The Philanthropist (21st November, 1837)
Anti-Slavery Movement in America
by Kimberly Dillard and Kate Nguyen
Click here to see Kate's PowerPoint presentation
Click here to see a timeline
of the Abolitionist movement
In 1821 Benjamin Lundy, began publishing the anti-slavery newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation. Over the next thirty years there were over twenty radical newspapers that tended to concentrate on the issue of slavery and civil rights. This included The Liberator (William Lloyd Garrison and Maria Weston Chapman), The Free Enquirer (Fanny Wright and Robert Dale Owen), The Philanthropist (James Birney), North Star (Frederick Douglass), Freedom's Journal (Samuel E. Cornish), The Mystery (Martin Robinson Delany), Emancipator and Public Morals and Mirror of Liberty (David Ruggles), Commonwealth (Julia Ward Howe and Samuel Gridley Howe), Colored American (James W. Pennington), St. Louis Observer (Elijah P. Lovejoy), National Anti-Slavery Standard (Lydia Maria Child), Palladium of Liberty (Charles Langston), National Watchman(Henry Highland Garnet), Pittsburgh Saturday Visiter and St. Cloud Visiter (Jane Grey Swisshelm), Cleveland True Democrat and the Aliened American (William Howard Day) and Pennsylvania Freeman (John Greenleaf Whittier).
These newspapers were published locally but received
support from the national Anti-Slavery
Society. They included speeches from Radical
Republicans in Congress, passages from sermons, excerpts from slave
narratives, reports on anti-slavery meetings and details of future events.
Editors of these newspapers were often attacked and on 7th November, 1837,
Elijah
P. Lovejoy was killed while attempting to protect his printing press
from a pro-slavery mob.
The Philanthropist (21st November, 1837)
In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law. Only John P. Hale, Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase and Benjamin Wade voted against the measure. The law stated that in future any federal marshal who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave could be fined $1,000. People suspected of being a runaway slave could be arrested without warrant and turned over to a claimant on nothing more than his sworn testimony of ownership. A suspected black slave could not ask for a jury trial nor testify on his or her behalf.
Any person aiding a runaway slave by providing shelter, food or any other form of assistance was liable to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Those officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee and this encouraged some officers to kidnap free Negroes and sell them to slave-owners. Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison and John Greenleaf Whittier led the fight against the law. Even moderate anti-slavery leaders such as Arthur Tappan declared he was now willing to disobey the law and as result helped fund the Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad was the name given to the system by which escaped slaves from the South were helped in their flight to the North. It is believed that the system started in 1787 when Isaac T. Hopper, a Quaker, began to organize a system for hiding and aiding fugitive slaves. Opponents of slavery allowed their homes, called stations, to be used as places where escaped slaves were provided with food, shelter and money. The various routes went through 14 Northern states and Canada. It is estimated that by 1850 around 3,000 people worked on the underground railroad. Some of the most best known of the people who provided help on the route included William Still, Gerrit Smith, Salmon Chase, David Ruggle, Thomas Garrett, William Purvis, Jane Grey Swisshelm, William Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Lucretia Mott, Charles Langston, Levi Coffin and Susan B. Anthony.
The underground railroad also had people known as conductors who went to the south and helped guide slaves to safety. One of the most important of these was the former slave, Harriet Tubman. She made 19 secret trips to the South, during which she led more than 300 slaves to freedom. Tubman was considered such a threat to the slave system that plantation owners offered a $40,000 reward for her capture.
Stations were usually about twenty miles apart. Conductors used covered wagons or carts with false bottoms to carry slaves from one station to another. Runaway slaves usually hid during the day and travelled at night. Some of those involved notified runaways of their stations by brightly lit candles in a window or by lanterns positioned in the frontyard. By the middle of the 19th century it was estimated that over 50,000 slaves had escaped from the South using the underground railroad.
