immediatist

US abolitionist who sought an immediate ban on slavery in the USA. Like the gradualist faction of the abolitionist movement, which campaigned to abolish slavery through gradual and legal means, immediatists held the fundamental belief that slavery was immoral. However, the immediatists, who were mainly African-American, differed in their tactics and approach. Although they did not favour violent action, they were earnest in their struggle for the immediate emancipation of slaves, while gradualists argued for a slower, measured approach.

In 1839 the American Anti-Slavery Society split when radical immediatist leaders, including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Lucretia Coffin Mott, and John Brown, refused to commit themselves to the gradual emancipation of slaves. At the same time, many abolitionists of more gradualist persuasion were offended by Garrison's unwillingness to compromise, as well as his commitment to include women in his organization. They deserted the Anti-Slavery Society and formed other organizations. Immediatists, meanwhile, retained control of the Society's newspaper, The Liberator, and gained a considerable African-American following in the North.

In the 1850s armed resistance to slavery increased and the controversy over extending slavery to Kansas, following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, erupted into Civil War in 1861.