History of the United States I / Unit 13 USH1 1839 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Moral Suasion and Immediatism
The idea
The American Anti-Slavery Society had two hundred fifty thousand members by eighteen thirty-eight. Its members rejected colonisation as racist and opposed violence, relying instead on moral suasion, meaning an appeal to the public conscience and to slaveholders' consciences. Garrison preached immediatism, the moral demand for immediate action to end slavery, and he demanded that Black and White people be treated equally. The appeal rested on dramatic narratives, often by formerly enslaved people, emphasising how slavery destroyed families by separating children from their parents.
In practice
Hundreds of tracts in circulation, and hundreds of petitions sent to Congress in the early eighteen thirties.
Where people slip
Two features made this radical beyond its stated aim. Immediatism rejected the gradual schemes that had let respectable people oppose slavery while doing nothing about it, and Garrison's insistence on equality went further than most antislavery northerners would go. Unit 09 entry 1256 shows why that mattered. Northern opposition to slavery was mostly not opposition to racial hierarchy, and Garrison attacked both at once.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for History of the United States I