Social Studies Chapter 12

1. Social Studies Chapter 12 Lesson 2: The Struggle for Freedom

2. The Antislavery Movement • People could not agree about the issue of slavery. • Some felt that slavery was needed to grow cash crops such as cotton and tobacco. • Other people felt it was wrong to enslave people • Some slaves had to wear tags that told where they lived and what they did.

3. someone who joined the movement to abolish, or end, slavery. • Many of these people became abolitionists. • An abolitionist is • Most abolitionists believed slavery went against the ideas of Christianity. • Abolitionists included people in the North and South, whites and free blacks, men and women. • Abolitionists wrote pamphlets and traveled across the country, speaking against slavery. • The abolitionist movement grew quickly in the 1830’s and 1840’s.

4. Leading Abolitionists • In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began printing an antislavery newspaper called The Liberator. • In this newspaper, he demanded that all enslaved people be free.

5. Leading Abolitionists • Fredrick Douglas, an escaped slave, was a well-known abolitionist. • He was a writer and often spoke to white audiences about slavery • He once told one audience, “I can tell you what I have seen with my own eyes, felt on my own person, and know to have occurred in my own neighborhood”.

6. Leading Abolitionists • Sojourner Truth was another abolitionists that had also been a slave. • She spoke in favor of abolition and women’s rights • Sisters, Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké were daughters of a slaveowner in South Carolina. • As adults, the sisters moved north and spoke out against slavery.

7. Free Blacks • By1860, about 500,000 free blacks lived in the United States. • About half lived in the North and half lived in the South. • Free blacks in the South often faced discrimination. • Discrimination is • Examples of how state laws limited the rights of free blacks: • They could not travel without permission • They could not meet in groups without a white person present the unfair treatment of particular groups of people.

8. Free Blacks • Although free blacks living in the North also faced some discrimination; • They could travel freely • Organize groups • Publish newspapers • These rights made it possible for free blacks in the North to work openly against slavery. • Free blacks and whites worked together and created the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. They called for the immediate end of slavery. • The newspaper, The Liberator, received most of its money from free blacks.

9. The Underground Railroad series of escape routes and hiding places to bring slaves out of the South. • The Underground Railroad was a • Some abolitionists worked in secret to help slaves escape to freedom using the Underground Railroad. • Runaways, the people who fled slavery, could head for the North and Canada, or could go south to Florida or the Caribbean. • Escaping took great courage; if the runaways where caught, they would be punished and returned to slavery.

11. Stations and Conductors • Free blacks gave most of the money and did most of the work to support the Underground Railroad. • Members of the Railroad gave food, clothing, and medical aid to the runaways. • They hid them until it was safe to move on. • Hiding places were known as ‘stations’. • ‘Conductors’ were people who guided runaways on to the next station.

12. The most famous conductor was Harriet Tubman who escaped from slavery in Maryland. • She returned 19 times to lead others to freedom. • She helped about 300 people to freedom. • She became a symbol of the abolitionist movement.