The Rise of the Antislavery Movement

In the 1830s, the antislavery movement began to gain momentum as part of a larger wave of social reform and religious “awakenings.” The morality of slavery and the issues of racial equality were eloquently and passionately argued, but not all those who were against slavery believed in its immediate abolition or in granting full citizenship to freed black people. Proposals to end slavery had included colonization, gradualism, compensated emancipation, and immediate abolition.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, abolitionist Wendell Phillips said, “Not an Abolitionist, hardly an antislavery man, Mr. Lincoln consents to represent an antislavery idea.” In fact, Lincoln had long favored colonization: to grant enslaved people freedom but send them to establish new lives in faraway places such as Panama or Liberia. Historians continue to debate why he supported such a solution; however, at the time, many activists, black and white, criticized Lincoln for not supporting immediate abolition.