There was a growing opposition to slavery in the United States from 1776 to 1852. Slavery was called the peculiar institution of the United States and had long been the subject of heated debate and an issue of an intense sectional divide. Despite the fact that the business of human bondage remained well at large until the mid-nineteenth century, gradual opposition to slavery had been mounting across the nation throughout the near-century prior. Among the numerous underlying forces and specific events that contributed to this growing opposition were the moral disagreement with the system of human ownership maintained by millions of American reformers, as well as the predominance of personal interests in the matter. This often encouraged white Americans to protest against slavery primarily because its existence impacted their own lives negatively. .
Moral opposition to slavery was evident since the colonial period and only grew in strength and power as time went on. As demonstrated by the fact that Northern states such as New York and Pennsylvania provided for the gradual emancipation of slaves (Document A), northern industrialists and manufacturers (who did not depend on slavery nearly as heavily as did the Southern plantation farmers) argued against the indefinite continuance of slavery, paving the way for the energetic abolitionists of the coming decades, most of whom hailed from these Northern territories. This anti-slavery sentiment was recognizable from the colonial period, as the Quakers of the Pennsylvania colony established the first anti-slavery organization in the New World. In addition, a court decision upholding the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts claimed that all men are born free and equal and every subject is entitled to liberty (Document B). Clearly, northern territories such as Massachusetts were the birthplace of the abolition movement, as talk of moral opposition to the immoral human bondage so freely practiced in the South quickly spread and the concern over the loss of American liberties at the hands of selfish slaveholders became a central focus of regional debate.
