Before the American Civil War; men and women who imagined a multiracial American society (social visionaries) included Protestant sacred music in their speeches and writings. Music affirmed the humanity and equality of Indians; whites and blacks and validated blacks and Indians as Americans. In contrast to dominant voices of white racial privilege; social visionaries criticized republican hypocrisy and Christian hypocrisy. Many social visionaries wrote hymns; transcending racial lines and creating a sense of equality among singers and their audience. Singing and reading Protestant sacred music encouraged community formation that led to American human rights activism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
#3999646 in Books 2011-09-27Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.90 x .60 x 5.90l; .75 #File Name: 0786463961236 pages
Review
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. First Responders to SlaveryBy Roger TaylorFirst Responders to Slavery In his latest book; Theodore Weld and the American Anti-Slavery Society (McFarland Company; Inc.; 2011); Owen Muelder tells the story of fearless missionaries of the abolitionist movement who responded to slavery in the early 1800s with "righteous militance". Risking verbal and physical abuse; even death; in their work; they confronted the north with the evils of the institution. The abolitionists shaped public sentiment and influenced voting in the north; supporting the later work of Lincoln and the Union Army. Muelder lays the groundwork for his history of the early abolitionists by teaching us things that most of us didn't learn in school. In the early 19th century; northern urban businessmen scorned abolitionism because of the financial benefits that redounded to them from the production; milling; insuring; and shipping of cotton; as well as from the sale of finished goods to southerners. Slave-produced cotton; Muelder explains; was the basis for the expanding American economy. In addition; fear of losing jobs to a glut of freed slaves prompted northern urban labor to be hostile to the abolitionists. Rebuffed in the cities; the abolitionists took to the rural hamlets and farms with their anti-slavery message. Muelder focuses his monograph on both the work of the American Anti-Slavery Society; founded in 1833; and on one of the Society's leaders; Theodore Weld. It was Weld who recruited and trained close to 70 agents of the Society. "Weld's Seventy" brought accomplished speaking skills and religious zeal to the cause. Indeed; many agents included in their anti-slavery lectures a warning that slavery was so extraordinary a sin that it foreclosed salvation for its defenders. Muelder documents the dangers that Weld and the other agents faced from frequently hostile and sometimes violent mobs as they traveled about delivering their lectures and organizing local anti-slavery organizations. Muelder points out that it was not just mobs who sought to block the abolitionists. Slaveholding President Andrew Jackson in an address to Congress called for "severe penalties" to stop the "unconstitutional activities" of the abolitionists. In addition to telling the story of the work of these abolitionists; Muelder also examines the politics of the movement. For example; the effective lectures to mixed sex audiences of two of Weld's agents; Angela and Susan Grimke; opened a debate among male leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society on the proper role of women in the movement. This debate; in turn; exposed the "remarkable similarities" between the denial of rights to American slaves and the denial of rights to most American women. One result was that most of the women who were involved in the anti-slavery campaign in the 1830s participated in the women's rights convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls; New York. Muelder tells some of the history with lengthy quotations from correspondence of the Weld Seventy and other contemporaries. These passages may annoy impatient readers and even raise the eyebrows of other historians. Use of these quotations enriched the story for me. These eye witness accounts vividly illustrate the horrors of slavery: the cruelty imposed on other human beings both by slave owners and by those who trafficked in human bondage. These passages make for gruesome reading; but reckoning with them leaves the reader with a deep appreciation of the importance of the work of the abolitionists whose history Muelder has researched so meticulously and chronicled so wellRoger L. TaylorTaylor practiced law for 30 years at Kirkland Ellis LLP in Chicago; becoming of counsel in 1999. He retired in 2011 after ten years as president of Knox College; from which he and Muelder both were graduated in 1963.
