50 Fun Facts About Abolitionism

Which boxing champion was born with the name of Cassius Marcellus Clay, a Kentucky abolitionist of the 1800s?

Muhammad Ali inherited the name from his father, whom his grandfather had named in tribute to the planter turned antislavery crusader. Ali gave it up in 1964.

Which American landmark got its familiar name in the 1830s from abolitionists who adopted it as their symbol?

The Liberty Bell was simply the State House bell until antislavery societies renamed it. Its link to the American Revolution was not drawn until 1847.

Which biblical nickname did Harriet Tubman earn for leading enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad?

Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, and Tubman made about 13 trips back into slave territory to bring out some 70 people. By her own account, not one of them was caught on the way.

Which disguise, backed by borrowed identity papers, did Frederick Douglass wear to escape slavery by train in 1838?

A sailor's uniform was supplied by Anna Murray, the free woman Douglass married eleven days after reaching New York. His whole journey to freedom took less than 24 hours.

Which famous hymn was written by John Newton, a former slave-ship captain who became an abolitionist clergyman?

Amazing Grace first appeared in a 1779 hymn book by a man who had once traded in human beings. Newton lived to see Parliament outlaw the British slave trade in 1807, months before he died.

Which new technology made Frederick Douglass the most pictured American of the nineteenth century?

Photography gave Douglass a way to answer racist caricatures, so he sat for portrait after portrait. He never smiled in them, refusing to look like a contented slave.

In which slave state were both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman born, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay?

Maryland held both of them in slavery until they fled, Douglass in 1838 and Tubman in 1849. They were born in neighbouring counties, Talbot and Dorchester, about four years apart.

Which author wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, the antislavery novel that sold 300,000 American copies in its first year?

Harriet Beecher Stowe first told the story as a 40-week serial in an abolitionist paper, The National Era. It became the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century.

Which country lay at the far end of the Underground Railroad, under code names such as Heaven and the Promised Land?

Canada became home to an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people who escaped by the network. Half of them arrived in the decade after 1850, when the free states stopped being safe.

Which Boston editor publicly burned a copy of the US Constitution in 1854 because of its compromises with slavery?

William Lloyd Garrison had been pulled through Boston on a rope by a mob in 1835 and jailed for his own protection. Southern states offered bounties for his capture.

Which abolitionist, raised speaking Dutch in rural New York, gave the 1851 speech later titled Ain't I a Woman?

Sojourner Truth spoke without notes at a women's rights meeting in Akron. The dialect version that made the speech famous was published by someone else twelve years later.

Which enslaved preacher led an 1831 uprising in Virginia that became the deadliest slave revolt in American history?

Nat Turner and his followers killed about 55 white people in Southampton County. Because he could read and preach, Southern legislatures then banned teaching enslaved people.

Which enslaved man's freedom suit ended in 1857 with a Supreme Court ruling that Black Americans were not citizens?

Dred Scott argued that four years spent living on free soil had made him free. He lost by seven votes to two, yet was freed privately two months later and died the next year.

Which abolitionist editor was shot dead in 1837 defending his printing press from a mob in Alton, Illinois?

Elijah Lovejoy had already moved his newspaper across the Mississippi from St. Louis to escape attacks. His killing made him a martyr to both abolition and the freedom of the press.

Which change to the US Constitution, ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime?

The Thirteenth Amendment became law once 27 of the 36 states had ratified it. It was the first of three changes made after the Civil War, ahead of those on citizenship and voting rights.

Which Civil War battle gave Abraham Lincoln the victory he wanted before announcing the Emancipation Proclamation?

Antietam, fought on 17 September 1862, turned back a Confederate invasion of Union territory. Lincoln issued the preliminary version of the order just five days later.

Which 1850 federal law paid its commissioners $10 to rule against the accused but only $5 to release them?

The Fugitive Slave Act also denied the accused a jury and the right to testify. It compelled officials and citizens of free states to help with captures.

