PAL: The Anti-Slavery Movement

PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide - An Ongoing Project

Chapter 4: The Anti-Slavery Movement

Page Links: | A Brief Chronology (1831-1860) | Selected Bibliography through 1999 Selected Bibliography 2000 to Present | MLA Style Citation of this Web Page |

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Anti-Slavery Movement: A Brief Chronology (1831-1860)

1831
Nat Turner leads an unsuccessful slave revolt. He is captured and hung.

1833
The American Anti-Slavery Society is founded by abolitionist groups from New York and New England.

1834
Anti-Abolition riots break out in New York and Philadelphia

1835
Congress adopts a "gag resolutions" against anti-slavery petitions and motions.

1839
Liberty Party, the first anti-slavery party holds a national convention in Warsaw, New York.

1840
World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London. American churches condemned for supporting slavery.

1841
Frederick Douglass addresses a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket, resulting in his employment as an agent.

1848
California adopts a constitution forbidding slavery. Conflicts between pro- and anti slavery groups deepens.

1850
Compromise of 1850 passes-California a free state. Fugitive Slave Act set up and slave trade abolished in District of Columbia

1851
Charles Sumner becomes U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and leads fight against slavery.

1854
Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed. All territories can decide to permit or prohibit slavery-condemned by abolitionists. --Republican Party formed as a reaction against Kansas-Nebraska Act- a call for abolishment of slavery.

1855
"Bleeding Kansas"--popular sovereignty leads to bloody war between pro and anti-slavery groups. John Brown arrived in Kansas, he helps to defend Lawrence.

1856
President Pierce recognizes proslavery legislature in Kansas Territory. Border Ruffians-proslavery, sack Lawrence, Kansas John Brown- attack in response. The Pottawatomie murders, May 23-26. Civil battles continue between free and proslavery states until federal troops restore peace. Senator Sumner gives bitter anti-slavery speech and rift between both sides broadens.

1857
Dred Scott Decision in Supreme Court means fugitive slaves in a free state are not free and says Congress has no right to prohibit slavery in the territories.

1858
Kansas rejects Locompton Constitution and becomes a non-slaveholding state.

1859
Abolitionist John Brown with 21 men, seize U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry-hoping to start a slave insurrection. He is hung for treason-Martyr to the North-Traitor to the South.

1860
Civil War rages...

Source: Urdang, Laurence. ed. The Timetables of American History. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1981: 184-222.

| Top |Selected Bibliography through 1999

Abzug, Robert H. Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform. NY: Oxford UP, 1980. E449 .W46 A29

Bartlett, Irving H. Wendell and Ann Phillips: The Community of Reform, 1840-1880. NY: Norton, 1981. E449 .P56 B36

---. Wendell Phillips, Brahmin Radical. Westport: Greenwood, 1973. E449 .P56 B37

Blackett, R. J. M. Beating Against the Barriers: Biographical Essays in Nineteenth-Century Afro-American History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1986. E185.96 .B55

Blue, Frederick J. Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North. Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1994. E415.9 .S9

Child, Lydia Maria Francis. An Appeal in Favor of Americans Called Africans. NY: Arno, 1968. E449 C532

Curry, Richard O., ed. The Abolitionists; Reformers or Fanatics? NY: Holt, 1965. E449 .C98

Davis, David B. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975. HT867 D38

Dillon, Merton L. The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority. DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1974. E449 D58

Duberman, Martin B., ed. The Antislavery Vanguard; New Essays on the Abolitionists. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1965. E449 .D8

Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery; A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: U of ChicagoP, 1968. E441 .E44

Faust, Drew Gilpin. Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War. U of North Carolina P, 1996.

Gerteis, Louis S. Morality and Utility in American Antislavery Reform. Chapel Hill: U of North CarolinaP, 1987. E449 .G38

Goodheart, Lawrence B. Abolitionist, Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse. Kent: Kent State UP, 1990. E449 .W9373

Hersh, Blanche G. The Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America. Urbana: U of IllinoisP, 1978. HQ1423 .H47

Kerr, Andrea M. Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992. HQ1413 .S73 K47

Lader, Lawrence E. The Bold Brahmins; New England's War Against Slavery, 1831-1863. NY, Dutton, 1961. E449 .L12

Lesick, Lawrence T. The Lane Rebels: Evangelicalism and Antislavery in Antebellum America. Metuchen: ScarecrowP, 1980. E449 .F86

Lutz, Alma. Crusade for Freedom; Women of the Antislavery Movement. Boston, BeaconP, 1968. E449 L95

Malin, James C. John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1942. F685 .B877

Marsh, Henry. Slavery and Race: A Story of Slavery and its Legacy for Today. NY: St. MartinP, 1974. HT861 .S25

