Abolitionist Literature

 

According to J.A. Cuddon, the term ‘abolitionist’ refers to the 18^th and 19th-century black British, African American, and white European and American men and women who campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and North America. The origin of abolitionist literature are found in the long history of slave rebellion, particularly in the Caribbean colonies in the 17th and 18^th centuries. This literature refers to writings- both fiction and non-fiction that took a moral stand against slavery, expose the horrors of the slave trade and the inhumanity of slavery, and called for the abolition of this institution. it often used sentimental and biblical rhetoric to attract sympathy for the abolitionist cause, and eventually, it played a critical role in changing public opinion and fueling the anti-slavery movement, especially in the United States and Britain.

Abolitionist literature comprises a diverse body of writing material culture to make an emotional appeal. Here, the authors depict the brutality of slavery to evoke sympathy. For example, the famous inscription “Am I Not a Man or Brother” (1787) on Josiah Wedgwood's medallion featured an image of an enslaved African man in chains. It represented the 18th-century anti-slavery campaign in Britain. Likely, to the speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?”, by the African-American former slave and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth(1851), challenges the idea that women were weak and needed special treatment and points out how Black women like herself were excluded from both white feminism and general respect for womanhood. Well-known instances in the 18^th c. English Literature includes slave narratives by early black British writers and abolitionists such as Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, and Ottobah Cugoano, political writing and speeches by the white abolitionists such as James Ramsey, Thomas Clarkson, and William Wilberforce, and anti-slavery writing by the Quakers.  Their joint efforts helped end the British slave trade in 1807 and slavery in British colonies in 1833. American abolitionist literature is equally diverse. It includes the writings of the American Anti- Slavery Society (1833-70), the narratives by former slaves and abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Harriet Jacob’s incidents in the life of a Slave Girl (1863), and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best selling sentimental novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). By writing about the harsh reality and persistence of slavery, many of these authors exposed the inherent flaws in the idea of ‘universal rights’ guaranteed by the US Declaration of Independence. Together, these writings sparked debate about the moral, political, and economic nature of slavery in America, which was one of the key factors leading to the Civil War (1861-65) and the abolition of slavery in 1865.