Misplaced Pages

Part of a series on
Forced labour and slavery
Contemporary Child Labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Involuntary servitude Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Black Sea slave trade Byzantine Empire Kholop Prague slave trade Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Genoese slave trade Venetian slave trade Balkan slave trade Muslim world Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate Slavery in al-Andalus ‎ Baqt Contract of manumission Bukhara slave trade Crimean slave trade Khazar slave trade Khivan slave trade Ottoman Empire Avret Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Safavid imperial harem Qajar harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm al-walad Circassian slave trade Saqaliba Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate Volga Bulgarian slave trade 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labour Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Zanzibar slave trade Angola Chad Comoros Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia Somali slave trade South Africa Sudan Zanzibar North and South America Pre-Columbian America Aztec Americas indigenous U.S. Natives United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labour Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan Brunei China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Indonesia Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Malaysia Maldives Slavery in the Mongol Empire Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe United Kingdom Penal Labour Slavery Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90 Temporary Slavery Commission 1926 Slavery Convention Committee of Experts on Slavery Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman Manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related Common law Indentured servitude Forced labour Fugitive slaves laws convention Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last survivors of American slavery List of slavery-related memorials and museums Slave marriages in the United States Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t e

The National Era was an abolitionist newspaper published weekly in Washington, D.C., from 1847 to 1860. Gamaliel Bailey was its editor in its first year. The National Era Prospectus stated in 1847:

While due attention will be paid to Current Events, Congressional Proceedings, General Politics and Literature, the great aim of the paper will be a complete discussion of the Question of Slavery, and an exhibition of the Duties of the Citizen in relation to it; especially will it explain and advocate the leading Principles and Measures of the Liberty Party, seeking to do this, not in the spirit of the Party, but in the love of Truth—not for the triumph of Party, but for the establishment of Truth.

Each number contained four pages of seven (later eight) columns each. The National Era was noted for its large size and unique type. It featured the works of John Greenleaf Whittier, who served as associate editor, and the first publication, as a serial, of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851). It was also the setting for the first publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Great Stone Face". In 1859, after Mr. Bailey's decease, his wife, Margaret Lucy Shands Bailey, served as publisher until the time of its suspension, February 1860.

"The Soft Answer"

Two months after the establishment of The National Era, "The Soft Answer" was published on its back page by Timothy Shay Arthur. The short story was based on a business disagreement between two former friends, Mr. Singleton and Mr. Williams, set to be mediated by a Lawyer named Mr. Trueman. After receiving an unacceptable settlement offer from Williams, Singleton prepares an angry reply, only to be dissuaded from sending it by his lawyer. Singleton instead assents to signing a far more tactful and conciliatory reply composed by Trueman.

That tactful and conciliatory reply, which reconciled two former friends, is what is now known as "The Soft Answer". That idea suggested a gradualist approach to abolish slavery.

"Changes in the forms of the social organization have always been gradual.... Social reforms are the product of the characters and opinions of the individuals composing a society. Individual influences determine them at first, and they react upon the individual...".

This idea of gradual steps to get two sides to agree is something that many felt that the North and South could use to abolish slavery and integrate the African Americans into society.

See also

• Abolitionist publications

References

1. "About The national era. (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860". National Era. Library of Congress. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
2. ^ Coggeshall, William Turner (1860). "Margaret L. Bailey". The Poets and Poetry of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices (Public domain ed.). Follett, Foster. ISBN 978-0-608-43014-0. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
3. ^ "The National Era". African American Newspapers. Accessible Archives, Inc. Archived from the original on 10 September 2020. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
4. Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980: 292. ISBN 0-395-27602-0
5. ^ Krywicki, Jarad (2013). ""The Soft Answer": The "National Era's" Network of Understanding". American Periodicals. 23 (2): 125–141. doi:10.1353/amp.2013.0017. JSTOR 24589014. S2CID 146663739.

External links

• National Era archive (1847–60) via Fultonhistory.com

• Abolitionist newspapers published in the United States
• Newspapers established in 1847
• Publications disestablished in 1860
• 1847 establishments in Washington, D.C.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin
• Defunct newspapers published in Washington, D.C.