The Abolitionist Movement and the Politics of Emancipation

• In Event: Reimagining Abolitionist Democracies

Abstract

This paper offers an historical and conceptual reconstruction of the political thought of the 19th century abolitionist movement in the US. I characterize abolitionism as a variety of radical republican political thought that can be distinguished by its orienting attention to the question of emancipation.

As the classical republican tradition collided with the world wrought by the Atlantic revolutions, it underwent a process of significant transformation and fragmentation. Scholars have shown that the novel political dilemmas posed by 19th century commercial society called forth multiple simultaneous conceptual innovations. As the emergent bourgeoisie adapted republican language to its purposes, liberalism began to take shape (Kalyvas and Katznelson, 2008). As the organized working classes hammered republicanism into an instrument of class struggle, socialism began to emerge (Gourevitch, 2014). And as women altered republican concepts to contest patriarchal bondage, feminism took form as a full-fledged political theory (Coffee, 2012). In this paper, I situate the emergence of abolitionist political thought within this broader period of conceptual innovation and transformation. Specifically, I argue that abolitionism should be understood as republican thought wrought into novel theoretical form by the enslaved and their comrades.

The defining feature of abolitionist thought is its central emphasis on the problem-space of emancipation. Republican political thought has long contained resources for offering a positive vision of the good life—for theorizing a public realm defined by commitments to freedom and civic virtue. Republicanism also offers a familiar conceptual vocabulary for naming the central threats to freedom and the good life, such as domination and corruption. But the classical tradition has very little to say about the space between these two poles—that is, for engaging the question of how to navigate the political transition from existing domination to future freedom. This is the problem-space of emancipation.

The abolitionist movement was the first movement to engage the question of emancipation at length and in detail. It was united by a commitment to creating freedom out of conditions of severe domination, and its various internal divisions reflected disagreements about how this ought to happen. I first offer a general overview of the movement’s various tendencies. Then I explain how the differences among these tendencies reflected distinct understandings of what emancipation required. The debates that ensued within the movement concerned issues of enduring relevance for both movements and theorists today. This includes the question of means and ends; the role (and justification) of violence; and the fraught issue of how, if at all, the state and legal institutions ought to be engaged. In conclusion, I reflect on the abolitionist movement’s legacy and ongoing relevance for theorizing the politics of emancipation, particularly in light of the recent resurgence of the demand for “abolition” in the 21st century.

Author

• Michael Gorup, New College of Florida