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Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery
Revised to include important new scholarship, James Brewer Stewart's eloquent survey of the abolitionist movement is also a superb analysis of how the antislavery movement reinforced and transformed the dominant features of pre-Civil War America. Revealing the wisdom and na veté of the crusaders' convictions and examining the social bases for their actions, Stewart demonstrates why, despite the ambiguity of its ultimate victory, abolition has left a profound imprint on our national memory.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
James Brewer Stewart
20 books4 followersThe founder and director of Historians Against Slavery, James Wallace is Professor of History Emeritus, Macalester College.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 12, 2022
Of all the reform movements that emerged in antebellum America, none was more successful than the campaign to abolish slavery. Though many of the era’s reformers changed the nation in important and far-reaching ways, only the abolitionists achieved their goal so completely and so permanently. Their achievement was all the more remarkable given the unpromising beginnings of the movement and the seeming victories won by the proslavery cause in the years leading up to the Civil War. How the abolitionists persevered in the face of this is at the heart of James Brewer Stewart’s book. In it he describes the long and meandering course of abolitionism, its reception in the country throughout its existence, and how it won its goals amidst such unpromising circumstances.
Brewer traces the roots of the abolitionist movement to the beginnings of the country itself. Even during the colonial era, Puritans and Quakers wrestled with the morality of owning enslaved persons. This received a boost first with the First Great Awakening, and then with the arguments over colonial political rights in the years leading up to the American Revolution, both of which fueled further doubts about slavery and contributed to efforts for measures of gradual emancipation in the newly independent Northern states. Independence also granted the planters new legitimacy, however, and their conditional support for the new union ensured that emancipation would be left up to the states.
The emergence of the Second Great Awakening in the 1820s shook up the post-revolutionary status quo. For many seeking to create a more moral republic, the existence of slavery and its associated corruption was too great a sin to ignore. This Christian moralism combined with Yankee conservatism to catalyze a militant abolitionist movement by the end of the decade, one that took inspiration from Black activists and the success of the emancipation movement in the British empire. Aware of the challenge before them, these men and women did not expect to end slavery overnight but sought an immediate start towards that goal, which they hoped to achieve through a campaign of sustained moral suasion.
This campaign soon foundered amongst the growing Southern commitment to slavery. With their rationalization of the institution as a reluctant necessity transformed into the claim that slavery was a positive good, most Southerners resisted criticisms of it. In response to the targeted mailing of abolitionist materials to Southern opinionmakers, angry mobs attacked post offices and burned the satchels containing the offending pamphlets. In Washington, the House of Representatives imposed a “gag rule” on antislavery petitions presented to it. And Northern mobs attacked local meetings of abolitionists and assaulted abolitionist speakers. This outburst of violence culminated in the murder of abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy in 1837, who was shot and killed while trying to protect his printing press from a mob-induced fire. By the end of the 1830s, it was clear that the American people were unwilling to be persuaded.
Nevertheless, the abolitionists had made it impossible to ignore the issue of slavery. Moreover, the aggressive Southern backlash to the campaign highlighted sectional tensions that pushed a growing number of Northerners towards opposing an institution with which they had little direct contact until that point. While the abolitionists quarreled and divided over tactics, the antislavery cause gained momentum in politics. In 1840 a new political organization, the Liberty Party, began campaigning for pro-emancipation candidates. The challenge they posed to the two main political parties was indirect, threatening their ability to win enough Northern votes to win the majorities needed to hold national power. With Northern politicians in both parties increasingly adopting antislavery positions in order to win local and statewide seats, anxious Southerners demanded greater concessions towards maintaining slavery. The most prominent of these, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, further inflamed Northern opinion, and created extraordinary scenes of abolitionist opposition to efforts to recapture people escaping bondage.
Calls for violent opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law continued to mark abolitionists out as extremists. In the growing political polarization of the 1850s, however, they found themselves pushed towards even greater extremes. John Brown’s violent activities in Kansas highlighted this dilemma, as frustrated abolitionists who had long advocated peaceful resistance to slavery cheered his attacks on slaveowners. This foreshadowed the broader question of using violence to win emancipation that was posed by the outbreak of the Civil War, with most abolitionists setting aside their pacifism in favor of routing slavery by force. That the war produced both the Emancipation Proclamation and a constitutional amendment banning slavery vindicated their choice, though the postwar fate of Reconstruction frustrated the hopes of many abolitionists for true equality between the races.
