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Although some Enlightenment philosophers opposed slavery, it was Christian activists, attracted by strong religious elements, who initiated and organized an abolitionist movement. [1] Throughout Europe and the United States, Christians, Christian faith movements or " non-conformist " believers within established churches, were to be found at ...
Northern clergy increasingly preached against slavery in the 1830s. In the 1840s, slavery began to divide denominations. [169] This, in turn, weakened social ties between the North and South, allowing the nation to become even more polarized in the 1850s. [170] [171] The issue of slavery in the United States came to an end with the American ...
Catholic teaching began, however, to turn against slavery from 1435. [7] While the Age of Discovery greatly increased the number of slaves owned by Christians, the response of the clergy, under strong political pressures, was ineffective in preventing the establishment of slave-owning societies in the colonies of Catholic countries.
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states ...
At other times, Christian groups worked against slavery. The seventh-century Saint Eloi used his vast wealth to purchase British and Saxon slaves in groups of 50 to 100 in order to set them free. [82] The Quakers in particular were early leaders of abolitionism, and in keeping with this tradition they denounced slavery at least as early as 1688.
When this view changed, white Christians began to try to convert slaves to Christianity, although slave owners resisted their conversion because they were afraid of slave revolts. In trying to convert slaves to Christianity, Christian leaders encouraged slavery, as well as any means of punishment that was used against slaves who revolted. [4]
In the 1880s it was the largest labor union in the United States and it is estimated that at least half its membership was Catholic (including Terence Powderly, its president from 1881 onward). In Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII criticized the concentration of wealth and power, spoke out against the abuses that workers faced, and demanded ...
The first federal act taken against slavery during the war occurred on 16 April 1862, when Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which abolished slavery in Washington, D.C. A few months later, on June 19, Congress banned slavery in all federal territories, fulfilling Lincoln's 1860 campaign promise. [108]