The anti-slavery sentiment and the movement aimed against the existence of the institution of slavery followed and in many cases coincided with, or were affected by, those against the slave trade from early colonial duties and taxes to steps for repression and emancipation. Promoted by the same, though a more limited and some times excitable public, including distinguished statesmen, authors, humanitarians, and sectari ans, the movement originated and first rose to importance in North America and England. Eighteenth-century Christian sentiment, particu larly among Friends, encouraged customary and legal manumission and the mitigation of slave codes. Justice Lord Mansfield's decision in 1772 freed slaves, like the negro Sommerset, brought to the soil of Great Britain. English emancipation societies arose in 1783, and French in 1788. Slaveholders like Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and Madison, and other statesmen, such as Franklin, Hamilton, and Adams, condemned slavery in principle, and emancipation was accomplished or in progress in every Northern State except New Jersey by 1799. Jefferson proposed in 1784 to prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territory, and he also advocated emancipation for Virginia in 1779. Tucker prepared another Virginia emancipa tion plan in 1796, New Jersey emancipated her slaves in 1804, and Congress limited the slave trade in Louisiana. The movement in its first stage rested chiefly on a moral or an economic basis, but soon became political. American anti-slavery organizations began from Pennsylvania petitioning Congress for Federal interference with slavery. Congress denied its constitutional competency to regulate the do mestic institution beyond the slave trade: but petitions continued, and the sentiment of the North and South, united in the Ordinance of 1787 (see NORTHWEST TERRITORY) , but divided in the Constitutional Convention, was increas ingly committed, respectively, to an anti-slavery and a pro-slavery programme. A movement toward united sentiment and national organiza tion to solve the slavery and free negro questions by emancipation and colonization took tangible shape in the American Colonization Society, 1816, and its affiliated State societies. (See COLONIZATION SOCIETY.) Though patronized by statesmen and divines, such as Madison, Harper, and Breckenridge, by many slaveholders, and by the Federal Government, this movement, which resulted in the establishment of a negro colony in Liberia, was viewed by extreme anti-slavery men as a pro-slavery reaction.
From ISIS to 1820 political anti-slavery senti ment became more prominent, opposing particu larly slavery extension. Dissatisfaction in the North with the :Missouri Compromise (q.v.) laid the basis of abolitionism. William Goodell with his Invesagator in Rhode Island. and Benjamin Lundy (q.v.) with his Genius of Universal Emancipation, established in 1821. began an anti-slavery press, while Lundy went on lecture tours, and endeavored to find a slave asylum in Texas and Mexico. .John Rankin formed an abolition society in Kentucky, and William Lloyd Garrison (q.v.), supported by Arthur and Lewis Tappan, established the Liberator at Boston in 1831. The era of expansion and reformation, mechanical, moral, and political, then beginning, favored the in creasing anti-slavery societies and press, such as Griswold and Leavitt's Neu; York Evangelist and Goodell's Genius of Temperance (1830) and Emancipator (1833), the New England Anti Slavery Society, founded in 1S32, and the New York City and the American anti-slavery societies, founded in 1833. The last resulted from a Na tional Convention in Philadelphia representing every Northern State. These agen cies distributed broadcast tracts,books. pamphlets, and business labels denouncing slavery. The abo litionists denounced slavery and slaveholding as crimes, demanded immediate and unconditional abolition without compensation, encouraged breach of slave laws and unconstitutional meas ures, and affirmed natural equality of persons. Garrison, Lovejoy, Phillips, Gerrit Smith, John Brown. Hutchinson, Storrs, and Birnev became leaders. Charming, Emerson, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell, and Longfellow gave literary and moral support to reasonable anti-slavery methods, but less conservative men in border free States ma nipulated an 'underground railway' to Canada for fugitive slaves. (See UNDERGROUND RAIL WAY.) John Quincy Adams and others fought for the right of petition concerning slavery and constitutional abolition. Southern apolo gists. such as Dew, Dabney, Smith, and Fitzhugh, answered the polemics culminating in Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852, a protest against the Fugitive Slave Law; and the paper war raged till Lincoln's election assured the anti slavery victory and made actual war inevitable. President Lincoln issued his famous emancipa tion proclamations on September 22, 1S62, and January 1, 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) practically and legally secured the suc cess of the abolitionists by Federal abolition.
Great Britain, where Clarkson and 'Wilber force had been the most prominent leaders in the anti-slavery movement, pursued a less radical method of abolition, providing by law in 1833 for future and progressive emancipation in her \Vest Indian colonies and compensating slave holders by purchase and an apprenticeship sub sequently limited to 1839. In 1843 she abol ished slavery in India. Sweden followed with colonial abolition in 1846; France in 1848; Hol land in 1859; Brazil with progressive emancipa tion in 1871, and total emancipation in 1888; Spain in Porto Rico in 1873, and in Cuba in 1880; Great Britain and Germany in their African protectorates in 1897 and 1901 ; the United States in the Philippines in 1902; and Egypt in the Sudan. The South American re publics abolished slavery when they emancipated themselves from the yoke of Spain.
Mohammedan countries have been the last to feel this influence, and slavery exists in Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Zanzibar, Pemba, Tripoli, Moroc co. and Central Africa, but in almost all steps favoring liberty or mitigation of status have been taken. Of 100.000 slaves in Zanzibar and Pemba in 1897 half that number were freed by 1903.
