Category: Abolitionism

Prostitution is one of the most acute problems of modern society. Despite formal prohibitions and various measures aimed at combating illegal prostitution, it is quite widespread. The turnover of the commercial sex market is billions of dollars, and it employs millions of people. Sex work is the primary source of income for some adults in most countries of the world in the 21st century. While estimates of the number of adults selling sex services require careful methodological approach, and also because of the lack of accurate population data, at the end of the 20th century, about 1.5% of the world’s female population — 46 million people — made life from partial or complete commercial sex work (Jansson, Smith, Flagg, 2017: 1).

Sex work is often referred to a world’s oldest profession. It exists mainly because men are willing to pay for sex. In short, sex sells. Men turn to prostitutes for many reasons: some have been temporarily deprived of sexual partners because they are traveling or in military service; others find it challenging to find partners due to some physical or psychological deficiencies. Sometimes men want to experience some particular form of sex, to which their regular partners do not agree; and some do not want to spend time, feelings and money on love relationships, preferring to buy sexual services. Even though more public extramarital sex in the United States has somewhat reduced prostitution, there are always many men who find themselves above situations (Masters, Johnson, Kolodny, 1988: 20).

However, the policy applied to prostitution is restrictive in most countries in the world. In this regard, many types of research (representing mainly various feminist organisations) emphasise that the civil rights of sex workers are violated, their social status is undermined, and considerable authority is given to them (Pokatovich, 2012: 33). The most important thing is that such a policy does not reach the goal: ‘it is obvious that these laws do not work because prostitution still exists’ (Elias, 1998).

The law and the most common philistine opinions about sex work bind sex and money to define ‘prostitution.’ However, in addition to simple economic exchange, sex work also has a symbolic dimension — the full range of moral evaluations of sex work and the social effects that these evaluations produce. All this ultimately affects the working conditions in the sexual sphere, influences the right and policy of regulating sex work, structures scientific research, and provokes grass-roots organisation of the community of sex workers.

The centre of this process is still stigmatisation – attributing negative moral characteristics to those engaged in sex work, which is why the ‘economy of pleasure’ remains under a partial ban, is associated with crimes and is morally condemned. However, the dominant ideas about sex work are also challenged – by the sex workers themselves and workers who gradually gain the right to vote through the communities they create and the ability to independently determine their sphere of activity. This allows to see a lot of unaccounted nuances of abstract theorising about ‘prostitution’ and in turn opens up the possibility of alternative definitions of sex work.

It is generally accepted that sex workers usually represent a marginal group that is widely subject to stigmatisation. Moreover, as mentioned above, prostitution is illegal in most countries of the world. The purpose of this paper is to review recent methods to eliminate sex work and how they influence the stigmatisation of prostitution in modern society.

In society, there is a deeply rooted negative attitude towards prostitution as an immoral, condemning phenomenon. Sex work is a stigmatising behaviour in almost all world cultures. Insulting labels, such as prostitute, whore, and hooker are systematically used to describe them in law regulations, mass media, everyday interactions, and sometimes in the research literature, showing the universal nature and popularity of these marks of stigma and disgrace.

Medics and psychologists would argue that attitudes toward prostitution start from a negative starting point for the same reason that promiscuous sex is seen negatively, people with facial birthmarks or defects are rejected, and indeed any form of social deviance involving the body and bodily functions. In this view, people unconsciously attempt to protect themselves against any trait or behaviour that might signal a risk of infectious disease. Anger is another typical reaction to sex work, one tied to perceptions of harm and the violations of conservative sexual norms. In studies of emotion, passion and disgust are very closely related. It takes very little for disgust to turn into anger.

Such an assessment of prostitution was characteristic of traditional culture and partially preserved in modern and post-modern cultures. Her theoretical rationale in modern Western society was the views of the famous criminologist Lombroso, who, following his basic concept of the hereditary nature of predisposition for committing crimes, argued that a person is already born a criminal and does not become him as a result of some external influences. In 1893, Lombroso and Ferrero published a paper ‘Criminal Woman, Prostitute and Normal Woman’ in which it was asserted that women prostitutes have a smaller skull size and they show other degraded characteristics compared to women who have committed other crimes (Levina, Dmitrieva, 2013). Shannon Bell (1994) analysed the stigmatization of prostitutes from a historical perspective. She emphasized the importance of forming in the public mind an image of a prostitute, as a woman belonging to another world, a woman with signs of ‘otherness’. The author cites data on how, since the time of Plato, the construction of the image of a prostitute was created, in which the primary and only identification was the body.

Besides, discrimination and stigma contribute to the social attitude of blaming prostitutes for their troubles when they are robbed or beaten by police or clients. Many, who commit crimes against sex workers know that police and society do not take them seriously, and often blame the crime victim for engaging in criminal or depraved behaviour. Interesting, those serial killers have often targeted prostitutes as their victims, because they correctly believe that sex workers disappearances will be treated lightly.

Also, the consequences of stigmatisation are extensive. It is negatively linked with quality of life measures, such as social isolation, revenue, employment, an arrengment of physical and mental health problems, as well as an unwillingness to use health services. Many types of research showed that stigma also causes job-related psychological stress and burnout symptoms (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal competence) among sex workers (Vanwesenbeeck, 2005). They found that burnout was not as much related to particular job characteristics (such as rewards, number of working hours or number of clients) as it was mostly associated with the experience of adverse social reactions, to role conflict, to encounters with violence (Vanwesenbeeck, 2005). Similarly, Platt and Grenfell (2016) decided, that sex workers’ psychological health is shaped by stigma related factors such as being discriminated by others, difficulties combining sex work and home, and fear of being found out.

However, later on, there is a growing understanding of the importance of social factors in the prosperity of prostitution. Recent theories in sociology offer an economic basis of all heterosexual relations – turning all heterosexual couples into prostitutes and clients. For example, Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, in a 2004 review of norms about female and male chastity, attractiveness, and prostitution, observed that society treats female sexuality of all kinds as an economic resource to be

obtained by men (Ditmore, 2006: 50). Regardless of these views, the social agreement tends to place sex in that category of goods for which an economic exchange is a taboo. Trading sex for money at the same time violates conservative morality’s chastity values and liberal morality’s hatred of sex where inequality of power exists. (p. 50). Consequently, the stigma attached to prostitution will likely survive most social, political and economic changes and trends.

The Netherlands, where prostitution has been formally legalized since October 2000, and the sphere of sex services is regulated by municipal authorities, is often opposed to other states as a country that has achieved enormous success in the fight against stigma. For instance, Weitzer (2012) discovered in the Netherlands the interest of sex industry organisers in reducing stigma. The respondents said that they were interested in making sex workers give the impression of ordinary women and at the same time feel they were. They argued that if in the past everything happened behind a closed door, then today sex workers may come to clubs and various public organisations in which everyone is willing to talk with them and discuss various problems.

Legalisation has a positive effect of destigmatising prostitution as well by removing the threat of arrest and laws interference for sex workers. Also, it helps decrease violence against sex workers, because it takes prostitution out of the criminal economy and deems it a legitimate work. The fact that stigma is reduced also makes clear to law forces, potential clients, and others that there are consequences to engaging in crimes against sex workers.

Nevertheless, some researchers believe that even the legalisation of sex work does not solve the problem. For instance, Zeitch and Staring (2009) find that also though in the Netherlands the population is more tolerant of prostitution, it meets with public condemnation. The authors cite, as an example, the statement of one of the university students that she treats prostitution as a regular but immoral phenomenon’ (Dmitrieva, Levina, 2013: 9). Vanwesenbeeck, (Vanwesenbeeck, 2001) points out, ‘no policies have been proposed to combat public rejection and stigmatization of prostitution, nor have standards for working conditions and social welfare been agreed. Sex workers are not even familiar with the new rights and opportunities that brought them legal status’. He also added that ‘a business that has been illegal for centuries cannot become’ normal ‘overnight.’ In general, sex work, where permitted, is treated as a routine work, and emancipative ambitions are clearly articulated. However, these ambitions are being implemented hesitantly (Vanwesenbeeck, 2001) and so far, have not led to a significant improvement in the social status of sex workers.

