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| Austin Stewart (1793-1860) | ||
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For excerpts from Twenty-Two
Years a Slave, see: Picture credit: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASsteward.htm
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| William Still (1821-1902) | ||
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For additional biographical information and picture credit, see: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASstill.htm
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| Jacob Stroyer | ||
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Born on a slave plantation near Columbia, S.C., in 1849, one of 15 children, Stroyer later became an African Methodist Episcopal minister in Salem, Mass. His 1898 autobiography, My Life in the South, provides vivid descriptions of childhood under slavery. For excerpts from My Life in
the South, see:
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| Charles Sumner (1811-1874) | ||
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On May 21, Senator Butler's nephew, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, entered a nearly empty Senate chamber, convinced that he had a duty to "avenge the insult to my State." Sighting Sumner at his desk, Brooks struck him with his cane. He swung so hard that the cane broke into pieces. Brooks caned Sumner rather than challenging him to a duel because he wanted to use the same method slaveholders used to chastise slaves. Brooks left Sumner "as senseless as a corpse for several minutes, his head bleeding copiously from the frightful wounds, and the blood saturating his clothes." It took Sumner three years to recover from his injuries and return to his Senate seat. In the South, Brooks became an instant hero. Merchants in Charleston, S.C. bought him a new cane inscribed "Hit him again." A vote to expel Brooks from the House of Representatives failed because every southern representative but one voted against expulsion. Instead, Brooks was censured. He resigned his seat and was immediately reelected to Congress. In the North, Sumner was regarded as a martyr to the cause of freedom. A million copies of his "Crime Against Kansas" speech were distributed. A young Massachusetts woman summed up popular feeling in the North, condemning Brook's assault with these words: "If I had been there I would have torn his eyes out and so I would now if I could." Picture credit: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASsumner.htm
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| Arthur Tappan (1786-1865) and Lewis Tappan (1788-1863) | ||
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Founders of the country's first commercial credit-ranking service (which would eventually become Dun & Bradstreet), these brothers were born in Northampton, Mass., and, after moving to New York and becoming successful in the silk-importing trade, became important financial backers for the abolitionist campaign. Lewis played an important behind-the-scenes roles in defending the Amistad captives. In 1840, they broke away from the American Anti-Slavery Society, in part over women's right to participate in the administration of the organization and the advisability of nominating abolitionists as independent political candidates, and help establish the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Strong supporters of political efforts to end slavery, they were among the founders of the Liberty Party.
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| Harriet Tubman (1820?-1913) | ||
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| Nat Turner (1800-1831) | ||
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On Aug. 22, 1831, Turner, a trusted Baptist preacher, led a slave insurrection in Southampton County in southern Virginia, in which some 60 to 80 slaves killed some 60 whites, more than half women and children. Turner was not captured until Oct. 31. Turner had experienced religious visions and in 1828 became convinced that he was to lead a war against evil when the proper signs appeared. After his capture, he was asked whether he was mistaken in thinking that he was charged with the holy mission of fighting against the Devil. He replied: "Was not Christ crucified?"
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| Bethany Veney | ||
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For excerpts from her autobiography,
see: Picture credit: |
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| David Walker (1785-1830) | ||
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A free black born in Wilmington, North Carolina, wrote one of America¹s most radical and incendiary assessments of racial prejudice of the early nineteenth century, His Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World challenged Walker's "afflicted and slumbering brethren" to overthrow slavey. A second-hand clothing dealer in Boston, he circulated his Appeal among black seamen who carried the document into southern ports.
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| Theodore Weld (1803-1895) | ||
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Picture credit: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASweld.htm
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| Fanny Wright (1795-1852) | ||
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| Zamba Zembola | ||
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Author of the 1847 slave narrative The Life and Adventures of Zamba, an African King, which describes his kidnapping and 40 years of labor on a slave plantation.
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The Abolitionists
A leading
figure in the Underground Railroad, who helped 649 fugitives
escape slavery, he led a post Civil War campaign to end discrimination
on Philadelphia's streetcars.
On May
19, 1856, Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts began a two-day
speech in which he denounced "The Crime Against Kansas."
In his speech, Sumner, charged that there was a southern conspiracy
to make Kansas a slave state: "It is the rape of a virgin
territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery."
Sumner proceeded to argue that a number of southern senators,
including Andrew Butler of South Carolina, stood behind the conspiracy.
Launching into a bitter personal diatribe, Sumner accused Butler
of taking "the harlot, Slavery," for his mistress and
then made fun of a medical disorder Butler had. At the rear of
the Senate chamber, Stephen Douglass muttered: "That damn
fool will get himself killed by some other damned fool."
Arthur
Tappan 
Lewis Tappan
The
"Black Moses," Tubman escaped from slavery in Maryland
in 1848 and free more than 300 slaves during 19 secret trips
into the South. During the Civil War, she served as a nurse and
scout for the Union army.
The
Virginia-born slave was author of an 1889 autobiography, A
Slave Woman.
In 1834,
Weld, a 31 year old student at Lane theological seminary in Cincinnati,
led 18 days of intense discussion on slavery and convinced his
fellow students to set up schools in Cincinnati's African American
ghetto. Lane's president Lyman Beecher (father of Harriet Beecher
Stowe) and the board of trustees expelled the antislavery students,
many of whom subsequently became agents for the American Anti-Slavery
Society. His 1839 volume Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand
Witnesses documented the horrors of slavery.
The
Scottish-born reformer and lecturer received the nickname "The
Great Red Harlot of Infidelity" because of her radical ideals
about birth control, liberalized divorce laws, and legal rights
for married women. The currents of radical antislavery thought
inspired her to found Nashoba Colony in 1826 near Memphis as
an experiment in interracial living. She established a racially-integrated
cooperative community in which slaves were to receive an education
and earn enough money to purchase their freedom. Unfortunately,
publicity about her desire to abolish the nuclear family, religion,
private property, and slavery created a furor and the community
dissolved after only four years.