Central New York was a hotbed of abolitionist activity in the 19th century. Led by figures like Gerrit Smith, Theodore Weld, and Charles Finney, the region saw the formation of numerous anti-slavery societies and petitions. Abolitionists in the area advocated for the immediate emancipation of all slaves and used moral arguments based on Christianity and natural rights to condemn the institution of slavery. Their activism was an important driver of the growing anti-slavery movement in the United States during the decades before the Civil War.

1. Central New York …
Hotbed of Abolitionism

3. What Did Anti-Slavery
Advocates Want?
The Anti-slavery
movement was
not monolithic.
It included:
– Gradualists
– Immediatists
– Abolitionists

4. Who Were the Abolitionists?
Abolitionists wanted the
– immediate,
– uncompensated
emancipation of
– all slaves.
Frederick Douglass

5. William Lloyd Garrison
• Boston
• The Liberator, 1831
• Organized New England
Anti-Slavery Society, 1832

6. The Second “Great Awakening”
in the “Burned-Over District”
“No more impressive revival has
occurred in American history.”
Whitney Cross
The Burned Over District

7. “Oneida County was the birthplace of what has been
called the Second Great Awakening. If the First Great
Awakening influenced the founding of the nation, this
Second Great Awakening helped to determine the great
reform movements of the 19th century and influenced
dramatically the great debate on slavery which ended in
the Civil War. 1826 in Oneida County was a portentous
moment for the history of the United States.”
Richard L. Manzelmann,
“Revivalism and Reform”

8. “Most scholars agree that it was revivalism as it came
out of Oneida County with Charles Finney and his
cohorts that played the crucial role in the 19th century.
Revivalism added an urgency, an energy, a moral and
theological imperative to reform that the cool and
general philosophy of the Enlightenment could not
supply.”
Richard L. Manzelmann,
“Revivalism and Reform”
Charles Grandison Finney

9. “The dominant force behind
reform in the 1830s was a
tremendous evangelical
religious revival generated by
one of the greatest preachers
of his day, the Reverend
Charles Grandison Finney.”
C. S. Griffin,
The Ferment of Reform, 1830-1860

10. Rev. Charles Grandison Finney
• Raised in Oneida
County
• Preached individual
responsibility for
salvation and
redemption

11. “Mankind will not act until they are excited.”
Charles Grandison Finney
“It is the business of the
church to reform the world,
to put away every sin.”
Charles Grandison Finney

12. Rev. Finney’s Evangelism
• Invited to New York Mills by George Andrews,
superintendent at the textile mills, in 1826.
• First preached in New York Mills school house, and the
next day in the Walcott & Campbell spinning mill.
• Led to flood of membership in local Methodist and
Presbyterian Churches.
• Later spoke to large audiences in Utica.
• One of his converts was Theodore Weld.

13. Gerrit Smith
• Born in Utica, 1797
• Son of pioneer
merchant, land
speculator and slave
owner
• Moved to Peterboro,
1806
• Hamilton College, 1818
• Wife related to Robert
E. Lee and Fitzhugh
Lee.

14. • Supported many reform
movements
• Supported the American
Colonization Society
• Believed slavery
incompatible with the very
definition of law
• A biographer said he
practiced "Bible politics”
• Gave away more than $8
million to various causes,
especially anti-slavery
movement

15. “He is an honest, brave,
kind-hearted Christian
philanthropist, whose
religion is not put aside
with his Sunday cloak, but
lasts him clear through the
week.”
Horace Greeley
Writing about Gerrit Smith in the
New York Tribune

16. The Abolitionists are nothing
more than “misguided
philanthropists” whose actions
are “little short of treason. The
slavery question should not be
discussed since slavery is
constitutional and since
discussion will only provoke
sectional rifts that would
otherwise disappear.”
Utica Common Council, 1832

17. Second
Presbyterian
Church, Utica
• Built in 1826
• Corner of Bleecker &
Charlotte Streets in
Utica
• Site of first meeting of
the New York State
Anti-Slavery Society in
1835

18. The petitioners pray the
Council “not submit to the
indignation of an abolition
assemblage being held in a
public building of the city …
developed to be used for
salutary public objects and
not as a receptacle for
deluded fanatics or restless
incendiaries.”
Petition to Utica Common Council
against granting permission for an
anti-slavery meeting, 1835

