Failure of the Abolitionists and the Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement
In my title, I don’t mean the efforts of the abolitionists that we read about in Stauffer’s were a complete failure. I see the effects of their actions two-fold: 1) the significant effect they had in regards to the eventual abolishment of slavery in the United States, and in this sense I see their efforts as victorious and 2) the effects they had in creating an egalitarian society in the US, and in this sense I see them as failing. I think the end of slavery was an important step towards creating an egalitarian society, but I think everyone would agree that they were very far from seeing that goal reached in their own lifetime, and even today we still have not obtained it. I see this failure occurring because of the means they resorted to bringing about the end of slavery as described by Stauffer in his book; that means being violence. Stauffer describes each abolitionist in his book as having this idealistic view of a utopian society in which all people are equal, but I think their view of the possibility of that happening in their own lifetime began to fade as they saw increasingly little effect of their non-violent protests. When I was reading the book, I viewed their resolution to begin using violence as an abandonment of their previous goal of creating an egalitarian society, and they instead focused on bringing about the end of slavery because that was something they believed they could do in their own lifetime. This had a profound impact on the civil rights movement, in my opinion, because even after slavery ended, African Americans were still viewed as second class citizens even up to the events of the movements. In part this is due to the polarizing effects violence has when trying to bring about equality, and this violence essentially helped to create two American societies within the same country: a dominant white majority which neglected the rights of the black minority (This is a huge oversimplification that disregards Asians, Native Americans, Latinos, etc. but I’m using it for the sake of the argument). If we then focus on the (largely) non-violent means used by the civil rights activists compared to the violence of the abolitionists, I think the civil rights movement took much greater steps forward in regards to creating a society of equals. I believe this is due to the methods used by the civil rights activists, which were for the most part, non-violent.