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Title: History of American Abolitionism
Author: De Fontaine, F. G. (Felix Gregory), 1832-1896
Language: English
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AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM,
FROM 1787 TO 1861.
A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORICAL FACTS,
EMBRACING LEGISLATION IN CONGRESS
AND AGITATION WITHOUT.
(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK HERALD.)
BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & CO.
1861.
PRICE, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS.
HISTORY OF AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM;
Its Four Great Epochs,
EMBRACING NARRATIVES OF THE
ORDINANCE OF 1787,
COMPROMISE OF 1820,
ANNEXATION OF TEXAS,
MEXICAN WAR,
WILMOT PROVISO,
NEGRO INSURRECTIONS,
ABOLITION RIOTS,
SLAVE RESCUES,
COMPROMISE OF 1850,
KANSAS BILL OF 1854,
JOHN BROWN INSURRECTION, 1859,
VALUABLE STATISTICS,
&c., &c., &c.
TOGETHER WITH A
HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.
(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK HERALD.)
BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.
_NEW YORK_:
D. APPLETON & Co.
1861.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one,
BY F. G. DE FONTAINE,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,
for the Southern District of New York.
CHAS. CRASKE,
STEREOTYPER.
BARTON & SON,
PRINTERS,
111 Fulton Street, N. Y.
INTRODUCTION.
The following pages originally appeared in the NEW YORK HERALD, of
February 2d, 1861. By request, they have been reproduced in their present
shape, with the view of preserving, in a form more compact than that of a
newspaper, the valuable facts embraced.
Without an extensive range of research it is almost impossible to acquire
the information which is thus compiled, and, at the present time,
especially, it is believed that the publication of these facts will be
desirable to the reading community.
F. G. DE F.
HISTORY OF AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM.
CHAPTER I.
The Spirit of the Age--Two Classes of Abolitionists--Their Objects--The
Sources of their Inspiration--Influences upon Church and State--Proposed
Invasions upon the Constitution--Effect upon the Slave States, &c., &c.
One of the commanding characteristics of the present age is the spirit of
agitation, collision and discord which has broken forth in every
department of social and political life. While it has been an era of
magnificent enterprises and unrivalled prosperity, it has likewise been an
era of convulsion, which has well nigh upturned the foundations of the
government. Never was this truth more evident than at the present moment.
A single topic occupies the public mind--Union or Disunion--and is one of
pre-eminently absorbing interest to every citizen. Upon this issue the
entire nation has been involved in a moral distemper, that threatens its
utter and irrevocable dissolution. Union--the child of compact, the
creature of social and political tolerance--stands face to face with
Disunion, the natural off-spring of that anti-slavery sentiment, which has
ever warred against the interests of the people and the elements of true
government, and struggles for the maintenance of that sacred pledge by
which the United States have heretofore been bound in a common
brotherhood. Like the marvellous tent given by the fairy Banou to Prince
Achmed, which, when folded up, became an ornament in the delicate hands of
women, but, spread out, afforded encampment to mighty armies; so is this
question of abolitionism, to which the present overwhelming trouble of our
land is to be traced, in its capacity to encompass all things, and its
ability to attach itself even to the amenities and refinements of life. It
has entered into everything, great and small, high and low, political,
theological, social and moral, and in one section has become the standard
by which all excellence is to be judged. Under the guise of philanthropic
reform, it has pursued its course with energy, boldness and unrelenting
bitterness, until it has grown from "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand"
into the dimensions of the tempest which is to-day lowering over the land
charged with the elements of destruction. Commencing with a pretended love
for the black race, it has arrived at a stage of restless, uncompromising
fanaticism which will be satisfied with nothing short of the consummation
of its wildest hopes. It has become the grand question of the day--of
politics, of ethics, of expediency, of justice, of conscience, and of law,
covering the whole field of human society and divine government.
In this view of the subject, and in view also of the surrounding unhappy
circumstances of the country which have their origin in this agitation, we
give below a history of abolition, from the period it commenced to exist
as an active element in the affairs of the nation down to the present
moment.
ABOLITIONISTS AND THEIR OBJECTS.
There are two classes of persons opposed to the continued existence of
slavery in the United States. The first are those who are actuated by
sentiments of philanthropy and humanity, but are at the same time no less
opposed to any disturbance of the peace or tranquility of the Union, or to
any infringement of the powers of the States composing the confederacy.
Among these may be classed the society of "Friends," one of whose
established principles is an abhorrence of war in all its forms, and the
cultivation of peace and good will amongst mankind. As far back as 1670,
the ancient records of their society refer to the peaceful and exemplary
efforts of the sect to prevent the holding of slaves by any of their
number; and a quaint incident is related of an eccentric "Friend," who, at
one of their monthly meetings, "seated himself among the audience with a
bladder of bullock's blood secreted under his mantle, and at length broke
the quiet stillness of the worship by rising in full view of the
congregation, piercing the bladder, spilling the blood upon the floor and
seats, and exclaiming with all the solemnity of an inspired prophet, 'Thus
shall the Lord spill the blood of those that traffic in the blood of their
fellow men.'"
The second class are the real ultra abolitionists--the "reformers" who, in
the language of Henry Clay, are "resolved to persevere at all hazards, and
without regard to any consequences, however calamitous they may be. With
them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of
the general government is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestible
powers of the State are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the Union,
and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the fondest
hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. They are for the immediate
abolition of slavery, the prohibition of the removal of slaves from State
to State, and the refusal to admit any new State comprising within its
limits the institution of domestic slavery--all these being but so many
means conducive to the accomplishment of the ultimate but perilous end at
which they avowedly and boldly aim--so many short stages, as it were, in
the long and bloody road to the distant goal at which they would
ultimately arrive. Their purpose is abolition, 'peaceably if it can,
forcibly if it must.'"
Utterly destitute of Constitutional or other rightful power; living in
totally distinct communities, as alien to the communities in which the
subject on which they would operate resides, as far as concerns political
power over that subject, as if they lived in Asia or Africa, they
nevertheless promulgate to the world their purpose to immediately convert
without compensation four millions of profitable and contented slaves into
four millions of burdensome and discontented negroes.
This idea, which originated and still generally prevails in New England,
is the result of that puritanical frenzy which has always characterized
that section of the country, and made it the natural breeding ground of
the most absurd "isms" ever concocted. The Puritans of to-day are not less
fanatical than were the Puritans of two centuries ago. In fact, they have
progressed rather than retrograded. Their god then was the angry,
wrathful, jealous god of the Jews--the Supreme Being now is the creation
of their own intellects, proportioned in dimensions to the depth and
fervor of their individual understandings. Then the Old Testament was
their rule of faith. Now neither old nor new, except in so far as it
accords with their consciences, is worth the paper upon which it is
written. Their creeds are begotten of themselves, and their high priests
are those who best represent their peculiar "notions." The same spirit
which, in the days of Robespierre and Marat, abolished the Lord's day and
worshipped Reason, in the person of a harlot, yet survives to work other
horrors. In this age, however, and in a community like the present, a
disguise must be worn; but it is the old threadbare advocacy of human
rights, which the enlightenment of the age condemns as impracticable. The
decree has gone forth which strikes at God, by striking at all
subordination and law, and under the specious cry of reform it is demanded
that every pretended evil shall be corrected, or society become a
wreck--that the sun must be stricken from the heavens if a spot is found
upon his disc.
The abolitionist is a practical atheist. In the language of one of their
congregational ministers--Rev. Henry Wright, of Massachusetts:--
"The God of humanity is not the God of slavery. If so, shame upon
such a God. I scorn him. I will never bow to his shrine; my head
shall go off with my hat when I take it off to such a God as that. If
the Bible sanctions slavery, the Bible is a self-evident falsehood.
And, if God should declare it to be right, I would fasten the chain
upon the heel of such a God, and let the man go free. Such a God is a
phantom."
The religion of the people of New England is a peculiar morality, around
which the minor matters of society arrange themselves like ferruginous
particles around a loadstone. All the elements obey this general law.
Accustomed to doing as it pleases, New England "morality" has usually
accomplished what it has undertaken. It has attacked the Sunday mails,
assaulted Free Masonry, triumphed over the intemperate use of ardent
spirits, and finally engaged in an onslaught upon the slavery of the
South. Its channels have been societies, meetings, papers, lectures,
sermons, resolutions, memorials, protests, legislation, private
discussion, public addresses; in a word, every conceivable method whereby
appeal may be brought to mind. Its spirit has been agitation!--and its
language, fruits and measures have partaken throughout of a character that
is thoroughly warlike.
"In language no element ever flung out more defiance of authority,
contempt of religion, or authority to man. As to agency, no element
on earth has broken up more friendships and families, societies and
parties, churches and denominations, or ruptured more organizations,
political, social or domestic. And as to measures! What spirit of man
ever stood upon earth with bolder front and wielded fiercer weapons?
Stirring harangues! Stern resolutions! Fretful memorials! Angry
protests! Incendiary pamphlets at the South! Hostile legislation at
the North! Underground railroads at the West! Resistance to the
Constitution! Division of the Union! Military contribution! Sharpe's
rifles! Higher law! If this is not belligerence enough, Mohammed's
work and the old Crusades were an appeal to argument and not to
arms."
What was philanthrophy in our forefathers has become misanthrophy in their
descendants, and compassion for the slave has given way to malignity
against the master. Consequences are nothing. The one idea preeminent
above all others is abolition!
It is worthy of notice in this connection that most abolitionists know
little or nothing of slavery and slaveholders beyond what they have
learned from excited, caressed and tempted fugitives, or from a
superficial, accidental or prejudiced observation. From distorted facts,
gross misrepresentations, and frequently malicious caricatures, they have
come to regard Southern slaveholders as the most unprincipled men in the
Universe, with no incentive but avarice, no feeling but selfishness, and
no sentiment but cruelty.
Their information is acquired from discharged seamen, runaway slaves,
agents who have been tarred and feathered, factious politicians, and
scurrilous tourists; and no matter how exaggerated may be the facts, they
never fail to find willing believers among this class of people.
In the Church, the missionary spirit with which the men of other times and
nobler hearts intended to embrace all, both bond and free, has been
crushed out. New methods of Scriptural interpretation have been
discovered, under which the Bible brings to light things of which Jesus
Christ and his disciples had no conception. Assemblings for divine worship
have been converted into occasions for the secret dissemination of
incendiary doctrines, and thus a common suspicion has been generated of
all Northern agency in the diffusion of religious instruction among the
slaves. Of the five broad beautiful bands of Christianity thrown around
the North and the South--Presbyterian, old school and new, Episcopalian,
Methodist and Baptist, to say nothing of the divisions of Bible, tract and
missionary societies--three are already ruptured--and whenever an
anniversary brings together the various delegates of these organizations,
the sad spectacle is presented of division, wrangling, vituperation and
reproach, that gives to religion and its professors anything but that
meekness of spirit with which it is wont to be invested.
Politically, the course of abolition has been one of constant aggression
upon the South.
At the time of the Old Confederation, the amount of territory owned by the
Southern States was 647,202 square miles; and the amount owned, by the
Northern States, 164,081. In 1783, Virginia ceded to the United States,
for the _common benefit_, all her immense territory northwest of the river
Ohio. In 1787, the Northern States appropriated it to their own exclusive
use by passing the celebrated ordinance of that year, whereby Virginia and
all her sister States were excluded from the benefits of the territory.
This was the first in the series of aggressions.
Again, in April, 1803, the United States purchased from France, for
fifteen millions of dollars, the territory of Louisiana, comprising an
area of 1,189,112 square miles, the whole of which was slaveholding
territory. In 1821, by the passage of the Missouri Compromise, 964,667
square miles of this was converted into free territory.
Again, by the treaty with Spain, of February, 1819, the United States
gained the territory from which the present State of Florida was formed,
with an area of 59,268 square miles, and also the Spanish title of Oregon,
from which they acquired an area of 341,463 square miles. Of this cession,
Florida only has been allowed to the Southern States, while the
balance--nearly six-sevenths of the whole--was appropriated by the North.
Again, by the Mexican cession, was acquired 526,078 square miles, which
the North attempted to appropriate under the pretence of the Mexican laws,
but which was prevented by the measures of the Compromise of 1850. Of
slave territory cut off from Texas, there have been 44,662 square miles.
To sum this up, the total amount of territory acquired under the
Constitution has been, by the
Northwest cession 286,681 square miles.
Louisiana cession 1,189,112 do.
Florida and Oregon cession 400,731 do.
Mexican cession 526,078 do.
---------
Total 2,377,602 do.
Of all this territory the Southern States have been permitted to enjoy
only 283,713 square miles, while the Northern States have been allowed
2,083,889 square miles, or between seven and eight times more than has
been allowed to the South.
The following are some of the invasions that have been from time to time
proposed upon the Constitution in the halls of Congress by these
agitators:
1. That the clause allowing the representation of three-fifths of the
slaves shall be obliterated from the Constitution; or, in other words,
that the South, already in a vast and increasing minority, shall be still
further reduced in the scale of insignificance, and thus, on every
attempted usurpation of her rights, be far below the protection of even a
Presidential veto.
Next has been demanded the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia, in the forts, arsenals, navy yards and other public
establishments of the United States. What object have the abolitionists
had for raising all this clamor about a little patch of soil ten miles
square, and a few inconsiderable places thinly scattered over the land--a
mere grain of sand upon the beach--unless it be to establish the precedent
of Congressional interference, which would enable them to make a wholesale
incursion upon the constitutional rights of the South, and to drain from
the vast ocean of alleged national guilt its last drop? Does any one
suppose that a mere microscopic concession like this would alone appease a
conscience wounded and lacerated by the "sin of slavery?"
Another of these aggressions is that which was proposed under the pretext
of regulating commerce between the States--namely, that no slave, for any
purpose and under any circumstances whatever, shall be carried by his
lawful owner from one slaveholding State to another; or, in other words,
that where slavery now is there it shall remain forever, until by its own
increase the slave population shall outnumber the white race, and thus by
a united combination of causes--the fears of the master, the diminution in
value of his property and the exhausted condition of the soil--the final
purposes of fanaticism may be accomplished.
Still another in the series of aggressions was that attempted by the
Wilmot Proviso, by which Congress was called upon to prohibit every
slaveholder from removing with his slaves into the territory acquired
from Mexico--a territory as large as the old thirteen States originally
composing the Union. It appears to have been forgotten that whether
slavery be admitted upon one foot of territory or not, it cannot affect
the question of its sinfulness in the slightest degree, and that if every
nook and corner of the national fabric were open to the institution, not a
single slave would be added to the present number, or that, if excluded,
their number would not be a single one the less.
We might also refer to the armed and bloody opposition to the Fugitive
Slave Law, to the passage of Personal Liberty Bills, to political schemes
in Congress and out, and to systematic agitation everywhere, with a view
to stay the progress of the South, contract her political power, and
eventually lead, at her expense, if not of the Union itself, to the utter
expurgation of this "tremendous national sin."
In short, the abolitionists have contributed nothing to the welfare of the
slave or of the South. While over one hundred and fifty millions have been
expended by slaveholders in emancipation, except in those sporadic cases
where the amount was capital invested in self-glorification, the
abolitionists have not expended one cent.
More than this: They have defeated the very objects at which they have
aimed. When Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, or some other border State has
come so near to the passage of gradual emancipation laws that the hopes of
the real friends of the movement seemed about to be realized, abolitionism
has stepped in, and, with frantic appeals to the passions of the negroes,
through incendiary publications, dashed them to the ground, tightening the
fetters of the slave, sharpening authority, and producing a reaction
throughout the entire community that has crushed out every incipient
thought of future manumission.
Such have been the obvious fruits of abolition. Church, state and society!
Nothing has escaped it. Nowhere pure, nor peaceable, nor gentle, nor
easily entreated, nor full of mercy and good fruits; but everywhere
forward, scowling, uncompromising, and fierce, breaking peace, order and
structure at every step, crushing with its foot what would not bow to its
will; defying government, despising the Church, dividing the country, and
striking Heaven itself if it dared to obstruct its progress; purifying,
pacifying, promising nothing, but marking its entire pathway by disquiet,
schism and ruin.
We come now to the train of historical facts upon which we rely in proof
of the foregoing assertions.
THE FIRST EPOCH.
FROM 1787 to 1820.
CHAPTER II.
The Ordinance of 1787--The Slave Population of 1790--Abolitionism at that
time--The Importation of Slaves the Work of Northerners--Statistics of the
Port of Charleston, S. C., from 1804 to 1808--Anecdote of a Rhode Island
Senator, &c., &c.
The first great epoch in the history of our country at which the spirit of
abolitionism displayed itself was immediately preceding the formation of
the present government. From the close of the Revolutionary War, in 1783,
to the sitting of the Constitutional Convention, was a space of only four
years. Two years more brings us to the adoption of the Constitution, in
1789. It was in the summer of 1787, and at the very time the Convention in
Philadelphia was framing that instrument, that the Congress in New York
was framing the ordinance which was passed on the 13th of July, 1787, by
which slavery was forever excluded from all the territory northwest of the
river Ohio, which, three years before, had been generously ceded to the
United States by Virginia, and out of which have since been organised the
States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and
Iowa.
According to the first census, taken in 1790, under the Constitution, when
every State in the Union, with one exception, was a slave State, the
number of slaves was as follows:--
STATES. NO. OF SLAVES.
1 Massachusetts
2 New Hampshire 158
3 Rhode Island 948
4 Connecticut 2,764
5 New York 21,340
6 New Jersey 11,423
7 Pennsylvania 3,737
8 Delaware 8,887
9 Maryland 103,036
10 Virginia 305,057
11 North Carolina 100,571
12 South Carolina 107,094
13 Georgia 29,264
Territory of Ohio 3,417
-------
Total 697,696
In 1820, New York had 10,088 slaves. In 1827, however, by virtue of an
Act, passed in 1817, they were declared free, and emancipated, without
compensation to their owners. Even in 1830, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania had slaves: New Jersey containing 2,254. Since
1790, the increase of slaves has been at the rate of thirty per cent. each
decade.
At this period numerous emancipation societies were formed, comprised
principally of the Society of Friends, and petitions were presented to
Congress, praying for the abolition of slavery. These were received with
but little comment, referred, and reported upon by a committee. The
reports stated that the general government had no power to abolish slavery
as it existed in the several States, and that the States themselves had
exclusive jurisdiction over the subject. This sentiment was generally
acquiesced in, and satisfaction and tranquility ensued, the abolition
societies thereafter limiting their exertions, in respect to the black
population, to offices of humanity within the scope of existing laws.
In fact, if we carry ourselves by historical research back to that day,
and ascertain men's opinions by authentic records still existing among us,
it will be found that there was no great diversity of opinion between the
North and the South upon the subject of slavery. The great ground of
objection to it then was political; that it weakened the social fabric;
that, taking the place of free labor, society was less strong and labor
less productive; and both sections, with an exhibition of no little
acerbity of temper and violence of language, ascribed the evil to the
injurious and aggrandizing policy of Great Britain, by whom it was first
entailed upon the Colonies. The terms of reprobation were then more severe
in the South than the North. It is a notorious fact that some of our
Northern forefathers were then the most aggravated slave dealers. They
transported the miserable captives from Africa, sold them at the South,
and were well paid for their work; and, when emancipation laws forbade the
prolongation of slavery at the North, there are living witnesses who saw
the crowds of negroes assembled along the shores of the New England and
the Middle States to be shipped to latitudes where their bondage would be
perpetual. Their posterity toil to-day in the fields of the Southern
planter.
It is a remarkable fact, also, that of the slaves imported into the United
States during a period of eighteen years, from 1790 to 1808, not less than
nine-tenths were imported for and by account of citizens of the Northern
States and subjects of Great Britain--imported in Northern and British
vessels, by Northern and British men, and delivered to Northern born and
British born consignees.
The trade was thus carried on, with all its historic inhumanity, by the
sires and grandsires of the very men and women, who, for thirty years,
have been denouncing slavery as a sin against God, and slaveholders as the
vilest class of men and tyrants who ever disgraced a civilised community;
and the very wealth in which, in a large degree, these agitators now
revel, has descended to them as the fruit of the slave trade in which
their fathers grew fat.
The following statistics of the port of Charleston, S. C., from the year
1804 to 1808, will more plainly illustrate this remark:--
Imported into Charleston from Jan. 1, 1804, to
Jan. 1, 1808, slaves 39,075
By British subjects 19,649
" French subjects 1,078
" Foreigners in Charleston 5,107
" Rhode Islanders 8,238
" Bostonians 200
" Philadelphians 200
" Hartford, citizens of 250
" Charlestonians 2,006
" Baltimoreans 750
" Savannah, citizens of 300
" Norfolk, citizens of 587
" New Orleans, citizens of 100
------ 39,075
" British, French and Northern people 35,532
" Southern people 3,543
------ 39,075
CONSIGNEES OF THESE SLAVES.
Natives of Charleston 13
Natives of Rhode Island 88
Natives of Great Britain 91
Natives of France 10
---
Total 202
It is related, that during the debate on the Missouri question, a Senator
from South Carolina introduced in the Senate of the United States a
document from the Custom House of Charleston, exhibiting the names and
owners of vessels engaged in the African slave trade. In reading the
document the name of De Wolfe was repeatedly called. De Wolfe, who was the
Senator elect from Rhode Island, was present, but had not been qualified.
