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| American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society | |
|---|---|
| Name | American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society |
| Founded | 1840 |
| Dissolved | 1860s |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Key people | Lewis Tappan, Arthur Tappan, Gerrit Smith, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass |
| Area served | United States, Europe |
| Purpose | Abolitionism, emancipation, anti-slavery advocacy |
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist organization founded in 1840 in New York City out of a split with the American Anti-Slavery Society. It brought together activists, philanthropists, and politicians who connected abolitionist aims to international campaigns and engaged figures from England, France, Ireland, and the British Empire. The Society involved leading reformers from the antebellum period and intersected with movements linked to temperance movement, women's suffrage movement, and transatlantic reform networks.
Formed at a meeting in New York City after dissent with leaders in the American Anti-Slavery Society such as William Lloyd Garrison, the Society united antislavery advocates including Lewis Tappan, Arthur Tappan, Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, and allies like Frederick Douglass who navigated tensions over tactics, politics, and women's participation. The split reflected controversies seen in other reform contexts involving figures like Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, and paralleled debates in Boston and Philadelphia antislavery circles. International correspondence linked the group to Thomas Clarkson in England, Frédéric Bastiat in France, and abolitionists across the British Empire and Caribbean islands. The Society's activity peaked in the 1840s and 1850s amid crises such as the Missouri Compromise aftermath, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and the political realignments leading to the formation of the Republican Party. Internal and external pressures from events like the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas–Nebraska Act shifted abolitionist strategy toward support for political options such as Free Soil Party and later alliances with figures like John C. Frémont and Abraham Lincoln.
Leadership centered on merchant-philanthropists and reformers drawn from New York City elites: brothers Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan provided funding and organizational direction, working with activists such as Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, and editors connected to abolitionist presses like The Emancipator and journalists who corresponded with Frederick Douglass. The Society formalized committees for foreign correspondence, legislative petitions, and lecture bureaus involving speakers who addressed audiences in Boston, Philadelphia, Providence, and transatlantic venues in London and Edinburgh. Organizational ties extended to institutions including the American Missionary Association, reform societies in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York benevolent associations, and to prominent legal figures such as Salmon P. Chase and Charles Sumner who aided petitions and litigation. Its membership lists intersected with congregational networks linked to figures like Henry Ward Beecher and evangelical activists with affiliations to Bowdoin College alumni and other northeastern seminaries.
The Society's objectives combined immediate emancipation rhetoric with international advocacy: coordinating petitions to state legislatures and the United States Congress, promoting boycott campaigns, and fostering political alliances with the Liberty Party and Free Soil Party. Activities included organizing conventions, sponsoring lecture tours featuring speakers like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison-era orators (despite earlier schisms), raising funds for legal defense in fugitive slave cases such as those invoking the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the 1850 statute, and lobbying diplomats in London and Paris to condemn slaveholding polities. The Society supported colonization critics and worked against pro-slavery agitation tied to southern institutions and politicians including John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, while engaging with northern politicians such as Daniel Webster and reform journalists like Horace Greeley.
The Society maintained periodicals, pamphlets, and translated materials to circulate abolitionist arguments across the Atlantic, employing printers and editors who also worked on titles connected to The Emancipator, The Liberator, and regional papers in New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Cincinnati. Publications included appeals referencing international law, speeches distributed after forums in London and Glasgow, and newsletters sent to supporters in Canada and the Caribbean. Communications networks used the telegraph and steamship routes linking ports such as New York Harbor and Liverpool to coordinate petitions and boycott lists, and printed testimonies from escaped slaves styled similarly to accounts like those by Frederick Douglass and narratives circulated by activists associated with Harriet Beecher Stowe and transatlantic abolitionist circles.
The Society's founding was rooted in disagreement with the American Anti-Slavery Society and thus it navigated competitive and cooperative relationships with the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and municipal auxiliaries across Connecticut and Rhode Island. It coordinated with politically oriented groups like the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party while differing from radical moral suasionists tied to William Lloyd Garrison and some women's rights activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton who pursued separate strategies. Internationally, it worked with British abolitionists including Thomas Clarkson's legacy organizations, members of the Anti-Slavery Society in London, and abolitionist networks in Scotland and Ireland.
The Society influenced abolitionist fundraising, transatlantic coordination, and the politicization of anti-slavery agitation that fed into mid-19th century political realignments culminating in the American Civil War. Its leaders and correspondents connected to later Reconstruction debates involving figures like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner and to postwar organizations such as the American Missionary Association. Though overshadowed by larger narratives centered on the American Anti-Slavery Society and abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, the Society's emphasis on international pressure, legal petitions, and electoral engagement left a record in pamphlet archives, legislative petitions, and in the institutional histories of northern evangelical philanthropy and antislavery politics. Its work intersected with cultural shifts that produced literature like Uncle Tom's Cabin and with juridical contests reflected in cases argued before jurists and politicians tied to antebellum crises.
Category:Abolitionism in the United States Category:Organizations established in 1840