Frederick Gaertner's Blog (29)

Though many slaves had been declared free by President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, their post-war status was uncertain. During the war, it applied only to the states that were in active rebellion on January 1, 1863, but did not apply to slave-holding border states or to areas of Confederate states already under Union control at the time. Lincoln and his fellow Republicans knew that the Emancipation Proclamation might be viewed as a temporary war measure and not outlaw…

So, what changed Abraham Lincoln from an antislavery moderate to the Great Emancipator?

Lincoln was a complicated figure whose views on slavery, race equality, and African American colonization are often intermixed. There is no doubt that he hated the institution of slavery. However, he was no abolitionist. Lincoln initially recognized that slavery was a bad institution but one that was accepted and necessary for the South's economy. Lincoln had campaigned against the expansion of…

Though there had been voices clamoring for the rights of African Americans to represent the United States in the Army since the beginning of the Civil War, the door was never really open until Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Soon, the United States Army began to organize African Americans into regimental units known as the United States Colored Troops (USCT).

Even before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the first regiment to become a…

During the 1860 presidential election, the divisions between the North and the South became fully exposed. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, won with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of electoral votes. However, he did not appear on the ballots of ten southern states, thus his election necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. http://bit.ly/1RDQVq5

The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, but a system of loosely connected safe havens where those escaping the brutal conditions of slavery were sheltered, fed, clothed, nursed, concealed, disguised, and instructed during their journey to freedom. http://bit.ly/1MTLth1

Officially titled "An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas," the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by mandating “popular sovereignty” – which allowed the settlers of a federal territory to decide the slavery question without interference from Congress. http://bit.ly/1KOKtbj

Frederick Douglass was the best known and most influential African American leader of the 1800s. He was born a slave in Maryland but managed to escape to the North in 1838. Fearing capture and re-enslavement, Douglass went to England and continued speaking out against slavery. He eventually raised enough money to buy his freedom and returned to America. He settled in Rochester, New York in 1847 and began to champion equality and freedom for slaves in earnest.…

What was the Fugitive Slave Act? Find out how it made abolitionists all the more resolved to put an end to slavery. http://bit.ly/1FLQXFJ

How did the American Anti-Slavery Society deal with the issue of slavery? http://bit.ly/1g6iYAR

What was the Missouri Compromise? How did it keep slavery in check? http://bit.ly/1JIGlYG

The history of the country we now know as Liberia began in the 1800s, when abolitionists and slaveholders discussed the idea of setting up a colony in Africa for freed African-American slaves. To this end, the American Colonization Society was founded in 1816.

Through fundraisers, the Society managed to fund the enterprise and on February 6, 1820, the “Mayflower of Liberia” (formerly “Elizabeth”), departed New York for West Africa with eighty-eight free black emigrants and three white…

Who were the people behind the controversial American Colonization Society? Here’s a look at some of their notable members.

• John Randolph (1773 – 1833) – a planter, and a Congressman from Virginia, serving in the House of Representatives at various times between 1799 and 1833, the Senate (1825–1827), and also as Minister to Russia (1830).

• Henry Clay, Sr. (1777 – 1852) – an American lawyer, politician, and skilled orator who…

“The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America” or “The American Colonization Society (ACS)” for short, was founded in 1816 to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. The Society was formed in an attempt to satisfy two groups. The first group was made up of philanthropists, clergy and abolitionists who wanted to free African slaves and their descendants and provide them with the opportunity to return to Africa.…

When the United States of America and the United Kingdom fought during the War of 1812, a large number of enslaved Africans (well over 4,000) managed to escape American slavery and find eventual freedom. Slaves from places such as the Georgia and the Chesapeake Bay coastal regions of Maryland and Virginia escaped on Royal Navy ships that were part of the blockade along the American coast. These freed slaves became known as the Black Refugees. - See more at:…

The African Free School was founded on November 2, 1787 to serve New York’s growing population of free people of color, as well as the children of slaves. Founded and supported by the New York Manumission Society, the school opened in a private home on Cliff Street with forty-seven students. Classes focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic, with boys receiving further instruction in cartography and navigation and girls in needlework. - See more at:…

One of the founding fathers of our country, John Jay, founded “The New York Society for the Manumission of Slaves and the Protection of such of them as had been or wanted to be Liberated” or the New York Manumission Society, in 1785. Jay also served as its first president. The Society was made up of some of New York’s most wealthy and influential white citizens, who protested the widespread practice of kidnapping black New Yorkers (both slave and free) and selling them as slaves elsewhere. -…

The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was founded on April 14, 1775 at the Rising Sun Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the “Society for the Relief for Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage.” Seventeen of the 24 men who attended initial meetings of the Society were Quakers, or members of the Religious Society of Friends, and Thomas Paine and Anthony Benezet were among its founders. Benezet, who was a leading Quaker educator, called the society together two years after he persuaded the…

Guess who were the first people on US soil to denounce slavery? If you read the title you probably know the answer already. That’s right, the Quakers. Since its founding in England during the 1640s, the sect, formally called the Religious Society of Friends, has championed equal rights for women and for religious and racial minorities in both England and the United States. - See more at:…

Who do you think are the most influential American abolitionists? Well, here’s a look at five individuals who helped pushed for the end of slavery. I’m sure these are familiar names. Thomas Jefferson (1706-1790) – The 3rd president of the United States was a slave owner himself; however, it is widely held that he was opposed to the institution of slavery on both moral and practical grounds. In 1784, Jefferson proposed to the United States Congress legislation that slavery should be banned in…

Abolitionism was a historical movement that sought the immediate emancipation of all enslaved people. The origins of abolitionism in what would become the United States of America started way back on February 18, 1688, when the Mennonites of Germantown, Pennsylvania held their monthly meeting and draft a set of resolutions in opposition to slavery, which they call “the traffic of men-body.” Soon after, in April 1688, German and Dutch Quakers in the same town wrote a two-page condemnation of…