The past decade has witnessed a growing debate over the sex trade and the growth of an organised campaign committed to expanding criminalisation. Indeed, prostitution is being increasingly demonised, marginalised and criminalised as a result of the efforts of a robust moral crusade (Weitzer, 2010: 62). The campaign initially targeted sex trafficking, but then expanded its targets to prostitution, pornography, stripping, and all other types of commercial sex. The crusade against trafficking and sex work has been dominated by a coalition of the religious right and abolitionist feminists. The term ‘abolitionist feminist’ refers to those who argue that the sex industry should be eliminated because of its objectification and oppressive treatment of women, considered to be inherent in sex for sale (p. 64).

Currently, a growing intention to control and punish is observed in Germany and other (primarily European) countries. This ‘regulation of deterrence’ is part of a broader development, in which sex work (again) is increasingly called extremely problematic and in which repression is pervasive. ‘New’ forms of criminalization are becoming increasingly popular. ‘Neo-abolitionism’ was introduced as an umbrella term to describe these recent developments (Vanwesenbeeck, 2017: 1632).

Two aspects characterize neo-abolitionism well. First, neo-abolitionism is reinforced by the remarkable resurgence of discourses on combating trafficking in human beings in sexual politics and public debates. Politicians in the sex business now seem to be reduced to anti-trafficking policies. The UN human trafficking protocol of 2000 and the North American ‘war on human trafficking’, initiated by the Bush regime, undoubtedly influenced Europe (and the rest of the world). Currently, European countries also spend huge amounts of money on anti-trafficking initiatives. However, there is a huge international confusion regarding the definitions of what exactly is considered human trafficking. The figures on trafficking were found to be bloated and unsubstantiated (Weitzer, 2012). The Netherlands, with its advanced registration system, inflates trafficking figures, counting not only actual cases but also ‘possible victims’, the qualification strongly depends on opinion and profiling. It is a fact that the dominance of the discourse on combating trafficking in human beings supports the idea of sex work as violence and sex workers as victims, something that hides voluntary (migration with a view to) sex work from the eyes and actively nourishes the punitive legal practice regarding sex work (Vanwesenbeeck, 2017: 1634).

Secondly, many countries (for example, Canada and a growing number of countries in Europe) are now criminalizing the purchase of sex, also called the ‘Swedish model,’ since Sweden was the first to introduce its Sex Purchase Act in 1998 (Vanwesenbeeck, 2017: 1635). The criminalization of clients is based on the idea that ‘stopping demand’ will eventually abolish sex work and, therefore, is abolitionist. Although the basic principle of the Swedish model is to prevent sex workers from being criminalized, many countries, including Sweden, apply this model, although they do not refrain from actively and continuously pursuing or even persecuting sex workers at the same time.

Next, abolitionism is still a dominant philosophy among modern feminists, both in the West and in developing countries. The most influential supporter of abolitionism at the international level is the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (CATW). Like their ancestors, modern ‘neo-abolitionist’ feminists deny that prostitution can be considered a real choice or a legitimate act of will. They argue that since all prostitution is inherently violence against women, actual consent is impossible. Therefore, for neo-abolitionist feminists, all prostitutes are victims. Male prostitution and transgender sex workers do not rank high on neo-abolitionist feminists because they do not fit into the neo-abolitionist analysis of prostitution as a system of male sexual violence perpetrated against women (Ditmore, 2006: 6). In short, abolitionists reject the sanitising description of ‘sex work’, and look at prostitution as a form of violence in which woman has come to be viewed as a commodity.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that the abolition of sex work does not have the desired effect. First of all, the criminalisation of prostitution creates significant barriers to combating the spread of HIV / AIDS: ‘When prostitution is punished, the implementation of effective programs to prevent and spread HIV / AIDS is complicated,’ said the representative of Pomerol, therefore we support the decriminalisation of prostitution (Ahmad, 2001: 643).

The granting of legal status to prostitution is not always a panacea and, in turn, is accompanied by negative manifestations. For example, the legalization of brothels in Nevada has been criticised for enforcing control and restricting the freedom of women working in brothels when they have no access to the social security system, which usually employs in the legal sector (Campbell, 1991).

To conclude, it should be noted that there is a continually growing literature confirming that a repressive approach to commercial sex is contrary to the principles of public health and human rights (Vanwesenbeeck, 2017: 1636). The direct and indirect way in which criminalisation harms is becoming increasingly apparent. One of the fundamental principles is that criminalization creates stigma, qualifying sex work as immoral and illegal, infringing the rights of sex workers and leading to negative beliefs. Stigmatized people attributed to a ‘corrupt personality’ (Goffman, 1963) are at a higher risk of underestimation, social isolation, and discrimination.

Deering et al. (2014) reviewed 42 international studies of sexual and physical violence against sex workers. They calculated that the risk of abuse was increased to seven times among sex workers with criminalisation experience. Criminalisation breeds violence and exploitation of sex workers because stigma supports a culture of impunity for violence and aggression. Besides, stigmatization deprives sex workers of equal protection from the law and deprives them of the right to go to court. Millions of sex workers around the world cannot count on the protection of the police, and risk being fined.

As long as structural conditions persist regarding global economic inequality, gender inequity, and poverty among women, gender labour markets and double sexual standards, sex work will remain one of the few income-generating options for many women. It is not surprising that the abolition of sex work is ineffective. If someone wants to consider sex business as a phenomenon due to poverty, then it is necessary to fight poverty, not sex work.

Methods of rethinking the stigma of prostitution include the vision of sex work as a routine economic activity and rethinking sex work in terms that emphasize its normality and acceptability as an aspect of social identity. Reframing sometimes occurs beyond the level of the individual. In a Jackson study (2016) on sex workers, they contrasted the ‘victim’ used by radical abolitionists with a ‘human rights’ structure. Jackson (2016) concluded that rethinking sex work as work and not a form of violence actually ‘corrects’ the wrong structure that anti-government groups use to describe sex work for their political purposes.

The primary focus of New Right Criminology (NRC) is on the prevention and control of criminal behavior. This is our current system in which the criminals are to be prevented from breaking the criminal law and punished if they do. With origins in Classical Theory, NRC accepts rational choice theory in which people act rationally.it fails to consider why people may choose to break the law; or the concepts of power and structures in society (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). This is also seen within Right Realism, where there is inadequate interest in corporate crime, white-collar crime, political crime or state crime. Because the NRC school under-emphasizes the causes of crime, it has been argued that New Right Criminology has had lasting negative impact on criminal justice policy.

Left Realism takes an opposing position, which centralizes the need to address problems as people experience them. Left Realism emerged as a reaction to the New Right. It’s philosophy takes a more realistic approach to crime control, and challenges right realists by arguing that the causation of crime comes from a mixture of relative deprivation and individualism which, consequently, creates widespread aggression and anti-social behavior leading to criminal activity (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). While New Right criminology continues to dominate criminal justice systems, with policies like zero-tolerance in the USA and Australia, Left Realism has contributed important changes that tackle NRC (Fitz-Gibbon & Roffee, 2016). Many of the theories proposed help shift paradigms about crime and behavior. Left Realism has been able take criminology out of its ‘ivory towers’ and into the messy world of practical solutions to crime problems such as cooperation between police and community members and crime prevention programs (Fitz-Gibbon & Roffee, 2016).

