Abolition 1813-1855

Abolition 1813-1855

Introduction

Opposition to slavery in America dates to the early years of European settlement, when small numbers of Quakers criticized the practice. Antislavery sentiment increased during the revolutionary period, when American protests against the "slavery" enforced by the English king made some question the morality of enslaving Africans in the colonies. After the American Revolution, antislavery sentiment grew, as the rhetoric of liberty influenced the way some Americans thought about owning other people. During the afterglow of victory, many southern slave owners freed their slaves in a spate of Revolutionary altruism, inspired by the Declaration of Independence, which held that "all men are created equal." Hence, sizable populations of legally free blacks in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina flourished throughout the antebellum period. (1)

Discussion

In the northern states, where slaves were fewer in number and less essential to the economy, abolitionist societies began to form in 1775. These societies successfully lobbied for abolition in the state legislatures of the North. By 1800, most northern states had abolished slavery—either immediately or through gradual manumission (e.g., upon reaching a certain age, a slave would be freed). In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, Congress prohibited carrying slaves into the Northwest Territory. In 1808, Congress outlawed the foreign slave trade. To antislavery activists, both of these measures seemed to point to the eventual dissolution of the slave economy. (2)

Thus, with the successes of antislavery advocates in the North, many Americans thought that the slavery system was becoming untenable in the new land of liberty and would soon die out. But with the invention of the cotton gin and new opportunities for expansion into the Old Southwest, slave-centered agriculture flourished after 1800. Also, because the U.S. Constitution did not grant the federal government the power to regulate slavery, southern states maintained enormous power to defeat any antislavery measures proposed in their state legislatures. Antislavery groups had effected change in the northern states where most of their members lived, but these groups had little influence in the South. Without an obvious way to combat slavery in the South, abolition societies became less powerful and lost momentum. Around this time the domestic or internal slave trade also began to flourish, resulting in the transfer of nearly 1 million individuals from the Upper South to the Cotton Belt by 1860, along with the concomitant rise of a professional class of slave traders. The seemingly innocuous cotton gin had inadvertently granted slavery a new lease on life and with it the potential for meaningful profit. Thus, given the incessant demand for cheap labor to work new farmlands in the Old Southwest, the "peculiar institution" and its defenders became more entrenched than ever in the American polity. (3)

But the conflict over slavery did not disappear. Indeed, as white Americans moved west, became property owners, and gained more political rights, the rhetoric of American liberty became ever more tied to ideas of white supremacy. Just as Indians were being removed from land to make way for white settlers, some ...