Abolitionism is a political and moral movement whose primary historical referent is the campaign to end the institution of chattel slavery, particularly as practiced in the Americas from the 16th through 19th centuries. The term also applies, by extension, to other campaigns seeking the total elimination of a practice or institution - including the abolition of capital punishment, of prisons, and of nuclear weapons - though without qualification it most commonly refers to anti-slavery activism. The movement drew from religious, Enlightenment, and natural rights traditions and ultimately succeeded in the legal abolition of slavery across the Western Hemisphere by the late 19th century.

In its core historical sense, abolitionism designates organized efforts to end slavery entirely, as distinguished from gradualism (phased emancipation), colonizationism (resettlement of freed people), or amelioration (reform of slavery's conditions without ending it). The distinction mattered politically: abolitionists were often in conflict not only with pro-slavery forces but also with moderates who accepted slavery's continuation in some form. In contemporary usage, “abolitionism” has been extended to movements seeking the elimination of prisons, police, or other institutions, though these uses are contested and the historical anti-slavery movement remains the primary referent.

Organized abolitionism emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries, with Quaker communities in England and the American colonies among its earliest institutional advocates. The movement gained significant political force in Britain through figures such as William Wilberforce and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, resulting in the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. In the United States, abolitionism grew from scattered religious and moral protest into a major political force by the mid-19th century, associated with figures including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. The movement encompassed significant internal disagreements over tactics, political engagement, the role of formerly enslaved people in leadership, and whether the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery or anti-slavery document. The American Civil War (1861-1865) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) brought legal abolition in the United States. For a fuller treatment, see Abolitionism - History.

Abolitionism was not a unified ideology. Practitioners differed on several dimensions that remain relevant to historians and political theorists:

• Means: Garrison advocated moral suasion and rejected political participation; others, including Douglass, ultimately engaged with electoral politics. A minority endorsed or tolerated violence, as in the case of John Brown.
• Constitutional interpretation: Garrison famously called the Constitution “a covenant with death” for its accommodations to slavery; Douglass and the Liberty/Free Soil/Republican political tradition argued it could be read as an anti-slavery document.
• Race and leadership: The movement's relationship between white allies and black activists - including the degree to which formerly enslaved people were centered or marginalized - has been a subject of significant historical and contemporary debate.
• Colonization vs. integration: Some who opposed slavery nonetheless supported relocating free black Americans to Africa or elsewhere; abolitionists such as Douglass rejected colonization as incompatible with full citizenship.

See Abolitionism - Debate for fuller treatment of these disputes.

Since the late 20th century, activists and scholars have applied the abolitionist label to campaigns for prison abolition, police abolition, and the elimination of other carceral institutions. Proponents argue these institutions function as continuations or successors of racial slavery. Critics dispute the analogy and the practical viability of abolition in these contexts. See Prison Abolition and Police Abolition.

• Immediatism - The position, associated with Garrison and his allies, that slavery must be ended immediately and without compensation to slaveholders, and that moral persuasion rather than political compromise was the proper instrument.
• Political Abolitionism - The view, represented by the Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, and eventually the Republican Party, that electoral and legislative action within existing constitutional structures was both legitimate and necessary.
• Gradualism - The position that slavery should be phased out over time, sometimes with compensation to slaveholders, as a means of avoiding social disruption; generally distinguished from and opposed by core abolitionism.
• Colonizationism - The view, associated with the American Colonization Society and figures such as Henry Clay, that ending slavery should be coupled with resettlement of freed people outside the United States; opposed by most abolitionists, particularly black abolitionists.
• Resistance and Self-Liberation - The perspective, foregrounded by scholars such as Herbert Aptheker and later by black history scholarship, that enslaved people's own resistance, flight, and rebellion were central to abolition rather than peripheral to a white-led movement.

• Abolitionism - History
• Abolitionism - Debate
• Frederick Douglass
• Slavery
• American Civil War
• Thirteenth Amendment
• Prison Abolition
• Police Abolition
• Quakers

1. Rodriguez, Junius P., ed. Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2007.
2. Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: Norton, 2010.
3. Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
4. Mayer, Henry. All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
5. Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.
6. Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.