Essays on Abolitionism

William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Horace Greeley, William Wilberforce, Frances Wright

Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery. Abolitionists sought the immediate and full emancipation of all enslaved people. Abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.

There were relatively few protests against the practice of slavery until the 1700s. Enlightenment thinkers argued that slavery was morally wrong. The abolitionist movement began as a more organized, radical and immediate effort to end slavery after the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to become a slave state. It officially emerged around 1830. Soon, abolitionism started in states like New York and Massachusetts and spread to other Northern states.

As abolitionism was illegal in the South, it caused increasing friction between states in the North and the slave-owning South. President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery, and his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed enslaved people in areas of the rebellion. Later, the Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States.