McKitrick, Eric L. Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963. E449 .M16

| Top | McPherson, James M. The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975. E185.61 M18

---. The Struggle for Equality; Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964. E449 .M176

Miller, Joseph C. Slavery: A Comparative Teaching Bibliography. Waltham: Crossroads P, 1977. Z7164 .S6 M54

Perry, Lewis. Radical Abolitionism; Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1973. E449 .P46

---, and Michael Fellman, eds. Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1979. E449 .A6237

Rampersad, Arnold, and Deborah E. McDowell, eds. Slavery and the Literary Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. PS217 .S55

Ripley, C. Peter, ed. The Black Abolitionist Papers. Chapel Hill: U of North CarolinaP, 1985-. E449 .B624

---, ed. Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation. Chapel Hill: U of North CarolinaP, 1993. E449 .W84

Ruchames, Louis. The Abolitionists; A Collection of Their Writing. NY: Putnam, 1963. E449 .R88

Sanchez-Eppler, Karen. Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism. and the Politics of the Body. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.

Scott, Otto J. The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement. NY: NY Times Books, 1979. E451 .S36

Sears, Lorenzo. Wendell Phillips, Orator and Agitator. NY: B. Blom, 1967. E449 .P5597

Ten Broek, Jacobus. The Antislavery Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment. Berkeley, U of CaliforniaP, 1951. E449 .T4

Walters, Ronald G. The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. E449 .W2

Winter, Kari J. Subjects of Slavery, Agents of Change: Women and Power in Gothic Novels and Slave Narratives, 1790-1865. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1992.

Wolf, Hazel C. On Freedom's Altar; The Martyr Complex in the Abolition Movement. Madison, U of WisconsinP, 1952. E449 .W89

Selected Bibliography 2000 to Present

Bennett, Michael. Democratic Discourses: The Radical Abolition Movement and Antebellum American Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005.

Dunbar, Erica A. A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2008

Foote, Lorien. Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform. Athens: Ohio UP, 2003.

Gray, Janet. Race and Time: American Women's Poetics from Antislavery to Racial Modernity. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2003.

Harrold, Stanley. The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004.

Nabers, Deak. Victory of Law: The Fourteenth Amendment, The Civil War, and American Literature, 1852-1867. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006.

Raimon, Eve A. The "Tragic Mulatta" Revisited: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Antislavery Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004.

Ryan, Susan M. The Grammar of Good Intentions: Race & the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003.

Zackodnik, Teresa C. The Mulatta and the Politics of Race. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004.

Zaeske, Susan. Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2003.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 4: Anti-Slavery Movement" PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/abolish.html (provide page date or date of your login).
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1831	Nat Turner leads an unsuccessful slave revolt. He is captured and hung.
1833	The American Anti-Slavery Society is founded by abolitionist groups from New York and New England.
1834	Anti-Abolition riots break out in New York and Philadelphia
1835	Congress adopts a "gag resolutions" against anti-slavery petitions and motions.
1839	Liberty Party, the first anti-slavery party holds a national convention in Warsaw, New York.
1840	World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London. American churches condemned for supporting slavery.
1841	Frederick Douglass addresses a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket, resulting in his employment as an agent.
1848	California adopts a constitution forbidding slavery. Conflicts between pro- and anti slavery groups deepens.
1850	Compromise of 1850 passes-California a free state. Fugitive Slave Act set up and slave trade abolished in District of Columbia
1851	Charles Sumner becomes U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and leads fight against slavery.
1854	Kansas-Nebraska Act is passed. All territories can decide to permit or prohibit slavery-condemned by abolitionists. --Republican Party formed as a reaction against Kansas-Nebraska Act- a call for abolishment of slavery.
1855	"Bleeding Kansas"--popular sovereignty leads to bloody war between pro and anti-slavery groups. John Brown arrived in Kansas, he helps to defend Lawrence.
1856	President Pierce recognizes proslavery legislature in Kansas Territory. Border Ruffians-proslavery, sack Lawrence, Kansas John Brown- attack in response. The Pottawatomie murders, May 23-26. Civil battles continue between free and proslavery states until federal troops restore peace. Senator Sumner gives bitter anti-slavery speech and rift between both sides broadens.
1857	Dred Scott Decision in Supreme Court means fugitive slaves in a free state are not free and says Congress has no right to prohibit slavery in the territories.
1858	Kansas rejects Locompton Constitution and becomes a non-slaveholding state.
1859	Abolitionist John Brown with 21 men, seize U.S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry-hoping to start a slave insurrection. He is hung for treason-Martyr to the North-Traitor to the South.
1860	Civil War rages...