The Carolina Senator was called to order. "Order!" "Order!" echoed through
the Senate Chamber. "It is contrary to order to call the name of a
Senator," said a distinguished gentleman. The Senator contended he was not
out of order, for the Senator from Rhode Island had not been qualified,
and consequently was not entitled to a seat. He appealed to the Chair. The
Chair replied, "You are correct, sir; proceed;" and proceed he did,
calling the name of De Wolfe so often, that before he had finished the
document, he had proved the honorable gentleman the importer of
three-fourths of the "poor Africans" brought to the Charleston market, and
the Rhode Island abolitionist bolted, amid the sympathies of his comrades
and the sneers of the auditors.
Such was the aspect of affairs with reference to this question at the time
of the adoption of the Constitution. The spirit of affection created and
fostered by the revolution--the cords binding together a common country in
a common struggle and a common destiny--were too strong in the breasts of
our revolutionary fathers for them to countenance the feeble efforts even
of those prompted by motives of humanity for the immediate emancipation of
the slaves, and by almost the entire North of that period they were
regarded with general disfavor, as an unwarrantable interference with an
already established institution of the country. The consequence was that
they sank into disrepute, and the country was blessed with and prospered
under their comparative cessation for a number of years. This hostile
feeling long lay dormant, and it was not until the year 1818, when
Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a State, that the period
of quiet was interrupted, and the little streams of abolitionism that had
been quietly forming, merged into the foul and noisome current which is
now devastating the land, has undermined and destroyed the Union, and is
exerting its blighting influence upon every department of the political
and social fabric.
SECOND EPOCH.
CHAPTER III.
History of the Missouri Compromise, 1820--Benjamin Lundy and the "_Genius
of Universal Emancipation_"--Insurrection at Charleston, S. C.--The result
of agitation in Congress--British Influence and Interference--Abolition in
the East and West Indies--Remarkable opinion of Sir Robert Peel--Letter
from Lord Brougham on the Harper's Ferry Insurrection.
Probably there has never been in the history of the United States, except
at the present time, a more critical moment, arising from the violence of
domestic excitement, than the agitation of the Missouri question from 1818
to 1821. On the 18th day of December, 1818, the Speaker of the House of
Representatives of the United States presented before that body a memorial
of the Legislature of the Territory of Missouri, praying that they might
be admitted to form a Constitution and State government upon "an equal
footing with the original States." Here originated the difficulty. Slavery
existed in the Territory proposed to be erected into an independent State.
The proposition was therefore to admit Missouri as a slave State, which
involved three very essential and important features. These were:--
1. The recognition of slavery therein as a State institution by the
national sovereignty.
2. The guarantee of protection to the ownership of her slave property by
the laws of the United States, as in the original States under the
Constitution.
3. That the right of representation in the National Legislature should be
apportioned on her slave population, as in the original States. This was a
recognition of slavery, which at once aroused the interest of the people
in every section of the Union.
The petition was received, read and reported upon, and in February, 1819,
Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, proposed an amendment "prohibiting slavery
except for the punishment of crimes, and that all children born in the
said State after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at
the age of twenty-five years."
This passed the House, but was lost in the Senate. The excitement, not
only in Congress, but throughout the Union, soon became intense, and for
eighteen months the country was agitated from one extreme to the other. In
many of the Northern States meetings were called, resolutions were passed
instructing members how to vote, prayers ascended from the churches, and
the pulpit began to be the medium of the incendiary diatribes for which it
has since become so famous.
In both branches of Congress amendments were passed and rejected without
number, while the arguments on both sides brought out the strongest views
of the respective champions.
On one hand it was maintained that the compromise of the federal
constitution regarding slavery respected only its existing limits at the
time; that it was remote from the views of the framers of the Constitution
to have the domain of slavery extended on that basis; that the fundamental
principles of the American Revolution and of the government and
institutions erected upon it were hostile to slavery; that the compromise
of the Constitution was simply a toleration of things that were, and not
a basis of things that were to be; that these securities of slavery, as it
existed, would be forfeited by an extension of the system; that the honor
of the republic before the world, and its moral influence with mankind in
favor of freedom, were identified with the advocacy of principles of
universal emancipation; that the act of 1787, which established the
Territorial government north and west of the river Ohio, prohibiting
slavery forever therefrom, was a public recognition and avowal of the
principles and designs of the people of the United States in regard to new
States and Territories north and west; and that the proposal to establish
slavery in Missouri was a violation of all these great and fundamental
principles.
On the other hand, it was urged that slavery was incorporated in the
system of society as established in Louisiana, which comprehended the
Territory of Missouri, when purchased from France in 1803; that the faith
of the United States was pledged by treaty to all the inhabitants of that
wide domain to maintain their rights and privileges on the same footing
with the people of the rest of the country; and consequently, that
slavery, being a part of their state of society, it would be a violation
of engagements to abolish it without their consent. Nor could the
government, as they maintained, prescribe the abolition of slavery to any
part of said Territory as a condition of being erected into a State, if
they were otherwise entitled to it. It might as well, as they said, be
required of them to abolish any other municipal regulation, or to
annihilate any other attribute of sovereignty. If the government had made
an ill-advised treaty in the purchase of Louisiana, they maintained it
would be manifest injustice to make its citizens suffer on that account.
They claimed that they were received as a slaveholding community on the
same footing with the slave States, and that the existence or
non-existence of slavery could not be made a question when they presented
themselves at the door of the Capitol of the republic for a State charter.
After much bitter and acrimonious discussion, the question was finally,
through the exertions of Henry Clay, settled by a compromise, and a bill
was passed for the admission of Missouri without any restriction as to
slavery, but prohibiting it throughout the United States north of latitude
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes.
Missouri was not declared independent until August, 1821. Previous to the
passage of the bill for its admission, the people had formed a State
constitution, a provision of which required the Legislature to pass a law
"To prevent free negroes from coming to and settling in the State." When
the constitution was presented to Congress, this provision was strenuously
opposed. The contest occupied a greater part of the session; but Missouri
was finally admitted on condition that no laws should be passed by which
any free citizen of the United States should be prevented from enjoying
those rights within the State to which he was entitled by the Constitution
of the United States.
Such was the Missouri Compromise, and though its settlement once more
brought repose to the country and strengthened the bonds of fraternity and
union between the States, its agitation in Congress was like the opening
of a foul ulcer--the beginning of that domineering, impertinent,
ill-timed, vociferous and vituperative opposition which has ever since
been the leading characteristic of the abolition movement.
The "settlement" of the question in Congress seemed to be merely the
signal for its agitation among the non-slaveholding States. Fanatics
sprang up like mushrooms, and, "in the name of God," proclaimed the
enormity of slavery and eternal damnation to all who indulged in the
wicked luxury.
Among the earliest and most notable of these philanthropic reformers was
one Benjamin Lundy, who, in the year 1821, commenced the publication of a
monthly periodical called the "_Genius of Universal Emancipation_," which
was successively published at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington City,
and frequently _en route_ during his travels wherever he could find a
press. It is related of him that at one time he traversed the free States
lecturing, collecting, obtaining subscribers, stirring up the people,
writing for his paper, getting it printed where he could, stopping to read
the "proof" on the road, and directing and mailing his papers at the
nearest post-office. Then, packing up in his trunk his column-rules, type,
"heading" and "direction book," he pushed along like a thorough-going
pioneer. What this solitary "Friend"--for such he was--in this manner
accomplished, he himself states in an appeal to the public in 1830. He
says:--
"I have within the period above mentioned (ten years) sacrificed
several thousands of dollars of my own hard earnings; I have
travelled upwards of five thousand miles on foot and more than twenty
thousand in other ways; have visited nineteen States of this Union,
and held more than two hundred public meetings--have performed two
voyages to the West Indies, by which means the emancipation of a
considerable number of slaves has been effected, and I hope the way
paved for the enfranchisement of many more."
INSURRECTION AT CHARLESTON, S. C.
The year 1822 was marked by one of the most nefarious negro plots ever
developed in the history of the country. The first revelation was made to
the Mayor of the city of Charleston on the 30th of May, 1822, by a
gentleman who had on the morning of the same day returned from the
country, and obtained on his arrival an inkling of what was going on from
a confidential slave, to whom the secret had been imparted.
Investigations were immediately set on foot, and one of the slaves who was
apprehended, fearing a summary execution, confessed all he knew. He said
he had known of the plot for some time; that it was very extensive,
embracing an indiscrimate massacre of the whites, and that the blacks were
to be headed by an individual who carried about him a charm which rendered
him invulnerable. The period fixed for the rising was on Sunday, the 16th
of June, at twelve o'clock at night.
Through the instrumentality of a colored class-leader in one of the
churches, this information was corroborated, and it was ascertained that
enlistment for the insurrection was being actively carried on in the
colored community of the church. It appeared that three months before that
time, a slave named Rolla, belonging to Governor Bennett, had communicated
intelligence of the intended rising, saying that when this event occurred
they would be aided in obtaining their liberty by people from St. Domingo
and Africa, and that if they would make the first movement at the time
above named, a force would cross from James Island and land at South Bay,
march up and seize the arsenal and guardhouse; that another body would at
the same time seize the arsenal on the Neck, and a third would rendezvous
in the vicinity of his master's mill. They would then sweep the town with
fire and sword, not permitting a single white soul to escape.
Startled by this terrible intelligence, the military were immediately
ordered out and preparations made to suppress the first signs of an
outbreak. Finding the city encompassed with patrols and a strict watch
kept upon every movement, the negroes feared to carry out their designs,
and when the period had passed for the explosion of the plot, the
authorities proceeded with vigor to arrest all against whom they possessed
information.
The first prisoner tried was Rolla, a commander of one of the contemplated
forces. On being asked whether he intended to kill the women and children,
he remarked, "_When we have done with the men we know what to do with the
women_." On this testimony he was found guilty, and sentenced to be
executed on the 2d of July.
Another was Denmark Vesey, the father of the plot, and a free black man.
It was proved that he had spoken of this conspiracy upwards of four years
previously. His house was the rendezvous of the conspirators, where he
always presided, encouraging the timid by the hopes of success, removing
the scruples of the religious by the grossest perversion of Scripture, and
influencing the bold by all the savage fascinations of blood, beauty and
booty. It was afterwards proved, though not on his trial, that he had been
carrying on a correspondence with certain persons in St. Domingo--the
massacre and rebellion in that island having suggested to him the
conspiracy in which he embarked at Charleston. His design was to set the
mills on fire, and as soon as the bells began to ring the alarm, to kill
every man as he came out of his door, and afterwards murder the women and
children, "for so God had commanded in the Scriptures." At the same time,
the country negroes were to rise in arms, attack the forts, take the
ships, kill every man on board except the captains, rob the banks and
stores, and then sail for St. Domingo. English and French assistance was
also expected.
Six thousand were ascertained to have been enlisted in the enterprise,
their names being enrolled on the books of "The Society," as the
organization was called.
When the first rising failed, the leaders, who still escaped arrest,
meditated a second one, but found the blacks cowed by the execution of
their associates and by the vigilance of the whites. The leaders waited,
they said, "for the head man, who was a white man," but they would not
reveal his name.
The whole number of persons executed was thirty-five; sentenced to
transportation, twenty-one; the whole number arrested, one hundred and
thirty-one.
Among the conspirators brought to trial and conviction, the cases of Glen,
Billy Palmer and Jack Purcell were distinguished for the sanctimonious
hypocrisy they blended with their crime. Glen was a preacher, Palmer
exceedingly pious, and Purcell no less devout. The latter made the
following important confession:--
"If it had not been for the cunning of that old villain Vesey I
should not now be in my present situation. He employed every
stratagem to induce me to join him. He was in the habit of reading to
me all the passages in the newspapers that related to St. Domingo,
and apparently every pamphlet he could lay his hands on that had any
connection with slavery. _He one day brought in a speech which he
told me had been delivered in Congress by a Mr. King on the subject
of slavery. He told me this Mr. King was the black man's friend; that
he (Mr. King) had declared he would continue to speak, write and
publish pamphlets against slavery to the latest day he lived, until
the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves, for that
slavery was a great disgrace to the country._"
The Mr. King here spoken of was Rufus King, Senator from New York. This
confession shows that the evil which was foretold would arise from the
discussion of the Missouri question had been in some degree realized in
the course of two or three years.
Religious fanaticism also had its share in the conspiracy at Charleston,
as well as politics. The secession of a large body of blacks from the
white Methodist church formed a hot-bed, in which the germ of insurrection
was nursed into life. A majority of the conspirators belonged to the
"African church," an appellation which the seceders assumed after leaving
the white Methodist church, and among those executed were several who had
been class-leaders. Thus was religion made a cloak for the most diabolical
crimes on record. It is the same at this day. The tirades of the North are
calculated to drive the negro population of the South to bloody massacres
and insurrections.
BRITISH INFLUENCE AND INTERFERENCE.
During all this time, British abolition sentiments and designs were
industriously infused into the minds of the people of the North. Looking
over their own homeless, unfed, ragged millions, their filthy hovels and
mud floors, worse than the common abode of pigs and poultry, crowded
cellars, hungry paupers, children at work under ground--a community of
wretchedness such as the American slave never dreamed of--British
philanthropists wrote, declaimed, and expended untold sums upon a supposed
abuse three thousand miles off, with which they have no connection, civil,
social or political, and of which they know comparatively nothing. They
passed their fellow-subjects by who were dying of hunger upon their very
door-sills, to make long prayers in the market-place for the imaginary
sufferings of negroes to whose well-fed and happy condition their own
wretched paupers might aspire in vain.
Before they indulged in this invective, it would have been wise to have
inquired who were the authors of the evil. In the language of an English
statesman--
"If slavery is the misfortune of America, it is the crime of Great
Britain. We poured the foul infection into her veins, and fed and
cherished the leprosy which now deforms that otherwise prosperous
country."
Having filled their purses as traders in slaves, they have become traders
in philanthropy, and manage to earn a character for helping slavery out of
the very plantations of the South they helped to stock. They resemble
their own _beau ideal_ of a fine gentleman--George IV.--who, it is said,
drove his wife into imprudences by his brutality and neglect, and then
persecuted her to death for having fallen into them; or one of those
fashionable philosophers who seduce women and then upbraid them for a want
of virtue. Like the Roman emperor, they find no unsavory smell in the gold
derived from the filthiest source.
The first abolition society in Great Britain was established in 1823, and
it is a fact worthy of note that the first public advocate in England of
the doctrine of immediate and unconditional abolition was a
woman--Elizabeth Herrick. In 1825, the Anti-Slavery Society commenced the
circulation of the Monthly Anti-Slavery Reporter, which was edited by
Zacharay Macaulay, Esq., the father of the late Thomas B. Macaulay, the
essayist, historian and lord. Petitions began to be circulated, public
meetings were held, and the Methodist Conferences took an active part in
the movement, exhorting their brethren, "for the love of Christ," to vote
for no candidates not known to be pledged to the cause of abolition.
Rectors, curates, doctors of divinity, members of Parliament and peers
engaged in the work, and converts rapidly increased. Riots and
disturbances resulted. In 1832, an insurrection, fomented by abolition
missionaries, broke out in the island of Jamaica, which was only
terminated by a resort to the musket and gibbet--the usual fruit of these
incendiary doctrines, wherever they have been circulated. In 1833, a bill
was passed by the British government, by which, for a compensation of one
hundred millions of dollars, eight hundred thousand slaves in the British
West Indies received their liberation. This was followed, in 1843, by the
abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions, which emancipated
twelve millions more in the East Indies. The cause thus received a new
impetus; societies sprang into life all over the United Kingdom; a
correspondence was opened in every part of the world where negroes were
held in bondage; lecturers were sent abroad, especially to the United
States, to disseminate their doctrines and stir up rebellion, both among
the people and the slaves; earnest endeavors were made to influence the
policy of the non-slaveholding States of the North, and create a hatred
for the South; and, in short, the abolition movement settled down in a
determined warfare against the institution of slavery wherever it existed.
It has been a war in which newspapers, pamphlets, periodicals, tracts,
books, novels, essays--in a word, the entire moral forces of the human
mind--have been the weapons. England became the champion of anti-slavery,
and the United States became the theatre of a crusade, which seemed as if
intended to carry out the spirit of the remark of Sir Robert Peel, that
"_the one hundred millions of dollars paid for the abolition of slavery in
the West Indies was the best investment ever made for the overthrow of
American institutions_."
Exeter Hall and the Stafford House became the centre of this new system,
around which revolved all the lights of British abolitionism. The ground
of immediate and unconditional emancipation, however, was not taken by the
English abolitionists until subsequent years, but these views, when
presented, found ready concurrence from Clarkson, Wilberforce and other
well known advocates of the cause. Among the English statesmen pledged
upon the subject, were Grey, Lansdowne, Holland, Brougham, Melbourne,
Palmerston, Graham, Stanley and Buxton, and in the hands of these fervent
leaders the cause speedily progressed towards its fruition.
From this time forward the coalesced efforts of British and Northern
influence to disturb the institution of slavery in the South, to render
slave labor less valuable and incite the negroes to rebellion, have been
continued with more or less system, occasionally threatening the stability
of the Union; the whole object of Great Britain being, not the welfare of
the slave, but the destruction of slave labor, whereby, through a system
of conquest and forced labor, she would be able to supplant the United
States, by producing her cotton from the fields of the Eastern world. With
this end in view, and coupled perhaps with the idea that the abolition of
slavery would break down our republican form of government, she resorted
to every species of intrigue that promised success. Dissensions have been
sown between the North and South; the "underground railroad" system has
been established leading to her Canadian possessions; agitation and
assault have been perseveringly maintained; the country has been flooded
with tirades of every hue and kind against the institution; the Northern
pulpit has been desecrated in its dedication to the work of stirring up
strife; churches have been severed in twain, and Southern Christians
denied fellowship with their Northern brethren, until the grand political
climax has been reached of secession and revolution. It is safe to say
that from the time this plan of operation was digested in England, thirty
years ago, there is scarcely a movement that has taken place on the
chess-board of American abolitionism, which, under the guise of
philanthropy, has not been dictated at Exeter Hall for the purpose of
destroying the production of cotton and breaking down the free government
of this country.
Among the more far-seeing and practical statesmen of Great Britain,
however--men who have ever dissented from the ultra views of
abolitionists--there is an evident alarm that this headlong policy that
has been pursued will rebound upon the interests of the mother country.
Already the subject has become a source of anxious consideration, and the
people of England are beginning to look around for some relief from that
dependence upon American institutions which has heretofore been the
reliance and support of millions of their workers. They find that the
example they have set, and the policy they have urged, does not promise to
be altogether so beneficial to them as they supposed. In this connection
it will be interesting, as a matter of history, to preserve the master
rebuke of Lord Brougham to the unconditional abolitionists of Boston, who
invited him to be present at the John Brown anniversary of the past year.
He says:--
"BROUGHAM, NOV. 20, 1860.
"SIR--I feel honored by the invitation to attend the Boston
Convention, and to give my opinion upon the question "How can
American Slavery be abolished?" I consider the application is made to
me as conceiving me to represent the anti-slavery body in this
country; and I believe that I speak their sentiments as well as my
own in expressing the widest difference of opinion with you upon the
merits of those who prompted the Harper's Ferry expedition, and upon
the fate of those who suffered for their conduct in it. No one will
doubt my earnest desire to see slavery extinguished, but that desire
can only be gratified by lawful means, a strict regard to the rights
of property, or what the law declares property, and a constant
repugnance to the shedding of blood. No man can be considered a
martyr unless he not only suffers but is witness to the truth; and he
does not bear this testimony who seeks a lawful object by illegal
means. Any other course taken for the abolition of slavery can only
delay the consummation we so devoutly wish, besides exposing the
community to the hazard of an insurrection perhaps less hurtful to
the master than the slave."
CHAPTER IV.
Progress of Abolition in America--An Era of Reforms--Southern Efforts for
Manumission--Various Plans of Emancipation that have been suggested--The
first Abolition journal--New York "Journal of Commerce"--William Lloyd
Garrison, his Early Life and Associations--The Nat. Turner Insurrection in
1832, &c., &c.
Probably no period in the history of the country has been more
characterized by the spirit of reform and innovation than that embraced
between the years 1825 and 1830. It then seemed as if all the social,
moral and religious influences of the community had been gathered in a
focus that was destined to annihilate the wickedness of man. Missionary
enterprises, though in their youth, were full of vigor. Anniversaries were
the occasion of an almost crazy excitement; religion assumed the shape of
fanaticism; the churches were thrilled with the sudden idea that the
millennium was at hand--the "evangelization of the world" never was
blessed with fairer prospects--the "awakenings to grace" were on the most
tremendous scale. Peace societies were formed--temperance societies
flourished more than ever--Free Masonry was attacked, socially and
politically--the Sabbath mail question became one of the absorbing topics
of the day--theatres, lotteries, the treatment of the "poor Indian" by the
general government--all came under the most rigorous religious review--the
Colonization Society, established in 1816, enlarged its operations, and,
in short, the spirit of reform became epidemic, and the period one of
unprecedented moral and political inquiry.
It was a period, too, when in many of the States of the South, and
especially those upon the Northern border, the subject was freely
discussed of a gradual and healthy emancipation of the slaves, and various
plans for this object were presented and entertained. The most valuable
agencies were set at work--not by abolitionists, but by Southerners
themselves, in whose hearts there had sprung up an embryo reformatory
principle simultaneously with the landing upon their shores of the first
slaves of their Northern brethren; which would have gone on increasing and
fructifying had not the bitterest of denunciation been launched against
them and driven the assaulted into an attitude of self-defence, whose
defiant spirit now speaks out to the assailant in a bold justification of
the institution attacked, as natural and necessary, and which it shall be
their purpose to perpetuate forever.
