gradualist

US abolitionist who sought to end slavery through gradual and legal means. The gradualist faction of the abolitionist movement tried to convince slaveholders that slavery was unethical and sinful through ‘moral suasion’, or persistent moral pressure. Their methods were often tentative and, for some, propelled by the fear that an abrupt and unconditional end to the institution would lead to the fall of the southern economy. The gradualists eventually distanced themselves from the sometimes militant immediatists, abolitionists who demanded an immediate ban on all slavery.

In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society split into gradualist and immediatist factions. Radical immediatist William Lloyd Garrison retained control of the Society's newspaper, The Liberator, while the gradualist brothers Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan founded the rival American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. A year later a group led by another prominent gradualist, James G Birney established the first antislavery political party, the Liberty Party.

Neither gradualists nor immediatists favoured violent action, and both factions shared the conviction that above all slavery was a moral sin, yet they differed in tactics and approach. By the 1850s, however, armed resistance to slavery increased and the bitter controversy over extending slavery into Kansas erupted into Civil War in 1861.