Slavery was chiefly a moral and economic ques tion in the American colonies. but it appeared as a political one during the Confederation, particu larly in the debates of the constitutional and ratifying conventions, when the question of sub mitting it and other States' rights to Federal initiative arose. The dictum of natural equality and inalienable rights in the Declaration of In dependence. even when reappearing in bills of rights, could not be practically applied except in limited cases, as by George NVythe in Virginia, to the liberation of slaves, But Northern eman cipation provisions showed that the economic and social basis in the North was to be increasingly laid in free labor and a farm system contrasting with the slavery and plantation system of the South. Economic and social sectionalism in the
colonial period rapidly became political in the federal. From 1787 Mason and Dixon's Line (q.v.) had political significance; slavery as one of the basal elements of the difference of sec tional interests and sentiment rose from a local State question into the most important and permanent in national polities. Controlling con ditions were: (1) Increasing sectionalism from localization of industrialism in the North; (2) constitutional compromise provisions granting Federal legislation in regard to the slave trade and fugitive slaves, and representation for slaves on the three-fifths basis; (3) a Federal domain increasing by cession, purchase, treaty, and conquest and subject to Federal organiza tion and representation in Congress: (4) the growth of political parties opposed as to con stitutional construction ; ( 5 ) sectionalized anti slavery sentiment, and (6) development and ex pansion of Southern staples adapted to slave labor. especially cotton after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The Constitution purposely avoided the use of the terms 'slave' and 'slavery,' yet the bargain of South Carolina and Georgia with commercial New England riveted upon it recognition of the institution. Slavery had thus two connected phases: (1) As to its existence in the States, a State right, a local question, in volved in national polities in the general States' rights struggle; (2) as to its existence and ex tension in Federal territory, a national question, constitutionally subject. to Federal legislation. Na tional expansion necessarily brought it into poli ties. Support of members from the slave States in Congress secured the ordinances of 1784 and 1787, prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Ter ritory and preparing the way for new free States. In 1793 Congress passed almost unani mously a fugitive slave law to secure owners in their property. (See FUGITIVE SLAVE Law.) The bill abolishing the slave trade renewed sectional debate and showed predominant anti slavery sentiment in the North. Between 1803 and 1817 four States, two free (Ohio and Indi ana) and two slave (Louisiana and Mississippi), were admitted iuto the Union, and the theory of balance of power between slave and free States was established. But the further organization of the Louisiana territory in 1818-20 drew the issue sharply on slavery extension. Only tem porary political adjustment of slavery followed the Missouri Compromise (q.v.) prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30' N. latitude, except in Missouri. From 1820 to 1830 tariff and public land policy were, together with slavery, the is sues conditioning the life and expansion of the Southern and Northern economic systems. Non extension was interpreted as eventual extinction of slavery. Discussion of tariff bills in 1824 and 1828, dogmas of nullification. State rights, and abolition, and the Hayne-Webster debate of 1830, greatly increased the importance of slavery in sectional polities and made it the leading ques tion after the tariff compromise of 1833. Anti-slavery men who believed in attaining their ends through constitutional methods and aboli tionists organized the Liberty Party (q.v.). and twice in 1840 and 1844, nominated J. G. Birney (q.v.) for President. The annexation of Texas in 1845, and the Mexican War in 1846-48. were pro-slavery victories, the latter adding territory from which the unsuccessful Wilmot Proviso (q.v.) failed to exclude slavery. There now arose over the question of slavery a controversy destined to split both Whigs and Democrats, to bring about new party alignments. and eventually to hasten, if not cause, a great civil conflict be tween the North and the South. By 1848 Oregon (q.v.) was organized without slavery, and the Free Soilers, who strove for the exclusion of slavery from the Territories (see FREE SOIL PARTY; TERRITORIES) . had taken the place of the Liberty Party. The anti-slavery cause won in the Compromise of 1850 in free California, and slave trade prohibition in the Dis trict of Columbia, but lost in a fugitive slave law federally executed. (See COMPROMISE MEASURE OF 1850.) Douglas's mistake in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and his sub stitution for the arrangement then effected of `squatter sovereignty' by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (q.v.) in 1854, precipitated a sectional struggle for possession of Territories by coloni zation and border warfare. (See KANSAS.) The free-State settlers practically- won in 1857, and the Republican Party. absorbing Anti-Nebras kans. Free Soilers, Abolitionists, and Anti-slav ery Whigs and Democrats, completed the victory, though the Dred Scott decision opened the Ter ritories to slavery. Cuban annexation, which had been a pro-slavery policy since 1841, was defeated in 1859, and Lincoln's election fol lowing the John Brown raid of 1859 was the signal for the secession, 1860-61, of a South jealous of her State rights, and resentful of interference in slavery. Congressional sets in 1862 and Lincoln's emancipation proclamation in 1863 (a war measure), and the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, legally destroyed the institu tion of slavery, while the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave freedmen full civil rights. Con sult: Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (New York, 1853) ; Hurd, Late of Freedom and Bond age in the United States (Boston, 1S58-1862) ; Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (ib., 1872-79) ; Wallon, Histoire de Pesclavage (1879) ; Richter. Die Sklaverei inn. griechischen Altertume (1886) ; Ingram, History of Slavery (London, 1895) ; Dn Bois, Suppression of the African Slave Trade io the United States (New York, 1896) ; Documents relatifs a la repression do la trait des eselaves (Bruxelles, 1901) Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 11th, 13th, 14th, 17th series, and extra volumes (Baltimore, 1889 1902) ; Tillinghast, The Negro in. America and Africa (New York. 1902) : Ballagh, A History of Slavery in l'irginia (Baltimore, 1902) ; Von Hoist, Constitutional and Political History of the United States (8 vols., new ed., Chicago, 1S89), which gives an excellent account of the history of the slavery question in American politics; W. H. Smith, .4 Political History of Slavery (2 vols., New York, 1903) ; Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom (2 vols., New York. 1861) ; and id., Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York, 1856), which give an interesting account of slav ery in the Southern States.