Plantation owners became concerned at the large number of slaves escaping to the North and in 1850 managed to persuade Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Act. In future, any federal marshal who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave could be fined $1,000. Any person aiding a runaway slave by providing shelter, food or any other form of assistance was liable to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
The Fugitive
Slave Act failed to stop the underground
railroad. Thomas
Garrett, the Deleware station-master, paid more than $8,000 in fines
and Calvin Fairbank served over seventeen years in prison for his anti-slavery
activities. Whereas John Fairfield, one of the best known of the white
conductors, was killed working for the underground railroad.
(1) Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881)
One important branch of my anti-slavery work in Rochester, was as station master and conductor of the underground railroad passing through this goodly city. Secrecy and concealment were necessary conditions to the successful operation of this railroad, and hence its prefix "underground." My agency was all the more exciting and interesting, because not altogether free from danger. I could take no step in it without exposing myself to fine and imprisonment, for these were the penalties imposed by the fugitive slave law, for feeding, harboring, or otherwise assisting a slave to escape from his master; but in face of this fact, I can say, I never did more congenial, attractive, fascinating, and satisfactory work.
True as a means of destroying slavery, it was like an attempt to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon, but the thought that there was one less slave, and one more freeman, brought to my heart unspeakable joy. On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof, and it was necessary for them to remain with me, until I could collect sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so many with food and shelter, but as may well be imagined, they were not very fastidious in either direction, and were well content with very plain food, and a strip of carpet on the floor for a bed, or a place on the straw in the barn loft.
The underground railroad had
many branches; but that one with which I was connected had its main stations
in Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester,
and St. Catharines (Canada). It is not necessary to tell who were the principal
agents in Baltimore; Thomas Garrett was the agent in Wilmington; Melloe
McKim, William Still, Robert Purvis, Edward M. Davis, and others did the
work in Philadelphia; David Ruggles, Isaac T. Hopper, Napolian, and others,
in New York city; the Misses Mott and Stephen Myers, were forwarders from
Albany; Revs. Samuel J. May and J. W. Loguen, were the agents in. Syracuse;
and J. P. Morris and myself received and dispatched passengers from Rochester
to Canada, where they were received by Rev. Hiram Wilson.
(2) In her book, Harriet Tubman, The Moses of Her People , Sarah Bradford explained the role that Harriet Tubman played in the Underground Railroad. (1886)
It would be impossible here to give a detailed account of the journeys and labors of this intrepid woman for the redemption of her kindred and friends, during the years that followed. Those years were spent in work, almost by night and day, with the one object of the rescue of her people from slavery. All her wages were laid away with this sole purpose, and as soon as a sufficient amount was secured, she disappeared from her Northern home, and as suddenly and mysteriously she appeared some dark night at the door of one of the cabins on a plantation, where a trembling band of fugitives, forewarned as to time and place, were anxiously awaiting their deliverer. Then she piloted them North, traveling by night, hiding by day, scaling the mountains, fording the rivers, threading the forests, lying concealed as the pursuers passed them. She, carrying the babies, drugged with paregoric, in a basket on her arm. So she went nineteen times, and so she brought away over three hundred pieces of living and breathing "property," with God given souls.
The way was so toilsome over the rugged mountain passes, that often the men who followed her would give out, and foot-sore, and bleeding, they would drop on the ground, groaning that they could not take another step. They would lie there and die, or if strength came back, they would return on their steps, and seek their old homes again. Then the revolver carried by this bold and daring pioneer, would come out, while pointing it at their heads she would say, "Dead niggers tell no tales; you go on or die!" And by this heroic treatment she compelled them to drag their weary limbs along on their northward journey.
But the pursuers were after them. A reward of $40,000 was offered by the slave-holders of the region from whence so many slaves had been spirited away, for the head of the woman who appeared so mysteriously, and enticed away their property, from under the very eyes of its owners.
(3) Thomas Garrett, a Quaker who was the Delaware station-master, wrote a letter to Sarah Bradford about the activities of Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad (June, 1866)
The date of the commencement of her labors, I cannot certainly give; but I think it must have been about 1845; from that time till 1860, I think she must have brought from the neighborhood where she had been held as a slave. from 60 to 80 persons, from Maryland, some 80 miles from here.
