Although slavery was never widespread within England and even less in other parts of the United Kingdom, many British merchants became wealthy through the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1782 and 1807, Britain traded in over one million human lives. In the colonies of the British Empire, slavery was a way of life.
In England in 1772 the case of a runaway slave named James Somerset, whose owner, Charles Stewart, was attempting to return him to Jamaica, came before the Lord Chief Justice William Murray, Lord Mansfield. Basing his judgement on Magna Carta and Habeas corpus he declared: "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." It was thus declared that the condition of slavery could not be enforced under English law. This judgement did not, however, abolish slavery in England, it simply made it illegal to remove a slave from England against his will, and slaves continued to be held for years to come. A similar case, that of Joseph Knight, took place in Scotland five years later, ruling slavery to be contrary to the law of Scotland. By 1783, an anti-slavery movement was beginning among the British public. In that year, the first English abolitionist organisation was founded by a group of Quakers. The Quakers continued to be influential throughout the life-time of the movement. In May 1787 the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed. The "slave trade" was the Atlantic slave trade, the trafficking in slaves by British merchants operating in British colonies and other countries. Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson were among the 12 committee members, most of whom were Quakers. Quakers could then not become MPs, so William Wilberforce was persuaded to become the leader of the parliamentary campaign. Clarkson was the group's researcher who gathered vast amounts of information about the slave trade. A network of local abolition groups was established across the country. They campaigned through public meetings, pamphlets and petitions. The movement had support from Quakers, Baptists, Methodists and others, and reached out for support from the new industrial workers. Even women and children, previously un-politicised groups, got involved. One particular project of the abolitionists was the establishment of Sierra Leone as a settlement for former slaves of the British Empire back in Africa. The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 25, 1807. The act imposed a fine of £100 for every slave found aboard a British ship. The intention was to entirely outlaw the slave trade within the British Empire, but the trade continued and captains in danger of being caught by the Royal Navy would often throw slaves into the sea to reduce the fine. In 1827 Britain declared that participation in the slave trade was piracy and punishable by death.
After the 1807 act, slaves were still held, though not sold, within the British Empire. In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement again became active, this time campaigning against the institution of slavery itself. The Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1823. Many of the campaigners were those who had previously campaigned against the slave trade. On August 23, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery in the British colonies. On August 1, 1834 all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated, but still indentured to their former owners in an apprenticeship system which was finally abolished in 1838. £20 million was paid in compensation to plantation owners in the Caribbean. From 1839, the 'British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society' worked to outlaw slavery in other countries and to pressure the government to help enforce the suppression of the slave trade by declaring slave traders pirates and pursuing them. This organization continues today as Anti-Slavery International.
The abolitionism of the mid-nineteenth century was generally close to the era's other influential reform movements, such as the Temperance movement, anti-Catholic Nativism, public schooling, and prison- and asylum-building. Although the movement was quite diverse, from the standpoint of the mainstream abolitionists, slaveholding interests went against their conception of the "Protestant work ethic". Abolitionism was a feature of an era marked by various approaches to deal with society's outcasts.
All of the states north of Maryland gradually and sporadically abolished slavery between 1789 and 1830. The first state to abolish slavery was Massachusetts, where a court decision in 1783 interpreted the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 (which asserted in its first article, "All men are created free and equal . . .") as an abolition of slavery. This was later explicitly codified in a new version of the Massachusetts Constitution written by John Adams. The institution remained solid in the South, however, and that region's customs and social beliefs evolved into a strident defense of slavery in response to the rise of a stronger anti-slavery stance in the North. The anti-slavery sentiment which existed before 1830 among many people in the North, quietly and unobtrusively, gave way to the rise among a vocal few of the abolitionist movement. The majority of Northerners did not accept the extreme positions of the abolitionists. Abraham Lincoln, while an opponent of slavery, did not accept abolitionism.
Abolitionism as a principle was far more than just the wish to limit the extent of slavery. Most Northerners recognized that slavery existed in the South and did not push to change that fact. Most Northerners favored a policy of gradual and compensated emancipation. Abolitionists wanted it ended immediately and everywhere. A few were willing to use insurrection, as exemplified by the activities of John Brown, but most tried to get legal reform to immediately emancipate slaves, or worked to rescue slaves. The abolitionist movement was begun by the activities of African-Americans, especially in the black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament. African-American activisits and their writings were rarely heard outside the black community; however, they were tremendously influential to some sympathetic whites, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, William Lloyd Garrison, who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass, who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right. Eventually, Douglass would publish his own, widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.
In the early 1850s the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the issue of the United States Constitution. This issue arose in the late 1840's after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner. The Garrisonians, led by Garrison and Wendell Phillips, publicly burned copies of the Constitution, called it a pact with slavery, and demanded its abolition and replacement. Another camp, led by Spooner, Gerrit Smith, and eventually Douglass, considered the Constitution to be an antislavery document. Using an argument based upon Natural law and a form of Social contract theory, they said that slavery existed outside of the Constitution's scope of legitimate authority and therefore should be abolished.
Another split in the abolitionist movement was along class lines. The artisan republicanism of Robert Dale Own and Frances Wright stood in stark contrast to the politics of prominent elite abolitionists such as industrialist Arthur Tappan and his evangelist brother Lewis. While the former pair opposed slavery on a basis of solidarity of "wage slaves" with "chattel slaves", the Whiggish Tappans strongly rejected this view, opposing the characterization of Northern workers as "slaves" in any sense. (Lott, 129-130)
In the United States, abolitionists were involved in the conflict between North and South. While the Quakers were particularly noted for activity in this movement, it was by no means limited to Quaker participation. This issue was one of several that led to the creation of the Free Methodist Church, a group which split from the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1860s.
Many American abolitionists took an active role in opposing slavery by supporting the Underground Railroad. This was made illegal by the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, but participants like Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Amos Noë Freeman and others continued regardless with the final destination for slaves moved to Canada.
After the Emancipation Proclamation, American abolitionists continued to pursue the freedom of slaves in the remaining slave states, and to better the conditions of black Americans generally. Abolitionist principles were the basis for the later US civil rights movement of the mid 20th century. The end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 ended the formal practice of slavery in the U.S., though formal Racial segregation would continue for another century, and aspects of Racism and racial discrimination would persist to current time.
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states: