America had always been home to people who felt that slavery was wrong and should be eliminated. These people, called abolitionists because they wanted to abolish or destroy slavery, denounced the practice as horrible and evil. Prior to the...

United States 1863-1865 By early 1861, just before the beginning of the American Civil War (sometimes also called the War Between the States and the War for Southern Independence), serious economic and ideological differences divided the citizens of...

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The technology can't be disinvented, and the possibility of escalting to a nuclear spasm deters conventional wars. The latest jolt of attention to the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons seems unlikely to produce early change in American policy. But it does give wondering...

The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves. By Stanley Harrold. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c. 2004. Pp. x, 246. $35.00, ISBN 0-8131-2290-2.) The latest addition to Stanley Harrold's prodigious output over the last decade is this collection of primary sources,...

Given that an outside consultant failed to find evidence that the Underground Railroad stopped at seven imperiled rowhouses on Duffield and Gold streets (PDF), Mayor Bloomberg could have pressed on, letting the properties be condemned and then flattened to make way for a park and...

In the following essay, Dykes examines the poetry and prose of famous English authors writing on abolitionist themes, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Shelley, Thomas DeQuincey, and Charles Dickens. These authors focused their attacks on British slavery until it was abolished in 1833, after which they turned their attentions to the United States.

In the following essay, Fisch discusses themes in the anonymous 1852 novel Uncle Tom in England, asserting the work was published to illustrate England's moral superiority to the United States and to capitalize on the success of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In the following excerpt, Ferguson examines the 1831 slave narrative The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave to show that Prince's language and agenda were often at odds with white female abolitionists.

Contends that through the work of abolitionists, slavery was abolished sooner that it might have been otherwise. Describes many of the goals and tactics used by early Quaker abolitionists.