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.
- July 8, 1777Vermont abolishes slavery
Vermont's constitution becomes the first in the Americas to abolish adult slavery outright.
- 1781The Quock Walker case ends slavery in Massachusetts
A series of freedom suits by Quock Walker leads Massachusetts courts to rule slavery incompatible with the new state constitution — effectively ending it there.
- August 21, 1781Elizabeth "Mum Bett" Freeman sues for freedom
Elizabeth Freeman wins her freedom in a Massachusetts court, arguing the new state constitution's "all men are born free" applied to her.
- September 1829David Walker's Appeal
A radical pamphlet calling for the end of slavery electrifies the abolitionist cause and panics the South.
- September 20, 1830The first National Negro Convention
Free Black leaders gather in Philadelphia to organize against slavery and for civil rights — the start of the Black convention movement.
- January 1, 1831William Lloyd Garrison launches The Liberator
A radical abolitionist newspaper amplifies the call for immediate emancipation.
- September 21, 1832Maria Stewart speaks
Maria Stewart becomes one of the first American women to lecture publicly on politics, calling Black Americans to education and resistance.
- July 2, 1839The Amistad rebellion
Captured Africans seize their slave ship; the Supreme Court later frees them.
- August 16, 1843Henry Highland Garnet's "Address to the Slaves"
Garnet calls on the enslaved to resist — a militant break with moral-suasion abolitionism that stuns the 1843 convention.
- December 3, 1847Frederick Douglass launches The North Star
Douglass founds his abolitionist newspaper under the masthead "Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Color."
- February 15, 1851The Shadrach Minkins rescue
Boston's Vigilance Committee storms a courthouse to free Shadrach Minkins from federal custody under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
- October 1, 1851The Jerry Rescue
A Syracuse crowd of thousands breaks into a jail to free William "Jerry" Henry, defying the Fugitive Slave Act.
- March 20, 1852Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel galvanizes Northern antislavery opinion.
- July 5, 1852"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
Frederick Douglass delivers the most searing abolitionist speech of the era, exposing the hypocrisy of celebrating liberty in a slaveholding nation.
- 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.
Garnet's militant call for the enslaved to resist.
The web
Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.
- part of (incoming)·Event"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
The most famous abolitionist speech: a demand that the nation live up to the Declaration it celebrated.
- part of (incoming)·EventThe Germantown Quaker Petition
The earliest documented colonial protest against slavery.
- inspired (incoming)·EventThe rendition of Anthony Burns
Burns's rendition turned moderate Northerners into committed opponents of slavery.