No slave who placed himself under her care, was ever arrested that I have heard of; she mostly had her regular stopping places on her route; but in one instance, when she had several stout men with her, some 30 miles below here, she said that God told her to stop, which she did; and then asked him what she must do. He told her to leave the road, and turn to the left; she obeyed, and soon came to a small stream of tide water; there was no boat, no bridge; she again inquired of her Guide what she was to do. She was told to go through. It was cold, in the month of March; but having confidence in her Guide, she went in; the water came up to her armpits; the men refused to follow till they saw her safe on the opposite shore. They then followed, and, if I mistake not, she had soon to wade a second stream; soon after which she came to a cabin of colored people, who took them all in, put them to bed, and dried their clothes, ready to proceed next night on their journey. Harriet had run out of money, and gave them some of her underclothing to pay for their kindness.
When she called on me two days after, she was so hoarse she could hardly speak, and was also suffering with violent toothache. The strange part of the story we found to be, that the masters of these men had put up the previous day, at the railroad station near where she left, an advertisement for them, offering a large reward for their apprehension; but they made a safe exit. She at one time brought as many as seven or eight, several of whom were women and children. She was well known here in Chester County and Philadelphia, and respected by all true abolitionists.
(4) Harriet Jacobs was one of the slaves rescued by the people on the Underground Railroad.
Peter took me in his boat, rowed out to a vessel not far distant, and hoisted me on board. They said I was to remain on board till near dawn, and then they would hide me in Snaky Swamp. About four o'clock, we were again seated in the boat, and rowed three miles to the swamp. My fear of snakes had been increased by the venomous bite I had received, and I dreaded to enter this hiding place. But I was in no situation to choose, and I gratefully accepted the best that my poor, persecuted friends could do for me.
Colored people were allowed to ride in a filthy box, behind white people, at the south but they were not required to pay for the privilege. It made me sad to find the north aped the customs of slavery. We were stowed away in a large, rough car, with windows on each side, too high for us to look without standing up. It was crowded with people, apparently of all nations. There were plenty of beds and cradles, containing screaming and kicking babies.
(5) William Still describing the rescue of Anna Maria Weems in his book The Underground Railroad (1870)
The only chance of procuring her freedom, depended upon getting her away on the Underground Rail Road. She was neatly attired in male habiliments, and in that manner came all the way from Washington. After passing two or three days with her new friends in Philadelphia, she was sent on (in male attire) to Lewis Tappan, of New York, who had likewise been deeply interested in her case from the beginning, and who held himself ready, as was understood, to cash a draft for three hundred dollars to compensate the man who might risk his own liberty in bringing her on from Washington. After having arrived safely in New York, she found a home and kind friends in the family of Rev. A. N. Freeman, and received quite an ovation characteristic of an Underground Rail Road.
(5) Francis Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Since my first attempt to escape I was so uniformly treated badly, that my life would have been insupportable if I had not been soothed by the kind words of the good abolitionist planter who had first conveyed to me a true knowledge of religion. I had been flogged, and went one day to show him the state in which I was. He asked me what I wanted him to do. I said, "To get me away to Canada."
He sat for full twenty minutes thoughtfully, and at last said, "Now, if I promise to take you away out of all this, you must not mention a word to any one. Don't breathe a syllable to your mother or sisters, or it will be betrayed." Oh, how my heart jumped for joy at this promise. I felt new life come into me. Visions of happiness flitted before my mind. And then I thought before the next day he might change his mind, and I was miserable again. I solemnly assured him I would say nothing to any one. "Come to me," he said, "on the Friday night about ten or eleven o'clock; I will wait till you come. Don't bring any clothes with you except those you have on. But bring any money you can get." I said I would obey him in every respect.
I went home and passed an anxious day. I walked out to my poor old mother's hut, and saw her and my sisters. How I longed to tell them, and bid them farewell. I hesitated several times when I thought I should never see them more. I turned back again and again to look at my mother. I knew she would be flogged, old as she was, for my escaping. I could foresee how my master would stand over her with the lash to extort from her my hiding-place. I was her only son left. How she would suffer torture on my account, and be distressed that I had left her for ever until we should meet hereafter in heaven I hoped.
