Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses, 1820s–1850s

This is Unit Thirteen, part two, on the reform campaigns themselves — temperance, and then abolition. Part one closed with temperance, and with the anchor's claim that drinking had reached levels never equalled since. Here is what the reformers did about it, and about slavery. Carry one habit of reading. Where a reform movement here does something admirable, look also at what else the same measure does. A temperance statute that reads as moral reform turns out, on inspection, to restrict how poor people buy. And the most respectable of the three organised answers to slavery was a proposal to remove free Black Americans from the country, which enslavers could support and did. By the end you will be able to explain what the fifteen-gallon law actually prohibited. To name the three rival answers to slavery. To explain what made immediatism radical. To state how Congress answered the petitions. And to explain why most northerners opposed abolitionists.

Four entries watching a demand for moderation turn into a demand for abstinence.

The first societies.

USH1 1827 The First Societies

The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance and the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals were both founded in eighteen thirteen, with Protestant ministers leading both, drawing support from Federalists and later from Whigs. These early societies called for moderation and a more restrained and genteel style of imbibing, and not for prohibition.

The man who changed the demand.

USH1 1828 Lyman Beecher

Lyman Beecher delivered six sermons on temperance in eighteen twenty-five, published the following year, urging his readers to abstain totally from hard liquor, with voluntary associations forming to bring forth a new day without spirits. Temperance suited the middle-class ethic of encouraging hard work and a sober workforce, which Unit Nine described.

How far it went.

USH1 1829 Teetotalism

The American Temperance Society formed in eighteen twenty-six, and by the early eighteen thirties thousands of similar societies had appeared across the country, with members pledging at first to avoid hard liquor and nothing more. By eighteen thirty-six most societies advocated total abstinence and no longer tolerated beer or wine. That position is teetotalism.

The working-class movement.

USH1 1830 The Washingtonians

The Washington Temperance Society, organised in eighteen forty and named in deference to George Washington, drew its leaders from the working class, and as many as six hundred thousand had taken the pledge by eighteen forty-four. They dramatised drunkenness as theatre, and Ten Nights in a Bar-Room of eighteen fifty-three became a stage production.

Two entries, and the second is where the reading habit I mentioned gets its first test.

What women brought.

USH1 1831 Women and Temperance

Alcohol abuse by men harmed women and children by misdirecting money needed for the household and through physical and emotional abuse, and women argued that abstinence would improve conditions for women and children alike. This is the first mass political activity open to women in the period, and it trained the organisers who appear in part three.

The laws.

USH1 1832 The Fifteen-Gallon Law

Massachusetts passed a law in eighteen thirty-eight prohibiting liquor sales in quantities under fifteen gallons. It was repealed in eighteen forty, and Massachusetts towns then banned alcohol locally, with close to one hundred going dry by eighteen forty-five. Mississippi enacted a similar law in eighteen thirty-nine outlawing sales of less than a gallon, which shows a northern and a southern state agreeing about alcohol. Maine passed the first statewide prohibition law in eighteen fifty-one. Now read the mechanism, because it is not what it appears. A fifteen-gallon minimum does not prohibit drinking. It prohibits buying in small quantities, which is how poor people buy. A wealthy household could purchase a barrel and a labourer could not. The anchor says the measure was designed to make it difficult for ordinary workmen of modest means to buy spirits. Temperance legislation of this shape is class discipline wearing the clothes of moral reform, and the same movement produced genuine relief for abused women. Both are true.

Three entries on immigration, and all three come with a sourcing caution.

The scale.

USH1 1833 The Scale of Immigration

The witnesses record over five million immigrants arriving in the United States between eighteen twenty and eighteen sixty, against about five thousand a year earlier, with six hundred thousand in the eighteen thirties and two point six million in the eighteen fifties. This entry is witness-sourced. The anchor gives no immigration figures anywhere, and Unit Nine flagged that gap when it arose.

Where they came from.

USH1 1834 The Irish and the Germans

One witness records two hundred fifty thousand Irish arriving between eighteen twenty and eighteen forty, and one point seven million between eighteen forty and eighteen sixty, against the famine of eighteen forty-five to fifty-five, in which two million people left Ireland. Over one point five million Germans arrived in the antebellum era, a figure resting on a single witness and marked as such.

What it did to the cities.

USH1 1835 One in Eight

By the Civil War nearly one in eight Americans had been born abroad, and the Irish made up half of New York and Boston. A separate witness counts one point seven million total immigrants in the eighteen forties. The two witnesses each report one point seven million meaning different things, so each figure keeps its own span and population.

One entry now, and it is the most important in this lecture. Three answers, and they compete.

Three answers to slavery.

