initial commit of ebook 3034HEADmain

2 files changed, 5283 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/ascru10.txt b/old/ascru10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a91eccf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/ascru10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5283 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Anti-Slavery Crusade
+by Jesse Macy
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.
+
+Please do not remove this.
+
+This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
+Do not change or edit it without written permission.  The words
+are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
+need about what they can legally do with the texts.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota,
+Iowa, Indiana, and Vermont. As the requirements for other states
+are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will
+begin in the additional states. These donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655
+
+
+Title: The Anti-Slavery Crusade
+
+Author: Jesse Macy
+
+Release Date: January, 2002  [Etext #3034]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Anti-Slavery Crusade
+by Jesse Macy
+******This file should be named ascru10.txt or ascru10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, ascru11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, ascru10a.txt
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
+all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
+copyright notice is included.  Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
+of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
+the official publication date.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
+or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02
+
+Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
+manage to get some real funding.
+
+Something is needed to create a future for Project Gutenberg for
+the next 100 years.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
+Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota,
+Iowa, Indiana, and Vermont. As the requirements for other states
+are met, additions to this list will be made and fund raising will
+begin in the additional states.
+
+All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and will be tax deductible to the extent
+permitted by law.
+
+Mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Avenue
+Oxford, MS 38655  [USA]
+
+We are working with the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation to build more stable support and ensure the
+future of Project Gutenberg.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+You can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
+if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
+it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email.
+
+
+Example command-line FTP session:
+
+ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
+login: anonymous
+password: your@login
+cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
+cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET GUTINDEX.??  [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
+GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain etexts, and royalty free copyright licenses.
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END*
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Anti-Slavery Crusade, A Chronicle of the Gathering Storm
+
+Author: Jesse Macy
+
+THIS BOOK, VOLUME 28 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
+JOHNSON, EDITOR, WAS DONATED TO PROJECT GUTENBERG BY THE JAMES
+J. KELLY LIBRARY OF ST. GREGORY'S UNIVERSITY; THANKS TO ALEV
+AKMAN.
+
+Scanned by Dianne Bean.
+Proofed by Doug Levy.
+
+THE  ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE, A CHRONICLE OF THE GATHERING STORM
+BY JESSE MACY
+
+NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
+TORONTO: GLASGOW, BROOK & CO.
+LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
+OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
+1919
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I. INTRODUCTION
+
+II. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE CRUSADE
+
+III. EARLY CRUSADERS
+
+IV. THE TURNING-POINT
+
+V. THE VINDICATION OF LIBERTY
+
+VI. THE SLAVERY ISSUE IN POLITICS
+
+VII. THE PASSING OF THE WHIG PARTY
+
+VIII. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
+
+IX. BOOKS AS ANTI-SLAVERY WEAPONS
+
+X. "BLEEDING KANSAS"
+
+XI. CHARLES SUMNER
+
+XII. KANSAS AND BUCHANAN
+
+XIII. THE SUPREME COURT IN POLITICS
+
+XIV. JOHN BROWN
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+
+
+THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE
+
+CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
+
+The Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln marks the
+beginning of the end of a long chapter in human history. Among
+the earliest forms of private property was the ownership of
+slaves. Slavery as an institution had persisted throughout the
+ages, always under protest, always provoking opposition,
+insurrection, social and civil war, and ever bearing within
+itself the seeds of its own destruction. Among the historic
+powers of the world the United States was the last to uphold
+slavery, and when, a few years after Lincoln's proclamation,
+Brazil emancipated her slaves, property in man as a legally
+recognized institution came to an end in all civilized countries.
+
+Emancipation in the United States marked the conclusion of a
+century of continuous debate, in which the entire history of
+western civilization was traversed. The literature of American
+slavery is, indeed, a summary of the literature of the world on
+the subject. The Bible was made a standard text-book both for and
+against slavery. Hebrew and Christian experiences were exploited
+in the interest of the contending parties in this crucial
+controversy. Churches of the same name and order were divided
+among themselves and became half pro-slavery and half
+anti-slavery.
+
+Greek experience and Greek literature were likewise drawn into
+the controversy. The Greeks themselves had set the example of
+arguing both for and against slavery. Their practice and their
+prevailing teaching, however, gave support to this institution.
+They clearly enunciated the doctrine that there is a natural
+division among human beings; that some are born to command and
+others to obey; that it is natural to some men to be masters and
+to others to be slaves; that each of these classes should fulfill
+the destiny which nature assigns. The Greeks also recognized a
+difference between races and held that some were by nature fitted
+to serve as slaves, and others to command as masters. The
+defenders of American slavery therefore found among the writings
+of the Greeks their chief arguments already stated in classic
+form.
+
+Though the Romans added little to the theory of the fundamental
+problem involved, their history proved rich in practical
+experience. There were times, in parts of the Roman Empire, when
+personal slavery either did not exist or was limited and
+insignificant in extent. But the institution grew with Roman wars
+and conquests. In rural districts, slave labor displaced free
+labor, and in the cities servants multiplied with the
+concentration of wealth. The size and character of the slave
+population eventually became a perpetual menace to the State.
+Insurrections proved formidable, and every slave came to be
+looked upon as an enemy to the public. It is generally conceded
+that the extension of slavery was a primary cause of the decline
+and fall of Rome. In the American controversy, therefore, the
+lesson to be drawn from Roman experience was utilized to support
+the cause of free labor.
+
+After the Middle Ages, in which slavery under the modified form
+of feudalism ran its course, there was a reversion to the ancient
+classical controversy. The issue became clearly defined in the
+hands of the English and French philosophers of the seventeenth
+and eighteenth centuries. In place of the time-honored doctrine
+that the masses of mankind are by nature subject to the few who
+are born to rule, the contradictory dogma that all men are by
+nature free and equal was clearly enunciated. According to this
+later view, it is of the very nature of spirit, or personality,
+to be free. All men are endowed with personal qualities of will
+and choice and a conscious sense of right and wrong. To subject
+these native faculties to an alien force is to make war upon
+human nature. Slavery and despotism are, therefore, in their
+nature but a species of warfare. They involve the forcing of men
+to act in violation of their true selves. The older doctrine
+makes government a matter of force. The strong command the weak,
+or the rich exercise lordship over the poor. The new doctrine
+makes of government an achievement of adult citizens who agree
+among themselves as to what is fit and proper for the good of the
+State and who freely observe the rules adopted and apply force
+only to the abnormal, the delinquent, and the defective.
+
+Between the upholders of these contradictory views of human
+nature there always has been and there always must be perpetual
+warfare. Their difference is such as to admit of no compromise;
+no middle ground is possible. The conflict is indeed
+irresistible. The chief interest in the American crusade against
+slavery arises from its relation to this general world conflict
+between liberty and despotism.
+
+The Athenians could be democrats and at the same time could
+uphold and defend the institution of slavery. They were committed
+to the doctrine that the masses of the people were slaves by
+nature. By definition, they made slaves creatures void of will
+and personality, and they conveniently ignored them in matters of
+state. But Americans living in States founded in the era of the
+Declaration of Independence could not be good democrats and at
+the same time uphold and defend the institution of slavery, for
+the Declaration gives the lie to all such assumptions of human
+inequality by accepting the cardinal axiom that all men are
+created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights,
+among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The
+doctrine of equality had been developed in Europe without special
+reference to questions of distinct race or color. But the terms,
+which are universal and as broad as humanity in their denotation,
+came to be applied to black men as well as to white men.
+Massachusetts embodied in her state constitution in 1780 the
+words, "All men are born free and equal," and the courts ruled
+that these words in the state constitution had the effect of
+liberating the slaves and of giving to them the same rights as
+other citizens. This is a perfectly logical application of the
+doctrine of the Revolution.
+
+The African slave-trade, however, developed earlier than the
+doctrine of the Declaration of Independence. Negro slavery had
+long been an established institution in all the American
+colonies. Opposition to the slave-trade and to slavery was an
+integral part of the evolution of the doctrine of equal rights.
+As the colonists contended for their own freedom, they became
+anti-slavery in sentiment. A standard complaint against British
+rule was the continued imposition of the slave-trade upon the
+colonists against their oft-repeated protest.
+
+In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, there
+appeared the following charges against the King of Great Britain:
+
+"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
+its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of
+distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying
+them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
+death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare,
+the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
+King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men
+should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for
+suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
+this execrable commerce."
+
+Though this clause was omitted from the document as finally
+adopted, the evidence is abundant that the language expressed the
+prevailing sentiment of the country. To the believer in liberty
+and equality, slavery and the slave-trade are instances of war
+against human nature. No one attempted to justify slavery or to
+reconcile it with the principles of free government. Slavery was
+accepted as an inheritance for which others were to blame.
+Colonists at first blamed Great Britain; later apologists for
+slavery blamed New England for her share in the continuance of
+the slave-trade.
+
+The fact should be clearly comprehended that the sentiments which
+led to the American Revolution, and later to the French
+Revolution in Europe, were as broad in their application as the
+human race itself--that there were no limitations nor exceptions.
+These new principles involved a complete revolution in the
+previously recognized principles of government. The French sought
+to make a master-stroke at immediate achievement and they
+incurred counterrevolutions and delays. The Americans moved in a
+more moderate and tentative manner towards the great achievement,
+but with them also a counter-revolution finally appeared in the
+rise of an influential class who, by openly defending slavery,
+repudiated the principles upon which the government was founded.
+
+At first the impression was general, in the South as well as in
+the North, that slavery was a temporary institution. The cause of
+emancipation was already advocated by the Society of Friends and
+some other sects. A majority of the States adopted measures for
+the gradual abolition of slavery, but in other cases there proved
+to be industrial barriers to emancipation. Slaves were found to
+be profitably employed in clearing away the forests; they were
+not profitably employed in general agriculture. A marked
+exception was found in small districts in the Carolinas and
+Georgia where indigo and rice were produced; and though cotton
+later became a profitable crop for slave labor, it was the
+producers of rice and indigo who furnished the original barrier
+to the immediate extension of the policy of emancipation.
+Representatives from their States secured the introduction of a
+clause into the Constitution which delayed for twenty years the
+execution of the will of the country against the African
+slave-trade. It is said that a slave imported from Africa paid
+for himself in a single year in the production of rice. There
+were thus a few planters in Georgia and the Carolinas who had an
+obvious interest in the prolongation of the institution of
+slavery and who had influence enough, to secure constitutional
+recognition for both slavery and the slave-trade.
+
+The principles involved were not seriously debated. In theory all
+were abolitionists; in practice slavery extended to all the
+States. In some, actual abolition was comparatively easy; in
+others, it was difficult. By the end of the first quarter of the
+nineteenth century, actual abolition had extended to the line
+separating Pennsylvania from Maryland. Of the original thirteen
+States seven became free and six remained slave.
+
+The absence of ardent or prolonged debate upon this issue in the
+early history of the United States is easily accounted for. No
+principle of importance was drawn into the controversy; few
+presumed to defend slavery as a just or righteous institution. As
+to conduct, each individual, each neighborhood enjoyed the
+freedom of a large, roomy country. Even within state lines there
+was liberty enough. No keen sense of responsibility for a uniform
+state policy existed. It was therefore not difficult for those
+who were growing wealthy by the use of imported negroes to
+maintain their privileges in the State.
+
+If the sense of active responsibility was wanting within the
+separate States, much more was this true of the citizens of
+different States. Slavery was regarded as strictly a domestic
+institution. Families bought and owned slaves as a matter of
+individual preference. None of the original colonies or States
+adopted slavery by law. The citizens of the various colonies
+became slaveholders simply because there was no law against it.*
+The abolition of slavery was at first an individual matter or a
+church or a state policy. When the Constitution was formulated,
+the separate States had been accustomed to regard themselves as
+possessed of sovereign powers; hence there was no occasion for
+the citizens of one State to have a sense of responsibility on
+account of the domestic institutions of other States. The
+consciousness of national responsibility was of slow growth, and
+the conditions did not then exist which favored a general crusade
+against slavery or a prolonged acrimonious debate on the subject,
+such as arose forty years later.
+
+* In the case of Georgia there was a prohibitory law, which was
+disregarded.
+
+In many of the States, however, there were organized abolition
+societies, whose object was to promote the cause of emancipation
+already in progress and to protect the rights of free negroes.
+The Friends, or Quakers, were especially active in the promotion
+of a propaganda for universal emancipation. A petition which was
+presented to the first Congress in February, 1790, with the
+signature of Benjamin Franklin as President of the Pennsylvania
+Abolition Society, contained this concluding paragraph
+
+"From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally, and is
+still, the birthright of all men, and influenced by the strong
+ties of humanity and the principles of their institutions, your
+memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable
+endeavors to loosen the bonds of slavery, and to promote the
+general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these
+impressions they earnestly entreat your attention to the subject
+of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the
+restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, who, alone, in this
+land of freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you
+will devise means for removing this inconsistency of character
+from the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice
+towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very
+verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species
+of traffic in the persons of our fellowmen."*
+
+* William Goodell, "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," p. 99.
+
+The memorialists were treated with profound respect. Cordial
+support and encouragement came from representatives from Virginia
+and other slave States. Opposition was expressed by members from
+South Carolina and Georgia. These for the most part relied upon
+their constitutional guaranties. But for these guaranties, said
+Smith, of South Carolina, his State would not have entered the
+Union. In the extreme utterances in opposition to the petition
+there is a suggestion of the revolution which was to occur forty
+years later.
+
+Active abolitionists who gave time and money to the promotion of
+the cause were always few in numbers. Previous to 1830 abolition
+societies resembled associations for the prevention of cruelty to
+animals--in fact, in one instance at least this was made one of
+the professed objects. These societies labored to induce men to
+act in harmony with generally acknowledged obligations, and they
+had no occasion for violence or persecution. Abolitionists were
+distinguished for their benevolence and their unselfish devotion
+to the interests of the needy and the unfortunate. It was only
+when the ruling classes resorted to mob violence and began to
+defend slavery as a divinely ordained institution that there was
+a radical change in the spirit of the controversy. The
+irrepressible conflict between liberty and despotism which has
+persisted in all ages became manifest when slave-masters
+substituted the Greek doctrine of inequality and slavery for the
+previously accepted Christian doctrine of equality and universal
+brotherhood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE CRUSADE
+
+It was a mere accident that the line drawn by Mason and Dixon
+between Pennsylvania and Maryland became known in later years as
+the dividing line between slavery and freedom. The six States
+south of that line ultimately neglected or refused to abolish
+slavery, while the seven Northern States became free. Vermont
+became a State in 1791 and Kentucky in 1792. The third State to
+be added to the original thirteen was Tennessee in 1796. At that
+time, counting the States as they were finally classified, eight
+were destined to be slave and eight free. Ohio entered the Union
+as a State in 1802, thus giving to the free States a majority of
+one. The balance, however, was restored in 1812 by the admission
+of Louisiana as a slave State. The admission of Indiana in 1816
+on the one side and of Mississippi in 1817 on the other still
+maintained the balance: ten free States stood against ten slave
+States. During the next two years Illinois and Alabama were
+admitted, making twenty-two States in all, still evenly divided.
+
+The ordinance for the government of the territory north of the
+Ohio River, passed in 1787 and reenacted by Congress after the
+adoption of the Constitution, proved to be an act of great
+significance in its relation to the limitation of slavery. By
+this ordinance slavery was forever prohibited in the Northwest
+Territory. In the territory south of the Ohio River slavery
+became permanently established. The river, therefore, became an
+extension of the original Mason and Dixon's Line with the new
+meaning attached: it became a division between free and slave
+territory.
+
+It was apparently at first a mere matter of chance that a balance
+was struck between the two losses of States. While Virginia
+remained a slave State, it was natural that slavery should extend
+into Kentucky, which had been a part of Virginia. Likewise
+Tennessee, being a part of North Carolina, became slave
+territory. When these two Territories became slave States, the
+equal division began. There was yet an abundance of territory
+both north and south to be taken into the Union and, without any
+special plan or agitation, States were admitted in pairs, one
+free and the other slave. In the meantime there was distinctly
+developed the idea of the possible or probable permanence of
+slavery in the South and of a rivalry or even a future conflict
+between the two sections.
+
+When in 1819 Missouri applied for admission to the Union with a
+state constitution permitting slavery, there was a prolonged
+debate over the whole question, not only in Congress but
+throughout the entire country. North and South were distinctly
+pitted against each other with rival systems of labor. The
+following year Congress passed a law providing for the admission
+of Missouri, but, to restore the balance, Maine was separated
+from Massachusetts and was admitted to the Union as a State. It
+was further enacted that slavery should be forever prohibited
+from all territory of the United States north of the parallel 36
+degrees 30', that is, north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
+It is this part of the act which is known as the Missouri
+Compromise. It was accepted as a permanent limitation of the
+institution of slavery. By this act Mason and Dixon's Line was
+extended through the Louisiana Purchase. As the western boundary
+was then defined, slavery could still be extended into Arkansas
+and into a part of what is now Oklahoma, while a great empire to
+the northwest was reserved for the formation of free States.
+Arkansas became a slave State in 1836 and Michigan was admitted
+as a free State in the following year.
+
+With the admission of Arkansas and Michigan, thirteen slave
+States were balanced by a like number of free States. The South
+still had Florida, which would in time become a slave State.
+Against this single Territory there was an immense region to the
+northwest, equal in area to all the slave States combined, which,
+according to the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise,
+had been consecrated to freedom. Foreseeing this condition, a few
+Southern planters began a movement for the extension of territory
+to the south and west immediately after the adoption of the
+Missouri Compromise. When Arkansas was admitted in 1836, there
+was a prospect of the immediate annexation of Texas as a slave
+State. This did not take place until nine years later, but the
+propaganda, the object of which was the extension of slave
+territory, could not be maintained by those Who contended that
+slavery was a curse to the country. Virginia, therefore, and
+other border slave States, as they became committed to the policy
+of expansion, ceased to tolerate official public utterances
+against slavery.
