JOURNEY THROUGH SLAVERY PART 4

               In 1830, Pierce Butler became the heir of an inheritance in Butler Island. Butler married a woman by the name of Fanny Kemble and she was an abolitionist. His family was rich due to slave labor. It would not be as a surprise because slavery became a billion dollar industry and it was one of the biggest forms of investments. Both the North and South depended on the usage of slaves to cultivate cotton and send it to textiles in the North.

               David Walker was never a slave, however, he became an abolitionist and published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Walker discusses black unity in order to rise up against masters and eliminate racial bondage. On the other hand William Lloyd Garrison published a newspaper called The Liberator. Garrison was one of the few white abolitionists and his paper became the voice of the abolitionist movement. Unlike Walker, Garrison talks about moral persuasion. He believed that through moral persuasion, slave owners would realize how wrong slavery is. Living in the North also caused tensions for free blacks. The African community was not allowed to become a church member or vote.

               Many southerners feared the elimination of slavery because it would eventually lead to a civil war and there would be multitudes of uneducated and uncivilized blacks living freely among whites. As part of the abolitionist movement, women also started to speak out in public and it definitely demonstrated a threat to the social order.

               By 1838, an increasing number of slaves continued to flee to the North and the Fugitive Slave Act continued to be enforced and one hundred lashes was the punishment. However, in the North, there was no physical bondage but there was segregated freedom. Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass became leaders of the abolitionist movement and in Douglass' newspaper, The North Star, he discusses the fight for the emancipation of both women and blacks.

Primary source: An excerpt from The Liberator/ letter to the public


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