At length I walked rapidly away, as if to leave my thoughts behind me, and arrived at my kind benefactor's house a little after eleven o'clock. He said but little, and seemed restless. He took some rugs and laid them at the bottom of the waggon, and covered me with some more. Soon we were on our way to Maysville, which was about twenty miles from his house. The horses trotted on rapidly, and I lay overjoyed at my chance of escape. When we stopped at Maysville, I remained for some time perfectly quiet, listening to every sound. At last I heard a gentleman's voice, saying, "Where is he? where is he?" and then he put in his hand and felt me. I started, but my benefactor told me it was all right, it was a friend. "This gentleman," he added, "will take care of you; you must go to his house." I got out of the waggon and shook my deliverer by the hand with a very, very grateful heart, you may be sure; for I knew the risk he had run on my account.
He wished me every success, and committed me to his friend, whom I accompanied to his house, and was received with the utmost kindness by his wife, who asked me if I was a Christian man. I answered yes. She took me up into a garret and brought me some food. Her little daughters shook hands with me. She spoke of the curse of slavery to the land. "I am an abolitionist," she said, "although in a slaveholding country. The work of the Lord will not go on as long as slavery is carried on here." Every possible attention was paid to me to soothe my troubled mind. The following night the gentleman and his son left the house about ten o'clock. A little after twelve o'clock the gentleman returned, and said he had got a boat and I was to go with him. His lady bid me farewell, and told me to put my trust in the Lord, in whose hands my friends were, and asked me to remember them in my prayers, since they had hazarded everything for me, and, if discovered, they would be cruelly treated. I was soon rowed across the river, which is about a mile wide in that place.
The son remained with me in the skiff whilst his father went to a neighbouring village to bring some one to take charge of me. After some time, he brought a friend, who told me never to mention the name of any one who had helped me. He took me to his house outside the town, where I had some refreshment, and remained about half-an-hour. A waggon came up, and I was stowed away, and driven about twenty miles that night, being well guarded by eight or ten young men with revolvers.
It would do any real Christian man good to see the enthusiasm and determination of these young Abolitionists. Their whole heart and soul are in the work. A dozen such men would have defied a hundred slaveholders. From having seen over and over again slaves dragged back chained through their country, and having heard the tales of horrible treatment of the poor hopeless captives, some having been flogged to death, others burnt alive, with their heads downwards, over a slow fire, others covered with tar and set on fire, these noble, courageous, self-sacrificing men have been so wrought upon, that they are heroes of the highest stamp, and I verily believe they would willingly lay down their lives rather than allow one fugitive slave to be taken from them.
The preceeding information is from this link: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAslavery.htm
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart3.html
contains information and documents from the Anti-Slavery Movement.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart3b.html
contains more information and documents from the Anti-Slavery Movement.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was established in 1833, but abolitionist sentiment antedated the republic. For example, the charter of Georgia prohibited slavery, and many of its settlers fought a losing battle against allowing it in the colony, Before independence, Quakers, most black Christians, and other religious groups argued that slavery was incompatible with Christ's teaching. Moreover, a number of revolutionaries saw the glaring contradiction between demanding freedom for themselves while holding slaves. Although the economic center of slavery was in the South, northerners also held slaves, as did African Americans and Native Americans. Moreover, some southerners opposed slavery. Blacks were in the vanguard of the anti-slavery movement. Abolitionist literature began to appear about 1820. Until the Civil War, the anti-slavery press produced a steadily growing stream of newspapers, periodicals, sermons, children's publications, speeches, abolitionist society reports, broadsides, and memoirs of former slaves. The Library of Congress has a wealth of material that demonstrates the extent of public support for and opposition to abolition. Broadsides advertise fairs and bazaars that women's groups held to raise money for the cause. Other publications advertise abolitionist rallies, some of which are pictured in prints from contemporaneous periodicals. To build enthusiasm at their meetings, anti-slavery organizations used songs, some of which survive. The Library also has many political and satirical prints from the 1830s through the 1850s that demonstrate the rising sectional controversy during that time. Although excellent studies of the abolition movement exist, further research in the Library's manuscripts could document the lesser known individuals who formed the movement's core. Other promising topics include the roles of women and black abolitionists and the activities of state and local abolitionist societies.
