Abolition in the US Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Abolition in the US - Essay Example The origins of abolitionist movement in the US can be traced back to the late 18th century: the American and French revolutions that occurred at that time separated by only a decade played the key role in its onset and further development. Both revolutions strongly relied on the concepts of equality between people and their right to live free and the protestant Christian morality (Wood, 1998; Doyle, 2002). Therefore, advocates of the early abolitionist movement believed it was wrong to maintain the artificial inferiority of non-white groups promoting the ideas of emancipation.While the earliest form of abolitionism in the US were rather mild and did not achieve any significant results except for the 1808's abolition of the slave trade with Africa, the later stage of the abolitionist movement that emerged in the 1830s was more powerful and called for an immediate end to slavery. The basic ideas underlying this later movement remained exactly the same as at the earliest stage: the comm on nature and origins of all human beings, the natural right to freedom, and the immorality of forced labor (Temperley, 1980). These ideas are vividly illustrated by one of the most famous artifacts of that epoch, namely the Wedgwood medallion featuring a kneeling chained slave and a slogan "Am I not a man and a brother"