Introduction : Free at last!
1. Abolitionist voices in colonial America
A Puritan magistrate condemns slavery / Samuel Sewall
The Quaker critique of American slavery / Dwight Lowell Dumond
A Virginian lobbies the Virginia legislature to end the slave trade / Arthur Lee
A Frenchman's view of American slavery / J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
2. Abolitionists of the early American republic
Abolition and the American Revolution / Merton L. Dillon
Abolitionists at the Constitutional Convention / Catherine Drinker Bowen
A founding father's critique of slavery / Benjamin Franklin
A plan for the abolition of slavery / Fernando Fairfax
A call for abolition by the First American Antislavery Society / American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and Improving the Condition of the African Race
3. The formation of a national abolitionist movement
Slavery violates the will of God / David Walker
William Lloyd Garrison commences publication of the Liberator / Henry Mayer
Nat Turner's slave rebellion / Nat Turner
A woman's role in the abolitionist movement / Angelina Grimké
Slaves must agitate to gain their freedom / Henry Highland Garnet
A sermon on slavery / Harriet Beecher Stowe
4. A war for abolition or union?
Abolition must be the main goal of the Civil War / Frederick Douglas
The goal of the war : abolish slavery or preserve the union? / Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln moves toward emancipation / John Hope Franklin
The Emancipation Proclamation / Abraham Lincoln
Extolling Lincoln's emancipation decree / Harriet Beecher Stowe
5. From emancipation to civil rights
Voting rights for the freedmen / Frederick Douglass
The emergence of Black politics during Reconstruction / Eric Foner
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 / U.S. Congress
The failure of reconstruction / Chester J. Wynne
