Anti-Abolition Backlash to Womens Rights

Anti-Abolition Backlash

• “gag rule” blocks Congress from considering petitions   * Congress received more than 130,000 petitions from citizens demanding the abolition of slavery in Washington D.C and other federally controlled territories
• anti-abolitionist propaganda in the north and the south
• violence, and it was sometimes even lethal

The Movement Splinters, c. 1839

• disagreements arise over the best strategy
• $William Lloyd Garrison:$ a prominent American Christian, abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer   * continued moral suasion, but advocated a new constitution
• others: moral suasion led to political action   * $moral suasion:$ act of persuading a group or person to act in a certain way through rhetorical appeals, persuasion, or implicit and explicit threats     * The Liberty Party, 1839-48
• others turn to direct resistance   * aiding runaways   * especially by the 1850s, some militarized

Women’s Rights

• some abolitionists came to believe racial and gender inequality were connected
• frustrated by sexism within the abolitionist movement   * 1840s World Anti-Slavery Convention in London refused female delegates
• 1848 Seneca Falls Convention   * Seneca Falls is in New York     * limited results, but laid the groundwork

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