Newspapers: The Abolitionist and Black Press, 1827–1870. (Primary Sources)

The antislavery movement was a publishing movement. Before it had political parties or courtroom victories it had presses, and the twenty-one titles below carried the arguments, the fugitive notices, the convention minutes, and the obituaries that held a scattered movement together. Several were edited by Black abolitionists whose names belong beside Garrison's and Douglass's: Samuel Cornish, Thomas Hamilton, Stephen Myers.

These papers are also where John Brown appears and disappears. He drafted his Provisional Constitution in the Rochester home of the man who edited three of these titles. Gerrit Smith, who bankrolled a fourth, gave Brown money for Kansas and later for Harpers Ferry. The Liberator printed a Fourth of July oration delivered from the rock above Brown's grave. The press did not merely report on Brown — it was the network he moved through.

Ten of the twenty-one are now free to read in full. That is a better number than it was: three titles previously listed here as lost or undigitized have since been located, including one, Douglass' Monthly, long assumed to have burned.

Freely digitized, full text online

The Liberator (Boston, 1831–1865) → Digital Commonwealth

William Lloyd Garrison's weekly, and the movement's longest-running voice — thirty-five years without missing an issue, ending only when the Thirteenth Amendment made its argument moot. Garrison's immediatism and his denunciation of the Constitution as "a covenant with death" defined one pole of abolitionist thought, the pole Brown rejected. Brown believed the founding documents were worth redeeming; Garrison wanted them burned, and did burn a copy publicly in 1854. The paper nonetheless covered Brown extensively after Harpers Ferry, and on August 3, 1860 it printed Luther Lee's Fourth of July oration, delivered from the rock above Brown's grave at North Elba.

Freedom's Journal (New York City, 1827–1829) → Library of Congress

The first Black-owned and Black-edited newspaper in the United States, founded by Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm. Its opening editorial gave the Black press its founding sentence: "We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us." It ran barely two years and shaped everything after it.

The North Star (Rochester, 1847–1851) → LOC Frederick Douglass Newspapers

Frederick Douglass founded it after breaking with Garrison over the Constitution — Douglass had come to read it as an antislavery document, a position closer to Brown's than to his old mentor's. The masthead motto: "Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Color."

Frederick Douglass' Paper (Rochester, 1851–1860) → LOC Frederick Douglass NewspapersThe North Star's successor, and the paper Douglass was editing in early 1858 when John Brown spent weeks as a guest in his Rochester house, drafting the Provisional Constitution at his table. Of all the addresses in this bibliography, this one is the most literal: Brown's constitution was written in a newspaper editor's home. ‍

Douglass' Monthly (Rochester, 1859–1863) → LOC Frederick Douglass Newspapers

Douglass's third title, launched the year of the Harpers Ferry raid. When the raid failed and Virginia sought Douglass's arrest as a conspirator, he fled to Canada and then England; the Monthly carried his public answer to the charge. This paper was for years described as effectively lost — much of Douglass's own file burned when his Rochester house was destroyed in 1872 — but surviving runs have been digitized and the Library of Congress now offers it complete and free.

The National Era (Washington, D.C., 1847–1860) → Library of Congress

Published in a slaveholding capital, edited by Gamaliel Bailey, and the paper that serialized Uncle Tom's Cabin across forty installments in 1851–52 before it was ever a book. A mob attacked its offices in 1848 after the Pearl escape attempt — the same episode that put Daniel Drayton in the Washington jail, whose memoir appears in this bibliography.

The Weekly Anglo-African (New York City, 1859–1862) → Chronicling America

Founded by Thomas Hamilton in July 1859, three months before Harpers Ferry, and quickly the most important Black-edited paper in the country. Hamilton insisted that Black Americans needed a press owned by Black Americans: white allies, however sincere, were still speaking for others. Its coverage of Brown — and of the Black men who died with him — is among the most valuable contemporary sources on the raid's reception in Black communities.

Genius of Universal Emancipation (Baltimore, 1821–1839) → Library of Congress

Benjamin Lundy's Quaker paper, the most important antislavery journal of the generation before Garrison — who worked for Lundy as an editor before founding The Liberator. Lundy was assaulted in the street and sued for libel for naming slave traders in print.

The Friend of Man (Utica, 1836–1842) → Cornell University Library, 283 issues · Chronicling America

The organ of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, edited by William Goodell. This is the paper of record for the upstate movement — the Utica and Peterboro conventions, the Liberty Party's formation, the vigilance committees. Cornell holds a nearly complete run of 283 issues and has digitized all of it. Previously listed here as undigitized; it is not.

Tocsin of Liberty (Albany, 1841–1842) → Digitized issues at Digital Commonwealth

A Liberty Party weekly with an unusually direct connection to this bibliography: it was edited by Charles T. Torrey and published with Abel Brown, and the memoirs of both men appear in the Autobiographies section. Torrey renamed it the Albany Patriot and later died in a Maryland penitentiary for helping enslaved people escape. Individual issues are freely readable; a complete run has not been located.

Cataloged, full text behind subscription

These titles are indexed and locatable but their digitized text sits behind Accessible Archives or Readex's America's Historical Newspapers — available through most university and many public library systems.

The Colored American (New York City, 1837–1841) → LOC catalog record Samuel Cornish again, later Philip Bell and Charles Ray. The most important Black paper of the late 1830s, and a central forum for the debate over whether Black Americans should pursue emigration or claim citizenship at home.

National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York City, 1840–1870) → LOC catalog record The official organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Lydia Maria Child edited it from 1841 to 1843, and her Appeal and her Harpers Ferry correspondence with Governor Wise both appear elsewhere in this bibliography.

The Emancipator / The Emancipator and Free American (New York City, 1833–1844) → LOC catalog record An American Anti-Slavery Society paper; it also serialized James Matthews's Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave in 1838.

Northern Star and Freemen's Advocate (Albany, 1842–1843) → LOC catalog record Operated by Stephen Myers, the formerly enslaved Albany abolitionist who ran what David Ruggles called the best-organized stretch of the Underground Railroad in New York State. Harriet Myers worked on the paper alongside him. Note the title: Freemen's, not Freeman's, as it is often miscited.

Radical Abolitionist (New York City, 1855–1858) → LOC catalog record Edited by William Goodell, organ of the American Abolition Society, and sustained financially by Gerrit Smith. It grew out of the 1855 Syracuse Convention of Radical Political Abolitionists, whose proceedings appear in this bibliography's Addresses section — the convention John Brown attended to appeal for money and arms for Kansas. Goodell abandoned the paper in 1858 after falling out with Smith.

The Rights of All (New York City, 1829) → LOC catalog record Samuel Cornish's short-lived successor to Freedom's Journal, launched after Russwurm emigrated to Liberia. Six issues are known.

Albany Weekly Patriot / Albany Patriot (Albany, 1843–1848) → LOC catalog record The Tocsin of Liberty renamed under Charles Torrey. A Liberty Party paper and a node of the Albany vigilance network.

The New-York Evangelist (New York City, 1830–1902) → Available through subscription newspaper databases An evangelical weekly, not an abolitionist organ as such, but a significant venue for antislavery argument within the churches — the terrain Beriah Green, Luther Lee, and George Cheever fought over.

No digitized copy located

Listed for the record. If you know of a digitized run of any of these, we would be glad to hear from you.

• ‍New-York Colonization Journal (New York City) — organ of the New York State Colonization Society, arguing the position that Brown, Douglass, and Garnet all rejected

• The Liberty Press (Utica) — Liberty Party paper of the mid-1840s

• Anti-slavery Lecturer (Utica) — short-lived, late 1830s