I'm interested to know if abolitionism ever seriously took the form of consumer activism. Especially in the case of staple products like cotton, sugar, coffee and tobacco, I'd love to know if there were any instances of:
boycotts of slave-made goods, whether large or individual in scale (e.g. giving up tobacco, wearing only wool/silk/linen instead of cotton)
people setting out to provide alternatives made using paid instead of slave labour
goods being marketed as the work of 'happy'/'well-treated' slaves.
To what extent did concerns like these factor into people's consumption of goods dependent on slave labour?
I can't speak for the US, but only in the specific context of Britain, and the abolition of slavery in 1833. Abolition itself was not in public consciousness so to speak until the late 18th century, and the British abolitionists (remember at his time there were many self-emancipated formally enslaved peoples who fought for abolition as well. Notably on a large scale with the Haitian Revolution) were mainly from Nonconformist Christian groups like Quakers. This is important to your question because yes there was "boycotting," and in particular middle-class woman (who could afford the consumer goods in the first place- because you can't boycott what you can't afford) who would buy the household goods that actively boycotted sugar and other products produced by slave labour. However, this was done in a religious context and the word "boycott" was not used but ""abstention" was used. They would distribute pamphlets, and give talks about the importance if "abstention" However, "abstention" was related to middle-class evangelical critiques of excessive consumption, and more closely related to the moral issues about consumption in general within a Christian worldview of refusal to eat products like sugar or drink alcohol, and generally speaking it was about self-denial not capitalist protest.
For the most part goods were not "advertised" in the contemporary sense until the late 19th century when print ads featured all sorts of idealised racialized images from Empire to sell goods. There are a few good works on this specific topic Imperial Leather by Anne McClintock, and there's a great (and controversial) article by Haskell called "Capitalism and the origins of the humanitarian sensibility, Part 1 and 2" which I think are available on google scholar.
But it's important to remember abolitionism was very diverse, and there were the pro-political economist abolitionists coming from Adam Smith who saw slave labour as incompatible with a market society that needed "free" labour to circulate, and other threads concerned with the horrific treatment of enslaved peoples, as well as enslaved peoples themselves who actively engaged in abolition. For example Mary Prince has a short autobiography published that gives insights into this aspect of abolition.
/u/betegalante: I bookmarked this thread to come back to and answer more fully when I had the time -- I probably won't have the time until tonight or tomorrow, but the bulk of my answer was going to be a paraphrase of Glickman's Buying Power, (great recc, /u/candidate0, and nice British perspective!) with some more perspectives on women, race, and labor from a few other scholars (Nan Ensted, Tera Hunter, etc.), plus some more on the Revolution from T.H. Breen.
If you want me to come back and do so, just let me know! If you feel sated, I might get back to writing my dissertation :-/
Hi OP, since you're looking for ways to procrastinate, here are a few more posts on the topic :)
Before the American Civil War, did anyone sell "slave-free" cotton the way organic foods are sold today? featuring /u/jordan42
In terms of slavery, was there an equivalent to modern day "fair trade" goods in Pre-Civil War America? featuring /u/slendergiantmoray