During the period when Americans enslaved other Americans, those that profited from white supremacy and the stolen labor of people of African descent engaged in violence to protect slavery. The first abolitionists, enslaved people themselves, engaged in various forms of resistance, from evading and escaping to violent revolt.
Later, the threat posed by anti-slavery activists and organizations drew violent reactions from slave interests in both the Southern and Northern states. Mobs ransacked anti-slavery offices, destroyed anti-slavery presses, burned postal sacks of anti-slavery pamphlets, broke up anti-slavery meetings, and imprisoned, assaulted and murdered abolitionists. [Read more…] about October 21, 1835: A Mob Tries To Kill William Lloyd Garrison