The argument for prison abolition rejects the idea that the criminal justice system is the most appropriate place to solve issues relating to the harm of crime (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). Abolitionism seeks to stop the dehumanization via the prison complex, and instead address societal problems. Furthermore, abolition scholars see structural and institutional issues with the prison system in which there are disproportionate incarceration rates affecting the poor and ethnic minorities. For abolitionists, a move away from the prison system also seeks to disrupt a society built on inequity, patriarchal violence, and colonisation (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). This means addressing the roots of poverty and trauma, which relates to many platforms of Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race theory emerged following the civil rights movement offering new theories on institutional forms of oppression. It highlights how racism is injected into the justice system, politics, and society (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). Critical Race theorist point out that the prison system is used to control and criminalize dangerous populations, and that people of colour are targeted in the USA. DuVernay’s expose film, 13th (2016), highlights this, examining how the “law and order” rhetoric popularized by Nixon and Reagan is used to justify violence and oppression of black communities. African-American men have a significantly higher percentage of lifetime likelihood of imprisonment – one in 17 white males will do prison time, compared to only one in three African-American males (DuVernay, 2016). According to Critical Race Theory, this racial disparity in the criminal justice system exists, as the proportion of a racial or ethnic group, within the control of the system, is greater than the proportion of such groups in the general population. Furthermore, the disproportionate incarceration rates, exemplified in DuVernay’s 13th (2016), of minority communities are continuing the cycle of intergenerational oppression – the mass incarceration problem in the USA is argued to be an extension of slavery. To many Critical Race theorists, mass incarceration is viewed as a manifestation of racial inequality; abolitionism would be an important element in addressing racial biases in the criminal justice system.

For critical postmodern criminologists, a starting point is the focus on the role of language, as they contend that language structures thought. Language here refers to spoken discursive language. Postmodernism emerged as a design movement eventually moving into a philosophical theory concerned with the properties of the literary text, meaning, and reading (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). Postmodernism holds that there is no objective truth or reality. Truth and reality are often defined as the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. However, according to Postmodernism these are subjective concepts unique to each of us, we have our various perceptions but never the ‘truth’ hence we can not attain a fully unprejudiced view. Our ways of talking don’t neutrally reflect our world, identities and social relationships, but rather play an active role in creating and changing them. For Postmodern criminologists these subjectivities exist only as social labels, as social categories and are socially defined (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). Thus language, and more broadly discourse, influences thought, and in criminology there can be a ‘symbolic violence’ in language, discourse and symbols. To many postmodern criminologists a solution to this is by the development of a replacement discourses that will undercut the power of the dominant languages that regulate and discipline the lives of alienated collectives. Black Lives Matter exemplifies this. The campaign seeks to withdraw authority from the dominant policing discourse in the USA, which has woven history, political conversation and the use of the media to construct and frame African-Americans as inherently criminal (Haines, White, & Asquith, 2017). According to postmodernist criminology, the discourse is dominant, exclusive, and exaggerates narrowly defined rules to the exclusion of others. The postmodern campaign challenges the hegemonic discourses with an inclusive replacement discourse that will assist in shifting social paradigms and resulting power structures.

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (ca 1818- 1907) was born as an enslaved person in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, to Agnes Hobbs and George Pleasant. Keckley experienced harsh treatment under slavery, including beatings as well as the sexual assault of a white man, by whom she had a son named George. She was eventually given to her owner’s daughter, Ann Garland, with whom she moved to St. Louis. There she became a dressmaker and supported Garland’s entire household for over two years. She married James Keckley around 1852, discovering only afterward that he was not a freeman. Prior to her marriage, Keckley had negotiated with the Garlands to purchase her freedom and that of her son, but she could not raise the required $1,200 because of the strain of supporting her dissipated husband and the Garland household. Sympathetic customers loaned Keckley the money to purchase her freedom and that of her son in 1855. In 1860, she left her husband and moved to Washington, D.C., where she set up a dressmaking shop. Keckley’s clients were the wives of influential politicians, and she eventually became the dresser and close confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln.

After President Lincoln’s assassination, Keckley made several attempts to raise money for the former first lady, publishing Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House in 1868, partly to help Mrs. Lincoln financially and partly to counter criticism of Mrs. Lincoln. Keckley did not foresee the overwhelming public disapproval for publishing personal details about Mrs. Lincoln and White House private life. It led to the end of her dressmaking career as well as condemnation from the Lincoln family. She left Washington in 1892 to teach domestic skills at Wilberforce University, but ill health forced her to return and spend her final years in the Home for Destitute Women and Children, which she had helped to establish. She died there after a stroke in 1907.

Though the verifiable facts in Behind the Scenes have affirmed the text’s authenticity, speculation remains about the level of involvement of Keckley’s editor, James Redpath. Lincoln scholars have quoted extensively from Keckley’s text for its details about White House domestic life, anecdotes. When Elizabeth had first arrived in Washington, she had no money, no friends, and no place to call home, but she had soon found work as an assistant seamstress for two and a half dollars a day and took a room in a boarding house. Before long she decided to strike out on her own and she had a sign and business cards made. She advertised herself as a skilled mantua maker, capable of sewing the complicated, snug-fitting bodice of the style that well-dressed ladies most desired. Slowly but surely, she acquired a few patrons, who recommended her to their friends and acquaintances. One generous lady, a friend of the mayor, persuaded him to waive the fee for the license that, like all free Negro females over the age of fourteen, Elizabeth was required to obtain within thirty days of her arrival if she wished to remain in the city. And she had already decided that she did wish to stay, even though the daily sight of slaves in chains being led through the muddy streets from shipyard to auction house and the restrictions upon freedmen like the license and curfews sometimes made her feel as if she were not truly free.

The slave narratives’ political purposes also contributed to their shape and content. Written to serve the abolitionist cause, the narratives quickly developed a set of rhetorically effective conventions with great political resonance in antebellum America, based on significant, systematic political ideas. The political character of abolitionism was itself a complex matter. The movement’s roots, and those of the slave narrative, lay in efforts to oppose slavery that had appeared both in Britain and its American colonies by the 1680s. During the eighteenth century, and into the era of the American Revolution, such former slaves as Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solomon) and Olaudah Equiano recounted their experiences in order to further that opposition. Still, both in Britain and the United States, the development of the slave narrative as a form were closely connected to the rise of American abolitionism as an organized force. Formally marked, beginning in 1833, by the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), led by William Lloyd Garrison, Robert Purvis, and others. The slave narrative not only flowered with the growth of abolitionism, but also simultaneously shaped and was shaped by the movement’s goals and the political environment within which it operated, an environment marked by conflict and change.

Politically, slave narratives tended to look in three distinct directions. First, as contributions to the abolitionist movement, they played a critical role in antebellum debates over slavery. With the growth of abolitionism, there developed a large body of proslavery writing defending the institution and creating an array of arguments on its behalf. Slave narratives countered proslavery arguments by undermining the ideas and images on which those arguments were based, and did so explicitly through the special role that African Americans and former slaves claimed in the debate.

Secondly, the slave narratives participated in larger processes of democratization taking place in the antebellum United States. Built on ideas and values going back to the American Revolution, democratic rhetoric and practices became dominant modes in the nation’s politics, especially after the mid-1820s, Imperfectly realized, these modes were nevertheless widely embraced as standards against which political processes were judged. Slave narratives both drew on and helped to shape this process. Finally, this was an era in which the idea of freedom itself was increasingly both valued and contested.

Objectives

The objectives of this research are: to obtain a more accurate account of the institution of American slavery and its impacts on African men, women and children with the help of the selected narratives, to record their progression of change (assimilation) and the psychological adaptation (annihilation) during their captivity, to record the perils and hardships they have undergone during their captivity, and to record their loss of identity in the new social setting.

