The abolition movement: an overview
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In this essay, we provide some context for the inspirational story of the vibrant Black community that existed on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts in the 19th century.
We sketch the history of abolitionism over a period of more than 200 years. From the courageous and continuous resistance of enslaved Africans and Indigenous people to the pioneering anti-slavery advocacy of a few Puritans and Quakers in the early years of colonial occupation. From hard-won “gradual emancipation” in the Northern states to the flowering of abolitionism as a multi-racial, cross-class social movement in the 1830s and beyond. From the legislative and physical battles over slavery that culminated in the Civil War to the official declaration of freedom for all those still held in bondage.
Click here to read the essay.
Special thanks to Professor Manisha Sinha, whose groundbreaking history of the abolitionist movement, The Slave’s Cause, is the principal source for this essay.
Image above: An anti-abolition print celebrating an attack by a pro-slavery mob on the White abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, Massachusetts in 1835. The assault followed a protest by the mob outside the offices of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Source: Library Company of Philadelphia.
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