Are you getting ready for the AP® US History exam? Do you need to master the abolitionist movement? (Hint: if you’re here, the answer to both of those questions is yes). Have no fear: in this APUSH crash course review, we’ll give you all the skills you need to master the features and figures of the abolitionist movement.
What is the abolitionist movement?
The abolitionist movement, or abolitionism, was the campaign to end slavery in the United States, before and during the Civil War. We know that this movement was eventually successful, but how?
One of the first widespread antislavery messages was spread during the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s. Around the same time, Enlightenment thinkers such as James Oglethorpe, Granville Sharp, and Hannah More began to make rational arguments against slavery as a violation of human rights. Despite the popularity of these arguments in theory, though, the colonies continued to practice slavery.
Attitudes started to change after the Revolutionary War officially established the United States of America. Northern states – beginning with Virginia in 1777 – gradually started to abolish slavery in their constitutions. In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, slavery was prohibited in the territories northwest of the Ohio River. By 1804, slavery was completely outlawed in the Northern states.
Abolishing slavery in the Southern states took much longer. In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves; under this law, which went into effect in 1808, no new slaves were to be brought into the United States. Ending the Atlantic slave trade was an important step toward total abolitionism. However, there was still much work to be done. The law was not always strictly enforced, so slaves were still being imported on a smaller scale. Plus, Jefferson himself was a longtime slave owner – he had an economic and personal interest in keeping slavery legal in the US.
In the South, the plantation economy relied almost entirely on slave labor. Owners of cash crop plantations – tobacco, cotton, sugar, and rice – fought the abolitionist movement. Many plantation owners thought the movement’s popularity was planting the seeds of slave rebellion.
The abolitionist movement in the US was mostly based in the Northern states and was led by social reformers and activists. Many of these reformers were inspired by the messages of the Second Great Awakening during the 1820s and 1830s. The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival that contrasted the rational ideals of the Enlightenment movement. This revival inspired many to see slavery as a sinful institution that should not be tolerated. In contrast, many Southerners in favor of the “peculiar institution” of slavery used religion and the Bible as an explicit justification for slavery.
In the 1830s, the abolitionist movement was spreading – but not all abolitionists were the same. Some, such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, called fervently for the immediate emancipation of all slaves and prohibition of slavery. Others who were less radical favored a more gradual program of emancipation.
Garrison was one of the most influential figures in the abolitionist movement. He joined others at Oberlin College to form the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. By the 1840s, the term “abolition” generally referred to the more radical and immediate solution that Garrison proposed. Abolitionists received a great deal of support from free blacks, free people of color, and religious groups like the Quakers.
Publications like Garrison’s newspaper The Liberator spread the message of abolition and helped garner support for the movement. The Liberator was published out of Boston beginning in 1831 and continued for three decades. It emphasized the fact that slavery seemed to contradict the fundamental principles of liberty and freedom that the nation was founded upon.
Another important moment in the debate over slavery was the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). The United States acquired a vast amount of territory following the war, which quickly fell into chaos over whether they would become free or slave territories. The Compromise of 1850 attempted to defuse this controversy. It had five major provisions:
- California was admitted as a free state.
- Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory would decide slavery based on popular sovereignty.
- Texas reduced its boundaries to their current status.
- The slave trade was abolished in Washington, D.C.
- The Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened.
The Fugitive Slave Act had a direct impact on the abolitionist movement. It required that all escaped slaves captured in free territory were to be returned to their masters, and that all residents in these free territories must cooperate with the law. Many of these escaped slaves had reached free territories via the Underground Railroad, with the help of abolitionists and free blacks such as Harriet Tubman. Northern abolitionists strongly opposed the Fugitive Slave Act because it required them to enforce slavery. Outraged by this law, author and activist Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, which quickly became the bestselling novel of the 19th century. In fact, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the bestselling book of the 1800s, second only to the Bible.
