Protesting the Fugitive Slave Law

Abstract This section gathers ten documents from 1849 to 1870, which speak to Pennington’s anti-slavery and civil rights efforts, changing stance on the means of resistance, and his anti-segregation and education activism during Reconstruction. 4.1–4.4: In these speeches, Pennington demands immediate and unconditional abolition and attacks the Fugitive Slave Law and local forms of discrimination, such as NYC’s segregation of streetcars, while embedding all of these struggles into a transatlantic fight against slavery and tyranny. 4.5–4.9: Written between 1849 and 1865, these four texts reflect Pennington’s shift from a pacifist stance to a qualified support for violent resistance and Black self-defense, and finally to a moral interpretation of the Civil War as a part of a larger struggle between good and evil. 4.10: Pennington’s 1865 letter from Mississippi documents his hopes and concerns about the spiritual and educational future of Black people in the context of early Reconstruction.