Unit 7: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature
At the same time that women’s limited roles in public society were being challenged through literary production and other forms of activism, Americans in the antebellum period also struggled with the question of slavery. Even as politicians repeatedly attempted to find ways to hide sectional differences and quiet the controversy, the issue of slavery became more and more divisive and eventually became the leading cause of the Civil War. In this last unit, we will focus on anti-slavery literature, looking at some of the founding statements of the Radical Abolitionist Movement as well as some of the most popular texts of the era. At the end of the course, you should be able to trace the ways that literary genres helped their writers craft the uniquely American sensibility that emerged in this period.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 42 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- summarize the ways that Africans resisted slavery, the impact of that resistance, who was involved in anti-slavery movements, and the arguments they used to advance their cause;
- explain how slavery related to ideas of manifest destiny, the Western expansion, and the Mexican-American War;
- define the key abolitionist arguments of Garrison, Walker, and Mott, and distinguish their approaches from one another.
- list the chief features of the slave narrative as a literary genre;
- distinguish similarities and differences between Douglass' and Jacobs' slave narratives, analyzing the roles gender and genre play in those distinctions;
- identify key turning points in Douglass' account of achieving freedom;
- outline the ways that Jacobs appealed specifically to women readers in the North;
- describe Stowe's appeal to her readers in Uncle Tom's Cabin and formulate hypotheses to explain its incredible popularity despite stereotypical representations of women and African Americans; and
- analyze the role of Christianity, motherhood, and racialist representations in the antislavery arguments of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
7.1: Slavery and the Debate over Abolition
Consider these questions as you read this article: In what ways did Africans resist slavery, and what was the impact of this resistance? Who was involved in anti-slavery movements, and how did the sentiment spread? What arguments did anti-slavery movements use to advance their cause?
To better understand abolition, antislavery movements, and the rise of the sectional controversy, read this text, which provides a short overview of abolition with related images from the Library of Congress.
7.2: Manifest Destiny and the Expanding Western Frontier
The mid-nineteenth century was a time of great geographical expansion for the United States. The relocation of Native tribes, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the California Gold Rush, and other events helped define this moment in history. Read this text to see the impact these events had on life, culture, and literature in the United States. Conversations around Manifest Destiny also seemed to hinge on slavery. Would new territories allow slavery or not? Read with this question in mind.
Watch this lecture from on the expansion of the United States and the question of slavery. Take notes while you watch, and think about the effects of these political conversations on the people living in the territories in question.
7.3: Radical Abolition and The Liberator
Read this short introduction to two abolitionist figures, David Walker and William Lloyd Garrison, and the concept of "radical abolitionism".
- In this introduction to the first edition of the antislavery paper he published for more than 30 years, you will encounter Garrison's straightforward and uncompromising statement of aims. Garrison began his antislavery newspaper The Liberator with a fiery introduction in which he stated his unequivocal abolitionist perspective and demanded that he be heard. Walker's text appeared a few years before Garrison began The Liberator and called upon African Americans to resist slavery by any means necessary.
Read these excerpts from David Walker's 1829 "Appeal", a radical document by a free African American living in Boston.
Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880) was a Quaker minister, abolitionist, social reformer, and proponent of women's rights. She is sometimes credited with being the first American feminist, but was more accurately one of the first political advocates for women in the early nineteenth century. During a time when women rarely spoke in public, she became an outspoken orator as an ordained minister for the Quaker Church, and she publicly condemned the horrors of slavery. Read this biographical sketch of her life and fight against slavery. Many women activists fought for both the rights of women and African-Americans at the same time.
7.4: The Slave Narrative
The slave narrative can broadly be defined as any first-person account of the experience of being enslaved. Read this introductory essay on the slave narrative as a literary genre.
Read Douglass' incredibly influential work from 1845, which became a bestseller and provided a textual model for many slave narratives that followed. Take notice specifically about how he comes to literacy and realizes his own self-worth.
Jacobs' 1861 narrative draws on and overturns many of the conventions of domestic sentimentalism embraced by mid-century American women. Read this revisionary account of the life of a slave woman.
7.5: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Read this short introduction to Stowe's bestselling novel to get a sense of its importance during this time.
To learn why it is so influential during this time, read Stowe's novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century, and arguably played a major role in fueling antislavery commitments in the North. Drawing on sentimental tropes and the emotional fervor of nineteenth-century American Protestantism, it combines its antislavery arguments with idealized portraits of motherhood and stereotypes of African-Americans. While it is often lauded for its abolitionist agenda, the stereotypical portrayals of gender and race have cultivated sharp criticism. Ask yourself these questions as you read:
- How does the author portray differences between women and men?
- How is power distributed between genders in this book?
- What role does fate or chance play in the circumstances of the book?
- How does Stowe answer the question of slavery?
- Do you see a link between religion and slavery in this text?
- Can a text be antislavery if its representations of African-Americans are stereotypical?
Unit 7 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.