Module: HST4314 'Building the American Nation - The United States, 1776-1896'
By Claudia Censina Brooker
Slavery had existed since 1619 through British colonial expansion and the Atlantic slave trade. Although anti-slavery sentiment began in the late 18th century it can be seen to be more widely divisive by the 1830s, through events such as Nat Turner's slave revolt and the creation of the American Anti-Slavery Society which gave the abolitionist movement a national platform. In the Jeffersonian era before the antebellum period, we see a growth of abolitionist outlook in certain states across America, which although it does not show slavery at its most divisive, it is important to consider, as the abolitionist movement stemmed from these earlier events and ideas. Various other factors and events throughout the antebellum period contribute to the anti-slavery movement, such as John Browns Raid on Harpers Ferry Arsenal and the creation of stricter laws and agreements, for example the Fugitive Slave Act, however these events simply expanded the division in America over slavery.
‘The year 1830 marked a transitional moment for both American culture and American abolitionism’[1] through the increased tension between slavery and anti-slavery supporters. Religion is a key factor which helped in creating this divide through the Second Great Awakening. ‘Religious revivals heralded a new age of perfectionism in which sin would not be tolerated.’[2] The Second Great Awakening was a period where a group of Protestants aimed for change in American Society as seen through their support of the abolitionist movement. ‘Quakers also opposed slavery from first to last on moral and religious grounds, as a sin’[3], which was not just in the 1830s but since the end of the 18th century. However, the religious support for abolitionism helped further the divide as religion was a key part in American culture, so to have a religious divide as well caused tension as ‘all men were equal in the sight of God. Slavery was a violation of the Christian principle of human brotherhood.’[4] Other religious interpretations of slavery include Fisk’s "view that slavery was created and sanctioned by God – ‘it may be an evil to the country and to the owner but it is a blessing to the slave’."[5] Although religion was not the biggest nor only factor in the American division over slavery, the various religious interpretations of whether slavery was morally right or wrong in the eyes of God contributes to how slavery became a divisive issue.
1831 was a pivotal year in the advancement of the abolitionist movement and in creating fear for the slavery supporters; this begins with Nat Turner’s slave revolt followed by William Lloyd Garrison’s publication of The Liberator. ‘It had taken Nat Turner's notorious rebellion to shake the foundations of slavery in Virginia.’[6] ‘Nat Turner, known as the Prophet among the enslaved people as it was believed he was chosen by God to lead them out of bondage,’[7] went to various plantations in the South gathering support, aiming to convince enslaved people to become fugitives (like himself) in order to rebel against slave owners and the slave system, and in 1831 he did just that. In Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner led over 80 enslaved people and free Blacks to rebel against various slave owners in the area. This four-day rebellion led to various laws being put in place to suppress the abolitionist movement (such as restrictions on teaching enslaved people) as well as to suppress their own fear of further uprisings in the future by them. ‘The Turner revolt generated a much greater volume of news content and invariably when reports reached newspaper editors, they told tales of brutal authoritative responses to deal with blacks. The Richmond Enquirer, for example, informed Virginia readers that the ‘spirits of the insurgents are broken and that any further danger from them is by this time over.’[8] The reassurance here to pro-slavery supporters indicates the attempt to rally support against any other abolitionist attempts as ‘white slave society was in a heightened state of fear and looking for slaves who might be planning similar acts.’[9] Nat Turner’s Slave Revolt was a success for both the abolitionist movement but also for the pro-slavery supporters, with assurance that enslaved people were willing to go against slave owners, but also for pro-slavery groups that the strengthening and creation of various legislation which restricted slave’s rights even more indicates how big of an issue slavery was during 1831. This is continued by the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison through his creation of his newspaper the Liberator. ‘It was dedicated to immediate abolition and full equality of African Americans.’[10] Garrison was very influential throughout this period and is known to have ‘founded the second wave of immediate abolitionism right to the end of Civil War.’[11]
Alongside his radical pamphlets he is best known for creating the American Anti-slavery Society in 1833 with the ‘object being the entire abolition of slavery in the United States, as well as influencing Congress in a constitutional way to ending the domestic slave trade and aiming to encourage coloured peoples improvement of intellectual moral and religious aspects.’[12] It was revolutionary for the time. This society was a national platform for support for the removal of slavery and the slave trade, and this furthered the divide between pro-slavery supporters and abolitionists. The American Anti-Slavery Society had been ‘the premier immediatist organisation in the country, publishing innumerable free pamphlets decrying the inhumanity of slavery alongside numerous petitions’[13] which added fear for the pro-slavery groups, that the abolitionist movement had the capacity to be able to reach and perhaps influence Congress. As this was the first society that had reached a national level and was gaining vast influence, this threatened slavery and the way of life in most of the southern states, creating a regional divide in America. The opposition to immediate emancipation (which was the aim of the American Anti-Slavery Society) as Dew concludes is ‘the effects it might have had on the South's Labour supply, as without a redistribution of wealth, free N****** would still be virtually enslaved and looked into slavery by the laws of population and economy and by the force of circumstances,’[14] however, Dew and Garrison believed ‘Americans had wondered curiously from the path of the American Revolution and from the course of economic sanity,’[15] which links to the earlier periods of discord in America over slavery after the American Revolution.
