It's important to note that most northerners did not
believe in black equality, even after the Civil War. In general, this was a racist
country, and would remain so for quite some time. The abolitionist movement was a
minority, even by 1861 when the war started. Most northerners believed that slavery was
OK if a state wanted it, they just didn't think it should spread farther west into new
territories.
What the abolitionist movement did, and this
took a considerable amount of time to achieve, was that it raised awareness of slavery,
and how brutal the institution was. The movement did grow, especially in the 1850s, due
to influential speakers, writers and the influences of the churches. But many
abolitionists, like John Brown or William Lloyd Garrison, were dismissed by the
mainstream of the North as too radical, and their influence was therefore more limited
than that of say, Frederick Douglass or Harriet Beecher Stowe.
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