2.2 Resisting Slavery

Vocabulary

1. code: A set of laws.

2. Abolitionist: A person who wanted to end slavery.

3. Underground railroad: A system of secret escape routes that led enslaved people to free land.

The Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott was an enslaved man owned by an army doctor. When the owner died, Scott went to court to try to gain his freedom. He argued that he should be free because he had once lived on free land.

The Fight to End Slavery• Nat Turner led an attack in Virginia that killed more than 50 people. 

Many people in the United States worked to end slavery. Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, started a

newspaper called Freedom’s Journal. It was the first newspaper owned and written by African Americans.

William Lloyd Garrison, a white Northerner,

started an abolitionist newspaper called

The Liberator.

• Frederick Douglass became well known for his writings and speeches against slavery.

» Isabella Van Wagener, traveled the country speaking out against slavery. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth. Sojourner means “traveler.”

 

• John Brown planned to give the guns to

enslaved people so they could fight for their freedom. He was caught, put on trial, and hanged.

The Underground Railroad• By 1860, there were more than 500,000 free African

Americans living in the United States.

•  Harriet Tubman, an African American who had escaped from slavery herself, was one of the best-known conductors.

Women Work for Change

 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought for the rights of both

women and enslaved people.

• Harriet Beecher Stowe published a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

It told the story of how

enslaved people were

mistreated.

• Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized a women’s rights convention. They wrote a statement that demanded that women should have “all privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.”