Hypothesis

It is assumed that the dehumanizing effect of slavery and cruelty would have in turn led to the rise of humanitarianism. Gearld A. Foster in American Slavery: the Complete Story points out “even though slavery may have officially ended with the civil war, racism perpetuated the slave-master mentality for another one hundred years” (3). And so the human and cultural degradation of blacks in the Americas would have made the nation to institute laws, policies, norms, and daily practices that engendered the deep self hate in blacks that persists to this day.

Conclusion

Given the focus of abolitionism, it is not surprising that the narratives should have played a specific role in this discussion. In the above chapter the ideas of freedom brought together with the abolitionist ideology by the narratives that had evolved out of the distinctive experiences of African Americans, especially people who had lived in bondage, in a way that had particular political resonance for antebellum American readers have been discussed. The detail account of traumas caused by the dislocation of slaves across the Atlantic world, the perils and hardships they have undergone and the rise of humanitarianism as a result in the further chapters would give the deep insight about the dehumanizing effects of African American slavery.

In my course, I read about the forms of resistance to slavery, pro-slavery justification, life for “free” Antebellum Northern blacks, and all the hateful discrimination that occurred to African-Americans during that time period. I also read about political and social conflicts that created policies that led to the Civil War which was the war that shaped America to where it is today.

Slavery in the South all the way to the Antebellum period

During the period of the domestic slave trade around 1812 Louisiana became a state. The population grew fast due to the demand for cotton and sugar cane. These crops provided incredible profit to owners in the South. At the time all the gulf coast states such as Alabama, etc. Were called the “ land of king cotton”. The revolt that happened in Saint-Dominque, played an important role in making the Atlantic slave trade illegal. The United States was not trying to experience the same fate as Saint-Dominque. The slave owners down South did not like this decision and started a movement to reopen the Atlantic slave trade. Making the Atlantic slave trade illegal made the interstate slave trade a very profitable business. This opened a profession called slave traders.

The slaves were being advertised across the states. Slaves families were sold together, but some slave owners chose to sell slaves separately to make more profit. Slaves had no human right or freedom at all during this period due to Slaves codes, which played a big role in the South. Slaves were not allowed to leave the plantations unless they had authority which was a slave pass from the owner. The worst part of being a slave was they couldn’t protect themselves at all against white people. The legal system was terrible when determining the length of imprisonment to slaves. Slaves had very little free time to socialize and relax, but they had cultivation periods. Christmas and cultivation periods gave slaves time for themselves. Some slaves were doing anti-slavery advocate that fought for the proper rights that they should have, and some slaves ran away from the terrible conditions. The runaway slaves usually used a system called the underground railroad that had safe houses and routes to the North; this started a period called the Antebellum.

Antebellum is a Latin term that means “before the war”. During the Antebellum period, the North was full of runaway slaves and free slaves. Free slaves and non-free slaves left the South for a so-called amazing less restricted life up North. African-Americans in the North had more privileges than those in the South, but it wasn’t that different when it came to discrimination. The North allowed African-Americans to be able to express themselves, but that all depended on what state up North. Some states up North weren’t okay with blacks having basic human rights. African-Americans up North were able to travel with ease than the South. Blacks were becoming soldiers, owners, and even paid taxes just like anybody else in the Northern states. Although African-Americans up North were living differently than down South this still didn’t stop them from helping and being outspoken about how the conditions were for African-Americans in the United States. Majority of blacks that lived up North stayed in poverty which was generally an unhealthy environment. Children that were black often was denied public education or was segregated unfunded schools. Some African-Americans were banned from immigration to some states up North. When crimes were involved black people bonds were unsuitable to pay due to job discrimination and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 caused more problems. For example, when dealing with the legal system The Dred Scott decision in 1857 made it clear that blacks were not citizens of the United States. This decision caused an uproar in the United States. Whites were doing everything in their power to intimidate blacks such as mobs and violence to show they were more superior than blacks.

Abolitionism in black and white to the Civil War

There were three events that help the beginning of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garson – the liberator, Nat Turner rebellion, and David Walker- the appeal. There were different types of abolitionist some pursue violence to prove a point or to pursue non-violence to prove their point. David Walker wrote an appeal in 1829, this appeal started appearing in the Southern states making abolitionist writing prohibited. Due to the appeal slaves was forbidden to learn how to read and write. Walker appeal was one of the most Anti-Slavery document made ever. The appeal gave slaves the motivation to have pride in themselves and fight the negative conditions they are experiencing. Willam Lloyd Garson worked to seek equality between white and black and advocate immediate abolitionism. Willam believed that the South and North was responsible for all the sin that was occurring in the United States. William fought against the American Colonizing Society because some member encouraged freedom and others wanted to relocate free blacks. The relocation was to reduce the number of free blacks to preserve the United States institution of slavery. William was accused of the rebellion in Virginia due to claims that he encouraged Nat Turner. Nat Turner leads the rebellion in 1831, his result was to pursue the mistreatment with violence. The rebellion lasted for a total of six months until he was executed. The violence put fear into Southerners ending the Emancipation movement and making harsher laws on slaves.

Women also played a significant role in abolitionism. Women gathered an enormous amount of signatures for petitions and sold items they made themselves. These few women were very known for their work to help the course. Sojourner Truth was moving an audience with powerful words, Mary Ann Shadd was publishing about the mistreatment, Harriet Tubman who did thirteen mission to rescue the enslave, etc. had a very big impact in the abolitionism. All the individuals that were abolitionist helped gained momentum to start conflict for change for example Civil War. The Civil War started between the North and South having differences in how the United States should be. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won election as first Republican president that pledge to keep slavery out of territory up North. This made the Southerns very angry causing them to secede and make a new nation called “The Confederate States of America”. On April 12, 1861, The Confederate army started a war by firing at the United States Fort Sumter. Lincoln release the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, to set all slaves free down South. Slaves didn’t know of this Proclamation because slave owners kept it a secret. The Proclamation was used as a war tactic to make sure the union won the Civil War. The Northern states won the Civil War and preserved the United States as one nation. In conclusion, each of these chapters taught how the events from slavery to the conflict of African-Americans becoming freed change the nation that everyone loves the United States of America.

The success of any historical and social movement should be judged by its own definitions and the extent of its accomplishments against measured against its own aims. Viewing the abolitionist movement in this way in the period 1820-1860 it is fair to say that the abolitionist movement was not an abject failure. ‘Abject’ implies ‘to the maximum degree’. Therefore, the definition, given by William Lloyd Garrison on the 1st January 1834 in his abolitionist newspaper ‘The Liberator’, states: “I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL BE HEARD”. Despite this, the Dred Scott decision in 1859 shows the limited influence of the abolitionists towards the end of this time period. One Georgia newspaper commented that “Southern opinion upon the subject of Southern slavery, is now the supreme law of the land”, and that opposition to it is “moral treason against the Government”. However, on the whole, the abolitionist movement was not an ‘abject’ failure to a certain extent because the abolitionists were certainly ‘heard’. Abolitionists brought about the Civil War, as southerners defended their ‘states’ rights’ and thus brought an end to slavery. The abolitionist leaders promoted the movement by taking advantage of the rapid development of print technology and the expansion of literacy. Additionally, the use of direct action through things similar to the Underground Railroad and slave insurrections meant that slaves were able to pursue freedom whilst also adding to the moral suasion cause, however, the consequences of these were limited to a certain extent. Mainly due to southern violence. Similar to the effects of direct action, black abolitionists were limited in their work by racism, even from white abolitionists in the North. Despite this, these black abolitionists were vital in showing the American public the atrocities committed in bondage; they also helped to demonstrate the intellectual abilities of blacks. However, the lack of organization and unity within the movement meant aims, methods, and goals were never fully decided, meaning the movement was prolonged and less efficient. Regardless, the abolitionist movement should always be remembered, despite the significant challenges it faced. The vitality of it to the southern economy and its entrenchment in the constitution meant that it would always be a momentous challenge to take down the ‘peculiar institution’. Moreover, the racist views of the US public meant that moral suasion was to play a large part in the movement. The way the abolitionists tackled these issues in the face of abuse is astonishing.

