text:
Information to change the world
Find Topics, Titles, Names related to your query
|Part of a series on
|Early history
|History– Antiquity– Aztec
Ancient Greece– Rome
Medieval Europe
Thrall– Kholop– Serfdom
|Slavery and religion
|The Bible– Judaism
Christianity– Islam
|By country or region
|Africa– Atlantic– Arab
Coastwise– Angola
Barbary Coast
Britain and Ireland
British Virgin Islands
Brazil– Canada– India– Iran
Japan– Libya– Mauritania
Ottoman empire
Romania– Spanish New World
Sudan– Sweden– United States
|Modern Africa– Debt bondage
Penal labour– Sexual slavery
Unfree labour– Human trafficking
|Opposition and resistance
|Timeline– Abolitionism
Compensated emancipation
Opponents of slavery–Ž
Slave rebellion– Slave narrative
Abolitionism is a world-wide movement to end human slavery.
In Western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and evangelical religious groups condemned it as un-Christian. Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, they had little immediate effect on the centers of slavery: the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States. The Somersett's case in 1772 that emancipated slaves in England, helped launch the movement to abolish slavery. Pennsylvania passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780. Britain banned the importation of African slaves in its colonies in 1807, and the United States followed in 1808. Britain abolished slavery throughout the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, the French colonies abolished it 15 years later, while slavery in the United States was abolished in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Abolitionism in the West was preceded by the New Laws of the Indies in 1542, in which Emperor Charles V declared free all Native American slaves, abolishing slavery of these races, and declaring them citizens of the Empire with full rights. The move was inspired by writings of the Spanish monk Bartolome de las Casas and the School of Salamanca. Spanish settlers replaced the Native American slaves with enslaved laborers brought from Africa and thus did not abolish slavery altogether.
In Eastern Europe, abolitionism has played out in movements to end the enslavement of the Roma in Wallachia and Moldavia and to emancipate the serfs in Russia.
In East Asia, abolitionism was evidenced in, for instance, the writings of Yu Hyongwon, a seventeenth-century Korean Confucian scholar who wrote extensively against slave-holding in seventeenth-century Korea.
Today, child and adult slavery and forced labour are illegal in most countries, as well as being against international law. Because slavery still exists, however, with an estimated 27 million people enslaved worldwide, a new international abolitionist movement has recently emerged.
In Britain, William Wilberforce took on the cause of abolition in 1787 after the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in which he led the parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807. He continued to campaign for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
The last known form of enforced servitude of adults (villeinage) had disappeared in Britain at the beginning of the seventeenth century. But by the eighteenth century, traders began to import African and Indian and East Asian slaves to London and Edinburgh to work as personal servants. Men who migrated to the North American colonies often took their East Indian slaves or servants with them, as East Indians were documented in colonial records.[1][2] They were not bought or sold in London, and their legal status was unclear until 1772, when the case of a runaway slave named James Somersett forced a legal decision. The owner, Charles Steuart, had attempted to abduct him and send him to Jamaica to work on the sugar plantations. While in London, Somersett had been baptised and his godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus. As a result Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, had to judge whether the abduction was legal or not under English Common Law, as there was no legislation for slavery in England.
In his judgment of 22 June 1772 Mansfield declared: "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." Although the exact legal implications of the judgement are actually unclear when analysed by lawyers, it was generally taken at the time to have decided that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law in England. This judgment emancipated the 10,000-14,000 slaves or possible slaves in England,[3] who were mostly domestic servants. It also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions (such as the North American colonies) could not be enforced in England.[4]
The Somersett case became a significant part of the common law of slavery in the English speaking world, and helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.[5] After reading about the Somersett's Case, Joseph Knight, an enslaved African in Scotland, left his master John Wedderburn. A similar case to Steuart's was brought by Wedderburn in 1776, with the same result: chattel slavery was ruled not to exist under the law of Scotland. Nonetheless, legally mandated, hereditary slavery of Scots in Scotland existed from 1606[6] until 1799, when colliers and salters were legally emancipated by an act of the Parliament of Great Britain (39 Geo.III. c56). A prior law enacted in 1775 (15 Geo.III. c. 28) was intended to end what the act referred to as "a state of slavery and bondage,"[7] but it was ineffectual, necessitating the 1799 act.
Despite the ending of slavery in Great Britain, slavery was a strong institution in the Southern Colonies of British America and the West Indian colonies of the British Empire. By 1783, an anti-slavery movement was beginning among the British public. That year the first British abolitionist organization was founded by a group of Quakers. The Quakers continued to be influential throughout the lifetime of the movement, in many ways leading the campaign.[8] On 17 June 1783 the issue was formally brought to government by Sir Cecil Wray (Member of Parliament for Westminster (UK Parliament constituency)), who presented the Quaker petition to parliament. Also in 1783, Dr Beilby Porteus issued a call to the Church of England to cease its involvement in the slave trade and to formulate a workable policy to draw attention to and improve the conditions of Afro-Caribbean slaves. The exploration of the African continent, by such British groups as the African Association (1788), promoted the abolitionists' cause by showing Europeans that the Africans had legitimate, complex cultures. The African Association also had close ties with William Wilberforce, perhaps the most important political figure in the battle for abolition in the British Empire.
Black people also played an important part in the movement for abolition. In Britain, Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography was published in nine editions in his lifetime, campaigned tirelessly against the slave trade
In May 1787, the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed, referring to the Atlantic slave trade, the trafficking in slaves by British merchants who took manufactured goods from ports such as Bristol and Liverpool, sold or exchanged these for slaves in West Africa where the African chieftain hierarchy was tied to slavery, shipped the slaves to British colonies and other Caribbean countries or the American colonies, where they sold or exchanged them mainly to the Planters for rum and sugar, which they took back to British ports. This was the so-called Triangle trade because these mercantile merchants traded in three places each round-trip. Political influence against the inhumanity of the slave trade grew strongly in the late eighteenth century. Many people, some African, some European by descent, influenced abolition. Well known abolitionists in Britain included James Ramsay who had seen the cruelty of the trade at first hand, Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, and other members of the Clapham Sect of evangelical reformers, as well as Quakers who took most of the places on the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, having been the first to present a petition against the slave trade to the British Parliament and who founded the predecessor body to the Committee. As Dissenters, Quakers were not eligible to become British MPs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, so the Anglican evangelist William Wilberforce was persuaded to become the leader of the parliamentary campaign. Clarkson became the group's most prominent researcher, gathering vast amounts of information about the slave trade, gaining first hand accounts by interviewing sailors and former slaves at British ports such as Bristol, Liverpool and London.