Abolition Checklist
Abolition as a Social Movement
Early Anti-Slavery Publication
Jonathan Edwards, Jr., (1745-1801), was, like his more famous father, a Congregationalist minister. He served at the White Haven Church in New Haven, Connecticut, and later became president of Union College in Schenectady, New York. In this sermon, Edwards presented forceful arguments against ten common pro-slavery positions. One of the earliest anti-slavery publications in the Library of Congress collections, the sermon demonstrates the existence of strong anti-slavery feeling in the early days of the republic.
Injustices and Impolicy of the Slave Trade and of the Slavery of Africans . . . , Title page Jonathan Edwards [Jr.], Author New Haven: Thomas & Samuel Green, 1791 Rare Book and Special Collections Division (35)
Minutes of Early Anti-Slavery Meeting
On January 1, 1794, delegates from the abolition societies of Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland met in Philadelphia, a stronghold of the anti-slavery Quaker religion. The group voted to petition Congress to prohibit the slave trade and also to appeal to the legislatures of the various states to abolish slavery. The petitions pointed out the inconsistency of a country that had recently rejected the tyranny of kings engaging in "domestic despotism." Delegates published an address urging on U.S. citizens "the obligations of justice, humanity, and benevolence toward our Africa brethren, whether in bondage or free." The group planned to meet each January until slavery was abolished.
Minutes of Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates from the Abolition Societies..., Title page Philadelphia: Zachariah Poulson, 1794 Rare Book and Special Collections Division (36)
Anti-Slavery Publication for Children
The American Anti-Slavery Society produced The Slave's Friend, a monthly pamphlet of abolitionist poems, songs, and stories for children. In its pages, young readers were encouraged to collect money for the anti-slavery cause. Here a picture of the coffle- yoke used to chain groups of slaves together illustrates a dialogue about the horrors of slavery between a girl named Ellen and her father, Mr. Murray. A shocked Ellen concludes that "I will never boast of our liberty while there is a slave in this land."
The Slave's Friend, Volume II, p. 3 New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836 Rare Book and Special Collections Division (37)
Anti-Colonization Song
Anti-colonization sentiment was common in abolitionist publications such as The Anti-Slavery Picknick, a collection of speeches, poems, dialogues, and songs intended for use in schools and anti-slavery meetings. A song called the "Colored Man's Opinion of Colonization" denounces plans to transport free blacks out of the United States. Many African-Americans opposed colonization, and, in 1831, a convention of free blacks meeting in New York asserted, "This is our home, and this is our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers; for it some of them fought, bled, and died. Here we were born, and here we will die."
The Anti-Slavery Picknick, pp. 106-107 Boston: H.W. Williams, 1842 Rare Book and Special Collections Division (38)
Anti-Slavery Fair Advertisement
Although women were heavily involved in abolitionist activities, opinion was divided as to their proper role. Some people believed that women should serve in auxiliary roles that did not expose them to competition with men. However, many women played a highly visible role as writers and speakers for the cause. Some of them gained activist experience that they later used in support of women's rights. In this circular, the women of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society advertise a fundraising event to support an agent. Well-known abolitionists such as Maria W. Chapman, a spirited speaker, song writer, and editor of many volumes of The Liberty Bell songbook, and Helen E. Garrison, wife of William Lloyd Garrison, were involved in the event.
"Anti-Slavery Fair" Boston: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Broadside Rare Book and Special Collections Division (39)
Slavery in the Washington, D.C., Area
This broadside condemns the sale and keeping of slaves in the District of Columbia. The work was issued during the 1835-1836 campaign to have Congress abolish slavery in the Capital. At the top are contrasting scenes: a view of a reading of the Declaration of Independence, captioned "The Land of the Free," with a scene of slaves being led past the Capitol, captioned "The Home of the Oppressed." Also shown is the infamous Franklin & Armfield Slave Prison, still standing on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia. Opened in 1828, this center soon gained control of nearly half the sea trade in slaves between Virginia and Maryland and New Orleans. Most area slaves "sold South" were held there before being shipped to a dreaded future on a rice, cotton or indigo plantation.
