SEMINAR STUDIES IN HISTORY General Editors: Clive Emsley & Gordon Martel The effort to abolish slavery produced the Atlantic world's great reform movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book focuses on the American abolitionists who struggled against slavery and advocated equal rights for African Americans in the United States. Blacks, whites, men and women, southern slaves and northern agitators became participants in the conflict between North and South that led to the Civil War in 1861 and general emancipation in 1865. Some of these activists advocated non-violence, while others - including slave rebels - engaged in antislavery violence. This provocative account provides a brief general history of the movement to abolish slavery, told through # numerous excerpts from abolitionist writings# a chapter on abolitionists and the origins of the women's rights movement# an extensive Glossary of terms and a Who's Who guide to key figures The complex history of the American antislavery movement is unravelled and explained through the story of its contentious and dedicated activists. STANLEY HARROLD is Professor of History at South Carolina State University and author of 'The Abolitionists and the South'.