Looking at the post-revolutionary period, there was a growth of pro-slavery ideas and laws which were not massively opposed to during the late 18th century, but would be when the abolitionist movement had gained momentum in the 1830s. The Declaration of Independence created in 1776 is what initially caused uproar and division due to the Declaration being interpreted differently amongst various for groups on whether enslaved people were considered equal or if they were not. The Declaration states ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’[16], and ‘Jefferson's initial draft of the Declaration included a vociferous attack on the slave trade, as he believed that America had waged cruel war against human nature itself.’[17] Although he was not a strong abolitionist, he saw the contradiction between slavery and the Declaration. The constitution created in 1787 ‘allowed the United States to be different from other countries because slaveholders had a direct say over the power and authority in national affairs.’[18] The Constitution itself is similar to the Declaration of Independence as it begins by saying ‘We the people,’[19] meaning that the government is representative of all the American people, however, whether enslaved people were included in that group or should be included indicates how different interpretations caused slavery to be a divisive issue over the Constitution. Furthermore, the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights were also very vague when discussing property, as it was interpreted by southern states that ‘slaves were property based in common law.’[20] meaning enslaved people could be moved across the nation as they were property. ‘The creation of the Three-Fifths Clause in 1787 allowed one slaveholder after another to be the president of the United States. It also prevented the suppression of the African slave trade by allowing slavery to spread to the territories and brought new slave states into the Union.’[21] It had ‘woven slavery into the fabric of national political life, it affected the balance of power on all sectional issues.’[22] As the agricultural life of the South was dependent on slave labour, with the ‘Cotton Kingdom’ expanding and industrialising due to Eli Whitney's cotton gin machine, the Three-Fifths Clause was beneficial in protecting the Southern way of life. ‘Slavery's expansion into the West marked a crucial tipping point in United States politics where debates of balance of sectional influence and territorial aggrandisement of the nation indicated the tension over the slave powers strength in the government.’[23] However, the clause infuriated abolitionists as it seemed as though the abolition of slavery and the slave trade was further out of reach, indicating how legislation created such divisiveness in America, even prior to the radical abolitionist movement. The initial Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 gave slave owners the right to find and collect their slaves that had absconded to various other states. These two pieces of legislation however were not effective in the long term as the Three-Fifths Clause became contradictory to the abolition of the slave trade in 1808 and after the prevention of the importation of slaves in 1794. Although the Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened in 1850, it was quite difficult to implement as throughout the 1790s the northern states began to abolish slavery (which further created the regional divide) as well as abolitionist help to fugitive enslaved people through the Underground Railroad in order to protect them.
Although this revolutionary period was dominated by legislation which seemed to be supportive of pro-slavery states, there were still abolitionist movements and ideologies that would have minimal but lasting effects until the national anti-slavery society was able to fully implement their protest. The Pennsylvanian Abolitionist Society was the world's first abolitionist organisation and its ‘strategy emphasised that the government and its representative legal and political institutions should gradually attack the institution of slavery.’[24] The idea of gradual emancipation seemed to be the most practical way for anti-slavery societies to even suggest their ideas amongst other groups and pro-slavery supporters. Without these foundations of gradual emancipation and anti-slavery sentiment within smaller societies, the radical immediatism in Garrison’s abolitionist movement would not have been possible. Gradual emancipation is argued by Rael ‘as temporising the issue of freedom and bargaining away the sanctity of the sleeves property in their own bodies in exchange for slaveholders investments.’[25] Although gradual emancipation and the earlier abolitionist societies did not achieve anywhere near the amount that a radical group as seen in the 1830s did, the assumption that gradual emancipation delayed enslaved people's freedom is misguided as it does not consider the impact that immediate emancipation would have had in the 1790s. Additionally, with the lack of abolitionist support it seems to be impractical of a small group of anti-slavery societies to demand emancipation, especially with legal restrictions. Nevertheless, groups such as the Pennsylvanian Abolitionist Society ‘hampered slavery’s legal protections and endeavoured to turn bondage into a distinct sectional institution with different legal sanctions in northern and southern courts,’[26] essentially to gain support from northern states that were more likely to support the abolitionist movement. ‘The process of abolitionism began before the end of the 18th century but the by-products did not appear until after 1808’[27] with the abolition of the slave trade.