As early as 1816 a manumission society was formed in Tennessee, whose
object was the gradual emancipation of the slaves under a system of
healthy and judicious State legislation. At a later day, Virginia,
Maryland and Kentucky were the theatres of discussion on the same subject,
and in all of them the question was agitated, socially and politically,
with a freedom and liberty that indicated a general desire to effect the
philanthropic object.
Various plans having the same end in view were likewise proposed, some of
them evincing a remarkable ingenuity. One of these, in 1817, was to
encourage, by all proper means, emancipation in the South; then to make
arrangements with the non-slaveholding States to receive the freed
negroes, and compel the latter, by law, if necessary, to reside in those
States. By this means it was thought that a gradual change of "complexion"
could be effected from natural causes, which would not take place unless
the blacks were scattered, and that thus, from simple association and
adventitious mixtures, the sable color would retire by degrees, and after
a few generations a black person would be a rarity in the community.
Another plan proposed in 1819 was to remove the females to the Northern
States, where they should be bound out in respectable families; those
unmarried, of ten years and upwards, to be immediately free, and all the
rest of the stock then existing to become so at ten years of age; the
proceeds of the males sold to be appropriated by the party making the
purchase to the removal and education of these females. In furtherance of
this scheme, it was argued that while negro women would still bear
children, though settled among white persons, they would not do so half so
rapidly, and thus their posterity would in three or four generations lose
the offensive color and have a tint not more disagreeable than the
millions who are called white men in Southern Europe and the West Indies,
and finally be lost in the common mass of humanity. While it is true that
very few people, after fifty or sixty years, could under this rule boast
of their fathers and mothers, the grand object would be attained, and the
world be satisfied.
Another proposition, which emanated from a distinguished gentleman in one
of the Southern States, and filling one of the highest offices in the
government of the United States, was that a grade of color should be fixed
in all the slaveholding States at which a person should be declared free
and entitled to all the rights of a citizen, even if born of a slave. He
contended that this act would separate all such persons from the negro
race, and present a very considerable check to the progress of the black
population, giving them at the same time new interests and feelings. The
children thus emancipated, even if the parents should not be wholly fitted
for it, would come into society with advantages nearly equal to those of
the poorer classes of white people, and might work their way to
independence as well, without any counteracting detriment to the public
good.
In Virginia, in 1821, it was suggested through the columns of the Richmond
Enquirer, that an act should be passed declaring that all involuntary
servitude should cease to exist in that State from and after the year
2000; thus, without reducing for one or two generations the value of slave
property one cent, affording ample time and opportunity to dispose of or
exchange that dead property for a more useful and profitable kind.
In 1825, Hon. Mr. King, of New York, introduced into the Senate of the
United States the annexed resolution:--
"That as soon as the portion of the existing funded debt of the
United States, for the payment of which the public land is pledged,
shall have been paid off, thenceforth the whole of the public lands
of the United States, with the net proceeds of all future sales
thereof, shall constitute and form a fund which is hereby
appropriated to aid the emancipation of such slaves and the removal
of any free persons of color in any of the said States, as by the
laws of the several States respectively may be allowed to be
emancipated, or to be removed to any territory or country without the
limits of the United States of America."
This resolution, however, was not called up by the mover, or otherwise
acted upon.
Still another plan was to raise money by contribution throughout the Union
and elsewhere, and buy all the slaves at $250 each. The value of four
million negroes at $500 each, their average market value, would be
$2,000,000,000. It is unnecessary to say that none of these propositions
were ever adopted in practice. In fact, while abolitionism has pretended
to feel for the supposed sufferings of slaves, it has never felt much in
its pockets to aid them.
At such a period--when the rampant spirit of reform was attacking every
imaginary evil of the times--it is not a matter of wonder that northern
abolitionists, yielding to their fanatical prejudices and to the British
intrigue that was urging them onward, commenced that acrimonious agitation
of the question which has since been its leading characteristic. The negro
was pronounced "a man and a brother," and that was the beginning and end
of the argument. Tracts, speeches, pamphlets and essays were scattered,
"without money and without price." The pulpit vied with the press, and
every imaginable form of argument was used to hold up slavery as the most
horrible of all atrocities, and the "sum of all villanies." Newspapers
began to be an acknowledged element in the land, and, falling in the train
of the young revolution, or rather growing out of it, wielded immense
power among the masses. Among those then devoted to the subject of reform
were the National Philanthropist, commenced in 1826; the Investigator,
published at Providence, R. I., by William Goodell, in 1827; the
Liberator, by William Lloyd Garrison, at Boston, in 1831, and the
Emancipator, in New York.
The first abolition journal ever published in this city was the present
Journal of Commerce, which was commenced September 1, 1827, by a company
of stockholders, the principal of whom was the famous Arthur Tappan. The
following extracts from its prospectus, issued March 24, 1827, will
sufficiently indicate the puritanical character of its authors, and the
general tone of the paper:--
"In proposing to add another daily paper to the number already
published in this city, the projectors deem it proper to state that
the measure has been neither hasty nor unadvisedly undertaken. Men
of wisdom, intelligence and character have been consulted, and with
one voice have recommended its establishment.
"Believing, as we do, that the theatre is an institution which all
experience proves to be inimical to morality, and consequently
tending to the destruction of our republican form of government, it
is a part of our design to exclude from the columns of the journal
all theatrical advertisements.
"The pernicious influence of lotteries being admitted by the majority
of intelligent men, and this opinion coinciding with our own, all
lottery advertisements will also be excluded.
"In order to avoid a violation of the Sabbath, by the setting of
types, collecting of ship news, &c., on that day, the paper on Monday
will be issued at a later hour than usual, but as early as possible
after the arrival of the mails. In this way the Journal will
anticipate by several hours a considerable part of the news contained
in the evening papers of Monday and the morning papers of Tuesday,
and will also give the ship news collected after the publication of
the other morning papers. With these views we ask all who are
friendly to the cause of morality in encouraging our undertaking."
_Extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of Merchants and others at the
American Tract Society's House, March 24, 1827:_
"_Resolved_, That the prospectus of a new daily commercial paper, to
be called the 'New York Journal of Commerce,' having been laid before
this meeting, we approve of the plan upon which it is conducted, and
cordially recommend it to the patronage of all friends to good morals
and to the stability of our republican institutions."
"ARTHUR TAPPAN, Chairman."
"ROE LOCKWOOD, Secretary."
In its issue of October 30, 1828, we find the following:--
"It appears from an article in the Journal of the Times, a newspaper
of some promise just established in Bennington, Vt., that a petition
to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia
is about to be put in circulation in that State.
"The idea is an excellent one, and we hope it will meet with success.
That Congress has a right to abolish slavery in that District seems
reasonable, though we fear it will meet with some opposition, so very
sensitive are the slaveholding community to every movement relating
to the abolition of slavery. At the same time, it would furnish to
the world a beautiful pledge of their sincerity if they would unite
with the non-slaveholding States, and by a unanimous vote proclaim
freedom to every soul within sight of the capital of this free
government. We could then say, and the world would then admit our
pretence, that the voice of the nation is against slavery, and throw
back upon Great Britain that disgrace which is of right and justice
her exclusive property."
Another of its editorials on November, 15, 1828:--
"We are all equally interested in demolishing the fabric (of slavery)
and we may as well go to work peaceably and reduce it brick by brick
as to make it a matter of warfare, and throw our enterprise and
industry into the opposite scale."
In the course of time changes were made in the ownership of the paper, but
one of its original proprietors is still its senior editor.
About this period William Lloyd Garrison made his appearance upon the
stage, and he has been probably one of the most intensely hated, as well
as one of the most sternly, severely and vociferously enthusiastic men in
the Union. He is a native of Massachusetts, and at a very early age was
placed in a printing office in Newburyport by his mother. Shortly after he
was twenty-one years of age he set up a paper which he called the Free
Press, which was read chiefly by a class of very advanced readers at the
North. After this he removed to Vermont, and edited the Journal of the
Times. This was as early as 1828. In September, 1829, he removed to
Baltimore for the purpose of editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation,
in company with Benjamin Lundy. While performing these duties, a
Newburyport merchant, named Francis Todd, fitted out a small vessel, and
filled it in Baltimore with slaves for the New Orleans market. Mr.
Garrison noticed this fact in his paper, and commented upon it in terms so
severe that Mr. Todd directed a suit to be brought against him for libel.
He was thereupon tried, convicted and thrown in jail for non-payment of
the fine (one hundred dollars and costs.) After an incarceration of fifty
days, he was released on the payment of his fine, by Mr. Arthur Tappan, of
this city, who, and his brother Lewis, before and since that time, have
been chiefly celebrated for their efforts in the cause of abolition. In
1831, he wrote a few paragraphs that bear out the idea we have
advanced--that there was then more real philanthropy in the South than at
the North. He says:--
"I issued proposals for the publication of the "_Liberator_" in
Washington City, during my recent tour, for the purpose of exciting
the minds of the people on the subject of slavery. Every place I
visited gave fresh evidences of the fact that a greater revolution in
public sentiment was to be effected in the free States, and
particularly in New England, than at the South. I found contempt more
bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice
more stubborn and apathy more frozen, than among the slaveowners
themselves. I determined at every hazard to lift up the standard of
emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill,
and in the birthplace of liberty. I am in earnest; I will not
equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch. I
will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every
statue lift from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the
dead."
From this time it may be said that the anti-slavery cause took its place
among the moral enterprises of the day. It assumed a definite shape, and
commenced that system of warfare which has since been unremittingly waged
against the South.
During this year--1830--Mr. Tappan, Rev. S. S. Jocelyn, and others,
projected the establishment of a seminary of learning at New Haven for the
benefit of colored students; but, opposition manifesting itself, it was
abandoned.
The first regularly organized convention of colored men ever assembled in
the United States for a similar purpose also held a meeting this year, and
aided and abetted by the Tappans, Jocelyns and other agitators of the
period, attempted to devise ways and means for bettering their condition
and that of their race. They reasoned that all distinctive differences
made among men on account of their origin was wicked, unrighteous and
cruel, and solemnly protested against every unjust measure and policy in
the country having for its object the proscription of the colored people,
whether state, national, municipal, social, civil or religious. In fact,
white men and black seem to have started in the race together, consorting
like brothers and sisters together in their aims and projects to
accomplish the same end.
About this time publications began to be scattered through the South,
whose direct tendency was to stir up insurrection among the slaves. The
Liberator found its way mysteriously into the hands of the negroes, and
individuals, under the garb of religion, were discovered in private
consultation with the slaves. Suddenly, in August, 1831, the whole Union
was startled by the announcement of an outbreak among the slaves of
Southampton County, Va; and now commences the history of a career of
violence and bloodshed that has marked every footstep of the abolition
movement.
THE NAT TURNER INSURRECTION.
The leader of this outbreak was a slave named Nat Turner, and from him its
name has been derived. Impelled by the belief that he was divinely called
to be the deliverer of his oppressed countrymen, he succeeded in fixing
the impression upon the minds of two or three others, his fellow slaves.
Turner could read and write, and these acquirements gave him an influence
over his associates. He was possessed, however, of little information,
and, is represented to have been cowardly, cruel, and as he afterwards
confessed, "a little credulous." It was a matter of notoriety that "secret
agents of abolition had corrupted and betrayed him." However that may be,
Nat declared that "he was advised" only to read to the slaves, that
"Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword!" Such a tree produced fitting
fruits.
About midnight on the Sabbath of the 21st of August, 1831, Turner, with
his confederates, burst into his master's house, and murdered every one of
the white inmates. They were armed with knives and axes, and, in order to
strike terror into the whites, most shockingly mangled the bodies of their
victims. Neither helpless infancy nor female loveliness were spared. They
then, by threats of death, compelled all the slaves to join them who would
not do it voluntarily, and, exciting themselves to fury by ardent spirits,
they proceeded to the next plantation. The happy family were reposing in
the sound and quiet slumbers which precede the break of day, as the shouts
of the raving insurgents fell upon their ears. It was the work of a
moment, and they were all weltering in their gore. Not a white individual
was spared to carry the tidings. The blow which dashed the infant left its
brains upon the hearth. The head of the youthful maiden was in one part of
the room and her mangled body was in another. Here again the number of
insurgents was increased by those who voluntarily joined them, and by
others who did it through compulsion. Stimulating their passions still
more by intoxication, and arming themselves with such guns as they could
obtain, some on horseback and others on foot, they rushed along to the
next plantation. The morning now began to dawn, and the shrieks of those
who fell under the sword and the axe of the negro were heard at a
distance, and thus the alarm was soon spread from plantation to
plantation, carrying inconceivable terror to every heart. The whites
supposed it was a plot deeply laid and widely spread, and that the day had
come for indiscriminate massacre. One gentleman who heard the appalling
tidings hurried to a neighboring plantation, and arrived there just in
time to hear the dying shrieks of the family and triumphant shouts of the
negroes. He hastened in terror to his own home, but the negroes were there
before him, and his wife and daughter had already fallen victims to their
fury. Thus the infuriated slaves went on from plantation to plantation,
gathering strength at every step, and leaving not a living white behind.
They passed the day, until late in the afternoon, in this work of carnage,
and numberless were the victims of their rage.
The population in this country is not dense, and, rapidly as the alarm
spread, it was impossible for some time to collect a sufficient number to
make a defence. Every family was entirely at the mercy of its own slaves.
It is impossible to conceive of more distressing circumstances of
apprehension. It is said that most of the insurgent slaves belonged to
kind and indulgent masters, and consequently no one felt secure.
Late in the afternoon, a small party of whites, well armed, collected at a
plantation for defence. The slaves came on in large numbers, and,
emboldened by success, they at first drove back the whites. The slaves
pressed on, thirsting for blood, and shouting with triumphant fury as the
whites slowly retreated, apparently destined to be butchered, with their
wives and children. Just at this awful moment a reinforcement of troops
arrived, which turned the tide of victory and dispersed the slaves.
Exhausted with the horrible labors of the day, the insurgents retired to
the woods and marshes to pass the night.
Early the next morning they commenced their work again. But the first
plantation they attacked--that of Dr. Blount--they were driven from by the
slaves, who rallied around their master, and fearlessly hazarded their
lives in his defence. By this time the whites were collected in sufficient
force to bar their further progress. The fugitives were scattered over the
country in small parties, but every point was defended, and wherever they
appeared they were routed, shot, taken prisoners, and the insurrection
quelled. The leader, Nat Turner, for a few weeks succeeded in concealing
himself in a cave in Southampton county, near the theatre of his bloody
exploits; but was finally taken, and suffered the extreme penalty of the
law.
To describe the state of alarm to which this outbreak gave rise is
impossible. Whole States were agitated; every plantation was the object of
fear and suspicion; free negroes and slaves underwent the most rigid
examination; armed bodies of men were held in constant readiness for any
emergency which might arise; every slave who had participated in the
insurrection was either shot or hung, and for months the entire South
remained in a fever of excitement.
All this time the abolition journals of the North were singing their
hallelujahs over the event. They circulated through the South then much
more freely than at present, and the following extract was read from one
of these by a gentleman to his terrified family, in the presence of the
gentleman from whom the above particulars were derived:--
"The news from the South is glorious. General Nat is a benefactor of
his race. The Southampton massacre is an auspicious era for the
African. The blood of the men, women and children shed by the sword
and the axe in the hand of the negro is a just return for the drops
which have followed the master's lash."
Another extract, of similar rhetoric, from the record of that day, is from
a speech by the "Reverend" Mr. Bayley, then of Sheffield, Mass.:--
"It is time that the ice was broken--time that the blacks considered
they have the same right to regain their liberties, and even the
present property of their owners, as the Hebrews had in despoiling
the heathen round about them. The blacks should also know that it is
their duty to destroy, if no other means offer conveniently, the
monstrous incubuses and tyrants, yclept planters; and I, for one,
would gladly lend a helping hand to lay them in one common grave! The
country would be all the better for ridding the world of such a nest
of vampyres."
Whether the abolitionists of the present time have modified the ideas they
promulgated then, we shall see hereafter from a few among the ten thousand
specimens that might be adduced.
The effect of these tirades upon the South cannot be well conceived.
Public opinion, just then opening to a free discussion of the question,
drew back and shut itself within its castle. The bonds of slavery were
bound tighter, the rivets were more strongly fastened, and a reactionary
movement commenced that has never yet terminated.
CHAPTER V.
The New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832--More Newspapers and
Tracts--New York City Anti-Slavery Society and the Incidents of Its
Organization--The American Anti-Slavery Society and its Creed--The Extent
and System of their operations--Abolition Riots in New York--An Era of
Excitement--Negro Conspiracy in Mississippi--George Thompson, the English
Abolitionist--Riot at Alton, Ill., and Death of the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy.
In the year 1832, January 30, the New England or Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society went into operation, but with limited means. From
this society have sprung the American Anti-Slavery Society and all its
numerous auxiliaries. It was the first organized body that attacked
slavery on the principle of its inherent sinfulness, and enforced the
consequent duty of "immediate emancipation." All the events of a
historical character which have marked the annals of the last thirty
years, may be traced directly to the agitation which this society first
set on foot in this country. Men have been forced to throw aside their
disguises and stand forth either as the open defenders of slavery or as
propagators of the abolition movement. The two great antagonistic parties
of the present day are the children of its vile creation. It has excited
the very fury of antagonism; it has shaken the pulpit with excommunicating
thunders; it has indulged in the most bitter invective, deluged the
country with invented instances of Southern barbarity, denounced the
Constitution as a "league with hell," and scattered its venom in every
household of the free States, until men, women and children have become
imbued with its contaminating infection. Their discourses have all been
tirades; their exordium, argument and peroration have turned on epithets,
slanders, inuendoes; Southerners have been reviled as "tyrants,"
"thieves," "murderers," "atrocious monsters," "violators of the laws of
nature, God and man," while their homes have been designated as "the
abodes of iniquity," and their land "one vast brothel."
More abolition papers sprang into existence. The New York Evangelist, then
conducted by the Rev. Samuel Griswold, espoused the cause. Through the
influence of the Tappans, millions of anti-slavery tracts were circulated
monthly, and sent by mail to all portions of the country, and especially
to clergymen. These publications were likewise scattered through the
South, their direct tendency being to stir up the slaves to further
insurrection. Recruits of all ages and professions came forward, and the
cause numbered amongst its adherents many of the theologians and
professional men of the period.
THE NEW YORK CITY ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.--1833.
On the 2d of October, 1833, a New York City Anti-Slavery Society was
organized, though not without some demonstrations of opposition. In fact,
a large majority of the most respectable citizens were opposed to the
enterprise, and they accordingly determined, if possible, to crush the
dangerous project in the bud. The meeting was advertised to be held in
Clinton Hall, but during the course of the day the public feeling was
excited by the posting through the city of a large placard, of which the
following is a copy:--
"NOTICE--TO ALL PERSONS FROM THE SOUTH: All persons interested in the
subject of a meeting called by J. Leavitt, W. Green, Jr., W. Goodell,
J. Rankin and Lewis Tappan, at CLINTON HALL, this Evening, at 7
o'clock, are requested to attend at the same hour and place.
"New York, Oct. 2d, 1833.
"MANY SOUTHERNERS."
Southerners, however, had nothing to do with the meeting. At an early hour
people began to assemble in crowds in front of Clinton Hall, but the
trustees, or some others, had closed the premises. The throng, however,
still increased, and it soon became evident from the execrations mutually
indulged in by the people, that the authors of the projected meeting were
acting with discreet valor in staying away. William Lloyd Garrison, who
had then just returned from England, where he had been engaged in
fomenting excitement against this country, traducing its people and
institutions, and who was expected to take part in the proceedings of the
meeting, was an especial object of popular abhorrence and disgust, and it
is said that many grave and respectable citizens would have gladly
assented to his decoration in a coat of tar and feathers. Notwithstanding
the notification of "No meeting," Clinton Hall was opened and crowded to
suffocation. Speeches were delivered by a number of citizens, and a series
of resolutions, prepared by Mr. F. A. Tallmadge, were adopted, deprecating
any interference in the question of slavery, and expressing a
determination to resist every attempt on the part of the abolitionists to
effect their object.
It appears, however, that the purposes for which the meeting was
originally called were indirectly attained. Finding it much easier to
raise a popular whirlwind than to ride securely upon it, they prudently
and privately changed their place of meeting to Chatham street chapel.
Here the New York City Anti-Slavery Society was duly organized, having for
its object the "total and immediate abolition of slavery in the United
States." Its first officers were:--
_President_--Arthur Tappan.
_Vice-President_--Wm. Green, Jr.
_Treasurer_--John Rankin.
_Corresponding Secretary_--Elizur Wright, Jr.
_Recording Secretary_--Rev. Chas. W. Dennison.
_Managers_--Joshua Leavitt, Isaac T. Hopper, Abraham Cox, M.D., Lewis
Tappan, William Goodell.
The proceedings of the night appear to have terminated in a broad farce,
for after the breaking up of the citizens' meeting, the crowd proceeded to
Chatham street Chapel to see what was going on there. They found the doors
open and the lights burning, but the meeting had suddenly dispersed. The
dignified philosophers, unable to "stand fire," had retreated "bag and
baggage," through the back windows. To have the frolic out, a black man
was put upon the stage, a series of humorous resolutions were passed,
good-natured speeches on the burlesque order were made, and, instead of
the angry frowns with which the evening was commenced, the whole affair
terminated amid the broad grins of a numerous multitude. Precisely one
week after the above occurrence, another meeting of the citizens was held,
over which the Mayor of the city presided. Among the orators was Hon.
