The Abolitionist Movement in the Antebellum South

In recent months there has been renewed public interest in the truth about the global history of slavery. For example, the conservative commentator Matt Walsh produced a well-received series titled “Real History,” in which one episode covered “what schools don’t teach you about slavery.”

Among the facts omitted from the official school narrative is the abolitionist movement in the South. The sociologist W.E.B. DuBois makes no mention of Southern abolitionists. His discussion of abolitionism refers specifically to the abolitionists of Massachusetts—notably William Lloyd Garrison. In his book, Black Reconstruction, he focuses exclusively on the campaigns of the Radical Republican “neo-abolitionists,” notably Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens.

Yet, before the 1830s, when some Northern abolitionists began encouraging violent slave revolt, there had been more abolitionist organizations in the South than in the North. Some of these Southern abolitionists were influential in their communities. For example, John Marquardt observes that in North Carolina,

In 1816, a town commissioner from New Salem, Moses Swain, was the founder and first president of the North Carolina Manumission Society. . . Within ten years, the Society had three thousand members in fourteen chapters throughout the State, as well as forty-five affiliated groups. Some of its members, like Swain, were also appointed or elected to public office in the State prior to 1861.

Nat Turner, as New York Times reports, “led an 1831 insurrection in Virginia. . . Turner led a group of 70 armed slaves and free blacks in an uprising that killed about 60 whites.” This insurrection is often depicted as heroic. It joins the legend of Spartacus, the Amistad, and other slave revolts listed by NYT as examples of rebellion against injustice.

However, there is another side to the story of Nat Turner’s revolt, namely, the fact that it all but ended the peaceful abolitionist movement in the South. Following the insurrection, the abolitionist movement was viewed by Southerners in an entirely different light. Marquardt explains that,

. . .while the uprising was suppressed within a few days, it caused a great deal of consternation throughout the South which led to more stringent judicial rulings and legislation in regard to slaves. . . .and by the mid-1830s, except for a few “stations” that remained on the Underground Railroad, the anti-slavery movements in the South had virtually come to an end.

It meant that the Southern people were less willing to join the abolitionist campaign. For example, in Virginia, where an emancipation campaign had previously enjoyed support, people were still reeling from the violence of the Turner revolt, which did not spare the women and children.

By midmorning the challenge of recruiting was compounded by a new problem for the rebels: news about the revolt had spread, making it harder for the rebels to find white victims. Most white people who heard of the revolt immediately fled to the woods, eluding the rebel army. Others tried to create defensible positions. At Levi Waller’s farm, the site of a local school, word arrived of the insurrection, and Waller made the decision to gather the children together to defend them. This led to the most devastating raid of the revolt, as the rebels arrived after the children had congregated but before Waller could set up any defense. Waller’s wife and ten children died during that assault.

This meant that Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s attempt “to convince the General Assembly to enact a plan that would have put the state on the path to gradual emancipation” failed. The abolitionist movement had now come to be viewed as a threat to peace rather than a movement for justice.

By 1838 the Northern abolitionists had sent more than 130,000 petitions to Congress, which were seen by the South as a call to violence. The South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun addressed this issue in the Senate in his February 1837 “Remarks on the Reception of the Abolition Petitions.” He began by objecting to the language used by the petitions. Unlike the peaceful language used by the English abolitionist William Wilberforce in his campaign to abolish slavery in the British Empire, which may be characterized as “hate the sin but love the sinner,” the Northern abolitionists denounced their fellow Americans as brutish and sinful who deserved any violence that may be meted against them. In response, Calhoun said:

And this with a systematic design of rendering us hateful in the eyes of the world. . . This too, in the legislative halls of the Union; created by these confederated States, for the better protection of their peace, their safety and their respective institutions; and yet we, the representatives of twelve of these sovereign States against whom this deadly war is waged, are expected to sit here in silence, hearing ourselves and our constituents day after day denounced, without uttering a word. . .

One might say slavery is so abhorrent that the twelve slave states deserved to be slandered in Congress as much as possible, and, better still, have violent insurrection incited against them to put pressure on them to do the right thing. Further, the abolitionists did not just want slavery to be abolished, but they were also intent on punishing the South for perpetuating this great evil. Yet the Northern abolitionists failed to mention that there were still slaves in their own states. Although New York abolished slavery in 1827, a few years before launching these petitions which were seen as inciting violence against the South, this did not mean that all those held in bonded labor were in practice set free: “The gradual abolition statutes passed in most states formally freed nobody already enslaved.” New York slave traders also continued illegally trading slaves, with their courts often turning a blind eye.

It is also worth noting that the threat of disunion was a concern for both North and South. On March 9, 1836 Calhoun noted in his Senate speech that,

. . .with the exception of the two senators from Vermont, all who have spoken have avowed their conviction, not only that [the abolitionist petitions] contain nothing requiring the action of the Senate, but that the petitions are highly mischievous, as tending to agitate and distract the country, and to endanger the Union itself.

This history merits more widespread attention because it shows how violent methods of achieving social-justice goals often prove to be counterproductive. The veneration of violence as a path to abolition became, paradoxically, an obstacle in the achievement of its own stated goals. 

The sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, by failing to acknowledge abolitionist movements in the South—either he had never heard of them, or he did not think they merited any acknowledgment—leaves the reader with the impression that there was no desire to eradicate slavery to be found among the people of the South. This is far from the truth. From there it is but a short step to promoting war as the only path to racial equality—Du Bois quotes favorably a Union officer praising the late war, and then follows up by saying that “in blood and servile war, freedom came to America.”

The belief in some quarters that war and violence are the only path to peace is not only Orwellian, but it sustains itself by willfully ignoring any evidence of peaceful abolitionist movements in the Old South. The point here is not that the South should be given “credit” or praised for having abolitionist movements, but that memory-holing historical facts that do not fit the narrative is dishonest and amounts to lying by omission.

This is a lie with major consequences for those interested in peace, because warmongers rely heavily on creating the impression that their endless recourse to violence is “necessary,” and that without waging war there would be no hope of ending injustice. To this end, they deem it necessary to silence the voices that advocate for peace. Those who insist that without war slavery would never have been abolished hold onto their beliefs only because they ignore the words of Robert E. Lee, who wrote, in a letter to Lord Acton after the war:

Although the South would have preferred any honorable compromise to the fratricidal war which has taken place, she now accepts in good faith its constitutional results, and receives without reserve the amendment which has already been made to the constitution for the extinction of slavery. That is an event that has long been sought, though in a different way, and by none has it been more earnestly desired than by citizens of Virginia.