Abolitionists saw their movement’s success with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. It changed the legal status of millions of enslaved people in the South from ”slave” to “free.” Upon escaping the Confederate government, the former slaves would immediately be freed.
The final outcome of the abolitionist movement was the 1865 ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. This Amendment – the first of the Reconstruction era – outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States.
Why is the abolitionist movement important?
So why do we care about the abolitionist movement? In short, it was one of the most widespread, varied, and successful social reform movements in American history. The movement’s incorporation of publications, religious groups, educational institutions, and Americans of all classes and races was ultimately one of the most important factors in its success.
The abolitionist movement is a key factor in the Civil War and the antebellum period. The Civil War was not only a military battle, but also a social one. Abolition of slavery was the most influential social movement during this period.
Moreover, the abolitionist movement led to the formation of the Republican Party in 1854. This Party was founded on a platform or rapid modernization and development, including industrial growth, railroads, and abolition. It denounced the power of the Southern slave owners who essentially controlled government decisions.
Several figures and features of the abolitionist movement are keys to the understanding of the 19th century. Some influential people to focus on include: Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Abraham Lincoln. Some events you should be sure to understand for the APUSH exam include: the end of the Atlantic slave trade in 1808, the first publication of The Liberator in 1831, the Second Great Awakening, theCompromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th Amendment.
What You Need to Know for the APUSH Exam – Multiple-Choice
On the new version of the AP® US History exam, the multiple-choice section presents you with stimulus material to guide sets of questions. This stimulus material could be a primary or secondary text, speech, chart, graph, map, or example of propaganda. If you want to conquer the APUSH multiple-choice section, you should be familiar with key documents and patterns having to do with a topic, so you will be able to recognize them on the exam. These materials will be identified with their citations, but it helps immensely to already be familiar with their context.
For example, APUSH multiple-choice questions about the abolitionist movement could include maps of the Underground Railroad, charts about free vs. slave populations, or excerpts from The Liberator, the Emancipation Proclamation, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Here is an example of a multiple-choice question that could appear on the APUSH exam. One of the excerpts is as follows:
“Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of Liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and denounce … slavery ‘the great sin and shame of America’!”
— Frederick Douglass, speech titled “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” 1852
Which of the following groups would be most likely to support the perspective of Frederick Douglass in the excerpt?
(A) Southern Democrats
(B) Southern planters
(C) Northern abolitionists
(D) Northern merchants
The correct choice is C. Frederick Douglass represents the viewpoint of Northern abolitionists with the radical and immediate approach to ending slavery. Southern Democrats and plantation owners, in general, were opposed to abolition. Northern merchants were also unlikely to support Douglass; they had an economic interest in slavery, especially in terms of shipping and insuring capital.
What You Need to Know for the APUSH Exam – Essays and Document-Based Questions
The long essays and DBQ on the APUSH exam are your opportunity to show off your contextualizing skills. The abolition movement could come into play on questions about the Civil War, the antebellum period, Reconstruction, or even social reform movements in general.
For example, here is a past APUSHlong essay question:
Evaluate the extent to which the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) marked a turning point in the debate over slavery in the United States, analyzing what changed and what stayed the same from the period before the war to the period after it.
So how would you tackle this question? First, you have to formulate a thesis that takes a side on the question – decide to what extent the Mexican-American War impacted the slavery debate.
If you decide that the Mexican-American War is a huge turning point for the slavery debate, you can then launch into your discussion of its context within the abolitionist movement. Discuss parts of the movement that came before the War: William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator, Frederick Douglass, etc. Then, compare those conditions to those after the Mexican-American War: popular sovereignty, the Compromise of 1850, etc. You can view more detailed scoring guidelines for a question like this one from the College Board here.
Phew. There’s a lot that goes into understanding the abolitionist movement, but now you’ve made it to the end of our APUSH crash course review. With these tools in hand, you have everything it takes to tackle the abolitionist movement on the AP® US History exam in May.
Let’s put everything into practice. Try this AP® US Historypractice question:
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