American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society was one of the most prominent abolitionist organizations in the United States of America during the early nineteenth century.
In 1833, abolitionists Theodore Weld, Arthur Tappan, and Lewis Tappan founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. These men provided local and state antislavery societies, including the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, with an organization that could take their cause to the national level. The American Anti-Slavery Society hoped to convince both white Southerners and Northerners of slavery's inhumanity. The organization sent lecturers across the North to convince people of slavery's brutality.[1]
Some members of the American Anti-Slavery Society travelled into Kentucky and posed as peddlers to aid fugitive escapes. Northern agents befriended the mistress of the house. After several visits, the agent passed along escape information to slaves and escorted them to the Ohio River. The American Anti-Slavery Society owned small skiffs kept at two crossing points along the river.[2] Many whites who entered Kentucky were arrested; they roused suspicion as they repeatedly talked to slaves thus making arrest easier.
[1] http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=832
[2] Pamela Peters,The Underground Railroad in Floyd County, Indiana, (Jefferson: McFarland & Co., 2001), 37.