Dissertation Information for Vivian Elizabeth Sandlund NAME: - Vivian Elizabeth Sandlund
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (1995)
ADVISORS: - Jonathan Prude
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - James L Roark - Patrick N. Allitt
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: "To arouse and awaken the American people": The ideas and strategies of the gradual emancipationists, 1800-1850
Abstract: This dissertation examines the ideas, the efforts, and the impact of early nineteenth-century American social reformers who sought to end slavery gradually. It argues that these reformers pushed an antislavery ethic on a largely indifferent or hostile public, and they passed on their convictions and ideas to the next generation of abolitionists. Though they failed to end slavery as they had hoped, the gradual emancipationists were vital actors and significant contributors to the long abolition struggle.
Each of the chapters in this dissertation profiles an antislavery activist who adopted a different approach to ending slavery. Chapter One profiles the Reverend David Barrow of Virginia and later Kentucky who, in the years between the American Revolution and 1820, fought to persuade his fellow Baptists to renounce slaveholding. Chapter Two profiles Thomas Branagan, a reformed slave trader turned author who wrote against slavery in the years before 1820. He sought to persuade Americans to colonize the black population outside the United States as a step toward ending slavery.
Chapter Three profiles Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker newspaper editor who started the first nationwide antislavery newspaper. Lundy edited his newspaper for eighteen years, from 1821 until 1839. He also advocated political organizing and voting as antislavery strategies. Chapter Four profiles Frances Wright, a Scottish immigrant woman who, in 1825, started an experimental cooperative slave plantation near Memphis, Tennessee, based on the principles of the socialist Robert Owen. Wright aimed to show planters how they could free their slaves gradually and safely, with no danger or loss of profits.
Chapter five profiles Robert Breckinridge, a conservative Kentucky minister who, in the 1830s and 1840s, sought to end slavery through gradual emancipation legislation and also to rid the nation of its black population by colonizing blacks in Africa. Breckinridge combined opposition to slavery with racism, nativism, anti-Catholicism, and conservative politics. The final chapter shows the connections between the gradual emancipationists and the immediate abolitionists, who inherited the tradition of antislavery activism from the gradualists. The immediate abolitionists went on to forge new approaches to challenging human bondage.
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calculated 2008-04-07 11:59:40
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