Before coming to Tuesday’s class, please closely read the articles by Huston and Yannielli listed on the schedule, as well as the additional article (by Stewart, Abzug, or Hershberger) that you were assigned today in class.
On Tuesday, we will talk a little bit about the mechanics of a history article–how it is put together, how an historian makes an argument and establishes the significance of his/her research. So as you read all these articles, pay attention to how and when the author references work by other historians. Note places where the author introduces evidence from primary sources to support the thesis. And especially make note of where the author lays out the major point he or she wants to make.
All of these articles deal with the question that we grappled with in our first week together: what would cause a person or group of people to demand the immediate end of slavery–an extremely profitable institution that most white people accepted and that had been around since the beginning of recorded human history? As you read, think about these questions, and then choose one of them to respond to in your comment for this week by clicking on “Leave a Reply” at the end of this post.
- James Huston argues that the experience of witnessing slavery’s operations was the crucial factor in the origins of abolitionist commitment. Is that generalization supported by the particular life stories of the characters in your other assigned articles? Does Huston’s case for the “experiential basis” of abolitionism account for immediatists better or worse than the other bases (economic, emulation of other movements, evangelical, etc.) that we discussed in class?
- Is Huston’s argument incompatible with the arguments of either of the other two articles you read? Why or why not?
- Based on specific examples drawn from the readings, do you think attention to broader Northern cultural shifts is necessary to explain the stories of particular abolitionists? Why or why not? And which cultural shifts in the broader environment seem to have been most important to the person(s) profiled in your non-Huston articles?
- On page 12, Huston notes that some historians have found “troublesome” or even “retrograde” beliefs and behaviors among the abolitionists? Is this true of the abolitionists you read about in the other articles? Were there specific aspects of the immediatists you met that surprised or troubled you?
Remember, you should think about all of these questions, and also make note of the major turning points and parts of the articles; we want to think both about what they are saying and how about how they say it, since you will be producing works of historical scholarship this semester, too. For your blog comment, however, you only need to address one of the questions above by noon on Tuesday, January 16.
In his article, James Huston supports the “experiential basis” of abolitionism: most people became more devoted to the abolitionist cause after seeing some aspect of slavery firsthand. Often northerners had read descriptions or heard accounts of slavery, but they were not convinced of slavery’s evils until they traveled south and witnessed it personally. Huston gives several specific examples of abolitionists, including Levi Coffin, William Henry Seward, and William Lloyd Garrison, who witnessed a cruel act of slavery such as a slave auction, whipping, or some other form of mistreatment.
Early in his life, Garrison became involved with the abolitionist cause. Initially, he supported gradual emancipation but eventually he turned to immediate emancipation, becoming more radical through the years. These changes came around the same time that Garrison lived in Baltimore. Like so many other northern abolitionists, here Garrison directly witnessed the horrors of slavery for the first time, when he heard slaves being whipped and later saw the physical results. These experiences gave abolition a deep human component, which made Garrison more committed not only to the cause of emancipation but also to the slaves as people. Garrison’s personal experiences and subsequent strengthened commitment to emancipation reinforce Huston’s theory of “experiential basis.” Yet like most other abolitionists at the time, several combining factors influenced Garrison’s views. He had been reading British pamphlets on immediate emancipation around the time he lived in Baltimore; these outside ideas, in combination with direct exposure to slavery and other factors, made him more committed to emancipation.
Although Huston makes an excellent case that personal experience with slavery yielded dramatic results, other factors in addition motivated people to stand up against the powerful and profitable institution of slavery. Huston writes that northerners would recall seeing violence against slaves; when these recollections were combined with “particular currents in northern society,” then the combination “evoked an antislavery commitment” (Huston). The other currents included the following: the Second Great Awakening, popular social reform movements, new attention to capitalism and a free labor market, and the emergence of a middle class. Huston also mentions that youthfulness was an important quality for abolitionists. Earlier generations of northerners had witnessed slavery, but the young people of the early 19th century were influenced by changes in society and exposure to slavery, causing them to become abolitionists. Many Americans in the North and South witnessed violent acts of slavery, but only a select few actually made an effort to abolish slavery, because there were other societal factors that made emancipation seem possible and necessary to them.
