This book raises even more questions than it answers about the interconnectedness of the international
antislavery movement and the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century labor systems were transformed to adapt to antislavery laws.
A 15-page overview of the American
antislavery movement and editorial headnotes for each individual selection help make such a large volume accessible to students and non-specialists.
Contemporaries and historians alike have frequently presented him as a selfish, insincere politician who used the
antislavery movement for his own advancement.
There's a lot going on here: the Wiccans and their celebrations and bonfires; the pro-war/anti war groups; the nasty longtime super-religious neighbors; the history of the families and their connection with the ante bellum
antislavery movement. There is a love story between Lara and the son of neighbors, the strange Schapens; and there are homosexual liaisons: a Schapen son and his friend; the lesbian relationships of the head Wiccan.
Angelina Grimke led women in the
antislavery movement to claim equal participation in American public life--as public speakers and movement leaders.
The chapters treat the African background and its influence on the rise of the church, early attractions to Christianity up to 1750, the rise of the earliest black congregations (1750-1800), the internal nature and trends of the churches to 1900, the spread of black congregations (1801-1840), the continued expansion of black Christianity (especially in relation to denominations, the role of the black church in social and political issues such as the
antislavery movement), and the role of black churches in establishing and supporting schools and churches in the post-Civil War period.
From Salem, Massachusetts, to Prairieville, Wisconsin, these Female Anti-Slavery Societies (FASS) agitated for freedom, wrote petitions to Congress, wrestled with internal divisions of race and religion, and "did the vast majority of the fund-raising" for the
antislavery movement (159).
In the three scenes in which he appears, Albert Finney is mesmerizing as the remorseful former slave trader and Wilberforce adviser John Newton, while Michael Gambon gets the bulk of pic's few lighter lines as Lord Charles Fox, whose dramatic defection to the
antislavery movement is seen to break up the logjam within Parliament.
The current bumper crop of books about the topic will only increase as the Anglo-American world approaches the bicentennial of two landmarks of the
antislavery movement: Britain's "Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade" and the American act outlawing the importation of slaves into the United States.
A dozen pages trumpet the role of the scriptures in the
antislavery movement and the drive for African-American civil rights.
Already active in the
antislavery movement and temperance campaigns (which urged abstinence from alcohol), women often enlisted in the fight for voting rights too.
With such phrases as "Hochschild...structures his tale as a middle-class epic" and "Abolition did not succeed in Britain until it transcended the narrow middle-class moralism that Hochschild celebrates," he implies two things: (1) that the British
antislavery movement was--at least until the very end--an entirely middle-class affair; and (2) that this is something I celebrate.
In his latest book, Adam Hochschild--a founding editor of Mother Jones--chronicles the unlikely success of the British
antislavery movement. In just 50 years a band of idealists and iconoclasts managed to shut down an institution that had fueled the expansion of the British Empire for nearly three centuries.
Zaeske argues that women indelibly changed the face of politics through their involvement in the
antislavery movement with their usage of collective petitioning to Congress as a valid form of political involvement for women, which was a critical stride toward securing future rights.