+
+Three more or less clearly defined sections appear in the later
+development of the crusade. These are the New England States, the
+Middle States, and the States south of North Carolina and
+Tennessee. In New England, few negroes were ever held as slaves,
+and the institution disappeared during the first years of the
+Republic. The inhabitants had little experience arising from
+actual contact with slavery. When slavery disappeared from New
+England and before there had been developed in the country at
+large a national feeling of responsibility for its continued
+existence, interest in the subject declined. For twenty years
+previous to the founding of Garrison's Liberator in 1831,
+organized abolition movements had been almost unknown in New
+England. In various ways the people were isolated, separated from
+contact with slavery. Their knowledge of this subject of
+discussion was academic, theoretical, acquired at second-hand.
+
+In New York and New Jersey slaves were much more numerous than in
+New England. There were still slaves in considerable numbers
+until about 1825. The people had a knowledge of the institution
+from experience and observation, and there was no break in the
+continuity of their organized abolition societies. Chief among
+the objects of these societies was the effort to prevent
+kidnapping and to guard the rights of free negroes. For both of
+these purposes there was a continuous call for activity.
+Pennsylvania also had freedmen of her own whose rights called for
+guardianship, as well as many freedmen from farther south who had
+come into the State.
+
+The movement of protest and protection did not stop at Mason and
+Dixon's Line, but extended far into the South. In both North
+Carolina and Tennessee an active protest against slavery was at
+all times maintained. In this great middle section of the
+country, between New England and South Carolina, there was no
+cessation in the conflict between free and slave labor. Some of
+these States became free while others remained slave; but between
+the people of the two sections there was continuous
+communication. Slaveholders came into free States to liberate
+their slaves. Non-slaveholders came to get rid of the competition
+of slave labor, and free negroes came to avoid reenslavement.
+Slaves fled thither on their way to liberty. It was not a matter
+of choice; it was an unavoidable condition which compelled the
+people of the border States to give continuous attention to the
+institution of slavery.
+
+The modern anti-slavery movement had its origin in this great
+middle section, and from the same source it derived its chief
+support. The great body of active abolitionists were from the
+slave States or else derived their inspiration from personal
+contact with slavery. As compared with New England abolitionists,
+the middlestate folk were less extreme in their views. They had a
+keener appreciation of the difficulties involved in emancipation.
+They were more tolerant towards the idea of letting the country
+at large share the burdens involved in the liberation of the
+slaves. Border-state abolitionists naturally favored the policy
+of gradual emancipation which had been followed in New York, New
+Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Abolitionists who continued to reside
+in the slave States were forced to recognize the fact that
+emancipation involved serious questions of race adjustment. From
+the border States came the colonization society, a characteristic
+institution, as well as compromise of every variety.
+
+The southernmost section, including South Carolina, Georgia, and
+the Gulf States, was even more sharply defined in the attitude it
+assumed toward the anti-slavery movement. At no time did the
+cause of emancipation become formidable in this section. In all
+these States there was, of course, a large class of
+non-slaveholding whites, who were opposed to slavery and who
+realized that they were victims of an injurious system; but they
+had no effective organ for expression. The ruling minority gained
+an early and an easy victory and to the end held a firm hand. To
+the inhabitants of this section it appeared to be a self-evident
+truth that the white race was born to rule and the black race was
+born to serve. Where negroes outnumbered the whites fourfold, the
+mere suggestion of emancipation raised a race question which
+seemed appalling in its proportions. Either in the Union or out
+of the Union, the rulers were determined to perpetuate slavery.
+
+Slavery as an economic institution became dependent upon a few
+semitropical plantation crops. When the Constitution was framed,
+rice and indigo, produced in South Carolina and Georgia, were the
+two most important. Indigo declined in relative importance, and
+the production of sugar was developed, especially after the
+annexation of the Louisiana Purchase. But by far the most
+important crop for its effects upon slavery and upon the entire
+country was cotton. This single product finally absorbed the
+labor of half the slaves of the entire country. Mr. Rhodes is not
+at all unreasonable in his surmise that, had it not been for the
+unforeseen development of the cotton industry, the expectation of
+the founders of the Republic that slavery would soon disappear
+would actually have been realized.
+
+It was more difficult to carry out a policy of emancipation when
+slaves were quoted in the market at a thousand dollars than when
+the price was a few hundred dollars. All slave-owners felt
+richer; emancipation appeared to involve a greater sacrifice.
+Thus the cotton industry went far towards accounting for the
+changed attitude of the entire country on the subject of slavery.
+The North as well as the South became financially interested.
+
+It was not generally perceived before it actually happened that
+the border States would take the place of Africa in furnishing
+the required supply of laborers for Southern plantations. The
+interstate slave-trade gave to the system a solidarity of
+interest which was new. All slave-owners became partakers of a
+common responsibility for the system as a whole. It was the newly
+developed trade quite as much as the system of slavery itself
+which furnished the ground for the later anti-slavery appeal. The
+consciousness of a common guilt for the sin of slavery grew with
+the increase of actual interstate relations.
+
+The abolition of the African slave-trade was an act of the
+general Government. Congress passed the prohibitory statute in
+1807, to go into effect January, 1808. At no time, however, was
+the prohibition entirely effective, and a limited illegal trade
+continued until slavery was eventually abolished. This
+inefficiency of restraint furnished another point of attack for
+the abolitionists. Through efforts to suppress the African
+slave-trade, the entire country became conscious of a common
+responsibility. Before the Revolutionary War, Great Britain had
+been censured for forcing cheap slaves from Africa upon her
+unwilling colonies. After the Revolution, New England was blamed
+for the activity of her citizens in this nefarious trade both
+before and after it was made illegal. All of this tended to
+increase the sense of responsibility in every section of the
+country. Congress had made the foreign slave-trade illegal; and
+citizens in all sections gradually became aware of the
+possibility that Congress might likewise restrict or forbid
+interstate commerce in slaves.
+
+The West Indies and Mexico were also closely associated with the
+United States in the matter of slavery. When Jamestown was
+founded, negro slavery was already an old institution in the
+islands of the Caribbean Sea, and thence came the first slaves to
+Virginia. The abolition of slavery in the island of Hayti, or San
+Domingo, was accomplished during the French Revolution and the
+Napoleonic Wars. As incidental to the process of emancipation,
+the Caucasian inhabitants were massacred or banished, and a
+republican government was established, composed exclusively of
+negroes and mulattoes. From the date of the Missouri Compromise
+to that of the Mexican War, this island was united under a single
+republic, though it was afterwards divided into the two republics
+of Hayti and San Domingo.
+
+The "horrors of San Domingo" were never absent from the minds of
+those in the United States who lived in communities composed
+chiefly of slaves. What had happened on the island was accepted
+by Southern planters as proof that the two races could live
+together in peace only under the relation of master and slave,
+and that emancipation boded the extermination of one race or the
+other. Abolitionists, however, interpreted the facts differently:
+they emphasized the tyranny of the white rulers as a primary
+cause of the massacres; they endowed some of the negro leaders
+with the highest qualities of statesmanship and self-sacrificing
+generosity; and Wendell Phillips, in an impassioned address which
+he delivered in 1861, placed on the honor roll above the chief
+worthies of history--including Cromwell and Washington Toussaint
+L'Ouverture, the liberator of Hayti, whom France had betrayed and
+murdered.
+
+Abolitionists found support for their position in the contention
+that other communities had abolished slavery without such
+accompanying horrors as occurred in Hayti and without serious
+race conflict. Slavery had run its course in Spanish America, and
+emancipation accompanied or followed the formation of independent
+republics. In 1833 all slaves in the British Empire were
+liberated, including those in the important island of Jamaica. So
+it happened that, just at the time when Southern leaders were
+making up their minds to defend their peculiar institution at all
+hazards, they were beset on every side by the spirit of
+emancipation. Abolitionists, on the other hand, were fully
+convinced that the attainment of some form of emancipation in the
+United States was certain, and that, either peaceably or through
+violence, the slaves would ultimately be liberated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. EARLY CRUSADERS
+
+At the time when the new cotton industry was enhancing the value
+of slave labor, there arose from the ranks of the people those
+who freely consecrated their all to the freeing of the slave.
+Among these, Benjamin Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker, holds a
+significant place.
+
+Though the Society of Friends fills a large place in the
+anti-slavery movement, its contribution to the growth of the
+conception of equality is even more significant. This impetus to
+the idea arises from a fundamental Quaker doctrine, announced at
+the middle of the seventeenth century, to the erect that God
+reveals Himself to mankind, not through any priesthood or
+specially chosen agents; not through any ordinance, form, or
+ceremony; not through any church or institution; not through any
+book or written record of any sort; but directly, through His
+Spirit, to each person. This direct enlightening agency they
+deemed coextensive with humanity; no race and no individual is
+left without the ever-present illuminating Spirit. If men of old
+spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, what they spoke or
+wrote can furnish no reliable guidance to the men of a later
+generation, except as their minds also are enlightened by the
+same Spirit in the same way. "The letter killeth; it is the
+Spirit that giveth life."
+
+This doctrine in its purity and simplicity places all men and all
+races on an equality; all are alike ignorant and imperfect; all
+are alike in their need of the more perfect revelation yet to be
+made. Master and slave are equal before God; there can be no such
+relation, therefore, except by doing violence to a personality,
+to a spiritual being. In harmony with this fundamental principle,
+the Society of Friends early rid itself of all connection with
+slavery. The Friends' Meeting became a refuge for those who were
+moved by the Spirit to testify against slavery.
+
+Born in 1789 in a State which was then undergoing the process of
+emancipating its slaves, Benjamin Lundy moved at the age of
+nineteen to Wheeling, West Virginia, which had already become the
+center of an active domestic slave-trade. The pious young Quaker,
+now apprenticed to a saddler, was brought into personal contact
+with this traffic in human flesh. He felt keenly the national
+disgrace of the iniquity. So deep did the iron enter into his
+soul that never again did he find peace of mind except in efforts
+to relieve the oppressed. Like hundreds and thousands of others,
+Lundy was led on to active opposition to the trade by an actual
+knowledge of the inhumanity of the business as prosecuted before
+his eyes and by his sympathy for human suffering.
+
+His apprenticeship ended, Lundy was soon established in a
+prosperous business in an Ohio village not far from Wheeling.
+Though he now lived in a free State, the call of the oppressed
+was ever in his ears and he could not rest. He drew together a
+few of his neighbors, and together they organized the Union
+Humane Society, whose object was the relief of those held in
+bondage. In a few months the society numbered several hundred
+members, and Lundy issued an address to the philanthropists of
+the whole country, urging them to unite in like manner with
+uniform constitutions, and suggesting that societies so formed
+adopt a policy of correspondence and cooperation. At about the
+same time, Lundy began to publish anti-slavery articles in the
+Mount Pleasant Philanthropist and other papers.
+
+In 1819 he went on a business errand to St. Louis, Missouri,
+where he found himself in the midst of an agitation over the
+question of the extension of slavery in the States. With great
+zest he threw himself into the discussion, making use of the
+newspapers in Missouri and Illinois. Having lost his property, he
+returned poverty-stricken to Ohio, where he founded in January,
+1821, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. A few months later he
+transferred his paper to the more congenial atmosphere of
+Jonesborough, Tennessee, but in 1824 he went to Baltimore,
+Maryland. In the meantime, Lundy had become much occupied in
+traveling, lecturing, and organizing societies for the promotion
+of the cause of abolition. He states that during the ten years
+previous to 1830 he had traveled upwards of twenty-five thousand
+miles, five thousand of which were on foot. He now became
+interested in plans for colonizing negroes in other countries as
+an aid to emancipation, though he himself had no confidence in
+the colonization society and its scheme of deportation to Africa.
+After leading a few negroes to Hayti in 1829, he visited Canada,
+Texas, and Mexico with a similar plan in view.
+
+During a trip through the Middle States and New England in 1828,
+Lundy met William Lloyd Garrison, and the following year he
+walked all the way from Baltimore to Bennington, Vermont, for the
+express purpose of securing the assistance of the youthful
+reformer as coeditor of his paper. Garrison had previously
+favored colonization, but within the few weeks which elapsed
+before he joined Lundy, he repudiated all forms of colonization
+and advocated immediate and unconditional emancipation. He at
+once told Lundy of his change of views. "Well," said Lundy, "thee
+may put thy initials to thy articles, and I will put my witness
+to mine, and each will bear his own burden." The two editors
+were, however, in complete accord in their opposition to the
+slave-trade. Lundy had suffered a dangerous assault at the hands
+of a Baltimore slave-trader before he was joined by Garrison.
+During the year 1830, Garrison was convicted of libel and thrown
+into prison on account of his scathing denunciation of Francis
+Todd of Massachusetts, the owner of a vessel engaged in the
+slave-trade.
+
+These events brought to a crisis the publication of the Genius of
+Universal Emancipation. The editors now parted company. Again
+Lundy moved the office of the paper, this time to Washington,
+D.C., but it soon became a peripatetic monthly, printed wherever
+the editor chanced to be. In 1836 Lundy began the issue of an
+anti-slavery paper in Philadelphia, called the National Inquirer,
+and with this was merged the Genius of Universal Emancipation. He
+was preparing to resume the issue of his original paper under the
+old title, in La Salle County, Illinois, when he was overtaken by
+death on August 22, 1839.
+
+Here was a man without education, without wealth, of a slight
+frame, not at all robust, who had undertaken, singlehanded and
+without the shadow of a doubt of his ultimate success, to abolish
+American slavery. He began the organization of societies which
+were to displace the anti-slavery societies of the previous
+century. He established the first paper devoted exclusively to
+the cause of emancipation. He foresaw that the question of
+emancipation must be carried into politics and that it must
+become an object of concern to the general Government as well as
+to the separate States. In the early part of his career he found
+the most congenial association and the larger measure of
+effective support south of Mason and Dixon's Line, and in this
+section were the greater number of the abolition societies which
+he organized. During the later years of his life, as it was
+becoming increasingly difficult in the South to maintain a public
+anti-slavery propaganda, he transferred his chief activities to
+the North. Lundy serves as a connecting link between the earlier
+and the later anti-slavery movements. Eleven years of his early
+life belong to the century of the Revolution. Garrison recorded
+his indebtedness to Lundy in the words: "If I have in any way,
+however humble, done anything towards calling attention to
+slavery, or bringing out the glorious prospect of a complete
+jubilee in our country at no distant day, I feel that I owe
+everything in this matter, instrumentally under God, to Benjamin
+Lundy."
+
+Different in type, yet even more significant on account of its
+peculiar relations to the cause of abolition, was the life of
+James Gillespie Birney, who was born in a wealthy slaveholding
+family at Dansville, Kentucky, in the year 1792. The Birneys were
+anti-slavery planters of the type of Washington and Jefferson.
+The father had labored to make Kentucky a free State at the time
+of its admission to the Union. His son was educated first at
+Princeton, where he graduated in 1810, and then in the office of
+a distinguished lawyer in Philadelphia. He began the practice of
+law at his home at the age of twenty-two. His home training and
+his residence in States which were then in the process of gradual
+emancipation served to confirm him in the traditional conviction
+of his family. While Benjamin Lundy, at the age of twenty-seven,
+was engaged in organizing anti-slavery societies north of the
+Ohio River, Birney at the age of twenty-four was influential as a
+member of the Kentucky Legislature in the prevention of the
+passing of a joint resolution calling upon Ohio and Indiana to
+make laws providing for the return of fugitive slaves. He was
+also conspicuous in his efforts to secure provisions for gradual
+emancipation. Two years later he became a planter near
+Huntsville, Alabama. Though not a member of the Constitutional
+Convention preparatory to the admission of this Territory into
+the Union, Birney used his influence to secure provisions in the
+constitution favorable to gradual emancipation. As a member of
+the first Legislature, in 1819, he was the author of a law
+providing a fair trial by jury for slaves indicted for crimes
+above petty larceny, and in 1826 he became a regular contributor
+to the American Colonization Society, believing it to be an aid
+to emancipation. The following year he was able to induce the
+Legislature, although he was not then a member of it, to pass an
+act forbidding the importation of slaves into Alabama either for
+sale or for hire. This was regarded as a step preliminary to
+emancipation.
+
+The cause of education in Alabama had in Birney a trusted leader.
+During the year 1830 he spent several months in the North
+Atlantic States for the selection of a president and four
+professors for the State University and three teachers for the
+Huntsville Female Seminary. These were all employed upon his sole
+recommendation. On his return he had an important interview with
+Henry Clay, of whose political party he had for several years
+been the acknowledged leader in Alabama. He urged Clay to place
+himself at the head of the movement in Kentucky for gradual
+emancipation. Upon Clay's refusal their political cooperation
+terminated. Birney never again supported Clay for office and
+regarded him as in a large measure responsible for the
+pro-slavery reaction in Kentucky.
+
+Birney, who had now become discouraged regarding the prospect of
+emancipation, during the winter of 1831 and 1832 decided to
+remove his family to Jacksonville, Illinois. He was deterred from
+carrying out his plan, however, by his unexpected appointment as
+agent of the colonization society in the Southwest--a mission
+which he undertook from a sense of duty.
+
+In his travels throughout the region assigned to him, Birney
+became aware of the aggressive designs of the planters of the
+Gulf States to secure new slave territories in the Southwest. In
+view of these facts the methods of the colonization society
+appeared utterly futile. Birney surrendered his commission and,
+in 1833, returned to Kentucky with the intention of doing himself
+what Henry Clay had refused to do three years earlier, still
+hoping that Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee might be induced to
+abolish slavery and thus place the slave power in a hopeless
+minority. His disappointment was extreme at the pro-slavery
+reaction which had taken place in Kentucky. The condition called
+for more drastic measures, and Birney decided to forsake entirely
+the colonization society and cast in his lot with the
+abolitionists. He freed his slaves in 1834, and in the following
+year he delivered the principal address at the annual meeting of
+the American Anti-Slavery Society held in New York. His gift of
+leadership was at once recognized. As vice-president of the
+society he began to travel on its behalf, to address public
+assemblies, and especially to confer with members of state
+legislatures and to address the legislative bodies. He now
+devoted his entire time to the service of the society, and as
+early as September, 1835, issued the prospectus of a paper
+devoted to the cause of emancipation. This called forth such a
+display of force against the movement that he could neither find
+a printer nor obtain the use of a building in Dansville,
+Kentucky, for the publication. As a result he transferred his
+activities to Cincinnati, where he began publication of the
+Philanthropist in 1836. With the connivance of the authorities
+and encouragement from leading citizens of Cincinnati, the office
+of the Philanthropist was three times looted by the mob, and the
+proprietor's life was greatly endangered. The paper, however,
+rapidly grew in favor and influence and thoroughly vindicated the
+right of free discussion of the slavery question. Another editor
+was installed when Birney, who became secretary of the Anti-
+slavery Society in 1837, transferred his residence to New York
+City.
