![]() As the free black population grew, their concern for the status of the African American became the center of the antislavery movement. The early antislavery societies promoted gradual emancipation and they faded from the national scene by the War of 1812. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was prominent in the antislavery societies which sprang up after the Revolution, and, for a while, the Baptists and Methodists were antislavery. In each decade after the Revolution, the assistance of some whites became more apparent. Whether they sought free territory or remained in the south, they were primarily aided by other slaves and by free blacks while in the south. Other fugitives stayed in southern towns and cities, often with forged "free" papers. Some stayed in the South, seeking family from whom they had been separated or a temporary refuge from slavery. Hundreds of slaves fled bondage each year in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War. ![]() That was to discourage enslaved persons from trying to reach free regions. But the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 explicitly stated that slaveholders could retrieve their slave "property" from free states and territories. The Northwest Territory was forbidden to slavery and the northern states enacted gradual emancipation laws. Some actions by the new American government and the individual states did limit slavery. But these events were more than counterbalanced by the fact that the United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, protected the rights of slaveholders to slave property throughout the union. The rhetoric of liberty and human rights effected a change in some slaveholders who emancipated their slaves in the years after the Revolution. The American Revolution created more free blacks, both through those who actively supported the Patriot cause and were freed and those who took the opportunity to work for or leave with the British. The northern states and Canada became goals when they adopted emancipation laws. Spanish Florida and Mexico were favored destinations for many enslaved in the lower South. ![]() For these groups, called maroons, their very numbers made them easier to discover, although bands of fugitives, primarily men, continued to live in swamps and mountains and to elude capture throughout the slavery era. In colonial North America, newly enslaved Africans often ran away in groups of men and women intending to create a new community in a remote area. Religious societies stressed the moral evil of the trade, and free blacks saw the end of the slave trade as a first step toward general emancipation. Some southerners feared slave revolts if importation continued. English reformers took the lead in this and were joined by Americans with varied motives. ![]() While colonial North America received few slaves compared to other places in the Western Hemisphere, it was deeply involved in the slave trade and the first protests against slavery were efforts to end the slave trade. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division The Liberator was started by William Lloyd Garrison as the first abolitionist newspaper in 1831.
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