compare and contrast anti-slavery views with those of the abolitionists.?

Question

in 19th century

Answer 1

So far, people don't get it -- though it's true that "(all) abolitionists were anti-slavery" it is NOT true that all who were anti-slavery were abolitionists!!

"Anti-slavery" and "abolitionist" are NOT the same thing. Example -- Abraham Lincoln was anti-slavery, but NOT an abolitionist. In fact, much of the Republican Party agreed with him.

"Anti-slavery" in this restricted sense included thinking slavery a bad thing for society, even a moral wrong against fellow human beings. It hoped for slavery, EVENTUALLY, to be brought to an end in the states where it was still practiced. But whereas abolitionists looked for direct legal (and maybe not always legal) steps to take to end slavery, and IMMEDIATELY, those who were 'merely' anti-slavery believed they could not do so.

(A number, however, did advocate providing some sort of federal INCENTIVES for slave states to emancipate their slaves -- such as government compensation and the colonization of freed slaves in other countries. This was THE main approach advocated by white opponents of slavery until about 1830 when groups for "immediate abolition" [with NO compensation] began to spring up. Note that LINCOLN advocated a program of compensated emancipation and (voluntary) colonization right up to the time he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.l)

Anti-slavery people were also "free soilers". In mid-18th-century America this meant preventing the SPREAD of slavery to new territories. Though they did not believe that, under the Constitution, they had the power to dictate to existing states on the matter of slavery, they DID believe that Congress could and should keep slavery out of the territories and look to bring them into the Union AS free states.

"Free soil" was an important part of the overall anti-slavery approach to slavery's end -- if slavery's growth/spread could be stopped, it would gradually die out in the existing slave states (who would THEMSELVES legislate its end, just as Northern states had done in the late 18th century).

It should be noted that not ALL free-soilers were against slavery in the same sense. Some simply did not want blacks, slave or free, competing with free labor in THEIR states. (Part of this was motivated by economic concerns, part by prejudice.) The South could do whatever it wanted, they didn't care so long as they themselves could EXCLUDE slaves (or blacks).

Contrary to what many Southerners thought in 1860, though it was true that most abolitionists were Republicans, the Republican Party (and its formal position) was not abolitionist but anti-slavery/free-soil.

Another implication of the abolitionist position for a number of its adherents was that the Constitution, since it allowed, even supported slavery, was a "covenant with death".. . and therefore not worthy of being honored. Non-abolitionist anti-slavery folk believed in following the Constitution, though they ALSO believed that it provided for a way that slavery might be discouraged (including by Congress keeping it out of the territories) and eventually ended.

One other outcome -- when Southern states seceded, there were many abolitionists who (at least at first) welcomed Southern secession, since it meant the Union would no longer be tainted by slavery.

Answer 2

The abolitionists were anti-slavery.

Essay finished.

Answer 3

um gosh, the abolitionists were anti-slavery.
hmmm. i didn't know there was a distinction there.