Newport, Indiana : a study of Quaker ante-bellum reform

This study is an attempt to uncover the considerable contribution to antebellum reform made by a small unassuming frontier community in Indiana, That this community has been largely neglected in social histories of the United States is probably because the region did not produce any nationally outstanding figure as well-'known as William Lloyd Garrison., Elijah Love joy,, Theodore Weld, James Birney or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. This dissertation is an in-depth look at a group of so-called ordinary men and women who were really rather extraordinary in the enlightened positions they took.The two decades, 1826-1846, were the major years of Newport's ascendancy as a leading community in antebellum reform, Newport was made up largely of members of the Society of Friends, many of whom had migrated to the area from the Carolinas and other parts of the South to escape the spreading institution of slavery. Their opposition to slavery, then, was part of their religious tradition, and included aiding runaways to reach free soil. I t was only, however # among the more activist Friends, centered mainly in Newport that organized efforts to manage more efficiently antislavery activities resulted in that community being dubbed the "Grand Central Station" in the Underground Railroad.The outstanding individual in these efforts was Levi Coffin, reputed "President of the Underground Railroad," His coming to Newport in 1826 marked the beginning of organized, wisely managed efforts to oppose slavery. This included such activities as an antislavery tract society, an antislavery library, antislavery newspapers, antislavery societies (including also a young men's antislavery society and a female antislavery society), schools for free blacks and fugitives, as well as the free Produce Movement, an attempt to encourage abstension from the purchase of goods produced by slave labor.In this, Coffin and the Newport reform leaders were opposed by many, a vast majority at first, who felt their direct action methods were too revolutionary and disruptive and as a result were counterproductive, So severe was the disagreement that a rupture of eleven years took place in the Indiana Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. By 1846, public toleration of abolition was such that Newport leaders felt little imperative to continue agitation for antislavery causes, instead, they centered their efforts in the political solution offered by the formation of the Liberty Party.The Newport community led in other popular contemporary reform movements including temperance, women's rights, education, and the peace movement. This comprehensiveness of 2lewport antebellum reform was consistent with antebellum reform in general. All the reforms were interrelated, all part of a larger pattern of moral planning. The cause of human rights embraced not only the freeing of slaves from bondage, but also the liberating of women from the bonds of less than equal status with men, the freeing, of the uneducated from the restrictions imposed by ignorance, the prohibition of the abuse of alcohol which shackled man's reason and will, and tie lifting from man of the curse of war.The Newport reformers believed in racial equality as tenaciously as did the Garrisonians or the Weld abolitionists. They seemed to have recognized that rhetoric, as ennobling and inspiriting as it can be, can also grow shrill and tiresome in its self-righteousness. Their reform was the kind of responsible reform directed at those around them--their family, friends, and neighbors--rather than at the faraway "demon" at whom shots can be taken with relative assurance he cannot immediate retaliate.Thesis (D. Ed.