Abolitionists, Anti-Abolitionists, and the Business of Manufacturing Cotton Grown by the Enslaved in Lowell, Massachusetts

FAIN: FT-291315-23

Elizabeth Ann Herbin-Triant
Amherst College (Amherst, MA 01002-2372)

Writing a book on Lowell, Massachusetts, from the 1820s to the 1860s, focusing on the community’s relationship to slavery and antislavery. 

“Abolitionists, Anti-Abolitionists, and the Business of Manufacturing Cotton Grown by the Enslaved in Lowell, Massachusetts” explores how people in one northern city grappled with what it meant to live with slavery. Examining textile manufacturers and workers, small business owners, church leaders, and fugitives from slavery, this book tells the story of antebellum Lowell—a place deeply tied to the South’s “peculiar institution” and shaped by competing currents of antislavery activism and anti-abolitionism. Even as this book considers how the textile manufacturers who bought cotton produced by enslaved people helped to sustain slavery, it also reveals the forces that worked against these business leaders’ efforts to protect the institution, examining how the presence and activities of African Americans in Lowell influenced the antislavery movement in the city. This study shows the North’s relationship to slavery to be messy and conflicted.