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Aside from the large number of blacks that died during the Civil War, blacks freed themselves by placing pressure on whites to do so.
How Blacks Freed Themselves from Slavery
Who should get the most credit for ending slavery in America and Great Britain? A landmark new book argues that blacks did far more for their own emancipation than previously appreciated.
Eric Herschthal
Jul. 12, 2017
Until the 1830s, free blacks were barred from most abolitionist societies. But that has not stopped Davis from emphasizing their centrality to the abolition movement, beginning when it got off the ground in the 1780s. Free blacks combated claims of their inferiority when they became eloquent spokespeople for themselves, as in the case of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry from the revolutionary era.
In 1804, enslaved Haitians succeeded in beating back the French, British, and Spanish empires to establish the world’s first black republic. Haiti’s existence represents “the turning point” for the antislavery movement, Davis writes, raising the previously unthinkable prospect of immediate emancipation into a full-fledged reality. Until Haiti, abolitionists focused on either gradual emancipation, or simply ending the slave trade, not slavery itself. Haiti changed that. In the short term, however, the Haitian Revolution actually slowed the official antislavery campaign. And slavery’s defenders quickly turned Haiti into an axe to bludgeon the abolitionist movement: give slaves even the slightest bit of hope, and they’ll insist on immediate freedom.
So white Americans came up with an alternative: colonization. Davis argues that the “bloodstained ghost” of Haiti—combined with a virulent racism comparatively absent in Britain—led America’s white abolitionists to favor returning slaves to Africa rather than setting them free and having them live as equals among whites. To make that idea a reality, the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 by a coalition of white abolitionists and Southern slave-owners, created Liberia in 1822. Northern abolitionists and Southern slave-owners may have disagreed over the morality of slavery, but what united them, Davis argues, is racism.
The problem was that blacks did not want to go. The “militant reaction against colonization, initiated by blacks themselves,” Davis writes, “gave a distinctive stamp to American abolitionism.” Initially, however, some free blacks were open to the idea, in part because they thought another black republic might bring dignity to their race, and in part because they knew racism in America was only getting worse. But the scene Davis paints from a free black Philadelphia church in 1817 says it all. When James Forten, one of the city’s most prominent free blacks, put up a vote of “ayes” for those in favor of colonization, he was stunned when “there was not a soul in favor of going to Africa,” as Forten wrote.
By the 1830s, it became clear that colonization was not a viable solution. If slavery was going to end, free blacks insisted that whites accept them as equal citizens—and end slavery immediately. The white abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison is often remembered as the most vocal proponent of immediate emancipation, but Davis reorients readers to his black backers. It was Forten’s financial support that kept Garrison’s radical abolitionist paper, The Liberator, afloat, for instance. More significantly, slave rebellions both within and beyond America’s borders, coupled with slaves’ persistent attempts to runaway, hastened the calls for immediate emancipation.
But free black Americans like Frederick Douglass ultimately forced immediate emancipation to become the only real option.
How Blacks Freed Themselves from Slavery
How Blacks Freed Themselves from Slavery
Who should get the most credit for ending slavery in America and Great Britain? A landmark new book argues that blacks did far more for their own emancipation than previously appreciated.
Eric Herschthal
Jul. 12, 2017
Until the 1830s, free blacks were barred from most abolitionist societies. But that has not stopped Davis from emphasizing their centrality to the abolition movement, beginning when it got off the ground in the 1780s. Free blacks combated claims of their inferiority when they became eloquent spokespeople for themselves, as in the case of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry from the revolutionary era.
In 1804, enslaved Haitians succeeded in beating back the French, British, and Spanish empires to establish the world’s first black republic. Haiti’s existence represents “the turning point” for the antislavery movement, Davis writes, raising the previously unthinkable prospect of immediate emancipation into a full-fledged reality. Until Haiti, abolitionists focused on either gradual emancipation, or simply ending the slave trade, not slavery itself. Haiti changed that. In the short term, however, the Haitian Revolution actually slowed the official antislavery campaign. And slavery’s defenders quickly turned Haiti into an axe to bludgeon the abolitionist movement: give slaves even the slightest bit of hope, and they’ll insist on immediate freedom.
So white Americans came up with an alternative: colonization. Davis argues that the “bloodstained ghost” of Haiti—combined with a virulent racism comparatively absent in Britain—led America’s white abolitionists to favor returning slaves to Africa rather than setting them free and having them live as equals among whites. To make that idea a reality, the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 by a coalition of white abolitionists and Southern slave-owners, created Liberia in 1822. Northern abolitionists and Southern slave-owners may have disagreed over the morality of slavery, but what united them, Davis argues, is racism.
The problem was that blacks did not want to go. The “militant reaction against colonization, initiated by blacks themselves,” Davis writes, “gave a distinctive stamp to American abolitionism.” Initially, however, some free blacks were open to the idea, in part because they thought another black republic might bring dignity to their race, and in part because they knew racism in America was only getting worse. But the scene Davis paints from a free black Philadelphia church in 1817 says it all. When James Forten, one of the city’s most prominent free blacks, put up a vote of “ayes” for those in favor of colonization, he was stunned when “there was not a soul in favor of going to Africa,” as Forten wrote.
By the 1830s, it became clear that colonization was not a viable solution. If slavery was going to end, free blacks insisted that whites accept them as equal citizens—and end slavery immediately. The white abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison is often remembered as the most vocal proponent of immediate emancipation, but Davis reorients readers to his black backers. It was Forten’s financial support that kept Garrison’s radical abolitionist paper, The Liberator, afloat, for instance. More significantly, slave rebellions both within and beyond America’s borders, coupled with slaves’ persistent attempts to runaway, hastened the calls for immediate emancipation.
But free black Americans like Frederick Douglass ultimately forced immediate emancipation to become the only real option.
How Blacks Freed Themselves from Slavery
