Abolitionist Movement In The 1800s

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The early 1800s was a period of significant social and political adjustment in the United States. Reform movements during this time period worked to increase public awareness about various issues and to foster change. Groups such as African-Americans and women, who continued to be oppressed, created the Abolitionist Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement. These organizations worked to expand rights for these minority groups since political leaders at the time had ignored them. Separately, the Education Reform Movement in the 1800s aimed to make a quality education accessible to all children. The Abolitionist Movement aimed to emancipate all slaves, end racial discrimination, and achieve suffrage. Moreover, the Women’s Rights Movement strived …show more content…

Abolitionist organizations such as the American Colonization Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society used propaganda in an attempt to convince Americans to oppose slavery and to achieve equal rights for African-Americans. For example, abolitionist tokens engraved by Patrick Reason read “Am I not a Woman and a Sister?” and were circulated throughout the United States. Such coins represented the relationship between the Abolitionist Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement because it depicted an African-American women kneeling in shackles. Such coins questioned the audience’s morals when it asked why a slave is denied liberty, but a white man is granted rights. The abolitionists attempted to inform Americans that inequality should not be an inherent trait that is based on skin color. However, William McGuffey quoted a young boy saying, “I have often been told, and I have read, that it is God who makes some poor, and others rich”. The boy’s thoughts portray the views of many slaves because they had come to accept their lower-class status in society. But the Abolitionist Movement made it their goal to change the notion of African-Americans as being intrinsically less equal than white people. They focused on advancing equality among all races and, in the process, gain liberty for

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