Antebellum Reform

Religon, reform, and moral Suasion

The second great awakening 

Growth of evangelical denominations, esp. Methodists 

Two religions: 

• Frontier 

• “Burned over district” in NY State

Frontier Revivals. Camp Meetings 

• Religion plus folk beliefs 

• Charismatic Worship 

• Circuit riders 

Burned Over District 

• Where Mormons originate 

• Joseph Smith's first video is in Palmyra, NY  

People from diverse backgrounds 

• AME Church 

• Theology People need to choose salvation 

• Open to all 

Reform impulse- to protect society  

Differrent Approchaes to Ending Slavery

• Gradualism- anyone born after 1801 is free from slavery 

• Immediatism- Vermont, Massachusetts, anybody in those states was free. Social argument bc it was pushback from whites because they didn’t want blacks into the labor market. Older people could no longer work. Virginia had a statute bc they had to promise to pay for black Americans bc there was no work.

• Coloization- John jay, and madision. Remove black Americans and move them to Africa. There were about 3 million black Americans in the country at the time. It’s not supper successful and mostly white people owned land 

• Violent overthrow- Nat Turner believed he could speak to god, and his prophets were like that. He had a vision that he should remove all the blacks.

William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator

From Massachusetts, white man, form the anti-slavery society. Didnt allow women to become members and they couldnt talk. Didnt allow black men become member either. Publushed a popular paper Named Liberartoer. Couldnt get it into the mail espically people in Charlstion.

Fred Douglass

•Born into slavery on the Eastern Shore (VA)

•Mother: Harriet Bailey, enslaved; father likely his white enslaver

•Separated from his mother as an infant; she died when he was about 10

•Sent to Baltimore at age 8 to live with Auld family and Sophia Auld teaches him to read

•Douglass believed literacy was key to freedom: “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave”

•Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison

•Douglass publishes The North Star and Garrison published The Liberator (1831-1865)

•Both believed in immediate abolition (unlike gradual policies or removal policies such as that proposed by the American Colonization Society)

•Garrison forms the New England Anti-Slavery Society 1832

•Both believe in moral suasion: non-violent approach to change hearts and minds. Garrison believes Const. is slave document

William Wells Brown

•Born into slavery in Kentucky around 1814

•Mother was enslaved/father was a white slaveowner

•Escaped slavery in 1834 via the Underground Railroad

•Adopted the name “William Wells Brown” after a Quaker who helped him

•Author of Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (1847): bestseller among slave narratives

•Also wrote plays, travel books, and histories

•Wrote Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter (1853): first novel published by an African American