Civil War, U.S.

The American Civil War was of immediate importance to free and enslaved Africans. During the antebellum years, many of them worked tirelessly to promote the antislavery cause. Foremost among them was Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave whose riveting oratory was said to hold audiences spellbound. Douglass's autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, published in 1845, became a mainstay in the antislavery movement, while his newspaper, The North Star, was probably second in influence only to William Lloyd Garrison's celebrated The Liberator. One of the most militant African abolitionists was David Walker, who published Walker's Appeal in 1829, calling upon slaves to rise up and seize their own freedom by force if necessary. Henry Highland Garnet, another noted public speaker, was another who advocated direct political action by Africans to end slavery and obtain equal rights under the Constitution. Yet another advocate of direct action was Harriet Tubman, who became famous as a leader in the Underground Railroad movement to assist slaves in escaping to freedom in the north or in Canada. Sojourner Truth was active in the antislavery and women's rights movement and is best known for her famous “Ain't I a Woman?” speech delivered at a women's rights convention in Ohio.

The slavery issue was also important to the tens of thousands of new immigrants who arrived in America during the antebellum years. During its first century of national existence, the two largest groups arriving on its shores came from Ireland and Germany. On the surface, these were quite different migrations. The Irish were predominantly poor, agricultural laborers, and a high percentage of them possessed little or no formal education. Their principal motive for migration was economic, including such prompts as the enclosure movement, which placed severe limitations on the public use of land, and the great famine. Because they were so poor, most settled initially in the eastern cities where they landed, taking the lowest-paying menial jobs and living in the least desirable overcrowded slums. German migration, on the other hand, reflected a much broader spectrum of society, including small farmers, factory workers, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and literary [Page 526]figures. More affluent when they arrived, many moved quickly west where they purchased their own land to settle down as independent farmers. Some carved out ethnic enclaves among the growing eastern municipalities, while others helped found distinctly German communities within emerging western cities like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.

Politically, the Irish immigrants were largely ambivalent toward the social issues of the day, including the antislavery movement, between 1820 and 1860. They were generally too poor for concerns beyond economic survival. In fact, if anything, the Irish preferred to leave slavery in place. Not that they supported it, but they feared that if it were eliminated the freed slaves would flood northern cities, competing with them for jobs, housing, and influence. They preferred the Democratic Party over the somewhat anti-immigrant stance of the Whigs and the later virulent antiforeign and anti-Catholic Know-Nothings. On the other hand, the German political émigrés of the late 1840s and 1850s not only embraced the liberal reform movements of the time but provided visible national leadership. They were ardent advocates of women's rights, education, and the anti-slavery crusade in which they numbered among its most strident supporters. When the Republican Party was formed in 1854 as a largely antislavery party, many were drawn to it, in contrast to the Democrats who generally fell somewhere between pro-slavery and compromise on the issue.

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