Broadside, "Coddings Lectures on the Slavery Question," circa 1855

Beginning in the 1830s, some people -- mostly white Northerners -- began to speak out against slavery. Ichabod Codding, a clergyman born in Bristol, New York, became convinced while in college in Middlebury, Vermont, that he should devote his career to the anti-slavery cause. He traveled extensively in New England, New York, and Illinois lecturing on the evils of slavery.