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2008 Abbeville Institute Scholars' Conference
"Northern Anti-Slavery Rhetoric "
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
April 3-6, 2008
The topic of the Summer School
was "What motivated Northern Anti-Slavery rhetoric?"
Was it a moral determination to emancipate the African population
and to work for its gradual incorporation into American society
as social and political equals? Since this captures our own
moral outlook, we are tempted to read those inclinations into
the anti-slavery language we find in history books.
But
that is not at all how James DeWolff thought of the matter.
DeWolff was an "anti-slavery" Senator from Rhode
Island, who opposed admitting Missouri as a slave State. He
had been a world class slave trader before the trade was outlawed
in 1808. His family company ran over 80 voyages to Africa
and sold slaves throughout the western hemisphere. DeWolff
never had an "Amazing Grace" conversion. But if
his "anti-slavery" position had no moral content
what was its meaning?
We explored the main Northern
anti-slavery critiques as they appeared in the Philadelphia
Convention, the Louisiana Purchase, New England nullification
of the war of 1812, the Abolition Petitions, the Missouri
Compromise, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the agitation over
allowing slavery in the West. The question discussed was to
what extent did this rhetoric have as its object a moral concern
to emancipate and incorporate the African population into
the American polity and to what extent did it display quite
different motives and objectives? If other motives and objectives,
what were they?
View the Program
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