American Antislavery 1820-1860 :: History African Americans Essays

American Anti slavery 1820-1860missing works citedThe antebellum American antislavery movement began in the 1820s and was sustained over 4 decades by organizations, publications, and small acts of resistance that challenged the legitimately protected and powerful institution of slavery and the more insidious resistance of baleful equality, racism. Abolitionists were always a radical minority even in the apologise states of the North, and the movement was never comprised of a single group of great deal with unified motivations, goals, and methods. Rather, the movement was fraught with ambiguity over who its leaders would be, how they would go about fighting the institution of slavery, and what the future would be like for black Americans. Some of the persisting goals of antislavery activism were licit emancipation, aid to runaway slaves through sleeplessness groups and the Underground Railroad, civil rights for freed blacks in the north, and education, suffrage, and economic advancement for African-Americans. Perhaps the some unifying ideal of the anti-slavery movement was that the racial basis for American slavery could be chthonicmined by promoting Christian values, education and economic progress among free blacks to show that they were capable of succeeding as individuals in an integrated American society. Richard Allen, leader of the A.M.E. church, stated the case for black progress as an come to the justifications of slaveholders if we are lazy and idol, the enemies of freedom plead it as a ingest why we ought not to be free. In addition to the connection betwixt abolition and economic and social progress, most abolitionists worked for the assurance of civil rights and legal protection for free blacks, who lived in an anomalous condition of freedom without citizenship and with unremitting threat of discrimination, violence, and abduction to be sold into slavery. There were some bitter conflicts over specific strategies. Though Garrison an d most blacks favored immediate abolition, umteen whites continued to prefer or express willingness to settle for gradual emancipation. bowelless resistance was at first rejected by many, again under the influence of Garrison, but David Walkers appeal that violence should be used against slavery became more popular as blacks and abolitionists searched for an effective means of self-defense against mobs and pursuit of civil rights. Whether or not individuals worked within the semipolitical framework of the constitution to effect change again depended on inscription to Garrison, and in general the early antislavery activists preferred moral arguments while afterwards leaders were more willing to use political means.