Theodore Frelinghuysen, then United States Senator from New Jersey,
afterwards a candidate for Vice-President of the United States on the
ticket with Henry Clay, and he directly charged the abolitionists with
"seeking to dissolve the Union;" declared that nine-tenths of the horrors
of slavery were imaginary, and that "the crusade of abolition was merely
the poetry of philanthropy." Chancellor Walworth was likewise in
attendance, and denounced their efforts as unconstitutional, and the
individuals instigating them as "reckless incendiaries."
THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.--1833.
On the 4th, 5th and 6th of December, 1833, a National Anti-Slavery
Convention was held in the city of Philadelphia, when, pursuant to
previous notice, sixty delegates from ten States assembled, viz:--Maine,
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Beriah Green, President of Oneida
Institute, was chosen President, and Lewis Tappan and John G. Whittier,
Secretaries. The resolutions were prepared in committee by William Lloyd
Garrison. This convention organized the American Anti-Slavery Society, of
which Arthur Tappan was chosen President; Elizur Wright, Jr., Secretary of
Domestic Correspondence; William L. Garrison, Secretary of the Foreign
Correspondence; A. L. Cox, Recording Secretary, and William Green, Jr.,
Treasurer. The Executive Committee was located in New York city, the seat
of the society's operations, which were now prosecuted with vigor. The
Emancipator became the organ of the society. Tracts, pamphlets and books
were published and circulated; a large number of agents were employed in
different guises to promote the work throughout the country, North and
South; State, county and local anti-slavery societies were organized
throughout the free States; funds were collected; the New England
Anti-Slavery Society became the Massachusetts State Society, and the whole
machinery of agitation was put in thorough working order.
Among the earliest principles adopted by the abolition societies was the
following:--
"Immediate and unconditional emancipation is eminently prudent, safe
and beneficial to all parties concerned.
"No compensation is due to the slaveholder for emancipating his
slaves; and emancipation creates no necessity for such compensation,
because it is of itself a pecuniary benefit, not only to the slave,
but to the master."
So perfect was this system of operations, that in 1836 the society
numbered two hundred and fifty auxiliaries in thirteen States. In eighteen
months afterwards it had increased to one thousand and six. In one week
alone, $6,000 were raised in Boston and $20,000 in the city of New York.
To such an extent was the abolition furor carried at this time, that many
prominent individuals had their dinner service, plates, cups, saucers,
&c., embellished with figures of slaves in chains, and other emblems of
the same character.
Similar prints, or pictorial illustrations of the natural equality before
God of all men, without distinction of color, and setting forth the happy
fruits of a universal acknowledgment of this truth by the exhibition of a
white woman in no equivocal relations to a black man, were circulated in
the South. The infection also broke out on Northern pocket handkerchiefs
made for Southern children, candy wrappers, fans and anti-slavery seals,
all being made to represent the prevailing idea. The reaction shortly
took place. Laws were passed forbidding the reception or circulation of
these incendiary articles in the Southern States. Mobs broke into the
post-offices and burned all abolition prints that could be found, and
rewards were offered for the detection and punishment of any person found
tampering with the slave population. Nor was this reaction confined to the
Southern section of the country; it was largely developed in the North.
Churches soon began to be the theatres of discussions on the subject, and
a conservative spirit sprang into life among all the principal religious
sects. Merchants began to suffer in their business; manufacturers found
their wares of no avail for the Southern market; and, in short, a strong
spirit of opposition to the revolutionary doctrines of the abolitionists
was manifested throughout the Northern States.
THE FIRST ABOLITION RIOT IN NEW YORK.--1834.
This excited feeling soon culminated in an outbreak. On the 8th of July,
1834, the New York Sacred Music Society attempted to assemble, as was
their wont, in Chatham street Chapel, for the purpose of practising sacred
harmony. They found the place, however, filled with an audience of whites
and blacks who had gathered to listen to an abolition address, and who
obstinately refused to remove. But this was not all. The anger of the
negroes was aroused in consequence of the request to remove, and they
attacked several of the gentlemen with loaded canes and other implements,
knocking some down and severely injuring others. The alarm was raised,
crowds assembled, a fight ensued in the church, the congregation were
expelled, and the building was closed. As Mr. Lewis Tappan was returning
to his house, the mob, supposing him to have been instrumental in
producing the disorder, followed him home and threw stones at his house.
On the 9th, three more riots occurred. The crowd proceeded to the Bowery
Theatre, took possession of the house, and put an end to "Metamora,"
without waiting the tragic conclusion to which it was destined by the
author. A great number then proceeded to the house of Lewis Tappan, in
Rose street, broke open the door, smashed the windows and threw the
furniture into the street. A bonfire was lighted, and beds and bedding
made the flames. Fuel was added to the excitement by publications in the
Emancipator, over the signature of Elizur Wright, Jr., in which
intimations were thrown out covertly, inviting to a forcible resistance to
the laws which authorize the recapture of runaway slaves. Placards were
posted through the streets in great numbers, and the demon of disorder
appeared to have taken possession of the city.
On the night of the 10th, the crowd again assembled and made their way to
Dr. Cox's church, then on the corner of Laight and Varick streets, which
they assaulted with stones, breaking the windows and doing a variety of
mischief. They then proceeded to Dr. Cox's house, No. 3 Charlton street,
but, anticipating an attack, he had packed up and sent away his furniture,
and removed with his family into the country on the previous afternoon.
The mob commenced the work of destruction by breaking in the two lower
windows; but they had scarcely effected an entrance before they were
driven from the premises by the police officers and a detachment of horse.
They were thenceforward kept at bay, but as far east as Thompson street,
the streets were filled with an excited multitude, armed with paving
stones, which they smote together, crying "All together." A fence was torn
down and converted into clubs, and a barricade of carts was built across
the street to impede the horsemen. After a while order was gradually
restored and the tumult subsided for the night.
On the 11th, it broke out again, when an attack was made on the store of
Arthur Tappan, in Pearl street. The rioters were driven away, however, by
the police, without further damage than the smashing of a few windows. A
second attack was likewise made on Dr. Cox's church, and also on the
church of Rev. Mr. Ludlow, in Spring street. The latter was almost
completely sacked, nearly the entire interior being torn up and carried
into the street to erect barricades against the horse and infantry which
had assembled at various rendezvous at an early hour, in compliance with
the proclamation of the Mayor. The excitement continued to increase. The
bells were rung, and the Seventh (then the Twenty-seventh) regiment, under
Col. Stevens, charged upon the rioters, driving them from their position
and clearing Spring street. The crowd next proceeded to the residence of
Rev. Mr. Ludlow, whose family had retired, and after breaking the windows
and doors, left the ground. Later in the night an immense riot occurred in
the neighborhood of the Five Points. St. Phillip's Episcopal Church
(colored), in Centre street, was nearly torn down, while several houses
occupied by negroes in the vicinity were entirely demolished. Several days
elapsed before quiet was effectually restored. All the military of the
city during this time were under arms.
Similar outbreaks also occurred at Norwich, Conn., Newark, N. J., and
other places, where the negroes, under the effect of abolition teachings,
grown bold and impudent, were compelled to leave town. In Norwich the mob
entered a church during the delivery of an abolition sermon, took the
parson from the pulpit, walked him into the open air to the tune of the
"Rogue's March," drummed him out of the town, and threatened if he ever
made his appearance in the place again they would give him "a coat of tar
and feathers."
Similar scenes were enacted in Philadelphia, where a large hall was
burned, and other public and private buildings in which the negroes and
abolitionists were in the habit of meeting, were either injured or
demolished.
NEGRO CONSPIRACY IN MISSISSIPPI.
On the 28th of June, 1835, it was discovered that the negroes of
Livingston, in Madison county, Miss., under the lead of a band of white
men, contemplated a general rising. A committee of safety was instantly
organized, and two of the white ringleaders were arrested, tried, and,
after a confession, forthwith hanged. By this confession, it appeared that
the plan was conceived by the notorious John A. Murrel, a well known
Mississippi pirate at that time, and that it embraced the destruction of
the entire population and liberation of the slaves in the South generally.
For two years the disaffection had thus been spreading, and, with few
exceptions, adherents existed on every plantation in the county. Arms and
ammunition had been secreted for the purpose, and everything made ready
for a general outbreak. The confession involved numerous white men and
black, many of whom were arrested and suffered for their diabolical
designs. Among these was one Ruel Blake, of Connecticut. The summary
proceedings adopted, however, had the desired effect, and in a few months
tranquillity was restored to the unsettled and excited district.
AN ERA OF EXCITEMENT.
The year 1835 was one of the most exciting eras of agitation in the early
history of anti-slavery. The events of the preceding few months had
aroused the entire country to a realizing sense of the dangerous tendency
of the abolitionists and the rapid progress of their cause. In Congress
the subject had again begun to be agitated, through petitions presented by
various individuals and bodies in the free States, praying the
interference of the government in the abolition of slavery, and in society
at large a more decided sentiment was evidently being formed _pro_ and
_con._ than had previously been manifested.
In the South, incendiary publications were circulated to such an alarming
extent, that the press and people of that section rose _en masse_ to put
down the growing evil. Following the insurrection to which allusion has
been made above, at a public meeting held in the town of Mississippi, it
was unanimously resolved that any "individual who dared to circulate
incendiary tracts or publications, likely to excite the slaves to
rebellion, was justly worthy, in the sight of God and man, of immediate
death." And at a similar meeting in Williamsburgh, Va., no less a
personage than General John Tyler, afterwards President of the United
States, endorsed a resolution to the effect that the circulation of these
incendiary documents was an act of treasonable character, and that when
offenders were detected in the fact, condign punishment ought and would be
inflicted upon them without resort to any other tribunal. In this state of
alarm, the gallows and stake soon found victims, and within a period of a
few months, no less than a dozen individuals, white and black, who were
found among the slaves, inciting them to insurrection, received the just
award of their crime. Efforts were also made at this time by several
Southern communities to get some of the prominent abolitionists in their
power, so that an example might be made of those who were too cowardly to
appear in the field of this species of missionary labor themselves. Among
others, a reward of five thousand dollars was offered by the Legislature
of Georgia for the apprehension of either of ten persons named in a
resolution, citizens of New York and Massachusetts, and "one George
Thompson, a subject of Great Britain." An offer of ten thousand dollars
was likewise made for the arrest of Rev. A. A. Phelps, a clergyman of New
York, and fifty thousand dollars was offered to any one who would deliver
into their hands the famous Arthur Tappan or Le Roy Sunderland, a well
known Methodist minister.
Even the clergymen added their voice to the general cry of indignation
that rose from the Southern heart; and when, in July, 1835, a few days
after the forcing of the Post-office, and the destruction of the abolition
publications there found, by a crowd in Charleston, S. C., a public
meeting was held for completing measures of protection, the clergy of all
denominations attended in a body to lend their sanction to the
proceedings. About this time one of the Methodist preachers of South
Carolina addressed the following novel letter to Rev. Le Roy Sunderland,
editor of Zion's Watchman of New York:--
"If you wish to educate the slaves, I will tell you how to raise the
money, without editing Zion's Watchman. You and old Arthur Tappan
come out to the South this winter, and they will raise one hundred
thousand dollars for you. New Orleans itself would be pledged for it.
Desiring no further acquaintance with you, I am, &c.,
"J. C. POSTELL."
Laws of the most stringent character were passed by nearly all the
Southern States to prevent the further dissemination among the Southern
people of abolition doctrines, and an appeal was made to the Legislatures
of the North to do the same thing. Indeed, the entire policy of that
section as regards the previous license allowed to slaves and free negroes
was changed so as to render it difficult, if not impossible, for any
future influence of an insurrectionary character to be exerted upon them.
Public meetings were also held, at which resolutions were passed
declaratory of the determination to put down at all hazards these repeated
attempts on the part of abolitionists to deluge their families and
firesides in blood. In many of the principal cities a list of all persons
arriving and departing was kept, that it might be known who were and who
were not to be regarded with suspicion.
The effect upon the North was not less marked, and this prompt action on
the part of their Southern brethren found thousands of sympathizers.
Indignation was almost universal. The press teemed with articles upon the
subject, and among the majority of the order-loving journals of the day,
it was generally agreed that if the madmen who were scattering firebrands,
arrows and death, could not be persuaded or rebuked to silence, no other
alternative was allowed to the slaveholding States to protect themselves,
except by the system of passports, examinations and punishments, which to
some extent they had adopted, and in which they were justified.
The people, too, were smarting under the insults that were poured out upon
the nation by the English emissaries and agents who were in the country
lending their assistance to the prevailing mischief. Among these
individuals was the famous George Thompson, an agent and orator of the
British Anti-Slavery Society. Such was the excitement produced by his
opprobrious language towards the South, that in many places where he
appeared he was greeted with demonstrations of anything but a
complimentary character. At Lynn, Mass., he was assaulted by females with
rotten eggs and stones, and driven off the ground; and at New Bedford, in
the language of the poet,
"When to speak the man essayed,
Gods! what a noise the fiddles made."
He was emphatically "sung down." At Boston the matter was still more
serious. It having been announced that Garrison and Thompson would speak
before a female anti-slavery meeting, the following hand-bill was
circulated:--
"THOMPSON THE ABOLITIONIST.--That famous foreign scoundrel, Thompson,
will hold forth this afternoon, at the Liberator office, No. 48
Washington street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends
of the Union to 'snake Thompson out!' It will be a contest between
the abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has
been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the
individual who shall first lay hands on Thompson, so that he may be
brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be
vigilant."
It is needless to say that Thompson did not appear. Garrison did, however,
or rather he was found ensconced, martyr-like, under a pile of shavings in
a carpenter's shop. A rope was then fastened around his neck, and he was
gently lowered out of a window to the ground. A general exclamation from
the assembled crowd, "Don't hurt him," indicated the gentleness of the
mob, and, pale and convulsed, he was thus led to the Mayor's office in the
City Hall. Afterwards he was conducted to jail, and, as he sank exhausted
into his place, he made the remark, "Never was man so rejoiced to get
into jail before." The rabble, which by the by, was of an unexceptionable
character, soon after dispersed, their object having been effected, and
the next morning Garrison was liberated from confinement. In Utica and
Rochester, N. Y., Worcester, Mass., Canaan, N. H., and at various places
in the New England States, the abolitionists met with similar treatment.
Their assemblages were either disturbed or broken up, and they often found
it required a large amount of determination to resist the indignation
which their fanaticism had aroused against them. Meetings were also held
in every portion of the North, at which influential citizens attended to
denounce the policy of the abolitionists as subversive of the Union and
Constitution, and to express their sympathy for the South. Several of the
post-masters of the North, participating in this reactionary sentiment, on
their own responsibility, even refused to allow the incendiary documents
to pass through the mails. Such was the activity of the abolitionists,
however, that in the month of August alone over 175,000 copies of their
publications were circulated through the United States; and their presses,
under the direction of the Tappans and Garrison & Co., were employed night
and day to foment the excitement. It was said that these individuals had
then planned an insurrectionary movement throughout the South, which was
to have been developed on a certain day; but the whirlwind they raised in
every section of the country rendered this impossible, and they were
compelled to change their programme of operations.
Though somewhat modified by the restrictions with which public opinion had
surrounded the abolitionists, this state of affairs continued through the
year 1836. The subject of excluding from the mails the whole series of
publications came under the consideration of government, and the
proposition of the President, Andrew Jackson, regarding the propriety of
passing a law for this purpose, being acted upon in Congress, resulted in
a bill rendering it unlawful for any deputy postmaster to deliver to any
person any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill or pictorial representation,
touching the subject of slavery, where, by the laws of the State,
Territory or District their circulation was prohibited. This healthy
measure was defeated, however, on the final vote.
THE RIOT AT ALTON, ILL., AND DEATH OF REV. E. P. LOVEJOY.
The principal anti-slavery event of the year 1837 was a riot at Alton,
Ill. For a long time the community of that town had been agitated by the
abolitionists, and finally, on an attempt being made to resuscitate the
Alton Observer, a newspaper previously edited by the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy,
(brother of Owen Lovejoy, the present member of Congress from Illinois,) a
journal which, in his hands, had become conspicuous for the violence of
its denunciations against the South and its institutions, a terrible riot
ensued. It had been announced for several days that a printing press was
hourly expected to arrive, intended for the purpose above named. This gave
rise to an intense excitement and to open threats, that its landing would
be resisted, if necessary, by force of arms. It was landed, however, and
placed in a warehouse, under the protection of a guard of twenty or thirty
gentlemen who had volunteered for the purpose. Almost immediately there
were indications of an attack. The press was demanded by the mob, who
insisted that they would not be satisfied with anything less than its
destruction. The party in the building determined it should not be given
up, and during the angry altercation which ensued, a shot was fired from
one of the windows, which mortally wounded a man named Lyman Bishop. The
crowd then withdrew, but with the death of Bishop the excitement increased
to such an extent that they shortly appeared in greater numbers, armed
with guns and weapons of different kinds, more than ever intent upon
carrying out their original purpose. A rush was made upon the warehouse
with the cries of "Fire the house," "Burn them out," &c. The firing soon
became fearful. The building was surrounded, and the inmates threatened
with extermination and death in the most frightful form imaginable. Fire
was applied, and all means of escape by flight were cut off. The scene now
became appalling.
About the time the fire was communicated to the building, Rev. E. P.
Lovejoy received four balls in the breast, near the door of the warehouse,
and fell a corpse. Several persons engaged in the attack were also
severely wounded. The contest raged for more than an hour, when the party
in the house intimated that they would abandon the premises and the press,
if allowed to pass out unmolested. This was granted, and they made their
escape, though several shots were fired in the act. A large number of
persons then rushed into the building, threw the press upon the wharf,
where it was broken in pieces and thrown into the river. The fire was then
extinguished, and without further attempts at violence, the mob dispersed.
No further indications of disorder were manifested.
For a long time this outbreak served as a check upon the aggressive policy
of the abolitionists, and, though not thoroughly cowed, both principals
and agents found that the agitation of the subject was like the handling
of a sword whose double edges cut in both directions. After this event,
with the exception of the burning of a hall in 1838, in which they held
their meetings, in Philadelphia, the country for a number of years became
comparatively quiet, and the agitators took good care not to give occasion
for further public demonstrations.
THIRD EPOCH.
CHAPTER VI.
The Era of "Gags" and Congressional Petitions--John Quincy Adams; his
Petition for Disunion--Legislation from 1835 to 1845--Annexation of
Texas--The Liberty Party of 1840, Free Soil Party of 1848, and Republican
Party of 1856--Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso.
The decade embraced between the years 1835 and 1845 may be termed the
third epoch in the history of this movement. In that period, the grand
experiment of the abolitionists was most effectually tried. They had felt
the public pulse, developed their power and resources, had the benefit of
experience, and ascertained to what extent the public mind could be
prejudiced by the course of agitation which they had pursued. It was in
fact an era of lessons, as well to the country as to themselves. From a
mere handful, the original organization had grown to be a power within
itself--a power at the ballot-box--a power for right or wrong, for good or
mischief, too self-reliant and too strong to be disregarded. Neither
legislative enactments, nor riots, nor personal chastisement, nor public
opinion, had been able to restrain its rapid advances towards the
consummation of its hopes. It lost ground nowhere, and in every
non-slaveholding State its friends and funds were greatly multiplied. As
an indication of its extraordinary growth, the number of anti-slavery
societies in the United States, in the year 1838, may be safely estimated
at two thousand, with at least two hundred thousand persons enrolled as
members.
These, however, were not all entitled to the suffrages of the party. They
were the children and wives of fanatics who learned their lessons of
abolition in the Bible classes, Sunday and secular schools, and from their
parents and husbands. The sentiment was intruded, indeed, in all the
relations of life--social, financial and domestic, and even in the affairs
of love, Cupid himself was made subservient to its ascendancy. The belles
of the day would hardly look upon a suitor who was not as well a
worshipper at the shrine of their political passion, as of their beauty,
and no youngster's domestic destiny was at all certain of fruition who was
not sound upon what was then regarded as the soul-saving question of
abolitionism. The youths of 1840 have become the men of 1860, and in the
enormous increase of the republican party, we see the result of the early
influences thus set at work.
For the first time in its history, the organization began to be regarded
as a political element in the land, and worthy of a courtship by those who
desired its influence and support. Candidates for office began to be
catechised, and such men as William H. Seward, Levi Lincoln, William L.
Marcy and others, found time to give lengthy replies to the authors of
this new inquisition, setting forth their views. In local politics, it was
the moral and political test by which men were measured, and it lay at the
foundation of all the subsequent State action of the Northern Legislatures
upon the subject of anti-slavery.
In both branches of Congress, also, the question of abolition for the
first time occupied a large share of the deliberations, and was discussed
under every possible aspect. From 1831, when John Quincy Adams presented
fifteen petitions in a single bunch, for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia, similar documents, got up and circulated by
anti-slavery societies, poured into both branches of the National
Legislature in a steady stream. They also called for a prohibition of what
was termed an "internal slave trade" between the States, avowing at the
same time that their ultimate object was to abolish slavery, not only in
the District, but throughout the Union. It was, indeed, the only mode in
which the fanatics could agitate the question in Congress, and was a part
of the scheme by which they expected to accomplish their purposes. Under
the influence of the feelings excited by these causes, the Southern
Senators and members declared, almost to a man, that if the Southern
States could not remain in the Union without having their domestic peace
continually disturbed by the systematic attempts of the abolitionists to
produce dissatisfaction and revolt among the slaves and incite their wild
passions to vengeance, the great law of self-preservation would compel
them to separate from the North. This persistent demand of the
abolitionists, through petitions, continued from session to session,
until, becoming a nuisance, an effort was made to prevent their farther
reception. The effort was, for a time, successful, and resulted in what
was called the "era of gags"--these gags being simply a rule of the House,
"That all petitions, memorials, resolutions and propositions relating in
any way or to any extent to the question of slavery shall, without either
being printed or referred, be laid on the table, and no further action
whatever shall be had thereon."
