Abolitionist Society Convention Name

Abolitionist Society Convention Name: __________________________________________

In class, we will be reenacting a 1850s Abolitionist Society Convention meeting. Each student will select a leader of the abolitionist movement. Your assignment is to research your leader and complete the questions and charts. On the day of the convention you will role-play the leader and participate in the discussion. You will be graded on the worksheet questions, the chart, and your participation in the discussion. Standard 2 will be assessed.

In your research, you want to answer the following questions and take notes on the information you find. All the information that you gather will help you when you portray the abolitionist at the convention. The information will help you understand the role your leader played in the abolition movement.

Abolitionist Name: ___________________________________________

1. Describe your up bringing and how it related to how and why you became an abolitionist? Where were you born (North or South)? What was your social status at birth (enslaved, free, upper class, etc.)?

2. Describe your education and religious tradition as they relate to your fight against slavery.

3. By what primary means did you work for the cause? What other strategies did you support?

4. For which publication did you write, publish, or contribute?

5. What anti-slavery organizations did you found or work for?

6. What difficulties did you face from inside (disagreements, leadership style) or outside the movement (heckling, social isolation, violence, etc.)?

7. What kind of impact did you make on ending slavery, or people’s opinions about the imperative to end slavery?

8. What other reforms or movements did you support (temperance, women’s rights, public education, etc.)?

9. Look at the list of the other abolitionists in our class. Do any of them figure in your biography? When and where did you encounter them? Did you agree with them at all times or did you part ways on certain issues?

10. Sources/Bibliography (MLA style) (author. title. publishing company, place of publication, and date of publication.)
Self Assessment Reference Guide Your Name: Your abolitionist:
Tactic
Your Opinion
(Yes – No)
Why? By what rationale or justification
An example of your use of this means
Writing (journalism, fiction, poetry)

Oratory (speeches)

Political Action (legal appeals, legislative measures)
Working within mainstream religious institutions
Boycotting products made by slave labor

Breaking the law

Violence (against property and persons)

Killing
Attitudes Towards Race & Gender (support of mixed meetings, fighting both causes)

Assessment Rubrics
Advanced
Proficient
Progressing
Standard 2: Recall, select, and explain the significance of important people, their work, and their ideas in the areas of political and intellectual leadership, inventions, discoveries, and the arts, within each major era of United States history

Thorough answers/research. Questions and chart completed.

Active involvement in the convention. (4x)
Detailed answers/research.
Questions and chart completed.

Involvement in the convention. (3x)
General answers/research.
Vast majority of the questions and chart completed.

Participation in the convention. (2x)
List of Abolitionists

Gamaliel Bailey (1807-1859) James Gillespie Birney (1792-1857)
William Wells Brown (c. 1814-1884) John Brown (1800-1859)
Maria Weston Chapman (1806-1885) Salmon Portland Chase (1808-1873)
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) Samuel Eli Cornish (1795-1858)
Frederick Douglass (c. 1818-1895) William Lloyd Garrison (c. 1805-1879)
Henry Highland Garnett (1815-1882) William Goodell (1792-1878)
Sarah Grimke (1792-1873) Angelina Grimke (1805-1879)
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) Lewis Hayden (1816-1889)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1811-1887)
Abby Kelley (1811-1887) Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880)
James Mott (1788-1868) Theodore Parker (1810-1860)
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) Robert Purvis (1810-1898)
Harriet Forten Purvis (1810-1875) Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873)
Franklin Sanborn (1831-1917) Gerrit Smith (1797-1874)
Henry Brewster Stanton (1805-1902) Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879)
Lucy Stone (1818-1883) Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
George Luther Stearns (1809-1867) Lewis Tappan (1788-1873)
Henry David Thoreau (1797-1862) Harriet Tubman (1822-1913)
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895)