Which Virginia town's federal armory did John Brown seize in 1859, hoping to arm a slave uprising?

Harpers Ferry was retaken within two days by US Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee. Frederick Douglass had refused to join the raid, believing the plan was suicidal.

In which territory did John Brown's band kill five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in 1856?

Kansas had been left to decide on slavery by a vote of its settlers, so rival camps moved in to fight it out. The killings opened the bloodiest three months of the conflict called Bleeding Kansas.

Which object, thrown by an overseer at another man, struck the young Harriet Tubman and left her with lifelong seizures?

A metal weight of about two pounds broke her skull, and she lay without medical care for two days. Severe headaches and sudden blackouts stayed with her for the rest of her life.

Which former president argued before the Supreme Court in 1841 for the Africans who had seized the slave ship Amistad?

John Quincy Adams, by then a congressman, spoke for eight and a half hours. The court ruled the captives free, and abolitionists rather than the government paid for their voyage home.

Which political party was founded in 1854 to stop slavery spreading into the western territories?

Republicans took their name at a meeting in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, in March 1854. Their first statewide slate of candidates was chosen that summer near Jackson, Michigan.

Which West African country grew from a colony founded by the American Colonization Society for free Black Americans?

Liberia drew only a few thousand settlers between 1821 and 1847. Frederick Douglass condemned the whole scheme, insisting that Black Americans had every right to stay in America.

Which religious group's members in colonial Germantown wrote the first American protest against slavery in 1688?

Quakers in the young settlement built their case on the Golden Rule, asking why Christians were allowed to buy and own people. Four men signed it, five years after the town was founded.

Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when Union troops brought news of freedom to enslaved people in which state?

Texas held an estimated 250,000 enslaved people by 1865, many brought there by planters escaping the fighting further east. General Gordon Granger read out the order in Galveston on 19 June.

Which group received the £20 million in compensation paid under Britain's Slavery Abolition Act of 1833?

The slave owners were paid because Parliament saw the enslaved as lawful property being taken by the state. Most of the people freed had to keep working as apprentices for years afterwards.

Which 1848 women's rights gathering in upstate New York did Frederick Douglass attend as its only Black participant?

The Seneca Falls Convention came close to dropping its call for women's votes until Douglass argued for keeping it. About 100 of the 300 people present signed the final declaration.

Which national holiday did Frederick Douglass condemn as hollow for the enslaved in a famous 1852 speech in Rochester?

The Fourth of July was his subject, yet Douglass gave the speech a day late, at a meeting of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. It was soon printed as a pamphlet of forty pages.

Which name did Frederick Douglass give the antislavery newspaper he launched in Rochester in 1847?

The North Star took its name from the star that guided people fleeing slavery at night. In 1851 it merged with a Syracuse paper and became Frederick Douglass' Paper.

Which sisters left their slaveholding family in South Carolina to tour as abolitionist speakers in the 1830s?

Sarah and Angelina Grimké were daughters of a Charleston judge who owned several plantations and hundreds of enslaved people. In 1838 Angelina became the first American woman to address a legislative body.

Which abolitionist's detailed notes on the fugitives in his care became the 1872 book The Underground Railroad Records?

William Still helped at least 649 people to freedom and wrote down their stories so that separated families could find each other. After the Civil War he prospered as a coal merchant.

Which Massachusetts senator was beaten with a cane on the Senate floor in 1856 by a proslavery congressman?

Charles Sumner could not return to the Senate until December 1859. Massachusetts refused to replace him, leaving his empty desk in the chamber as a reminder of the attack.

Which free Black New Yorker was drugged and sold into slavery in 1841, later recounting it in Twelve Years a Slave?

Solomon Northup was lured to Washington with the offer of work as a musician in a travelling circus. A white lawyer whose family had once held his father in slavery helped to free him.

Which formerly enslaved author's 1789 life story became a British bestseller and a weapon against the slave trade?

Olaudah Equiano saw his book go through nine editions in his lifetime, and by 1792 it was also in print in Russia, Germany and Holland. He toured as one of the abolitionist Sons of Africa.

Which Yorkshire MP led the 20-year parliamentary campaign that ended Britain's part in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807?

William Wilberforce died in 1833, three days after learning that the bill to end slavery itself across most of the British Empire was certain to pass. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Which English potter produced the kneeling-figure medallion that became the emblem of British abolitionists in 1787?

Josiah Wedgwood paid for the medallions himself, and they were soon worn as pendants and set into snuff boxes, bracelets and hairpins. He was also the grandfather of Charles Darwin.

Which slaveholding president signed the 1807 law that banned the importing of enslaved people into the United States?

Thomas Jefferson had urged Congress to pass the ban in his annual message of 1806. It took effect on 1 January 1808, the earliest date the Constitution permitted.

Under which birth name did Harriet Tubman grow up, before adopting her mother's first name soon after her marriage?

Araminta Ross, known as Minty, became Harriet soon after marrying John Tubman, a free Black man, around 1844. Because she was enslaved, any children of the marriage would have been enslaved too.

Up which South Carolina river did Harriet Tubman guide an 1863 Union raid that freed more than 700 enslaved people?

Combahee plantations were raided by Black soldiers of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry, and more than 100 of the men freed then joined the Union army. Tubman is widely credited as the first woman to lead such an assault.

Which narrative poem by the author of Ivanhoe supplied the surname Frederick Douglass chose after escaping slavery?

The Lady of the Lake has two leading characters named Douglas, and his host in New Bedford suggested it. Born Frederick Bailey, he had been calling himself Johnson, a name far too common in the town.

In which New York city did Harriet Tubman settle on a farm bought from the family of Senator William Seward?

Auburn was a centre of antislavery activity, and the 1859 sale broke federal law because Tubman was legally a runaway. She died there in 1913, in a home for the elderly that she had helped to set up.

Which Boston clothing dealer's 1829 Appeal urged Black Americans to resist slavery and was outlawed across the South?

David Walker's pamphlet alarmed Southern ports so much that people were arrested in Charleston and New Orleans for handing it out. Savannah barred Black seamen from coming ashore at all.

Which name is given to the Northern backers who funded John Brown's 1859 raid on a federal armory?

The Secret Six got that label from writers long after Brown's death. The men helped him as individuals and were never all in the same room together.

Which Midwestern college was among the first in America to admit Black students, in 1835, and women, in 1837?

Oberlin opened its doors soon after mobs had destroyed two earlier integrated schools, Noyes Academy and the Canterbury Female Boarding School. Refugees from both had studied on at another reform college.

Which author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl spent seven years hiding in a tiny space under a roof?

Harriet Jacobs could not stand up in the space, which was only three feet high at its tallest point. She bored small holes in the wall to let in air and a little light.

Which Boston abolitionist weekly ran without a break for 35 years, closing in 1865 once slavery had been abolished?

The Liberator had a circulation of only about 3,000, and in 1834 three-quarters of its subscribers were African Americans. Its fame came from demanding freedom for every enslaved person at once.

Which city did Henry Box Brown reach in 1849 after mailing himself out of slavery in Virginia in a wooden crate?

Philadelphia abolitionists received the box after 27 hours on wagons, trains and a steamboat. Carriers ignored its labels and often left it upside down.

To which country did President Benjamin Harrison send Frederick Douglass as United States minister in 1889?

Haiti was a double posting, since Douglass served as both minister resident and consul-general. He was also put in charge of American business in neighbouring Santo Domingo.

Which railway job title was given to guides such as Harriet Tubman who led fugitives along the Underground Railroad?

Conductors came from many backgrounds, including free-born Black people, white abolitionists, former slaves and Native Americans. The people they guided were known as passengers.

Which country became the last in the Americas to abolish slavery when a princess signed its Golden Law in 1888?

Brazil's law was signed by Princess Isabel, acting as regent while her father, Emperor Pedro II, was in Europe. Earlier laws had freed only newborn children and people over sixty.