+
+Twenty-three years before Lincoln's famous utterance in which he
+proclaimed the doctrine that a house divided against itself
+cannot stand, and before Seward's declaration of an irrepressible
+conflict between slavery and freedom, Birney had said: "There
+will be no cessation of conflict until slavery shall be
+exterminated or liberty destroyed. Liberty and slavery cannot
+live in juxtaposition." He spoke out of the fullness of his own
+experience. A thoroughly trained lawyer and statesman, well
+acquainted with the trend of public sentiment in both North and
+South, he was fully persuaded that the new pro-slavery crusade
+against liberty boded civil war. He knew that the white men in
+North and South would not, without a struggle, consent to be
+permanently deprived of their liberties at the behest of a few
+Southern planters. Being himself of the slaveholding class, he
+was peculiarly fitted to appreciate their position. To him the
+new issue meant war, unless the belligerent leaders should be
+shown that war was hopeless. By his moderation in speech, his
+candor in statement, his lack of rancor, his carefully
+considered, thoroughly fair arguments, he had the rare faculty of
+convincing opponents of the correctness of his own view.
+
+There could be little sympathy between Birney and William Lloyd
+Garrison, whose style of denunciation appeared to the former as
+an incitement to war and an excuse for mob violence. As soon as
+Birney became the accepted leader in the national society, there
+was friction between his followers and those of Garrison. To
+denounce the Constitution and repudiate political action were,
+from Birney's standpoint, a surrender of the only hope of
+forestalling a dire calamity. He had always fought slavery by the
+use of legal and constitutional methods, and he continued so to
+fight. In this policy he had the support of a large majority of
+abolitionists in New England and elsewhere. Only a few personal
+friends accepted Garrison's injunction to forswear politics and
+repudiate the Constitution.
+
+The followers of Birney, failing to secure recognition for their
+views in either of the political parties, organized the Liberty
+party and, while Birney was in Europe in 1840, nominated him as
+their candidate for the Presidency. The vote which he received
+was a little over seven thousand, but four years later he was
+again the candidate of the party and received over sixty thousand
+votes. He suffered an injury during the following year which
+condemned him to hopeless invalidism and brought his public
+career to an end.
+
+Though Lundy and Birney were contemporaries and were engaged in
+the same great cause, they were wholly independent in their work.
+Lundy addressed himself almost entirely to the non-slaveholding
+class, while all of Birney's early efforts were "those of a
+slaveholder seeking to induce his own class to support the policy
+of emancipation. Though a Northern man, Lundy found his chief
+support in the South until he was driven out by persecution.
+Birney also resided in the South until he was forced to leave for
+the same reason. The two men were in general accord in their main
+lines of policy: both believed firmly in the use of political
+means to effect their objects; both were at first
+colonizationists, though Lundy favored colonization in adjacent
+territory rather than by deportation to Africa.
+
+Women were not a whit behind men in their devotion to the cause
+of freedom. Conspicuous among them were Sarah and Angelina
+Grimke, born in Charleston, South Carolina, of a slaveholding
+family noted for learning, refinement, and culture. Sarah was
+born in the same year as James G. Birney, 1792; Angelina was
+thirteen years younger. Angelina was the typical crusader: her
+sympathies from the first were with the slave. As a child she
+collected and concealed oil and other simple remedies so that she
+might steal out by night and alleviate the sufferings of slaves
+who had been cruelly whipped or abused. At the age of fourteen
+she refused to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church because the
+ceremony involved giving sanction to words which seemed to her
+untrue. Two years later her mother offered her a present of a
+slave girl for a servant and companion. This gift she refused to
+accept, for in her view the servant had a right to be free, and,
+as for her own needs, Angelina felt quite capable of waiting upon
+herself.
+
+Of her own free will she joined the Presbyterian Church and
+labored earnestly with the officers of the church to induce them
+to espouse the cause of the slave. When she failed to secure
+cooperation, she decided that the church was not Christian and
+she therefore withdrew her membership. Her sister Sarah had gone
+North in 1821 and had become a member of the Society of Friends
+in Philadelphia. In Charleston, South Carolina, there was a
+Friends' meeting-house where two old Quakers still met at the
+appointed time and sat for an hour in solemn silence. Angelina
+donned the Quaker garb, joined this meeting, and for an entire
+year was the third of the silent worshipers. This quiet
+testimony, however, did not wholly satisfy her energetic nature,
+and when, in 1830, she heard of the imprisonment of Garrison in
+Baltimore, she was convinced that effective labors against
+slavery could not be carried on in the South. With great sorrow
+she determined to sever her connection with home and family and
+join her sister in Philadelphia. There the exile from the South
+poured out her soul in an Appeal to the Christian Women of the
+South. The manuscript was handed to the officers of the Anti-
+slavery Society in the city and, as they read, tears filled their
+eyes. The Appeal was immediately printed in large quantities for
+distribution in Southern States.
+
+Copies of the Appeal which had been sent to Charleston were
+seized by a mob and publicly burned. When it became known soon
+afterwards that the author of the offensive document was
+intending to return to Charleston to spend the winter with her
+family, there was intense excitement, and the mayor of the city
+informed the mother that her daughter would not be permitted to
+land in Charleston nor to communicate with any one there, and
+that, if she did elude the police and come ashore, she would be
+imprisoned and guarded until the departure of the next boat. On
+account of the distress which she would cause to her friends,
+Miss Grimke reluctantly gave up the exercise of her
+constitutional right to visit her native city and in a very
+literal sense she became a permanent exile.
+
+The two sisters let their light shine among Philadelphia Quakers.
+In the religious meetings negro women were consigned to a special
+seat. The Grimkes, having first protested against this
+discrimination, took their own places on the seat with the
+colored women. In Charleston, Angelina had scrupulously adhered
+to the Quaker garb because it was viewed as a protest against
+slavery. In Philadelphia, however, no such meaning was attached
+to the costume, and she adopted clothing suited to the climate
+regardless of conventions. A series of parlor talks to women
+which had been organized by the sisters grew in interest until
+the parlors became inadequate, and the speakers were at last
+addressing large audiences of women in the public meeting-places
+of Philadelphia.
+
+At this time when Angelina was making effective use of her
+unrivaled power as a public speaker, she received in 1836 an
+invitation from the Anti-slavery Society of New York to address
+the women of that city. She informed her sister that she believed
+this to be a call from God and that it was her duty to accept.
+Sarah decided to be her companion and assistant in the work in
+the new field, which was similar to that in Philadelphia. Its
+fame soon extended to Boston, whence came an urgent invitation to
+visit that city. It was in Massachusetts that men began to steal
+into the women's meetings and listen from the back seats. In Lynn
+all barriers were broken down, and a modest, refined, and
+naturally diffident young woman found herself addressing immense
+audiences of men and women. In the old theater in Boston for six
+nights in succession, audiences filling all the space listened
+entranced to the messenger of emancipation. There is uniform
+testimony that, in an age distinguished for oratory, no more
+effective speaker appeared than Angelina Grimke. It was she above
+all others who first vindicated the right of women to speak to
+men from the public platform on political topics. But it must be
+remembered that scores of other women were laboring to the same
+end and were fully prepared to utilize the new opportunity.
+
+The great world movement from slavery towards freedom, from
+despotism to democracy, is characterized by a tendency towards
+the equality of the sexes. Women have been slaves where men were
+free. In barbarous ages women have been ignored or have been
+treated as mere adjuncts to the ruling sex. But wherever there
+has been a distinct contribution to the cause of liberty there
+has been a distinct recognition of woman's share in the work. The
+Society of Friends was organized on the principle that men and
+women are alike moral beings, hence are equal in the sight of
+God. As a matter of experience, women were quite as often moved
+to break the silence of a religious meeting as were the men.
+
+For two hundred years women had been accustomed to talk to both
+men and women in Friends' meetings and, when the moral war
+against slavery brought religion and politics into close
+relation, they were ready speakers upon both topics. When the
+Grimke sisters came into the church with a fresh baptism of the
+Spirit, they overcame all obstacles and, with a passion for
+righteousness, moral and spiritual and political, they carried
+the war against slavery into politics.
+
+In 1833, at the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society
+in Philadelphia, a number of women were present. Lucretia Mott, a
+distinguished "minister" in the Society of Friends, took part in
+the proceedings. She was careful to state that she spoke as a
+mere visitor, having no place in the organization, but she
+ventured to suggest various modifications in the report of
+Garrison's committee on a declaration of principles which
+rendered it more acceptable to the meeting. It had not then been
+seriously considered whether women could become members of the
+Anti-Slavery Society, which was at that time composed exclusively
+of men, with the women maintaining their separate organizations
+as auxiliaries.
+
+The women of the West were already better organized than the men
+and were doing a work which men could not do. They were, for the
+most part, unconscious of any conflict between the peculiar
+duties of men and those of women in their relations to common
+objects. The "library associations" of Indiana, which were in
+fact effective anti-slavery societies, were to a large extent
+composed of women. To the library were added numerous other
+disguises, such as "reading circles," "sewing societies,"
+"women's clubs." In many communities the appearance of men in any
+of these enterprises would create suspicion or even raise a mob.
+But the women worked on quietly, effectively, and unnoticed.
+
+The matron of a family would be provided with the best
+riding-horse which the neighborhood could furnish. Mounted upon
+her steed, she would sally forth in the morning, meet her
+carefully selected friends in a town twenty miles away, gain
+information as to what had been accomplished, give information as
+to the work in other parts of the district, distribute new
+literature, confer as to the best means of extending their
+labors, and return in the afternoon. The father of such a family
+was quite content with the humbler task of cooperation by
+supplying the sinews of war. There was complete equality between
+husband and wife because their aims were identical and each
+rendered the service most convenient and most needed. Women did
+what men could not do. In the territory of the enemy the men were
+reached through the gradual and tentative efforts of women whom
+the uninitiated supposed to be spending idle hours at a sewing
+circle. Interest was maintained by the use of information of the
+same general character as that which later took the country by
+storm in Uncle Tom's Cabin. In course of time all disguise was
+thrown aside. A public speaker of national reputation would
+appear, a meeting would be announced, and a rousing abolition
+speech would be delivered; the mere men of the neighborhood would
+have little conception how the surprising change had been
+accomplished.
+
+On rare occasions the public presentation of the anti-slavery
+view would be undertaken prematurely, as in 1840 at Pendleton,
+Indiana, when Frederick Douglass attempted to address a public
+meeting and was almost slain by missiles from the mob. Pendleton,
+however, was not given over to the enemy. The victim of the
+assault was restored to health in the family of a leading
+citizen. The outrage was judiciously utilized to convince the
+fair-minded that one of the evils of slavery was the development
+of minds void of candor and justice. On the twenty-fifth
+anniversary of the Pendleton disturbance there was another great
+meeting in the town. Frederick Douglass was the hero of the
+occasion. The woman who was the head of the family that restored
+him to health was on the platform. Some of the men who threw the
+brickbats were there to make public confession and to apologize
+for the brutal deed.
+
+In the minds of a few persons of rare intellectual and logical
+endowment, democracy has always implied the equality of the
+sexes. From the time of the French Revolution there have been
+advocates of this doctrine. As early as 1820, Frances Wright, a
+young woman in Scotland having knowledge of the Western republic
+founded upon the professed principles of liberty and equality,
+came to America for the express purpose of pleading the cause of
+equal rights for women. To the general public her doctrine seemed
+revolutionary, threatening the very foundations of religion and
+morality. In the midst of opposition and persecution she
+proclaimed views respecting the rights and duties of women which
+today are generally accepted as axiomatic.
+
+The women who attended the meetings for the organization of the
+American Anti-Slavery Society were not suffragists, nor had they
+espoused any special theories respecting the position of women.
+They did not wish to be members of the men's organizations but
+were quite content with their own separate one, which served its
+purpose very well under prevailing local conditions. James G.
+Birney, the candidate of the Liberty party for the Presidency in
+1840, had good reasons for opposition to the inclusion of men and
+women in the same organization. He knew that by acting separately
+they were winning their way. The introduction of a novel theory
+involving a different issue seemed to him likely to be a source
+of weakness. The cause of women was, however, gaining ground and
+winning converts. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were
+delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention at London. They
+listened to the debate which ended in the refusal to recognize
+them as members of the Convention because they were women. The
+tone of the discussion convinced them that women were looked upon
+by men with disdain and contempt. Because the laws of the land
+and the customs of society consigned women to an inferior
+position, and because there would be no place for effective
+public work on the part of women until these laws were changed,
+both these women became advocates of women's rights and
+conspicuous leaders in the initiation of the propaganda. The
+Reverend Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, New York, preached a sermon
+in 1845 in which he stated his belief that women need not expect
+to have their wrongs fully redressed until they themselves had a
+hand in the making and in the administration of the laws. This is
+an early suggestion that equal suffrage would become the ultimate
+goal of the efforts for righting women's wrongs.
+
+At the same time there were accessions to the cause from a
+different source. In 1833 Oberlin College was founded in northern
+Ohio. Into some of the first classes there women were admitted on
+equal terms with men. In 1835 the trustees offered the presidency
+to Professor Asa Mahan, of Lane Seminary. He was himself an
+abolitionist from a slave State, and he refused to be President
+of Oberlin College unless negroes were admitted on equal terms
+with other students. Oberlin thus became the first institution in
+the country which extended the privileges of the higher education
+to both sexes of all races. It was a distinctly religious
+institution devoted to radical reforms of many kinds. Not only
+was the use of all intoxicating beverages discarded by faculty
+and students but the use of tobacco as well was discouraged.
+
+Within fifteen years after the founding of Oberlin, there were
+women graduates who had something to say on numerous questions of
+public interest. Especially was this true of the subject of
+temperance. Intemperance was a vice peculiar to men. Women and
+children were the chief sufferers, while men were the chief
+sinners. It was important, therefore, that men should be reached.
+In 1847 Lucy Stone, an Oberlin graduate, began to address public
+audiences on the subject. At the same time Susan B. Anthony
+appeared as a temperance lecturer. The manner of their reception
+and the nature of their subject induced them to unite heartily in
+the pending crusade for the equal rights of women. The three
+causes thus became united in one.
+
+Along with the crusade against slavery, intemperance, and women's
+wrongs, arose a fourth, which was fundamentally connected with
+the slavery question: Quakers and Southern and Western
+abolitionists were ardently devoted to the interests of peace.
+They would abolish slavery by peaceable means because they
+believed the alternative was a terrible war. To escape an
+impending war they were nerved to do and dare and to incur great
+risks. New England abolitionists who labored in harmony with
+those of the West and South were actuated by similar motives.
+Sumner first gained public notice by a distinguished oration
+against war. Garrison went farther: he was a professional
+non-resistant, a root and branch opponent of both war and
+slavery. John Brown was a fanatical antagonist of war until he
+reached the conclusion that according to the Divine Will there
+should be a short war of liberation in place of the continuance
+of slavery, which was itself in his opinion the most cruel form
+of war.
+
+Slavery as a legally recognized institution disappeared with the
+Civil War. The war against intemperance has made continuous
+progress and this problem is apparently approaching a solution.
+The war against war as a recognized institution has become the
+one all-absorbing problem of civilization. The war against the
+wrongs of women is being supplanted by efforts to harmonize the
+mutual privileges and duties of men and women on the basis of
+complete equality. As Samuel May predicted more than seventy
+years ago, in the future women are certain to take a hand both in
+the making and in the administration of law.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE TURNING-POINT
+
+The year 1831 is notable for three events in the history of the
+anti-slavery controversy: on the first day of January in that
+year William Lloyd Garrison began in Boston the publication of
+the Liberator; in August there occurred in Southampton, Virginia,
+an insurrection of slaves led by a negro, Nat Turner, in which
+sixty-one white persons were massacred; and in December the
+Virginia Legislature began its long debate on the question of
+slavery.
+
+On the part of the abolitionists there was at no time any sudden
+break in the principles which they advocated. Lundy did nothing
+but revive and continue the work of the Quakers and other non-
+slaveholding classes of the revolutionary period. Birney was and
+continued to be a typical slaveholding abolitionist of the
+earlier period. Garrison began his work as a disciple of Lundy,
+whom he followed in the condemnation of the African colonization
+scheme, though he went farther and rejected every form of
+colonization. Garrison likewise repudiated every plan for gradual
+emancipation and proclaimed the duty of immediate and
+unconditional liberation of the slaves.
+
+The first number of the Liberator contained an Address to the
+Public, which sounded the keynote of Garrison's career. "I shall
+contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave
+population--I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as
+justice on this subject--I do not wish to think, or speak, or
+write with moderation--I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I
+will not retreat a single inch, and I WILL BE HEARD!"
+
+The New England Anti-Slavery Society, of which Garrison was the
+chief organizer, was in essential harmony with the societies
+which Lundy had organized in other sections. Its first address to
+the public in 1833 distinctly recognized the separate States as
+the sole authority in the matter of emancipation within their own
+boundaries. Through moral suasion, eschewing all violence and
+sedition, its authors proposed to secure their object. In the
+spirit of civil and religious liberty and by appealing to the
+Declaration of Independence, the Liberty party of 1840 and 1844,
+by the Freesoil party of 1848, and later by the Republican party,
+and that nearly all of the abolitionists continued to be faithful
+adherents to those principles, are sufficient proof of the
+essential unity of the great anti-slavery movement. The apparent
+lack of harmony and the real confusion in the history of the
+subject arose from the peculiar character of one remarkable man.
