Abolitionists

in United States history, those who advocated the abolition of African slavery in the Southern States, The anti-slavery agitation dates back even to colonial days. Agitation became acute after the settlement of the war troubles of 1812- 1815. In 1833, the formation of a National Anti-Slavery, Society took Plgpe in Philadelphia, and in 1848 of the Free Soil Party. The abolition movement was powerfully promoted by William Lloyd Garrison, who i ued a newspaper, “The Liberator,” for the better di emination of his views; and also by Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner and others. The more extreme agitators among them denied the duty of obedience to the Constitution, since it contained the clause warranting the Fugitive Slave Law, and they denounced it as “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” In practice they violated it by systematically a isting in the escape of runaway slaves. <A line of stations known as the “ Underground Railroad” was seeretly arranged, along which the fugitives were pa ed from point to point,- concealed from pursuers, and cared for until they reached safety in Canada. In Boston, Garrison was mobbed, and the abolition cause in the United States counted among its martyrs Elijah Lovejoy, shot in Alton, Ill., in 1837, and John Brown, hanged in Virginia in 1859. In 1840 the abolitionists divided on the question of the formation of a political anti-slavery party, and the two wings remained active on separate lines to the end. It was largely due to the abolitionists that the Civil War, when it came, was regarded by the North chiefly as an anti-slavery conflict, and they looked upon the Emancipation Proclamation as a vindication of this view.