The abolitionist movement was the social and political effort to end slavery everywhere. Fueled in part by religious fervor, the movement was led by people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and John Brown.
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John Brown: Abolitionist Leader Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, John Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and anti‑slavery family. He spent much of his life failing at a variety of businesses–he declared bankruptcy in his early 40s and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. In 1837, his life changed […]
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Matthew Pinsker gives a crash course on the Compromise of 1850, the resolution to a dispute over slavery in territory gained after the Mexican‑American War.
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The former slave, whose brilliant prose and soaring oratory pricked the conscience of a nation, carefully shaped his own myth. Details like a white second wife didn’t fit.
Read more about What Frederick Douglass Revealed—and Omitted—in His Famous Autobiographies
