AntiSlavery Thought

1
Anti-Slavery Thought

• Enlightenment
• Natural Rights
• Economics
• Religion
• Reform
• African American Challengers
• Politics

2
Enlightenment

• Liberal component
• slavery offered efficiencies
• Pseudo science Africans suited for tropics/labor
• Humanitarian component
• Faith in nature, belief in human progress
• Human righteousness and happiness required
  freedom

3
Natural Rights

• John Locke
• Natural Rights life, liberty and property
• Right to the fruits of ones labor in safety
• The main purpose of establishing a civil
  government is to protect the freedom and security
  of all members of society. If a government
  arbitrarily attempts to deprive some individuals
  of their liberty or property, then it engages in
  a 'state of war' with them, and they have the
  right to oppose the unjust actions of that
  government.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Social Contract
• Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité

4
Economics

• Transition to market economy
• Beginning of wage labor and free-labor ideology
• Manufactures/industrialization
• Transition from monopolistic mercantile political
  economy to a proto-capitalist economy
  competition (Williams anti-monopolist
  capitalists)
• Davis Reduced efficiency

5
Religion

• Quakers, 1757
• The Bible
• Sanctions for master class
• Salvation for slaves, Richard Allens AME
• Challenges to formalism Methodists
• Evangelism doing Gods work
• The Second Great Awakening (1820s)
• Charles Finneys revival was the greatest work
  of God, the greatest revival of religion, that
  the world has ever seen.

6
Reform

• Self improvement
• Social improvement
• Education (Lyceums and public education Horace
  Mann)
• Temperance (Lyman Beecher)
• Labor (Workingmans Party)
• Womens rights (Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony)
• Asylums
• Prison Reform (Dorethea Dix)
• End International Slave Trade (1808)
• American Colonization Society (1816)

7

• American Colonization Society (1816)
  emancipation linked to deportation and racism
  (Jefferson)
• "American Society for Colonizing the Free People
  of Color in the United States."
• Rev Robert Finley, Francis Scott Key, Bushrod
  Washington, John Randolph, Henry Clay, Paul
  Cuffee, Daniel Webster
• Sierra Leone, Liberia

8
African American Challengers

• In the system
• Petitioners and court challenges
• Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm David Walker
• Revolts Gabriel Prosser (1800), Denmark Vesey
  (1822), Nat Turner (1831), Haiti (1791-1804), New
  Orleans (1811), Jamiaca (1831), etc.
• Fear and Insecurity in master class (Aunt Betsey)

9
Politics

• Expansion west War of 1812, Contested territory.
• Missouri, 1820 Holding a wolf by the ears

10
Anti-Slavery Society

• White supporters William Lloyd Garrison
• Whereas the Most High God "hath made of one blood
  all nations of men to dwell on all the face of
  the earth," and hath commanded them to love their
  neighbors as themselves and whereas, our
  National Existence is based upon this principle,
  as recognized in the Declaration of Independence,
  "that all mankind are created equal, and that
  they are endowed by their Creator with certain
  inalienable rights, among which are life,
  liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and
  whereas, after the lapse of nearly sixty years,
  since the faith and honor of the American people
  were pledged to this avowal, before Almighty God
  and the World, nearly one-sixth part of the
  nation are held in bondage by their
  fellow-citizens and whereas, Slavery is contrary
  to the principles of natural justice, of our
  republican form of government, and of the
  Christian religion, and is destructive of the
  prosperity of the country, while it is
  endangering the peace, union, and liberties of
  the States and whereas, we believe it the duty
  and interest of the masters immediately to
  emancipate their slaves

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Anti-Slavery Society

• Moral Suasion
• Public Education
• Pamphlets
• Petitions (Gag Rule 1836)
• Speaking Tours
• Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Sojourner Truth

12
Sojourner Truth
13
Texas

• 1824 Mexican Republic
• 1835-36 Texas Revolution
• Sam Houston
• Stephen Austin
• Goliad
• Alamo
• San Jacinto

14
Defending Slavery

• Alton, Illinois1837
• Elijah Lovejoy

15
Anti-Slavery Politics

• Tappan Brothers
• Liberty Party

16
Mexico and Free Soil

• Free Soil Movement
• David Wilmot
• Mexican War

17
A Continental Nation Whither Goes Slavery?