How did enslaved people and their free allies fight human bondage in America? What tools and tactics, means and methods did Americans from Nat Turner to Abraham Lincoln use to escape slavery or try to exterminate it?
Richard Bell, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park, examines the history of antislavery between 1829 and 1865, tracing the efforts of black field workers, fugitives, and former slaves and of white activists, writers, and politicians to build an abolition movement that could bring slavery to its knees.
10 to 11 a.m. Walker and Turner
David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) marked the beginning of a radical new phase in American antislavery. In it, Walker, a free black Bostonian, challenged Thomas Jefferson’s racism and encouraged black slaves in the south to rise up in armed revolt. Despite planters’ attempts to suppress the pamphlet, two years later, a Virginian slave named Nat Turner did as Walker had bid, leading the largest and bloodiest slave insurrection in American history.
11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Garrison and Douglass
Few Americans were more profoundly affected by the actions of Walker and Turner than William Lloyd Garrison, an apprentice printer turned activist. In the 1830s, Garrison spearheaded the creation of a national antislavery campaign that succeeded in raising public awareness and stoking moral outrage while remaining committed to nonviolence. At first, Frederick Douglass was a staunch ally in this crusade, but he later broke with Garrison in favor of more militant action to speed slavery’s demise.
12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Lunch (participants provide their own)
1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Stowe, Tubman, and Brown
The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was a great setback for American abolitionists, a sure sign that southern slaveholders remained in power in Washington. In outraged response, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a preacher’s daughter living in Ohio, penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, the novel that famously hastened the country along the road to Civil War. At the same time, Harriet Tubman, a former slave, and John Brown, a white activist, took direct action to try to liberate as many southern slaves as they could—or die in the attempt.
2:45 to 4 p.m. Lincoln and the Slaves
When the war came, it was the enslaved people of the Confederacy who succeeded in transforming Lincoln’s war aims from preserving the union to destroying slavery. Fleeing their masters in unprecedented numbers, slaves emancipated themselves and sought protection behind Union lines. Bolstered by these “contraband” soldiers and by the successful enlistment of free black men into northern regiments, Lincoln’s army relied on black manpower to defeat the Confederacy and to usher in a “new birth of freedom.”
