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Abolitionism

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Abolitionism Abolitionism sought out to end slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Slave revolts began in the 15th century, slaves would purposely break tools so that labor was deterred until further notice. Many reasons why slave masters and people weren’t open to the idea of freeing slaves because they were worried about a revenge takeover or riot. Many of the first abolitionists were Quakers, they believed that it is against their religion to hold people as slaves. Later, Quakers supported runaway slaves and helped in Underground Railroad. “Quakers believed that all people, regardless of race, had a divine spark inside them and were equal in the eyes of God.” The first goal of the Quaker abolitionists was to end slave trading among fellow Quakers because the barbarity of the buying and selling of slaves was more obvious than that of the institution of slavery as a whole. It was also generally assumed that if the slave trade was abolished slavery itself would soon cease to exist. After slave trading among Friends had been stopped, during the 1760s Quaker congregations began expelling slaveholders. Under the influence of Quakers in the American colonies, British Quakers established Britain's first antislavery society, the London Committee to Abolish the Slave Trade, in 1783.
The Mennonites, German Baptists whose beliefs resembled those of the English and Welsh Quakers, had founded Germantown half a century earlier. They argued that it was hypocritical for whites, especially Christians, to participate in the enslavement that they had themselves so feared for generations at the hands of the Turks on the high seas. They wrote that, "there is a saying, that we should do to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of generation or color.
The Underground Railroad used secret routes and safe houses in the 19th century to aid in helping black

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