Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. It gained momentum in the western world in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
The first country to fully outlaw slavery was France in 1315, but it was later used in its colonies. The first country to abolish and punish slavery for indigenous people was Spain with the New Laws in 1542.
Manchester Liberalism (also called the Manchester School, Manchester Capitalism and Manchesterism) comprises the political, economic and social movements of the 19th century that originated in Manchester. Led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, it won a wide hearing for its argument that free trade would lead to a more equitable society, making essential products available to all. Its most famous activity was the Anti-Corn Law League that called for repeal of the Corn Laws that kept food prices high. It expounded the social and economic implications of free trade and laissez-faire capitalism. The Manchester School took the theories of economic liberalism advocated by classical economists such as Adam Smith and made them the basis for government policy. It also promoted pacifism, anti-slavery, freedom of the press and separation of church and state.
The Republican Party, also known as the Grand Old Party (GOP), is a conservative and right-wing political party in the United States. It emerged as the main rival of the Democratic Party in the 1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since then.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists opposing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories. It rapidly gained support in the North, drawing in former Whigs and Free Soilers. Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 led to the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the American Civil War. Under Lincoln and a Republican-controlled Congress, the party led efforts to preserve the Union, defeat the Confederacy, and abolish slavery. During the Reconstruction era, Republicans sought to extend civil rights protections to freedmen, but by the late 1870s the party shifted its focus toward business interests and industrial expansion. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it dominated national politics, promoting protective tariffs, infrastructure development, and laissez-faire economic policies, while navigating internal divisions between progressive and conservative factions. The party's support declined during the Great Depression, as the New Deal coalition reshaped American politics. Republicans returned to national power with the 1952 election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose moderate conservatism reflected a pragmatic acceptance of many New Deal-era programs.
Martin Van Buren (/væn ˈbjʊərən/ van BYOO-rən; Dutch: Maarten van Buren [ˈmaːrtə(ɱ) vɑm ˈbyːrə(n)] ; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, Van Buren held a number of prominent offices. He served as New York's attorney general and U.S. senator, then briefly as the ninth governor of New York. After joining Andrew Jackson's administration, he served as the tenth United States secretary of state, minister to the United Kingdom, and ultimately, as the eighth vice president from 1833 to 1837, after being elected on Jackson's ticket in 1832. Van Buren won the presidency in 1836 against divided Whig opponents. He lost re-election in 1840, and failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1844. Later in his life, Van Buren re-emerged as an elder statesman and an anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the 1848 presidential election.
He was born in Kinderhook, New York, where most residents were of Dutch descent and spoke Dutch as their primary language. Van Buren is the only president to have spoken English as a second language. He entered politics as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, won a seat in the New York State Senate, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1821. As the leader of the Bucktails faction of the party, Van Buren established the political machine known as the Albany Regency. He ran successfully for governor of New York to support Andrew Jackson's candidacy in the 1828 presidential election but resigned shortly after Jackson was inaugurated so he could accept appointment as Jackson's secretary of state. In the cabinet, Van Buren was a key Jackson advisor and built the organizational structure for the coalescing Democratic Party. He ultimately resigned to help resolve the Petticoat affair and briefly served as ambassador to the United Kingdom. At Jackson's behest, the 1832 Democratic National Convention nominated Van Buren for vice president, and he took office after the Democratic ticket won the 1832 presidential election.
David Livingstone (/ˈlɪvɪŋstən/; 19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish doctor, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffat missionary family. Livingstone came to have a mythic status as a Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, he became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.
Livingstone's fame as an explorer and his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile was founded on the belief that if he could solve that age-old mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab–Swahili slave trade. "The Nile sources", he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power [with] which I hope to remedy an immense evil." His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa. At the same time, his missionary travels, "disappearance" and eventual death in Africa—and subsequent glorification as a posthumous national hero in 1874—led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa", during which almost all of Africa fell under European rule for decades.
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the American Civil War".
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary, was part of the religious Beecher family and an active abolitionist. She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the horrors of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve.