Abolitionism movement
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery, whether formal or informal. The goal of the abolitionist movement was the immediate emancipation of all slaves and the end of racial discrimination and segregation. Advocating for immediate emancipation distinguished abolitionists from more moderate anti-slavery advocates who argued for gradual emancipation, and from free-soil activists who sought to restrict slavery to existing areas and prevent its spread further west. Radical abolitionism was partly fueled by the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, which prompted many people to advocate for emancipation on religious grounds. Abolitionist ideas became increasingly prominent in Northern churches and politics beginning in the 1830s, which contributed to the regional animosity between North and South leading up to the Civil War. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historical movement to end the African slave trade and set slaves free. Although European colonists, beginning with the Spanish, initially enslaved natives, the Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas helped convince the Spanish government to enact the first European law abolishing colonial slavery in 1542; Spain weakened these laws by 1545. The first recorded abolition meeting took place in 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, with a group of Quakers, whose religious beliefs were that slavery was sin. Quakers told other colonists they believe that worse things could be done toward us, but men and women shouldn’t rob or steal us away and sell us for slaves to strange countries. Quakers were saying that they don’t believe that they should be sold to anyone or be sold as if they were some kind of item product. They’re saying that they are also human and shouldn’t be treated differently than any others. In the 17th century English Quakers and evangelical religious groups condemned slavery (by then applied mostly to Africans) as un-Christian; in the 18th century, abolition was part of the