Resistance & Abolition (c. 1700-1865)

This topic examines how enslaved and free Black people, alongside white allies, built movements that destabilized slavery and ultimately ended it in the United States.

Why This Topic Matters on AP AAS

• It demonstrates Black political agency long before formal citizenship.
• It supports causation prompts about the Civil War and continuity prompts about Black activism.
• It introduces the AP skill of analyzing primary sources from Black writers, orators, and organizers.

1) Forms of Resistance Inside Slavery

• Everyday resistance included tool breakage, work slowdowns, feigned illness, and theft of food.
• Truancy and short-term escape were widespread strategies for negotiating treatment.
• Long-term flight, often via the Underground Railroad, produced thousands of self-emancipations annually by the 1850s.

Major Armed Revolts

2) Free Black Communities

• By 1860, about 488,000 free Black people lived in the United States, roughly half in the South.
• Free Black communities founded mutual aid societies, churches (Bethel AME 1794), and schools (Prince Hall Masons 1784).
• Free Black activism produced early Black newspapers (Freedom's Journal, 1827) and the early national convention movement (1830).

3) The Black Abolitionist Movement

• Frederick Douglass: formerly enslaved orator, editor of The North Star, and author of three autobiographies who provided firsthand testimony of slavery's brutality.
• Harriet Tubman: Underground Railroad conductor and Union scout who guided about 70 people to freedom and led the Combahee River Raid (1863).
• Sojourner Truth: itinerant preacher who linked abolition with women's rights ("Ain't I a Woman?", 1851).
• David Walker: author of the militant Appeal (1829), which urged enslaved people to claim freedom by any means.

4) White Allies and Political Abolitionism

• William Lloyd Garrison launched The Liberator (1831), demanding immediate emancipation.
• The American Anti-Slavery Society (1833) coordinated petitioning, lecture tours, and printing.
• Political abolitionism shaped the Liberty Party (1840), Free Soil Party (1848), and ultimately the Republican Party (1854).

5) Core AP Patterns

6) High-Yield Terms

• Underground Railroad
• The North Star
• Bethel AME Church
• Black convention movement
• Walker's Appeal
• Fugitive Slave Act (1850)

7) AP Writing Tips

1. Lead with Black-led action; treat white allies as supporters rather than originators.
2. Pair an armed revolt with a print or institutional example to show resistance was not only violent.
3. For causation prompts about emancipation, connect Black abolitionism to Republican electoral politics.

Quick Check

• Why did the Vesey and Turner episodes provoke especially harsh legal responses?
• How did free Black communities support enslaved people through institutions and the press?
• Which two Black abolitionists best illustrate the range of strategies in the movement?