+
+The few owners of slaves who had assumed the role of public
+defenders of the institution were in the habit of using violent
+and abusive language against anti-slavery agitators. This
+appeared in the first debate on the subject during Washington's
+administration. Every form of rhetorical abuse also accompanied
+the outbreak of mob violence against the reformers at the time of
+Garrison's advent into the controversy. He was especially fitted
+to reply in kind. "I am accused," said he, "of using hard
+language. I admit the charge. I have not been able to find a soft
+word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it."
+This was a new departure which was instantly recognized by
+Southern leaders. But from the beginning to the bitter end,
+Garrison stands alone as preeminently the representative of this
+form of attack. It was significant, also, that the Liberator was
+published in Boston, the literary center of the country.
+
+There is no evidence that there was any direct connection between
+the publication of the Liberator and the servile insurrection
+which occurred during the following August.* It was, however, but
+natural that the South should associate the two events. A few
+utterances of the paper were fitted, if not intended, to incite
+insurrection. One passage reads: "Whenever there is a contest
+between the oppressed and the oppressor--the weapons being equal
+between the parties--God knows that my heart must be with the
+oppressed, and always against the oppressor. Therefore, whenever
+commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave insurrections."
+Again: "Rather than see men wearing their chains in a cowardly
+and servile spirit, I would, as an advocate of peace, much rather
+see them breaking the heads of the tyrant with their chains."
+
+* Garrison himself denied any direct connection with the Nat
+Turner insurrection. See "William Lloyd Garrison, the Story of
+His Life told by His Children," vol. I, p. 251.
+
+George Thompson, an English co-laborer with Garrison, is quoted
+as saying in a public address in 1835 that "Southern slaves
+ought, or at least had a right, to cut the throats of their
+masters."* Such utterances are rare, and they express a passing
+mood not in the least characteristic of the general spirit of the
+abolition movement; yet the fact that such statements did emanate
+from such a source made it comparatively easy for extremists of
+the opposition to cast odium upon all abolitionists. The only
+type of abolition known in South Carolina was that of the extreme
+Garrisonian agitators, and it furnished at least a shadow of
+excuse for mob violence in the North and for complete suppression
+of discussion in the South. To encourage slaves to cut the
+throats of their masters was far from being a rhetorical figure
+of speech in communities where slaves were in the majority. Santo
+Domingo was at the time a prosperous republic founded by former
+slaves who had exterminated the Caucasian residents of the
+island. Negroes from Santo Domingo had fomented insurrection in
+South Carolina. The Nat Turner incident was more than a
+suggestion of the dire possibilities of the situation. Turner was
+a trusted slave, a preacher among the blacks. He succeeded in
+concealing his plot for weeks. When the massacre began, slaves
+not in the secret were induced to join. A majority of the slain
+were women and children. Abolitionists who had lived in slave
+States never indulged in flippant remarks fitted to incite
+insurrection. This was reserved for the few agitators far removed
+from the scene of action.
+
+* Schouler, "History of the United States under the
+Constitution," vol. V, p. 217.
+
+Southern planters who had determined at all hazards to perpetuate
+the institution of slavery were peculiarly sensitive on account
+of what was taking place in Spanish America and in the British
+West Indies. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, and united with
+Colombia in encouraging Cuba to throw off the Spanish yoke,
+abolish slavery, and join the sisterhood of New World republics.
+This led to an effective protest on the part of the United
+States. Both Spain and Mexico were advised that the United States
+could not with safety to its own interests permit the
+emancipation of slaves in the island of Cuba. But with the
+British Emancipation Act of 1833, Cuba became the only
+neighboring territory in which slavery was legal. These acts of
+emancipation added zeal to the determination of the Southern
+planters to secure territory for the indefinite extension of
+slavery to the southwest. When Lundy and Birney discovered these
+plans, their desire to husband and extend the direct political
+influence of abolitionists was greatly stimulated. To this end
+they maintained a moderate and conservative attitude. They took
+care that no abuse or misrepresentation should betray them into
+any expression which would diminish their influence with
+fair-minded, reasonable men. They were convinced that a clear and
+complete revelation of the facts would lead a majority of the
+people to adopt their views.
+
+The debate in the Virginia Legislature in the session which met
+three months after the Southampton massacre furnishes a
+demonstration that the traditional anti-slavery sentiment still
+persisted among the rulers of the Old Dominion. It arose out of a
+petition from the Quakers of the State asking for an
+investigation preparatory to a gradual emancipation of the
+slaves. The debate, which lasted for several weeks, was able and
+thorough. No stronger utterances in condemnation of slavery were
+ever voiced than appear in this debate. Different speakers made
+the statement that no one presumed to defend slavery on
+principle--that apologists for slavery existed but no defenders.
+Opposition to the petition was in the main apologetic in tone.
+
+A darker picture of the blighting effects of slavery on the
+industries of the country was never drawn than appears in these
+speeches. Slavery was declared to be driving free laborers from
+the State, to have already destroyed every industry except
+agriculture, and to have exhausted the soil so that profitable
+agriculture was becoming extinct, while pine brush was
+encroaching upon former fruitful fields. "Even the wolf," said
+one, "driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns,
+after the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over the desolations
+of slavery." Contrasts between free labor in northern industry
+and that of the South were vividly portrayed. In a speech of
+great power, one member referred to Kentucky and Ohio as States
+"providentially designated to exhibit in their future histories
+the differences which necessarily result from a country free
+from, and a country afflicted with the curse of slavery."
+
+The debate was by no means confined to industrial or material
+considerations. McDowell, who was afterwards elected Governor of
+the State, thus portrays the personal relations of master and
+slave "You may place the slave where you please--you may put him
+under any process, which, without destroying his value as a
+slave, will debase and crush him as a rational being--you may do
+all this, and the idea that he was born to be free will survive
+it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality--it is the
+ethereal part of his nature which oppression cannot reach--it is
+a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of the Deity, and never
+meant to be extinguished by the hand of man."
+
+Various speakers assumed that the continuance of slavery involved
+a bloody conflict; that either peaceably or through violence,
+slavery as contrary to the spirit of the age must come to an end;
+that the agitation against it could not be suppressed. Faulkner
+drew a lurid picture of the danger from servile insurrection, in
+which he referred to the utterances of two former speakers, one
+of whom had said that, unless something effective was done to
+ward off the danger, "the throats of all the white people of
+Virginia will be cut." The other replied, "No, the whites cannot
+be conquered--the throats of the blacks will be cut." Faulkner's
+rejoinder was that the difference was a trifling one, "for the
+fact is conceded that one race or the other must be
+exterminated."
+
+The public press joined in the debate. Leading editorials
+appeared in the Richmond Enquirer urging that effective measures
+be instituted to put an end to slavery. The debate aroused much
+interest throughout the South. Substantially all the current
+abolition arguments appeared in the speeches of the slave-owning
+members of the Virginia Legislature. And what was done about it?
+Nothing at all. The petition was not granted; no action looking
+towards emancipation was taken. This was indeed a turning-point.
+Men do not continue to denounce in public their own conduct
+unless their action results in some effort toward corrective
+measures.
+
+Professor Thomas Dew, of the chair of history and metaphysics in
+William and Mary College and later President of the College,
+published an essay reviewing the debate in the Legislature and
+arguing that any plan for emancipation in Virginia was either
+undesirable or impossible. This essay was among the first of the
+direct pro-slavery arguments. Statements in support of the view
+soon followed. In 1885 the Governor of South Carolina in a
+message to the Legislature said, "Domestic slavery is the
+corner-stone of our republican edifice." Senator Calhoun,
+speaking in the Senate two years later, declared slavery to be a
+positive good. W. G. Simms, Southern poet and novelist, writing
+in 1852, felicitates himself as being among the first who about
+fifteen years earlier advocated slavery as a great good and a
+blessing. Harriet Martineau, an English author who traveled
+extensively in the South in 1885, found few slaveholders who
+justified the institution as being in itself just. But after the
+debates in the Virginia Legislature, there were few owners of
+slaves who publicly advocated abolition. The spirit of mob
+violence had set in, and, contrary to the utterances of Virginia
+statesmen, free speech on the subject of slavery was suppressed
+in the slave States. This did not mean that Southern statesmen
+had lost the power to perceive the evil effects of slavery or
+that they were convinced that their former views were erroneous.
+It meant simply that they had failed to agree upon a policy of
+gradual emancipation, and the only recourse left seemed to be to
+follow the example of James G. Birney and leave the South or to
+submit in silence to the new order.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE VINDICATION OF LIBERTY
+
+With the changed attitude of the South towards emancipation there
+was associated an active hostility to dearly bought human
+liberty. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of
+worship, the right of assembly, trial by jury, the right of
+petition, free use of the mails, and numerous other fundamental
+human rights were assailed. Birney and other abolitionists who
+had immediate knowledge of slavery early perceived that the real
+question at issue was quite as much the continued liberty of the
+white man as it was the liberation of the black man and that the
+enslavement of one race involved also the ultimate essential
+enslavement of the other.
+
+In 1831 two slave States and six free States still extended to
+free negroes the right to vote. During the pro-slavery crusade
+these privileges disappeared; and not only so, but free negroes
+were banished from certain States, or were not permitted to enter
+them, or were allowed to remain only by choosing a white man for
+a guardian. It was made a crime to teach negroes, whether slaves
+or free men, to read and write. Under various pretexts free
+negroes were reduced to slavery. Freedom of worship was denied to
+negroes, and they were not allowed to assemble for any purpose
+except under the strict surveillance of white men. Negro
+testimony in a court of law was invalid where the rights of a
+white man were involved. The right of a negro to his freedom was
+decided by an arbitrary court without a jury, while the disputed
+right of a white man to the ownership of a horse was conditioned
+by the safeguard of trial by jury.
+
+The maintenance of such policies carries with it of necessity the
+suppression of free discussion. When Southern leaders adopted the
+policy of defending slavery as a righteous institution,
+abolitionists in the South either emigrated to the North or were
+silenced. In either case they were deprived of a fundamental
+right. The spirit of persecution followed them into the free
+States. Birney could not publish his paper in Kentucky, nor even
+at Cincinnati, save at the risk of his life. Elijah Lovejoy was
+not allowed to publish his paper in Missouri, and, when he
+persisted in publishing it in Illinois, he was brutally murdered.
+Even in Boston it required men of courage and determination to
+meet and organize an anti-slavery society in 1832, though only a
+few years earlier Benjamin Lundy had traveled freely through the
+South itself delivering anti-slavery lectures and organizing
+scores of such societies. The New York Anti-Slavery Society was
+secretly organized in 1832 in spite of the opposition of a
+determined mob. Mob violence was everywhere rife. Meetings were
+broken up, negro quarters attacked, property destroyed, murders
+committed.
+
+Fair-minded men became abolitionists on account of the crusade
+against the rights of white men quite as much as from their
+interest in the rights of negroes. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was
+led to espouse the cause by observing the attacks upon the
+freedom of the press in Cincinnati. Gerrit Smith witnessed the
+breaking up of an anti-slavery meeting in Utica, New York, and
+thereafter consecrated his time, his talents, and his great
+wealth to the cause of liberty. Wendell Phillips saw Garrison in
+the hands of a Boston mob, and that experience determined him to
+make common cause with the martyr. And the murder of Lovejoy in
+1837 made many active abolitionists.
+
+It is difficult to imagine a more inoffensive practice than
+giving to negro girls the rudiments of an education. Yet a school
+for this purpose, taught by Miss Prudence Crandall in Canterbury,
+Connecticut, was broken up by persistent persecution, a special
+act of the Legislature being passed for the purpose, forbidding
+the teaching of negroes from outside the State without the
+consent of the town authorities. Under this act Miss Crandall was
+arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.
+
+Having eliminated free discussion from the South, the Southern
+States sought to accomplish the same object in the North. In
+pursuance of a resolution of the Legislature, the Governor of
+Georgia offered a reward of five thousand dollars to any one who
+should arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction under
+the laws of Georgia the editor of the Liberator. R. G. Williams,
+publishing agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, was
+indicted by a grand jury of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, and
+Governor Gayle of Alabama made a requisition on Governor Marcy of
+New York for his extradition. Williams had never been in Alabama.
+His offense consisted in publishing in the New York Emancipator a
+few rather mild utterances against slavery.
+
+Governor McDuffie of South Carolina in an official message
+declared that slavery was the very corner-stone of the republic,
+adding that the laboring population of any country, "bleached or
+unbleached," was a dangerous element in the body politic, and
+predicting that within twenty-five years the laboring people of
+the North would be virtually reduced to slavery. Referring to
+abolitionists, he said: "The laws of every community should
+punish this species of interference with death without benefit of
+clergy." Pursuant to the Governor's recommendation, the
+Legislature adopted a resolution calling upon non-slaveholding
+States to pass laws to suppress promptly and effectively all
+abolition societies. In nearly all the slave States similar
+resolutions were adopted, and concerted action against
+anti-slavery effort was undertaken. During the winter of 1835 and
+1836, the Governors of the free States received these resolutions
+from the South and, instead of resenting them as an uncalled-for
+interference with the rights of free commonwealths, they treated
+them with respect. Edward Everett, Governor of Massachusetts, in
+his message presenting the Southern documents to the Legislature,
+said: "Whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated
+to excite an insurrection among the slaves has been held, by
+highly respectable legal authority, an offense against this
+Commonwealth which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common
+law." Governor Marcy of New York, in a like document, declared
+that "without the power to pass such laws the States would not
+possess all the necessary means for preserving their external
+relations of peace among themselves." Even before the Southern
+requests reached Rhode Island, the Legislature had under
+consideration a bill to suppress abolition societies.
+
+When a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature had been duly
+organized to consider the documents received from the slave
+States, the abolitionists requested the privilege of a hearing
+before the committee. Receiving no reply, they proceeded to
+formulate a statement of their case; but before they could
+publish it, they were invited to appear before the joint
+committee of the two houses. The public had been aroused by the
+issue and there was a large audience. The case for the
+abolitionists was stated by their ablest speakers, among whom was
+William Lloyd Garrison. They labored to convince the committee
+that their utterances were not incendiary, and that any
+legislative censure directed against them would be an
+encouragement to mob violence and the persecution which was
+already their lot. After the defensive arguments had been fully
+presented, William Goodell took the floor and proceeded to charge
+upon the Southern States which had made these demands a
+conspiracy against the liberties of the North. In the midst of
+great excitement and many interruptions by the chairman of the
+committee, he quoted the language of Governor McDuffie's message,
+and characterized the documents lying on the table before him as
+"fetters for Northern freemen." Then, turning to the committee,
+he began, "Mr. Chairman, are you prepared to attempt to put them
+on?"--but the sentence was only half finished when the stentorian
+voice of the chairman interrupted him: "Sit down, sir!" and he
+sat down. The committee then arose and left the room. But the
+audience did not rise; they waited till other abolitionists found
+their tongues and gave expression to a fixed determination to
+uphold the liberties purchased for them by the blood of their
+fathers. The Massachusetts Legislature did not comply with the
+request of Governor McDuffie of South Carolina to take the first
+step towards the enslavement of all laborers, white as well as
+black. And Rhode Island refused to enact into law the pending
+bill for the suppression of anti-slavery societies. They declined
+to violate the plain requirements of their Constitution that the
+interests of slavery might be promoted. Not many years later they
+were ready to strain or break the Constitution for the sake of
+liberty.
+
+In the general crusade against liberty churches proved more
+pliable than States. The authority of nearly all the leading
+denominations was directed against the abolitionists. The General
+Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed in 1836 a
+resolution censuring two of their members who had lectured in
+favor of modern abolitionism. The Ohio Conference of the same
+denomination had passed resolutions urging resistance to the
+anti-slavery movement. In June, 1836, the New York Conference
+decided that no one should be chosen as deacon or elder who did
+not give pledge that he would refrain from agitating the church
+on the subject.
+
+The same spirit appeared in theological seminaries. The trustees
+of Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, Ohio, voted that students
+should not organize or be members of anti-slavery societies or
+hold meetings or lecture or speak on the subject. Whereupon the
+students left in a body, and many of the professors withdrew and
+united with others in the founding of an anti-slavery college at
+Oberlin.
+
+A persistent attack was also directed against the use of the
+United States mails for the distribution of anti-slavery
+literature. Mob violence which involved the post-office began as
+early as 1830, when printed copies of Miss Grimke's Appeal to the
+Christian Women of the South were seized and burned in
+Charleston. In 1835 large quantities of anti-slavery literature
+were removed from the Charleston office and in the presence of
+the assembled citizens committed to the flames. Postmasters on
+their own motion examined the mails and refused to deliver any
+matter that they deemed incendiary. Amos Kendall,
+Postmaster-General, was requested to issue an order authorizing
+such conduct. He replied that he had no legal authority to issue
+such an order. Yet he would not recommend the delivery of such
+papers. "We owe," said he, "an obligation to the laws, but a
+higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former
+be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard
+them. Entertaining these views, I cannot sanction, and will not
+condemn, the step you have taken." This is an early instance of
+the appeal to the "higher law" in the pro-slavery controversy.
+The higher law was invoked against the freedom of the press. The
+New York postmaster sought to dissuade the Anti-slavery Society
+from the attempt to send its publications through the mails into
+Southern States. In reply to a request for authorization to
+refuse to accept such publications, the Postmaster-General
+replied: "I am deterred from giving an order to exclude the whole
+series of abolition publications from the Southern mails only by
+a want of legal power, and if I were situated as you are, I would
+do as you have done."
+
+Mr. Kendall's letters to the postmasters of Charleston and New
+York were written in July and August, 1835. In December of the
+same year, presumably with full knowledge that a member of his
+Cabinet was encouraging violations of law in the interest of
+slavery, President Jackson undertook to supply the need of legal
+authorization. In his annual message he made a savage attack upon
+the abolitionists and recommended to Congress the "passing of
+such a law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the
+circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of
+incendiary publications."
