Many people in the North and South spoke out against slavery and were known as abolitionists. Newspapers like The Liberator and The North Star, which was started by Frederick Douglass, helped to spread the word of the abolitionists. Two sisters, Angelina and Sara Grimke, were Southern whites who were the first women to speak for abolition. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about the lives of the enslaved in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The Underground Railroad was a major escape route for enslaved people. It was a system of secret routes that had "conductors," or people who guided the slaves, or "passengers." The "president of the Underground Railroad" was Levi Coffin, a Quaker from Indiana. Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad and became a conductor who led many enslaved families to freedom.

Along with the rise of the abolition movement came the rise of the women's rights movement. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention on July 19, 1848 to discuss women's rights. Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth spoke against slavery and for women's rights.