Abolitionist

Abolition

Abolitionist believed that the idea of slave ownership was just fundamentally wrong. Thousands of men would lose their lives fighting for the rights of millions of slaves or future slaves.

The Civil War was fought, largely in part, for the idea that all men are created equal. Not just white men or indigenous American Indians (who were not treated much better), the African-American race was to be treated equally and not enslaved. A terrible war was fought and a great number of Americans lost their lives in the pursuit of what their movement was all about. Freedom.

The grass-root movement was led in America by social reformist such as William Lloyd Garrison and the writer, John Green-leaf Whittier. They were joined by such greats as the wonderful Harriet Beecher Stowe and the duo of brothers Charles and John Langston. Together, these politically charged individuals would usher in a new sense of ethics and the war would be thought of in the light in which it should have been, the destruction of slavery.

Once Abraham Lincoln was elected as President of the United States, the battle was on for the removal of all things slavish in the American conscience. Lincoln would support the abolitionist movement with great determination. Without a leader to speak for them, they would have been just another small group of lobbyist, not the massive movement that lit the fire under the barrel of North and South clashing theories.

Lincoln issued the official decree commanding the release of all the Southern slaves with his 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War was now fully on and there was no turning back. Either the Union would prevail and the entire unified country would abolish slavery, or the South would win it's right to own and treat humans as if they were livestock.

Their role today requires one to look at the slavery situation throughout the world. Certainly, the Civil War victory by the North freed millions upon millions of black people in the States and was a great monumental win for all of humanity. The question remains about the still enslaved people of the world. Are there any slave camps left? Unfortunately, we all realize the answer to this. They knew that in certain parts of the world, human slavery is flourishing as a viable economic means of financial wealth.

The first conditional aspect that must be addressed is the identification of those countries that still allow or even turn their heads from the involvement of slavery. This is where the abolitionist comes in; the monitoring of those areas is vital if we, as a global society, are going to be free.

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