Abolitionism in the United States

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Abolitionism in the United States

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Abolitionism in the United States was the movement prior to the American Civil War to end slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United States.In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historical movement to end the African slave trade and set slaves free. Later, in the 17th century, English Quakers and evangelical religious groups condemned slavery (by then applied mostly to Africans) as un-Christian; in the 18th century, abolition was part of the message of the First Great Awakening in the Thirteen Colonies; and in the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man. James Edward Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanistic grounds, arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, they joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect. Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nations that used slave labor continued to do so, including the South of the United States.After the American Revolutionary War established the United States, northern states, beginning with Pennsylvania in 1780, passed legislation during the next two decades abolishing slavery, sometimes by gradual emancipation. Massachusetts ratified a constitution that declared all men equal; freedom suits challenging slavery based on this principle brought an end to slavery in the state. In other states, such as Virginia, similar declarations of rights were interpreted by the courts not applicable to Africans. During the following decades, the abolitionist movement grew in northern states, and Congress regulated the expansion of slavery in new states admitted to the union.Britain banned the importation of African slaves in its colonies in 1807 and abolished slavery in the British Empire in 1833. The United States criminalized the international slave trade in 1807 and abolished slavery in 1865 as a result of the American Civil War.The historian James M. McPherson defines an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional, and total abolition of slavery in the United States." He does not include antislavery activists such as Abraham Lincoln or the Republican Party, which called for the gradual ending of slavery.