PROS AND CONS OF THE ABOLITIONIST ARGUMENT

Pros and Cons of the Abolitionist Argument

Pros and Cons of the Abolitionist Argument

Introduction

During the three decades that preceded the Civil War abolitionism was a major factor in the demise of slavery. Abolitionism was a morally grounded and uncompromised movement during the 17th and 18th centuries. Abolitionist played a key role in setting the terms of debate over slavery and in making it a compelling moral issue. The 13th amendment was ratified in 1865 which abolished slavery. William Lloyd Garrison, and other white and black abolitionists played a significant role in leading to the demise of slavery. There have been many scholarly opinions of how the abolitionists had a role in the demise of slavery. Many abolitionists played a positive role in it, but some were persecuted for what they had to say and thought of as a negative source for the movement.

Pros and Cons of the Abolitionist Argument

Wide-spread rejection of the antislavery program forced abolitionists to reconsider their moral suasion strategy. Many followed the lead of the Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and abandoned the churches, believing them to be hopelessly corrupted by slavery. Garrisonians also counseled Northerners to refuse to vote as a way of expressing disapproval for the "proslavery" Constitution. The Garrisonians also championed universal reform, including temperance, pacifism, and extension of women's rights.

Many non-Garrisonian abolitionists regrouped in a new organization, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. These abolitionists continued to lobby religious institutions, and they gained valuable allies in the early 1840s, namely the well-organized Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian antislavery movements. Their agitation helped bring about sectional schisms in the Methodist and Baptist churches in the mid-1840s and the New School Presbyterians in 1857. Even after those divisions, however, abolitionists protested that the Northern church branches tolerated thousands of border state slave owners in their fellowship.

Abolitionists were deeply divided over the fledgling Liberty partyslide11.jpg (16342 bytes). Most Garrisonians condemned any political activity as an implied endorsement of the legality of slavery.

In the postwar era, abolitionist reformers continued to lobby the federal government for protection of the rights of African Americans. The political abolitionists' constitutional interpretation, based on natural rights theory, became the legal justification for much of the Reconstruction era's civil rights legislation. As dedicated agitators for more than thirty years, the abolitionists contributed significantly to moving the political system to act against slavery and racism.

Discussion

Stephen H. Browne critiques William Lloyd Garrison's Textual style and Radical Critique In William Lloyd Garrison's Thoughts On African Colonization. Browne's essay was often very praiseful of Garrison and in many ways puts Garrison in regards that few people are ever held up to. Browne not only says that Garrison launched a phase in the anti-slavery -movement, but he continued on to even say that Garrison's Thought's "helped to effect a rhetorical revolution whereby one language of reform was to be vanquished and another set in place" (Browne 177). In Browne's essay he focuses on Garrison's fight against the American Colonization Society which was formed ...