, 1831

Document H:

“I tell you Americans! That unless you speedily alter your course, you and your country are gone!!!!!! For God Almighty will tear up the very face of the earth!!! . . . . But I am afraid that they have done us so much injury, and are so firm in their belief that our Creator made us to be an inheritance to them forever, that their hearts will be hardened so that their destruction may be sure. But O Americans! I warn you . . . to repent and reform, or you are ruined!!!
----- David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles with a Preamble to
the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829)

Questions To Develop Student Discussion:

1. If you were debating John C. Calhoun and George Fitzhugh, how would you have responded to their arguments?

2. Based on the readings, which viewpoint most closely corresponds with your own? Explain.

3. Which statements would you characterize as moderate, and which ones would you characterize as militant? Explain and support your answer.

4. Do you agree or disagree with Henry David Thoreau’s position on civil
disobedience concerning slavery? Under what conditions do you think that civil disobedience is justified? Explain.

5. Should the abolitionists be blamed for Southern secession from the Union and the Civil War, or praised for bringing slavery to an end?

6. Were the abolitionists’ militant rhetoric and actions necessary for the abolition of slavery? Explain your opinion.

Application:

(a) Students can compare the militant behavior and rhetoric of the abolitionists with reform movements from other historical periods and issues such as temperance and prohibition, voting rights and equality for women, civil rights for African Americans, conservation and environmental concerns, etc. The “essential question” posed in this lesson, as its primary learning objective, can readily be applied to any other reform movement in United States history.

(b) Students can be referred to a recent article in The New York Times (August 8, 2005), entitled "Abolitionist’s Family Celebrated a Legacy of Nonconformity." This article highlights the recent family reunion of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s descendents in Boston. Following the reading, students should be asked if this article helped to give them a better understanding of the abolitionist legacy.

(c) At the 1964 Republican convention, Barry Goldwater (the Republican nominee) stated in a speech that “extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Would you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain.

For further resources about the history of the abolitionist movement, please visit our suggested resources page.