Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved people around the world.
Gamaliel Bailey was an American physician who left that career to become an abolitionist journalist, editor, and publisher, working primarily in Cincinnati, and Washington, D.C. Anti-abolitionist mobs attacked his offices in both cities during the 1840s.
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
Theodore Dwight Weld was one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years from 1830 to 1844, playing a role as writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. He is best known for his co-authorship of the authoritative compendium American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, published in 1839. Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Weld's text; the latter is regarded as second only to the former in its influence on the antislavery movement. Weld remained dedicated to the abolitionist movement until slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
James Gillespie Birney was an American abolitionist, politician, and attorney born in Danville, Kentucky. He changed from being a planter and slave owner to abolitionism, publishing the abolitionist weekly The Philanthropist. He twice served as the presidential nominee for the anti-slavery Liberty Party.
Lane Seminary, sometimes called Cincinnati Lane Seminary, and later renamed Lane Theological Seminary, was a Presbyterian theological college that operated from 1829 to 1932 in Walnut Hills, Ohio, today a neighborhood in Cincinnati. Its campus was bounded by today's Gilbert, Yale, Park, and Chapel Streets.
John Rankin was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and abolitionist. Upon moving to Ripley, Ohio, in 1822, he became known as one of Ohio's first and most active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. Prominent pre-Civil War abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were influenced by Rankin's writings and work in the anti-slavery movement.
The Philanthropist was an abolitionist newspaper printed in Cincinnati, Ohio, starting in 1836, edited by James G. Birney, and printed Achilles Pugh for the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Originally published at New Richmond, Ohio due to complications with Cincinnati mayor Samuel W. Davies, the paper moved to Cincinnati in April 1836 to resume publication. The plan had always involved Cincinnati, but Birney wanted to publish a few issues out of the jurisdiction of Davies first. The paper often gave readers two sides of an argument, printing news items from the South that were proslavery and then critique them.
Calvin Ellis Stowe was an American Biblical scholar who helped spread public education in the United States. Over his career, he was a professor of languages and Biblical and sacred literature at Andover Theological Seminary, Dartmouth College, Lane Theological Seminary, and Bowdoin College. He was the husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (1833–1840) was an abolitionist, interracial organization in Boston, Massachusetts, in the mid-19th century. "During its brief history ... it orchestrated three national women's conventions, organized a multistate petition campaign, sued southerners who brought slaves into Boston, and sponsored elaborate, profitable fundraisers."
The Cincinnati race riots of 1829 were triggered by competition for jobs between Irish immigrants and native blacks and former slaves, in Cincinnati, Ohio but also were related to white fears given the rapid increases of free and fugitive blacks in the city during this decade, particularly in the preceding three years. Merchants complained about the poor neighborhoods along the river as having ill effects on their waterfront shops and trade with southern planters. Artisans excluded blacks from apprenticeships and jobs in the skilled trades. In June 1829 overseers of the poor announced that blacks would be required to post surety bonds of $500 within 30 days or face expulsion from the city and state. This was in accord with a 1807 Black Law passed by the Ohio legislature intended to discourage black settlement in the state.
The Cincinnati riots of 1841 occurred after a long drought had created widespread unemployment in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. Over a period of several days in September 1841, unemployed whites attacked black residents who defended themselves. Many blacks were rounded up and held behind a cordon and then moved to the jail. According to the authorities, this was for their own protection.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery for non-criminals through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Ohio Anti-Slavery Society (1835–1845) was an abolitionist Anti-Slavery Society established in Zanesville, Ohio, by American activists such as Gamaliel Bailey, Asa Mahan, John Rankin, Charles Finney and Theordore Dwight Weld.
Marius Robinson (1806–1878) was an American minister, abolitionist, and newspaper editor of the antislavery newspaper The Philanthropist and The Anti-Slavery Bugle. He helped establish a school for African Americans in Cincinnati, Ohio while attending Lane Seminary. Responding to backlash from the city's residents, he continued to teach and was one of the Lane Rebels who would not be pressured to give up improving the lives of African Americans. He was an anti-slavery lecturer. He worked together with his wife Emily Rakestraw Robinson, to better the lives of African Americans.
The Matilda Case involved Matilda, a 20-year-old woman whose father, Missouri planter Larkin Lawrence, claimed to own her as his slave. In 1837, she fled from her master-father in Cincinnati, a city located in the free state of Ohio. Matilda was captured and returned to her master by order of the local courts, based on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
Abolitionist children’s literature includes works written for children by authors committed to the movement to end slavery. It aimed to instill in young readers an understanding of slavery, racial hierarchies, sympathy for the enslaved, and a desire for emancipation. A variety of literary forms were used by abolitionist children’s authors including, short stories, poems, songs, nursery rhymes and dialogues, much of it written by white women. Pamphlets, picture books and periodicals were the primary forms of abolitionist children’s literature, often using Biblical themes to reinforce the wickedness of slavery. Abolitionist children's literature was countered with pro-slavery material aimed at children, which attempting to depict slavery as a noble pursuit, and slaves as stupid and grateful, or evil.
A symbolic day in the history of the American abolitionist movement was May 14, 1838. On that date two related events occurred: the inauguration in Philadelphia of Pennsylvania Hall, built to symbolize and facilitate the abolitionist movement, and the wedding of Theodore Weld and Angelina Grimké, "the wedding that ignited Philadelphia." The wedding was held that day because of the many out-of-town abolitionists present for the inauguration of the Hall.