This was respectively passed in 1836, 1837 and 1838, and in 1840 it was
incorporated into the standing rules of the House--being thenceforward
known as the "Twenty-first Rule." The vote upon this was--yeas, 128; nays,
78.
The excitement produced in the House on the occasion of these several
votes was intense, and speeches were made upon the question by the most
distinguished men of the country.
In 1837, the immediate occasion of the contest was the pertinacious effort
of Mr. Slade, of Vermont, to make the presentation of abolition petitions
the ground of agitation and action against the institution of slavery in
the Southern States. Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina, warned him of the
consequences of such inflammatory harangues, and his refusal to desist
from them was the signal for a general disorder and uproar. The next
morning a resolution similar to that above quoted was adopted by a vote of
135 yeas to 60 nays--the full two-thirds and fifteen. "This," says Thomas
H. Benton, "was one of the most important votes ever delivered in the
House." Upon its issue depended the quiet of the House on one hand, and on
the other the renewal and perpetuation of the scenes of the day
before--ending in breaking up all deliberation and all national
legislation.
Thus were stifled, and in future, for a few years at least, prevented in
the House the inflammatory debates on these disturbing petitions. It was
the great session of their presentation, being offered by hundreds and
signed by hundreds of thousands of persons--many of them women, who forgot
their sex and their duties to mingle in the inflammatory work; and some of
them clergymen, who forgot their mission of peace to stir up strife among
those who should be brethren. After long and protracted efforts by John
Quincy Adams, who was then champion of the abolitionists on the floor of
the House, this restriction upon the right of petition was removed in
December, 1845, by a vote of 108 to 80. Among the acts of this statesman
in 1839, was the presentation of a resolution that the following
amendments to the Constitution of the United States should be proposed to
the several States of the Union:--
"1. From and after the 4th July, 1842, there shall be throughout the
United States no hereditary slavery; but on and after that day, every
child born in the United States, their territory or jurisdiction,
shall be born free.
"2. With the exception of the Territory of Florida, there shall
henceforth never be admitted into this Union any State, the
Constitution of which shall tolerate within the same the existence of
slavery.
"3. From and after the 4th July, 1845, there shall be neither slavery
nor slave trade at the seat of government of the United States."
This proposition of course received no favor either North or South, and
was speedily laid aside. Subsequently he presented a petition praying for
a dissolution of the Union--the first of the kind ever offered to the
government--whereupon a resolution was submitted to Congress to the effect
that Mr. Adams in so doing had offered the deepest indignity to the House
and insult to the people of the United States, and that, for thus
permitting, through his instrumentality, a wound to be aimed at the
Constitution and existence of his country he merited expulsion from the
national council and the severest censure. It concluded--"This they hereby
do for the maintenance of their own purity and dignity; for the rest, they
turn him over to his own conscience and the indignation of all true
American citizens."
The resolution was discussed for several days, in which Mr. Adams and his
anti-slavery propagandism were handled without gloves; but finally the
whole subject was laid upon the table.
THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.
Another source of discussion, both in and out of Congress, about this
time, was the Texas question. As far back as 1829, the annexation of Texas
was agitated in the Southern and Western States, being urged on the ground
of the strength and extension it would give to the slaveholding interest.
This fact at once enlisted opposition from the entire anti-slavery
sentiment of the North, in which British abolitionism took part, and every
effort was made on the other side of the water to increase the sectional
jealousy already known to be existing. The English press, Parliament and
statesmen, all treated the proposed acquisition as one in which they felt
called upon to interfere. The famous "Texan plot," which was matured at
the "World's Anti-Slavery Convention," held in London in 1840, was one of
the results.
The part to be performed by the British government embraced a double
object. The large territory claimed by Texas was known to contain most of
the remaining cotton lands of North America. A virtual control of these
lands would, therefore, be invaluable to British commerce. The country was
but thinly settled, and the number of slaves was small enough to render
emancipation of easy attainment. Thus, if by a timely interposition of her
influence and diplomacy, Great Britain could establish a rival cotton
producing country at our very door, and prevent the growth of slavery
there, she would partially prevent a growing dependence on the slave
products of the United States, and at the same time set up a barrier to
the further extension of Southern civilization in that direction. There
was but one obstacle in the way. Texas preferred annexation to the United
States, and, notwithstanding British assistance, believed to have been
proffered to Santa Anna in 1842, when he resolved to send an invading army
into the territory for the purpose of declaring emancipation, and other
objects; notwithstanding the resolutions of Northern Legislatures and
acrimonious debates in Congress; notwithstanding every effort, home and
foreign, to prevent annexation; through the patriotic efforts of General
Jackson, President Tyler, Mr. Calhoun and other statesmen, on the 16th of
December, 1845, Texas was admitted into the Union.
Though thus defeated in their immediate designs, one point was gained by
the friends of anti-slavery. They succeeded in obtaining a position in
Congress which enabled them to agitate the whole Union. From that time
their power began to increase, until the infection has diseased the great
mass of the people of the North, who, whatever may be their opinion of the
original abolition party, which still keeps up its distinctive
organization, never fail, when it comes to acting, to co-operate in
carrying out their measures.
THE BEGINNING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY--THE LIBERTY PARTY.
The year 1840 was marked by two important events, namely, the formation of
a distinct political party of abolitionists, and a division in the two
leading anti-slavery societies of the country. The Liberty Party arose
from the fact that, after a protracted experiment, the candidates of the
old parties could not, to any extent, however questioned or pledged, be
depended upon to do the work which the abolitionists demanded of them.
Such an organization was advocated by Mr. Garrison as early as 1834; but
it was not until the annual meeting of the New York Anti-Slavery Society
at Utica, in September, 1838, that a series of resolutions or a platform
was adopted, setting forth the principles of political action, and
solemnly pledging those who adopted them to vote for no candidates who
were not fully pledged to anti-slavery measures. In July, 1839, a National
Anti-Slavery Convention was held at Albany, and the mode of political
action against slavery, including the question of a distinct party, was
fully discussed, but without coming to any definite decision by vote
farther than to refer the question of independent nominations to the
judgment of abolitionists in their different localities. The Monroe county
convention for nominations at Rochester, N. Y., September, 1839, adopted a
series of resolutions and an address prepared by Myron Holly, which have
been regarded as laying the real corner-stone of the Liberty party. He
may, therefore, be regarded, more than any other man, as its founder.
In January, 1840, a New York State Anti-Slavery Convention was held in
Genesee county. The traveling at that season of the year was bad, and
delegates were in attendance from only six States. Among these were Myron
Holly and Gerrit Smith. By this convention, a call was issued for a
National Convention, and accordingly, April 1, 1840, it assembled at
Albany--Alvan Stuart presiding. After a full discussion, the Liberty party
was organized, and James G. Birney and Thomas Earle were nominated for
President and Vice-President of the United States. At the Presidential
election in the autumn of that year, the entire vote of the Liberty party
amounted to 7,059. In 1844, the Liberty candidates, James G. Birney and
Thomas Morris, received 62,300 votes. These, however, were but a small
part of the professed abolitionists of the United States, the great
majority voting for the nominees of the old parties--Harrison, Van Buren,
Polk and Clay.
The other event of the year 1840, to which we have alluded, was the
division in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, and a
division in the American Anti-Slavery Society of New York, the causes in
each case being more or less identified with each other. Without going
into the subject, it may be briefly stated that the principal cause in
both instances was a difference of opinion on theological questions as
applied to politics and reformatory measures, and especially theological
jealousies. The most rabid among the abolitionists have been infidels, or
little less, from the start, and have absorbed every species of
fanaticism, in whatever shape it has appeared since. Another question
resulting in the division appears to have been "Woman's Rights," or, in
other words, what position females ought to occupy in the society. As
early as 1835, these moral hermaphrodites were in the habit of delivering
public lectures and scattering publications through the land; but their
wagging tongues finally became such a nuisance that several clergymen
published a pastoral letter in 1837, strongly censuring all such unwomanly
interference. The result was, as has been stated, great excitement and a
subsequent separation of the respective opponents.
Shortly after this division, we find the American Anti-Slavery Society, at
one of its annual meetings, raising the flag of "No Union with
Slaveholders," demanding a dissolution of the Union, and denouncing the
federal constitution as pro-slavery--"a covenant with death and an
agreement with hell."
To resume the history of the progress of the party. In 1835 a State
Convention of abolitionists was held at Port Byron, New York, at which an
address was presented embodying the views of a number of individuals, who,
while they were abolitionists at heart, were not rabid or ultra enough to
be prepared to act with the Liberty party. This was printed, circulated,
and gained adherents, and upon its basis, in 1847, a convention assembled
at Macedon, New York, when Gerrit Smith and Elihu Burrit were nominated
for President and Vice-President of the United States; but the latter
declining, the name of Charles C. Foote was afterwards substituted. This
party was known by the name of the Liberty League. Subsequently its
principles became merged into the Buffalo platform of 1847. Gerrit Smith
was then again proposed as a candidate for the Presidency; but the course
of leading men in the convention required the nomination of a different
man. Accordingly, Hon. John P. Hale, of New Hampshire--an "independent
democrat," as he termed himself--and Hon. Leicester King, of Ohio, were
nominated. This, however, was only temporary; and another convention was
called, and held at Buffalo, August 9, 1848, composed of "the opponents to
slavery extension, irrespective of parties," and including, of course, all
those committed to the one idea of abolition. It was one of the most
remarkable political meetings on record, for it was the beginning of the
political drama which has since resulted in a dissolution of the Union.
Vast multitudes, from all parts of the non-slaveholding States, of all
political parties, came together, and seemed to be melted into one by
their common zeal against the aggressions of slavery. Though they looked
only to the restraint of slavery within the bounds which they claimed our
fathers had erected for its protection, still the opposition sprang from
the strong anti-slavery sentiment already pervading the country. It was
the springing up of the green blade, and the forming of the ear from the
many years sowing of the abolitionists. The nomination of Martin Van Buren
and Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, was made with great unanimity
and enthusiasm, though by a body composed of original elements of the most
extreme contrariety. Messrs. Hale and King, as was expected, withdrew
their names. The old Liberty party was absorbed in the new organization,
whose platform was broad enough to satisfy any reasonable abolitionist.
Mass meetings were held in every village to hear the new word, and within
a few months an impulse was communicated to the great mass of the Northern
mind which has constituted the basis of its action ever since. The number
of votes cast for these candidates in 1848 was 291,263.
The platform was substantially as follows:--That the people propose no
interference by Congress with slavery within the limits of any State; that
the federal government has no constitutional power over life, liberty or
property without due legal progress; that Congress has no more power to
make a slave than to make a king--no more power to establish slavery than
to establish a monarchy; that Congress ought to prohibit slavery in all
the territories; that the issue of the slave power is accepted--no more
slave States and no slave territory; no more compromises; and finally, the
establishment of a free government in California and New Mexico.
In 1852, this same party nominated John P. Hale and George W. Julian. The
number of votes then cast was 155,825. The platform was much the same as
that which preceded it four years before, though more progressive and
revolutionary in several of its ideas, one of its clauses being "that
slavery is a sin against God and a crime against man, which no human
enactment nor usage can make right, and that Christianity, humanity and
patriotism, alike demand its abolition." Another clause was to the effect
that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, being repugnant to the principles of
Christianity and the principles of the common law, had no binding force
upon the American people.
The republican party of 1856 was merely an enlargement or extension of the
old free-soil organization of the preceding eight years. It was modified,
it is true, by many of the events of the time, but its foundation was laid
upon precisely the same principles that had been enunciated during the
previous twelve years. It was emphatically a Northern party, extending
only here and there by some straggling outposts over the slave boundary.
It was so far anti-slavery as to resent the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, and oppose the introduction of slavery into new territory. As
events progressed, the forces combatting on either side of the great
question of the day became more concentrated and determined, and more
inspirited by a single purpose, until the one idea of anti-slavery became
distinctly developed and firmly fixed in the Northern mind.
The Republican Convention assembled at Philadelphia, June 18, 1856, when
John C. Fremont and Wm. L. Dayton were nominated for President and Vice
President of the United States, and in the following November received
1,341,264 votes.
The election for 1860 has only recently terminated in the elevation to the
head of the Federal Government of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, by
a purely anti-slavery vote of 1,865,840. The events which preceded it are
too fresh to require repetition; but, for the first time in the history of
our confederacy, we look upon the spectacle of a sectional party,
defiant, unyielding and uncompromising, whose principles aim a blow direct
at the annihilation of one of the institutions of the South, in the full
flush of victory, singing poeans of glory over its success, with a Union
dissolving around it, while another portion of the country is agitated to
its very centre in preparations for self-protection against the
usurpations which, from press and pulpit, and floor of Congress, have been
so boldly threatened. Whether as abolition, liberty, free-soil or
republican, the party has always shown the cloven hoof, and the best
efforts of its more considerate friends have never been able to cover the
deformity. Into the masses it has instilled the most unrelenting hatred to
slavery, until all other ideas, feelings and passions have, for the time,
been swallowed up in this one overwhelming sentiment.
It has dissolved the Union, though formed and cemented in the blood of our
fathers, rather than it should tolerate an institution which is older than
the Union. It has shed the blood of innocent white men while engaged in
the discharge of their sworn duty, and made widows and orphans rather than
return an escaped servant to his master and obey the Constitution of the
country. Such is the spirit which controls this party, by whatever name it
may be known.
Its leaders, claiming to stand by principle, hug to their bosom the most
damning political heresies. Pretending to obey God and reverence the
Bible, some of them are the most unblushing infidels, who boldly proclaim
that the Sacred Word is not worth the paper upon which it is printed,
unless it denounce slavery and applaud abolitionism, and would teach that
the Constitution of our country is the consummation of every iniquity.
Some of them aspire to be the followers of Jesus, but convert their sacred
desks into political rostrums, from which are fulminated the falsest
denunciations that a diseased mind can conjure into existence. Claiming to
be teachers of religion and peace, they prove the authenticity of their
holy commission by exhorting to civil war, making collections for Sharpe's
rifles, and playing the _role_ of spiritual demagogues among the falling
ruins of the republic.
* * * * *
The year 1841 was marked by another attempt at insurrection. On the 22d of
July, during a hot night, several negroes were overheard conversing in
their quarters, on a plantation, near New Orleans, respecting an
insurrection in which they intended to join. An investigation was made the
next day, and resulted in tracing out a widely-extended organization among
the slaves of the neighborhood, having a general rising in view. This
early discovery of the plot of course prevented its consummation, and the
execution and punishment of the instigators soon quelled every design of
an outbreak.
In 1845 we find Cassius M. Clay mobbed in Lexington, Ky., and his paper,
the True American, stopped, the presses, type, &c., being packed up and
forwarded to Cincinnati, for advocating the incendiary doctrines of the
abolitionists, and thereby producing an excitement among the slaves, and
arousing apprehensions in the community lest they should rise in rebellion
against the whites.
THE MEXICAN WAR.
We have already brought our chronological history down to the year 1845,
when Texas was admitted as a State. It was during the progress of
annexation that the government of Mexico served a formal notice on the
United States that annexation would be viewed in the light of a
declaration of war. This notice, however, was of little avail, and before
the close of the year 1845, Congress had consummated the act. The war
broke out in April, 1846, the second year of Mr. Polk's administration,
and on the 11th of May the President issued his proclamation to that
effect. A large portion of the western domain of Texas, as now described,
was disputed territory, occupied by Mexicans and under Mexican rule at the
time of and after annexation. General Taylor was ordered to march from
Corpus Christi, and take up his position on the Rio Grande, opposite
Matamoras, thus traversing the disputed territory from its eastern to its
western border. The Mexican army, on the opposite side of the river,
immediately commenced hostilities, and soon after followed the battles of
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. How the war was continued and terminated
are matters of general history. Peace was at last dictated to Mexico on
the 30th of May, 1848, and resulted in a surrender by her of a large belt
of her northern territories, extending from the Rio Grande to the Pacific,
including California, though at that time its immense wealth and great
importance were not fully appreciated. In Congress and among the people of
the North the war was not popular. It was said to be a scheme for the
acquirement of more slave territory, and this fact of itself excited
contention throughout the land.
THE WILMOT PROVISO.
On the 12th of August, 1846, a bill being under consideration in the
Committee of the Whole, making further provision for the expenses
attending the intercourse between the United States and Mexico, Mr. David
Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, moved the following amendment:--
"Provided, that as an express and fundamental condition to the
acquisition of territory from the republic of Mexico, by the United
States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated between them,
and to the use by the Executive of the moneys herein appropriated,
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any
part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall
first be duly convicted."
This amendment was adopted by a vote of yeas 77, nays 58. The bill was not
voted on in the Senate, that body adjourning _sine die_ before it reached
that stage.
On the 8th of February, the Three Million Bill being under consideration,
a similar amendment was offered in the House, and on the 15th was adopted
by a vote of 115 yeas and 106 nays. The Senate having passed a similar
bill, which came before the House on the 3d of March, 1847, Mr. Wilmot
moved to amend the same by adding his proviso thereto; but it was rejected
by a vote of yeas 97, nays 102. The Senate bill, without the amendment of
Mr. Wilmot, then became a law. This celebrated proviso has been offered,
by different senators and representatives, to various bills since. Its
popular use, in fact, since that time, constitutes a great chapter in the
political history of the country. For a long time it has rung in the ears
of the public, and it will never cease until the question of slavery
ceases to be a political question in the organization of new Territories
and new States.
* * * * *
In 1848, Connecticut, which had never passed a law completely abolishing
slavery, and which then contained some eight or ten slaves, through her
Legislature enacted its total abolition forever, compelling the masters of
the few slaves existing to support them for life.
The escape of slaves from the South has been one of the principal
practical effects of abolition ever since the idea assumed shape, in 1830.
Men and women have been found, North and South, who, either from
philanthropic motives or under the pecuniary inducements of abolition
societies, have aided in their escape. Among these, New England
"schoolmarms" and schoolmasters have played an active part, and several
were from time to time arrested.
One Delia Webster suffered for such an interference with other people's
affairs by an incarceration in the penitentiary at Lexington, Ky., in
1845, for two years. Another, Rev. Charles Torrey, for similar offences,
was sentenced to six years in the Maryland penitentiary, but died before
the expiration of the sentence.
Many other instances of a similar nature might be cited; but these are
enough to indicate the extent to which fanaticism carried its followers.
The year 1848 was characterized by the usual venom which the anti-slavery
societies industriously endeavored to distil into the community. Fred.
Douglas, Edmund Quincy, Francis Jackson, Abby Kelly, Garrison, Phillips,
Pillsbury, Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, and a retinue of negro orators,
escaped slaves and others, regularly held their meetings and indulged in
their customary rhodomontades. At the New England Convention, which
assembled during this year, a series of one hundred conventions for the
purpose of agitating the question of dissolution of the Union was
commenced in Massachusetts, and funds were raised for the purpose. Some of
these meetings were broken up by indignant mobs, but they were mainly
allowed to go on, and accumulated disciples.
THE FOURTH EPOCH.
CHAPTER VII.
History of the Compromise Measures of 1850--Cessation of the Agitation in
Congress--The Fugitive Slave Law in the North--Repeal of the Missouri
Compromise--Narrative of the Difficulties in Kansas--Disunion Convention
in Massachusetts.
The next important move upon the political chessboard with reference to
slavery preceded the adoption of the celebrated measures familiarly known
by the above title, or as the "Omnibus Bill of 1850." The events which led
to this measure may be briefly stated thus:--
Ever since 1848, a storm had been lowering in the political horizon of the
country on the slavery question, threatening to dissolve the Union, which
necessarily burst over Congress in Legislating for the new Territories
brought into the Union by the result of the Mexican war. Probably no
subject has been presented since the adoption of the federal constitution
involving questions of such deep and vital importance to the inhabitants
of the different States of the confederacy as that in reference to the
territory thus acquired. Not only was the sentiment avowed of the
existence of danger to the Union, but in various quarters was heard an
open and undisguised declaration of a necessity and desire for its
dissolution. General Taylor was elected, a new administration came into
power, and being somewhat identified with the Northern anti-slavery
elements, as opposed to the Democratic party, a tremendous agitation was
at once created, and the whole question of slavery thrown again into the
crucible.
The Thirtieth Congress had adjourned without organizing the new
Territories, or settling any great principle as to their future government
and destiny. California had gone forth without asking leave, formed a
State government prohibiting slavery, and put its machinery in operation.
Utah was governed by a high and arbitrary spiritual despotism, and New
Mexico was under military rule, ordered from the seat of federal power at
Washington. In addition to this, it was discovered that Mexico had
abolished slavery, and consequently that the _lex loci_ of all the
countries ceded by Mexico to the United States excluded slavery. The
Wilmot Proviso had been carried in the House, but failed in the Senate,
and waited only for the admission of California, which would give sixteen
free States against fifteen slave States.
Of course the whole South rose in arms against the consequences of this
disappointment. They would not admit California; they declared that
slavery did exist in the territories acquired from Mexico; that in any
case the Constitution of the United States would carry it there and
protect it there; and that they would dissolve the Union if the Wilmot
Proviso became a law.
In this state of affairs, Henry Clay, on the 29th of January, brought
forward in the Senate his famous resolutions of compromise, and laid the
basis of an adjustment which might have lasted till this day but for the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. Subsequently, a Committee of
Thirteen was appointed by the Senate, charged with the duty of considering
all the subjects, of which Mr. Clay was appointed chairman. On the 8th of
May, 1850, this committee reported a series of measures, differing but
inconsiderably from the original resolutions of Mr. Clay. These were:--
1. The admission of California as a free State, according to the
expression of the will of her people.
