READ: Slavery and Abolition

Abolition

By 1820, although racial discrimination against African Americans remained, slavery had largely ended in the North. Many northerners and some southerners took up the cause of abolition, a campaign to abolish slavery immediately and to grant no financial compensation to slave-owners. As most slaves were held in southern states, abolition was a significant issue that led to growing hostility between northerners and southerners. Prominent abolitionists included African Americans, whites, men, and women. Among the most notable were:

William Lloyd Garrison, a writer and editor, was an important white abolitionist. He founded regional and national abolitionist societies and published an antislavery newspaper that printed graphic stories of the bad treatment received by slaves.
Frederick Douglass, a former slave, worked for Garrison and traveled widely, giving eloquent speeches on behalf of equality for African Americans, women, Native Americans, and immigrants. He later published autobiographies and his own antislavery newspaper.
The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, were southern women who lectured publicly throughout the northern states about the evils of slavery they had seen growing up on a plantation. Their public careers began when Garrison published a letter from Angelina in his newspaper.

Slavery as a Major Political Issue

Most white southerners opposed abolition. White writers and public speakers argued slavery was a necessary part of life in the South. The southern economy, they said, was based on large-scale agriculture that would be impossible to maintain without slave labor. They also boasted that southern white culture was highly sophisticated and said it was made possible by the plantation economy.