Mainly because of Clarkson's efforts, a network of local abolition groups was established across the country. They campaigned through public meetings and the publication of pamphlets and petitions. One of the earliest books promoted by Clarkson and the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was the autobiography of the freed slave Olaudah Equiano. The movement had support from such freed slaves, from many denominational groups such as Swedenborgians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists and others, and reached out for support from the new industrial workers of the cities in the midlands and north of England. Even women and children, previously un-politicised groups, became involved in the campaign although at this date women often had to hold separate meetings and were ineligible to be represented in the British Parliament, as indeed were the majority of the men in Britain.
One particular project of the abolitionists was the negotiation with African chieftains for the purchase of land in West African kingdoms for the establishment of 'Freetown' – a settlement for former slaves of the British Empire and the United States, back in west Africa. This privately negotiated settlement, later part of Sierra Leone eventually became protected under a British Act of Parliament in 1807–8, after which British influence in West Africa grew as a series of negotiations with local Chieftains were signed to stamp out trading in slaves. These included agreements to permit British navy ships to intercept Chieftains' ships to ensure their merchants were not carrying slaves.
In 1796, John Gabriel Stedman published the memoirs of his five-year voyage to Surinam as part of a military force sent out to subdue bosnegers, former slaves living in the inlands. The book is critical of the treatment of slaves and contains many images by William Blake and Francesco Bartolozzi depicting the cruel treatment of runaway slaves. It became part of a large body of abolitionist literature.
The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire. The Act imposed a fine of –100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. Such a law was bound to be eventually passed, given the increasingly powerful abolitionist movement. The timing might have been connected with the Napoleonic Wars raging at the time. At a time when Napoleon took the retrograde decision to revive slavery which had been abolished during the French Revolution and to send his troops to re-enslave the people of Haiti and the other French Caribbean possessions, the British prohibition of the slave trade gave the British Empire the high moral ground.
The act's intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the British Empire, but the trade continued and captains in danger of being caught by the Royal Navy would often throw slaves into the sea to reduce the fine. In 1827, Britain declared that participation in the slave trade was piracy and punishable by death. Between 1808 and 1860, the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard.[9] Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.[10]
After the 1807 act, slaves were still held, though not sold, within the British Empire. In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement again became active, this time campaigning against the institution of slavery itself. In 1823 the first Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Britain. Many of the campaigners were those who had previously campaigned against the slave trade. Sam Sharpe contributed to the abolition of slavery with his Christmas rebellion in 1831.
On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was given Royal Assent, which paved the way for the abolition of slavery within the British Empire and its colonies. On 1 August 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but they were indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was abolished in two stages; the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships ended two years later on 1 August 1840.
On 1 August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly Negroes being addressed by the Governor at Government House in Port of Spain, Trinidad, about the new laws, began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("Not six years. No six years"), drowning out the voice of the Governor. Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved. Full emancipation for all was legally granted ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838, making Trinidad the first British colony with slaves to completely abolish slavery.[11] The government set aside –20 million to cover compensation of slave owners across the Empire, but the former slaves received no compensation or reparations.[12]
In 1839, a successor organisation to the Anti-Slavery Society was formed, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which worked to outlaw slavery in other countries and also to pressure the government to help enforce the suppression of the slave trade by declaring slave traders pirates and pursuing them. This organisation continues today as Anti-Slavery International.
As in other "New World" colonies, the Atlantic slave trade provided the French colonies with manpower for the sugar cane plantations. The French West Indies included Anguilla (briefly), Antigua and Barbuda (briefly), Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Hati, Montserrat (briefly), Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius (briefly), St Kitts and Nevis (St Kitts, but not Nevis), Trinidad and Tobago (Tobago only), Saint Croix (briefly), and the current French overseas dpartements of Martinique and Guadeloupe (including Saint-Barthlemy and northern half of Saint Martin) in the Caribbean sea.
The slave trade was regulated by Louis XIV's Code Noir. The revolt of slaves in the largest French colony of St. Domingue in 1791 was the beginning of what became the Hatian Revolution led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. The institution of slavery was first abolished in St. Domingue in 1793 by Sonthonax, who was the Commissioner sent to St. Domingue by the Convention, after the slave revolt of 1791, in order to safeguard the allegiance of the population to revolutionary France. The Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), then abolished slavery in law in France and its colonies on 4 February 1794. Abb Grgoire and the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Socit des Amis des Noirs), led by Jacques Pierre Brissot, were part of the abolitionist movement, which had laid important groundwork in building anti-slavery sentiment in the metropole. The first article of the law stated that "Slavery was abolished" in the French colonies, while the second article stated that "slave-owners would be indemnified" with financial compensation for the value of their slaves. The constitution of France passed in 1795 included in the declaration of the Rights of Man that slavery was abolished.
However, Napoleon did not include any declaration of the Rights of Man in the Constitution promulgated in 1799, and decided to re-establish slavery after becoming First Consul, promulgating the law of 20 May 1802 and sending military governors and troops to the colonies to impose it. On 10 May 1802, Colonel Delgrs launched a rebellion in Guadeloupe against Napoleon's representative, General Richepanse. The rebellion was repressed, and slavery was re-established. The news of this event sparked the rebellion that led to the loss of the lives of tens of thousands of French soldiers, a greater loss of civilian lives, and Hati's gaining independence in 1804, and the consequential loss of the second most important French territory in the Americas, Louisiana, which was sold to the United States of America. The French governments refused to recognise Haiti and only did so in the 1830s when Haiti agreed to pay a substantial amount of reparations. Then, on 27 April 1848, under the Second Republic (1848–52), the decree-law SchÅlcher again abolished slavery. The state bought the slaves from the colons (white colonists; Bks in Creole), and then freed them.
At about the same time, France started colonising Africa. Its activities there included transferring the population to mines, forestry, and rubber plantations under isolated, harsh working conditions often compared to slavery.
Debates about the dimensions of colonialism continue. On 10 May 2001, the Taubira law officially acknowledge slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade as a crime against humanity. 10 May was chosen as the day dedicated to recognition of the crime of slavery. Anti-colonial activists also want the French Republic to recognise African Liberation Day.
Although the crime of slavery was formally recognised, four years later, the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) voted on 23 February 2005 for a law to require teachers and textbooks to "acknowledge and recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence abroad, especially in North Africa." This resolution was met with public uproar and accusations of historic revisionism, both inside France and abroad. Because of this law, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria, refused to sign the envisioned "friendly treaty" with France. Famous writer Aim Csaire, leader of the Ngritude movement, refused to meet UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy, who cancelled his planned visit to Martinique. President Jacques Chirac (UMP) repealed the controversial law at the beginning of 2006.
