<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> Abolitionism in the United States was the movement before and during the American Civil War to end slavery in the United States . In the Americas and western Europe, abolitionism was a movement to end the Atlantic slave trade and set slaves free . In the 17th century, English Quakers and Evangelicals condemned slavery as un-Christian . At that time, most slaves were Africans, but thousands of Native Americans were also enslaved . In the 18th century, as many as six million Africans were transported to the Americas as slaves, at least a third of them on British ships to North America . Abolition was part of the message of the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s in the Thirteen Colonies . </P> <P> In the same period, rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized slavery for violating human rights . A member of the British Parliament, James Edward Oglethorpe, was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery . Founder of the Province of Georgia, Oglethorpe banned slavery on humanistic grounds . He argued against it in Parliament and eventually encouraged his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause . Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More joined with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect . Although anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, colonies and emerging nations, notably in the southern United States, continued to use and uphold traditions of slavery . </P>

What was an abolitionist during the civil war
find me the text answering this question