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