Ambivalence, Ambiguity, and Contradiction Garrisonian Abolitionists and Nonviolence

Historian Alice Felt Tyler once used the expression “Freedom’s Ferment” to characterize the antebellum period in American history.’ It was an apt phrase referring to the multitude of reform movements, religious enthusiasms, and social experiments which transformed American culture in fundamentally important ways. The modem abolitionist movement emerged out of this cauldron of ferment — a movement which called for immediate repentance from the sin of slavery, and denounced the South’s peculiar institution in thunderous, vituperative terms

Volume 6, Number 3 (1982)