The abolitionist movement was not an abject failure to a certain extent because it used slave literature to show the country the true horrors of slavery extremely effectively. Perhaps the most significant part of the American abolitionist movement was the use of literature. By 1820, anti-slavery societies and determined abolitionists across the country had begun making use of the improvements in the printing press to make aware to the country of the true barbarism of slavery and the need for its abolition. The flood of pamphlets, personal appeals, petitions, newspapers, and treatises had a profound effect on northern thought. The literature spread by abolitionists helped to solidify the thoughts of many wavering and unsure northerners who had not quite made up their minds on the institution of slavery. Abolitionists wrote of the severity of slavery – the whippings, the brutality of slave masters, and the parting of families. The literature defied the warm picture of slavery as depicted by southern writers such as John Pendleton Kennedy in his ‘Swallow Barn’ (1852). The importance and influence of anti-slavery writers in denouncing slavery are demonstrated by the persecution of famed abolitionist writers who suffered mockery, persecution, and financial troubles. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, born on 9th November 1802, died on 7th November 1837 in Alton, Illinois, in defense of his right to print antislavery material. In 1835, Lovejoy was forced to move his printing press across the Mississippi River to Alton, in the free state of Illinois, after extreme mob violence in his home state of Missouri. Despite its new location, his press was destroyed by mobs several times in one year. Eventually, on the night of November 7, 1837, a mob attacked a warehouse storing Lovejoy’s new printing press that was intended for the re-establishment of the Alton Observer. A statement from John M. Krum, Alton’s major in 1837, says: “The circulation of these reports (reports of the new printing press) caused no small degree of excitement among those who have taken a decided stand against the abolitionist sentiments that were understood to have been disseminated by the Observer”. Lovejoy was killed as he emerged from the burning building. A large part of the slave literature movement was the Underground Railroad, a series of interconnected escape networks, as the UGRR produced the single most effective publicity tool of the abolitionist movement: slave narratives. Despite stories of slave injustices dating from the early 1700s, an abundance of slave accounts transformed the movement during the 1840s and 1850s. In 1845, Frederick Douglass’ work became an international bestseller. It described his life, from birth in Maryland in or around 1818 to the story of his escape from slavery. After several failed attempts at escape, Douglass left the farm in 1838, aged just twenty, he boarded a train to Havre de Grace, Maryland. He then traveled through Delaware to New York, eventually taking shelter at the safe house of abolitionist David Ruggles. The work of Douglass inspired many other abolitionists to introduce themselves to Anglo-American audiences through slave narratives, such as Ellen and William Craft and William Wells Brown. In 1849, one abolitionist stated that “fugitive slave literature is destined to be a powerful level” of reform. Saying that “it goes right to the hearts” of men and women. Slave narrators helped to establish common humanity with their white readers. They described bondage in the most personal terms: what it was like to see family members sold away, what harsh punishments felt like, and how working all day and night physically and emotionally drained the body. For example, Henry Bibb recalled the heartache of standing before his family knowing he may never see them again after he escaped. He also depicts his nighttime environment whilst in bondage: “I either had to sleep with my feet in the stocks, or be chained with a large log overnight, with no bed or bedding to rest my wearied limbs on, after toiling all day in the cotton field”. Abolitionist literature was the first way that free blacks were able to express or read views that they shared, before this there was no way they could express them, most free blacks didn’t have the right to vote, let alone run for office. It is no surprise then that by the early 1830s, American abolitionists embraced immediatism through anti-slavery newspapers. In 1831, former gradualist William Lloyd Garrison began publishing ‘The Liberator’ in Boston, which became the standard bearer of immediate emancipation. Newspapers such as ‘The Liberator’ helped spread the doctrine of immediatism. By the end of the decade, nearly two thousand antislavery societies calling for immediate abolition appeared from Maine to Michigan. During the paper’s early days approximately one-fifth of the intellectual content of ‘The Liberator’ came from African Americans. Not surprisingly, free blacks compromised more than three-quarters of the paper’s initial subscribers. Abolitionist literature such as this would have been impossible without the Second Great Awakening. Nineteenth-century revivalists argued that Americans had the ability to decide their eternal fate by accepting or rejecting sin. During the 1830s, revivalists saw abolitionism as the next great moral campaign.

Therefore, the abolitionist movement was not an abject failure as abolitionist literature spread the abolitionist message and, in the words of Garrison, made sure they were ‘heard’.

Did you know that we have been wrong all along? We Celebrate Douglass during Black History month but an interesting fact that I learned while doing this project, is that Douglass is African American but, we can’t stop there! He actually is made of mixed blood yes, I said it both African American, and half Caucasian. Don’t worry there is more to his story. Come along with me as I tell you a little bit more about who and what Frederick Douglass was and a few of his many accomplishments in life. Who was Frederick Douglass? Frederick Douglass’s birthday was unknown but, the books say that he chose his birthday to be celebrated on February 14, 1818.

How interesting is it that you are able to choose what day you want to celebrate your birthday because you don’t know what day you were actually born? Frederick Douglass was born into slavery. His mom’s name was Harriet Douglass and she was also born into slavery as well. He was 1 of 6 kids, their names were (Kitty Bailey, Eliza Bailey, Arianna Bailey, Sarah Bailey, and Perry Douglass). He was excellent at writing and he wrote several works during his lifetime which included three autobiographies. These biographies are still considered to still have a historical narrative of our country today. He also was a publisher, and an editor.

In addition to being a speaker and author of books Douglass owned his own printing press, started publication of the north star and even published a paper for more than 16 years, lets not forget he achieved these things and many more by teaching his own self to read and write. Frederick Douglass advocated on behalf of the soldiers during the Civil War, where he met with President Abraham Lincoln. During this time Douglass along with many others spoke and fought to have slaves freed. After the war he fought for the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment which granted voting rights to men of all color. This fight later led women to the right to vote during the 19th Amendment in 1920. Frederick Douglass was not a quitter, and he never gave up. He promoted and advocated for equal rights of African American Citizens. Even up until his death.

A few Famous quotes that Frederick Douglass wrote were: Man’s Greatness Consists In His Ability To Do, Not A Gentleman can Insult Me, One And God Make A Majority, and Man’s greatness Consist In His Ability To Do, and The Proper Application Of His Powers To Things Needed To Be Done. Upon Completing my project, I learned many things about Frederick Douglass. However, one thing that really stood out about his many accomplishments that I would like to leave you with today is, it can never be said that we as Americans can never say that we can’t accomplish anything in life. Frederick Douglass proved to us by his actions and knowledge, that if he went from a slave to a presidential advisor anything and everything in life is possible. Sometimes we tend to look to others or wait for someone else to give us things in life. Frederick Douglass showed us to never give up, and always push to fight for what you feel is right and never give up on your dreams!

It is often pointed out that the word history is a conjunction of the words “his” and “story”, but from a modern point of view, it is quite obvious that women have had a profound impact in shaping history. Historically, within American culture, women have been oppressed and subjugated to conditions alike to slavery. And yet, even with these deterrents and obstacles, they have made American Society what it is today.