2. The establishment of Territorial governments, without the Wilmot
Proviso, for New Mexico and Utah, embracing all the territory recently
acquired by the United States from Mexico, not contained in the boundaries
of California. The question of slavery was left without any other
restriction than the will of the people.
3. The establishment of the western and northern boundary of Texas, and
the exclusion from her jurisdiction of all New Mexico, with the grant to
Texas of a pecuniary equivalent.
4. More effectual enactments for the recovery of fugitive slaves.
5. Abstaining from abolishing slavery, but under a heavy penalty
prohibiting the slave trade, in the District of Columbia.
Separate bills were drawn embodying all the main features of this
compromise, and eight months having been consumed in their discussion, the
two houses were at last brought to a vote on each bill by itself.
The Utah Territorial Bill passed the Senate, August 10, 1850, by a vote of
yeas 32, nays 18.
The Texas Boundary Bill passed the Senate, August 10, 1850, by a vote of
yeas 30, nays 20.
The bill for the admission of California passed the Senate, August 13,
1850, by a vote of 34 to 18.
The New Mexico Bill passed the Senate, August 14, 1850, by a vote of 27 to
10.
The Fugitive Slave Bill passed the Senate on the 23d of August, 1850, by a
vote of 27 to 12.
The bill abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia passed the
Senate, September 14, 1850, by a vote of 33 to 19.
In the House, the vote on the several bills was:--
New Mexico and Texas boundary, Sept. 6, 1850, yeas 180, nays 97.
Admission of California, Sept. 7, 1850, yeas 150, nays 53.
Utah Bill, Sept. 7, 1850, yeas 97, nays 85.
Fugitive Slave Bill, Sept. 12, 1850, yeas 109, nays 76.
Slave trade in the District of Columbia, Sept. 17, 1850, yeas 124,
nays 59.
Out of Congress the abolitionists were aroused almost to a pitch of frenzy
by the passage of the Compromise measures and the Fugitive Slave Law.
Addresses were immediately issued by thousands, which were freely
circulated in all the Northern States, counseling resistance to the law
under every circumstance. Conventions were held of whites and negroes, in
which was proclaimed death to every slaveholder who attempted to carry out
the provisions of the infamous enactment. The tide of runaway slaves from
the South, which had been flowing for so many years, swelled into a flood.
Where one slave formerly made a successful escape, scores made good their
flight now. New England became the goal of the fugitives, and here they
found friends without number, who furnished them with the means of
extending their journey to the Canadian provinces.
One of the first and most successful attempts to resist the Fugitive Slave
Law was in Boston, in April, 1851, when one Thomas Sims, who had escaped
from Georgia, was taken in custody by the city authorities, on a warrant
issued by the United States Commissioner. A mob was the result. The
military was called out, and for several days the most intense excitement
ensued. The law finally triumphed, however, and amid the cry of "Sims,
preach liberty to your fellow slaves," he was put on a steamtug and sent
where he belonged.
Shortly after this, a meeting was called by the Vigilance Committee, which
was presided over by Hon. Horace Mann, when Anson Burlingame, Henry
Wilson, Remond, Higginson and several other negroes appeared and made
denunciatory speeches against the law and in favor of the resolutions,
which proclaimed the necessity of resistance to the uttermost.
On September 11, 1851, occurred the celebrated Christiana affair. Edward
Gorsuch, of Maryland, his son and a party of friends, accompanied by a
United States Commissioner, appeared in the neighborhood of Christiana,
Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, in pursuit of a slave. An attack was made
upon them by negroes, and both father and son were killed. The United
States marines were ordered to the spot, and for several days the place
was under martial law. The slave, of course, escaped. We might also refer
to the rescues of Shadrack, Anthony Burns, the slave Jerry at Syracuse,
and similar incidents that occurred in various parts of the Northern
States; but the circumstances are most of them too recent and familiar to
require more than a passing allusion.
It is only necessary to say that this kind of agitation--resistance to the
laws and disturbance of the peace--has been a part of the tactics of
abolitionists down to the present moment. They have never allowed an
opportunity to pass of showing their utter disregard for law and order,
and of interposing every obstacle in the way of those whose sincere desire
it is to promote the peace and prosperity of the country. The breeze has
become a gale, and the gale has swelled into a tempest, under the
influence of which the mind of a portion of the North has been lashed into
insane fury.
THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE, AND FORMATION OF THE TERRITORIAL
GOVERNMENTS OF KANSAS AND NEBRASKA.
It was reserved for the years 1853 and 1854 to be a period of
agitation--revived under the auspices of such men as Stephen A. Douglas,
Franklin Pierce, Caleb Cushing, David Atchinson and other politicians
intent upon the Presidency--unrivalled in the annals of the country.
The new danger came up in the shape of a proposition to establish a
Territorial government in Nebraska (then embracing Kansas), a Territory
which, with Missouri, originally constituted the upper part of the
province of Louisiana, and was acquired from the French in 1803 by the
payment of 60,000,000 francs.
As early as Dec. 11, 1844, Mr. Douglas gave notice to the House of his
intention to introduce a bill for this purpose, which he did on the 17th
instant following. After being favorably reported upon, it was referred to
the Committee of the Whole, where, owing to the importance of other
measures pending, it was not again acted upon during the session. On the
15th of March, 1848, he introduced a similar bill, and again it met a
similar fate. In the Senate, in 1852, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, early introduced
a resolution, which was passed, instructing the Committee on Territories
to inquire into the expediency of organizing the Territory; but no further
action was taken upon it until the House of Representatives had passed its
bill for that purpose. On December 17, the petition of Mr. Guthrie for a
seat as a delegate from Nebraska, was received and referred, and on the 2d
day of February, 1853, the Committee on Territories, through Mr.
Richardson, of Illinois, their chairman, reported their bill for
organizing Nebraska, which, after three days consideration, was passed on
the 10th, by a vote of 98 to 43. It was silent on the subject of the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The Senate received it the next day,
and on the 17th instant, the Committee on Territories reported it without
amendment. On the 3d of March, 1853, it was laid upon the table. In the
debate which immediately preceded this disposition, Senator Atchison, of
Missouri, openly avowed the ground of his opposition to be that the law
excluding slavery from the Territory of Louisiana, north of thirty-six
degrees and thirty minutes, would be enforced in the new Territory,
"unless specially rescinded." He did not appear, however, to entertain any
hope that this desirable object could be effected. He said he should,
therefore, oppose the organization, unless the whole South could go into
the Territory with rights and privileges, respecting property, equal to
other people of the Union. The idea of the possibility of a repeal of the
Missouri Compromise was thus, for the first time, thrown out and left to
take root in the minds of the nation, with the chance of growing up to
perfection. Even the most ultra among the Southerners then regarded this
as a thing rather to be hoped for than realized.
On the 4th of January, 1854, Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on
Territories, (which consisted of Messrs. Douglas, of Illinois; Houston, of
Texas; Johnson, of Arkansas; Bell, of Tennessee; Jones, of Iowa, and
Everett, of Massachusetts,) to whom had been referred the bill of Mr.
Dodge, reported back the same with amendments and a report which contained
the first open, and as it were official, declaration of the impending
_coup d'etat_. This report assumed as its basis that the Compromise acts
of 1850, which, it will be recollected, leave to the people of the
Territories to decide for themselves whether or not there shall be slavery
in their midst, were the supreme, authentic law of the land, and the
Missouri Compromise was cited and put aside as immaterial, because it came
in collision with this latest legislation and adjustment of the question.
This perpetual prohibition Mr. Douglas proposed incidentally to repeal by
the following provision in the bill:--
"And when admitted as a State or States, the said Territory, or any
portion of the same, shall be received in the Union with or without
slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at the time of their
admission."
Later in this month the same committee submitted an amended bill by which
two Territories--Kansas and Nebraska--were to be created out of the domain
in question.
On the 22d of January, Messrs. Chase and Sumner, of the Senate, and
Messrs. Giddings, Wade, Dewitt and Gerrit Smith, of the House, issued a
stirring appeal to the people of the United States, urging and imploring
instant action to avert the pending calamity. This was circulated over the
whole country, and aided not a little in adding fuel to the already
furious flame of excitement.
The discussion of the bill in the Senate was continued from time to time
through January. It swallowed up all other interests, and was the
absorbing topic throughout the country. The vote was finally reached at
five o'clock in the morning of March 4, 1854, when the bill passed the
Senate by a vote of thirty-seven to fourteen. Fourteen of the votes in its
favor were given by Senators from the free States, and two of those
against it by Senators from the slave States--Messrs. Houston, of Texas,
and Bell, of Tennessee.
On the 14th of March Mr. Everett presented the famous mammoth memorial,
signed by 3,050 clergymen of New England, protesting against the passage
of the bill.
In the House of Representatives the bill was brought up on the 31st of
January, 1853. The debate upon it was closed on the 19th of May, 1854, and
on the 22d of May, 1854, it passed the House by the following vote:--Yeas,
113; nays, 100. The vote of the Senate on the final passage of the bill
was, yeas, 35; nays, 13.
On the 20th of December, 1854, the Hon. John H. Whitfield, delegate elect
from the Territory of Kansas, was sworn in and admitted to a seat in the
House. It was alleged that his election had been carried by an importation
of Missourians into the Territory, but no contest was made on his right,
and he held his position during the remainder of the Thirty-third
Congress.
During the recess between the 4th of March and the 1st of December, 1855,
the history of Kansas was marked by the most exciting events. The removal
of the seat of government by the Territorial Legislature from the place
which had been fixed by Governor Reeder, was deemed by the latter to have
made void, ab initio, all acts enacted by them subsequent to such removal,
on the ground that the power to locate the same was vested in him alone.
The free State party backed up Governor Reeder, while the pro-slavery
party endorsed the action of the Legislature. Governor Reeder was in the
meantime removed from office.
The free State party met at Big Springs and resolved to repudiate the acts
of the Territorial Legislature and organize a State government. A
Convention was accordingly called and held at Topeka, on the 4th Tuesday
of October, framed what was called the Topeka Convention, and set on foot
a State Government which soon came in conflict with the regularly
constituted authorities, and resulted in the indictments against the
former for treason, which followed.
Meanwhile, finding opposition to the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska act
unavailing in Congress and under the forms of the Constitution,
combinations were entered into at the North to control the political
destinies and form and regulate the domestic institutions of these
Territories through the machinery of emigrant aid societies, by which
means large numbers of persons were forwarded to the debatable ground. In
order to give consistency to the movement and surround it with the color
of legal authority, an act of incorporation was procured from the
Legislature of Massachusetts for an association by the name of the
Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, the ostensible purpose of which was to
enable emigrants to settle in the West. It was a powerful corporation,
with a capital of five millions of dollars, invested in houses and lands,
in merchandise and mills, in cannons and rifles, in powder and lead--in
all the implements of art, agriculture and war, and employing a
corresponding number of men under the management of directors who remained
at home and pulled the wires of this immense political automaton. In a
measure they succeeded. Thousands of these emigrants poured into the
Territory, armed with Sharpe's rifles and the Word of God, and located
themselves wherever their votes were most necessary. The result might have
been anticipated. Under the influence of inflammatory appeals and stung by
the irritating threats of the free-state men, the most intense indignation
was aroused in the States near the Territory of Kansas, and especially in
Missouri, whose domestic peace was thus the most directly endangered.
Counter movements consequently ensued. Bands of men came over the State
border and appeared at the polls, and on both sides angry accusations
followed that the elections were carried by fraud and violence. In the
meantime, statements entirely unfounded or grossly exaggerated concerning
events within the Territory, were sedulously diffused through remote
States to feed the flame of sectional animosity there, and the agitators
in the States in turn exerted themselves to encourage and stimulate strife
within the Territory.
During the Presidential campaign of 1856 Kansas may be said to have been
in a state of civil war. Life was nowhere safe. Armed men espousing both
sides of the question roamed throughout the country, committing
depredations and atrocities which find their equal only in the records of
savage barbarity. Men, women and children were murdered in their beds, and
few could aver themselves either as free-state men or pro-slavery men
without danger of being shot down in their tracks. It was during this
period that the notorious John Brown, with his band, made his appearance
and commenced those villanies for which he has since met a just reward
upon the gallows.
To return to Congress, however: on the 7th of April, 1856, a memorial of
the Senators and Representatives of the so-called State of Kansas,
accompanied by the Constitution adopted at Topeka, praying the admission
of the same into the Union, was presented in the House of Representatives
and referred. The Committee on Territories reported a bill to that effect,
which was rejected on the 30th of June by a vote of yeas 106, nays 107.
On motion of Mr. Barclay, of Pennsylvania, the question was reconsidered,
and the vote being taken on the passage of the bill, it was carried by
yeas 107, nays 106, the abovenamed gentleman changing his ballot, and one
other voting aye who was not present before.
The bill being brought before the Senate, that body substituted for it a
bill of its own, which was returned to the House, where no action was
taken upon it. Several other attempts were subsequently made in both the
Senate and House, during 1856, to pass bills to authorise the people of
Kansas to form a Constitution and State government, but without
success--neither body endorsing the act of the other.
On the 29th of July, 1856, a bill reported by Mr. Grow, from the Committee
on Territories, "To annul certain acts of the Legislative Assembly of the
Territory of Kansas," being before the House, Mr. Dunn, of Indiana, moved
an amendment to the same, which substantially re-established the
compromise of 1820. This was carried by a vote of 89 yeas and 77 nays. The
bill reached the Senate, and a report upon it was made by the Committee on
Territories on the 11th of August, 1856, recommending that it be laid upon
the table, which was done, by a test vote of 35 to 12.
On the 11th of July, 1856, the committee appointed by the House to proceed
to Kansas and investigate all matters connected with the contested
election case between A. H. Reeder and John W. Whitfield, each of whom
claimed to have been elected a delegate to Congress, made a majority and
minority report, Messrs. W. A. Howard, of Michigan, and Lewis Campbell, of
Ohio, affirming that everything connected with the Territorial Legislature
and the election of Whitfield was wrong; and Mr. Mordecai Oliver, of
Missouri, affirming that everything was right, and that Mr. Reeder was not
duly elected according to law.
These reports were acted upon on the 29th of July, when Mr. Whitfield was
declared not to be entitled to a seat in the House by a vote of 110 yeas
to 92 nays, and Mr. Reeder was likewise declared not to be entitled to a
seat by a vote of 88 yeas and 113 nays. On the 1st Of December, 1856,
however, Mr. Whitfield, having again been elected a delegate, was sworn in
by a vote of 112 yeas to 108 nays.
The effect of this agitation in Congress upon the people was immense, and
every power that could be brought to bear to influence the result one way
or another was unsparingly employed. It was almost the sole hinge upon
which, for a time, swung the welfare of the country. The immediate
admission of Kansas, with her free constitution, formed at Topeka, was
engrafted upon the republican platform of 1856, and men were arraigned at
the bar of public opinion and proved guilty or innocent by their standing
with reference to this great question. Happily, however, the election of
Mr. Buchanan threw oil upon the troubled waters, and with his inauguration
the country relapsed once more into a state of comparative quiet. The
predatory bands engaged in Kansas in acts of rapine, under cover of
existing political disturbances, were arrested or dispersed, the troops
were withdrawn, and tranquillity was once more restored to the hitherto
agitated territory.
On the first Monday of September, 1857, a Convention was called together
by virtue of an act of the Territorial Legislature, whose lawful existence
had been recognized by various enactments of Congress, to frame a
constitution for Kansas. A large proportion of the citizens did not think
proper to register their names and vote at the election for delegates; but
an opportunity to do this having been afforded, in the language of Mr.
Buchanan, "their refusal to avail themselves of their right, could in no
manner affect the legality of the Convention." But little difficulty
occurred except on the question of slavery, and after an excited and angry
debate on this subject, by a majority of only two, it was decided to
submit the question of slavery to the people.
This was the famous Lecompton Convention. They adopted a constitution, and
the form of submission was "constitution with slavery," or "constitution
without slavery." A great many people were indignant because the
constitution was made thus imperative, and more than one-half stayed away
from the polls. The constitution was consequently adopted by the party
voting for it with slavery. In that form it was submitted to the
President, and the President submitted it to Congress. After a protracted
discussion in both houses, the admission of Kansas under that instrument
was defeated, and a compromise was adopted to submit the Lecompton
constitution back to the people, with the condition that if accepted they
should immediately come into the Union by a proclamation of the President,
and that, if rejected, they should wait until they had ninety-three
thousand inhabitants, to be ascertained by a census. They rejected the
constitution by some ten thousand majority. In the meantime, under the
operation of the Territorial Legislature and the Lecompton Convention
acting in conjunction with each other, the anti-slavery elements rallied
and elected an anti-slavery Legislature. There were, however, bogus
returns from two or three counties, which, if admitted, would have changed
the complexion of the Legislature into a pro-slavery body; but these were
cast out by Governor Walker, and the Legislature was thus left in the
possession of the free-soil party.
After the rejection of the Lecompton constitution, the people called
another Convention, which assembled at Wyandot, and adopted an
anti-slavery constitution. This they laid before Congress, and at the same
time elected a Legislature and a member of Congress, the Legislature in
turn electing two Senators, in anticipation of the admission of the State
under the Wyandot constitution. The bill for the admission of the State
was taken up in Congress during the present session and passed, and on
Wednesday, the 30th of January, was returned to Congress with the
signature of the President, thus forever setting at rest a question which
has so long disturbed the country.
The following are the State officers of Kansas elected under the Wyandot
constitution, and who will assume to administer the new State
government:--
_Governor_--Charles Robinson, formerly of Massachusetts.
_Lieutenant Governor_--J. P. Root, formerly of Connecticut.
_Secretary of State_--J. W. Robinson, formerly of Maine.
_Treasurer_--William Tholen, formerly of New York.
_Auditor_--George W. Hillyer, formerly of Ohio.
_Superintendent of Public Instruction_--W. R. Griffith, formerly of
Illinois.
_Chief Justice_--Thomas Ewing, Jr., formerly of Ohio.
_Associate Justices_--Samuel D. Kingham, formerly of Kentucky, and
Lawrence Bailey, formerly of New Hampshire.
In the Supreme Court, under the Dred Scott decision, the right has been
established of every citizen to take his property of every kind, including
slaves, into the common Territories, belonging equally to all the States
of the confederacy, and to have it protected there under the Constitution.
It is hardly necessary to advert further to the progress of the
anti-slavery element in Congress than to merely recal the tumults excited
at the beginning of every session by the election of a Speaker, and the
constant ebb and flow of agitation upon the one absorbing theme which has
at last, through the efforts of the abolitionists and their allies, come
to be the single sentiment, upon which hang suspended the destiny and
hopes of a nation.
* * * * *
In 1857, a State Convention assembled in Worcester, Mass., "to consider
the practicability, probability and expediency of a separation of the free
and slave States." In the language of one of the orators, they felt that
the time had come when they should "sever for ever the bloody bond which
united them to the slaveholders, slave-breeders and slave-traders of the
nation." The meeting found its sympathizers, and made converts in every
portion of the North, and from that day to the present, have been
spreading among a certain class the following sentiments, with which
Wendell Phillips closed one of his speeches:--
"If the slaveholder loves the Union, I hate it. The love of so
sagacious a tyrant is authority enough for my hate. If the
slaveholder clings to the Union, it is instinct. When they set horses
to run in the Roman races, each horse bears about him a little
network of pointed pricks, that the faster he goes, make him run yet
faster. I would set the slaveholder running with four millions of
slaves for the pricks. Dissolution is my method for that race.
Dissolution, in other words, is only another method of letting
natural causes have free play. I would take down the dam of the Union
and let loose the torrent of God's own water-courses, and, like every
current, you may be sure it will clear every channel for itself."
In an address delivered by Wm. Lloyd Garrison, July 20, 1860, at the
Framingham celebration, he declares:
"Our object is the abolition of slavery _throughout the land_; and
whether in the prosecution of our object, this party goes up, or the
other party goes down, it is nothing to us. We cannot alter our
course one hair's breadth, nor accept a compromise of our principles,
for the hearty adoption of our principles. I am for _meddling with
slavery everywhere--attacking it by night and by day, in season and
out of season_--(no, it can never be out of season)--in order to
_effect its overthrow_. (Loud applause.) Higher yet will be my cry.
Upward and onward. No union with slaveholders. Down with this
slaveholding government. Let this covenant 'with death and agreement
with hell' be annulled. _Let there be a free, independent, Northern
republic_, and _the speedy abolition of slavery_ will inevitably
follow. (Loud applause.) So I am laboring to dissolve this
blood-stained Union, as a work of paramount importance. Our mission
is to regenerate public opinion."
This has been the point, end and object at which the practical
abolitionists of the country have aimed from the start. If they have
advocated a measure, its purpose has been dissolution. If they have
prevented the execution of the laws, the purpose has been dissolution; if
they have made war or made peace, or taken any step during their unholy
career, the one end and object has been the overthrow of the government
and the freedom of the slave, no matter what may be the consequence.
The conventions of the abolitionists are now held every year, and they
have gathered about them a galaxy of congenial followers--
"Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray"--
well worthy of the cause they espouse. No stone remains unturned that
obstructs the accomplishment of their designs. Until of late their agents
have circulated in every nook and corner of the country, and from Maine to
Texas these serpents of society have been distilling their venom among
the people. We have seen the result within the past two years in poisoned
families, executed slaves, a John Brown insurrection, and all the
enormities which attend the movement of a band of infatuated individuals
who are spurred on to deeds of desperation by those who stay at home to
preach that which they leave their deluded victims to practise.
