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abolitionism

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A group of three abolitonists standing in front of a man holding a bag of money and brandishing a chair as a weapon, with the caption "The Disappointed Abolitionists."

The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles

History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.
by Isaac Kolding via Commonplace on December 24, 2024
A ticket to the 1854 Anti-Slavery Bazaar for 1854-1855.

Women’s Work: The Anti-Slavery Fairs of the 1800s

Women abolitionists held annual Christmas bazaars to raise money for the cause; these fairs sold everything from needlework to books to Parisian dresses.
by Tanya L. Roth via The Saturday Evening Post on December 3, 2024
A 1905 photo of a Cincinnati, Ohio, home that once functioned as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
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Abolitionism Shows How One Person Can Help Spark a Movement

Rankin's 'Letters on American Slavery' set out a moral argument for abolition that resonated across the nation.
by Caleb Franz via Made By History on December 2, 2024
Pressed seaweed arranged like a bouquet by William G. Allen and Mary King Allen.

Flowers of the Sea: Marine Specimens at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar

Seaweed and its connection to faith and abolitionism.
by Charline Jao via Commonplace on September 27, 2024
Pennsylvania Hall in flames.
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Sordid Mercantile Souls

When labor found a common cause — and enemy — with the abolition movement.
by Sean Griffin via HNN on May 21, 2024
Illustration of Nancy and the first edition of the Emancipator.

He Published the First Abolitionist Newspaper in America. He Was Also an Enslaver.

When "The Emancipator" was first published in 1820, its original owner had to answer for why he owned Nancy and her five children.
by Anne G'Fellers-Mason via The Emancipator on April 30, 2024
Gun on the cover of Kellie Carter Jackson's book "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence."

Words to Weapons: A History of the Abolition Movement from Persuasion to Force

With "Force and Freedom," Carter Jackson makes a stimulating and insightful debut which will have a major influence on abolition movement scholarship.
by William Morgan Sr. via Commonplace on December 18, 2023
Painting of Reverend Lemuel Haynes preaching

The Revolution Within the American Revolution

Supported and largely led by slaveholders, the American Revolution was also, paradoxically, a profound antislavery event.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on October 23, 2023
Drawing of Abraham Lincoln as a guest at Ann Spriggs' Washington, D.C. boarding house, 1906.

The D.C. Boarding House That Moved the Needle on Slavery

Where abolitionists and congressmen—including Lincoln—dined, debated, and became bedfellows.
by Bennett Parten via Zócalo Public Square on July 31, 2023
Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass and the “Faithful Little Band of Abolitionists” in Uxbridge, Massachusetts

This is the story of how a visit by Frederick Douglass to south-central Massachusetts, epitomizes the movement’s ability to spread in the region.
by C. J. Martin via Commonplace on June 6, 2023
Abraham Lincoln.

The Two Constitutions

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.
by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on May 18, 2023
Portrait of Lydia Maria Child reading a book. Courtesy the Smithsonian/NMAAHC

Lydia Maria Child and the Vexed Role of the Woman Abolitionist

Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today.
by Lydia Moland via Aeon on March 27, 2023
Samuel Ringgold Ward and Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass Thought This Abolitionist Was a 'Vastly Superior' Orator and Thinker

A new book offers the first full-length biography of newspaper editor, labor leader and minister Samuel Ringgold Ward.
by Richard Blackett via Smithsonian on March 24, 2023
Painting of a pond surrounded by lush vegetation.

A Paradise for All

The relentless radicalism of Benjamin Lay.
by Astra Taylor via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 21, 2023
Building of the old Pendleton Farmers' Society.

Ablaze: The 1849 White Supremacist Attack on a South Carolina Post Office

The bonfire was a public spectacle for Black people, as well as any white dissenters. It was a calculated warning.
by Susanna Ashton via Southern Spaces on December 2, 2022
Engraving of freed slaves arriving at Union lines, New Bern, North Carolina, 1863.

The Emancipators’ Vision

Was abolition intended as a perpetuation of slavery by other means?
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on December 1, 2022
Black and white photo of Charles Sumner

“A Solemn Battle Between Good and Evil.” Charles Sumner’s Radical, Compelling Message of Abolition

The senator from Massachusetts and the birth of the Republican Party.
by Timothy Shenk via Literary Hub on October 24, 2022
Black and white photo of Lydia Maria Child reading a book

Living in Words

A new biography explores the work of the influential abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, who wrote about the social, political, and cultural issues of her time.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on October 13, 2022
Harriet Tubman in the late 1860s.

When Harriet Tubman Met John Brown

Looking back at the short but deep friendship of John Brown and Harriet Tubman, who gave their lives to the abolitionist cause.
by Paul Bowers via Jacobin on June 19, 2022
A political cartoon in which a king sitting on a litter carried by enslaved men rests his elbow on three skulls labeled Fugitive Slave Bill.

Transcendentalists Against Slavery

Why have historians overlooked the connections between abolitionism and the famous New England cultural movement?
by Peter Wirzbicki, David Moore via Mere Orthodoxy on February 9, 2022
Pastoral landscape with classical architecture. Copy after Thomas Cole’s “Dream of Arcadia”, by Robert Seldon Duncanson, 1852.

An Ugly Preeminence

On the devout abolitionists who excoriated American exceptionalism.
by Ian Tyrrell via Lapham’s Quarterly on January 26, 2022

Ralph Waldo Emerson Would Really Hate Your Twitter Feed

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.
by Peter Wirzbicki via Psyche on August 9, 2021
Engraving of freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867

Forging an Early Black Politics

The pre-Civil War North was a landscape not of unremitting white supremacy but of persistent struggles over racial justice by both Blacks and whites.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on June 11, 2021
Picture of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln.

On Abraham Lincoln’s Convoluted Plan For the Abolition of Slavery

Although he did not openly endorse every one of the many precepts of the antislavery Constitution, Lincoln framed his positions entirely within its parameters.
by James Oakes via Literary Hub on January 13, 2021
African American men who escaped slavery at a US Army Camp.

John Wolcott Phelps’ Emancipation Proclamation

The story of John Wolcott Phelps and his push for Lincoln to emancipate all slaves.
by David T. Dixon via Emerging Civil War on January 4, 2021

The Prophet Is Human

A towering new biography of the great American orator and public intellectual Frederick Douglass.
by Mary F. Corey via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 11, 2019

A “Malicious Fabrication” by a “Mendacious Scribbler for the ‘New York Times’”

The Times, as a “venomous Abolition Journal” could not be trusted to provide the truth for a white, slave-owning southerner.
by Mandy Cooper, Kate Collins via The Devil's Tale on March 12, 2018

Voices in Time: Epistolary Activism

An early nineteenth-century feminist fights back against a narrow view of woman’s place in society.
by Louise W. Knight via Lapham’s Quarterly on February 22, 2018

One of History's Foremost Anti-Slavery Organizers Is Often Left Out of Black History Month

The Reverend Dr. Henry Highland Garnet may be the most famous African American you never learned about.
by Paul Ortiz via TIME on January 31, 2018
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The Tireless Abolitionist Nobody Ever Heard of

He was a well-known figure in early America, but the name of Warner Mifflin has all but faded from the nation's memory.
by Gary B. Nash via HNN on October 24, 2017
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