Unsung History11 Apr 2022

The Abolition Movement of the 1830s

From the founding of the United States, there were people who opposed slavery, but many who grappled with the concept, including slave owner Thomas Jefferson, envisioned a plan of gradual emancipation for the country. In 1817, after the establishment of the American Colonization Society, free Blacks in Philadelphia and elsewhere began to fight for immediate abolition for all enslaved people in the United States. By the 1830s, they were joined in these efforts by white allies.

Although not as well known as later abolitionists like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionists of the 1830s played a crucial role in building and popularizing the movement. These abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, David Ruggles, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, the Forten Family, and the Grimké sisters, faced personal violence, destruction of property, financial ruin, and physical maladies as they raised their voices and put their bodies on the line for the cause.

I’m joined in this episode by J.D. Dickey, author of The Republic of Violence: The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson's America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. Image Credit: “Anti-Slavery Meeting on the [Boston] Common” From Gleason's Pictorial, May 3, 1851. Photomural from woodcut. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Additional Sources:

“Jan. 15, 1817: The Vote on Colonization of Free Blacks in West Africa,” The Zinn Education Project.
“Africans in America,” PBS.
“Grimke Sisters,” National Park Service.
“The Abolitionists,” American Experience, PBS, Aired January 8, 2013.
David Ruggles Center for History and Education.
“Friends of Freedom: The Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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