Oxford Dictionary of World History | abolitionists
abolitionists
Militant opponents of slavery in 19th‐century USA. In the first two decades of the 19th century, there was only a handful of individual abolitionists, but thereafter, fired by religious revivalism, the abolition movement became a strong political force. Prominent as writers and orators were the Boston newspaper‐owner
William
Lloyd
Garrison
, the author
Harriet
Beecher
Stowe
(whose anti‐slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 1.5 million copies within a year of its publication in
1852
), and the ex‐slave Frederick Douglass. The abolitionist cause at first found little support in Congress or the main political parties, except among a few individuals such as
Charles
Sumner
, but it played an increasing part in precipitating the political division that led to the
American Civil War
.
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