THE ABOLITIONISTS AND AMERICAN SOCIETY
History 212
Robert Nelson
Office: Blair 354
Office hours: Mondays 2pm-4pm and by appointment
Phone: 221-1136
E-mail: rknels@wm.edu
Course Description
Ideologically and politically, nineteenth-century American abolitionists were a diverse group, often sharing little with one another besides the conviction that the institution of slavery in the United States should be ended. Most of them championed not just the abolition of slavery but racial equality, contending that blacks and whites could and should live together in American society as friends and equals. Others just as hostile to slavery disagreed (though we generally do not label them as "abolitionists"). These anti-slavery activists maintained that blacks and whites could not live peacefully together in the same society, and thus they insisted that emancipated former slaves needed to emigrate outside the U.S. Some abolitionists believed that women and men were equals deserving of the same political rights and social opportunities; others held that they were fundamentally different beings with distinct obligations and privileges in society and politics. Some spurned conventional politics believing electoral, party politics to be inevitably morally compromising; others instead organized new political parties to attack slavery. Some believed that all physical coercion was sinful, and thus that slaveholders must be persuaded to voluntarily emancipate their slaves; others felt that the institution of slavery was so terrible that the use of violence to end it was wholly justifiable.
Racial and sexual equality, politics and morality, violence as a means for accomplishing social change: before the Civil War affected the end of slavery, the abolitionists passionately debated all of these issues—and others—with their opponents and with one another. In this course we will explore these debates. By doing so, we will learn not just about a small, radical fringe group in antebellum America but also about the social, political, and economic institutions of antebellum America that the abolitionists sought to change through their activism.
Required Books
The following books are all available for purchase at the college bookstore.
- Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
- Harrold, Stanley. Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865. Louisiana State University Press, 2003.
- Newman, Richard S. The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic. University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
- Stauffer, John. The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. Harvard University Press, 2002.
- Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. Hill and Wang, 1996.
- Walker, David. David Walker's Appeal. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.
Assignments
Encyclopedia Entries
In this assignment we will collectively construct a miniature encyclopedia on a number of abolitionists. For the first portion of the assignment, you will be randomly assigned a particular abolitionist. You will write and post on a wiki in the course's Blackboard site a 600- to 750-word entry on that individual. In this entry, you will provide a concise overview that outlines the role and significance of that person in the history of abolitionism; you do not need to cover his or her entire biography exhaustively. You will also need to provide a short bibliography at the end of your entry that lists the sources you consulted. (I will provide you with a list of some sources and resources to consult in your research.) This entry is due on February 5.
For the second portion of this assignment, you will be paired with a fellow classmate and asked to review and, if necessary, revise his or her entry. You will need to familiarize yourself with the sources listed in the bibliography of your partner's entry. Do you think the person missed anything that is particularly important? Did he or she overemphasize or underemphasize something in your view? Could your partner's prose benefit from some revision? (No text is perfect and almost all can benefit from editing.) If so, you will need to revise that entry in consultation with the person who originally drafted it. These revisions will be due on February 14.
Finally, for this assignment I will ask you to engage with a public beyond our classroom by using what you have learned about "your" abolitionist to revise the entry for him or her on Wikipedia. Please correct any errors and address any significant omissions you find. Do not do this anonymously. Instead, create an account on Wikipedia. When you have finished any revisions, email me your Wikipedia userid so I can view the changes you made. If there is no entry or just a stub for your abolitionist, create one using your revised entry from our mini-encyclopedia. This portion of the assignment needs to be completed by February 28. (While this is not required, I would suggest tracking for the remainder of the semester the subsequent revisions of the Wikipedia entry. I will show you an easy way to do this in class.)
This class satisfies the "Major Computing Requirement" for history majors. Digital resources and tools have become integral to the work of historians and other humanists, and this assignment is designed to introduce you to some of those resources and one of those tools—the wiki. In this course you will be introduced to a number of online resources and digital tools in addition to those you will work with in this assignment.
Midterm exam
The midterm exam will consist of a number of identification questions on people, events, publications, or organizations as well as an essay question. The identifications will, in part, be drawn from the encyclopedia entries you and your classmates developed. (You will have a very limited choice among topics to identify and will not be able to select either the entry you composed or revised for the encyclopedia entry assignment.)
Response Paper
You will write one 1250- to 1500-word paper for this course. In this paper I want you to thoughtfully analyze the readings from one of the four thematic units of the course ("The Abolitionists and Race," "The Abolitionists and Women's Rights," "The Abolitionists and Politics," or "The Abolitionists and Violence"). You should not summarize the readings in these papers. Instead, you should aim to produce a thoughtful, original argument rather than reproduce the arguments of others. This response paper is meant to give you an opportunity to do in miniature what professional historians do: to explicate the culture and politics of the past by analyzing primary sources and by engaging the ideas of scholars through secondary sources.
Early on in the course I will ask you to choose which unit you will write about. The paper will be due at the beginning of the last class of that unit (exact due dates are listed in the schedule below). While I will accept hard copies of your papers, I would prefer to receive them electronically, submitted in either .rtf or Microsoft Word format through the course's Blackboard site. Late papers will result in grade reductions; I will subtract a letter grade for each day the paper is late (e.g. a "B+" paper that is two days late will result in a "D+").
Final Paper
Your final essay will be a 2500- to 3000-word (a 10- to 12-page) research paper on a topic of your choosing. In this paper you will need to analyze one or more primary sources that we did not read in class, as well as draw upon secondary literature in your analysis. On April 10 I will ask you to turn in a short paragraph description of your topic and a preliminary list of articles, books, and electronic resources relevant to your essay. Your essay is due the day of the scheduled final exam listed in the registration bulletin.
Grading
Your final grade will be calculated as follows:
- Encylopedia entry: 15%
- Midterm: 20%
- Response paper: 15%
- Final paper: 30%
- Attendance, class participation, any reading quizzes: 20%
Failure to attend class will, of course, compromise your grade.
Any cases of plagiarism will result in an "F" and will be reported to the Honor Council. William & Mary's Honor Code describes that "Plagiarism occurs when a student, with intent to deceive or with reckless disregard for proper scholarly procedures, presents any information, ideas or phrasing of another as if they were his or her own and does not give appropriate credit to the original source. Proper scholarly procedures require that all quoted material be identified by quotation marks or indentation on the page, and the source of information and ideas, if from another, must be identified and be attributed to that source. Students are responsible for learning proper scholarly procedure" (http://www.wm.edu/SO/honor-council/honorcode.htm). In cases where plagiarism is suspected, I reserve the right to use to submit students' work to turnitin.com. If you have any questions about proper citation, intellectual integrity, or this policy, please feel free to ask me.