In the early nineteenth century, as societies within the north and the south continued to dichotomize, a large movement began to formulate, known as the Abolition movement. Believing in its sinful nature, this movement sought to eliminate the institution of slavery. At the forefront of this movement, were women, who were able to empathize with the oppressed life of slaves. Some of these women included Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, who themselves were once slaves; Susan B. Anthony, who played a large role within the American Anti-Slavery Society; and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the famous book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which brought a harsh depiction of slavery to the forefront of northerners minds.

Although women had been testing the bounds of the established patriarchy for years and even generations prior, it wasn’t until the abolition movement that women began taking a greater role in politics. In their book The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne describe how the Anti-Slavery Conventions of American Women held from 1837 to 1839 provided some of the first organized platforms for women to express their political perspectives and helped to pave the way for future events such as the Seneca Falls Convention and other regional women’s rights conventions held about a decade later. They also explain how many of the women who participated within the abolition movement later took part in the fight for women’s suffrage as well. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for instance designed and had presented what would eventually become the Constitution’s Nineteenth Amendment. At the time, the presence of women within any political atmosphere was still quite a revolutionary concept for Americans. Women got petitions to be sent en masse to government offices and public officials advocating for the abolition of slavery. They held rallies and marches in protest of slavery. The widespread awareness this created fueled the abolition movement even more, resulting in women being given a public platform on which to voice their opinions. At a time when abolition was considered extremism, women were able to stir the pot, giving credence to both themselves and the idea of abolishing slavery. The abolition movement not only began to change women’s role within politics, but also religion.

Many abolitionists can tie their respective perspectives back to religion. Anna M Speicher in her book The Religious World of Antislavery Women: Spirituality in the Lives of Five Abolitionist Lecturers, argues that religion was the core motivating force in many abolitionist women. Her writing focuses on the Grimké sisters, Abby Foster, Sallie Holly, and Lucretia Mott. She explains that religions like the Quakers were responsible for instilling progressive or liberal values within many members of the abolitionist movement. These religions taught concepts of equality, which in turn, manifested within the political, social, and societal atmosphere. These women also had an influential role within the religions themselves, often making them more forward-thinking as they supported progressive causes and raised their children with the same liberal attitudes that they held through republican motherhood.

With women at the forefront of the progressive movement, they were able to bring about an era of social change that still reverberates through society today. They manifested the political changes they sought through extreme but necessary methods, such as freeing runaway slaves through the underground railroad or raising awareness by writing a book about the realities of slavey. Through abolition, women were able to change much about American society, but for many white women, their positions within the household and thus their socioeconomic status, remained largely stagnant. This, however, would not last.

Following the Civil War, many women began to realize their own oppression. In her article The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920, Paula Baker explains how women were unable to vote and were often subject to their husbands or even at the mercy of their husbands, who often came home drunk. They were expected to stay home to take care of children and were defined by their roles as mothers, daughters, and wives. Within the workplace, women were paid less than men and worked in odious and restricting conditions. Abolition, however, served as a catalyst for women to begin solving some of the cultural issues permeating post civil war America.

The suffrage movement and abolition movement often worked hand-in-hand with each other, but it wasn’t until after the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments (the reconstruction amendments) were ratified that the suffrage movement began to gain ground. As the extremism of the previous era began to become the norm, more and more people were open to the idea of giving women the right to vote. Abolitionists all over the country were also apart of the suffrage movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who were among some of the most influential women’s rights activists. With the formation of groups like the National American Woman Suffrage Association of 1890 or the proposition of a women’s suffrage movement, suffrage played an ever-larger role in the political playground.

Suffragists, however, sometimes butted heads over race. Allison L. Sneider in her article “The Impact of Empire on North American Woman Suffrage Movement: Suffrage Racism in an Imperial Context”, explains how following the civil war, the suffrage movement fractured over racism. She describes how large amounts of white southern women joined the movement, many of whom had little to no ties with the abolition movement. Even important suffrage leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton showed racism within their rhetoric. George Lipsitz explains the perpetuation of racial hierarchies, stating that, “political activity has also played a constitutive role in racializing U.S. culture” (George Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American Studies”, 1995, p. 371). Here he alluding to political events such as the Jim Crow laws or, more relevantly, the exclusion of African American women within the suffrage movement reinforcing racial hierarchies.

With the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, women’s inevitable role within politics grew substantially. The eventual ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment led to the subsequent ban of the use of alcohol in all manners except for drinking. Prohibition was one of the first goals of women following obtaining the right to vote. While prohibition was largely unsuccessful and did not last, it was women’s first large-scale use of their power within politics that affected everyday American life. Today they use their power in the form of feminism, continuing to fight for equality and affecting everyday policy. This attitude of progressivism can be traced back to the work that the abolitionists and suffragists did to help bring equality to late nineteenth century and early twentieth century America.

Unlike abolition, however, religion’s role was much smaller within the suffrage movement. Evelyn A. Kirkley explains her article “‘This Work is God’s Cause’: Religion in the Southern Woman Suffrage Movement, 1880–1920”, that suffragists were more likely to use arguments of natural rights and of long term benefits than religious arguments. Even the antisuffragists were disinclined to use religious based arguments, and instead, preferred to use arguments based upon the dangers of giving black women the vote or the sentiment that husbands represented their wives in the voting booth.

Although suffrage served to increase the political power of American women, their role within the household was predominantly the same as it was before obtaining the right to vote; however, a few women were beginning to test the social norms of the time. One example of this can be seen in the flappers of the 1920s. It can be argued that it was these women who really started changing the gender roles within America. Nevertheless, Baker explains that antisuffragists and suffragists alike still held to the belief that women belonged in the home, and that women’s role as mother and caretaker must be upheld. This sentiment was also known as republican motherhood.

Similarly to how the suffrage and abolition movements fueled each other, republican motherhood was deeply intertwined within the two. Linda Kerber, within her article ‘The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment – An American Perspective’, describes republican motherhood as mothers instilling in their sons the concepts of liberty, republic, and masculinity, while preparing daughters with domestic skills and the ability to be the mothers that society expected them to be. It has helped shape and perpetuate gender roles within politics, society, and religion.

Republican motherhood also had the largest impact on women’s roles within American society at large. Kerber elucidates that republican motherhood “legitimized” political activism, allowing for women’s large role in abolition and for the suffrage movement to even take place at all. It also allowed for women to take greater responsibility within religion, due to the fact that they were the ones accountable for carrying on those religious values to their children.

Women have had a large and lasting impact on American culture, society, and politics, but throughout our history, we have excluded them from the history books. This has a substantial negative impact on the women studying those books. Individuals who do not see people who they can relate with or who resemble them, tend to have lower self esteem and bad self images. Children especially depend on seeing themselves represented within groups in order to gain confidence and motivation. The consequences of excluding women from history are unknown, but they are undoubtedly negative. Popular sentiments hold that if we do not know our history we are doomed to repeat it. Additionally, virtue ethics dictate that credit should be given where credit is due. Historically, women have been the ones upholding morality through republican motherhood within this country, and so excluding them further is no longer an option.

Frederick Douglass was born a slave, taught himself how to read and write, lectured in the United States and England, and wrote three autobiographies. He was also one of President Abraham Lincoln’s friends.

Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born on a Maryland plantation as a slave in February of 1818, according to his master’s inventory. His slave mother, named Harriet Bailey, was a field hand while his father was a white man. As a young boy, he was sent to a plantation run by Colonel Lloyd.

Frederick worked for Colonel Lloyd until 1826 when he is sent to work for the Auld family. When Sophia Auld taught Frederick the alphabet, her husband, Hugh Auld, got angry because he thought that if a slave learned to read, he would become discontent with his state as a slave. After Sophia stops teaching him, he read the boy of the house’s school book. He also befriended the neighborhood kids and borrowed a book from them named The Columbian Orator to practice his reading.

