Events
1822
Demark Vesey leads slave revolt in South Carolina
Republic of Liberia is founded in Africa
1826
American Temperance Society is founded
1831
Nat Turner leads slave rebellion in Virginia
William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The
Liberator
1833
Garrison and Theodore Weld found American Anti-Slavery
Society
1834
Female Moral Reform Society forms in New York
1836
House of Representatives passes “Gag Resolution”
1837
Abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy is killed
Oberlin College opens as a coeducational institutionMary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Seminary for women
1840
Liberty Party is formed
1843
Dorothea Dix crusades for prison and insane asylum
reform
1845
Frederick Douglass publishes A Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass
1848
Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention is held
1854
T. S. Arthur publishes Ten Nights in a Barroom
and What I Saw There
Key People
-
Susan B. Anthony
Ardent women’s rights advocate and suffragette
-
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Feminist and women’s rights advocate; organized Seneca
Falls Convention along with Susan B. Anthony
-
Frederick Douglass
Freed slave who was a leader in the abolitionist
movement
-
William Lloyd Garrison
Radical abolitionist; published magazine The
Liberator
-
Horace Mann
Public
education advocate; pushed for education reforms in Massachusetts
-
Dorothea Dix
Massachusetts
schoolteacher who campaigned for publicly funded asylums to help
the mentally ill
The Rise of Social Reform
The revivalism that spread across the country during the
antebellum era also gave rise to numerous social reform movements,
which challenged Americans to improve themselves and their communities. Because
revivalism and reform went hand in hand, many prominent reformers
were women. Denied roles in politics or in the new
market economy, women found that they could make a difference through championing
social change. These women reformers often fought for a variety
of causes at the same time: for instance, the women’s suffrage movement
was closely tied to the abolitionist movement.
Abolitionism
The abolitionist movement sought to eradicate
slavery in the United States. Prominent leaders in the movement
included Theodore Weld, Sojourner Truth, Frederick
Douglass, Elijah P. Lovejoy, and William Lloyd
Garrison, among others. Garrison, a radical abolitionist
who called for immediate emancipation, became infamous when he started
an antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831.
His articles were so vitriolic that warrants for his arrest were
issued in the South. Garrison and Weld also founded the American
Anti-slavery Society in 1833.
Anti-Abolitionism in the North
Although the North was the hotbed of the abolitionist
movement, not all northerners were abolitionists: many felt ambivalent
toward emancipation or were downright against it. Trade unions and
wage workers, for example, feared that if slavery were abolished,
they would have to compete with free blacks for jobs (an argument
also used by pro-slavery southerners). Most public figures and politicians
shunned abolitionists for their radicalism and unwillingness to
compromise. Even the “Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln,
though more open to abolitionism, was wary of radical abolitionists.
Slave Uprisings
The antebellum period was marked by several major
slave uprisings. In 1822,
a former slave named Denmark Vesey planned to lead
eighty slaves in a revolt in Charleston, South Carolina. Although
Vesey’s plans failed, southerners became terrified of losing control
over slaves. In 1831,
another slave, Nat Turner, led a bloody slave uprising
in Virginia.
Abolitionist Propaganda and Politics
Because William Lloyd Garrison published
the first edition of The Liberator the same year
as Turner’s uprising, many southerners jumped to the conclusion
that Garrison had incited the rebellions with his antislavery rhetoric.
Furthermore, former slave Frederick Douglass became
a celebrity in the North when he published his experiences in A
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845.
As the abolitionist movement grew, it became more of an
organized political force. The movement grew to be so noisome that
the House of Representatives actually passed a gag resolution in 1836 to squelch
all further discussion of slavery. Several years later, in 1840, the
abolitionists organized into a party, the Liberty Party.