"Slave Market of America" New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836 Broadside Rare Book and Special Collections Division (40)
Anti-Abolitionist Handbill
This handbill urging opponents of abolitionists to obstruct an anti-slavery meeting demonstrates the depth of pro-slavery feeling. Although the handbill advocates peaceful means, violence sometimes erupted between the two factions. An emotion-laden handbill was a factor in the well-known Boston riot of October 21, 1835. In that incident, a mob broke into the hall where the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was meeting, and threatened William Lloyd Garrison's life.
"Outrage," February 2, 1837 Handbill Rare Book and Special Collections Division (41)
Anti-Slavery Almanac
Each year the American Anti-Slavery Society distributed an almanac containing poems, drawings, essays, and other abolitionist material. This issue was compiled by Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), a popular writer recruited to the abolitionist cause by William Lloyd Garrison. In 1833, Mrs. Child produced An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, a sensational anti-slavery publication that won converts to the movement. From 1841 to 1849, she edited the New York-based National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper.
L[ydia] M[aria] Child, comp. The Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1843, cover New York:American Anti-Slavery Society, 1843 Rare Book and Special Collections Division (42)
Slave-Revolt Leader Joseph Cinquez
Joseph Cinquez (or Cinque) was one of a group of Africans from Sierra Leone who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. In July 1839, Cinquez led a revolt on the slave ship Amistad, off Cuba. The slaves took control of the ship and killed the crew, but were soon captured and charged with piracy. Their subsequent trials in New Haven, Connecticut, were causes celebres, pitting abolitionists against President Martin Van Buren's administration. In March 1841, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision to return Cinquez and his surviving friends to Africa. John Quincy Adams had represented the Africans before the Supreme Court, and they were set free largely as a result of his eloquent pleading.
"Joseph Cinquez, the brave Congolese Chief, who prefers death to Slavery, and who now lies in jail..." James or Isaac Sheffield, Illustrator New York: Moses Beach, 1839 Lithograph Prints and Photographs Division (43)
Abolitionist Song
The illustration on this sheet-music cover is an allegory of the triumph of abolitionism. A railroad car called "Immediate Emancipation," is pulled by a locomotive named "Liberator." These two names refer to William Lloyd Garrison, whose demand for immediate emancipation was expressed in his newspaper The Liberator. "Repealer," the second locomotive, probably refers to the Irish insurgent movement, a cause with which many U.S. abolitionists were allied. Flags bearing the names of two other abolitionist publications, the Herald of Freedom and American Standard (or National Anti-Slavery Standard) fly from the "Emancipation" car. In the distance, two other trains, one marked "Van," the other "Clay," crash, and their passengers flee. These trains allude to Democrat and Whig presidential hopefuls Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay.
"Get Off The Track: A Song for Emancipation...," cover Jesse Hutchinson, Author Boston, 1844 Sheet music Prints and Photographs Division (44)
Abolitionist Sheet-Music
Like many other reformers, abolitionists felt that good crusades required singing. Hence, many abolitionists expressed themselves in verse and songs. The cover of this sheet-music shows a fictionalized and inaccurate version of the escape from slavery of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), who actually fled by ship. The song is dedicated to Douglass "for his fearless advocacy, signal ability, and wonderful success in behalf of His Brothers in Bonds."
"The Fugitive's Song...,"cover Boston: Henry Prentiss, 1845 Sheet-music Prints and Photographs Division (45)
Abolitionist Appeal to Women
Abolitionist materials aimed at women often appealed to their sympathetic feeling as wives and mothers for the plight of slave women who might be separated from their husbands or children.
"The Negro Woman's Appeal to Her White Sisters" Richard Barrett, ca. 1850s Broadside Rare Book and Special Collections Division (46)
The preceeding information is from this link: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/abol.html
This link contains more information on the Anti-Slavery Movement: http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/hb_asm.htm
For more information on the Anti-Slavery Movement, keyword search on Google.com : Anti Slavery Movement.