After his master dies in 1832, he was sent back to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. Then, he was selected to be sent to Lucretia Auld in Baltimore. After she dies, he is sent to Thomas Auld, on the eastern shore of Maryland. In 1833 He is then sent to a “slave-breaker” named Edward “the snake” Covey. A slave breaker was a master that would break a slave’s will to escape by being incredibly cruel. Covey was called “the snake” because he would sneak along the fields on his belly to catch any slaves not working. Covey “beats Frederick until he is sick.” (P.g. 80)1 He ran back to Thomas Auld and was returned to Edward Covey. After this, he brawled with Covey for two hours. Covey never whipped Frederick after that.

In 1834, he is hired by a master named Mr. William Freeland. At a secret Sunday school, Frederick taught the other slaves to read. In 1835, he devised a plan to escape with the other slaves: they would escape on a large canoe with passes he forged. But someone they never knew betrayed them, and when they went to breakfast, they were bound and thrown in jail.

In 1836, Frederick was sent to the Auld family in Baltimore. There, Hugh Auld helped him learn a trade. While he earned as much as a white worker, he had to turn over all his money to his master at the end of the week. So he came to Hugh Auld with a proposal: “If he were allowed to hire himself out but keep part of his wages, he could live on his own, pay his room and his board, and buy his tools. In return for that liberty, he would pay Master Hugh three dollars at the end of every week.” (P.g. 15)1 During this time, he fell in love with a free woman named Anna Murray. By using clever words and a sailor’s papers obtained by some friends, he escaped to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and there married Anna Murray in 1838. There, he changed his name to Frederick Douglass and moved into a small farm with Anna. She had two daughters and three sons.

After settling down in New Bedford, he became an abolitionist. He lectured on the evils of slavery throughout the Northeast. After indirectly revealing his actual identity in his first autobiography in 1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: Written by Himself, he fled to England, where slavery was abolished. There, he was a celebrity and lectured through Wales Scotland and Ireland. While in England, his friends there give his owner $710 (now $17,000) for manumission. He started his abolitionist newspaper North Star in 1847. In 1848, he moved to Rochester, New York, and used his home as a safe house for runaway slaves. That year, he attended the first convention in Seneca Falls, New York. In March of that year, their first daughter Annie was born. He met Harriet Tubman in 1851 as she was leading her group to Canada. That same year, he combined North Star and Gerrit Smith’s Liberty Party Paper to make Frederick Douglass’s Paper. In 1855, he published My Bondage and My Freedom, his second autobiography. After his friend, John Brown, attacked the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry and was found guilty, Douglass was declared an accomplice on the basis of a letter. To escape arrest, he first went to Canada and then England to lecture.

In the March of 1860, Annie dies back in Rochester. When Douglass returned to the United States In April that year, he was not charged with anything. In February of 1863, he became a recruiter of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry. His sons Lewis and Charles enlist there. His other son Frederick Douglass Jr. also became an army recruiter. On August 10, he met with Lincoln to talk about the “unequal pay and poor treatment”4 that the black soldiers received. A year and nine days later, in 1864, they met again so Lincoln could ask Frederick to “prepare an effort to assist slaves escaping to the north”4 in case the Union did not win. On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. He died the next day. Later that year, on December 18, slavery was outlawed through The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Starting in 1865, he lectures on women’s rights and Reconstruction. In 1870, Douglass first edited then owned the New National Era, which was “a weekly newspaper for African Americans.”4. When the newspaper folded, he lost 10 thousand dollars. That year, the 15th amendment was adopted, which stated that all citizens could vote regardless of race. In 1871, Ulysses S. Grant appointed Frederick to the investigation commission on the “possibility of annexing the Dominican Republic to the U.S.”4. The next year, The Equal Rights Party nominated him as their candidate for vice-president of the U.S. That year, in 1872, he and his family moved to Washington, D.C. after a fire burned his house down. In march, 1874 he became the president of the failing Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company. He worked with the Senate Finance Committee’s chairman, but Douglass could not save it. The same month next year, a Civil Rights Act that prohibited “discrimination in public places”4

In 1877, Frederick was made the U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia under President Hayes. He bought his last home, Cedar Hill, a 20 room house, in 1878. It was in Anacostia, Washington, D.C. He later bought 15 acres of land next to it. In 1881, he published his last autobiography. Later that year, he was appointed as the Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia by President Garfield, which was a well-paid job back then. On August fourth, 1881, Frederick’s 44-year-old wife, Anna Murray Douglass, died after a stroke. After this, he went into depression. In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional.

On January 24, 1884, he married Helen Pitts, his white secretary when Frederick was the recorder of deeds. From 1886 to 1887, he toured Europe and Africa with her. On July first, 1889, he was made “U.S minister resident and consul general, Republic of Haiti, and chargé d’affaires, Santo Domingo.”4 He arrived there in October. In 1890, he was instructed by the U.S. to ask Môle St. Nicholas, a Haitian port town, if the U.S. Navy could use it as a refueling port. Haiti rejected it in 1891 as “too intrusive”4. Frederick resigned in July because the U.S. press blamed him for the rejection. Because he was the minister in Haiti, he was in charge of the Haitian exhibit in the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. On February 20, 1895, Frederick Douglass, age 77, died at home at Cedar Hill, Washington D.C. from heart failure while reenacting a meeting of the National Council of Women that he spoke at that day.

Frederick Douglass, originally Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, for a short time Frederick Johnson, was one of the most prominent figures of the abolitionist movement, and possibly one of less prominent figures of the women’s rights campaign. He was born a slave, taught himself how to read, escaped to freedom, and went on to become one of the most important speakers in the history of the United States. The most important thing we need to learn about this person is not just that he was a slave or that he lectured; it is that Frederick Douglass, a slave, taught himself how to read, escaped to freedom, wrote three autobiographies, and changed at least the northern part of the nation.

Introduction

John Brown, an iconic figure in American history, remains a subject of fascination and debate. Born in 1800, Brown dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery, embodying the complex interplay of morality, violence, and idealism in the pre-Civil War United States. He is best known for his audacious raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in 1859, an act intended to incite a slave rebellion. Although the raid failed, and Brown was subsequently executed, his actions significantly impacted the nation’s trajectory towards the Civil War.

Brown’s legacy is multifaceted. To some, he is a heroic martyr for justice and a pivotal figure in the fight against slavery. To others, he is a controversial and polarizing figure, criticized for his use of violent tactics. His life and actions offer a deep well of analysis for understanding the complexities of moral conviction, the fight for civil rights, and the roots of the American Civil War.

This exploration into John Brown’s life and legacy provides a comprehensive understanding of a man who stood at the crossroads of American history. Through an examination of his early life, radicalization, the Harpers Ferry raid, and his enduring impact, we gain insights into the tumultuous era that shaped the United States and the enduring struggle for justice and equality.

100 Words Essay about John Brown

John Brown, an ardent abolitionist, holds a significant place in American history. His 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, aimed at igniting a widespread slave uprising, marked a pivotal moment in the nation’s journey towards the Civil War. This bold act, though ultimately unsuccessful, dramatically escalated tensions. Brown’s unwavering commitment to eradicating slavery, even through extreme measures, sparked intense nationwide controversy. His subsequent trial and execution garnered both admiration and condemnation, cementing his role as a contentious and complex figure. Brown’s life and actions reflect the deep moral and political struggles surrounding slavery in 19th-century America, making him a symbol of both sacrifice and radicalism.

250 Words Essay about John Brown

John Brown, born in 1800, emerged as a pivotal figure in American history, known for his vehement opposition to slavery. His life’s journey, marked by deep religious convictions, steered him towards radical abolitionism. Brown’s most notable act, the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, was a daring attempt to initiate a slave revolt. This raid, though unsuccessful, sent shockwaves across the nation and significantly heightened tensions between the North and South.