USH1 1836 Three Answers to Slavery

Those who opposed slavery divided into three approaches that were rival programmes rather than stages of one movement. The first was colonisation. Reformers unable to envision Black and White Americans coexisting as equals proposed removing free Black people to Africa or the Caribbean, and the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, founded in eighteen sixteen, was endorsed by Thomas Jefferson among other prominent statesmen. It targeted about two hundred thousand free Black Americans, secured one hundred thousand dollars in federal funding in eighteen nineteen, and helped establish Liberia, whose capital was named for President Monroe. The second was resistance by force. David Walker, born free in North Carolina in seventeen ninety-six, moved to Boston and promoted Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper, and his Appeal of eighteen twenty-nine condemned colonisation and called on Black Americans to fight for equality, including by violence if necessary. The third was abolition by moral argument, which the rest of this unit follows. Colonisation is the one to think hardest about, because it was the most respectable of the three and it was not an antislavery position. It could be held by enslavers. It rested on the premise that free Black Americans were a problem to be exported rather than citizens to be admitted, and free Black communities in the North said so at the time and rejected it. That rejection is why Walker's Appeal attacked colonisation before it attacked slaveholders. Walker died months after publishing, and many believe he was murdered.

Three entries on what abolition became after eighteen thirty-one.

Turner, and the reaction.

USH1 1837 Nat Turner and the Reaction

Nat Turner's rising in eighteen thirty-one killed roughly sixty-five people, and Turner evaded capture until late October before being tried, hanged and quartered, with Virginia executing fifty-six others while vigilantes and militias killed two hundred more. Unit Twelve covered the rising itself and the Virginia legislature's debate. This entry covers what it did to the reform movement.

The man who defined abolitionism.

USH1 1838 Garrison and The Liberator

William Lloyd Garrison had supported colonisation and concluded that it deepened racism and perpetuated sin, and he founded The Liberator in eighteen thirty-one, declaring that he would be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. He also promised that he would be heard. He founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and a national one in eighteen thirty-three.

The method.

USH1 1839 Moral Suasion and Immediatism

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, with hundreds of tracts in circulation and hundreds of petitions sent to Congress. 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 Nine showed why that mattered. Northern opposition to slavery was mostly not opposition to racial hierarchy, and Garrison attacked both at once.

Three entries on the answer they got, and it was not an argument.

How Congress answered.

USH1 1840 The Gag Rule

Congress passed a gag rule forbidding any consideration of the hundreds of abolitionist petitions that were arriving from around the country, and anti-abolitionists also sought federal laws to criminalise abolitionist literature in the mails. A legislature suspending the right of petition in order to protect slavery is a constitutional entry as much as a reform one.

The violence.

USH1 1841 The Mobs

Most northerners rejected abolition entirely, and anti-abolitionists saw Garrison and his allies as a direct threat to decency and public order. A Boston mob dragged Garrison through the streets in eighteen thirty-five. An Illinois mob killed the editor Elijah Lovejoy in eighteen thirty-seven, and ten thousand protesters burned Pennsylvania Hall in eighteen thirty-eight.

Why northerners opposed them.

USH1 1842 Why the North Resisted

Northern anti-abolitionists feared that abolition would upend traditional Black and White and gender distinctions, destroying decency and order together, and feared that ending slavery would flood the North with Black workers taking White jobs. This is the same calculation Unit Nine records among northern wage workers, and it is economic as well as racial.

Three entries on the political wing and the movement's most famous voice.

The political wing.

USH1 1843 The Liberty Party

Garrison rejected the political system as slaveholder-controlled, and others disagreed and created the Liberty Party in eighteen forty to work inside it, with James G. Birney, born in Kentucky in seventeen ninety-two, as its first presidential candidate. Birney had been an enslaver who endorsed colonisation, then freed the people he held and demanded immediate abolition instead.

Douglass.

USH1 1844 Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in Maryland in eighteen eighteen, escaped to New York in eighteen thirty-eight, and settled at New Bedford, Massachusetts, publishing his Narrative in eighteen forty-five and naming the White people who had brutalised him. For publishing at all, and for naming them, Douglass fled the country to avoid being murdered.

How he got his freedom back.

USH1 1845 Bought and Returned

British abolitionists purchased Douglass's freedom from his Maryland owner, which let him return to the United States and found his own newspaper, The North Star, published at Rochester, New York, in the burned over district. An abolitionist's liberty secured by purchase recognises the property claim it ends, and Douglass understood that perfectly well.

One entry to close, and it sets up everything part three is about.

The women who organised.

USH1 1846 Women in the Movement

By eighteen thirty-eight women had formed antislavery organisations of their own, among them the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia, against protests of impropriety whenever women addressed audiences of both sexes. Some men refused to support them. White women, Black women and free Black men were all excluded from leadership in the national society.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain what the fifteen-gallon law actually prohibited, which was buying in small quantities, and therefore buying at all if you were poor — the anchor says it was designed to make spirits difficult for workmen of modest means. You can name the three rival answers to slavery: colonisation, resistance by force, and abolition by moral argument. And you can say why colonisation was not an antislavery position, since enslavers could hold it and free Black communities rejected it at the time. You can explain what made immediatism radical beyond ending slavery, which was that Garrison demanded racial equality as well, and most antislavery northerners would not go there. You can state how Congress answered the petitions, by passing a gag rule that suspended their consideration entirely. And you can explain why most northerners opposed abolitionists, which was a fear about order and about competition for jobs.