19. They “intended to insult us …
to degrade the character of the
city in the esteem of the world
… to treat us with the utmost
contempt--insult us to our
faces. The laws of propriety
forbid that they should come
here. We are to be picked out
as the head-quarters of
Abolitionism in the state of
New York. Rather than this, I
would almost as soon see it
[the city] swept from the face of
the earth, or sunk as low as
Sodom and Gomorrah!”
Congressman Samuel Beardsley,
Beardsley
Utica

20. October 21, 1835
• First meeting of the New York
Anti-Slavery Society with
between 300 and 400 delegates.
• Disturbance, mobs, yelling,
abuse, threats of violence
prevented speakers from
continuing.
• Gerrit Smith rose and said he
was not an abolitionist, but
believed in fair play. Invited
them to reconvene at Peterboro
the next day.

21. “Resolved, That the right
of free discussion, given
to us by God, and asserted
and guarded by the laws
of our country, is a right
so vital to man's freedom,
and dignity, and
usefulness, that we can
never be guilty of its
surrender, without
consenting to exchange
that freedom for slavery,
and that dignity and
usefulness for
debasement and
worthlessness.”
Gerrit Smith

22. Gerrit Smith Home

23. Gerrit Smith Mansion

24. “Now is the time for men
who have souls to speak
out.”
Gerrit Smith
Slavery is “robbery, and
the worst species of it for it
plunders its victim, not of
goods and money, but of
his body, his mind, his
soul.”
Gerrit Smith

26. Gerrit Smith &
Frederick Douglass

27. Gerrit Smith
• Many consider him and William Lloyd Garrison on a
par, with Garrison the leader in New England and Smith
in Middle Atlantic and Midwestern states.
• Used Bible to denounce slavery.
• Used some of his fortune to purchase freedom of
slaves.
• Reward of $20,000 put on his head by a radical
Southerner.

28. 1836
• Theodore Weld delivered 16 lectures in
Utica to overflow crowds.
• Reportedly 600 people joined the Utica
Anti-Slavery Society.
• 184 enrolled in Rome Anti-Slavery
Society
• 100 people formed a Young People’s
Anti-Slavery Society in New York Mills.
• 1,200 names appeared on a petition to
Congress to abolish slavery in the
Theodore Weld District of Columbia.

29. 1836
• William Goodell established the anti-
slavery newspaper The Friend of Man
in Utica.
• 6 Uticans elected to the Executive
Committee of the New York Anti-
Slavery Society, and to offices of vice
president, corresponding secretary,
recording secretary and treasurer.
• Stunning victory for the anti-slavery
forces.

30. “The New York abolitionist
leaders were radical. They
held ideas which were
radical in substance —
specifically, immediate
emancipation and political
and economic equality for
blacks. … they experienced
a total commitment to
abolitionism.”
Gerald Sorin
The New York Abolitionists

31. “Abolitionism in Utica and
its environs was sparked by
some of the nation’s most
important advocates of
immediatism.”
Edward Magdol
The Antislavery Rank and File

32. Presbyterian Church, Whitesboro
• 1835: resolution condemning slavery as "a sin against
God and man.”
• Called on slaveholding states to free their slaves
voluntarily
• Slavery question divided congregation.

33. Presbyterian Church, New York Mills
• Considerable turnover in ministers who were not
radical enough for the congregation.
• Rev. Ira Pettibone, an outspoken “immediatist,”
frequently asked Rev. Beriah Green to address
congregation.
• Passed resolution “strongly denouncing slavery” that
formed “as decided a document as the most radical
might ask” (Rev. Austin).

34. New York Mills Anti-Slavery Petition, 1837

35. Welsh Anti-Slavery Petition, 1837

36. Rev. George Washington Gale
• Converted Finney to
Abolitionist cause
• Founded Oneida
Institute in 1827 to
prepare Finney’s
converts for Ministry
• Unique combination of
work and study used as
a model by many,
including Oberlin

37. Oneida Institute of Science and Industry
Whitesboro
First educational institution in the country
to enroll black and white students on an equal basis.

38. Rev. Beriah
Green
• 1795-1874
• Clergyman, Educator,
Abolitionist
• President of Oneida
Institute in 1834

39. Oneida Institute
• Board of Directors heavily represented from
Utica, Whitesboro & New York Mills.
• Supported financially by Benjamin Walcott of
New York Mills.
• Enrolled both black and white students.
• Vied with Oberlin College as leader in African
education.

