Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830-1870

This book is an examination of antebellum abolitionism in the United States. Professor Friedman studies the abolitionists as individuals, delving into the psychology, sociology and group dynamics of the movement. He examines those ‘immediatists’ who, in contrast to gradualist circles of anti-slavery opinion, refused, as they saw it, to temporise with evil. He also explores the differences between the Boston and New York groups, assesses the role of the movement in the coming of the civil war, and develops an original view of feminist abolitionism.