Library Catalog
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
The Crooked Path to Abolition by
The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes's brilliant history of Lincoln's antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action--in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade--they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King's cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.
Call Number: E449 .O1145 2021
The Slave's Cause by Call Number: E441 .S536 2016
The Long Emancipation by Call Number: E441 .B48 2015
Freedom National by Call Number: E453 .O13 2013
Coming for to Carry Me Home by Call Number: E185.18 .M335 2012
Websites
- Abolition, Anti-Slavery Movements, and the Rise of the Sectional Controversy
From
The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
The Abolitionist Movement. Produced by the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier
Primary Sources
- Slavery and Abolitionist Movement (1790 - 1860)
from Proquest
Online From CCBC Libraries
Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment by Publication Date: 2015
Quakers and Abolition by
This collection of fifteen insightful essays examines the complexity and diversity of Quaker antislavery attitudes across three centuries, from 1658 to 1890. Contributors from a range of disciplines, nations, and faith backgrounds show Quaker's beliefs to be far from monolithic. They often disagreed with one another and the larger antislavery movement about the morality of slaveholding and the best approach to abolition. Not surprisingly, contributors explain, this complicated and evolving antislavery sensibility left behind an equally complicated legacy. While Quaker antislavery was a powerful contemporary influence in both the United States and Europe, present-day scholars pay little substantive attention to the subject. This volume faithfully seeks to correct that oversight, offering accessible yet provocative new insights on a key chapter of religious, political, and cultural history. Contributors include Dee E. Andrews, Kristen Block, Brycchan Carey, Christopher Densmore, Andrew Diemer, J. William Frost, Thomas D. Hamm, Nancy A. Hewitt, Maurice Jackson, Anna Vaughan Kett, Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner, Gary B. Nash, Geoffrey Plank, Ellen M. Ross, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, James Emmett Ryan, and James Walvin.
Publication Date: 2014-04-07
Abolition Movement by Publication Date: 2011
Representations of Slave Women in Discourses on Slavery and Abolition, 1780-1838 by
This booknbsp;analyzes textual representations of Jamaican slave women in three contexts--motherhood, intimate relationships, and work--in both pro- and antislavery writings.nbsp;Altink examines how British abolitionists and pro-slavery activists represented the slave women to their audiences and explains not only the purposes that these representations served, but also their effectsnbsp;on slave women's lives. nbsp;
Publication Date: 2007-06-11
Databases
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Articles and scholarly essays, historical newspaper articles, primary sources, and timelines you can use for African American topics.
- U.S. History This link opens in a new window
Articles, essays, and primary sources on the history of the United States. - ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Baltimore Sun This link opens in a new window
Primary source articles covering the politics, society and events of the time period 1837 - 1992.
