Standard-bearers of equality : America's first abolition movement / Paul J. Polgar.

ISBN:

9781469653952

9781469653945

Title:

Standard-bearers of equality : America's first abolition movement / Paul J. Polgar.

Author:

Polgar, Paul J., author.

Personal Author:

Polgar, Paul J., author.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (342 pages) : illustrations, portraits

Contents:

Reimagining American abolitionism -- The making of a movement : progress, problems, and the ambiguous origins of the abolitionist project -- The "just right of freedom" : enforcing and expanding gradual emancipation -- Republicans of color : societal environmentalism and the quest for black citizenship -- "A well grounded hope" : sweeping away the cobwebs of prejudice -- "Unconquerable prejudice" and "alien enemies" : the roots and rise of the American Colonization Society -- A prudent alternative or a dangerous diversion? First movement abolitionists respond to colonization -- A movement forgotten.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Corporate Subject:

Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery -- History.

New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be Liberated -- History.

New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be Liberated

Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery

Subject Term:

Antislavery movements -- Middle Atlantic States -- History -- 18th century.

Antislavery movements -- Middle Atlantic States -- History -- 19th century.

Free African Americans -- Political activity.

African Americans -- Civil rights -- History.

Mouvements antiesclavagistes -- États du Moyen-Atlantique (États-Unis) -- Histoire -- 18e siècle.

Mouvements antiesclavagistes -- États du Moyen-Atlantique (États-Unis) -- Histoire -- 19e siècle.

Noirs américains affranchis -- Activité politique.

Noirs américains -- Droits -- Histoire.

HISTORY -- African American.

African Americans -- Civil rights

Antislavery movements

Race relations

Geographic Term:

United States -- Race relations -- History.

États-Unis -- Relations raciales -- Histoire.

Middle Atlantic States

United States

Added Corporate Author:

Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture,

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=2291537

Publication Date:

2019

Publication Information:

Williamsburg, Virginia :

Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture ;

Chapel Hill :

University of North Carolina Press,

[2019]

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
305.800973 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Paul Polgar recovers the racially inclusive vision of America's first abolition movement. In showcasing the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the New York Manumission Society, and their African American allies during the post-Revolutionary and early national eras, he unearths this coalition's comprehensive agenda for black freedom and equality. By guarding and expanding the rights of people of African descent and demonstrating that black Americans could become virtuous citizens of the new Republic, these activists, whom Polgar names "first movement abolitionists," sought to end white prejudice and eliminate racial inequality. Beginning in the 1820s, however, colonization threatened to eclipse this racially inclusive movement. Colonizationists claimed that what they saw as permanent black inferiority and unconquerable white prejudice meant that slavery could end only if those freed were exiled from the United States. In pulling many reformers into their orbit, this radically different antislavery movement marginalized the activism of America's first abolitionists and obscured the racially progressive origins of American abolitionism that Polgar now recaptures.

By reinterpreting the early history of American antislavery, Polgar illustrates that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are as integral to histories of race, rights, and reform in the United States as the mid-nineteenth century.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Polgar (Univ. of Mississippi) here seeks to expand the breadth, depth, and length of what he terms "the first abolition movement," condemned as early as 1832 by the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. A self-proclaimed "immediatist," Garrison criticized "gradualists" for espousing gradual emancipation, including the repatriation of America's slaves to Africa via the American Colonization Society, and awarding compensation to slaveholders who freed their bonds people. Polgar pays close attention to these "gradualists," whom he credits with planting "the racially progressive roots of first movement abolitionism" during the post-Revolutionary and early national eras. Antislavery "gradualists" were in fact interracial activists who promoted emancipation in state legislatures, called for the cessation of the transatlantic slave trade, advocated equal rights for free black persons, condemned white prejudice, and championed the social, political, and economic uplift of African Americans. In accentuating the first movement abolitionist program's contributions, Polgar underscores the degree to which those who supported "gradualist" antislavery helped set the free North and slave South on the tortured road to civil war that ultimately abolished slavery and provided a blueprint for equal rights and citizenship for black Americans during Reconstruction and in 20th-century civil rights campaigns. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. --John David Smith, University of North Carolina at Charlotte