Abolitionism: Part Two: why it succeeded and where it failed

In examining why the abolitionist movement succeeded in effecting such radical change in such a short period of time, one thing that stands out is how the defenders of slavery overreacted to abolitionist agitation, which then created a snowball effect and won more sympathy for the cause. We see this in the persecution of the embryonic abolitionist movement in the 1830s, the constant refrain that their agitation would endanger the Union, the development of a pro-slavery Southern nationalism (replacing the yeoman farmer-based Southern thought of Jefferson and Madison, which often saw slavery as a British-imposed necessary evil), and finally in the Southern belief that John Brown’s futile attack at Harpers Ferry was a sign of impending slave revolt. The paranoia among Southern planters that their social order was under threat caused them to lash out and expand their reach, both politically (through legislative measures such as the Fugitive Slave Act) and geographically (eg. the Mexican-American War and the expansion of slavery into Kansas and Nebraska).

I will offer a tentative explanation for the anti-abolitionist overreaction, and it is drawn from the thought of Noel Ignatiev, the former Harvard academic who wrote the classic study of nineteenth-century American race relations, How the Irish Became White. Ignatiev has written of whiteness as a sort of currency, which bestows certain social and political privileges on its bearers. If a significant number of white Americans were to reject the privileges of whiteness and become ‘counterfeit whites’, authorities who police the boundaries of whiteness could no longer be certain that any given white-skinned person was a participant in the scheme of white privilege. Using the currency metaphor, Ignatiev posits that even a small percentage of ‘counterfeit whites’ would be enough to devalue whiteness.

Prior to the rise of organised abolitionism, whiteness had come to signify membership in the community of American citizens. When suffrage was extended to virtually all adult white males in the 1820s and 1830s, it was often taken away from African-Americans who had owned enough property to qualify under the previous franchise. Thus, when a significant number (although nowhere near a majority) of northerners became active in the abolitionist movement, the defenders of slavery could no longer assume that every white American was a grateful beneficiary of white privilege. Even if John Brown wasn’t about to be followed by more abolitionist activists trying to incite slave rebellions, southerners wouldn’t be able to physically distinguish them from other white-skinned people. The idea of ‘counterfeit whites’, I believe, helps to explain the reaction against abolitionism, as the ‘currency’ of whiteness had become devalued by the presence of activists who divested themselves of white privilege.

In a few previous blog posts, I have explored the idea of oppositional political movements creating a counter-public sphere in which their ideas are disseminated, in an attempt to make them hegemonic (in the Gramscian sense). This can involve newspapers, schools, cultural institutions, trade unions, and entertainment facilities. Abolitionists certainly created such a counter-public sphere, beginning with Garrison’s first issue of The Liberator in 1831. Their network of organisations included anti-slavery societies (linked to the broader international anti-slavery movement), as well as factions within major political parties. It was via this network that abolitionists were able to promote their free labour ideology and disseminate their ‘Slave Power’ narrative, to the point where they realigned the party system and captured power in Washington, D.C.

The title of Ignatiev’s book, on the other hand, gives us a clue as to how opposition to abolitionism was formulated in the North. For migrant groups such as the Irish, their whiteness was a means of achieving social equality in an Anglo- and Protestant-dominated country, and the Jacksonian ideal of a republic of white men appealed to them. To overcome the lowly status ascribed to them by the Anglo elites, the Irish consciously separated themselves from, and placed themselves above, African-Americans. In fields such as voting rights, access to jobs, and housing patterns, the Irish generally sought to exclude blacks in order to promote themselves to equal status with the Anglos.

It was little surprise, then, that Irish-Americans didn’t take to the abolitionist cause, as it threatened the ‘white republic’ ideal which served as their best chance of gaining acceptance in their new land. The presence of so many defectors from the (anti-Catholic) Know-Nothing movement in the early Republican Party didn’t help matters, either. In the 1860 presidential election, they provided much of Stephen Douglas’ vote in the North, while the Irish populations of cities such as Charleston and New Orleans gave him nearly all of his southern vote. The leading role of Irish-Americans in the 1863 New York Draft Riots was another consequence of the abolitionist movement’s failure to articulate a clear vision of a ‘colour-blind republic’ to replace the ‘white republic’.

The victory of the abolitionist cause also reminds us how revolutions have historically been betrayed by political actors who wish to tone down the new, highly-charged political climate which they produce. The 1868 South Carolina constitutional convention, mentioned in my previous post (with sixty slaves, thirty propertyless whites, and thirty-five slave-holding whites), failed to completely transform the society of the Palmetto State. The appointed military Governor addressed it on its first day, and was quick to remind delegates that they did not represent the wealth, virtue, or intelligence of the state, and therefore, that their proposed constitution must look after the interests of the white elites. This was just one of a number of betrayals by both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, who left the new biracial governing coalitions open to attack from pro-elite Redeemers, and which culminated in the Thermidorian retreat from Reconstruction which followed the Compromise of 1877.