Abolitionists

in American history, a name applied to those who urged the immediate and utter abolition of slavery. The term dates from the founding, in 1831, by William Lloyd Garrison, of a paper called The Liberator. The abolitionists were confined chiefly to the North. They were bitter in their denunciation of the fugitive slave law, and promoted the "underground railroad," through whose agency many slaves found their way to freedom. The abolitionists were at no time a political party or organization. Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner were conspicuous in the movement. John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry was regarded as the logical outcome of the methods advocated by the abolitionists. See Slavery; Taney; Underground Railroad; Brown; Garrison; Phillips; Whittier; Free Soil Party; Civil War; Confederacy