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How Did Reformers Contribute To The Abolition Of Slavery By David Walker

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Although the United States was going through a moral reform, reformers continued to make every effort to abolish slavery in order to unify the nation. Reformers swept through the United States before the Civil War in a movement known as the Second Great Awakening to influence citizens to change their previous moral standards. Slavery continued to expand in the South, and reformers’ agendas continued to fail because of the denial of Southern plantation owners wanting to keep their slaves. Many reformers attempted to promote the abolition of slavery, however, their religious beliefs, poster propaganda, and questioning the morality of slavery were the most effective ways to influence the nation to unify. Religious beliefs contributed to the …show more content…

David Walker says, “whites have always been an unjust...set of beings, always seeking power and authority,” to call for slaves to revolt against their masters. Angelina Grimke builds upon Walker’s position, saying “the opposition of slavery has done its deadliest work in the hearts of our citizens,” to illustrate how slavery has caused nothing positive to the nation and is only diverting the country apart. The Northerners also had the interpretation of “holding slaves is morally wrong...upon precepts taught in the bible, and takes (the bible) as the standard of morality and religion” (Slavery and the Bible,1850) to further question the justification of holding slaves and how the morals of Christians in the North aided by the rise of the abolition movement during the Second Great Awakening. The morality of slavery was being questioned in the United States during the nineteenth century because of the denial of happiness and human rights among those under the rule of southern plantation owners. Reformers expressed their point of views, and many northerners began to join the abolition movement, however their attempts couldn’t influence the southerners and slavery continued on plantations in the southern

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He rather rejected the manipulation of doctrine utilized by the slaveholders to achieve their end. Douglass wrote that, "the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,-a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,-a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,-and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection" (965). Religion was therefore not only a means of false justification for slave owners, but also a source of unified protection against any criticism of slave practices that could arise. Douglass seemed to insist that there was a genuine form of Christianity that was based upon love of God and love of "thy neighbor," but that these Southern practitioners certainly had not converted to the belief in such a doctrine.

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and by those too, who profess religion?”(Apess, 6). In this way, Apess argues by pointing out the hypocrisy found in the Christian ideology of the time, insisting that the ideas held on racial superiority and slavery, while not explicitly condemned in the Bible, go against the ideas of the teachings of Jesus. Apess also uses an appeal to authority, to Jesus nonetheless, in order to shame those who would argue for slavery by mentioning that their savior would be discriminated against in American society. Another voice against slavery, Frederick Douglass, not only uses his religion as an argument against slavery, but also condemns the branches of Christianity which supported it over the course of his 1845 “Narrative”. In his appendix, Douglass states “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt,

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