40. Theodore Weld
• Son of conservative
Presbyterian minister in
Cazenovia
• Education paid for by
British anti-slavery
leader Charles Stuart
• Lecturer on temperance
and moral reform
• Argued against slavery
as a sin against religion

41. Rev. Jermain W. Loguen
• From Rochester
• Prominent in the
movement to colonize
Liberia
• Began school for black
children in Utica
• Minister in African
Methodist Episcopal
Zion Church

42. Rev. Alexander Crummel
• Active in organizing
the New York
Association for the
Political Improvement
of Colored People
• Earned baccalaureate
from Queen's College,
Cambridge, England
• Became Episcopal
minister

43. • Two decades as missionary in Liberia
• Quarter century as rector of St. Luke's Episcopal
Church in Washington, DC

44. Rev. Henry Highland Garnet
• Acclaimed public
speaker
• Member of the
American and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society
• Joined Liberty Party
and fought for Black
franchise in NY State
• Assisted escaping
slaves on the

45. • Presbyterian minister in Britain, Scotland and West
Indies
• Supported American Colonization Society
• In 1854 to Liberia as U.S. Minister Resident; later held
same post in Liberia in 1880s

46. “Voluntary submission to slavery is a sin. It is your
solemn and imperative duty to use every means ... moral,
intellectual, and physical, that promises success. You
should all stop working. If they then commence the work
of death, they and not you will be responsible for the
consequences.”
Henry Highland Garnet,
Convention of the Free People of Color,
Buffalo, New York, 1843

47. Garnet vs. Frederick Douglass
• Garnet advocated slave
uprising at the
Convention in Buffalo,
1843
• Douglass urged
moderation
• Douglass purchased
The North Star in
Rochester and
surpassed Garnet as the
chief African-American

48. Theodore Weld
• Advocate of “Agency
System” of identifying
local anti-slavery
agents
• Leading recruiter and
trainer of local agents
• Helped organize the
first nationwide petition
campaign.
• Wrote abolitionism’s
most famous

49. William Goodell
• Editor of Genius of
Temperance, Boston,
1830-33
• Editor of Emancipator,
official organ of the
American Anti-Slavery
Society 1833-36
• Settled in Utica in to edit
The Friend of Man, 1836-
42

50. Gerrit Smith and William Goodell were instrumental in
organizing the Liberty party in New York State in 1840.
“In this section a Liberty party convention is an Abolition
convention, and an Abolition convention a Liberty party
convention.
Gerrit Smith to Salmon P. Chase,
May 31, 1842

51. Compromise of 1850

52. • Admission of California
• Popular Sovereignty
• Fugitive Slave Laws

53. Kansas-Nebraska Debate
Popular Sovereignty
Repealed Missouri Compromise
Further Sectionalized Nation
“Beecher’s Bibles”
“Border Ruffians”

54. “Popular Sovereignty”
“Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler”

55. Stephen A. Douglas is
a "demagogue,"
a "scavenger,"
a "second Benedict Arnold,"
an "enemy of Liberty.”
Utica Herald

56. Oneida County’s Response
• 400 names on petition against the act in Rome
• 755 names on petition against the act in Utica
• Petitions from New Hartford, Whitesboro, New York
Mills, Remsen, Prospect, and elsewhere in Oneida
County
• In Whitesboro Stephen A. Douglas was hung in effigy
and then burned in a tar barrel.

57. “The traitor Douglas will be ordered down at 8
this evening and burned in a tar barrel at the
stake. By order of the Guard of Liberty.
Whitesboro, June 15, 1854.
P.S. A band is expected to play the rogues march
and other appropriate airs on this occasion, for
the Prince of Doughfaces and enemy of Liberty.”
Utica Morning Herald

58. Dred Scott Decision
• “Surely there can be fewer great monstrosities than the
proposition that one race has the right to enslave another.” -
Roscoe Conkling
• "A new code of political ethics is pronounced: a new theory of
Government has been discovered. It is not a Republic, but a
Despotism we are living under. The Constitution is not a chart
of freedom, but an instrument of Bondage. The object of the
Government is not to protect the liberties of the People, but to
further the interests of Slavery. It is not Freedom that is
national, but Slavery.” - Utica Herald

59. The “Secret Six”

60. Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe
• Born in Boston
• Graduated from Brown
Univ. and Harvard Medical
School
• Director, Perkins Institute
for the Blind
• Developed system of Braille
and published first Braille
New Testament
• “I do not like caution. It
betokens little faith in God’s
arrangements.”

