PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: abolitionism
United States official and diplomat
Frederick Douglass was an African American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher, and author who is famous for his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,...
American abolitionist
Anna Murray Douglass was an abolitionist, an agent on the Underground Railroad, and a mother of five who lived a life of service to her community. In 1838, she married Frederick Douglass, and throughout...
American editor, writer, and abolitionist
William Lloyd Garrison was an American journalistic crusader who published a newspaper, The Liberator (1831–65), and helped lead the successful abolitionist campaign against slavery in the United States....
American abolitionist
John Brown was a militant American abolitionist whose raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), in 1859 made him a martyr to the antislavery cause and was instrumental...
American journalist
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor who is known especially for his vigorous articulation of the North’s antislavery sentiments during the 1850s. Greeley was a printer’s apprentice in East...
American social reformer
Frances Wright was a Scottish-born American social reformer whose revolutionary views on religion, education, marriage, birth control, and other matters made her both a popular author and lecturer and...
American abolitionist
Harriet Tubman was an American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She led dozens of enslaved people to freedom in the North...
American author
John Greenleaf Whittier was an American poet and abolitionist who, in the latter part of his life, shared with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow the distinction of being a household name in both England and the...
British politician
William Wilberforce was a British politician and philanthropist who from 1787 was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself in British overseas possessions....
English clergyman and writer
John Newton was an English slave trader who became an Anglican minister, a hymn writer, and later a noted abolitionist, best known for his hymn “Amazing Grace.” His transformation from a faithless seaman...
American abolitionist and educator
Charlotte Forten Grimké was an American abolitionist and educator best known for the five volumes of diaries she wrote. They were published posthumously. Forten was born into a prominent free Black family...
abolitionist and writer
Olaudah Equiano was an abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), became the first...
American social reformer
Lucretia Mott was a pioneer reformer who, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the organized women’s rights movement in the United States. Lucretia Coffin grew up in Boston, where she attended public school...
Union army officer
Robert Gould Shaw was a Union army officer who commanded a prominent regiment of African American troops during the American Civil War. Shaw was born into an immensely wealthy Boston family. His merchant...
American author and social reformer
Frances E.W. Harper was an American author, orator, and social reformer who was notable for her poetry, speeches, and essays on abolitionism, temperance, and woman suffrage. Frances Watkins was the daughter...
American social reformer
Abigail Hopper Gibbons was an American social reformer, remembered especially for her activism in the cause of prison reform. Abigail Hopper was born into a pious Quaker family with a deep tradition of...
American evangelist and social reformer
Sojourner Truth was an African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervor to the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. Isabella was the daughter of enslaved people and spent...
United States statesman
Charles Sumner was a U.S. statesman of the American Civil War period dedicated to human equality and to the abolition of slavery. A graduate of Harvard Law School (1833), Sumner crusaded for many causes,...
American social reformer
Ernestine Rose was a Polish-born American reformer and suffragist, an active figure in the 19th-century women’s rights, antislavery, and temperance movements. Born in the Polish ghetto to the town rabbi...
American politician and social reformer
Robert Dale Owen was an American social reformer and politician. The son of the English reformer Robert Owen, Robert Dale Owen was steeped in his father’s socialist philosophy while growing up at New Lanark...
American writer
Julia Ward Howe was an American author and lecturer best known for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Julia Ward came of a well-to-do family and was educated privately. In 1843 she married educator Samuel...
American abolitionist and feminist
Abigail Kelley Foster was an American feminist, abolitionist, and lecturer who is remembered as an impassioned speaker for radical reform. Abby Kelley grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was reared...
American physician and abolitionist
Martin Delany was an African American abolitionist, physician, and editor in the pre-Civil War period; his espousal of black nationalism and racial pride anticipated expressions of such views a century...
German-American politician
Carl Schurz was a German-American political leader, journalist, orator, and dedicated reformer who pressed for high moral standards in government in a period of notorious public laxity. As a student at...
American social reformer
Caroline Maria Seymour Severance was an American reformer and clubwoman who was especially active in woman suffrage and other women’s issues of her day. Caroline Seymour married Theodoric C. Severance...
American philanthropist
Arthur Tappan was an American philanthropist who used much of his energy and his fortune in the struggle to end slavery. After a devoutly religious upbringing, Tappan moved to Boston at age 15 to enter...
