Historical Abolitionist

The historical antislavery movement shows two independent trends that can be morally divided into separate eras in history. The first group of early abolitionist evolved before the 1830’s. The second group of abolitionist evolved after the 1830’s Even though both groups of abolitionist held the same initial idealism they were very much divided by their morals at the time. The division of morals clearly defines each groups successes and failures.

The earlier crusade against slavery showed some signs of the later abolitionists point of view on moral issues, but failed to side with the issue of overall equality for African Americans. These earlier abolitionist saw the arising problem, but wished to send all African Americans back to Africa, just to rid America of African Americans. They believed this was an easy solution for the rising conflict regarding the issue of slavery. Alan Brinkley, the author of A Survey of History states an example of this early ideology, “It centered on the concept of colonization-the effort to encourage resettlement of African Americans in Africa or the Caribbean”(330). This early idealism was based on ignorantly seeking an easy way out of slavery in America. Most early abolitionist were not politically committed to the idea of humoring an integrated society. They wanted change, but were afraid to take the action to support it. The earlier abolitionist also sympathetically sided with the aristocratic white slave owner. Alan Brinkley states the ideas of the group called the American Colonization Society (ACS). “The ACS proposed a gradual manumission (or freeing) of slaves masters receiving compensation through funds raised by private charity or appropriated by state legislators” (330). The idea was to slowly rid America of the freed slaves by sending them to other countries. This early idealism actually helped to increase the power of the slave owners by targeting free slaves in America as the problem. The ACS did manage to send some newly freed slaves to Liberia, but their ideas were far to unrealistic because the growing African American population made up a large portion of the American population. The efforts of the early abolitionist lacked the vision of improving the future morals of Americans and denied people the strength to support them. Brinkley states the unsuccessful attempt of the first movement, “The cotton boom in the deep south was increasing the commitment of planters to their peculiar labor system” (330).