The 200,000-member Anti-Slavery Society reached barely 3-4% of northern adults.

Evidence

Historians have devoted a great deal of prose to the rise of abolitionist ferment in the North after 1820. Popular sentiment against slavery seems to have gathered momentum in the relatively unbroken line that is so typical of successful reform movements, from the persistent agitations of Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison through the formation of antislavery societies in the 1830s, the development of the underground railroad, the birth of the Republican Party in the name of abolition, and its final electoral triumph in a popular majority for Lincoln outside the South in 1860. A number of figures are commonly cited to express the deep penetration of the ferment into the consciousness of the general public, including the membership of 200,000 attracted by the American Anti- Slavery Society in the seven short years after 1833 and the truly remarkable sales of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 and after. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1966