Slavery and Abolition

Why did slavery become such an explosive issue?

Identify the following terms and people as they relate to the abolition movement:

abolition

William Lloyd Garrison

Emancipation

David Walker

Frederick Douglass

Nat Turner

Antebellum

Gag rule

Answer the following questions regarding slavery in the period:

How did William Lloyd Garrison alienate many whites in the period?

What did David Walker and Frederick Douglass advocate?

What were the similarities and differences between Urban and Rural Slavery?

What were the causes and consequences of Nat Turner’s Rebellion?

What can you learn from the chart on page 251?

Complete the following chart regarding slavery in the period:

Antislavery Actions / Pro-Slavery Actions

Answer the following questions in paragraph form. (minimum of 150 words each)

Which do you think was a more effective strategy for achieving the abolitionists’ goal of eliminating slavery- violence or nonviolence? Include the following in tyour paragraph:

Garrison and Walker’s remarks

Frederick Douglass’s views

Southerners reactions to Nat Turner’s Rebellion

Compare the similarities and differences between free blacks in the North and slaves in the South.

Excerpts from The Liberator

Through his newspaper, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison spoke out against slavery and for the rights of African Americans for over 30 years. Garrison established his fierce tone with his first issue titled, "To the Public," on January 1, 1831. He was a passionate abolitionist that sought an immediate end to slavery. It was not until the United States had fought a Civil War and our Congress adopted the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) that slavery would come to an end. Men and women such as Garrison dedicated their lives to ensuring freedom and rights for African Americans.

I deem the publication of my original Prospectus unnecessary, as it has obtained a wide circulation. The principles therein inculcated will be steadily pursued in this paper, excepting that I shall not array myself as the political partisan of any man. In defending the great cause of human rights, I wish to derive the assistance of all religions and of all parties.
Assenting to the "self-evident truth" maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights -- among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popluar but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My consicence in now satisfied.
I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch –

AND I WILL BE HEARD.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2928t.html

Monticello Apr. 22. 20.

I thank you, Dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. it is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. but this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in anypracticableway. the cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me in a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation andexpatriationcould be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. but, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burthen on a greater number of co-adjutors. an abstinence too from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress, to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a state. this certainly is the exclusive right of every state, which nothing in the constitution has taken from them and given to the general government. could congress, for example say that the Non-freemen of Connecticut, shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other state?

I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of$76. to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. if they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world.

to yourself as the faithful advocate of union I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect. Th. Jefferson

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html