One factor in the failure in achieving that goal was the loss of unity that came with emancipation. In this respect, the very success of the abolitionists in ending slavery frustrated the larger vision of many of them of equality between the races. That Stewart delineates between these currents within the abolitionist movement is just one of the many strengths of his book, as he provides an excellent overview of the evolution of the movement over the decades of its existence. He is particularly good at highlighting the critical but often-marginalized role that Black abolitionists played within the movement, giving them an agency that older works, which focused on the more famous white activists, denied them. While Stewart’s greater attention to the political activities of the movement downplays their activities in other areas – particularly their roles in assisting people fleeing enslavement – his book nevertheless offers an excellent overview of the abolitionist movement, one that is an excellent starting point for anyone seeking to learn the role they played in effecting the dramatic moral transformation that brought about the demise of legal slavery in America.
Brewer traces the roots of the abolitionist movement to the beginnings of the country itself. Even during the colonial era, Puritans and Quakers wrestled with the morality of owning enslaved persons. This received a boost first with the First Great Awakening, and then with the arguments over colonial political rights in the years leading up to the American Revolution, both of which fueled further doubts about slavery and contributed to efforts for measures of gradual emancipation in the newly independent Northern states. Independence also granted the planters new legitimacy, however, and their conditional support for the new union ensured that emancipation would be left up to the states.
The emergence of the Second Great Awakening in the 1820s shook up the post-revolutionary status quo. For many seeking to create a more moral republic, the existence of slavery and its associated corruption was too great a sin to ignore. This Christian moralism combined with Yankee conservatism to catalyze a militant abolitionist movement by the end of the decade, one that took inspiration from Black activists and the success of the emancipation movement in the British empire. Aware of the challenge before them, these men and women did not expect to end slavery overnight but sought an immediate start towards that goal, which they hoped to achieve through a campaign of sustained moral suasion.
This campaign soon foundered amongst the growing Southern commitment to slavery. With their rationalization of the institution as a reluctant necessity transformed into the claim that slavery was a positive good, most Southerners resisted criticisms of it. In response to the targeted mailing of abolitionist materials to Southern opinionmakers, angry mobs attacked post offices and burned the satchels containing the offending pamphlets. In Washington, the House of Representatives imposed a “gag rule” on antislavery petitions presented to it. And Northern mobs attacked local meetings of abolitionists and assaulted abolitionist speakers. This outburst of violence culminated in the murder of abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy in 1837, who was shot and killed while trying to protect his printing press from a mob-induced fire. By the end of the 1830s, it was clear that the American people were unwilling to be persuaded.
Nevertheless, the abolitionists had made it impossible to ignore the issue of slavery. Moreover, the aggressive Southern backlash to the campaign highlighted sectional tensions that pushed a growing number of Northerners towards opposing an institution with which they had little direct contact until that point. While the abolitionists quarreled and divided over tactics, the antislavery cause gained momentum in politics. In 1840 a new political organization, the Liberty Party, began campaigning for pro-emancipation candidates. The challenge they posed to the two main political parties was indirect, threatening their ability to win enough Northern votes to win the majorities needed to hold national power. With Northern politicians in both parties increasingly adopting antislavery positions in order to win local and statewide seats, anxious Southerners demanded greater concessions towards maintaining slavery. The most prominent of these, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, further inflamed Northern opinion, and created extraordinary scenes of abolitionist opposition to efforts to recapture people escaping bondage.
Calls for violent opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law continued to mark abolitionists out as extremists. In the growing political polarization of the 1850s, however, they found themselves pushed towards even greater extremes. John Brown’s violent activities in Kansas highlighted this dilemma, as frustrated abolitionists who had long advocated peaceful resistance to slavery cheered his attacks on slaveowners. This foreshadowed the broader question of using violence to win emancipation that was posed by the outbreak of the Civil War, with most abolitionists setting aside their pacifism in favor of routing slavery by force. That the war produced both the Emancipation Proclamation and a constitutional amendment banning slavery vindicated their choice, though the postwar fate of Reconstruction frustrated the hopes of many abolitionists for true equality between the races.
