" The society encouraged public lectures, publications, civil disobedience, and the boycott of cotton and other slave-manufactured products.
The Abolitionist Crusade was controversial because the abolitionist associated with it fought against the government and slave owners for the rights and freedom for slaves. It was basically a crime to speak out against slavery in the South and many abolitionists were persecuted for their beliefs. The pro slavery responded to the abolitionists by passing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. This controversial law allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. Because it was often presumed that a black person was a slave, the law threatened the safety of all blacks, slave and free, and forced many Northerners to become more defiant in their support of fugitives. The most realistic approach to ending slavery was the gradual emancipation of the slaves. It would have been very difficult for abolitionists to immediately demand freedom for all because the slavery institution was ingrained in American society. African Americans yearned for immediate freedom from slavery and the ability to lead normal and free lives.
The fact that the abolitionist movement became more urgent, militant and radical in the 1830s is a historical fact. However, most often William Lloyd Garrison is given too much credit for the shift. As publisher of The Liberator and leader of the New England Anti-Slavery Society he created a bully pulpit to wage his moral campaign against slavery. In the process, Garrison challenged the more moderate voices of antislavery, the members of the American Colonization Movement. Whereas the moderates favored gradual emancipation and financial compensation to slaveholders, Garrison demanded immediate and complete end of slavery. Whereas the moderates believed that freed slaves (as well as existing free blacks) should be returned to Africa to form their own "colonies," Garrison recognized that "colonization" of blacks was not fair, since by the 1830s most all had been born in the Untied States.