Slavery was abolished in most of Latin America during the Independence Wars (1810–1822), but slavery remained a practice in the region up to 1888 in Brazil, as well as having long life in the remaining Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In some parts of Africa and in much of the Islamic world, it persisted as a legal institution well into the 20th century.
In the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (both now part of Romania), the enslavement of the Roma (often referred to as Gypsies) was still legal at the beginning of the 19th century. Abolitionism was associated with the progressive pro-European and anti-Ottoman movement, which gradually gained power in the two principalities. Between 1843 and 1855, all of the 250,000 enslaved Roma people were liberated. Many migrated to Western Europe and North America.
In eleven States constituting the American South, slavery was a social and powerful economic institution, integral to the agricultural economy. By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million.[13]. American abolitionism labored under the handicap that it was accused of threatening the harmony of North and South in the Union. The abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society; writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe; former slaves such as Frederick Douglass; and free blacks such as brothers Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston, who helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society.[14]
The 1860 presidential victory of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the spread of slavery to the Western United States, marked a turning point in the movement. Convinced that their way of life was threatened, the Southern states seceded from the Union, which led to the American Civil War. In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1865) prohibited slavery throughout the country.
The first American movement to abolish slavery came in the spring of 1688 when German and Dutch Quakers of Mennonite descent in Germantown, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia) wrote a two-page condemnation of the practice and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church, the Society of Friends. Though the Quaker establishment took no immediate action, the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, was an unusually early, clear and forceful argument against slavery and initiated the process that finally led to the banning of slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and in the state of Pennsylvania(1780).
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers who had strong religious objections to slavery. Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown, co-founder of Brown University, and who also settled at Uxbridge, Massachusetts prior to 1770, were among the first in America to free slaves. The society ceased to operate during the Revolution and the British occupation of Philadelphia. After the Revolution, it was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president.[15] Benjamin Rush was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers.[16] The first article published in what later became the United States advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery was allegedly written by Thomas Paine. Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, more popularly known as The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Museum.[17]
Through the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 under the Congress of the Confederation, slavery was prohibited in the territories north west of the Ohio River. By 1804, abolitionists succeeded in passing legislation that would eventually (in conjunction with the 13th amendment) emancipate the slaves in every state north of the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon Line. However, emancipation in the free states was so gradual that both New York and Pennsylvania listed slaves in their 1840 census returns, and a small number of black slaves were held in New Jersey in 1860.[18]
The principal organized bodies to advocate this reform were the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society and the New York Manumission Society. The last was headed by powerful politicians: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, later Federalists and Aaron Burr, later Democratic-Republican Vice-President of the United States. That bill did not pass, because of controversy over the rights of freed slaves; every member of the Legislature, but one, voted for some version of it. New York did enact a bill in 1799, which did end slavery over time, but made no provision for the freedmen. New Jersey in 1804 was the last northern state to enact the gradual elimination slavery (again in a gradual fashion); there were still a dozen "perpetual apprentices" in New Jersey in the 1860 Census. Despite the actions of abolitionists, free blacks were subject to racial segregation in the North.[19]
At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, agreement was reached that allowed the Federal government to abolish the importation of slaves into the United States, but not prior to 1808. By that time, all the states had passed individual laws abolishing or severely limiting the international buying or selling of slaves.[20] The importation of slaves into the United States was officially banned on January 1, 1808.[21] but not its internal slave trade.
After 1776, Quaker and Moravian advocates helped persuade numerous slaveholders in the Upper South to free their slaves. Manumissions increased for nearly two decades. Many individual acts of manumission freed thousands of slaves in total. Slaveholders freed slaves in such number that the percentage of free Negroes in the Upper South increased sharply from one to ten percent, with most of that increase in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. By 1810 three-quarters of blacks in Delaware were free. The most notable of individuals was Robert Carter III of Virginia, who freed more than 450 people by "Deed of Gift", filed in 1791. This number was more slaves than any single American had freed or would ever free.[22] Often slaveholders came to their decisions by their own struggles in the Revolution; their wills and deeds frequently cited language about the equality of men supporting their manumissions. Slaveholders were also encouraged to do so because the economics of the area was changing. They were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco culture to mixed crop cultivation and did not need as many slaves.[23]
The free black families began to thrive, together with African Americans free before the Revolution, mostly descendants of unions between working class white women and African men.[24] By 1860, in Delaware 91.7 percent of the blacks were free, and 49.7 percent of those in Maryland. These first free families often formed the core of artisans, professionals, preachers and teachers in future generations.[23]
During the Congressional debate on the 1820 Tallmadge Amendment, which sought to limit slavery in Missouri as it became a state, Rufus King declared that "laws or compacts imposing any such condition [slavery] upon any human being are absolutely void, because contrary to the law of nature, which is the law of God, by which he makes his ways known to man, and is paramount to all human control." The amendment failed and Missouri became a slave state. According to historian David Brion Davis, this may have been the first time in the world that a political leader openly attacked slavery's perceived legality in such a radical manner.
Beginning in the 1830s, the U.S. Postmaster General refused to allow the mails to carry abolition pamphlets to the South.[25] Northern teachers suspected of abolitionism were expelled from the South, and abolitionist literature was banned. Southerners rejected the denials of Republicans that they were abolitionists. They pointed to John Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a slave uprising as proof that multiple Northern conspiracies were afoot to ignite bloody slave rebellions. Although some abolitionists did call for slave revolts, no evidence of any other Brown-like conspiracy has been discovered.[26] The North felt threatened as well, for as Eric Foner concludes, "Northerners came to view slavery as the very antithesis of the good society, as well as a threat to their own fundamental values and interests".[27] However, many conservative Northerners were uneasy at the prospect of the sudden addition to the labor pool of a huge number of freed laborers who were used to working for very little, and thus seen as being willing to undercut prevailing wages.[citation needed]. The famous, "fiery" Abolitionist, Abby Kelley Foster, from Massachusetts, was considered an "ultra" abolitionist who believed in full civil rights for all black people. She held to the views that the freed slaves would colonize Liberia. Parts of the anti-slavery movement became known as "Abby Kellyism". She recruited Susan B Anthony to the movement.
In the early part of the 19th century, a variety of organizations were established advocating the movement of black people from the United States to locations where they would enjoy greater freedom; some endorsed colonization, while others advocated emigration. During the 1820s and 1830s the American Colonization Society (A.C.S.) was the primary vehicle for proposals to return black Americans to freedom in Africa. It had broad support nationwide among white people, including prominent leaders such as Abraham Lincoln,[28] Henry Clay and James Monroe, who saw this as preferable to emancipation, with Clay stating: "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off".[29] Clay argued that as blacks could never be fully integrated into society due to "unconquerable prejudice" by white Americans, it would be better for them to emigrate to Africa.[29] There was however, considerable opposition among African Americans, many of whom did not see colonization as a viable or acceptable solution to their daunting problems in the United States. One notable opponent of such plans was the wealthy free black abolitionist James Forten of Philadelphia.
