William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator . Nat Turner, a slave who believed God had chosen him to lead slaves out of bondage, leads an insurrection killing 51 whites in Southampton County, Virginia. He and his followers were caught. More stringent slave laws were enacted following his rebellion. Oberlin College in Ohio is founded as an integrated institution and becomes a center of abolitionist and underground railroad activity.
All slavery is abolished in the British Empire, including Canada.
New England Anti-Slavery Society is formed. 1837 Abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy killed in Alton, Illinois. Enslaved African revolt on the Spanish ship Amistad off the coast of Cuba. 1843 Prigg vs. Pennysylvania challenging the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. 1847 Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and tremendous abolitionist orator, begins publication of the newspaper, The North Star . 1848 First Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York.