61. Franklin B. Sanborn
• Born in New Hampshire
• Graduate of Harvard
• Opened a college
preparatory school in
Concord, NH
• His “quiet, steadfast
earnestness and ethical
fortitude are of the type
that calmly, so calmly,
ignites and then throws
bomb after bomb” (Henry
David Thoreau).

62. George Luther Sterns
• Medford, MA
• Prosperous businessman
• Backed Charles Sumner’s
political career
• Fugitive Slave Act:
Purchased revolver and
vowed “no runaway will be
taken from my premises.”

63. Rev. Theodore Parker
• Born in Boston
• Harvard Divinity School
• Believed in God’s “Higher
Law”
• Outspoken abolitionist
• “All the great charters of
humanity are writ in blood
and must continue to be for
some centuries.”

64. Thomas Wentworth Higginson
• Harvard Divinity School
• Believed clergy had an
obligation to promote
reform
• Supported Parker’s “Higher
Law” philosophy
• Exceptionally radical
• 1854 led assault on Boston
jail to free fugitive slave
• Thereafter supported
disunion

65. Gerrit Smith
• Annual income in
excess of $60,000 (over
$1 million today)
• A founder of the anti-
slavery Liberty Party in
1840
• Endorsed African
repatriation and
compensated
emancipation, but soon
rejected both

66. • Benefactor of Oberlin College
• Set aside 120,000 acres near Lake Placid to resettle ex-
slaves.
– About 3,000 small farms.
– Franklin, Essex, Hamilton, Fulton, Oneida, Delaware,
Madison and Ulster Counties.
– Each deed was 40 to 60 acres.
– Many were valuable for the timber growing on them.

67. John Brown
• Failed at business
and farming
• To Kansas in 1855
with his five sons
• Sack of Lawrence
• Pottawatomie
Massacre

68. “Bleeding Kansas”

69. “Captain John Brown,
I have known you many years, and have highly esteemed
you as long as I have known you. I know your
unshrinkable bravery, your self-sacrificing benevolence,
your devotion to the cause of freedom, and have long
known them. May heaven preserve your life and health,
and prosper your noble purposes!”
Gerrit Smith, 1856

70. “Much as I abhor war, I nevertheless believe that there
are instances when the shedding of blood is
unavoidable. … The slave will be delivered by the
shedding of blood and the signs are multiplying that his
deliverance is at hand.”
Gerrit Smith to Joshua Giddings, 1858

71. “For several years I have frequently given him money
towards sustaining him in his conquests with the slave-
power. Whenever he shall embark in another of these
contests I shall again stand ready to help him; and I will
begin with giving him a hundred dollars. I do not wish to
know Captain Brown’s plans. I hope he will keep them
to himself.”
Gerrit Smith to Franklin B. Sanborn,
Summer,1858

72. • Believed slavery could
be ended only by the
sword
• Rented farm in
Maryland
• 17 white & 5 black
recruits
• 18 men to arsenal in
Harper’s Ferry,
Virginia
• No plans or supplies

73. Harper’s Ferry

74. The Engine House

75. Storming the Engine House

76. John Brown Prison

77. “I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any
other purpose.”
John Brown to Family
“I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.”
John Brown Note to Jailer
December 2, 1859

78. John Brown Home
North Elba, NY

79. John Brown Grave

80. John Brown “will make the gallows as glorious as
the cross.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

81. “No breath of shame can touch his shield
Nor ages dim its shine
Living, he made life beautiful
Dying, made death divine.”
Louisa May Alcott

82. Northern abolitionists “designed to slaughter sleeping
Southern men and their awakened wives and children.”
Edmund Ruffin

83. “The day of
compromise is passed.”
Charleston Mercury

84. • When Brown was captured a canceled check for
$100 from Gerrit Smith was found in his pocket
• Warrant issued for Smith’s arrest
• Armed neighbors and blacks surrounded his
house to defend him
• Smith “suffered a breakdown”
• Committed to the New York State Lunatic Asylum
in Utica (an institution he financially supported)

85. Conclusions
• Oneida County was one of the first areas in
the nation to actively support anti-slavery
initiatives and more radical abolitionism.
• Oneida County held a place of prominence in
the development of the abolitionism
movement nationally, and the shaping of the
anti-slavery debate.

86. THE
END