After a series of attempts to plant small settlements on the coast of West Africa, the A.C.S. established the colony of Liberia in 1821–22. Over the next four decades, it assisted thousands of former slaves and free black people to move there from the United States. The disease environment they encountered was extreme, and most of the migrants died fairly quickly. Enough survived to declare independence in 1847. American support for colonization waned gradually through the 1840s and 1850s, largely because of the efforts of abolitionists to promote emancipation of slaves and granting of American citizenship. Americo-Liberians ruled Liberia continuously until the military coup of 1980.[30]
The emigrationist tradition dated back to the Revolutionary War era. Initially, the thought was that free African Americans would want to emigrate to Africa, but over time other ideas became popular. After Haiti became independent, it tried to recruit African Americans to migrate there after it re-established trade relations with the United States. The Haytian Union was the name of a group formed to promote relations between the countries.[31]
Cincinnati's Black community sponsored founding the Wilberforce Colony, an initially successful settlement of African American immigrants to Canada. The colony was one of the first such independent political entities. It lasted for a number of decades and provided a destination for about 200 black families emigrating from a number of locations in the United States.[31]
A radical shift came in the 1830s, led by William Lloyd Garrison, who demanded "immediate emancipation, gradually achieved". That is, he demanded that slave-owners repent immediately, and set up a system of emancipation. Theodore Weld, an evangelical minister, and Robert Purvis, a free African American, joined Garrison in 1833 to form the American Anti-Slavery Society (Faragher 381). The following year Weld encouraged a group of students at Lane Theological Seminary to form an anti-slavery society. After the president, Lyman Beecher, attempted to suppress it, the students moved to Oberlin College. Due to the students' anti-slavery position, Oberlin soon became one of the most liberal colleges and accepted African American students. Along with Garrison, were Northcutt and Collins as proponents of immediate abolition. These two ardent abolitionists felt very strongly that it could not wait and that action needed to be taken right away. Abby Kelley Foster became an "ultra abolitionist" and a follower of William Lloyd Garrison. She led Susan B. Anthony into the anti-slavery cause.
After 1840 "abolition" usually referred to positions like Garrison's; it was largely an ideological movement led by about 3000 people, including free blacks and people of color, many of whom, such as Frederick Douglass, and Robert Purvis and James Forten in Philadelphia, played prominent leadership roles. Abolitionism had a strong religious base including Quakers, and people converted by the revivalist fervor of the Second Great Awakening, led by Charles Finney in the North in the 1830s. Belief in abolition contributed to the breaking away of some small denominations, such as the Free Methodist Church.
Evangelical abolitionists founded some colleges, most notably Bates College in Maine and Oberlin College in Ohio. The well-established colleges, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, generally opposed abolition,[citation needed] although the movement did attract such figures as Yale president Noah Porter and Harvard president Thomas Hill.
In the North, most opponents of slavery supported other modernizing reform movements such as the temperance movement, public schooling, and prison- and asylum-building. They were split bitterly on the role of women's activism.
Daniel O'Connell, the Roman Catholic leader of the Irish in Ireland, supported the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and in America. O'Connell had played a leading role in securing Catholic Emancipation (the removal of the civil and political disabilities of Roman Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland) and he was one of William Lloyd Garrison's models. Garrison recruited him to the cause of American abolitionism. O'Connell, the black abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond, and the temperance priest Theobald Mathew organized a petition with 60,000 signatures urging the Irish of the United States to support abolition. O'Connell also spoke in the United States for abolition.
The Repeal Associations in the United States mostly took a pro-slavery position. Several reasons have been suggested for this: that Irish immigrants were competing with free blacks for jobs, and disliked having the same arguments used for Irish and for black freedom; that they were loyal to the United States Constitution, which defended their liberties, and disliked the fundamentally extra-constitutional position of the Abolitionists; and that they perceived abolitionism as Protestant, and were therefore suspicious of them. In addition, slaveholders had no hesitation in voicing their support for the freedom of Ireland, a white nation outside the United States.
Radical Irish nationalists – those who broke with O'Connell over his refusal to contemplate the violent overthrow of British rule in Ireland – had a diversity of views about slavery. John Mitchel, who spent the years 1853 to 1875 in America, was a passionate propagandist in favor of slavery; three of his sons fought in the Confederate Army. On the other hand, his former close associate Thomas Francis Meagher served as a Brigadier General in the United States Army during the American Civil War.
The Catholic Church in America had long ties in slaveholding Maryland and Louisiana. Despite a firm stand for the spiritual equality of black people, and the resounding condemnation of slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in his bull In Supremo Apostolatus issued in 1839, the American church continued in deeds, if not in public discourse, to support slaveholding interests. The Bishop of New York denounced O'Connell's petition as a forgery, and if genuine, an unwarranted foreign interference. The Bishop of Charleston declared that, while Catholic tradition opposed slave trading, it had nothing against slavery. No American bishop supported abolition before the Civil War. While the war went on, they continued to allow slave-owners to take communion.
One historian observed that ritualist churches separated themselves from heretics rather than sinners; he observed that Episcopalians and Lutherans also accommodated themselves to slavery. (Indeed, one southern Episcopal bishop was a Confederate general.) There were more reasons than religious tradition, however, as the Anglican Church had been the established church in the South during the colonial period. It was linked to the traditions of landed gentry and the wealthier and educated planter classes, and the Southern traditions longer than any other church. In addition, while the Protestant missionaries of the Great Awakening initially opposed slavery in the South, by the early decades of the 19th century, Baptist and Methodist preachers in the South had come to an accommodation with it in order to evangelize with farmers and artisans. By the Civil War, the Baptist and Methodist churches split into regional associations because of slavery.[32]
After O'Connell's failure, the American Repeal Associations broke up; but the Garrisonians rarely relapsed into the "bitter hostility" of American Protestants towards the Roman Church. Some antislavery men joined the Know Nothings in the collapse of the parties; but Edmund Quincy ridiculed it as a mushroom growth, a distraction from the real issues. Although the Know-Nothing legislature of Massachusetts honored Garrison, he continued to oppose them as violators of fundamental rights to freedom of worship.
Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison repeatedly condemned slavery for contradicting the principles of freedom and equality on which the country was founded. In 1854, Garrison wrote:
I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form – and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing – with indignation and abhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defense, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any institution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may rightfully make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration of Independence. Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire. I do not know how to espouse freedom and slavery together.[33]
In The Struggle for Equality, historian James M. McPherson defines an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War in the United States had agitated for the immediate, unconditional, and total abolition of slavery in the United States."
Although there were several groups that opposed slavery (such as the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage), at the time of the founding of the Republic, there were few states which prohibited slavery outright. The Constitution had several provisions which accommodated slavery, although none used the word. Passed unanimously by the Congress of the Confederation in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory, a vast area which had previously belonged to individual states in which slavery was legal.
American abolitionism began very early, well before the United States was founded as a nation. An early law abolishing slavery (but not temporary indentured servitude) in Rhode Island in 1652 floundered within 50 years.[34] Samuel Sewall, a prominent Bostonian and one of the judges at the Salem Witch Trials, wrote The Selling of Joseph in protest of the widening practice of outright slavery as opposed to indentured servitude in the colonies. This is the earliest-recorded anti-slavery tract published in the future United States.
Abolitionists included those who joined the American Anti-Slavery Society or its auxiliary groups in the 1830s and 1840s as the movement fragmented.[35] The fragmented anti-slavery movement included groups such as the Liberty Party; the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society; the American Missionary Association; and the Church Anti-Slavery Society. McPherson describes three types of abolitionists prior to the Civil War:
On the ideological spectrum, from immediate abolition on the Left to conservative antislavery on the Right, it is often hard to tell where "abolition" (which demanded unconditional emancipation and usually envisaged civil equality for the free slaves.) ended and "antislavery" or "free soil" (which desired only the containment of slavery and was ambivalent on the question of equality) began. In New England particularly, many free soilers were abolitionists at heart; in the mid-Atlantic states and even more in the old Northwest, political abolitionists tended to submerge their abolitionist identity in the broader but shallower stream of free soil.
Vermont was the first territory (not a state at the time) in North America to prohibit slavery in 1777. It did not actually free slaves, but required masters to remove them from the territory. The first state to begin a gradual abolition of slavery was Pennsylvania in 1780, although the process was very gradual. All importation of slaves was prohibited, but it freed no one at first; only the slaves of masters who failed to register them with the state, along with the future children of enslaved mothers. Those enslaved in Pennsylvania before the 1780 law went into effect were not freed until 1847.[36]
Massachusetts took an opposite and much more radical position. Its Supreme Court ruled in 1783, that a black man was, indeed, a man; and therefore free under the state's constitution.
All of the other states north of Maryland began gradual abolition of slavery between 1781 and 1804, based on the Pennsylvania model. Rhode Island had limited slave trading in 1774[citation needed] (Virginia had also attempted to do so before the Revolution, but the Privy Council had vetoed the act)[citation needed], all the other northern states also limited the slave trade by 1786, and Georgia in 1798.[citation needed] These northern emancipation acts typically provided that slaves born before the law was passed would be freed at a certain age, and so remnants of slavery lingered; in New Jersey, a dozen "permanent apprentices" were recorded in the 1860 census.
The institution remained solid in the South, however and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a stronger anti-slavery stance in the North. In 1835 alone abolitionists mailed over a million pieces of anti-slavery literature to the south. In response southern legislators banned abolitionist literature and encouraged harassment of anyone distributing it. Anti-slavery sentiment among many people in the North was jolted by the murder of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a white man and editor of an abolitionist newspaper on 7 November 1837, by a pro-slavery mob[37] which destroyed his printing press. The majority of Northerners rejected the extreme positions of the abolitionists; Abraham Lincoln, for example. Indeed many northern leaders including Lincoln, Stephen Douglas (the Democratic nominee in 1860), John C. Fremont (the Republican nominee in 1856), and Ulysses S. Grant married into slave owning southern families without any moral qualms.
Abolitionism as a principle was far more than just the wish to limit the extent of slavery. Most Northerners recognized that slavery existed in the South and the Constitution did not allow the federal government to intervene there. Most Northerners favored a policy of gradual and compensated emancipation. After 1849 abolitionists rejected this and demanded it end immediately and everywhere. John Brown was the only abolitionist known to have actually planned a violent insurrection, though David Walker promoted the idea. The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free African-Americans, especially in the black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament. African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the black community; however, they were tremendously influential to some sympathetic white people, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, William Lloyd Garrison, who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass, who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own, widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.
In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the issue of the United States Constitution. This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by Lysander Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an antislavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural Law and a form of social contract theory, they said that slavery existed outside of the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to the politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother Lewis. While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129–130)
Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Nevertheless, participants like Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Amos No« Freeman and others continued with their work. Abolitionists were particularly active in Ohio, where some worked directly in the Underground Railroad. Since the state shared a border with slave states, it was a popular place for slaves' escaping across the Ohio River and up its tributaries, where they sought shelter among supporters who would help them move north to freedom. Two significant events in the struggle to destroy slavery were the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. In the South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing slavery were often targets of lynch mob violence before the American Civil War.[38]
Numerous known abolitionists lived, worked, and worshipped in Downtown Brooklyn, from Henry Ward Beecher, who auctioned slaves into freedom from the pulpit of Plymouth Church, to Nathan Egelston, a leader of the African and Foreign Antislavery Society, who also preached at Bridge Street AME and lived on Duffield Street. His fellow Duffield Street residents, Thomas and Harriet Truesdell were leading members of the Abolitionist movement. Mr. Truesdell was a founding member of the Providence Anti-slavery Society before moving to Brooklyn in 1851. Harriet Truesdell was also very active in the movement, organizing an antislavery convention in Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia. The Tuesdell's lived at 227 Duffield Street. Another prominent Brooklyn-based abolitionist was Rev. Joshua Leavitt, trained as a lawyer at Yale who stopped practicing law in order to attend Yale Divinity School, and subsequently edited the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator and campaigned against slavery, as well as advocating other social reforms. In 1841 Leavitt published his The Financial Power of Slavery, which argued that the South was draining the national economy due to its reliance on slavery.
After the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, abolitionists continued to pursue the freedom of slaves in the remaining slave states, and to better the conditions of black Americans generally. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 officially ended slavery in the United States.
Slavery was abolished in these nations in these years:
The abolitionist movements and the abolition of slavery have been commemorated in different ways around the world in modern times. The United Nations General Assembly declared 2004 the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. This proclamation marked the bicentenary of the birth of the first black state, Haiti. Numerous exhibitions, events and research programmes were connected to the initiative.