Based on specific examples drawn from the readings, do you think attention to broader Northern cultural shifts is necessary to explain the stories of particular abolitionists? Why or why not? And which cultural shifts in the broader environment seem to have been most important to the person(s) profiled in your non-Huston articles?
I think that both Huston’s experimental basis and broader shifts in Northern culture are necessary factors to explain the cases of specific abolitionists. Huston connects these two factors by arguing that social and economic shifts in the north only caused abolitionism because they magnified northern cultural shock at personal experience with slavery. In the other two articles I read, by Yannielli and Hershberger, attention to cultural shifts seemed necessary to explain the motivation of the particular abolitionists profiled.
In both articles, abolitionists were portrayed as not only radical abolitionists, but rather simply “radical” in a broader social context. The Yannielli article focused primarily on the story of George Thompson. Clearly personal experience, particularly time spent in prison, shaped Thompson. Yet this is not enough to explain behavior so radical that both contemporaries and historians continually described him as “crazy.” While prison may have been a catalyst for Thompson, I don’t think he would have ever even gotten to that point if not for religious revival. A huge part of Thompson’s work in Africa revolved around missionary work. His settlement and his whole existence there had a firm religious base. Thompson as a radical cannot be understood outside of the context of wider religious revival and radicalism during this time period.
The other article I read, by Hershberger, also indicated that wider cultural shifts were responsible for shaping radical abolitionists. This article focused on the issue of Indian Removal. Many prominent abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe, were first involved in the struggle against Indian Removal. This article drew a strong connection between opposing Indian removal and opposing slavery, suggesting that many antiremovalists later turned into abolitionists. This supports the idea that many radical abolitionists were also “radical” in a broader social context both before and after becoming abolitionists.
The Huston articles points out that abolitionists tended to be against not only slavery, but also generally against all institutions that practiced exploitation for economic gain. This suggests that while personal experience may have been the catalyst driving would-be abolitionists to radicalism, the cases of individual abolitionists must also be understood in the context of the broader social and religious movements of the time.
Huston’s article makes some important insights about the historiography of abolitionism and his points that slavery was not some sort of abstraction during the period and that the South should be considered in the historical context of abolitionism are cogent. However, examples from the two other articles that I read do not fit very cleanly into his thesis about the experience of slavery as the primary cause of the abolitionist.
It is striking that, as Hershberger points out in her article on the Indian removal act, ‘the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society were all first outspoken opponents of Indian removal’. Thus, many radicals in American society were clearly not only motivated by their experience of slavery to seek to change American society. Furthermore, Hershberger notes that many advocates of African Colonization recanted their support and became immediatists after the Anti-Removal Movement. The experiences of these figures points to the existence of a reformist culture that transcended and preceded abolitionism, and also suggests that many reformers adhered to a set of common beliefs that evolved over time.
In a similar vein, the article by Yannielli does not completely contradict the importance of personal experience of slavery but emphasizes the importance of other pertinent factors. In this case the most important personal experiences for William Raymond and George Thompson were the conflicts with authorities that fostered their identities as radicals and, in the eyes of Raymond, made them ‘black’. The context of power relations also eventually worked against Thompson as he eventually found himself in the position of violently punishing Africans for refusing to work for him or violating his rules.
Huston seems to almost contradict himself by simultaneously reaching for a clear explanation of the importance of the genesis of an abolitionist and at the same time admitting the importance of the cultural, economic and intellectual context of the early 1800’s, whatever the geographic bounds. Huston links the visceral experience of slavery being perpetrated against a slave to the fundamental assertion that ‘at the heart of the abolitionist complaint against slavery was the despotic infliction of violence upon others to obtain wealth.’ However, the linkage of force and avarice fits well with the criticisms set out by the anti-removal movement of the 1820’s in which many future abolitionists cut their teeth, and thus it seems that Huston puts too much emphasis on the specific experience of violent slavery in the formation of anti-slavery activism.