As a party they have become so strong that,
"Having both the key
Of officer and office, they set all hearts
To what tune they please."
CHAPTER VIII.
The Influence of Religion and Women--Ruptures in Churches and Church
Organizations--Sentiments of Clergymen--"Uncle Tom's Cabin"--The
"Impending Crisis"--The Harper's Ferry Insurrection.
One of the principal agencies by which this extraordinary revolution in
the public sentiment of the North has been brought about is the Church.
The history of anti-slavery in this connection, however, is too extended
to admit of anything more than a narration of general facts. It is
sufficient to say that the abolitionists have had the co-operation of a
portion of the principal religious sects of the free States ever since the
year 1820, since which time their conferences, sessions, assemblies and
meetings have been the theatres of the most rancorous discussion, abusive
debate and irremediable discord. They have ruptured the Presbyterian,
Methodist and Baptist churches, and divided into antagonistic parties the
American Board of Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society,
the American Tract Society, and every other benevolent organization which
embraces within its scope of good the common country. They have thus
prevented the dissemination of the Bible, the establishing of
missionaries, the distribution of tracts, and interrupted all efforts that
have been made for the Christian elevation of the slave or the welfare of
the master. Instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the
interests of religion which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed
against each other, two hostile bodies, whose sole occupation is
individual abuse, political harangues, and the profanation of the sacred
desk. Personal holiness has given way to party spirit, and while men's
hearts around them are blazing with the carnalities of their own fallen
nature, ministers have forgotten their vocation in preaching havoc,
subverting the Scriptures and setting up as the God of worship the
comfortable negroes of the South. Their sentiment is "If the Bible
tolerates slavery for an instant, away with it. And God himself!--if he
sanctions this hell-born monster, even he is unworthy of respect." The
black portrait of Southern slavery has been indelibly painted upon their
imaginations until the pure, solid, consistent religion of our forefathers
no longer exists. These reverend Pecksniffs can hardly bear to look upon a
Southern man without a feeling of revenge; they seldom look at a Bible
without muttering a blasphemy, and cannot speak of the South and its
institutions without letting out their dream of blood and desire.
Witness some of their effusions. The Rev. Daniel Foster, one of the
chaplains of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1855-6, referring to the
Southern clergy, said:--
"He stood on that floor as an orthodox clergyman, but he would as
soon exchange with the devil as one of those hireling priests--those
traitors to humanity. The professed Church of Christ is false, and
its hireling priesthood unworthy of confidence."
The Rev. Mr. Griswold, of Stonington, said:--
"For the church which sustains slavery, wherever it be, I am ready to
say I will welcome the bolt, whether it come from heaven or hell,
which shall destroy it. Its pretensions to Christianity are the
boldest effrontery and the vilest imposture."
The Rev. Mr. Howell says, when speaking of the Bible arguments in behalf
of slavery:--
"Give up my advocacy of abolition? Never! I will sooner, Jonas like,
throw the Bible overboard, and execrate it as the Newgate calendar,
denounce God as a slaveholder, and his angels and Apostles as
turnkeys and slavedrivers."
The Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a speech in the Detroit Convention:--
"Damned to the lowest hell all the pastors and churches of the South,
as they were a body of thieves, adulterers, pirates and
murderers--that the Episcopal Methodist Church is more corrupt and
profligate than any bawdy house in the Union--that the Southern
ministers of that body are desirous of perpetuating slavery for the
purpose of debauchery, and that every clergyman among them is guilty
of enormities that would shock a savage."
The same Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a discussion in Cincinnati, in 1845, in
reply to Dr. Rice, who held up to the abolitionists' imitation the example
of the "Angel of the Lord who advised Hagar, the slave of Abraham, to
return to her master," said:--"Well, if the angel did so advise her, I
think he was a ruffian."
We might quote sentiments like the above _ad libitum_; but these are
sufficient to show the drift of a portion, at least, of the clerical mind
at the North.
What has been the influence of these clerical fanatics? They have
contributed to the formation of revolutionary societies, throughout the
length and breadth of the land, and invited all men to join in the holy
crusade. Appealing to their congregations, they have worked with honied
phrase and flattering carresses upon the tender imaginations of women
until they have learned to look upon a slaveholder as a sort of moral
monstrosity. Sewing parties have been turned into abolition clubs, while
little children in the Sunday schools have been taught that A. B. stands
for abolition, from books illuminated with graphic insignia of terror and
oppression; with pictorial chains, handcuffs and whips, in the act of
application to naked and crouching slaves. This latter remark is truer of
the past than the present generation; but we see the influence around us
in the millions of young men that now constitute the bulk of the
republican party, who may trace their opinions upon the question of
slavery to the early prejudices thus acquired.
John Randolph, of Roanoke, once said, "that the worst government on earth
was a government of priests, and the next worst was a government of
women." There is little doubt that if the present movement goes on, we
shall have a government of both priests and females. As the revolution of
France was hurried forward by the fish-women of Paris, many of the
horrible atrocities of that time being perpetrated by them, so the same
misguided spirit urges on the women of the present day, until they have
become not only regardless of the human suffering which may result from
their course, but of the inevitable tendencies of their influence towards
the overthrow of the government itself.
Some of these women edit newspapers, write books, peddle tracts, deliver
lectures, and constantly, in one shape or another, keep themselves
notorious in the public prints. One of the most effective of these
feminine offsprings ever brought to bear upon the public mind was "Uncle
Tom's Cabin"--a story which originally appeared in the National Era, at
Washington, in 1852, was afterwards published in a book, and soon created
an extraordinary excitement on both sides of the Atlantic. No other book
ever passed through so many editions, either in America or Europe. It has
been translated into most of the Continental languages, and placed upon
the stage in a dramatic form in almost every city of the Union. It served
its purpose. What truth could not accomplish, fiction did, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe has had the satisfaction of throwing a firebrand into the
world, which has kept up a furious blaze ever since. Others have followed
in her wake, but their success has been more moderate, making proselytes
by hundreds, where she made them by thousands.
Among the publications of a more recent date is that of Hinton Rowan
Helper, on the "Impending Crisis," which appeared in 1858, filled with the
most ultra abolition doctrines that could be accumulated, and received the
endorsement of the principal leaders of the republican party. It
thereafter became the Shibboleth of the organization, by which its members
have sworn, and the standard by which its principles have since been
measured. While it is a work intrinsically false and worthless, yet, being
the production of a Southern man, it had a fictitious value in the eyes of
Northern fanatics who were only too glad to use it against the people of
the South.
Contemporaneous with the excitement produced by this book, and partially
growing out of it, was
THE HARPER'S FERRY INSURRECTION.
The facts are briefly as follows:--On the 17th of October, 1859, the
country was startled with the announcement that a party of armed men,
whites and blacks, had entered the village of Harper's Ferry, Va., taken
possession of the United States armory at that place, shot two or three
whites, placed guards on the railroad bridge, and stopped the passenger
trains of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
The President promptly dispatched a detachment of marines to the spot. The
insurrectionists were found to number about twenty white men and negroes,
under the leadership of the notorious Kansas Free-State man, John
Ossawatomie Brown. After some time spent in parley, made for the purpose
of saving a number of prominent citizens who were held prisoners by Brown
within the enclosures of the United States Armory, the marines made an
attack, beat down the gates, and took all who were not killed prisoners.
Among the latter was Brown himself, who had received a number of severe
wounds. Brown confessed that his object was to liberate and run off all
the slaves in the adjoining counties of Virginia and Maryland. At a
farm-house which Brown had hired a few miles from Harper's Ferry, were
found ammunition and arms, consisting of a large number of Sharpe's
rifles, revolvers, pikes and other implements of war, together with a
great amount of correspondence, consisting of letters of Gerrit Smith and
Fred Douglas. During the whole affair, there were killed ten of the
insurrectionists, six citizens and one United States marine, and a number
on both sides were wounded.
Brown was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the United States
on the 2d of November, was sentenced to be hung, which sentence was
carried into effect on the 2d of December, 1859.
It has since been discovered that the following is a portion of the plans
of abolitionists, matured in Kansas by Brown and others, and which he
attempted in part to carry out:--
"1. To _make war_ (openly or secretly, as circumstances may dictate)
_upon the property of the slaveholders_ and their abettors--not for
its destruction, if that can be easily avoided, but to convert it to
the _use_ of the _slaves_. If it cannot be thus converted, then we
advise its _destruction_. Teach the slaves to _burn their master's
buildings_, to _kill_ their _cattle_ and _horses_, to conceal or
_destroy farming utensils_, to abandon labor in seed time and
harvest, and _let crops perish_. Make slavery unprofitable in this
way, if it can be done in no other.
"2. To make slaveholders objects of _derision_ and _contempt_, by
_flogging them_ whenever they shall be guilty of flogging their
slaves.
"3. To risk no general insurrection until we of the North go to your
assistance, or you are sure of success without our aid.
"4. To cultivate the friendship and confidence of the slaves; to
consult with them as to their rights and interests, and the means of
promoting them; to show your interest in their welfare, and your
readiness to assist them; let them know that they have your sympathy,
and it will give them courage, self-respect and ambition, and make
men of them--infinitely better men to live by, as neighbors and
friends, than the indolont, arrogant, selfish, heartless, domineering
robbers and tyrants who now keep both yourselves and the slaves in
subjection, and look with contempt upon all who live by honest labor.
"5. To change your political institutions as soon as possible, and,
in the meantime, give never a vote to a slaveholder; pay no taxes to
their government, if you can either resist or evade them; as
witnesses and jurors, give no testimony and no verdicts in support of
any slaveholding claims; perform no military, patrol or police
service; mob slaveholding courts, jails and sheriffs; do nothing, in
short, for sustaining slavery, but everything you safely can,
_publicly and privately, for its overthrow_."
THE END.
We have before given a table of the number of slaves in the United States
in 1790. It was then 697,696. The following is a similar estimate for the
year 1850, as determined by the seventh census:
1 New Jersey 222
2 Delaware 2,990
3 Maryland 90,368
4 Virginia 472,528
5 North Carolina 288,548
6 South Carolina 384,984
7 Georgia 386,682
8 Florida 39,309
9 Alabama 342,892
10 Mississippi 309,878
11 Louisiana 244,809
12 Texas 58,161
13 Arkansas 47,100
14 Tennessee 239,460
15 Kentucky 210,981
16 Missouri 87,422
17 District of Columbia 3,687
18 Utah 26
----------
Total 3,204,347
Adding to this sum thirty per cent, a fair estimate of the increase for
the last ten years, and we have in 1860, 3,965,651 slaves in the United
States, or _four millions in round numbers_. There were in the United
States 347,525 persons owning slaves. Of this number two owned 1,000 each;
both resided in South Carolina. Nine only owned between 500 and 1,000, of
whom two resided in Georgia, four in Louisiana, one in Mississippi.
Fifty-six owned from 300 to 500, of whom one resided in Maryland, one in
Virginia, three in North Carolina, one in Tennessee, one in Florida, four
in Georgia, six in Louisiana, eight in Mississippi, twenty-nine in South
Carolina, one hundred and eighty-seven owned from 200 to 300, of whom
South Carolina had sixty-nine, Louisiana thirty-six, Georgia twenty-two,
Mississippi eighteen, Alabama sixteen, North Carolina twelve, five other
States fourteen, and four States none. Fourteen hundred and seventy-nine
owned from 100 to 200. All the slaveholding States, except Florida and
Missouri, are represented in this class, South Carolina having one-fourth
of the whole; 29,733 persons owned from ten to twenty slaves each. South
Carolina, from this statement, owns more slaves in proportion to her
population than any other State in the South.
* * * * *
A few general considerations, and we conclude our narrative. After tracing
the course of events recorded in the foregoing pages, the questions
naturally arise--What has been the result? what have the abolitionists
gained? The answers may be briefly summed up as follows:--
1. They have put an end to the benevolent schemes of emancipation
which originated among the real philanthropists of the South, and
were calculated, in a proper time and manner, beneficent to all
concerned, to produce the desired result. In their wild and fanatical
attempts they have counteracted the very object at which they have
aimed. Instead of ameliorating the condition of the slaves, they have
only aroused the distrust of the master, and led to restrictions
which did not before exist. The truth is, the lot of the people of
the South is not more implicated in that of the slaves than is the
lot of the slaves in the people of the South. In their mutual
relations, they must survive or perish together. In the language of
another, "The worst foes of the black race are those who have
intermeddled in their behalf. By nature, the most affectionate and
loyal of all races beneath the sun, they are also the most helpless:
and no calamity can befal them greater than the loss of that
protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system. Indeed, the
experiment has been tried of precipitating them upon a freedom which
they know not how to enjoy; and the dismal results are before the
world in statistics that may well excite astonishment. With the
fairest portions of the earth in their possession, and with the
advantage of a long discipline as the cultivators of the soil, their
constitutional indolence has converted the most beautiful islands of
the sea into howling wastes. It is not too much to say, that if the
South should, at this moment, surrender every slave, the wisdom of
the entire world, united in solemn council, could not solve the
question of their disposal. Freedom would be their doom. Every
Southern master knows this truth and feels its power."
2. Touch the negro, and you touch cotton--the mainspring that keeps
the machinery of the world in motion. In teaching slaves to entertain
wild and dangerous notions of liberty, the abolitionists have thus
jeopardized the commerce of the country and the manufacturing
interests of the civilized world. They have likewise destroyed
confidence. Northern institutions are no longer filled with the young
men and women of the South, but find rivals springing up in every
State south of Mason and Dixon's line. Northern commerce can no
longer depend upon the rich places of wealth it has hitherto found in
Southern patronage. Northern men can no longer travel in the South
without being regarded as objects of suspicion and confounded with
the abolitionists of their section. In short, all the kind relations
that have ever existed between the North and the South have been
interrupted, and a barrier erected, which, socially, commercially and
politically, has separated the heretofore united interests of the two
sections, and which nothing but a revolution in public sentiment, a
higher sense of the moral obligations due our neighbor, a religious
training, which will graft upon our nature a truer conscience and
inculcate a purer charity, and finally a recognition of abstract
right and justice, can ever remove.
3. They have held out a Canadian Utopia, where they have taught the
slaves in their ignorance to believe they could enjoy a life of ease
and luxury, and having cut them off from a race of kind masters and
separated them from comfortable homes, left the deluded beings
incapable of self-support upon an uncongenial soil, to live in a
state of bestiality and misery, and die cursing the abolitionists as
the authors of their wretchedness.
4. They have led a portion of the people of the North, as well as of
the South, to examine the question in all its aspects, and to plant
themselves upon the broad principle that that form of government
which recognizes the institution of slavery in the United States, is
the best, the condition of the two races, white and black being
considered, for the development, progress and happiness of each. In
other words, to regard servitude as a blessing to the negro, and
under proper and philanthropic restrictions, necessary to their
preservation and the prosperity of the country.
5. Step by step they have built up a party upon an issue which has
led to a dissolution of the Union. They have scattered the seeds of
abolitionism until a majority of the voters of the free States have
become animated by a fixed purpose not only to prevent the further
growth of the slave power, but to beard the lion in his den.
The power of the North has been consolidated, and for the first time in
the history of the country it is wielded as a sectional weapon against the
interests of the South. The government is now in the hands of men elected
by Northern votes, who regard slavery as a curse and a crime, and they
will have the means necessary to accomplish their purpose.
The utterances that have heretofore come from the rostrum or from
irresponsible associations of individuals now come from the throne. "Clad
with the sanctities of office, with the anointing oil poured upon the
monarch's head, the decree has gone forth that the institution of Southern
slavery shall be constrained within assigned limits. Though Nature and
Providence should send forth its branches like the banyan tree to take
root in congenial soil, here is a power superior to both, that says it
shall wither and die within its own charmed circle."
If this be not believed, let the following selections from the speeches of
the leaders of the Republican party be the proof:--
Hon. Charles Sumner, United States Senator from Mass.:--
"This slave oligarchy will soon cease to exist as a political
combination. Its final doom may be postponed, but it is certain.
Languishing, it may live yet longer, but it will surely die. Yes,
fellow-citizens, surely it will die--when disappointed in its
purposes--driven back within the States, and constrained within these
limits, it can no longer rule the Republic as a plantation of slaves
at home; can no longer menace Territories with its five-headed device
to compel labor without wages; can no longer fasten upon the
constitution an interpretation which makes merchandise of men, and
gives a disgraceful immunity to the brokers of human flesh, and the
butchers of human hearts; and when it can no longer grind flesh and
blood, groans and sighs, the tears of mothers and the cries of
children into the cement of a barbarous political power! Surely,
then, in its retreat, smarting under the indignation of an aroused
people, and the concurring judgment of the civilized world it must
die;--it may be, as a poisoned rat dies, of rage in its hole.
(Enthusiastic applause.) Meanwhile all good omens are ours. The work
cannot stop. Quickened by the triumph, now at hand,--with a
Republican President in power, State after State, quitting the
condition of a territory, and spurning slavery, will be welcomed into
our plural unit, and joining hands together, will become a belt of
fire about the slave States, in which slavery must die."
Hon. John Wentworth, Editor of the _Chicago Democrat_, and Mayor of
Chicago:--
"We might as well make up our minds to fight the battle now, as at
any other time. It will have to be fought, and the longer the evil
day is put off, the more bloody will be the contest when it comes. If
we do not place slavery in the process of extinction now, by hemming
it in, where it is, and not suffering it to expand, it will
extinguish us, and our liberties.
"If the Union be preserved, and if the Federal government be
administered for a few years by Republican Presidents, a scheme may
be devised, and carried out, which will result in the peaceful,
honorable and equitable EMANCIPATION of ALL the SLAVES.
"The States must be made ALL FREE, and if a Republican government is
intrusted with the duty of making them FREE, the work will be done
without bloodshed, without revolution, without disastrous loss of
property. The work will be one of time and patience, but it MUST BE
DONE!"
Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State (his Rochester speech of Oct. 25,
1858):
"Our country is a theatre which exhibits, in full operation, two
radically different political systems--the one resting on the basis
of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor
of freemen. * * * * * * * *
"The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But never
have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.
* * * These antagonistic systems are continually coming in closer
contact, and collision ensues.
"Shall I tell you what this collision means? It is an irrepressible
conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the
United States must, and will, sooner or later, become entirely a
slaveholding nation, or entirety a free labor nation. Either the
cotton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations
of Louisiana, will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston
and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or
else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York
must again be surrendered by their farmers to the slave culture and
to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more
markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men."
At a later period, in the Senate of the United States, the same Senator
uttered the following language:--
"A free Republican government like this, notwithstanding all its
constitutional checks, cannot long resist and counteract the progress
of society.
"Free labor has at last apprehended its rights and its destiny, and
is organizing itself to assume the government of the Republic. It
will henceforth meet you boldly and resolutely here (Washington); it
will meet you everywhere, in the Territories and out of them,
wherever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in
California and in Kansas, it will invade you soon in Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. It will meet you in Arizona,
in Central America, and even in Cuba.
* * * * *
"You may, indeed, get a start under or near the tropics, and seem
safe for a time, but it will be only a short time. Even there you
will found States only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The
interest of the whole race demands the ultimate emancipation of all
men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with
needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or
be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. The
white man needs this continent to labor upon. His head is clear, his
arm is strong, and his necessities are fixed.
* * * * *
"It is for yourselves, and not for us, to decide how long and through
what further mortifications and disasters the contest shall be
protracted before freedom shall enjoy her already assured triumph.
"You may refuse to yield it now, and for a short period, but your
refusal will only animate the friends of freedom with the courage and
the resolution, and produce the union among them, which alone is
necessary on their part to attain the position itself, simultaneously
with the impending overthrow of the existing Federal Administration
and the constitution of a new and more independent Congress."
Hon. Joshua Giddings, Member of Congress from Ohio:--
"I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection
in the South; when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and
led on by British officers, shall assert his freedom, and wage a war
of extermination against his master; when the torch of the incendiary
shall light up the towns and cities of the South, and blot out the
last vestige of slavery. And though I may not mock at their calamity,
nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will hail it as the dawn of a
political millennium."
Hon. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States:--
"I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave, and
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect
the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where
the public mind shall rest in the belief, that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, until it
shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new,
North as well as South."
"I have always hated slavery as much as any abolitionist. I have
always been an old line Whig. I have always hated it, and I always
believed it in a course of ultimate extinction. If I were in
Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery
should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott
decision I would vote that it should."
These are a few only of the extracts of a similar nature which may be
selected from multitudes of speeches that have been delivered by the
leading men of the party. The same sentiment, however, runs through them
all, and abolition, in one way or another, is not less a doctrine of the
Republican party of 1860 than it was of the Liberty party of 1840, to
which it owes its birth. "Abolitionism is clearly its informing and
actuating soul; and fanaticism is a blood-hound that never bolts its track
when it has once lapped blood. The elevation of their candidate is far
from being the consummation of their aims. It is only the beginning of
that consummation; and if all history be not a lie, there will be coercion
enough till the end of the beginning is reached, and the dreadful banquet
of slaughter and ruin shall glut the appetite."
And now the end has come. The divided house, which Mr. Lincoln boastfully
said would not fall, has fallen. The ruins of the Union are at the feet as
well of those who loved and cherished it as of those who labored for its
destruction. The Constitution is at length a nullity, and our flag a
mockery. Fanaticism, too, must have its apotheosis.
HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.
CHAPTER IX.
The Six Seceding States and date of their Separation--Organization of the
Southern Congress--Names of Members--Election of President and Vice
President, and Sketch of their Lives--The New Constitution--The City of
Montgomery, &c., &c.
