{"id":74763,"date":"2022-08-08T08:02:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T12:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=74763"},"modified":"2022-08-08T14:16:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T18:16:56","slug":"northern-abolitionists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/northern-abolitionists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth About Northern Abolitionists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What role did the North play in the abolition of slavery? Were all Northern states against slavery? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Nikole Hannah-Jones, an American investigative journalist and the author of The 1619 Project<\/em>, the mainstream story about Northern states spearheading the abolition of slavery is historically inaccurate. The North was not actually abolitionist because Northerners also owned slaves and participated in the slave trade at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s what history textbooks don’t tell us about Northern abolitionists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Myth of the “Free Abolitionist North”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of The 1619 Project<\/em>, <\/strong>the myth of the Northern abolitionists leading the fight for American freedom is based on half-truths, hypocrisies, and inaccurate information. The North was neither free nor abolitionist at this time. Further, the authors of America\u2019s founding documents (like the Declaration of Independence<\/a> and the Constitution) were all slave owners and mostly Virginian Southerners like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early American Beliefs on Slavery and Abolition<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Historians confirm that most of the authors of America\u2019s founding documents enslaved people. However, experts add that despite this, many of them expressed the wish for slavery to eventually be abolished at one point in their careers. George Washington, the nation\u2019s first president, repeatedly expressed his desire to pass legislation that would abolish slavery, and at the end of his life, he freed the people he enslaved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this additional information doesn\u2019t necessarily contradict any of Hannah-Jones\u2019s claims, it may reframe how we view the attitudes of early Americans\u2014the issue wasn\u2019t as straightforward as Hannah-Jones frames it to be. Many prominent people, like Washington, were troubled by the moral evils of slavery but didn\u2019t yet know how to abolish the institution while preserving a unified nation and avoiding economic collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further, Hannah-Jones\u2019s claim that the North was neither free nor abolitionist is only half true\u2014while many Northerners either owned slaves or participated in the slave trade, there were a number of states that were majority abolitionist and began the process of abolishing slavery immediately after the war. Pennsylvania began the abolition process in 1780, followed by six more Northern states in the next several years. So while the Northern states weren\u2019t free at the time of the Revolution, many of them were<\/em> abolitionists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What role did the North play in the abolition of slavery? Were all Northern states against slavery? According to Nikole Hannah-Jones, an American investigative journalist and the author of The 1619 Project, the mainstream story about Northern states spearheading the abolition of slavery is historically inaccurate. The North was not actually abolitionist because Northerners also owned slaves and participated in the slave trade at the time. Here’s what history textbooks don’t tell us about Northern abolitionists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":42406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-74763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-the-1619-project","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Truth About Northern Abolitionists - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The mainstream story about Northern states spearheading the abolition of slavery in America is historically inaccurate. 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