+
+This part of the President's message was referred to a select
+committee, of which John C. Calhoun was chairman. The chairman's
+report was against the adoption of the President's recommendation
+because a subject of such vital interest to the States ought not
+to be left to Congress. The admission of the right of Congress to
+decide what is incendiary, asserted the report, carries with it
+the power to decide what is not incendiary and hence Congress
+might authorize and enforce the circulation of abolition
+literature through the mails in all the States. The States should
+themselves severally decide what in their judgment is incendiary,
+and then it would become the duty of the general Government to
+give effect to such state laws. The bill recommended was in
+harmony with this view. It was made illegal for any deputy
+postmaster "to deliver to any person whatsoever, any pamphlet,
+newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper, or pictorial
+representation touching the subject of slavery, where by the laws
+of the said State, territory, or district their circulation is
+prohibited." The bill was defeated in the Senate by a small
+margin. Altogether there was an enlightening debate on the whole
+subject. The exposure of the abuse of tampering with the mail
+created a general reaction, which enabled the abolitionists to
+win a spectacular victory. Instead of a law forbidding the
+circulation of anti-slavery publications, Congress enacted a law
+requiring postal officials under heavy penalties to deliver
+without discrimination all matter committed to their charge. This
+act was signed by President Jackson, and Calhoun himself was
+induced to admit that the purposes of the abolitionists were not
+violent and revolutionary. Henceforth abolitionists enjoyed their
+full privileges in the use of the United States mail.
+An even more dramatic victory was thrust upon the abolitionists
+by the inordinate violence of their opponents in their attack
+upon the right of petition. John Quincy Adams, who became their
+distinguished champion, was not himself an abolitionist. When, as
+a member of the lower House of Congress in 1831, he presented
+petitions from certain citizens of Pennsylvania, presumably
+Quakers, requesting Congress to abolish slavery and the
+slave-trade in the District of Columbia, he refused to
+countenance their prayer, and expressed the wish that the
+memorial might be referred without debate. At the very time when
+a New England ex-President was thus advising abolitionists to
+desist from sending petitions to Congress, the Virginia
+Legislature was engaged in the memorable debate upon a similar
+petition from Virginia Quakers, in which most radical abolition
+sentiment was expressed by actual slaveowners. Adams continued to
+present anti-slavery memorials and at the same time to express
+his opposition to the demands of the petitioners. When in 1835
+there arose a decided opposition to the reception of such
+documents, Adams, still in apparent sympathy with the pro-slavery
+South on the main issue, gave wise counsel on the method of
+dealing with petitions. They should be received, said he, and
+referred to a committee; because the right of petition is sacred.
+This, he maintained, was the best way to avoid disturbing debate
+on the subject of slavery. He quoted his own previous experience;
+he had made known his opposition to the purposes of the
+petitioners; their memorials were duly referred to a committee
+and there they slept the sleep of death. At that time only one
+voice had been raised in the House in support of the abolition
+petitioners, that of John Dickson of New York, who had delivered
+a speech of two hours in length advocating their cause; but not a
+voice was raised in reply. Mr. Adams mentioned this incident with
+approval. The way to forestall disturbing debate in Congress, he
+said, was scrupulously to concede all constitutional rights and
+then simply to refrain from speaking on the subject.
+
+This sound advice was not followed. For several months a
+considerable part of the time of the House was occupied with the
+question of handling abolition petitions. And finally, in May,
+1836, the following resolution passed the House: "Resolved, That
+all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers
+relating in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of
+slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either
+printed or referred, be laid on the table, and that no further
+action whatever shall be had thereon." This is commonly known as
+the "gag resolution." During four successive years it was
+reenacted in one form or another and was not repealed by direct
+vote until 1844.
+
+When the name of Mr. Adams was called in the vote upon the
+passage of the above resolution, instead of answering in the
+ordinary way, he said: "I hold the resolution to be a direct
+violation of the Constitution of the United States, of the rules
+of this House, and of the rights of my constituents." This was
+the beginning of the duel between the "old man eloquent" and a
+determined majority in the House of Representatives. Adams
+developed undreamed-of resources as a debater and
+parliamentarian. He made it his special business to break down
+the barrier against the right of petition. Abolitionists
+cooperated with zeal in the effort. Their champion was abundantly
+supplied with petitions. The gag resolution was designed to
+prevent all debate on the subject of slavery. Its effect in the
+hands of the shrewd parliamentarian was to foment debate. On one
+occasion, with great apparent innocence, after presenting the
+usual abolition petitions, Adams called the attention of the
+Speaker to one which purported to be signed by twenty-two slaves
+and asked whether such a petition should be presented to the
+House, since he was himself in doubt as to the rules applicable
+in such a case. This led to a furious outbreak in the House which
+lasted for three days. Adams was threatened with censure at the
+bar of the House, with expulsion, with the grand jury, with the
+penitentiary; and it is believed that only his great age and
+national repute shielded him from personal violence. After
+numerous passionate speeches had been delivered, Adams injected a
+few important corrections into the debate. He reminded the House
+that he had not presented a petition purporting to emanate from
+slaves; on the contrary, he had expressly declined to present it
+until the Speaker had decided whether a petition from slaves was
+covered by the rule. Moreover, the petition was not against
+slavery but in favor of slavery. He was then charged with the
+crime of trifling with the sensibilities of the House; and
+finally the champion of the right of petition took the floor in
+his own defense. His language cut to the quick. His calumniators
+were made to feel the force of his biting sarcasm. They were
+convicted of injustice, and all their resolutions of censure were
+withdrawn. The victory was complete.
+
+After the year 1838 John Quincy Adams had the effective support
+of Joshua R. Giddings from the Western Reserve, Ohio--who also
+fought a pitched battle of his own which illustrates another
+phase of the crusade against liberty. The ship Creole had sailed
+from Baltimore to New Orleans in 1841 with a cargo of slaves. The
+negroes mutinied on the high seas, slew one man, gained
+possession of the vessel, sailed to Nassau, and were there set
+free by the British Government. Prolonged diplomatic negotiations
+followed in which our Government held that, as slaves were
+property in the United States, they continued to be such on the
+high seas. In the midst of the controversy, Giddings introduced a
+resolution into the House, declaring that slavery, being an
+abridgment of liberty, could exist only under local rules, and
+that on the high seas there can be no slavery. For this act
+Giddings was arraigned and censured by the House. He at once
+resigned, but was reelected with instructions to continue the
+fight for freedom of debate in the House.
+
+In the campaign against the rights of freemen mob violence was
+first employed, but in the South the weapon of repressive
+legislation was soon substituted, and this was powerfully
+supplemented by social and religious ostracism. Except in a few
+districts in the border States, these measures were successful.
+Public profession of abolitionism was suppressed. The violence of
+the mob was of much longer duration in the North and reached its
+height in the years 1834 and 1835. But Northern mobs only
+quickened the zeal of the abolitionists and made converts to
+their cause. The attempt to substitute repressive state
+legislation had the same effect, and the use of church authority
+for making an end of the agitation for human liberty was only
+temporarily influential.
+
+As early as 1838 the Presbyterian Church was divided over
+questions of doctrine into Old School and New School
+Presbyterians. This served to forestall the impending division on
+the slavery question. The Old School in the South became
+pro-slavery and the New School in the North became anti-slavery.
+At the same time the Methodist Church of the entire country was
+beset by a division on the main question. In 1844 Southern
+Methodist Episcopalian conferences resolved upon separation and
+committed themselves to the defense of slavery. The division in
+the Methodist Church was completed in 1846. A corresponding
+division took place in the Baptist Church in 1845. The
+controversy was dividing the country into a free North and an
+enslaved South, and Southern white men as well as negroes were
+threatened with subjection to the demands of the dominant
+institution.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE SLAVERY ISSUE IN POLITICS
+
+Some who opposed mob violence became active abolitionists; others
+were led to defend the rights of abolitionists because to do
+otherwise would encourage anarchy and general disorder. The same
+was true of those who defended the right of petition and the free
+use of the mails and the entire list of the fundamental rights of
+freemen which were threatened by the crusade against
+abolitionists. Birney's contention that unless the slave is freed
+no one can be free was thus vindicated: the issue involved vastly
+more than the mere emancipation of slaves.
+
+The attack made in defense of slavery upon the rights of freemen
+was early recognized as involving civil war unless peaceable
+emancipation could be attained. So soon as John Quincy Adams
+faced the new spirit in Congress, he was convinced that it meant
+probable war. As early as May, 1836, he warned the South, saying:
+"From the instant that your slaveholding States become the
+theater of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from that moment the
+war powers of the Constitution extend to interference with the
+institution of slavery." This sentiment he reiterated and
+amplified on various occasions. The South was duly warned that an
+attempt to disrupt the Union would involve a war of which
+emancipation would be one of the consequences. With the exception
+of Garrison and a few of his personal followers, abolitionists
+were unionists: they stood for the perpetual union of the States.
+
+This is not the place to give an extended account of the Mexican
+War.* There are, however, certain incidents connected with the
+annexation of Texas and the resulting war which profoundly
+affected the crusade against slavery. Both Lundy and Birney in
+their missions to promote emancipation through the process of
+colonization believed that they had unearthed a plan on the part
+of Southern leaders to acquire territory from Mexico for the
+purpose of extending slavery. This discovery coincided with the
+suppression of abolition propaganda in the South. Hitherto John
+Quincy Adams had favored the western expansion of our territory.
+He had labored diligently to make the Rio Grande the western
+boundary of the Louisiana Purchase at the time of the treaty with
+Spain in 1819. But though in 1825 he had supported a measure to
+purchase Texas from Mexico, under the new conditions he threw
+himself heartily against the annexation of Texas, and in 1838 he
+defeated in the House of Representatives a resolution favoring
+annexation. To this end Adams occupied the morning hour of the
+House each day from the 16th of June to the 7th of July, within
+two days of the time fixed for adjournment. This was only a
+beginning of his fight against the extension of slavery. There
+was no relenting in his opposition to pro-slavery demands until
+he was stricken down with paralysis in the streets of Boston, in
+November, 1846. He never again addressed a public assembly. But
+he continued to occupy his seat in Congress until February 23,
+1848.
+
+* See "Texas and the Mexican War" (in "The Chronicles of
+America").
+
+The debate inaugurated in Congress by Adams and others over the
+extension of slave territory rapidly spread to the country at
+large, and interest in the question became general. Abolitionists
+were thereby greatly stimulated to put into practice their
+professed duty of seeking to accomplish their ends by political
+action. Their first effort was to secure recognition in the
+regular parties. The Democrats answered in their platform of 1840
+by a plank specifically denouncing the abolitionists, and the
+Whigs proved either noncommittal or unfriendly. The result was
+that abolitionists organized a party of their own in 1840 and
+nominated James G. Birney for the Presidency. Both of the older
+parties during this campaign evaded the issue of the annexation
+of Texas. In 1844 the Whigs again refrained from giving in their
+platform any official utterance on the Texas issue, though they
+were understood to be opposed to annexation. The Democrats
+adroitly asserted in their platform their approval of the
+re-annexation of Texas and reoccupation of Oregon. There was a
+shadowy prior claim to both these regions, and by combining them
+in this way the party avoided any odious partiality towards the
+acquisition of slave territory. But the voters in both parties
+had become interested in the specific question whether the
+country was to enter upon a war of conquest whose primary object
+should be the extension of slavery. In the North it became
+generally understood that a vote for Henry Clay, the Whig
+candidate, was an expression of opposition to annexation. This
+issue, however, was not made clear in the South. In the absence
+of telegraph and daily paper it was quite possible to maintain
+contradictory positions in different sections of the country. But
+since the Democrats everywhere openly favored annexation, the
+election of their candidate, James K. Polk, was generally
+accepted as a popular approval of the annexation of Texas.
+Indeed, action immediately followed the election and, before the
+President-elect had been inaugurated, the joint resolution for
+the annexation of Texas passed both Houses of Congress.
+
+The popular vote was almost equally divided between Whigs and
+Democrats. Had the vote for Birney, who was again the candidate
+of the Liberty party, been cast for Clay electors, Clay would
+have been chosen President. The Birney vote was over sixty-two
+thousand. The Liberty party, therefore, held the balance of power
+and determined the result of the election.
+
+The Liberty party has often been censured for defeating the Whigs
+at this election of 1844. But many incidents, too early forgotten
+by historians, go far to justify the course of the leaders.
+Birney and Clay were at one time members of the same party. They
+were personal friends, and as slave holders they shared the view
+that slavery was a menace to the country and ought to be
+abolished. It was just fourteen years before this election that
+Birney made a visit to Clay to induce him to accept the
+leadership of an organized movement to abolish slavery in
+Kentucky. Three years later, when Birney returned to Kentucky to
+do himself what Henry Clay had refused to do, he became convinced
+that the reaction which had taken place in favor of slavery was
+largely due to Clay's influence. This was a common impression
+among active abolitionists. It is not strange, therefore, that
+they refused to support him as a candidate for the Presidency,
+and it is not at all certain that his election in 1844 would have
+prevented the war with Mexico.
+
+Northern Whigs accused the Democrats of fomenting a war with
+Mexico with the intention of gaining territory for the purpose of
+extending slavery. Democrats denied that the annexation of Texas
+would lead to war, and many of them proclaimed their opposition
+to the farther extension of slavery. In harmony with this
+sentiment, when President Polk asked for a grant of two million
+dollars to aid in making a treaty with Mexico, they attached to
+the bill granting the amount a proviso to the effect that slavery
+should forever be prohibited in any territory which might be
+obtained from Mexico by the contemplated treaty. The proviso was
+written by an Ohio Democrat and was introduced in the House by
+David A. Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, after whom it is known.
+It passed the House by a fair majority with the support of both
+Whigs and Democrats. At the time of the original introduction in
+August, 1846, the Senate did not vote upon the measure. Davis of
+Massachusetts moved its adoption but inadvertently prolonged his
+speech in its favor until the hour for adjournment. Hence there
+was no vote on the subject. Subsequently the proviso in a new
+form again passed the House but failed of adoption in the Senate.
+
+During the war the Wilmot Proviso was the subject of frequent
+debate in Congress and of continuous debate throughout the
+country until the treaty with Mexico was signed in 1848. A vast
+territory had been acquired as a result of the war, and no
+decision had been reached as to whether it should remain free or
+be opened to settlement by slave-owners. Another presidential
+election was at hand. For fully ten years there had been
+ever-increasing excitement over the question of the limitation or
+the extension of slavery. This had clearly become the topic of
+supreme interest throughout the country, and yet the two leading
+parties avoided the issue. Their own membership was divided.
+Northern Democrats, many of them, were decidedly opposed to
+slavery extension. Southern Whigs with equal intensity favored
+the extension of slavery into the new territory. The platforms of
+the two parties were silent on the subject. The Whigs nominated
+Taylor, a Southern general who had never voted their party
+ticket, but they made no formal declaration of principles. The
+Democrats repeated with colorless additions their platforms of
+1840 anti 1844 and sought to win the election with a Northern
+man, Lewis Cass of Michigan, as candidate.
+
+There was, therefore, a clear field for a party having fully
+defined views to express on a topic of commanding interest. The
+cleavage in the Democratic party already begun by the debate over
+the Wilmot Proviso was farther promoted by a factional division
+of New York Democrats. Martin Van Buren became the leader of the
+liberal faction, the "Barnburners," who nominated him for
+President at a convention at Utica. The spirit of independence
+now seized disaffected Whigs and Democrats everywhere in the
+North and Northwest. Men of anti-slavery proclivities held
+nonpartizan meetings and conventions. The movement finally
+culminated in the famous Buffalo convention which gave birth to
+the Freesoil party. The delegates of all political persuasions
+united on the one principle of opposition to slavery. They
+adopted a ringing platform closing with the words: "Resolved,
+That we inscribe on our banner 'Free Soil, Free Speech, Free
+Labor, and Free Men,' and under it will fight on, and fight ever,
+until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." They
+accepted Van Buren as their candidate. The vote at the ensuing
+election was more than fourfold that given to Birney in 1844. The
+Van Buren supporters held the balance of power between Whigs and
+Democrats in twelve States. Taylor was elected by the vote of New
+York, which except for the division in the party would have gone
+to Cass. There was no longer any doubt of the fact that a
+political force had arisen which could no longer be ignored by
+the ruling parties. One of the parties must either support the
+new issue or give place to a party which would do so.
+
+A political party for the defense of liberty was the fulfillment
+of the aspirations of all earnest anti-slavery men and of all
+abolitionists not of the radical Garrisonian persuasion. The
+national anti-slavery societies were for the most part limited in
+their operations to the Atlantic seaboard. The West organized
+local and state associations with little reference to the
+national association. When the disruption occurred between
+Garrison and his opponents in 1840, the Western abolitionists
+continued their former methods of local organization. They
+recognized no divisions in their ranks and continued to work in
+harmony with all who in any way opposed the institution of
+slavery. The political party was their first really effective
+national organization. Through party committees, caucuses, and
+conventions, they became a part of the forces that controlled the
+nation. The older local clubs and associations were either
+displaced by the party or became mere adjuncts to the party.
+
+The lines for political action were now clearly defined. In the
+States emancipation should be accomplished by state action. With
+a few individual exceptions the leaders conceded that Congress
+had no power to abolish slavery in the States. Upon the general
+Government they urged the duty of abolishing both slavery and the
+slave-trade in the District of Columbia and in all areas under
+direct federal control. They further urged upon the Government
+the strict enforcement of the laws prohibiting the foreign
+slave-trade and the enactment of laws forbidding the interstate
+slave-trade. The constitutionality of these main lines of action
+has been generally conceded.