Huston notes in his article that not all abolitionists were free of racism. This is surprising, because it is easy to assume that since abolitionists opposed slavery, they also supported racial equality for African Americans. This was the case for George Thompson who advocated equal rights for blacks in the United States. Yet in Africa he had a low opinion of the natives and looked down on African culture as “primordial”. It is not clear how much his opinion of Africans reflects his opinion of African Americans. Slaves were partially removed from their original African heritage, but this heritage definitely influenced slave culture in the United States. So if Thompson’s low opinion of Africans also meant that he had a low opinion of slaves in America, then I question what racial equality really means. Yannielli explicitly states that Thompsons supported racial equality, and perhaps he did in the sense that he supported equal legal rights for African Americans. Yet this doesn’t lead to complete racial equality, because considering one group inferior often results in their unequal treatment as such attitudes manifest themselves. Thompson is also reported to have brutally punished some of the natives with whippings, which is inconsistent with Huston’s theory that abolitionists mostly opposed slavery, because they were averse to violence.
Although Wendell Phillips’s views were not blatantly racist, I was surprised that he seemed more concerned about the effect slavery had on the white masters than on the slaves. His main objection to slavery was that people lose control when they have unlimited power and thus can’t achieve personal liberty. He seems more concerned about this more abstract/spiritual personal liberty for whites than the bondage of slaves who had much less liberty than their white owners. His argument for abolitionism is not strongly based in racial equality. Additionally it was not clear in the article to what extent Phillips supported racial equality beyond abolitionism.
James L. Huston set out to prove that focusing on abolitionists’ direct connections with slavery historiography could remarry what had previously been divorced, “abolitionists” and “the institution of slavery” (615). According to Huston, focusing too much on cultural shifts in the North for reasons why abolitionists were made forced a divide between protesters and the institution they were fighting against. Through utilizing the post-Civil War memoirs of several abolitionists, he attempted to show that while abolitionists were influenced by their cultural background, adding a focus on direct experiences with the South provided more compelling evidence for creating radicals.
On the other side of the historiography coin, James B. Stewart chose to focus on a single man and his interaction with the “counterpoint between control and impulsiveness” as a strong motivator for immediatism (369). In the case of looking at a single person and their embrace of abolitionist doctrine, an analysis of Northern cultural shifts is absolutely necessary to understanding motivation, even if it does not provide a complete picture. He followed a doctrine of egaliantarianism with “emphatic reaffirmation of social control” that in turn, at least to Stewart, “enhanced” his “demand that slavery be abolished” (184).
Attention to political and social movements in the North is critical to understanding the background of individual abolitionists, yet every person interprets their culture in distinct and seperate ways. In order to portray a broader image of how abolitionism came about, paying too much attention to individual viewpoints may become too daunting and unnecesssary of a task. These cultural shifts should be recognized and acknowledged, but focusing on them too much could result in a lack of focus on the problem of slavery itself.
I believe that it is essential to examine the theory of Northern Cultural Shifts when attempting to explain or reason the birth of the Northern Abolition/Anti-Slavery movement that took place in the century preceding the outbreak of the American Civil War. The Huston article comes to the conclusion that the Abolition movement in the United States was largely due to a convergence of cultural and geographic differences that lead to the “Radicalism” that became the Abolitionism movement.
Huston discusses the Work of Elkins who proposed that the Abolitionists were afflicted with Anti-institutional biases. In reality the only dominate anti-institutional bias was towards the Institution of slavery. The world in which many Northern Abolitionists lived was a far cry from the plantation dominated economic system of the south. While many Northerners worked in or frequently dealt with the booming industrial sector, there was a disconnect from slavery seemingly miles away in the South. This led to a general sense that slavery was an unnecessary evil, contrary to the general holding in the South that slavery was a necessary evil, as we saw in the in-class readings last week. The direct experiences with the south that Huston presents only magnify the vast immorality of the slaveholders to many Northerners. Coupled with the cultural disconnect and geographic distance the abolition movement became a driving force in Northern politics.
