Assembling in Philadelphia, the city of the nation's birth, abolitionists from all over the North founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833. They planted their faith squarely "upon the Declaration of our Independence" written 57 years earlier. They acknowledged that the U.S. Constitution forbade interference with slavery in the southern states. They committed themselves to a peaceful struggle, reliant on divine guidance, to liberate America 's enslaved.

The press of the Society, based on Nassau Street in lower Manhattan, aimed different publications at different audiences. The Slave's Friend brought the cause home for children in anti-slavery families. The Emancipator probed more deeply into the morality and politics of slavery. The Anti-Slavery Record was mailed monthly to thousands of American homes. It targeted an audience susceptible to sentimental appeals. In the 1840s and 1850s, the Society's use of political imagery became more and more sophisticated. Over the course of a single year The Anti-Slavery Almanac, for 1840 inventively combined simple engravings depicting violence against southern slaves with sardonic cartoons of northern hypocrisy.