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Elizabeth Heyrick's Immediate Not Gradual Abolition

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Going back hundreds of years, we can find men and women who bravely stood for the rights of those who were enslaved, imprisoned, and treated unfairly. One of those courageous women was Elizabeth Heyrick, an abolitionist who fought for the freedom of the oppressed and equal rights for all people and devoted her life to social reform.Due to her dedication to the enslaved, she became a prominent female activist of the 1820s and continues to inspire our fight for the oppressed and enslaved today. She wrote political pamphlets about a range of issues, from the Corn Laws to the harsh treatment of vagrants, opposition of war, and corporal punishment. Her message was clear cut. She described the West India planters ''as being like thieves and those who bought their produce, like receivers of stolen …show more content…

She criticized the mainstream anti-slavery figures for being slow, cautious and accommodating.She stated, “The perpetuation of slavery in our West Indian colonies is not an abstract question to be settled between the government and the planters; it is one in which we are all implicated, we are all guilty of supporting and perpetuating slavery.”9In 1824, she published her pamphlet 'Immediate not Gradual Abolition'. This differed from the official policy of gradual abolition and William Wilberforce gave out instructions for leaders of the movement not to speak at women's anti-slavery societies, most of which supported Heyrick.

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