Movement of resistance · 1700–1865
Abolitionism
The long movement to end slavery, led substantially by free and formerly enslaved Black Americans.
On the timeline
- February 18, 1688The Germantown Quaker Petition
Four Germantown Quakers write the first formal protest against slavery in the English colonies — an early seed of abolition.
- April 14, 1775First abolition society founded
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the first in America, is organized in Philadelphia.
- September 1829David Walker's Appeal
A radical pamphlet calling for the end of slavery electrifies the abolitionist cause and panics the South.
- January 1, 1831William Lloyd Garrison launches The Liberator
A radical abolitionist newspaper amplifies the call for immediate emancipation.
- July 2, 1839The Amistad rebellion
Captured Africans seize their slave ship; the Supreme Court later frees them.
- March 20, 1852Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel galvanizes Northern antislavery opinion.
- October 16, 1859John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's failed raid to arm the enslaved pushes the nation toward civil war.
- January 1, 1863The Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln declares the enslaved in rebel states free, transforming the war into a fight for freedom.
Resources
Douglass's influential abolitionist newspaper.
~7,400 items: correspondence, speeches, and writings of Frederick Douglass.
The first written protest against slavery in the English colonies.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- part of (incoming)·EventThe Germantown Quaker Petition
The earliest documented colonial protest against slavery.