On Saturday, February 9, 1861, six seceding States of the old Union
organized an independent government, adopted a constitution, and elected a
President and Vice President. These States passed their respective
ordinances of dissolution as follows:--
STATE. DATE. YEAS. NAYS.
South Carolina Dec. 20, 1860 169 --
Mississippi Jan. 9, 1861 84 15
Alabama Jan. 11, 1861 61 39
Florida Jan. 11, 1861 62 7
Georgia Jan. 19, 1861 228 89
Louisiana Jan. 25, 1861 113 17
Only two of the seceding States--South Carolina and Georgia--were original
members of the confederacy. The others came in in the following order:--
Louisiana April 8, 1812
Mississippi Dec 10, 1817
Alabama Dec 14, 1819
Florida March 3, 1845
Texas Dec 29, 1845
The Convention which consummated this event assembled on the 4th of
February, at Montgomery, Alabama. Hon. R. M. Barnwell, of South Carolina,
being appointed temporary chairman, the Divine blessing was invoked by
Rev. Dr. Basil Manly.
We give this first impressive prayer in the Congress of the new
Confederacy below, and further add, as an illustration of the religious
earnestness by which the delegates were one and all animated, that the
ministers of Montgomery were invited to open the deliberations each day
with invocations to the Throne of Grace:--
Oh, Thou God of the Universe, Thou madest all things; Thou madest man
upon the earth; Thou hast endowed him with reason and capacity for
government. We thank Thee that Thou hast made us at this late period
of the world; and in this fair portion of the earth, and hast
established a free government and a pure form of religion amongst us.
We thank Thee for all the hallowed memories connected with our past
history. Thou hast been the God of our fathers; oh, be Thou our God.
Let it please Thee to vouchsafe Thy sacred presence to this assembly.
Oh, Our Father, we appeal to Thee, the searcher of hearts, for the
purity and sincerity of our motives. If we are in violation of any
compact still obligatory upon us with those States from which we have
separated in order to set up a new government--if we are acting in
rebellion to and in contravention of piety towards God and good faith
to our fellow man, we cannot hope for Thy presence and blessing. But
oh, Thou heart searching God, we trust that Thou seest we are
pursuing those rights which were guaranteed to us by the solemn
covenants of our fathers and which were cemented by their blood. And
now we humbly recognise Thy hand in the Providence which has brought
us together. We pray Thee to give the spirit of wisdom to Thy
servants, with all necessary grace, that they may act with
deliberation and purpose, and that they will wisely adopt such
measures in this trying condition of our affairs as shall redound to
Thy glory and the good of our country. So direct them that they may
merge the lust for spoil and the desire for office into the patriotic
desire for the welfare of this great people. Oh God, assist them to
preserve our republican form of government and the purity of the
forms of religion, without interference with the strongest form of
civil government. May God in tender mercy bestow upon the deputies
here assembled health and strength of body, together with calmness
and soundness of mind; may they aim directly at the glory of God and
the welfare of the whole people, and when the hour of trial which may
supervene shall come, enable them to stand firm in the exercise of
truth, with great prudence and a just regard for the sovereign rights
of their constituents. Oh, God, grant that the union of these States,
and all that may come into this union, may endure as long as the sun
and moon shall last, and until the Son of Man shall come a second
time to judge the world in righteousness. Preside over this body in
its organization and in the distribution of its offices. Let truth
and justice, and equal rights be secured to our government. And now,
Our Father in Heaven, we acknowledge Thee as our God--do Thou rule in
us, do Thou sway us, do Thou control us, and let the blessings of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit rest upon this assembly now and forever.
Amen.
A. R. Lamar, Esq., of Georgia, was then appointed temporary secretary, and
the deputies from the several seceding States represented presented their
credentials in alphabetical order, and signed their names to the roll of
the Convention.
The following is the list:--
ALABAMA.
R. W. Walker,
R. H. Smith,
J. L. M. Curry,
W. P. Chilton,
S. F. Hale Colon,
J. McRae,
John Gill Shorter,
David P. Lewis,
Thomas Fearn.
FLORIDA.
James B. Owens,
J. Patten Anderson,
Jackson Morton, (not present.)
GEORGIA.
Robert Toombs,
Howell Cobb,
F. S. Bartow,
M. J. Crawford,
E. A. Nisbet,
B. H. Hill,
A. R. Wright,
Thomas R. R. Cobb,
A. H. Kenan,
A. H. Stephens.
LOUISIANA.
John Perkins, Jr.
A. Declonet,
Charles M. Conrad,
D. F. Kenner,
G. E. Sparrow,
Henry Marshall.
MISSISSIPPI.
W. P. Harris,
Walter Brooke,
N. S. Wilson,
A. M. Clayton,
W. S. Barry,
J. T. Harrison.
SOUTH CAROLINA.
R. B. Rhett,
R. W. Barnwell,
L. M. Keitt,
James Chesnut, Jr.
C. G. Memminger,
W. Porcher Miles,
Thomas J. Withers,
W. W. Boyce.
THE HALL OF THE SOUTHERN CONVENTION.
The following description is from a Southern paper:--
"On the extreme left, as the visitor enters the Hall, may be seen a
list of the names of the gallant corps constituting the Palmetto
regiment of South Carolina, so distinguished in the history of the
Mexican War; next to that is an impressive representation of
Washington delivering his inaugural address; and still farther to the
left, a picture of South Carolina's ever memorable statesman, John C.
Calhoun; and next to that, an excellent portrait of Albert J.
Pickett, "the historian of Alabama." Just to the right of the
President's desk is the portrait of Dixon H. Lewis, a representative
in Congress from Alabama for a number of years. Immediately over the
President's desk is the portrait of the immortal General George
Washington, painted by Stuart. There are a few facts connected with
the history of this portrait which are, perhaps, deserving of special
mention. It was given by Mrs. Custis to General Benjamin Smith, of
North Carolina. At the sale of his estate it was purchased by Mr.
Moore, who presented it to Mrs. E. E. Clitherall (mother of Judge A.
B. Clitherall, of Pickens), in whose possession it has been for forty
years. It is one of the three original portraits of General
Washington now in existence. A second one, painted by Trumbull, is in
the White House at Washington, and is the identical portrait that
Mrs. Madison cut out of the frame when the British attacked
Washington in 1812. The third is in the possession of a gentleman in
Boston, Massachusetts. Next to the portrait of Washington is that of
the Old Hero, Andrew Jackson; next in order is an excellent one of
Alabama's distinguished son, Honorable W. L. Yancey; and next, a
picture of the great orator and statesman, Henry Clay; and next to
that, a historical representation of the swamp encampment scene of
General Marion, when he invited the British officer to partake of his
scanty fare; and on the extreme right of the door, entering into the
Hall, is another picture of General Washington, beautifully and
artistically wrought upon canvas by some fair hand."
The deputies having handed in their credentials, on motion of Mr. Rhett,
of South Carolina, Honorable Howell Cobb, of Georgia, was chosen President
of the Convention, and Mr. J. J. Hooper, Secretary. Thus permanently
organized, the Convention proceeded with the usual routine of business.
A committee was appointed to report a plan for the Provisional Government
upon the basis of the Constitution of the United States, and after
remaining in secret session the greater part of the time for five days,
the "Congress"--the word "Convention" being entirely ignored on motion of
Honorable A. H. Stephens, of Georgia--at half past ten o'clock, on the
night of February 8, unanimously adopted a provisional constitution
similar in the main to the constitution of the old Union.
The vital points of difference are the following:--
1. _The importation of African negroes from any foreign country other
than the slaveholding States of the Confederated States is hereby
forbidden, and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall
effectually prevent the same._
2. _Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of
slaves from any State not a member of this Confederacy._
The Congress shall have power--
1. _To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, for
revenue necessary to pay the debts and carry on the government of the
Confederacy, and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform
throughout the Confederacy._
_A slave in one State escaping to another shall be delivered up on
the claim of the party to whom said slave may belong by the Executive
authority of the State in which such slave may be found; and any case
of any abduction or forcible rescue full compensation, including the
value of slave, and all costs and expenses, shall be made to the
party by the State in which such abduction or rescue shall take
place._
2. _The government hereby instituted shall take immediate steps for
the settlement of all matters between the States forming it and their
late confederates of the United States in relation to the public
property and public debt at the time of their withdrawal from them,
these States hereby declaring it to be their wish and earnest desire
to adjust everything pertaining to the common property, common
liabilities, and common obligations of that Union upon principles of
right, justice, equity and good faith._
In several other features the new constitution differs from the original.
The old one commences with the words--"We the people of the United
States," &c. The new--"We the deputies of the sovereign and independent
States of South Carolina," &c., thus distinctly indicating their sovereign
and independent character, and yet their mutual reliance.
Again, the new constitution reverentially invokes "the favor of Almighty
God." In the old, the existence of a Supreme Being appears to have been
entirely ignored.
In the original, not only was the word "slave" omitted, but even the idea
was so studiously avoided as to raise grave questions concerning the
intent of the several clauses in which the "institution" is a subject of
legislation, while in the new, the word "slaves" is boldly inserted, and
the intention of its framers so clearly defined with reference to them
that there is hardly a possibility of misapprehension.
Again, contrary to the expectation of the majority of the Northern people,
who have _persistently urged that the object of the South in establishing
a separate government was to re-open the African slave trade, the most
stringent measures are to be adopted for its suppression_.
All this was done with a unanimity which indicated the harmony of
sentiment that prevailed among the people of the seceding States, and
among the delegates by whom they were represented in the Southern
Congress.
THE ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND VICE PRESIDENT.
The constitution having been adopted, the sixth day's proceedings of the
Southern Congress, on Saturday, February 9, were characterized by unusual
interest, the galleries being crowded with anxious and enthusiastic
spectators.
During the preliminary business several model flags were presented for
consideration--one being from the ladies of South Carolina; and a
committee was appointed to report on a flag, a seal, a coat of arms and a
motto for the Southern confederacy. There were likewise appointed
committees on foreign affairs, on finance, on military and naval affairs,
on postal affairs, on commerce and on patents.
The Congress then proceeded to the election of a President and Vice
President of the Southern confederacy, which resulted, by a unanimous
vote, as follows:--
_President_--Honorable Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi.
_Vice President_--Honorable Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia.
This announcement was received with the grandest demonstrations of
enthusiasm. One hundred guns were fired in the city of Montgomery in honor
of the event, and in the evening a serenade was given to the Vice
President elect, to which he eloquently responded. Messrs. Chesnut and
Keitt, of South Carolina, and Conrad, of Louisiana, likewise made
appropriate speeches.
A resolution was adopted in Congress appointing a committee of three
Alabama deputies to make arrangements to secure the use of suitable
buildings for the use of the several executive departments of the
Confederacy.
An ordinance was also passed, continuing in force, until repealed or
altered by the Southern Confederacy, all laws of the United States in
force or use on the first of November last.
The Committee on Finance were likewise instructed to report promptly a
tariff for raising revenue for the support of the government. Under this
law a tariff has been laid on all goods brought from the United States.
The appointment of a committee was also authorized for the purpose of
reporting a constitution for the permanent government of the Confederacy.
These are some of the measures thus far adopted by the new government. The
legislation has been prompt, unanimous, and adapted to the exigency of the
moment, and there is little doubt that when all the necessary laws have
been passed, a strong, healthy, and wealthy confederation will be in the
full tide of successful experiment.
The Southern Cabinet is composed of the following gentlemen:--
Secretary of State Robert Toombs.
Secretary of Treasury C. S. Memminger.
Secretary of Interior Vacancy.
Secretary of War L P. Walker.
Secretary of Navy John Perkins, Jr.
Postmaster General H. T. Ebett.
Attorney General J. P. Benjamin.
HON. JEFFERSON DAVIS, OF MISSISSIPPI, PRESIDENT.
Few men have led a life more filled with stirring or eventful incidents
than Jefferson Davis. A native of Kentucky, born about 1806, he went in
early youth with his father to Mississippi, then a Territory, and was
appointed by President Monroe in 1822 to be a cadet at West Point. He
graduated with the first honors in 1828 as Brevet Second Lieutenant, and
at his own request was placed in active service, being assigned to the
command of General (then Colonel) Zachary Taylor, who was stationed in the
West. In the frontier wars of the time young Davis distinguished himself
in so marked a manner that when a new regiment of dragoons was formed he
at once obtained a commission as first lieutenant. During this time a
romantic attachment sprang up between him and his prisoner, the famous
chief Black Hawk, in which the latter forgot his animosity to the people
of the United States in his admiration for Lieutenant Davis, and not until
his death was the bond of amity severed between the two brave men.
In 1835 he settled quietly down upon a cotton plantation, devoting himself
to a thorough and systematic course of political and scientific education.
He was married to a daughter of Gen. Taylor.
In 1843 he took the stump for Polk, and in 1845, having attracted no
little attention in his State by his vigor and ability, he was elected to
Congress. Ten days after he made his maiden speech. Soon the Mexican war
broke out, and a regiment of volunteers having been formed in Mississippi,
and himself chosen Colonel, he resigned his post in Congress, and
instantly repaired with his command to join the _corps d'armee_ under
General Taylor. At Monterey and Buena Vista he and his noble regiment
achieved the soldiers' highest fame. Twice by his coolness he saved the
day at Buena Vista. Wherever fire was hottest or danger to be encountered,
there Colonel Davis and the Mississippi Rifles were to be found. He was
badly wounded in the early part of the action, but sat his horse steadily
till the day was won, and refused to delegate even a portion of his duties
to his subordinate officers.
In 1848 he was appointed to fill the vacancy in the Senate of the United
States occasioned by the death of General Speight, and in 1850 was elected
to that body almost unanimously for the term of six years.
In 1851 he resigned his seat in the Senate to become the State Rights
candidate for Governor, but was defeated by Governor Foote.
In 1853 he was called to a seat in the Cabinet of President Pierce, and
was Secretary of War during his administration. In 1857 he was elected
United States Senator from Mississippi for the term of six years, which
office he held until his resignation on the secession of Mississippi from
the Union.
Personally, he is the last man who would be selected as a "fire-eater." He
is a prim, smooth looking man, with a precise manner, a stiff, soldierly
carriage and an austerity that is at first forbidding. He has naturally,
however, a genial temper, companionable qualities and a disposition that
endears him to all by whom he may be surrounded. As a speaker he is clear,
forcible and argumentative; his voice is clear and firm, without tremor,
and he is one in every way fitted for the distinguished post to which he
has been called.
HON. ALEXANDER H. STEVENS, OF GEORGIA, VICE PRESIDENT.
This gentleman is known throughout the Union as one of the most prominent
of Southern politicians and eloquent orators. His father, Andrew B.
Stephens, was a planter of moderate means, and his mother (Margaret Grier)
was a sister to the famous compiler of Grier's almanacs. She died when he
was an infant, leaving him with four brothers and one sister, of whom only
one brother survives.
Mr. Stephens was born in Georgia on the 11th of February, 1812. When in
his fourteenth year his father died, and the homestead being sold, his
share of the entire estate was about five hundred dollars. With a
commendable Anglo-Saxon love of his ancestry Mr. Stephens has since
repurchased the original estate, which comprised about two hundred and
fifty acres, and has added to it about six hundred more. Assisted by
friends he entered the University of Georgia in 1828, and in 1832
graduated at the head of his class. In 1834 he commenced the study of the
law, and in less than twelve months was engaged in one of the most
important cases in the country. His eloquence has ever had a powerful
effect upon juries, enforcing, as it does, arguments of admirable
simplicity and legal weight. From 1837 to 1840 he was a member of the
Georgia Legislature. In 1842 he was elected to the State Senate, and in
1843 was elected to Congress. He was a member of the whig party in its
palmiest days, but since its dissolution has acted with the men of the
South, and such has been the upright, steadfast and patriotic policy he
has pursued, that no one in the present era of faction, selfishness or
suspicion has whispered an accusation of selfish motives or degrading
intrigues against him. In the House he served prominently on the most
important committees, and effected the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill
through the House at a time when its warmest friends despaired of success.
He was subsequently appointed chairman of the Committee on Territories,
and was also chairman of the special committee to which was referred the
Lecompton constitution. By his patriotic course on various measures, he
has, from time to time, excited the ire of many of the Southern people,
but he has always succeeded in coming out of the contest with flying
colors, and his recent elevation is a mark of the profound respect
entertained for his qualities as a man and a statesman.
Mr. Stephens is most distinguished as an orator, though he does not look
like one who can command the attention of the House at any time or upon
any topic. His health from childhood has been very feeble, being afflicted
with four abscesses and a continued derangement of the liver, which gives
him a consumptive appearance though his lungs are sound. He has never
weighed over ninety-six pounds, and to see his attenuated figure bent over
his desk, the shoulders contracted and the shape of his slender limbs
visible through his garments, a stranger would never select him as the
"John Randolph" of our time, more dreaded as an adversary and more prized
as an ally in a debate than any other member of the House of
Representatives. When speaking he has at first a shrill, sharp voice, but
as he warms up with his subject the clear tones and vigorous sentences
roll out with a sonorousness that finds its way to every corner of the
immense hall. He is witty, rhetorical and solid, and has a dash of keen
satire that puts an edge upon every speech. He is a careful student, but
so very careful that no trace of study is perceptible as he dashes along
in a flow of facts, arguments and language that to common minds is almost
bewildering. Possessing hosts of warm friends who are proud of his regard,
and enlightened Christian virtue and inflexible integrity, such is
Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President elect of the Southern
confederacy.
THE NEW CONFEDERACY.
At this particular juncture it will also be interesting, in view of coming
legislation, to note some of the statistics of the several seceding States
with reference to their population, State debt, &c. They are as follows:--
POPULATION IN 1860. STATE DEBT
FREE SLAVE. IN 1859.
South Carolina 308,186 407,185 $6,192,743
Georgia 615,336 467,400 2,632,722
Alabama 520,444 435,473 5,888,134
Mississippi 407,051 479,607 7,271,707
Louisiana 354,245 312,186 10,703,142
Florida 81,885 63,800 158,000
--------- ---------
2,287,147 2,165,651
2,287,147
---------
Total 4,452,798
This is a population exceeding by 522,926 that of 1790, at the close of
the Revolutionary war of the whole United States.
1850. 1860.
Total population of free States 13,454,169 18,950,759
Do. do. slave States 9,612,969 12,433,409
Do. do. Territories 120,901 262,701
---------- ----------
Total population of the United States 23,191,876 31,646,869
Increase in ten years 8,454,993
THE CITY OF MONTGOMERY--THE PROVISIONAL CAPITAL OF THE NEW CONFEDERACY.
The city of Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, has assumed such a sudden
importance as the capital of the Southern Confederacy and the seat of the
federal operations of the new government, that we give below a brief
sketch of its locality and surroundings. It is situated on the left bank
of the Alabama River, 331 miles by water from Mobile, and 830 miles from
Washington, D. C. It is the second city in the State in respect to trade
and population, and is one of the most flourishing inland towns of the
Southern States, possessing great facilities for communications with the
surrounding country. For steamboat navigation the Alabama River is one of
the best in the Union, the largest steamers ascending to this point from
Mobile. The city is also the western termination of the Montgomery and
West Point Railroad. It contains several extensive iron foundries, mills,
factories, large warehouses, numerous elegant stores and private
residences. The cotton shipped at this place annually amounts to about one
hundred thousand bales. The public records were removed from Tuscaloosa to
Montgomery in November, 1847. The State House was destroyed by fire in
1849, and another one was erected on the same site in 1851. The present
population of the city is not far from 16,000, and it is probable that,
with all its natural advantages, the fact of its present selection as the
Southern capital, will soon place it in the first rank of Southern cities.
THE EFFECT OF THE SOUTHERN CONGRESS.
The united front and united action of the six States which have thus
formed themselves into the pioneer guard, as it were, of the remaining
nine, is an earnest that no one of them, in its sovereign capacity, will
undertake a conflict with the old United States without the assent of its
brethren. What they have thus far done "in Congress assembled," they have
done soberly and after mature consideration; and in their past action we
may find assurance that no future movements will be undertaken--especially
those of a nature likely to involve them in a civil war--without equal
deliberation, calmness, and a just regard for the common welfare. If there
should be, it will be the fault of the aggressive policy of some of the
Legislatures of the North.
It will be observed that, notwithstanding Texas had already passed the
ordinance of secession, as that act had not yet been endorsed by the
people, at the time of the sitting of the Convention, she was not regarded
as one of the new confederacy, and consequently was unrepresented. North
Carolina also sent three Commissioners to deliberate with the delegates of
the seceding States--namely, Messrs. D. L. Swain, J. L. Bridgers and M. W.
Ransom.
The entire movement bears upon its face all the marks of a well developed,
well digested plan of government--a government now as independent as were
the old thirteen States after the Fourth of July, 1776, and possessing
what our ancestors of that date did not fully have--the wealth, ability
and power to meet almost any contingency that may arise. Meanwhile,
judging from the disposition of republicans in Congress and throughout
the country, the ball thus set in motion will not stop. The States already
united will undoubtedly remain so, and form the nucleus around which will
gather others. The new Union will grow in strength as it grows in age.
According to our recent intelligence from England and France, these two
nations will rival each other in endeavoring to first secure the favor of
the new Power. With them cotton will be the successful diplomat. Ministers
and agents will be appointed, postal facilities will be re-arranged, a new
navy will spring into existence, prosperity will begin to pour into the
newly opened lap, and we shall witness at our very side the success of a
people who, by the pertinacity of the selfish political leaders and the
political domination of the North, have been driven to measures of defence
which are destined to redound to their benefit, but to our cost and
national shame.--_New York Herald, Feb. 11, 1861._
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