Does anyone know of any books or articles that talk about Abolitionists who lived in (and preferably were native to) the South?
-FrL-
Most southern states passed laws prior to the Civil War that prohibited any public advocacy or even discussion of the abolition of slavery.
There were attacks on Abolitionist Newspapers (or more accurately newspapers that had an abolitionist stance) in Kentucky and in DC - both places that allowed Slavery. The Law basically backed these mob actions.
There was also a massive abolitionist postal campaign in 1835 where pretty united Christian abolitionists under the American Anti-Slavery Society mailed tons of literature South to stir the sh^t with a moral anti_Slavery bent. With the help of President Jackson Southern Political power meant that Post Masters in the South refused to deliver the mail.
The Grimké sisters came from South Carolina, the daughters of a slave owner. After they wrote for The Liberator, and Angelina’s writings were burned and she was threatened with arrest if she returned to South Carolina, they became became two of the leading abolitionist and women’s rights firebrands of their day. When they began to speak out and address public abolitionist meetings, it was considered very unusual in an era when women were not supposed to be public speakers. Meetings at which they spoke were sometimes physically attacked by mobs.
The only abolitionist I can think of who continued to live in the South was Cassius Clay of Kentucky (the man after whom the boxer was named). Clay lived at the northern edge of the slave states, in Lexington and Louisville, and even so was constantly subjected to legal harassment and assassination attempts. Further south, you couldn’t be an abolitionist and survive.
So a book on this topic would unfortunately be a rather thin volume.
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen has some neat chapters on this. Among many things I didn’t know:
Don’t worry, the guy has original sources. LOTS of them.
Not to nitpick Loewen, but neither Winston County or Jones County actually seceded from the Confederacy, although there was strong anti-confederate sentiment in both places. Also, Winn Parish never “refused to secede from the Union”. The delegate from Winn Parish to Louisiana’s seccession convention just voted against secession.
I’m not sure what you mean by “on this”, but the subject of this thread is abolitionists in the South. Opposition to secession and the Confederacy was NOT equivalent to abolitionism.
It is worth noting that there was, of course, the underground railway, which was a covert network for getting slaves out of the south. By its nature, the railway was a covert operation, so I suspect many of its members were not openly abolitionists.
I always worry when I see Loewen being used as an authority. The man’s as credible as Rush Limbaugh. They’re both pushing their own ideas and feel that the higher truth they’re putting forth justifies distorting the actual facts.
Captain Amazing, Freddy the Pig, and Little Nemo, I stand humbled.
Loewen tells a good story, so perhaps I was blinded. I doubt he’s completely bullshitting, though.
Madmonk28, yes. Nothing conclusive that I know of, but local rumor (St. Louis) has it that the limestone caves underlying the city that were (are?) used as cooling cellars for the breweries were also used as hideouts=“stations” on the Underground Railway.
Double apology for Freddy. I wasn’t answering the question at all.
Liberty party presidential candidate James Birney and Kentucky missionary John Fee were Southern abolitionists and were held up as examples of how there was hope for bringing Southern whites around to Northern ways of thinking. (Though most Southerners consider Kentucky a border state to this day.)
The notion that there were no abolitionists is nonsense. Especially since most Southerners never owned slaves.
Of course, Northerners of the early 19th Century seem to have forgotten about their own history as slave states for much longer periods of time than most Southern states.
Birney moved to Ohio, and then to Michigan, when he became an abolitionist in the 1830’s. Yes, Fee is a good example, comparable to Cassius Clay, of an abolitionist who remained in Kentucky, although even he was forced to flee after John Brown’s raid. But again, that was in Kentucky–I challenge you to find an abolitionist who lived and published farther south than Kentucky between the 1830’s and the Civil War. It’s a matter of historical record that anti-slavery agitation was illegal and entailed grave personal risk at that time and place.
What does owning slaves have to do with anything? Being a nonslaveholder had nothing to do with being an abolitionist.
It’s irrelevant to this thread.
Rev. Anthony Bewley? He was a Methodist minister in Arkansas and Texas who was lynched in Fort Worth for his abolitionism. I also found refrence in the New York Times from 1852 to $100 bounties on two abolitionist preachers in Graydon County, Virginia.
I’ve seen similar claims before, and it could very well be true, but I’d like to see a cite.
Actually, I can do some Wiki-foo and see for myself.
California 1850 1850 0
Connecticut 1633 1784 151
Illinois 1818 1818 0
Indiana 1816 1816 0
Iowa 1846 1846 0
Kansas 1861 1861 0
Maine 1820 1820 0
Massachussetts 1620 1783 163
Michigan 1837 1837 0
Minnesota 1858 1858 0
New Hampshire 1623 1783 160
New Jersey 1626 1804 178
New York 1626 1799 173
Ohio 1803 1803 0
Oregon 1859 1859 0
Pennsylannia 1681 1780 99
Rhose Island 1636 1784 148
Vermont 1791 1791 0
Wisconsin 1848 1848 0
Alabama 1819 1865 46
Arkansas 1836 1865 29
Delaware 1681 1865 184
Florida 1845 1865 20
Georgia 1670 1865 195
Kentucky 1792 1865 73
Louisiana 1812 1865 53
Maryland 1634 1865 231
Mississippi 1817 1865 48
Missouri 1821 1865 44
North Carolina 1670 1865 195
South Carolina 1670 1865 195
Tennessee 1796 1865 69
Texas 1845 1865 20
Virginia 1606 1865 259
This is somewhat apples vs oranges because I’ve listed settlement dates for the original colonies and admittance dates for later states, but for comparison between North and South, I think it’s fair since slave and free states were balanced.
Overall, it looks like the Northern states had slavery for less time than Southern states. Yes, the older Northern states had had slavery for longer than the younger Southern states, but that shouldn’t be surprising. And the phrase “most Southern states” is simply not true if we’re talking about early 19th century. You could make a case for it in the Civil War era, if you’re willing to ignore all the new Northern states.
A better statement with similar sentiments is: “Of course, Northerners of the early 19th Century seem to have forgotten about their own colonial history as slave states for periods of time much longer than the age of the Union.”
As mentioned, a big problem with Abolition was that the government representatives, even on a local level, were often all plantation owners, who used the state for their own ends and made their values its own. They made it illegal to speak out against them and whipped up mobs to mess with poepe who did.
As a consequence, many anti-slavery people, or even those who just didn’t like the planters, left for the West. My home region of Indiana had a lot of people from western North Carolina who came there before the Civil War. Of course, this meant that the planters had even less opposition.
I note your careful caveat about living and publishing south of Kentucky, which, true enough, would have been hazardous to an abolitionist’s health. But that is not to say that there were no Southern abolitionists. They just had to go north to publish.
For example, Daniel R. Goodloe, of North Carolina (but who lived in DC at the time of publishing his views). (Note also the reference in that blurb to two competing newspapers, both favoring emancipation, being published in Richmond in the 1840s.)
Goodloe published at least two anti-slavery works: Inquiry into the Causes Which Have Retarded the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the Southern States: in Which the Question of Slavery is Considered in a Politico-Economical Point of View. By a Carolinian
and
Southern Platform: Or Manual of Southern Sentiment on the Subject of Slavery (1858)
Here’s a book which seems to address the OP’s request:
The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861
From a reader review:
I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on the quality of the book or the accuracy of that review.
I’d be interested to hear what Northern states had a “much longer” history of slavery than any Southern states. Slavery began in the South first and continued there after it was abolished in the North.
And leaving that issue aside, the crucial distinction is that Northerners changed their minds on the issue of slavery and abolished it of their own volition.