+
+Abolitionists were pioneers in the formulation of political
+platforms. The declaration of principles drawn up by Garrison in
+1833 and adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society was of the
+nature of a political platform. The duty of voting in furtherance
+of the policy of emancipation was inculcated. No platform was
+adopted for the first political campaign, that of 1840; but four
+years later there was an elaborate party platform of twenty-one
+resolutions. Many things had happened in the eleven years
+intervening since the declaration of principles of the American
+Anti-Slavery Society. In the earlier platform the freedom of the
+slave appears as the primary object. That of the Liberty party
+assumes the broad principle of human brotherhood as the
+foundation for a democracy or a republic. It denies that the
+party is organized merely to free the slave. Slaveholding as the
+grossest form of despotism must indeed be attacked first, but the
+aim of the party is to carry the principle of equal rights into
+all social relations. It is not a sectional party nor a party
+organized for a single purpose. "It is not a new party, nor a
+third party, but it is the party of 1776, reviving the principles
+of that memorable era, and striving to carry them into practical
+application." The spirit of '76 rings, indeed, throughout the
+document, which declares that it was understood at the time of
+the Declaration and the Constitution that the existence of
+slavery was in derogation of the principles of American liberty.
+The implied faith of the Nation and the States was pledged to
+remove this stain upon the national character. Some States had
+nobly fulfilled that pledge; others shamelessly had neglected to
+do so.
+
+These principles are reasserted in succeeding platforms. The
+later opponents of slavery in their principles and policies thus
+allied themselves with the founders of the republic. They claimed
+the right to continue to repeat the words of Washington and
+Jefferson and those of the members of the Virginia Legislature of
+1832. No new doctrines were required. It was enough simply to
+reaffirm the fundamental principles of democracy.
+
+The names attached to the party are significant. It was at first
+popularly styled the Abolition party, then officially in turn the
+Liberty party, the Freesoil party, and finally the Republican
+party. Republican was the name first applied to the Democratic
+party--the party of Jefferson. The term Democrat was gradually
+substituted under the leadership of Jackson before 1830. Some of
+the men who participated in the organization of the later
+Republican party had themselves been Republicans in the party of
+Jefferson. They not only accepted the name which Jefferson gave
+to his party, but they adopted the principles which Jefferson
+proclaimed on the subject of slavery, free soil, and human rights
+in general. This was the final stage in the identification of the
+later anti-slavery crusade with the earlier contest for liberty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE PASSING OF THE WHIG PARTY
+
+The middle of the last century was marked by many incidents which
+have left a permanent impress upon politics in general and upon
+the slavery question in particular. Europe was again in the
+throes of popular uprisings. New constitutions were adopted in
+France, Switzerland, Prussia, and Austria. Reactions in favor of
+autocracy in Austria and Germany sent multitudes of lovers of
+liberty to America. Kossuth, the Hungarian revolutionist,
+electrified American audiences by his appeals on behalf of the
+downtrodden in Europe. Already the world was growing smaller.
+America did not stop at the Pacific but crossed the ocean to
+establish permanent political and commercial relations with Japan
+and China.
+
+The industries of the country were being reorganized to meet new
+conditions created by recent inventions. The electric telegraph
+was just coming into use, giving rise to a new era in
+communication. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 was
+followed by competing projects to construct railroads to the
+Pacific with Chicago and St. Louis as the rival eastern
+terminals. The telegraph, the railway, and the resulting
+industrial development proved great nationalizing influences.
+They served also to give increased emphasis to the contrast
+between the industries of the free and those of the slave States.
+The Census of 1850 became an effective anti-slavery argument.
+
+The telegraph also gave new life to the public press. The
+presidential campaign of 1848 was the last one in which it was
+possible to carry on contradictory arguments in support of the
+same candidate. If slavery could not endure the test of
+untrammeled discussion when there were no means of rapid
+intercommunication such as the telegraph supplied, how could it
+contend against the revelations of the daily press with the new
+type of reporter and interviewer which was now developed?
+
+It is a remarkable coincidence that in the midst of the passing
+of the old and the coming in of the new order there should be a
+change in the political leadership of the country. Webster, Clay,
+Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, not to mention others, all died near
+the middle of the century, and their political power passed to
+younger men. Adams gave his blessing to a young friend and
+co-laborer, William H. Seward of New York, intimating that he
+expected him to do much to curb the threatening power of the
+slaveholding oligarchy; while Andrew Jackson, who died earlier,
+had already conferred a like distinction upon young Stephen A.
+Douglas. There was no lack of aspirants for the fallen mantles.
+
+John C. Calhoun continued almost to the day of his death to
+modify his interpretation of the Constitution in the interest of
+his section. As a young man he avowed protectionist principles.
+Becoming convinced that slave labor was not suited to
+manufacture, he urged South Carolina to declare the protective
+tariff laws null and void within her limits. When his section
+seemed endangered by the distribution of anti-slavery literature
+through the mail, he extemporized a theory that each State had a
+right to pass statutes to protect itself in such an emergency, in
+which case it became the duty of the general Government and of
+all other States to respect such laws. When it finally appeared
+that the territory acquired from Mexico was likely to remain
+free, the same statesman made further discoveries. He found that
+Congress had no right to exclude slavery from any Territory
+belonging to the United States; that the owners of slaves had
+equal rights with the owners of other property; that neither
+Congress nor a territorial authority had any power to exclude
+slaves from a Territory. This doctrine was accepted by extremists
+in the South and was finally embodied in the Dred Scott decision
+of 1857.
+
+Abolitionists had meantime evolved a precisely contradictory
+theory. They asserted that the Constitution gave no warrant for
+property in man, except as held under state laws; that with this
+exception freedom was guaranteed to all; that Congress had no
+more right to make a slave than it had to make a king; and that
+it was the duty of Congress to maintain freedom in all the
+Territories. Extremists expressed the view that all past acts
+whereby slavery had been extended were unconstitutional and
+therefore void. Between these extreme conflicting views was every
+imaginable grade of opinion. The prevailing view of opponents of
+slavery, however, was in harmony with their past conduct and
+maintained that Congress had complete control over slavery in the
+Territories.
+
+When the Mexican territory was acquired, Stephen A. Douglas, as
+the experienced chairman of the Committee on Territories in the
+Senate, was already developing a theory respecting slavery in the
+Territories which was destined to play a leading part in the
+later crusade against slavery. Douglas was the most thoroughgoing
+of expansionists and would acknowledge no northern boundary on
+this side of the North Pole, no southern boundary nearer than
+Panama. He regarded the United States, with its great principle
+of local autonomy, as fitted to become eventually the United
+States of the whole world, while he held it to be an immediate
+duty to make it the United States of North America. As the son-
+in-law of a Southern planter in North Carolina, and as the father
+of sons who inherited slave property, Douglas, although born in
+Vermont, knew the South as did no other Northern statesman. He
+knew also the institution of slavery at first hand. As a
+pronounced expansionist and as the congressional leader in all
+matters pertaining to the Territories, he acquired detailed
+information as to the qualities of these new possessions, and he
+spoke, therefore, with a good degree of authority when he said,
+"If there was one inch of territory in the whole of our
+acquisitions from Mexico where slavery could exist, it was in the
+valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin." But this region
+was at once preempted for freedom upon the discovery of gold.
+
+Douglas did not admit that even the whole of Texas would remain
+dedicated to slavery. Some of the States to be formed from it
+would be free, by the same laws of climate and resources which
+determined that the entire West would remain free. Before the
+Mexican War the Senator had become convinced that the extension
+of slavery had reached its limit; that the Missouri Compromise
+was a dead letter except as a psychological palliative; that
+Nature had already ordained that slave labor should be forever
+excluded from all Western territory both north and south of that
+line. His reply to Calhoun's contention that a balance must be
+maintained between slave and free States was that he had plans
+for forming seventeen new States out of the vast Western domains,
+every one of which would be free. And besides, said he, "we all
+look forward with confidence to the time when Delaware, Maryland,
+Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and probably North Carolina and
+Tennessee will adopt a gradual system of emancipation." Douglas
+was one of the first to favor the admission of California as a
+free State. According to the Missouri Compromise law and the laws
+of Mexico, all Western territory was free, and he was opposed to
+interference with existing conditions. The Missouri Compromise
+was still held sacred. Finally, however, it was with Douglas's
+assistance that the Compromise measures of 1850 were passed, one
+of which provided for territorial Governments for Utah and New
+Mexico with the proviso that, when admitted as States, slavery
+should be permitted or prohibited as the citizens of those States
+should determine at the time. Congress refrained from any
+declaration as to slavery in the Territories. It was this policy
+of "non-intervention" which four years later furnished plausible
+excuse for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
+
+It was not strange that there was general ignorance in all parts
+of the country as to the resources of the newly acquired
+territory. The rush to the goldfields precipitated action in
+respect to California. Before General Taylor, the newly elected
+President, was inaugurated, there was imminent need of an
+efficient government. An early act of the Administration was to
+send an agent to assist in the formation of a state Government,
+and a convention was immediately called to frame a constitution.
+By unanimous vote of the convention, slavery was excluded. The
+constitution was approved by popular vote and was presented to
+Congress for final acceptance in December, 1849.
+
+In the meantime a great commotion had arisen among the people.
+Southern state legislatures passed resolutions demanding that the
+rights of their peculiar institution should be recognized in the
+new Territory. Northern legislatures responded with resolutions
+favoring the admission of California as a State and the
+application of the Wilmot Proviso to the remaining territory.
+Northern Democrats had very generally denied that the affair with
+Mexico had as a chief purpose the extension of slavery. Democrats
+therefore united with Whigs in maintaining the principle of free
+soil. In the South there was a corresponding fusion of the two
+parties in support of the sectional issue.
+
+General concern prevailed as to the attitude of the
+Administration. Taylor's election had been effected by both a
+Southern and a Northern split in the Democratic party. Northern
+Democrats had voted for the Free-soil candidate because of the
+alleged pro-slavery tendencies of their own party. Southern
+Democrats voted for Taylor because of their distrust of Lewis
+Cass, their own candidate. Some of these met in convention and
+formally nominated Taylor, and Taylor accepted their nomination
+with thanks. Northern anti-slavery Whigs had a difficult task to
+keep their members in line. There is evidence that Taylor held
+the traditional Southern view that the anti-slavery North was
+disposed to encroach upon the rights of the South. Meeting fewer
+Northern Whig supporters, he became convinced that the more
+active spirit of encroachment was in the pro-slavery South.
+California needed a state Government, and the President took the
+most direct method to supply that need. As the inhabitants were
+unanimous in their desire to exclude slavery, their wish should
+be respected. New Mexico was in a similar situation. As slavery
+was already excluded from the territory under Mexican law, and as
+there was no wish on the part of the inhabitants to introduce
+slavery, the President recognized existing facts and made no
+change. When Southern leaders projected a scheme to enlarge the
+boundaries of Texas so as to extend slavery over a large part of
+New Mexico, President Taylor set a guard of United States troops
+to maintain the integrity of the Territory. When a deputation of
+Southern Whigs endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose,
+threatening a dissolution of the Union and intimating that army
+officers would refuse to act against citizens of Texas, the
+soldier President replied that in such an event he would take
+command in person and would hang any one caught in acts of
+treason. When Henry Clay introduced an elaborate project for a
+compromise between the North and the South, the President
+insisted that each question should be settled on its own merits
+and directed the forces of the Administration against any sort of
+compromise. The debate over Clay's Omnibus Bill was long and
+acrimonious. On July 4, 1850, the President seemed triumphant.
+But upon that day, notwithstanding his apparent robust health, he
+was stricken down with an acute disease and died five days later.
+With his passing, the opposing Whig faction came into power. The
+so-called compromise measures were at length one by one passed by
+Congress and approved by President Fillmore.
+
+California was admitted as a free State; but as a palliative to
+the South, Congress passed bills for the organization of
+territorial Governments for New Mexico and Utah without positive
+declarations regarding the powers of the territorial Legislatures
+over slavery. All questions relating to title to slaves were to
+be left to the courts. Meantime it was left in doubt whether
+Mexican law excluding slavery was still in force. Southern
+malcontents maintained that this act was a mere hoax, using words
+which suggested concession when no concession was intended.
+Northern anti-slavery men criticized the act as the entering
+wedge for another great surrender to the enemy. Because of the
+uncertainty regarding the meaning of the law and the false hopes
+likely to be created, they maintained that it was fitted to
+foment discord and prolong the period of distrust between the two
+sections. At all events such was its actual effect.
+
+A third act in this unhappy series gave to Texas ten millions of
+dollars for the alleged surrender of claims to a part of New
+Mexico. This had little bearing on the general subject of
+compromise; yet anti-slavery men criticized it on the ground that
+the issue raised was insincere; that the appropriation was in
+fact a bribe to secure votes necessary to pass the other
+measures; that the bill was passed through Congress by shameless
+bribery, and that even the boundaries conceded to Texas involved
+the surrender of free territory.
+
+The abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia was
+supported by both sections of the country. The removal of the
+slave pens within sight of the Capitol to a neighboring city
+deprived the abolitionists of one of their weapons for effective
+agitation, but it did not otherwise affect the position of
+slavery.
+
+Of the five acts included in the compromise measures, the one
+which provided for the return of fugitive slaves was most
+effective in the promotion of hostility between the two sections.
+During the six months of debate on the Omnibus Bill, numerous
+bills were presented to take the place of the law of 1793.
+Webster brought forward a bill which provided for the use of a
+jury to establish the validity of a claim to an escaped slave.
+But that which was finally adopted by a worn-out Congress is
+characterized as one of the most barbarous pieces of legislation
+ever enacted by a civilized country. A single incident may
+indicate the nature of the act. James Hamlet, for three years a
+resident of New York City, a husband and a father and a member of
+the Methodist Church, was seized eight days after the law went
+into effect by order of the agent of Mary Brown of Baltimore, cut
+off from all communication with his friends, hurried before a
+commissioner, and on ex parte testimony was delivered into the
+hands of the agent, by whom he was handcuffed and secretly
+conveyed to Baltimore. Mr. Rhodes accounts for the enactment in
+the following words: "If we look below the surface we shall find
+a strong impelling motive of the Southern clamor for this harsh
+enactment other than the natural desire to recover lost property.
+Early in the session it took air that a part of the game of the
+disunionists was to press a stringent fugitive slave law, for
+which no Northern man could vote; and when it was defeated, the
+North would be charged with refusal to carry out a stipulation of
+the Constitution . . . . The admission of California was a bitter
+pill for the Southern ultras, but they were forced to take it.
+The Fugitive Slave Law was a taunt and a reproach to that part of
+the North where the anti-slavery sentiment ruled supremely, and
+was deemed a partial compensation." Clay expressed surprise that
+States from which few slaves escaped demanded a more stringent
+law than Kentucky, from which many escaped.
+
+Whatever may have been the motives leading to the enactment, its
+immediate effect was the elimination of one of the great national
+parties, thus paving the way for the formation of parties along
+sectional lines. Two years after the passage of the compromise
+acts the Democratic national convention assembled to nominate a
+candidate for the Presidency. The platform adopted by the party
+promised a faithful execution of the acts known as the compromise
+measures and added "the act for reclaiming fugitives from service
+or labor included; which act, being designed to carry out an
+express provision of the Constitution, cannot, with fidelity
+thereto, be repealed nor so changed as to destroy or impair its
+efficiency." When this was read, the convention broke out in
+uproarious applause. Then there was a demand that it should be
+read again. Again there was loud applause.
+
+Why was there this demand that a law which every one knew had
+proved a complete failure should be made a permanent part of the
+Constitution? And why the ungovernable hilarity over the demand
+that its "efficiency" should never be impaired? Surely the motive
+was something other than a desire to recover lost property. Upon
+the Whig party had been fastened the odium for the enactment of
+the law, and the act unrepealed meant the death of the party. The
+Democrats saw good reason for laughter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
+
+Wherever there are slaves there are fugitives if there is an
+available place of refuge. The wilds of Florida were such a
+refuge during the early part of last century. When the Northern
+States became free, fugitive slaves began to escape thither, and
+Canada, when it could be reached, was, of course, the goal of
+perfect security and liberty for all.
+
+A professed object of the early anti-slavery societies was to
+prevent the enslavement of free negroes and in other ways to
+protect their rights. During the process of emancipation in
+Northern States large numbers of colored persons were spirited
+off to the South and sold into slavery. At various places along
+the border there were those who made it their duty to guard the
+rights of negroes and to prevent kidnapping. These guardians of
+the border furnished a nucleus for the development of what was
+later known as the Underground Railroad.
+
+In 1796 President Washington wrote a letter to a friend in New
+Hampshire with reference to obtaining the return of a negro
+servant. He was careful to state that the servant should remain
+unmolested rather than "excite a mob or riot or even uneasy
+sensations in the minds of well disposed citizens." The result
+was that the servant remained free. President Washington here
+assumed that "well disposed citizens" would oppose her return to
+slavery. Three years earlier the President had himself signed a
+bill to facilitate by legal process the return of fugitives
+escaping into other States. He was certainly aware that such an
+act was on the statute books when he wrote his request to his
+friend in New Hampshire, yet he expected that, if an attempt were
+made to remove the refugee by force, riot and resistance by a mob
+would be the result.
+
+Not until after the foreign slave-trade had been prohibited and
+the domestic trade had been developed, and not until there was a
+pro-slavery reaction in the South which banished from the slave
+States all anti-slavery propaganda, did the systematic assistance
+rendered to fugitive slaves assume any large proportions or
+arouse bitter resentment. It began in the late twenties and early
+thirties of the nineteenth century, extended with the spread of
+anti-slavery organization, and was greatly encouraged and
+stimulated by the enactment of the law of 1850.
+
+The Underground Railroad was never coextensive with the abolition
+movement. There were always abolitionists who disapproved the
+practice of assisting fugitives, and others who took no part in
+it. Of those who were active participants, the larger proportion
+confined their activities to assisting those who had escaped and
+would take no part in seeking to induce slaves to leave their
+masters. Efforts of that kind were limited to a few individuals
+only.