While Huston focused on many differing stories and theories in his article Yannielli focuses on the narrative of one man George Thompson. Yannielli’s work downplays the importance of cultural and personal experience of slavery. It goes without saying that Thompson’s experience in prison was personal, but his fervor for the cause could not have been accomplished without his strong religious holdings. Thompson saw salves in America as people in need of saving. Accordingly he advocated that preachers and missionaries take up the cause, preaching the injustices of American slavery. Contrary to his message in America when Thompson moved to Africa he drove his workers extremely hard. To me this is in opposition the cultural experience theory. Because Thompson’s harsh treatment in prison did not keep him from becoming a disciplinarian similar to many Southern planters.
The final article that I will examine is the Hershberger work. Hershberger took a different approach to explaining the motivations behind radicals. By addressing the similarities in the moral conflict between the Indian removals under Andrew Jackson with the institution of slavery. Abolitionists also exhibited many of the traits of the people working for Indian rights. Van Bruren and the rest of the Jackson administration’s blatant disregard to the rights of Indians were similar to the attitude towards Slaves in the South. Jackson argued that it was the “best” thing for the Indians as many Planters argued that Slavery was the “best” and “most humane” institution for Slaves. One unique aspect of the Hershberger article was that it dealt with how Women’s organizations worked to better the situation for American Indians. Through the sponsorships of humanitarian missions and schools. Like Huston, Hershberger made the association with cultural biases in the birth of radicalism.
By examining the theory of Northern Cultural Shifts when attempting to explain or reason the birth of the Northern Abolition movement, we see that as Huston theorized it was a multitude of cultural and geographic differences that lead to the “Radicalism” that became the Abolitionism movement. Supported by the work of Hershberger and Yannielli the theory can be applied accurately to explain why people worked to abolish the system of Slavery that existed in the American South.
Through reading these articles it becomes very apparent that the motivations and driving forces behind becoming an abolitionist are both widely disputed and multi-faceted. In a single article, Huston outlines roughly a dozen possible factors and perceived reasons for joining the abolitionist movement before he even throws his own theory into the mix. Explanations include the Second Great Awakening, a moral prerogative driven by religious evolution, anti-establishment sentiments attributed to youth, and even considerations as wide as uncertainties in day to day life created by northern socio-economic transformation. Huston then proceeds to make his argument for experiential based motivation for joining of the abolitionist movement, founded upon the idea that seeing and experiencing the cruelties of slavery first hand ignited the abolitionist spark. This wide range of interpretations with which historians approach abolitionists is surely the result of incongruence between the ideals of the abolitionists themselves.
In Yannielli’s article we are presented with George Thompson, an abolitionist who seems to embody the ‘troublesome’ or ‘retrograde’ aspects which some historians have pointed out within the abolition movement. Yannielli describes Thompson as feeling akin to ‘the black man’ due to his perceived abuse by authority. However, Thompson is also depicted as holding native Africans as a collective people in ill regard and even exhibiting violence upon them. This picture of an abolitionist who despises Africans but considers himself a black presents a confusing image contrasted with the concept of abolitionists as crusaders for equality.
The subject of Stewart’s article also fails to conform to the idea of abolition for the sake of equality. Wendell Phillips was (by Stewart’s account) one of the most eloquent and inflammatory leaders of the abolitionist movement, however his motivations were not to see the end of abuse to African-Americans or even to promote equality. Phillips was primarily concerned with the limitation of primal impulses through the enforcement of a strong sense of self-discipline – more worried about the effect that the institution of slavery had upon its advocates than its victims adding yet another explanation for abolitionist motivation to the mix. For me, these examinations of abolitionist motivations highlight one very important aspect: that being an abolitionist was not synonymous with championing the plight of the slave.