Compare And Contrast The Civil War And The Abolitionist Movement

The Abolitionist Movement: the American Revolution vs. the Civil War How do you imagine the days before the abolition of slavery? Do you imagine someone shouting “Let my people go,” while parting a sea filled with hope of escape? Do you imagine chains and bondage? Do you imagine years of sorrow at the hands of someone you don’t even know? The topics of slavery and abolition have begun to take a toll on how modern-day American citizens think about race, discrimination, and a list of other things. To understand how things got to be this way, you need to go back to the beginning. The abolitionist movement is acknowledged to have begun on January 1, 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison published his abolitionist paper, The Liberator, but this
The abolitionist movement wasn’t in its full swing. The abolitionist movement didn’t really begin until after the Revolutionary War. Because of the end of the war, slavery was at the forefront of the public’s attention. The United States Constitution was seen as protection for the rights of slaveholders after instituting the Three-Fifths Compromise and the original Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which wasn’t fully enforced until 1850 (“Early Antislavery”). Even later, some of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence realized their own hypocrisy and let their slaves go (Pavao). This brings us to before the Civil War. At this time, groups of African-Americans known as maroons, seek escape by hiding in swamps and mountains (Early Antislavery). The Fugitive Slave Law, now put into action, allows people to track down their “property” and bring them back to the plantation. Many were beginning to see the value of abolition and put themselves to work. Religious groups were using revivals to call for immediate emancipation. Revivals such as the Second Great Awakening caused abolition and emancipation to become more of an ethical or moral cause (Davidson and Stoff,