American abolitionist and suffragist
Josephine Sophia White Griffing was an American reformer and a strong presence in the women’s rights movement in the mid-19th-century. She also campaigned vigorously and effectively for Abolition and later...
American philanthropist and social reformer
Gerrit Smith was an American reformer and philanthropist who provided financial backing for the antislavery crusader John Brown. Smith was born into a wealthy family. In about 1828 he became an active...
American abolitionist and author
Harriet Jacobs was an American abolitionist and autobiographer who crafted her own experiences into Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), an eloquent and uncompromising slave...
American politician
George W. Julian was an American reform politician who began as an abolitionist, served in Congress as a Radical Republican during the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and later championed woman...
American minister
Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the first woman to be ordained a minister of a recognized denomination in the United States. Antoinette Brown was a precocious child and at an early age began to speak at...
American abolitionist
Levi Coffin was an American abolitionist, called the “President of the Underground Railroad,” who assisted thousands of runaway slaves on their flight to freedom. Coffin was raised on a farm, an upbringing...
American philosopher and educator
Bronson Alcott was an American philosopher, teacher, reformer, and member of the New England Transcendentalist group. The self-educated son of a poor farmer, Alcott traveled in the South as a peddler before...
18th vice president of the United States
Henry Wilson was the 18th vice president of the United States (1873–75) in the Republican administration of President Ulysses S. Grant and a national leader in the antislavery movement. Wilson was the...
American politician
John Parker Hale was an American lawyer, senator, and reformer who was prominent in the antislavery movement. Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Bowdoin College, Hale went on to study law and was...
American author
Lydia Maria Child was an American author of antislavery works that had great influence in her time. Born into an abolitionist family, Lydia Maria Francis was primarily influenced in her education by her...
American abolitionist
Maria Weston Chapman was an American abolitionist who was the principal lieutenant of the radical antislavery leader William Lloyd Garrison. Maria Weston spent several years of her youth living with the...
Anglo-American minister and social reformer
Elizabeth Leslie Rous Comstock was an Anglo-American Quaker minister and social reformer, an articulate abolitionist and an influential worker for social welfare who helped adjust the perspective of the...
American religious leader
John Woolman was a British-American Quaker leader and abolitionist whose Journal is recognized as one of the classic records of the spiritual inner life. Until he was 21 Woolman worked for his father,...
American abolitionist
Wendell Phillips was an abolitionist crusader whose oratorical eloquence helped fire the antislavery cause during the period leading up to the American Civil War. After opening a law office in Boston,...
American abolitionist
David Walker was an African American abolitionist whose pamphlet Appeal…to the Colored Citizens of the World… (1829), urging enslaved people to fight for their freedom, was one of the most radical documents...
American theologian
Theodore Parker was an American Unitarian theologian, pastor, scholar, and social reformer who was active in the antislavery movement. Theologically, he repudiated much traditional Christian dogma, putting...
American journalist
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, biographer, and charity worker. A descendant of an old New England family (its progenitor first immigrating in 1632), Sanborn attended Phillips Exeter...
American abolitionist
Samuel Ringgold Ward was a black American abolitionist known for his oratorical power. Born a slave, Ward escaped with his parents in 1820 and grew up in New York state. He was educated there and later...
English abolitionist
Thomas Clarkson was an abolitionist, one of the first effective publicists of the English movement against the slave trade and against slavery in the colonies. Clarkson was ordained a deacon, but from...
American abolitionist and clergyman
Henry Highland Garnet was an American abolitionist and clergyman who became known for his militant approach to ending slavery, which was expressed in his “Call to Rebellion” speech (1843). Born into slavery,...
American social reformer and writer
Frances Dana Barker Gage was an American social reformer and writer who was active in the antislavery, temperance, and women’s rights movements of the mid-19th century. Gage began her public involvement...
American abolitionist
Theodore Dwight Weld was an American antislavery crusader in the pre-Civil War period. While a ministerial student at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, Weld participated in antislavery debates and led a...
American writer
Francis Henry Underwood was an American author and lawyer who became a founder of The Atlantic Monthly in order to further the antislavery cause. Following a year at Amherst (Mass.) College, Underwood...
American minister
Elias Hicks was an early advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States and a liberal Quaker preacher whose followers became known as Hicksites, one of two factions created by the schism of...
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