If there was one single issue that divided all Americans at the midpoint of the nineteenth century, it was slavery. The United States had been founded on principles of equality. The idea that all men were created equal was acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence, one of the country’s founding documents. Many of the men who wrote and signed the document, however, actively owned, worked, and occasionally traded Black slaves. That contradiction—the idea that people who embraced ideals of freedom and liberty could also justify to themselves that they had a right to exert ownership over others—came to the forefront of American politics in the 1850s. While mainstream politicians, especially in the South, embraced slavery as an economic benefit, others opposed it and called more and more often for its elimination. These were the abolitionists, and their voices were at the center of the nation’s struggle with slavery in the mid-nineteenth century.