One factor in the failure in achieving that goal was the loss of unity that came with emancipation. In this respect, the very success of the abolitionists in ending slavery frustrated the larger vision of many of them of equality between the races. That Stewart delineates between these currents within the abolitionist movement is just one of the many strengths of his book, as he provides an excellent overview of the evolution of the movement over the decades of its existence. He is particularly good at highlighting the critical but often-marginalized role that Black abolitionists played within the movement, giving them an agency that older works, which focused on the more famous white activists, denied them. While Stewart’s greater attention to the political activities of the movement downplays their activities in other areas – particularly their roles in assisting people fleeing enslavement – his book nevertheless offers an excellent overview of the abolitionist movement, one that is an excellent starting point for anyone seeking to learn the role they played in effecting the dramatic moral transformation that brought about the demise of legal slavery in America.
May 6, 2022
A classic book on the abolitionist movement, written in a very accessible style (no footnotes or even endnotes, just a bibliographic essay). I think this is now the in-between for me:
brief: Abolitionism: A Very Short Introduction (175 pp)
medium: Holy Warriors (256 pp)
comprehensive: The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (784 pp)
Also, I was surprised and pleased to learn that "Jim" Stewart lives in the Twin Cities, and having taught at Macalester. I got to have coffee with him a couple months ago, and he was delightful. Be sure to check out his YouTube series Jim Stewart’s Tonic for Fragile White Folks.
brief: Abolitionism: A Very Short Introduction (175 pp)
medium: Holy Warriors (256 pp)
comprehensive: The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (784 pp)
Also, I was surprised and pleased to learn that "Jim" Stewart lives in the Twin Cities, and having taught at Macalester. I got to have coffee with him a couple months ago, and he was delightful. Be sure to check out his YouTube series Jim Stewart’s Tonic for Fragile White Folks.
February 4, 2016
An excellent overview of the movement, which I really should have read 5 years ago.
June 4, 2025
A clear exposition of how extreme abolitionism contributed to the American Civil War. Slavery existed throughout the world in the 19th century but every country freed its slaves peaceably except the United States. “Holy Warriors” explains how radical reformers used abolitionism to instigate a second revolution and transform America.
Stewart’s book is based on solid research but opens with an apparent contradiction: proposals for emancipation (in the South) “were met with … hostility from every stratum of the white population.” Then, three pages later, “On the eve of the Revolution . . . some of the South’s leading planters were practicing gradual emancipation.” It is a fact that due to the action of slaveowners, by 1810 the number of free Blacks living in the South was well over 100,000.
The United States was founded on compromise, leaving slavery enshrined in the Constitution. But there had been tension between the sections from the beginning, an intense rivalry between the founding fathers from New England and those from the South and slavery was just one cause of friction. The culture of New England led to the flowering of reform movements bent on fundamentally changing society, a development seen as abhorrent by the more conservative South. Abolitionism became the raison d’etre for the reformers in what the author describes as a “new religion”, its members seized with fervency, demanding “immediate, unconditional, uncompensated emancipation.” This was a radical slogan, not seen anywhere else in the world. “Emancipation, like temperance, women’s rights, and communitarianism, became synonymous with the redemption of humanity and the opening of a purer phase of history.” These new radicals spoke of “higher laws [preempting Congress or the Constitution].”
The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Philadelphia in 1833, resisting all “practical” schemes for easing the slaves’ transition to freedom. “‘Practicality’ implied compromise and abolitionists rejected it utterly.”
In 1832, a Virginia state representative proposed “a gradual emancipation bill which mandated compensation for masters and expulsion for freed Blacks.” The bill was decisively defeated as Southerners dug in against a rising onslaught of actions from Northern activists that grew over the intervening years, anti-slavery pamphlets flooding the mails, the spread of abolitionist newspapers, growing numbers of public speakers spouting anti-Southern rhetoric. A prominent conspiracy theory arose in the North concerning the “slave power”, the belief that the government was in the control of Southern planters. Abolitionist James Birney said, “the liberties of [free citizens] are in imminent peril . . . It is not only for the emancipation of the enslaved that we contend.”
The AASS then began “an aggressive petition campaign”, pressuring the U.S Congress with a myriad of anti-slavery proposals. Northern workers going door to door procured in excess of 415,000 signatures in 1838 but the House of Representatives had effectively neutered the campaign in an earlier vote to “table” the petitions indefinitely.
These actions set off “cycles of agitation and repression”. Abolitionist assemblies and speeches in the North were disrupted by local citizens, newspaper offices were destroyed, and laws were passed to restrict and intercept abolitionist pamphlets in the mail.
