The Role Of Slavery In The 19th Century

Throughout the 19th century, many African American slaves lived a highly controlled life. They were forbidden from learning to read and write, and their movement and behavior was restricted. In the early 1830s, many people began realizing that slavery was an inhumane practice and antislavery groups started forming. Early antislavery societies believed that slavery had to be stopped gradually. Their primary goal was to put an end to slave trading. After they accomplished this, they would then put an end to slavery itself. Supporters believed that ending slavery gradually would give the South’s economy time to adjust to the loss of enslaved labor. By the early 1800s, the Northern states ended slavery there, but the south continued. Many white southerners claimed that slavery was necessary to the southern economy and it had allowed them to reach a high level of culture.

Throughout the movement there had been many significant participants, one of which was Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was an African American slave from Talbot County, Maryland who taught himself how to read and write. By the age of twenty one, Douglass found a way to escape after two failed attempts. Once he escaped, he wanted to promote freedom for all of the slaves. In

William Lloyd Garrison was an American journalist from Newburyport, Massachusetts who helped lead the fight against slavery. At the age of 25, Garrison joined the American Colonization Society. The American Colonization Society was a group of people who believed that blacks should move to the west coast of Africa . By 1830, he decided to leave the American Colonization Society and he began an abolitionist newspaper in 1830, called The Liberator. Garrison also helped form the New England Antislavery Society in 1832 and founded the American Antislavery Society in 1833. The American Antislavery Society reached up to 250,000 members by