History of North America · History of North America

PLUS 2.41 Prelude to U.S. Civil War (Chapter 8.13)

April 12, 2026·10 min·1 clip

How did slave songs evolve into spirituals and jazz, and who was poet Joshua McCarter Simpson?

The episode opens with a brief mention of how African American slave music expressed suffering and became the forerunner of spirituals, blues, and jazz. Joshua McCarter Simpson is named as an Ohio poet whose emancipation songs were sung by runaway slaves. The episode then profiles Charles Lennox Remen, born 1810 in Salem, Massachusetts, who traveled the northern United States and Europe testifying against slavery. Remen was the first Black person to speak at public abolitionist meetings and was the American delegate to the 1840 World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London. At the 1858 Convention of Colored Citizens of Massachusetts, Remen proposed that Southern slaves should resort to insurrection. Henry Highland Garnett is profiled next — born enslaved in Maryland in 1815, he escaped with his family in 1824 to New York. Garnett received 14 years of formal schooling ending with graduation from Oneida Institute in 1840. He was ordained as a pastor and led congregations in multiple cities including New York and Kingston, Jamaica. Garnett became a leading advocate for racial equality, lecturing against the slave trade and highlighting Black contributions to the American Revolution. At the 1843 National Negro Convention in Buffalo, Garnett delivered his famous 'Address to the Slaves of the United States,' urging rebellion. His resolution failed by one vote, and Frederick Douglass initially opposed his call. As the Civil War approached, especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, more abolitionists sided with Garnett. Garnett also supported Black emigration to Africa and founded the African Civilization Society in 1858. Near the end of the Civil War, he addressed the House of Representatives calling for slavery's end. In 1881, he was appointed American Minister and Consul General to Liberia, where he died. Post-war abolitionists drove passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The episode concludes with Canadian abolitionism — the African slave trade reached Canada in the 17th century and persisted for over 200 years, but Canadian public opinion gradually turned against the institution. Slavery was abolished for the British Empire in 1834, with the practice already nearly ended in Canada by the 1820s through judicial and legislative action.

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