The revolutionary and the initial years of the antebellum period both indicate the start and growth of the divide between pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters, as well as the sectional tension between the northern and southern states. It is also important to consider however, the 1850s leading up to the American Civil War, where a growing number of enslaved people began rebelling and becoming fugitives, and the fear of abolitionism caused a strengthening of legalisation against slavery. Looking at legislation, the 1850 Compromise began due to debates on what to do with land after the Mexican war. This caused tension as California wanted to join the Union as a Free State however federal politicians aimed to keep the balance of pro-slavery and anti-slavery states within the Union; so the compromise was created and this caused the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia as well as popular sovereignty being agreed upon, which benefited the abolitionist movement. However, it was also beneficial for pro-slavery states as the compromise consequentially led to a stricter Fugitive Slave Act.
Additionally, this period saw the rise in abolitionist literature, alongside Garrison’s Liberator, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin which ‘evangelised abolitionism offering a moderate anti-slavery that appealed to the bourgeois domestic ideals of an expanding middle class.’[28] which created further tension over slavery as across America families (especially in the North) became influenced by the text to support the abolitionist movement after understanding Stowe’s fictional story was not really fiction.
Finally, in 1859, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry Arsenal (with a group of fellow abolitionists) occurred and although this was only two years prior to the civil war, this attack caused a mammoth amount fear and tension as John Brown was white. This was the first radical attack by a white abolitionist against fellow white men over the issue of slavery and ‘like the Prophet of Southampton, Brown had long entertained plan to make war on slavery.’[29] and his raid was the preliminary attack of the subsequent years of war.
‘The Civil War predicted by abolitionists in the 1850s and in no small part inspired by the activism would demolish slavery in a few short years.’[30] The Thirteenth Amendment, which would be implemented towards the end of the American Civil War, saw that ‘neither slavery nor involuntary servitude would exist within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction,’[31] This alongside the Emancipation Declaration is one of the first appearances of anti-slavery legislation, caused by not only years of war but decades of tension and division within the nation over slavery. ‘Changing opinions on the question of slavery… were only visible indications of a more basic alteration in values that revolutionised the perspective of Americans on nearly every crucial social issue.’[32] ‘The house divided against itself did stand; a Union that was half slave, half free, did survive for 70 years.’[33] Slavery and its abolishment is due to the tension between various states and groups, and the 1830s especially showed the commencement of the radical change, which was necessary to increase anti-slavery sentiment throughout the nation.
Footnotes [1] Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (America: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p. 14. [2]Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism p.14. [3] Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1966), p.17. [4] Ibid, p.19. [5] Larry E. Tise, Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840 (Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1987), p. 189. [6] Patrick Rael, Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865 (Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2015), p. 225. [7] Dumond, Antislavery, p.116. [8] Brian Gabriel, The Press and Slavery in America, 1791-1859 (South Carolina: The University of South Carolina, 2016), p.111. [9] Ibid, p.112. [10] Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism, p.1. [11] Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, p. 2. [12] Dumond, Antislavery, p.178. [13] Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, p.187. [14] Tise, Proslavery, p.73. [15] Tise, Proslavery, p.74. [16] Thomas Jefferson and Congress, The Declaration of Independence (America: Washington D.C., 1776) [17] Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, p.54. [18] Carl Lawrence Paulus, The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War (Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2017), p.87. [19] James Madison, The United States Constitution (America: Philadelphia, 1787) [20] Dumond, Antislavery, p.29. [21] Dumond, Antislavery, p.75. [22] Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, p.123. [23] Ibid, p.194. [24] Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism, p.4. [25] Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, p.67. [26] Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism, p.5. [27] Tise, Proslavery, p.41. [28] Rael, Eighty-Eight Years, p.223. [29] Ibid, p.231. [30] Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism, p.176. [31] Abraham Lincoln, Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (America: Northwest Ordinance and the United States Senate, 1865) [32] Tise, Proslavery, p.69. [33] Susan-Mary Grant, Brian Holden Reid, The American Civil War (England: Pearson Education, 2000), p.25.
Bibliography
Dumond, Dwight Lowell. Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1966.
Gabriel, Brian. The Press and Slavery in America, 1791-1859. South Carolina: The University of South Carolina, 2016.
Grant, Susan-Mary and Reid, Brian Holden. The American Civil War. England: Pearson Education, 2000.
Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence. America: Washington D.C., 1776.
Lincoln, Abraham. Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. America: Northwest Ordinance and the United States Senate, 1865.
Madison, James. The United States Constitution. America: Philadelphia, 1787.
Newman, Richard S. The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic. America: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Paulus, Carl Lawrence. The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War. Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2017.
Rael, Patrick. Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865. Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2015.
Tise, Larry E. Proslavery: A History of the Defense of Slavery in America, 1701-1840. Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1987.
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