Internal And External Resistance To The Abolitionist Movement

By 1860, 35% of the southern population was made up of slaves. African Americans that were free, enslaved, and formerly enslaved actively resisted the institution of slavery and contributed to the abolitionist movement through internal and external resistance such as revolting and holding public speeches. Famous abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Nat Turner led prominent anti-slavery newspapers, revolutions, and speeches. Internal and external resistance to slavery has been overlooked because of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.

A few African-American children that were born into slavery, were born with a dream to escape slavery and help free wrongfully treated slaves. Notable

Slaves were also forced to work until they could not see what they were farming and when there was a full moon they could have worked until midnight. Many brave slaves rose up against the slave masters and revolted. One of the most well-known slave revolutions was led by Nat Turner. The result of Nat Turner’s rebellion was 60 dead white men, but it was mostly unsuccessful because it made slave owners stiffen their rules against education, movement, and assembly of enslaved people. Although the rioting was a very big form of resistance, there were smaller forms of resistance that enslaved people used such as working slower in the fields to spite their owner. Despite the fact that slave owners were given the power to abuse the enslaved people, they never gave up trying to secure freedom for themselves and their

Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery, made speeches in the northeast about slavery and the difference between black people and white people. When Douglass made a speech about the Fourth of July, he said, “Independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” (Frederick Douglass, What to a Slave…) Douglass was saying this because some white people are oblivious about how freedom works. Douglass and other enslaved people did not earn freedom after America beat England in the war, enslaved people just kept on working in the fields picking cotton and tobacco, while the white Americans celebrated. Enslaved people had to fight for their freedom. One of the most famous anti-slavery newspapers, The Liberator, released its first issue on January 1st, 1831 by William Lloyd Garrison. Even though Garrison was a white man and could have easily bought slaves to do cheap labor for him, he was completely against the idea of slavery and wrote this in his first issue, “A drove consisting of males and females chained in couples, starting from Roby’s Tavern on foot, for