The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic - Softcover

S. Newman, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807849987 ISBN 13: 9780807849989

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press, 2002

Synopsis

Most accounts date the birth of American abolitionism to 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison began publishing his radical antislavery newspaper, The Liberator. In fact, however, the abolition movement had been born with the American Republic. In the decades following the Revolution, abolitionists worked steadily to eliminate slavery and racial injustice, and their tactics and strategies constantly evolved. Tracing the development of the abolitionist movement from the 1770s to the 1830s, Richard Newman focuses particularly on its transformation from a conservative lobbying effort into a fiery grassroots reform cause.

What began in late-eighteenth-century Pennsylvania as an elite movement espousing gradual legal reform began to change in the 1820s as black activists, female reformers, and nonelite whites pushed their way into the antislavery movement. Located primarily in Massachusetts, these new reformers demanded immediate emancipation, and they revolutionized abolitionist strategies and tactics--lecturing extensively, publishing gripping accounts of life in bondage, and organizing on a grassroots level. Their attitudes and actions made the abolition movement the radical cause we view it as today.

About this title

Book Description:

"Deserves careful reading. Its fresh and lively writing and Newman's insistence on linking and contrasting old and new antislavery tactics should encourage researchers and lecturers on antislavery movements to broaden the context of their work."-- Journal of Southern History

From the Inside Flap:

Newman traces the abolition movement's transformation from the American Revolution to 1830, showing how what began in late-18th-century Pennsylvania as an elite movement espousing gradual legal reform had by the 1830s become a radical, egalitarian mass movement based in Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0807849987
• ISBN 13: 9780807849989
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272