2007 witnessed major exhibitions in British museums and galleries to mark the anniversary of the 1807 abolition act – 1807 Commemorated 2008 marks the 201st anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire.[58] It also marks the 175th anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire.[59]
The Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa held a major international conference entitled, "Routes to Freedom: Reflections on the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade", from 14 to 16 March 2008.[60] Actor and human rights activist Danny Glover delivered the keynote speech announcing the creation of two major scholarships intended for University of Ottawa law students specializing in international law and social justice at the conference's gala dinner.
Brooklyn, New York has begun work on commemorating the abolitionist movement in New York.
On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states:
Although outlawed in most countries, slavery is nonetheless practiced secretly in many parts of the world. Enslavement still takes place in the United States, Europe, and Latin America,[61] as well as parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.[62] There are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide.[63] In Mauritania alone, estimates are that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved. Many of them are used as bonded labour.[64]
Modern-day abolitionists have emerged over the last several years, as awareness of slavery around the world has grown, with groups such as Anti-Slavery International, the American Anti-Slavery Group, International Justice Mission, and Free the Slaves working to rid the world of slavery. Zach Hunter[65], for example, began a movement called Loose Change to Loosen Chains[66] when he was in seventh grade. Also featured on CNN[67] and other national news organizations, Hunter has gone on to help inspire other teens and young adults to take action against injustice with his books, Be the Change and Generation Change.
In the United States, The Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery is a coalition of NGOs, foundations and corporations working to develop a policy agenda for abolishing slavery and human trafficking. Since 1997, the United States Department of Justice has, through work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, prosecuted six individuals in Florida on charges of slavery in the agricultural industry. These prosecutions have led to freedom for over 1000 enslaved workers in the tomato and orange fields of South Florida. This is only one example of the contemporary fight against slavery worldwide. Slavery exists most widely in agricultural labor, apparel and sex industries, and service jobs in some regions.
In 2000, the United States passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) "to combat trafficking in persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and involuntary servitude."[68] The TVPA also "created new law enforcement tools to strengthen the prosecution and punishment of traffickers, making human trafficking a Federal crime with severe penalties."[69]
The United States Department of State publishes the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, identifying countries as either Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List or Tier 3, depending upon three factors: "(1) The extent to which the country is a country of origin, transit, or destination for severe forms of trafficking; (2) The extent to which the government of the country does not comply with the TVPA's minimum standards including, in particular, the extent of the government's trafficking-related corruption; and (3) The resources and capabilities of the government to address and eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons."[70]
|Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Abolitionism
Related topics in the Connexions Subject Index
Alternatives –
Left History –
Libraries & Archives –
Social Change –
Alternatives – Left History – Libraries & Archives – Social Change –
This article is based on one or more articles in Wikipedia, with modifications and additional content contributed by
Connexions editors. This article, and any information from Wikipedia, is covered by a
Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the
GNU Free Documentation
License (GFDL).
We welcome your help in improving and expanding the content of Connexipedia articles, and in correcting errors. Connexipedia is not a wiki: please contact Connexions by email if you wish to contribute. We are also looking for contributors interested in writing articles on topics, persons, events and organizations related to social justice and the history of social change movements.
For more information contact Connexions


text:
About a year ago, I was training a guy in his mid 50s, an older gentleman.
Shortly after the training, the one-on-one training with him, he hooked up with a girl in her early 20s and actually went on some dates. He got her into bed, but they actually split apart eventually because her parents found out.
They were horrified that she was dating such an older and she forced her to break up with him.
Now the story actually has a much more positive ending for this guy. I'm going to get back to that in a couple of minutes, but this got me thinking.
Is it ever going to become mainstream or acceptable for a much older guy to date a much younger girl, say a 55-year-old guy dating a 20-year-old girl?
The short answer is no.
Four reasons old-young relationships will never be accepted
Actually, I thought of four pretty good reasons for this, delving deep into human psychology and economics.
Now there's tons of younger girls that have this fantasy of dating a much older gentleman, the George Clooney or the Richard Gere, who has status and good looks, who is well-grounded and experienced and well-traveled and so on like she's got some little fantasy going on.
But at the same time, society will shame her, so she's got to be conscious of what her family would think or what her friends would think.
Reason #1- most older guys are broken
The first reason that this will never become mainstream dating between old and young is simply because 99 percent of older gentlemen in their 50s, by the time they hit 50, they are broken men.
They are broken. They have 20 or 30 years of bad habits behind them – smoking, or drinking, or watching too much television, leading sedentary lives, or you know going to a job that they dislike, and they've got all these stress hormones ravaging their body. Cortisol going through their head, and they feel like shit. They don't exercise. They don't eat right. By the time they hit 55, they look like crap.
If you walk through any Wal-Mart, older guys, you very rarely look at a guy in his 50s and like, "Oh, I want to be that guy. That's how I want to be." I mean that almost never happens.
You're always thinking, "Shit, I'll never look like that," or, "I hope I don't look like that."
The reason that it will never become mainstream is because 99 percent of guys reinforce this image or this stereotype that all older guys are kind of like past their prime. They're losers. They're no good for younger girls. They have nothing to offer.
Even if a young girl has this fantasy in her head of the ideal older guy, if she told her friends or family, what they're thinking about is the guy, you know the Wal-Mart critter, or the old guy with the shriveled skin and the balding head. He has no fashion sense and he is from a different century, and you could kick his dick up.
So they would probably shame her or tease her because they're thinking in their mind, "Okay, this girl has some weird fetish for creepy, older guys like grandpa on her."
Most younger girls are not going to openly admit that to other people, even though they harbor fantasy.
Reason #2- it's a threat to older women
So the second reason that it will never become mainstream is because of older women.
Now it's not in the interest of older women for older guys to date younger girls.
A lot of older women, their income and companionship depend on older guys sticking with them, not going after these young girls.
It would throw society or mainstream society into total chaos if millions of older guys suddenly got the bright idea to hit on young girls or go after younger girls because you have all these older women that would be kind of left behind. It's not in their genetic interest for that to happen.
So older women will often very quickly shame a younger girl or shame a couple where it's an older guy or a younger woman because they don't like to see that. They don't want older guys to get any ideas.
Reason #3- it's a threat to younger men
The third reason it will never become mainstream ever, not now or not for a thousand years is because of younger guys.
So younger guys don't want that competition. I mean younger guys have a lot to offer in their own way. They have a lot of potential for growth. They have better looks, maybe physically in better shape.
But older guys, if they have been working on themselves really well, are really hard competition.
An older guy that's been working on himself can be better dressed, has more experience, has more status, can have more money.
He can be more successful.
He can offer a lot more to a young 18-year-old or 19-year-old girl.
