HUM 2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Underground Railroad, Religious Liberalism, Quills
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Hum 1
Introduction to Humanities
● Reform & Abolition - Main Ideas
○ Setting for philanthropy in antebellum US
■ Favorable legal climate
■ Erosion of traditional social order
■ Moral responsibility and duty to community
■ Second Great Awakening and religious liberalism
○ Reform movements - interrelated yet disconnected
■ Bible and Tract societies, Sunday schools, missionary and utopian
societies, temperature, first-wave feminism, and abolition
○ Underground Railroad
■ Most americans did not condone slavery but were conflicted over how to
end it
● Slavery evil but feared dissolution of the country
● Slavery evil but multiracial society not possible
● Gradual vs. immediate emancipation
● Colonization
■ Many considered abolitionists a dangerous fringe movement
threatening to disrupt the social order
■ Scaring slaveholders strengthened their opposition to a peaceful
resolution and “riveted the chains of the slaves”
■ Judge to defendant in 1839 Ohio trial for violation of state;s Fugitive
Slave Law:
● “Your present situation should be a warning to you and you
should not allow yout excessive philanthropy to lead you into
similar aggressions in the future.”
■ Role of “ordinary women”
● Built upon decades of organized benevolence, British
models of antislavery work
● Black and white women worked together
● Emphasized education through lectures, writing, and door-to-door
petition campaigns
○ “Quills” were their weapons
● Religious affiliations ~ revival atmosphere
● Fundraising, fundraising, fundraising
● Direct solicitations, dues
● Fairs and bazaars
○ Lasted up to 1 week in major cities