THE ABOLITIONISTS
In national politics, Southerners chiefly sought protection and en- largement of the interests represent- ed by the cotton/slavery system . They sought territorial expansion because the wastefulness of cultivating a sin- gle crop, cotton, rapidly exhausted the soil, increasing the need for new fertile lands . Moreover, new territory would establish a basis for additional slave states to offset the admission of new free states . Antislavery North- erners saw in the Southern view a conspiracy for proslavery aggran- dizement . In the 1830s their opposi- tion became fierce .
An earlier antislavery movement, an offshoot of the American Revo- lution, had won its last victory in
1808 when Congress abolished the slave trade with Africa . Thereafter, opposition came largely from the Quakers, who kept up a mild but ineffectual protest . Meanwhile, the cotton gin and westward expansion into the Mississippi delta region cre- ated an increasing demand for slaves .
The abolitionist movement that emerged in the early 1830s was combative, uncompromising, and insistent upon an immediate end to slavery . This approach found a leader in William Lloyd Garrison, a young man from Massachusetts, who com- bined the heroism of a martyr with the crusading zeal of a demagogue . On January 1, 1831, Garrison pro- duced the first issue of his newspa- per, The Liberator, which bore the announcement: “I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfran- chisement of our slave population . . . . On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with mod- eration . . . . I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD .”
Garrison’s sensational methods awakened Northerners to the evil in an institution many had long come to regard as unchangeable . He sought to hold up to public gaze the most repulsive aspects of slav- ery and to castigate slave holders as torturers and traffickers in human life . He recognized no rights of the masters, acknowledged no compro- mise, tolerated no delay . Other aboli- tionists, unwilling to subscribe to his law-defying tactics, held that reform
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should be accomplished by legal and peaceful means . Garrison was joined by another powerful voice, that of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who galvanized Northern audiences . Theodore Dwight Weld and many other abolitionists crusaded against slavery in the states of the old North- west Territory with evangelical zeal .
One activity of the movement in- volved helping slaves escape to safe refuges in the North or over the bor- der into Canada . The “Underground Railroad,” an elaborate network of secret routes, was firmly established in the 1830s in all parts of the North . In Ohio alone, from 1830 to 1860, as many as 40,000 fugitive slaves were helped to freedom . The number of local antislavery societies increased at such a rate that by 1838 there were about 1,350 with a membership of perhaps 250,000 .
Most Northerners nonetheless ei- ther held themselves aloof from the abolitionist movement or actively opposed it . In 1837, for example, a mob attacked and killed the an- tislavery editor Elijah P . Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois . Still, Southern re- pression of free speech allowed the abolitionists to link the slavery issue with the cause of civil liberties for whites . In 1835 an angry mob de- stroyed abolitionist literature in the Charleston, South Carolina, post of- fice . When the postmaster-general stated he would not enforce delivery of abolitionist material, bitter de- bates ensued in Congress . Abolition- ists flooded Congress with petitions calling for action against slavery . In
1836 the House voted to table such petitions automatically, thus effec- tively killing them . Former President John Quincy Adams, elected to the House of Representatives in 1830, fought this so-called gag rule as a violation of the First Amendment, finally winning its repeal in 1844 .