Younger guys, instead of competing mano a mano with that, it's just a lot easier to shame the girl. Shame her. Shame her. Shame her. Because it's not in their genetic interest, again you have a whole big sector of society there that this will not become mainstream.
Reason #4- Fathers
The fourth reason it will never become mainstream older guys dating younger girls is because of fathers.
Now every older guy, if they could just snap their fingers and make it happen would love to have a threesome or a foursome with a bunch of 18-year-old girls, but every father doesn't want his angel little daughter to get fucked by a bunch of guys, let alone some guy that's twice or three times her age.
Fathers are very protective and in that way, there is this contradiction.
A guy can be a father and very protective of his own offspring and yet want to bang everybody else's offspring.
Because of that, this conflict of interest between men, you have this whole swathe of demographic of fathers who don't want their daughters to hook up with older guys and will never become mainstream.
Because of these four reasons, don't ever wait around, thinking that this is going to become a new movement like gay rights or legalization of marijuana where you do see movement forward.
On this, you're never going to see forward movement because there's just too many people out there that's not in their genetic interest to see it happen. It's sometimes not in the economic interest of mainstream society.
Use the social pressure to YOUR advantage
So the thing is, here's the thing: you want to use that to your advantage. This is awesome. You should be thinking of this as a great opportunity. Let's say you can go back in time and be a 20-year-old guy.
There's no shame in hooking up with a 19-year-old, but the downside to that if you have to compete now with every other 20-year-old guy.
You're competing with every other 19-year-old guy.
You're competing with everyone who's 21, 22, 23. You're competing with millions of men that want her attention.
Whereas if you're an older guy, because of the shame, because a lot of older guys don't take care of themselves, if you're an older guy that takes care of himself and you're just like "Fuck with society things, I'm going to do it anyway," and you go to where the young girls are, you're really going to stand out.
You're not going to have any competition. If you're the 55-year-old guy that's really got the shit together, really got his act together, you're going to be the only 55-year-old guy within a 30-mile radius that can see that.
If you're older- here's you how can clean up with younger girls
Most girls harbor fantasies about hooking with an older guy, you're going to be the one older guy around, so no competition.
It's just a matter of taking care of yourself, having the right habits, walking that narrow road of success, and not caring about the shame, not caring about what other people think, not caring about seeking permission. Then you can really clean up. You can really, really clean up.
Like this guy ‑ to finish the story – like this guy in his mid 50s who is very short-term girlfriend was forced to break up with him, he actually came back from more training with me a little while later and then later on, he's slept with a girl who I think is 18-year-old or 19-year-old, something like that, really, really young.
He sent me some photos. Really cute girl. Amazing. I was even a little shocked. That didn't last, but shortly after that, he started dating a girl who was in her mid 20s again, and I think they're still dating.
Granted this guy is successful, relatively successful, not rich or anything but relatively successful, dresses well, is well-spoken, has done some traveling, is experienced, he offers a lot to a woman that a young guy simply can't offer.
He's a cool guy.
If you can build up your habits, if you can build up a lifestyle that girls will find attractive and you're an older gentleman, you want to go with these younger girls, you can really, really clean up.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
In a twenty minute interview at the BBC, the founder of People Can Change, Richard Wyler from Virginia USA, explains what PCC does and in what way he chooses to do other things with same-sex attractions than adopt the political 'gay' label. He does not want some sexual feelings to totally define who he is as a personal identity or to define a lifestyle: "I am not going to make the life choices about who I love based on political correctness".
Click here to hear the audio file.


text:
SICP insight of the day: iterative programming doesn't require a for loop. Tail recursion is iterative programming. It looks very close to recursion, but the distinction is: a program is iterative if everything it needs is stored in a few state variables. In an imperative style the state is stored in mutable variables. In a functional style the state is passed as parameters to the function, over and over again.
The key difference between recursion and iteration is whether any necessary information is stored on the stack between calls. Is there any operation to perform after the recursive call completes? If so, we need the stack. If not, tail recursion, iterative program. Of course, this is why iterative programs can go on forever, while recursive programs will eventually run out of stack space. Recursion requires the computer to store more state for every pass. Iterative programs have a fixed amount of state.
The awesome concept here is the distinction between the shape of program execution vs the style it is written in. Look at what the code does, not how it goes about it.
There is one advantage of tail recursion over a for loop, even though both produce the same kind of program. Tail recursion lets everything stay immutable. This is safer.
When we're training ourselves to think functionally, using recursion in place of loops and mutables: look at the for loop. What state is tracked within there? Typically there is some state that determines when to stop (a counter, typically) and one or more running totals that represent the output of the loop. Take each of these and make it a parameter to the recursive function. Pattern-match on the state to determine when to end the loop; output the running totals at that point. In the recursive call, increment or advance the pieces of state and pass the updated ones as parameters to the next call.
For instance:
String printContents(String[] arr) {
String output = "";
for (int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
output += " " + i + ") " + arr[i] + "\n";
return output;
Here, the state of the iteration is contained in the the counter i and the aggregator output. A direct, simple translation to a tail-recursive function is then:
String printContents(int i, String output, String[] arr) {
i >= arr.length?
output :
printContents(i + 1, output + " " + i + ") " + arr[i] + "\n", arr);
See how the loop counter became an argument and the aggregator became an argument? The input was an argument to begin with and stays there. This transfers the needed state to the next call.
People familiar with functional style will immediately recognize that there are easier ways to flip through the contents of an array or collection. That's fine — functional languages have syntax to make this very common pattern extra-clean. The point is that when we're used to thinking of iteration in terms of loops, we can train ourselves to recognize the iterative state and move it into parameters.
Now, if the purpose of your for-loop is to produce a bunch of side effects, I got no help for ya.
Disclaimer: never do this in real life in Java because tail-recursion is not supported.
Personal footnote: The other day a friend gave me some serious geek cred points when he noticed the Wizard Book on my nightstand. It is a classic, and it's filling in holes in my education. I'm only on chapter one, but every section that I read makes my day.


text:
An adaptation of the classic (albeit frequently mis-told) fairy tale of two sisters -- blond/white Snow and black/red Rose. After their father disappears during a trip through the woods, they and their mother are thrown out of their home and forced to take up occupying an abandoned house in those same woods. Their mother warns them to stay close, but the girls long to find their father and they wander. In the woods, they find many strange and scary things: wolves, a hunter, a tiny little man who speaks in riddles, a injured bear, and an old woman who maintains a "library" of objects which tell stories.