Brown’s early life in Ohio shaped his strong moral stance against slavery. He witnessed its brutal realities firsthand, fostering a growing sense of urgency to fight this institution. Brown’s involvement in the Bleeding Kansas conflict, where he led anti-slavery forces, further solidified his reputation as a fervent abolitionist. His actions in Kansas, marked by both moral fervor and violent tactics, foreshadowed his later raid on Harpers Ferry.

The Harpers Ferry raid, though it ended in Brown’s capture and execution, had far-reaching implications. It intensified the national dialogue on slavery and fueled the fire that would lead to the Civil War. Brown’s radical approach to ending slavery sparked debate over the limits of moral action and the use of violence for righteous causes.

In death, Brown became a martyr for the abolitionist movement, with his legacy continuing to inspire debates about justice, equality, and the means to achieve social change. His life story offers a window into the complexities of pre-Civil War America, highlighting the deep divisions and moral dilemmas that led to one of the nation’s most tumultuous periods.

400 Words Essay about John Brown

John Brown, an abolitionist whose actions profoundly shaped American history, remains a complex and controversial figure. Born in 1800, Brown’s life was a testament to his fervent opposition to slavery, a stance that ultimately led him to violent acts in the name of justice. Though a tactical failure, his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 played a significant role in polarizing the nation and accelerating the onset of the Civil War.

Brown’s upbringing in a deeply religious family instilled in him a strong sense of moral righteousness. This foundation, combined with his firsthand observations of slavery’s brutality, fueled his determination to fight the institution. His early adult life was marked by business failures and personal tragedies, which further deepened his empathy for the oppressed.

Brown’s anti-slavery activism gained momentum in the mid-1850s during the Bleeding Kansas crisis, where he led anti-slavery forces against pro-slavery settlers. His actions in Kansas, particularly the Pottawatomie massacre, where he and his followers killed five pro-slavery settlers, demonstrated his willingness to use violence for his cause. These events earned him both infamy and admiration, painting him as a militant crusader against the institution of slavery.

The Harpers Ferry raid, Brown’s most audacious act, aimed to seize the federal arsenal and spark a widespread slave uprising. The raid’s failure led to Brown’s capture, trial, and execution. Despite its failure, the raid significantly impacted the nation’s psyche, illustrating the deep divisions over slavery. Brown’s trial and execution garnered national attention, with many Northerners viewing him as a martyr and Southerners regarding him as a terrorist.

Brown’s legacy is multifaceted. He is a heroic figure to some, symbolizing the moral imperative to fight injustice. To others, he is a cautionary tale about the perils of extremism. His life and actions highlight the complexities of ethical action and the challenging moral decisions faced in the struggle against oppression.

Brown’s story offers valuable insights into the turbulent years leading to the Civil War. It underscores the deep moral and ideological divides that tore at the nation’s fabric. His unwavering commitment to his cause, despite its violent manifestation, forces us to confront the difficult question of how far one should go in the fight against grave injustices.

Today, John Brown’s life continues to provoke discussion and debate, serving as a powerful example of how individual actions can influence the course of history. His legacy remains relevant in discussions about social justice, the use of violence for political ends, and the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America.

500 Words Essay about John Brown

John Brown, a name synonymous with fervent abolitionism, played a pivotal role in American history, especially in the turbulent years leading up to the Civil War. Born in 1800, Brown’s life was a tapestry of deep religious conviction and unwavering commitment to the abolition of slavery. His actions, culminating in the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, intensified the national debate over slavery and set the stage for the Civil War.

Raised in a staunchly anti-slavery household, Brown’s early life in Ohio was steeped in a religious ethos that viewed slavery as a profound moral wrong. This upbringing, combined with his firsthand experiences of slavery’s brutality, fueled his passionate opposition to the institution. Despite facing numerous personal and financial challenges, Brown’s resolve to fight against slavery only strengthened.

Brown’s journey as an abolitionist took a more active turn during the Bleeding Kansas crisis in the mid-1850s. Here, he led anti-slavery forces in a series of violent confrontations against pro-slavery settlers, gaining notoriety for his militant tactics. The Pottawatomie massacre, where Brown and his followers killed five pro-slavery settlers, showcased his belief in violent resistance as a necessary tool in the fight against slavery.

The Harpers Ferry raid, Brown’s most audacious act, aimed to seize the federal arsenal and incite a slave uprising. Though the raid ultimately failed and led to Brown’s capture and execution, it had far-reaching implications. It served as a catalyst, polarizing the nation and deepening the divide between the North and South. In the North, Brown was hailed as a martyr for the abolitionist cause, while in the South, he was denounced as a terrorist.

Brown’s legacy remains complex and multifaceted. Some revered him as a heroic figure in the fight against slavery, symbolizing moral courage and the willingness to confront grave injustices. To others, he is a reminder of the perils of extremism and the moral ambiguity of using violence to achieve noble ends. His life raises critical questions about the limits of moral action and the role of violence in the pursuit of justice.

In contemporary discussions, Brown’s actions and consequences offer valuable insights into the antebellum period’s moral and political landscape. His commitment to his cause, despite its violent methods, prompts reflection on the challenges of combating deep-rooted societal evils.

John Brown’s story underscores the power of individual conviction in shaping historical events and driving societal change. His radical stand against slavery, though controversial, highlights the importance of steadfastly opposing systemic injustices. His life, and the reactions it elicited, provide a window into the societal values and tensions of his era, reflecting the complex struggle for justice and equality.

In summary, John Brown’s life and legacy form an integral part of American history, offering a nuanced exploration of the moral and political challenges of the antebellum period. His radical stance against slavery and the extreme measures he took in his fight continues to spark debate, serving as a powerful example of the complexities involved in pursuing justice and the profound impact of individual actions on history.

Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist who was born around 1820 and died in 1913 she grew up in Maryland, as a slave on a plantation farm which was the main reason she desired to see an end to the institution of slavery.

In 1849 her master died so she left her family behind and escaped to Philadelphia in the North, using the organization known as the Underground Railroad, once in Philadelphia she joined the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was established in the 1830s. It was a network of people who helped slaves escape from the South. It became an important symbol of abolition and served to antagonize the South, however, it was not a failsafe as it did not guarantee the freedom of the slave. The fugitive slave act said runaways could be captured even in free states, and slaves first had to escape from their plantations themselves

“Conductors” (this is what Harriet Tubman was) smuggled runaway slaves from “station” to “station” providing food and hiding places until they reached places safe from bounty hunters. She made her first trip as a conductor to free her niece, her niece’s husband, and their two children. After that Harriet Tubman made at least 19 trips into slave territory risking her own life on countless occasions. She was hailed as the “Moses of her people” and freed around 300 slaves over 10 years. She often claimed God gave her visions on how to help people escape.

She moved to Canada in 1852 but came back to the US when the Civil War broke out. First serving as a Union spy from 1861-1863, in 1863 she began work at Beaufort South Carolina, and led raids (sometimes even assisting in the planning of violent ones such as John Brown’s raid at Harper Ferry) to liberate slaves from Confederate plantations near the Combahee river. As a result of her work nearly 800 African Americans were helped behind union lines

She received only $300 compensation for her effort in the war and retired to Auburn New York and opened a home for “indigent and aged Negroes” and died in 1913 with barely any money, alone and without recognition.

Overall Harriet Tubman made a very significant contribution to the abolishment of slavery, while she didn’t campaign outright against the institution of slavery her contribution was still important as she helped over 800 slaves escape to freedom. She may not have had a long-term solution but she made a difference to countless lives.