The Great Crusade: 1830-63   Before the year 1830, when Theodore
Weld began preaching the gospel of abolitionism—a crusade in
which the Grimké sisters would soon join him—hardly a single
noted American advocated the prompt abolition of slavery within
the United States. It was not that the slave system had many
ardent defenders, but that it had few ardent enemies.
Conscientious men expected it to die out naturally, while the
majority of Americans hardly thought about it at all. The
South’s “peculiar institution,” it was felt, was no one’s
concern but the South’s.  A few years later, a quarter of a
million Americans, organized in two thousand chapters of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, had come to believe that slavery
was a sin, a crime, an abomination so loathsome that nothing but
its immediate extirpation could save the nation’s soul. This was
the achievement of the abolitionists, a small, fervent band of
men and women incredibly brave, righteous to a fault, and
disliked by most of their countrymen.  At fi