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• n  the doctrine that calls for the abolition of slavery

• If Uncle Tom's Cabin is the fictional masterpiece of American abolitionism, a book Abraham Lincoln would later acknowledge as powerful enough to "cause this big war," then Douglass .
• In American politics, abolitionism was just beginning to move from the left wing into the mainstream.
• History, he believes, provided the appropriate issue in abolitionism, which expanded the private privilege of conscience into the public privilege of civil disobedience.