No Union with Slaveholders: A Radical, Practical Abolitionist Plan

ABSTRACT: Nineteenth-century American abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison urged their followers to rally around the unpopular motto “No Union with Slaveholders.” Beginning two decades before the Civil War, they argued that the only way to end slavery was to dissolve the Union. These “disunionists” were criticized by other reformers at the time for doing nothing to advance the cause, especially in comparison to antislavery politicians who believed slavery could be “denationalized” through electoral politics. Like today’s abolitionists, disunionists were often dismissed as impractical idealists. Yet they did have a plan that proved prescient in the end.