Paper Summary:

The paper examines abolitionism which was a key issue in electoral politics during the thirty years that lead to the Civil War. It shows that most historians use the term abolitionism to refer to antislavery activism between the early 1830s, when William Lloyd Garrison began publishing "The Liberator", and the Civil War. It discusses too, the difference between abolitionism, a morally grounded and adamant social reform movement, from political antislavery represented, for example, by the Free Soil or Republican parties which promoted more restricted political solutions, such as keeping slavery out of the Western territories, and was more open to conciliation.

From the Paper:

"Abolitionism was never a independent or singular movement. It included a bewildering collection of national, state, and local organizations, opposing policies, and clashing personalities. Abolitionists are commonly depicted as benevolent white people deeply concerned with the well-being of enslaved blacks, symbolized by such activists as Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). In fact, a great number of abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, were African American. Free blacks in the North were stalwart in their commitment to the cause and provided a uneven share of the movement's financial funding."

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