After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of was passed, both pro- and anti-slavery groups inhabited the Kansas Territory. In , a pro-slavery group attacked the town of Lawrence, which was founded by abolitionists from Massachusetts.
In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown organized a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers. Then, in , Brown led 21 men to capture the U. He and his followers were seized by a group of Marines and convicted of treason. Brown was hanged for the crime. President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but was cautious about fully supporting the more radical ideas of the abolitionists. As the power struggle between the North and the South reached its peak, the Civil War broke out in As the bloody war waged on, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of , calling for the freeing of enslaved people in areas of the rebellion.
And in , the Constitution was ratified to include the Thirteenth Amendment , which officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States. Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Amendment , ratified in , granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former enslaved people.
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In , a group of prominent Black intellectuals led by W. Du Bois met in Erie, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, to form an organization calling for civil and political rights for African Americans. With its comparatively aggressive approach to combating racial discrimination The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the s and s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States.
The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped enslaved people from the South.
It developed as a convergence of several different clandestine efforts. The exact dates of its existence are not known, but it Abolitionists initially focused their efforts on church members and clergymen. If the concept of the abolition of slavery could be driven home from the pulpits, the attitudes of White Americans would surely change. Garrison was not the consummate politician who sought compromise on the matter of slavery.
Not only did he advocate the emancipation of slaves, but also suggested that blacks be given the same political and economic rights that were afforded to Whites only. Many Northerners would accept the gradual elimination of slavery, but giving blacks equal rights to compete among Whites was totally unacceptable. Although their numbers did grow rapidly, most White clergymen would not speak out against slavery. The abolitionists knew that they had to influence the many northerners who where still undecided on abolition of slavery issue in order to reach their goal.
Northern abolitionists would assist the slaves in running away, or simply attempt to speak to people on the topic. By the 19th century, the institution of slavery was somewhat gone from the North, but this institution remained strong in the South because their economy depended on slave labor.
The southern plantation owners were not willing to follow in the North's footsteps because their income would decrease a considerable amount. Having this difference in their lifestyles began to cause tension, and would soon get the ball rolling toward abolition. In , he traveled to Africa and negotiated with eight tribal chiefs in Abbeokuta for land, on which he planned to establish a colony for skilled and educated African Americans. In the 20th century, that lingering animosity nearly defeated the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.
It had been founded in as a colony for free-born blacks, freed slaves and mulattoes mixed race from the United States. A number of Americans who opposed slavery including Abraham Lincoln for a time and the aforementioned Delany felt that the two races could never live successfully together, and the best hope for Negroes was to return them to freedom in Africa. However, the slave trade between Africa and the Western Hemisphere the Caribbean and South America had never ended, and many American ship owners and captains were enjoying something of a golden era of slave-trading while the U.
Even if freed slaves had been sent to Africa, many would have wound up back in slavery south of the United States. Only in the late s did Britain step up its anti-slavery enforcement on the high seas, leading America to increase its efforts somewhat. When the federal government passed a second, even more stringent fugitive slave act in , several states responded by passing personal liberty laws.
Born a slave in New York, she walked away from her owner after she felt she had contributed enough to him. While Sojourner Truth, Douglass, Delaney and others wrote and spoke to end slavery, a former slave named Harriet Tubman, nee Harriet Ross, was actively leading slaves to freedom.
After escaping from bondage herself, she made repeated trips into Dixie to help others. Believed to have helped some slaves to escape, she was noted for warning those she was assisting that she would shoot any of them who turned back, because they would endanger herself and others she was assisting.
The trip might begin by hiding in the home, barn or other location owned by a Southerner opposed to slavery, and continuing from place to place until reaching safe haven in a free state or Canada.
Those who reached Canada did not have to fear being returned under the Fugitive Slave Act. In , what may have been the seminal event of the abolition movement occurred. It presented a scathing view of Southern slavery, filled with melodramatic scenes such as that of the slave Eliza escaping with her baby across the icy Ohio River:.
The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;—stumbling,—leaping,—slipping—springing upwards again!
Her shoes are—gone her stockings cut from her feet—while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank. Critics pointed out that Stowe had never been to the South, but her novel became a bestseller in the North banned in the South and the most effective bit of propaganda to come out of the abolitionist movement.
It galvanized many who had been sitting on the sidelines. Slave owners or their representatives traveling north to reclaim captured runaways were sometimes set upon on abolitionists mobs; even local lawmen were sometimes attacked. In the South, this fueled the belief that the North expected the South to obey all federal laws but the North could pick and choose, further driving the two regions apart.
The abolition movement became an important element of political parties. So did many Whigs and the Free Soil Party. In , these coalesced into the Republican Party.
Four years later, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency of the United States. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of allowed the citizens of those territories to determine for themselves whether the state would be slave or free. Proponents of both factions poured into the Kansas Territory, with each side trying to gain supremacy, often through violence. After pro-slavery groups attacked the town of Lawrence in , a radical abolitionist named John Brown led his followers in retaliation, killing five pro-slavery settlers.
The decision of the U. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford denied citizenship to anyone of African blood and held the Missouri Compromise of to be unconstitutional. Abraham Lincoln revived his personal political career, coming out of a self-imposed semi-retirement to speak out against the Dred Scott decision. The year saw two events that were milestones in the history of slavery and abolition in America.
The ship Clotilde landed in Mobile, Alabama. Though the importation of slaves had been illegal in America since , Clotilde carried to African slaves.
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