Illustrated with original watercolor sketches, this handsome fairy tale is a striking book. The story, not always so straightforward, gels well enough in the end, although is not as strong as the presentation. Rather striking for the genre, the narrative is surprisingly animal-friendly, whether it is showing kindness to a hungry bear or to the girls' cat. The more gruesome nature typically associated with fairy tales is largely absent.


text:
Here are five ways that you can protect your vision:
- Get an eye exam every year. The very first step to caring for your eyes is to get an annual eye exam, which can also detect early symptoms of other health conditions.
- Eat eye-healthy foods. A colorful diet is good for your whole body, your eyes included! Check out these 10 eye-healthy foods.
- Quit smoking. Smoking has terrible effects on your body and your eyes. People who smoke are more likely to develop eye diseases and cataracts. The more you smoke, the more your risk increases.
- Stick to the 20-20-20 rule. If you spend a lot of time with digital devices, your eyes are at risk. You can reduce the impact of the screens by taking a break every 20 minutes to look for 20 seconds at something that is 20 feet away.
- Wear UV-blocking sunglasses. Protect your eyes from damaging UV rays by wearing sunglasses outdoors.


text:
News that Labour MP, Iain Lees-Galloway will not resubmit the End of Life Choice Bill is warmly welcomed.
The bill had been inherited by Lees-Galloway, as its earlier sponsor, Maryan Street, failed to be re-elected into Parliament in the recent general election. But any attempt to resubmit the bill by Lees-Galloway has been squashed by new Labour leader, Andrew Little.
Although Little is not opposed to euthanasia he believes there are more important issues to deal with as the party attempts to rebuild. In a Herald article he is quoted as saying:
It's not about avoiding controversy but it's about choosing the controversies that are best for us at this point in time. That stuff on euthanasia, it isn't the time for us to be talking about that.
So for the time being, it looks like euthanasia will not be on the political horizon.
However, this does not mean that we should rest. There is much work to be done. The pro-euthanasia/assisted suicide lobby are working very hard to change the general public's view of end of life issues.
It should also be noted that another MP, either from Labour or another political party, could also take the opportunity to submit the End of Life Choice bill – or a similar one.
Euthanasia Free NZ released an excellent press release on the issue, which I publish here in full:
Labour congratulated on withdrawing bill
Euthanasia Free NZ – Press Release
Euthanasia-Free NZ congratulates Labour leader Andrew Little and MP Iain Lees-Galloway for resisting sponsorship of the ex-Maryan Street voluntary euthanasia bill.
The End-of-Life Choice Bill proposes legal assisted suicide and euthanasia for anyone over 18 who has either a terminal condition which could end their life in 12 months, or an irreversible physical or mental medical condition that the person feels makes their life unbearable. It would effectively legalise euthanasia for anyone with a chronic physical or mental illness, disability, ageing-related condition or any condition for which a person refuses further treatment.Euthanasia-Free NZ congratulates Labour leader Andrew Little and MP Iain Lees-Galloway for resisting sponsorship of the ex-Maryan Street voluntary euthanasia bill.
"Public support for voluntary euthanasia is overestimated and based on unscientific online polls that ask an uninformed public to respond to leading questions couched in euphemisms", says Renée Joubert, executive officer of Euthanasia-Free NZ.
"Hence, many people confuse "assisted dying" (a euphemism) with switching off life support, withdrawing or refusing treatment and 'do-not-resuscitate' orders. However, euthanasia actually involves a doctor administering lethal drugs by injection in a way similar to overseas executions. Assisted suicide involves a person swallowing lethal drugs prescribed by their doctor."
Many are ignorant of studies showing that up to 35% of doctor-assisted deaths involve complications such as uncontrolled vomiting, epileptic fits and delayed death. It is hardly 'death with dignity". Many don't know that witnessing the assisted death of a loved one carries the same risk of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as Iraqi war veterans have."
A common misconception is that euthanasia and assisted suicide are purely private matters. That is not so. Both require the involvement of another party to execute, hence are public matters. Legalising euthanasia means making it legal for one person to be involved in deliberately ending the life of another person. Calling it "mercy killing" can hide a multitude of motives, including elder abuse.
Many are unaware that uncontrolled pain is not the reason why people request euthanasia or assisted suicide. The actual reasons are existential, such as being less able to engage in enjoyable activities and fear of being a burden. A high proportion of requests are from depressed people. A UK study of the terminally ill showed that 98% of those wanting to die changed their minds after being treated for depression.
The unintended consequences of euthanasia legislation are unknown to many. Several depressed, but otherwise healthy, Belgians have been euthanised. Many naively believe that legal euthanasia can be regulated and that safeguards can prevent coercion and subtle pressure on vulnerable people to request death. It is not so.
Two 2010 studies on assisted deaths in Flanders, Belgium, show that only 53% of cases were reported and of these, less than three-quarters followed legal requirements. 32% of euthanasia deaths were without the patient's request. In half of these, death was the wish of family. In 20% of cases improvement in the person's medical condition was still possible. 92% of victims killed without consent were 65 years or older.
Dr Theo Boer, who initially supported euthanasia and reviewed about 4000 cases as a member of a Dutch Regional Euthanasia Commission, is now warning other countries not to make the mistake The Netherlands did in legalising euthanasia. Our parliamentarians would do well to heed his advice.


text:
Former student of Hutong Photography workshop featured in City Weekend
We were delighted to find out last week that Chelin Miller, who is a former student from one of out hutong workshops, was featured in Beijing City Weekend and interviewed about her experiences taking on of our classes. You can read a snippet of the interview here online and read it reproduced below. Well done Chelin! To see images from the workshop Chelin attended, please go here.
Snap Happy: Hutong Photography
*Amateur photographer Chelin Miller tells us why she hones her skills in Sean Gallagher's photo workshops
What is it about photography that draws you?
Photos tell a story, preserve memories and can be a fantastic creative outlet.
Have you ever studied photography before?
I have never studied photography seriously, but I've had a passion for it since I was a teenager.
How did you find the hands-on photography workshop?
There was a feeling of camaraderie from the beginning. We were eight in our group. Armed with our cameras, we went out around the hutong and although we were all together, we all perceived different aspects of the area, the people and the architecture. It was fascinating to come back to the hostel and review everybody's photos; I think we all learned a lot from each other.
Is the workshop accessible to the camera challenged?
Yes, the workshop was very clear and concise. It covered enough basic technical and composition steps to be able to take good photos even if you were a total beginner, without slowing down the pace for those with a little bit more experience.
Will you be taking the workshop again?
Yes, definitely. I can't wait to go to Harbin for the ice festival with Sean and Jessica's group. Being with others who share my passion, making jokes, feeding ideas off each other and learning from each other is what makes the workshops so enjoyable.