American Abolitionism: Its Direct Political Impact from Colonial Times into Reconstruction

Abstract

This book is the only systematic examination of the political impacts of the American movement to end slavery and gain equal rights for African Americans from colonial times to the Civil War and after. It focuses on abolitionists’ political tactics—petitioning, lobbying, establishing bonds with sympathetic politicians—but also on their disruptions of slavery itself. The book begins with an investigation of the abolition movement’s relationship to politics and government in the northern American colonies. It goes on to assess the movement’s impacts on the U.S. Congress during the 1790s, on the Missouri Controversy, on the struggle over slavery in Illinois during the 1820s, and abolitionist petitioning of Congress during that same decade. The rise of immediate abolitionism, with its emphasis on moral suasion, did not lessen the impact of other forms of abolitionism on Congress during the 1830s and 1840s. Abolitionists’ direct actions against slavery—aiding escaped or kidnapped slaves—led southern politicians to demand the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which became a major flashpoint of antebellum politics. Finally, the book investigates the relationship between abolitionists and the Republican Party up through the Civil War and Reconstruction.