Boston and the Fight Against Slavery: The Abolitionist City

In the decades before the Civil War, Boston was one of the most important centers of the movement to end slavery in the United States. Black and white Bostonians wrote, preached, organized and sometimes physically resisted the law to defend freedom. Many of the places where this happened still stand.

Massachusetts and slavery

Slavery existed in colonial Massachusetts. After the Revolution, a series of court cases in the 1780s, including those involving Quock Walker and Elizabeth Freeman, led to the end of legal slavery in the state. By the first U.S. census in 1790, Massachusetts reported no enslaved people. But Boston’s economy remained tied to slavery elsewhere through trade, textiles and shipping.

Voices of the movement

• David Walker, a Black clothing dealer in Boston, published his Appeal in 1829, a powerful call for enslaved people to resist. It alarmed slaveholders across the South.
• Maria Stewart, a Black writer and lecturer, gave public speeches in Boston in the early 1830s on abolition and women’s rights, a bold act at the time.
• William Lloyd Garrison began publishing The Liberator in Boston in 1831. It called for the immediate end of slavery and ran for more than three decades.
• Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery, spoke frequently in Boston and nearby, and his first autobiography was published in Boston in 1845.

Sheltering freedom seekers

Boston was a key stop on the Underground Railroad, the network of people who helped those escaping slavery reach safety. On Beacon Hill, the home of Lewis and Harriet Hayden sheltered many freedom seekers. Black churches and organizations raised money, provided housing and connected people with work or onward travel to Canada.

Resisting the Fugitive Slave Act

The federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required Northern officials to help return people who had escaped slavery. Boston activists organized to resist it.

• In 1851, a crowd of Black Bostonians freed Shadrach Minkins from a courthouse, and he escaped to Canada.
• In 1854, Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston. Despite a large protest and an attempt to free him, federal troops marched him through the streets to a ship that returned him to Virginia. Buildings along the route were draped in black. Supporters later raised money to purchase his freedom.

The Burns case turned many previously moderate Bostonians against slavery.

Where to see this history

Many sites connected to abolition are within walking distance of each other:

• The African Meeting House and Abiel Smith School on Smith Court.
• The Black Heritage Trail on Beacon Hill.
• Faneuil Hall, where antislavery meetings were held.
• Park Street Church, where Garrison gave his first major antislavery speech in 1829.
• The William Lloyd Garrison statue on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

Boston’s abolitionist history is a reminder that change often came from ordinary people willing to take great risks. Black Bostonians, in particular, led the way, protecting their neighbors and pushing the nation toward freedom. For tours and maps, visit the National Park Service at nps.gov/boaf.