Abolitionist Movement and Emancipation

Anti-slavery activity started long before the establishment of groups dedicated to ending slavery. Quaker Charles Osborn published The Philanthropist in 1817 in Mount Pleasant, Ohio. It was the first paper to discuss the abolition of slavery. Other papers included Genius of Universal Emancipation from 1827-1835, edited by Benjamin Lundy, Anti-Slavery Bugle from Salem, Ohio, and William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. Garrison used sermons and addresses in the paper to push for emancipation and talked against colonizing formerly enslaved people in Canada or giving compensation to enslavers.

The Abolitionist movement in the United States spanned from the early 1830s until 1865, although advocates for ending slavery existed from the beginning of the republic. An abolitionist is someone who wanted the immediate and complete emancipation (freedom) of enslaved people. They used narratives and autobiographies told by enslaved people to bring to light the degradation and cruelty of the institution of slavery. They believed slavery was immoral. Free stores were established which sold only goods produced by free persons. Others, such as John Brown, used force. He demanded the end of slavery by any means, including starting a war with the Southern states.

The abolitionist movement grew in the 1840s and 1850s. Word spread across the North and even into the South, with sheets left in stage coaches, barrooms, railway cars, boats and some even sent through the mail. This angered many in the South, as they saw it as an attack on their livelihood. While not the only cause of the Civil War, slavery was a primary factor. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing all persons held as slaves in the South. Slavery was not abolished until the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December of that year.