+
+Incidents drawn from the reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the
+reputed president of the Underground Railroad, may serve to
+illustrate the origin and growth of the system. He was seven
+years old when he first saw near his home in North Carolina a
+coffle of slaves being driven to the Southern market by a man on
+horseback with a long whip. "The driver was some distance behind
+with the wagon. My father addressed the slaves pleasantly and
+then asked, 'Well, boys, why do they chain you?' One of the men
+whose countenance betrayed unusual intelligence and whose
+expression denoted the deepest sadness replied: 'They have taken
+us from our wives and children and they chain us lest we should
+make our escape and go back to them."' When Coffin was fifteen,
+he rendered assistance to a man in bondage. Having an opportunity
+to talk with the members of a gang in the hands of a trader bound
+for the Southern market, he learned that one of the company,
+named Stephen, was a freeman who had been kidnapped and sold.
+Letters were written to Northern friends of Stephen who confirmed
+his assertion. Money was raised in the Quaker meeting and men
+were sent to recover the negro. Stephen was found in Georgia and
+after six months was liberated.
+
+During the year 1821 other incidents occurred in the Quaker
+community at New Garden, near Greensboro, North Carolina, which
+illustrate different phases of the subject. Jack Barnes was the
+slave of a bachelor who became so greatly attached to his servant
+that he bequeathed to him not only his freedom but also a large
+share of his property. Relatives instituted measures to break the
+will, and Jack in alarm took refuge among the Quakers at New
+Garden. The suit went against the negro, and the newspapers
+contained advertisements offering a hundred dollars for
+information which should result in his recovery. To prevent his
+return to bondage, it was decided that Jack should join a family
+of Coffins who were moving to Indiana.
+
+At the same time a negro by the name of Sam had for several
+months been abiding in the Quaker neighborhood. He belonged to a
+Mr. Osborne, a prototype of Simon Legree, who was so notoriously
+cruel that other slave-owners assisted in protecting his victims.
+After the Coffins, with Jack, had been on the road for a few
+days, Osborne learned that a negro was with them and, feeling
+sure that it was his Sam, he started in hot haste after them.
+This becoming known to the Friends, young Levi Coffin was sent
+after Osborne to forestall disaster. The descriptions given of
+Jack and Sam were practically identical and it was surmised that
+when Osborne should overtake the party and discover his mistake,
+he would seize Jack for the sake of the offered reward. Coffin
+soon came up with Osborne and decided to ride with him for a time
+to learn his plans. In the course of their conversation, it was
+finally agreed that Coffin should assist in the recovery of Sam.
+Osborne was also generous and insisted that if it proved to be
+the other "nigger" who was with the company, Coffin should have
+half the reward. How the young Quaker outwitted the tyrant,
+gained his point, sent Jack on his way to liberty, and at the
+same time retained the confidence of Osborne so that upon their
+return home he was definitely engaged to assist Osborne in
+finding Sam, is a fascinating story. The abolitionist won from
+the slaveholder the doubtful compliment that "there was not a man
+in that neighborhood worth a d--n to help him hunt his negro
+except young Levi Coffin."
+
+Sam was perfectly safe so long as Levi Coffin was guide for the
+hunting-party, but matters were becoming desperate. For the
+fugitive something had to be done. Another family was planning to
+move to Indiana, and in their wagon Sam was to be concealed and
+thus conveyed to a free State. The business had now become
+serious. The laws of the State affixed the death penalty for
+stealing a slave. At night when young Coffin and his father, with
+Sam, were on their way to complete arrangements for the
+departure, horsemen appeared in the road near by. They had only
+time to throw themselves flat on the ground behind a log. From
+the conversation overheard, they were assured that they had
+narrowly escaped the night-riders on the lookout for stray
+negroes. The next year, 1822, Coffin himself joined a party going
+to Indiana by the southern route through Tennessee and Kentucky.
+In the latter State they were at one time overtaken by men who
+professed to be looking for a pet dog, but whose real purpose was
+to recover runaway slaves. They insisted upon examining the
+contents of the wagons, for in this way only a short time
+previous a fugitive had been captured.
+
+These incidents show the origin of the system. The first case of
+assistance rendered a negro was not in itself illegal, but was
+intended merely to prevent the crime of kidnapping. The second
+was illegal in form, but the aid was given to one who, having
+been set free by will, was being reenslaved, it was believed, by
+an unjust decision of a court. The third was a case of outrageous
+abuse on the part of the owner. The negro Sam had himself gone to
+a trader begging that he would buy him and preferring to take his
+chances on a Mississippi plantation rather than return to his
+master. The trader offered the customary price and was met with
+the reply that he could have the rascal if he would wait until
+after the enraged owner had taken his revenge, otherwise the
+price would be twice the amount offered. A large proportion of
+the fugitives belonged to this maltreated class. Others were
+goaded to escape by the prospect of deportation to the Gulf
+States. The fugitives generally followed the beaten line of
+travel to the North and West.
+
+In 1826 Levi Coffin became a merchant in Newport, Indiana, a town
+near the Ohio line not far from Richmond. In the town and in its
+neighborhood lived a large number of free negroes who were the
+descendants of former slaves whom North Carolina Quakers had set
+free and had colonized in the new country. Coffin found that
+these blacks were accustomed to assist fugitives on their way to
+Canada. When he also learnt that some had been captured and
+returned to bondage merely through lack of skill on the part of
+the negroes, he assumed active operations as a conductor on the
+Underground Railroad.
+
+Coffin used the Underground Railroad as a means of making
+converts to the cause. One who berated him for negro-stealing was
+adroitly induced to meet a newly arrived passenger and listen to
+his pathetic story. At the psychological moment the objector was
+skillfully led to hand the fugitive a dollar to assist him in
+reaching a place of safety. Coffin then explained to this
+benevolent non-abolitionist the nature of his act, assuring him
+that he was liable to heavy damages therefor. The reply was in
+this case more forcible than elegant: "Damn it! You've got me!"
+This conversion he publicly proclaimed for the sake of its
+influence upon others. Many were the instances in which those of
+supposed pro-slavery convictions were brought face to face with
+an actual case of the threatened reenslavement of a human being
+escaping from bondage and were, to their own surprise, overcome
+by the natural, humane sentiment which asserted itself. For
+example, a Cincinnati merchant, who at the time was supposed to
+be assisting one of his Southern customers to recover an escaped
+fugitive, was confronted at his own home by the poor half-starved
+victim. Yielding to the impulse of compassion, he gave the slave
+food and personal assistance and directed the destitute creature
+to a place of refuge.
+
+The division in the Quaker meeting in Indiana with which Levi
+Coffin was intimately associated may serve to exemplify a
+corresponding attitude in other churches on the question of
+slavery. The Quakers availed themselves of the first great anti-
+slavery movement to rid themselves completely of the burden.
+Their Society itself became an anti-slavery organization. Yet
+even so the Friends had differences of opinion as to fit methods
+of action. Not only did many of them disapprove of rendering aid
+to fugitives but they also objected to the use of the
+meetinghouses for anti-slavery lectures. The formation of the
+Liberty party served to accentuate the division. The great body
+of the Friends were anti-slavery Whigs.
+
+A crisis in the affairs of the Society of Friends in the State of
+Indiana was reached in 1843 when the radicals seceded and
+organized an independent "Anti-Slavery Friends Society."
+Immediately there appeared in numerous localities duplicate
+Friends' meeting-houses. In and around one of these,
+distinguished as "Liberty Hall," were gathered those whose
+supreme religious interest was directed against the sin of
+slavery. Never was there a church division which involved less
+bad blood or sense of injury or injustice. Members of the same
+family attended separate churches without the least difference in
+their cordial relations. No important principle was involved;
+there were apparently good reasons for both lines of policy, and
+each party understood and respected the other's position. After
+the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the passing of
+the Whig party, these differences disappeared, the separate
+organization was disbanded, and all Friends' meetinghouses became
+"liberty halls."
+
+The disposition to aid the fugitive was by no means confined to
+the North nor to Quakers in the South. Richard Dillingham, a
+young Quaker who had yielded to the solicitations of escaped
+fugitives in Cincinnati and had undertaken a mission to
+Nashville, Tennessee, to rescue their relatives from a "hard
+master," was arrested with three stolen slaves on his hands. He
+made confession in open court and frankly explained his motives.
+The Nashville Daily Gazette of April 13, 1849, has words of
+commendation for the prisoner and his family and states that "he
+was not without the sympathy of those who attended the trial."
+Though Dillingham committed a crime to which the death penalty
+was attached in some of the States, the jury affixed the minimum
+penalty of three years' imprisonment for the offense. As
+Nashville was far removed from Quaker influence or any sort of
+anti-slavery propaganda, Dillingham was himself astonished and
+was profoundly grateful for the leniency shown him by Court,
+jury, and prosecutors. This incident occurred in the year before
+the adoption of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. It is well known
+that in all times and places which were free from partizan
+bitterness there was a general natural sympathy for those who
+imperiled their life and liberty to free the slave. Throughout
+the South men of both races were ready to give aid to slaves
+seeking to escape from dangers or burdens which they regarded as
+intolerable. While such a man as Frederick Douglass, when still a
+slave, was an agent of the Underground Railroad, Southern anti-
+slavery people themselves were to a large extent the original
+projectors of the movement. Even members of the families of
+slaveholders have been known to assist fugitives in their escape
+to the North.
+
+The fugitives traveled in various ways which were determined
+partly by geographical conditions and partly by the character of
+the inhabitants of a region. On the Atlantic coast, from Florida
+to Delaware, slaves were concealed in ships and were thus
+conveyed to free States. Thence some made their way towards
+Canada by steamboat or railroad, though most made the journey on
+foot or, less frequently, in private conveyances. Stalwart slaves
+sometimes walked from the Gulf States to the free States,
+traveling chiefly by night and guided by the North Star. Having
+reached a free State, they found friends among those of their own
+race, or were taken in hand by officers of the Underground
+Railroad and were thus helped across the Canadian border.
+
+>From the seacoast the valley of the Connecticut River furnished
+a
+convenient route for completing the journey northward, though the
+way of the fugitives was often deflected to the Lake Champlain
+region. In later years, when New England became generally
+sympathetic, numerous lines of escape traversed that entire
+section. Other courses extended northward from the vicinity of
+Philadelphia, Delaware, and Maryland. Here, through the center of
+American Quakerdom, all conditions favored the escape of
+fugitives, for slavery and freedom were at close quarters. The
+activities of the Quakers, who were at first engaged merely in
+preventing the reenslavement of those who had a legal right to
+freedom, naturally expanded until aid was given without
+reservation to any fugitive. From Philadelphia as a distributing
+point the route went by way of New York and the Hudson River or
+up the river valleys of eastern Pennsylvania through western New
+York.
+
+In addition to the routes to freedom which the seacoast and river
+valleys afforded, the Appalachian chain of mountains formed an
+attractive highway of escape from slavery, though these mountain
+paths lead us to another branch of our subject not immediately
+connected with the Underground Railroad--the escape from bondage
+by the initiative of the slaves themselves or by the aid of their
+own people. Mountains have always been a refuge and a defense for
+the outlaw, and the few dwellers in this almost unknown
+wilderness were not infrequently either indifferent or friendly
+to the fugitives. The escaped slaves might, if they chose, adopt
+for an indefinite time the free life of the hills; but in most
+cases they naturally drifted northward for greater security until
+they found themselves in a free State. Through the mountainous
+regions of Virginia many thus escaped, and they were induced to
+remain there by the example and advice of residents of their own
+color. The negroes themselves excelled all others in furnishing
+places of refuge to fugitives from slavery and in concealing
+their status. For this reason John Brown and his associates were
+influenced to select this region for their great venture in 1859.
+
+But there were other than geographical conditions which helped to
+determine the direction of the lines of the Underground Railroad.
+West of the Alleghanies are the broad plains of the Mississippi
+Valley, and in this great region human elements rather than
+physical characteristics proved influential. Northern Ohio was
+occupied by settlers from the East, many of whom were anti-
+slavery. Southern Ohio was populated largely by Quakers and other
+people from the slave States who abhorred slavery. On the east
+and south the State bordered on slave territory, and every part
+of the region was traversed by lines of travel for the slave. In
+eastern and northern Indiana a favorable attitude prevailed.
+Southwestern Indiana, however, and southern Illinois were
+occupied by those less friendly to the slave, so that in these
+sections there is little evidence of systematic aid to fugitives.
+But with St. Louis, Missouri, as a starting-point, northern
+Illinois became honeycombed with refuges for patrons of the
+Underground Railroad. The negro also found friends in all the
+settled portions of Iowa, and at the outbreak of the Civil War a
+lively traffic was being developed, extending from Lawrence,
+Kansas, to Keokuk, Iowa.
+
+There is respectable authority for a variety of opinions as to
+the requirements of the rendition clause in the Constitution and
+of the Act of Congress of 1793 to facilitate the return of
+fugitives from service or labor; but there is no respectable
+authority in support of the view that neither the spirit nor the
+letter of the law was violated by the supporters of the
+Underground Railroad. This was a source of real weakness to
+anti-slavery leaders in politics. It was always true that only a
+small minority of their numbers were actual violators of the law,
+yet such was their relation to the organized anti-slavery
+movement that responsibility attached to all. The platform of the
+Liberty party for 1844 declared that the provisions of the
+Constitution for reclaiming fugitive slaves were dangerous to
+liberty and ought to be abrogated. It further declared that the
+members of the party would treat these provisions as void,
+because they involved an order to commit an immoral act. The
+platform thus explicitly committed the party to the support of
+the policy of rendering aid to fugitive slaves. Four years later
+the platform of the Free-soil party contained no reference
+whatever to fugitive slaves, but that of 1852 denounced the
+Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as repugnant to the Constitution and
+the spirit of Christianity and denied its binding force on the
+American people. The Republican platform of 1856 made no
+reference to the subject.
+
+The Underground Railroad filled an insignificant place in the
+general plan for emancipation, even in the minds of the
+directors. It was a lesser task preparatory to the great work. As
+to the numbers of slaves who gained their freedom by means of it,
+there is a wide range of opinion. Statements in Congress by
+Southern members that a hundred thousand had escaped must be
+regarded as gross exaggerations. In any event the loss was
+confined chiefly to the border States. Besides, it has been
+stated with some show of reason that the danger of servile
+insurrection was diminished by the escape of potential leaders.
+
+>From the standpoint of the great body of anti-slavery men who
+expected to settle the slavery question by peaceable means, it
+was a calamity of the first magnitude that, just at the time when
+conditions were most favorable for transferring the active
+crusade from the general Government to the separate States,
+public attention should be directed to the one point at which the
+conflict was most acute and irrepressible.
+
+Previous to 1850 there had been no general acrimonious debate in
+Congress on the rendition of fugitive slaves. About half of those
+who had previously escaped from bondage had not taken the trouble
+to go as far as Canada, but were living at peace in the Northern
+States. Few people at the North knew or cared anything about the
+details of a law that had been on the statute books since 1793.
+Members of Congress were duly warned of the dangers involved in
+any attempt to enforce a more stringent law than the previous act
+which had proved a dead letter. To those who understood the
+conditions, the new law also was doomed to failure. So said
+Senator Butler of South Carolina. An attempt to enforce it would
+be met by violence.
+
+This prediction came true. The twenty thousand potential victims
+residing in Northern States were thrown into panic. Some rushed
+off to Canada; others organized means for protection. A father
+and son from Baltimore came to a town in Pennsylvania to recover
+a fugitive. An alarm was sounded; men, mostly colored, rushed to
+the protection of the one whose liberty was threatened. Two
+Quakers appeared on the scene and warned the slavehunters to
+desist and upon their refusal one slave-hunter was instantly
+killed and the other wounded. The fugitive was conveyed to a
+place of safety, and to the murderers no punishment was meted
+out, though the general Government made strenuous efforts to
+discover and punish them. In New York, though Gerrit Smith and a
+local clergyman with a few assistants rescued a fugitive from the
+officers of the law and sent him to Canada, openly proclaiming
+and justifying the act, no attempt was made to punish the
+offenders.
+
+After a dozen years of intense and ever-increasing excitement,
+when other causes of friction between North and South had
+apparently been removed and good citizens in the two sections
+were rejoicing at the prospect of an era of peace and harmony,
+public attention was concentrated upon the one problem of conduct
+which would not admit of peaceable legal adjustment.
+Abolitionists had always been stigmatized as lawbreakers whose
+aim was the destruction of slavery in utter disregard of the
+rights of the States. This charge was absolutely false; their
+settled program involved full recognition of state and municipal
+control over slavery. Yet after public attention had become fixed
+upon conduct on the part of the abolitionists which was illegal,
+it was difficult to escape the implication that their whole
+course was illegal. This was the tragic significance of the
+Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. BOOKS AS ANTI-SLAVERY WEAPONS
+
+Whittier offered up "thanks for the fugitive slave law; for it
+gave occasion for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" Mrs. Harriet Beecher
+Stowe had been mistress of a station on the Underground Railroad
+at Cincinnati, the storm-center of the West, and out of her
+experience she has transmitted to the world a knowledge of the
+elemental and tragic human experiences of the slaves which would
+otherwise have been restricted to a select few. The mistress of a
+similar station in eastern Indiana, though she held novel reading
+a deadly sin, said: "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is not a novel, it is a
+record of facts. I myself have listened to the same stories." The
+reading public in all lands soon became sympathetic participants
+in the labors of those who, in defiance of law, were lending a
+hand to the aspirants for liberty. At the time of the publication
+of the story in book form in March, 1852, America was being
+profoundly stirred by the stories of fugitives who had escaped
+from European despotism. Mrs. Stowe refers to these incidents in
+her question: "When despairing Hungarian fugitives make their
+way, against all the search-warrants and authorities of their
+lawful governments to America, press and political cabinet ring
+with applause and welcome. When despairing African fugitives do
+the same thing--it is--what IS it?" Little did she think that
+when the eloquence of the Hungarian refugee had been forgotten,
+the story of Eliza and Uncle Tom would ring throughout the world.
