Abolitionist movement and censorship
The Abolitionist movement in the United States, which spanned from the 1780s to the 1860s, sought to end slavery and promote the idea of equality for all individuals. Emerging initially in the late 18th century, the movement gained momentum as political and social ideologies emphasizing natural rights took root. In response to the growing antislavery sentiment, a proslavery movement also emerged, leading to heightened tensions and significant censorship efforts aimed at suppressing abolitionist voices.
Censorship manifested in various ways, notably through the targeting of abolitionist literature and the suppression of petitions to Congress advocating for the end of slavery. Prominent incidents, such as the violent destruction of abolitionist newspapers and the murder of editor Elijah Lovejoy, highlighted the dangers faced by those who spoke out against slavery. Additionally, legislative measures like the Gag Rule, which prevented the reading of anti-slavery petitions in Congress, showcased institutional attempts to stifle discussions surrounding the issue.
Through these challenges, abolitionists argued that censorship not only impeded their cause but also violated fundamental rights to free speech and expression, positioning the fight against slavery as part of a broader struggle for liberty and justice in America.
Subject Terms
Abolitionist movement and censorship
- DATE: 1780s-1860s
- PLACE: United States
- SIGNIFICANCE: In many parts of the United States opponents of slavery were rigorously censored
In 1619, the first Africans to land in North America were sold into indentured servitude in Virginia. From this beginning, the institution of slavery gradually evolved. As it spread throughout Britain’s American colonies, opponents to the institution began speaking out. In the 1770s, Quakers and others began protesting the system that allowed Christians to hold other human beings in involuntary servitude; those calling for the abolition of slavery became known as abolitionists. The revolutionary ideologies of political philosophers Thomas Paine (1737-1809) and John Locke (1632-1704), emphasizing natural rights, added a philosophical base to abolitionism. At first, slaveholders engaged in discussions about the legitimacy of slavery but found they could not resolve the issues of social control and economics if slavery ended.
After the independent United States arose from the American Revolution (1775-1783), most of the Northern states abolished slavery. However, the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s and the rapidly increasing world demand for cotton fabrics gave Southern slavery a new lease on life and caused White Southerners to view the institution as a necessary evil early in the nineteenth century. The antislavery movement matured, however, and grew more resolute as the concept of slavery, especially in a free country, lost credibility.
During the 1820s, a growing radical segment of U.S. citizens called for slavery’s immediate abolition. This rising antislavery tide caused a corresponding increase in participation in a proslavery movement, which resulted in Southern society’s arguing that slavery was good for American society. Those supporting slavery resorted to legal, extralegal, and illegal approaches to blunt the efforts of the abolitionists. Meanwhile, the slavery issue was a part of a larger discussion on the right of free speech and the rights to liberty of all Americans, especially those opposed to slavery.
Two of the numerous parts of the antislavery movement have a special bearing on questions of censorship. The first part is abolitionist literature, the second petitions sent to the U.S. Congress and congressional reaction to such petitions.
Censorship of Literature
The printed word provided one of the easiest ways for abolitionists to spread news of their activities, and there were several antislavery newspapers. At least two of them attracted enough attention, which resulted in dire consequences. A Southern planter and slaveholder named James G. Birney sold his enslaved people during the early 1830s. After attempting to conduct antislavery work in Alabama and Kentucky, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. There, he established an antislavery paper, the Philanthropist, early in 1836. His paper was short-lived, however. In July, a mob that included Cincinnati’s mayor, a bank president, and a former senator destroyed Birney’s paper. Afterward, Birney tried to establish another antislavery paper in Danville, Kentucky. He was stopped from doing so because it would create an unsafe environment. In a letter to fellow abolitionist Gerrit Smith, Birney concluded that an inextricable link existed between liberty and slavery. Denial of the opportunity to oppose slavery limited the freedom of White individuals.
The year after the Philanthropist’s destruction, an Alton, Illinois, mob that included the town’s leading citizens, murdered Elijah Lovejoy, who edited an antislavery newspaper. William Elery Channing called a protest meeting to be held in Boston. Although many people opposed the rally, for fear of the reaction it might cause, more than five thousand defenders of free speech and abolitionism turned out on December 8, 1837. They heard Wendell Phillips declare that Lovejoy’s murder was censorship that threatened the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press. Phillips charged that a mob had lynched Lovejoy merely for expressing his views on slavery. To Phillips, such actions undermined the nation’s founding principles.
Lovejoy’s martyrdom caused others to rise in defense of free speech and to speak out against this heinous form of censorship. Journalist Horace Greeley expressed his outrage that people could suggest Lovejoy was at fault. In a similar vein, Ralph Waldo Emerson praised Lovejoy in a speech on heroism.
The Gag Rule
Antislavery activists began petition drives to force Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and to restrict its spread into the territories. The first nationwide petition drive began in 1828. By 1836, petitions were arriving in sufficient numbers to disrupt the work of Congress. While there were enough Southern senators to vote to prevent petitions from being read on the floor, supporters of slavery enjoyed no such balance in the House of Representatives. Therefore, the House instituted a Gag Rule ordering petitions relating to slavery to be immediately tabled without being read. Despite opposition from congressmen Joshua Giddings of Ohio, William Slade of Vermont, and former president John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, the rule was reinstated in 1837 and made permanent in 1842. The anti-abolition forces succeeded in having Representative Giddings censured, whereupon he resigned his seat and returned to Ohio to be re-elected. Revocation of the Gag Rule in 1844 vindicated the free-speech congressmen.
John C. Calhoun
A major supporter of slavery, Senator Calhoun of South Carolina argued vehemently for the need to control actions that might undermine the institution. In fact, he demanded that the Northern states support slavery as vigorously as the Southern states were doing—even if they had to restrict First Amendment freedoms as the slaveholding states had already done. Calhoun defended the actions of a mob that had burned allegedly abolitionist literature by the American Anti-Slavery Society that had been found at the Charleston, South Carolina, post office. As a result, Amos Kendall, President Andrew Jackson’s postmaster general, refused to order Southern postmasters to deliver abolitionist literature. Jackson supported Kendall, going so far as to ask—without success—for a law prohibiting the circulation of incendiary literature in the South. Calhoun called for a similar law.
While most censorship of abolitionist literature occurred in the Southern states, the Reverend Leonard Bacon issued the Connecticut Gag Law, which denied abolitionists the opportunity to use Congregational churches for their meetings. This law was adopted in other Northern states, thus limiting the places where abolitionists could hold their meetings.
Several Southern states passed laws censoring abolitionists following the incident in Charleston. Maryland made it a “high offense” to write or circulate literature that might cause discontent among enslaved individuals, with penalties of up to twenty years in prison. South Carolina made it a crime to subscribe to antislavery literature, while Arkansas specified prison terms for anyone speaking against slavery. The legislatures of Alabama, North and South Carolina, and Georgia called upon Northern states to outlaw the publication of abolitionist literature. Abolitionists used these and similar actions to gain support for their position, arguing that such attacks undermined basic democratic principles. Abolitionists kept reminding Americans that slavery was only one part of the general issue of freedom and liberty for all Americans.
Bibliography
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Duberman, Martin. The Antislavery Vanguard. Princeton UP, 1965.
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