But the radicals had little use for politicians because lawmakers were bent on winning elections and that required compromise. Yet it was measures of conciliation that staved off civil war from the 1830s through the 1850s during a time of increasing election volatility and a growing sectionalism. Finally, divisions were too great and the emergence of the Republican Party would brook no further compromise. John Brown’s terrorist attack on the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry sealed the nations fate. The author cites the raid as “a predictable result” of the abolitionists’ thirty year escalation. “Holy Warriors” is a fitting companion of Thomas Fleming’s “A Disease in the Public Mind,” a book explaining how radicalism was a major contributor to this nation’s Civil War.
Stewart’s book is based on solid research but opens with an apparent contradiction: proposals for emancipation (in the South) “were met with … hostility from every stratum of the white population.” Then, three pages later, “On the eve of the Revolution . . . some of the South’s leading planters were practicing gradual emancipation.” It is a fact that due to the action of slaveowners, by 1810 the number of free Blacks living in the South was well over 100,000.
The United States was founded on compromise, leaving slavery enshrined in the Constitution. But there had been tension between the sections from the beginning, an intense rivalry between the founding fathers from New England and those from the South and slavery was just one cause of friction. The culture of New England led to the flowering of reform movements bent on fundamentally changing society, a development seen as abhorrent by the more conservative South. Abolitionism became the raison d’etre for the reformers in what the author describes as a “new religion”, its members seized with fervency, demanding “immediate, unconditional, uncompensated emancipation.” This was a radical slogan, not seen anywhere else in the world. “Emancipation, like temperance, women’s rights, and communitarianism, became synonymous with the redemption of humanity and the opening of a purer phase of history.” These new radicals spoke of “higher laws [preempting Congress or the Constitution].”
The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Philadelphia in 1833, resisting all “practical” schemes for easing the slaves’ transition to freedom. “‘Practicality’ implied compromise and abolitionists rejected it utterly.”
In 1832, a Virginia state representative proposed “a gradual emancipation bill which mandated compensation for masters and expulsion for freed Blacks.” The bill was decisively defeated as Southerners dug in against a rising onslaught of actions from Northern activists that grew over the intervening years, anti-slavery pamphlets flooding the mails, the spread of abolitionist newspapers, growing numbers of public speakers spouting anti-Southern rhetoric. A prominent conspiracy theory arose in the North concerning the “slave power”, the belief that the government was in the control of Southern planters. Abolitionist James Birney said, “the liberties of [free citizens] are in imminent peril . . . It is not only for the emancipation of the enslaved that we contend.”
The AASS then began “an aggressive petition campaign”, pressuring the U.S Congress with a myriad of anti-slavery proposals. Northern workers going door to door procured in excess of 415,000 signatures in 1838 but the House of Representatives had effectively neutered the campaign in an earlier vote to “table” the petitions indefinitely.
These actions set off “cycles of agitation and repression”. Abolitionist assemblies and speeches in the North were disrupted by local citizens, newspaper offices were destroyed, and laws were passed to restrict and intercept abolitionist pamphlets in the mail.
But the radicals had little use for politicians because lawmakers were bent on winning elections and that required compromise. Yet it was measures of conciliation that staved off civil war from the 1830s through the 1850s during a time of increasing election volatility and a growing sectionalism. Finally, divisions were too great and the emergence of the Republican Party would brook no further compromise. John Brown’s terrorist attack on the Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry sealed the nations fate. The author cites the raid as “a predictable result” of the abolitionists’ thirty year escalation. “Holy Warriors” is a fitting companion of Thomas Fleming’s “A Disease in the Public Mind,” a book explaining how radicalism was a major contributor to this nation’s Civil War.
February 3, 2021
Well documented account of the Abolitionist Movement Against Slavery in America starting in Colonial American through Reconstruction.
November 10, 2023
It was interesting to learn of the different approaches, and even sometimes bitter divisions, within the movement to end American slavery.
September 2, 2008
This book is an excellent, although sometimes opinionated, overview of the abolitionist movement of the 19th century. The author will occasionally toss in a zinger without backing it up, but the factual parts which make up the bulk of the book are very much worth reading if you are interested in the history of slavery, abolitionism or the causes of the Civil War.
August 28, 2012
This is the first book I'd ever read specifically focused on the abolitionist movement in the United States. Like most introductions to a previously unstudied subject, I enjoyed learning from it quite a bit.
May 4, 2013
Fascinating Social History - Stewart is an excellent scholar.
July 6, 2014
Terrific account of the evolution of abolitionist thinking and strategy in the antebellum period.
October 24, 2016
Dry, if not concise. Not bad.
October 27, 2016
Read for Jacksonian America
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews