Slavery and Abolition in the United States

Questions and Answers

To gradually end slavery in the United States by removing the free Black population from North America (correct)

To promote social reform among middle-class evangelicals

To appeal to the sense of Christian conscience of enslavers

To immediately end slavery in the United States

Colonizationist movement leaders

European abolitionists

Southern slave owners and politicians

Northern free Black Americans and middle-class evangelicals (correct)

Moral suasion (correct)

Gradual emancipation

Political activism

Conditional emancipation

National redemption and moral harmony Signup and view all the answers

William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Theodore Dwight Weld Signup and view all the answers

They saw it as a moral sin and a blight on the United States Signup and view all the answers

A rising tide of anticolonization sentiment Signup and view all the answers

Gradual emancipation Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Revivalist doctrines of salvation, perfectionism, and disinterested benevolence led many evangelical reformers to believe that slavery was the most God-defying of all sins and the most terrible blight on the moral virtue of the United States.

White interest in and commitment to abolition had existed for several decades before the 1830s.
Organized antislavery advocacy was largely restricted to models of gradual emancipation (seen in several northern states following the American Revolution) and conditional emancipation (seen in colonization efforts to remove Black Americans to settlements in Africa).

The colonizationist movement of the early nineteenth century drew together a broad political spectrum of Americans with its promise of gradually ending slavery in the United States by removing the free Black population from North America.

By the 1830s, a rising tide of anticolonization sentiment among northern free Black Americans and middle-class evangelicals’ flourishing commitment to social reform radicalized the movement.
The radicalization led to the idea of immediate emancipation becoming a central part of northern reform agendas.

Baptists such as William Lloyd Garrison were key figures in the abolitionist movement.
Congregational revivalists like Arthur and Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld were also prominent abolitionists.
Radical Quakers including Lucretia Mott and John Greenleaf Whittier were important figures in the movement.

Abolitionists believed they could convince enslavers to voluntarily release their enslaved laborers by appealing to their sense of Christian conscience through a strategy known as “moral suasion.”
The goal of moral suasion was to achieve national redemption and moral harmony.