+
+The book did far more than vindicate the conduct of those who
+rendered assistance to the fugitive from slavery; it let in
+daylight upon the essential nature of slavery. Humane and just
+masters are shown to be forced into participation in acts which
+result in intolerable cruelty. Full justice is done to the noble
+and admirable character of Southern slave-owners. The author had
+been a guest in the home of the "Shelbys," in Kentucky. She had
+taken great pains to understand the Southern point of view on the
+subject of slavery; she had entered into the real trials and
+difficulties involved in any plan of emancipation. St. Clair,
+speaking to Miss Ophelia, his New England cousin, says:
+
+"If we emancipate, are you willing to educate? How many families
+of your town would take in a negro man or woman, teach them, bear
+with them, and seek to make them Christians? How many merchants
+would take Adolph, if I wanted to make him a clerk; or mechanics,
+if I wanted to teach him a trade? If I wanted to put Jane and
+Rosa to a school, how many schools are there in the Northern
+States that would take them in? How many families that would
+board them? And yet they are as white as many a woman north or
+south. You see, cousin, I want justice done us. We are in a bad
+position. We are the more obvious oppressors of the negro; but
+the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost
+equally severe."
+
+Throughout the book the idea is elaborated in many ways. Miss
+Ophelia is introduced for the purpose of contrasting Northern
+ignorance and New England prejudice with the patience and
+forbearance of the better class of slave-owners of the South. The
+genuine affection of an unspoiled child for negro friends is made
+especially emphatic. Miss Ophelia objected to Eva's expressions
+of devotion to Uncle Tom. Her father insists that his daughter
+shall not be robbed of the free utterance of her high regard,
+observing that "the child is the only true democrat." There is
+only one Simon Legree in the book, and he is of New England
+extraction. The story is as distinctly intended to inform
+Northern ignorance and to remove Northern prejudice as it is to
+justify the conduct of abolitionists.
+
+What was the effect of the publication? In European countries far
+removed from local partizan prejudice, it was immediately
+received as a great revelation of the spirit of liberty. It was
+translated into twenty-three different languages. So devoted were
+the Italians to the reading of the story that there was earnest
+effort to suppress its circulation. As a drama it proved a great
+success, not only in America and England but in France and other
+countries as well. More than a million copies of the story were
+sold in the British Empire. Lord Palmerston avers that he had not
+read a novel for thirty years, yet he read Uncle Tom's Cabin
+three times and commended the book for the statesmanship
+displayed in it.
+
+What is in the story to call forth such commendation from the
+cold-blooded English statesman? The book revealed, in a way
+fitted to carry conviction to every unprejudiced reader, the
+impossibility of uniting slavery with freedom under the same
+Government. Either all must be free or the mass subject to the
+few--or there is actual war. This principle is finely brought out
+in the predicament of the Quaker confronted by a fugitive with
+wife and child who had seen a sister sold and conveyed to a life
+of shame on a Southern plantation. "Am I going to stand by and
+see them take my wife and sell her?" exclaimed the negro. "No,
+God help me! I'll fight to the last breath before they shall take
+my wife and son. Can you blame me?" To which the Quaker replied:
+"Mortal man cannot blame thee, George. Flesh and blood could not
+do otherwise. 'Woe unto the world because of offences but woe
+unto them through whom the offence cometh.'" "Would not even you,
+sir, do the same, in my place?" "I pray that I be not tried." And
+in the ensuing events the Quaker played an important part.
+
+Laws enacted for the protection of slave property are shown to be
+destructive of the fundamental rights of freemen; they are
+inhuman. The Ohio Senator, who in his lofty preserve at the
+capital of his country could discourse eloquently of his
+readiness to keep faith with the South in the matter of the
+faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, becomes, when at
+home with his family, a flagrant violator of the law. Elemental
+human nature is pitted against the apparent interests of a few
+individual slaveowners. The story of Uncle Tom placed all
+supporters of the new law on the defensive. It was read by all
+classes North and South. "Uncle Tom's Cabin as it is" was called
+forth from the South as a reply to Mrs. Stowe's book, and there
+ensued a general discussion of the subject which was on the whole
+enlightening. Yet the immediate political effect of the
+publication was less than might have been expected from a book so
+widely read and discussed. Its appearance early in the decade did
+not prevent the apparent pro-slavery reaction already described.
+But Mr. Rhodes calls attention to the different impression which
+the book made upon adults and boys. Hardened sinners in partizan
+politics could read the book, laugh and weep over the passing
+incidents, and then go on as if nothing had happened. Not so with
+the thirteen-year-old boy. He never could be the same again. The
+Republican party of 1860 was especially successful in gaining the
+first vote of the youthful citizen and undoubtedly owed much of
+its influence to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
+
+Two lines of attack were rapidly rendering impossible the
+continuance of slavery in the United States. Mrs. Stowe gave
+effective expression to the moral, religious, and humanitarian
+sentiment against slavery. In the year in which her work was
+published, Frederick Law Olmsted began his extended journeys
+throughout the South. He represents the impartial scientific
+observer. His books were published during the years 1856, 1857,
+and 1861. They constitute in their own way an indictment against
+slavery quite as forcible as that of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but an
+indictment that rests chiefly upon the blighting influence of the
+institution of slavery upon agriculture, manufactures, and the
+general industrial and social order. The crisis came too soon for
+these publications to have any marked effect upon the issue.
+Their appeal was to the deliberate and thoughtful reader, and
+political control had already drifted into the hands of those who
+were not deliberate and composed.
+
+In 1857, however, there appeared a book which did exert a marked
+influence upon immediate political issues. There is no evidence
+that Hinton Rowan Helper, the author of "The Impending Crisis,"
+had any knowledge of the writings of Olmsted; but he was familiar
+with Northern anti-slavery literature. "I have considered my
+subject more particularly," he states in his preface, "with
+reference to its economic aspects as regards the whites--not with
+reference, except in a very slight degree, to its humanitarian or
+religious aspects. To the latter side of the question, Northern
+writers have already done full and timely justice . . . . Yankee
+wives have written the most popular anti-slavery literature of
+the day. Against this I have nothing to say; it is all well
+enough for women to give the fictions of slavery; men should give
+the facts." He denies that it had been his purpose to cast
+unmerited opprobium upon slaveholders; yet a sense of personal
+injury breathes throughout the pages. If he had no intention of
+casting unmerited opprobrium upon slaveholders, it is difficult
+to imagine what language he could have used if he had undertaken
+to pass the limit of deserved reprobation. In this regard the
+book is quite in line with the style of Southern utterance
+against abolitionists.
+
+Helper belonged to a slaveholding family, for a hundred years
+resident in the Carolinas. The dedication is significant. It is
+to three personal friends from three slave States who at the time
+were residing in California, in Oregon, and in Washington
+Territory, "and to the non-slaveholding whites of the South
+generally, whether at home or abroad." Out of the South had come
+the inspiration for the religious and humanitarian attack upon
+slavery. From the same source came the call for relief of the
+poverty-stricken white victims of the institution.
+
+Helper's book revived the controversy which had been forcibly
+terminated a quarter of a century before. He resumes the argument
+of the members of the Virginia legislature of 1832. He reprints
+extended selections from that memorable debate and then, by
+extended references to later official reports, points out how
+slavery is impoverishing the South. The South is shown to have
+continuously declined, while the North has made immense gains. In
+a few years the relation of the South to the North would resemble
+that of Poland to Russia or of Ireland to England. The author
+sees no call for any arguments against slavery as an economic
+system; he would simply bring the earlier characterization of the
+situation down to date.
+
+Helper differs radically from all earlier speakers and writers in
+that he outlines a program for definite action. He estimates that
+for the entire South there are seven white non-slaveholders for
+every three slaveholders. He would organize these
+non-slaveholding whites into an independent political party and
+would hold a general convention of non-slaveholders from every
+slave State to adopt measures to restrain "the diabolical
+excesses of the oligarchy" and to annihilate slavery.
+Slaveholders should be entirely excluded from any share in
+government. They should be treated as criminals ostracized from
+respectable society. He is careful to state, however, that by
+slaveholder he does not mean such men as Benton of Missouri and
+many others throughout the slave States who retain the sentiments
+on the slavery question of the "immortal Fathers of the
+Republic." He has in mind only the new order of owners, who have
+determined by criminal methods to inflict the crime of slavery
+upon an overwhelming majority of their white fellow-citizens.
+
+The publication of "The Impending Crisis" created a profound
+sensation among Southern leaders. So long as the attack upon the
+peculiar institution emanated from the North, the defenders had
+the full benefit of local prejudice and resentment against
+outside intrusion. Helper was himself a thorough-going believer
+in state rights. Slavery was to be abolished, as he thought, by
+the action of the separate States. Here he was in accord with
+Northern abolitionists. If such literature as Helper's volume
+should find its way into the South, it would be no longer
+possible to palm off upon the unthinking public the patent
+falsehood that abolitionists of the North were attempting to
+impose by force a change in Southern institutions. All that
+Southern abolitionists ever asked was the privilege of remaining
+at home in their own South in the full exercise of their
+constitutional rights.
+
+Southern leaders were undoubtedly aware of the concurrent
+publications of travelers and newspaper reporters, of which
+Olmsted's books were conspicuous examples. Olmsted and Helper
+were both sources of proof that slavery was bringing the South to
+financial ruin. The facts were getting hold of the minds of the
+Southern people. The debate which had been adjourned was on the
+eve of being resumed. Complete suppression of the new scientific
+industrial argument against slavery seemed to slave-owners to
+furnish their only defense.
+
+The Appalachian ranges of mountains drove a wedge of liberty and
+freedom from Pennsylvania almost to the Gulf. In the upland
+regions slavery could not flourish. There was always enmity
+between the planters of the coast and the dwellers on the upland.
+The slaveholding oligarchy had always ruled, but the day of the
+uplanders was at hand. This is the explanation of the veritable
+panic which Helper's publication created. A debate which should
+follow the line of this old division between the peoples of the
+Atlantic slave States would, under existing conditions, be fatal
+to the institution of slavery. West Virginia did become a free
+State at the first opportunity. Counties in western North
+Carolina claim to have furnished a larger proportion of their men
+to the Union army than any other counties in the country. Had the
+plan for peaceable emancipation projected by abolitionists been
+permitted to take its course, the uplands of South Carolina would
+have been pitted against the lowlands, and Senator Tillman would
+have appeared as a rampant abolitionist. There might have been
+violence, but it would have been confined to limited areas in the
+separate States. Had the crisis been postponed, there surely
+would have been a revival of abolitionism within the Southern
+States. Slavery in Missouri was already approaching a crisis.
+Southern leaders had long foreseen that the State would abolish
+slavery if a free State should be established on the western
+boundary. This was actually taking place. Kansas was filling up
+with free-state settlers and, by the act of its own citizens, a
+few years later did abolish slavery.
+
+Republicans naturally made use of Helper's book for party
+purposes. A cheap abridged edition was brought out. Several
+Republican leaders were induced to sign their names to a paper
+commending the publication. Among these was John Sherman of Ohio,
+who in the organization of the newly elected House of
+Representatives in 1859 was the leading candidate of the
+Republicans for the speakership. During the contest the fact that
+his name was on this paper was made public, and Southern leaders
+were furious. Extracts were read to prove that the book was
+incendiary. Millson of Virginia said that "one who consciously,
+deliberately, and of purpose lends his name and influence to the
+propagation of such writings is not only not fit to be speaker,
+but he is not-fit to live." It is one of the ironies of the
+situation that the passage selected to prove the incendiary
+character of the book is almost a literal quotation from the
+debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1832.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. "BLEEDING KANSAS"
+
+Both the leading political parties were, in the campaign of 1852,
+fully committed to the acceptance of the so-called Compromise of
+1850 as a final settlement of the slavery question; both were
+committed to the support of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Free-soil
+party, with John P. Hale as its candidate, did make a vigorous
+attack upon the Fugitive Slave Act, and opposed all compromises
+respecting slavery, but Free-Boilers had been to a large extent
+reabsorbed into the Democratic party, their vote of 1852 being
+only about half that of 1848. Though the Whig vote was large and
+only about two hundred thousand less than that of the Democrats,
+yet it was so distributed that the Whigs carried only four
+States, Massachusetts, Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The
+other States gave a Democratic plurality.
+
+Had there been time for readjustment, the Whig party might have
+recovered lost ground, but no time was permitted. There was in
+progress in Missouri a political conflict which was already
+commanding national attention. Thomas H. Benton, for thirty years
+a Senator from Missouri, and a national figure, was the
+storm-center. His enemies accused him of being a Free-Boiler, an
+abolitionist in disguise. He was professedly a stanch and
+uncompromising unionist, a personal and political opponent of
+John C. Calhoun. According to his own statement he had been
+opposed to the extension of slavery since 1804, although he had
+advocated the admission of Missouri with a pro-slavery
+constitution in 180. He was, from the first, senior Senator from
+the State, and by a peculiar combination of influences incurred
+his first defeat for reelection in 1851.
+
+Benton's defeat in the Missouri Legislature was largely the
+result of national pro-slavery influences. In a former chapter,
+reference was made to the Ohio River as furnishing a
+"providential argument against slavery." The Mississippi River as
+the eastern boundary of Missouri furnished a like argument, but
+on the north not even a prairie brook separated free labor in
+Iowa from slave labor in Missouri. The inhabitants of western
+Missouri, realizing that the tenure of their peculiar institution
+was becoming weaker in the east and north, early became convinced
+that the organization of a free State along their western
+boundary would be followed by the abolition of slavery in their
+own State. This condition attracted the attention of the national
+guardians of pro-slavery interests. Calhoun, Davis, Breckinridge,
+Toombs, and others were in constant communication with local
+leaders. A certain Judge W. C. Price, a religious fanatic, and a
+pro-slavery devotee, was induced to visit every part of the State
+in 1844, calling the attention of all slaveholders to the perils
+of the situation and preparing the way for the repeal of the
+Missouri Compromise. Senator Benton, who was approached on the
+subject, replied in such a way that all radical defenders of
+slavery, both national leaders and local politicians, were moved
+to unite for his political defeat.
+
+David R. Atchison, junior Senator from Missouri, had been made
+the leader of the pro-slavery forces. The defeat of Benton in the
+Missouri Legislature did not end the strife. He at once became a
+candidate for Atchison's place in the election which was to occur
+in 1855, and he was in the meantime elected to the House of
+Representatives in 1852. The most telling consideration in
+Benton's favor was the general demand, in which he himself
+joined, for the immediate organization of the western territory
+in order to facilitate the building of a system of railways
+reaching the Pacific, with St. Louis as the point of departure.
+For a time, in 1859, and 1853, Benton was apparently triumphant,
+and Atchison was himself willing to consent to the organization
+of the new territory with slavery excluded. The national leaders,
+however, were not of the same mind. The real issue was the
+continuance of slavery in the State; the one thing which must not
+be permitted was the transfer of anti-slavery agitation to the
+separate States. Henry Clay's proposal of 1849 to provide for
+gradual emancipation in Kentucky was bitterly resented. It had
+long been an axiom with the slavocracy that the institution would
+perish unless it had the opportunity to expand. Out of this
+conviction arose Calhoun's famous theory that slaveowners had
+under the Constitution an equal right with the owners of all
+other forms of property in all the Territories. The theory itself
+assumed that the act prohibiting slavery in the territory north
+of the southern boundary of Missouri was unconstitutional and
+void. But this theory had not yet received judicial sanction, and
+the time was at hand when the question of freedom or slavery in
+the western territory was to be determined. Between March and
+December, 1853, the discovery was made that the Act of 1850
+organizing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah had superseded
+the Compromise of 1820; that a principle had been recognized
+applicable to all the Territories; that all were open to
+settlement on equal terms to slaveholders and non-slaveholders;
+that the subject of slavery should be removed from Congress to
+the people of the Territories; and that they should decide,
+either when a territorial legislature was organized or at the
+time of the adoption of a constitution preparatory to statehood,
+whether or not slavery should be authorized. These ideas found
+expression in various newspapers during the month of December,
+1853. Though the authorship of the new theory is still a matter
+of dispute, it is well known that Stephen A. Douglas became its
+chief sponsor and champion. The real motives and intentions of
+Douglas himself and of many of his supporters will always remain
+obscure and uncertain. But no uncertainty attaches to the motives
+of Senator Atchison and the leaders of the Calhoun section of the
+Democratic party. For ten years at least they had been laboring
+to get rid of the Missouri Compromise. Their motive was to defend
+slavery and especially to forestall a successful movement for
+emancipation in the State of Missouri.
+
+From early in January, 1854, until late in May, Douglas's
+Nebraska bill held the attention of Congress and of the entire
+country. At first the measure simply assumed that the Missouri
+Compromise had been superseded by the Act of 1850. Later the bill
+was amended in such a way as to repeal distinctly that
+time-honored act. At first the plan was to organize Nebraska as a
+single Territory extending from Texas to Canada. Later it was
+proposed to organize separate Territories, one west of Missouri
+under the name of Kansas, the other west of Iowa under the name
+of Nebraska. Opposition came from Free-soilers, from Northern
+Whigs and a few Whigs from the South, and from a large proportion
+of Northern Democrats. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise came
+like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky to the people of the North.
+For a time Douglas was the most unpopular of political leaders
+and was apparently repudiated by his party. The first name
+designating the opponents of the Douglas bill was "Anti Nebraska
+men," for which the name Republican was gradually substituted and
+in 1858 became the accepted title of the party.
+
+The provision for two territorial governments instead of one
+carried with it the idea of a continued balance between slave and
+free States; Kansas, being on a geographical parallel with the
+slave States, would probably permit slavery, while Nebraska would
+be occupied by free-state immigrants. Though this was a commonly
+accepted view, Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, and a few
+others took a different view. They proposed to make an end of the
+discussion of the extension of slavery by sending free men who
+were opposed to slavery to occupy the territory open for
+settlement. To attain this object they organized an Emigrant Aid
+Company incorporated under the laws of the State. Even before the
+bill was passed, the corporation was in full working order.
+Thayer himself traveled extensively throughout the Northern
+States stimulating interest in western emigration, with the
+conviction that the disturbing question could be peacefully
+settled in this way. California had thus been saved to freedom;
+why not all other Territories? The new company had as adviser and
+co-laborer Dr. Charles Robinson, who had crossed the Kansas
+Territory on his way to California and had acquired valuable
+experience in the art of state-building under peculiar
+conditions.
+
+The first party sent out by the Emigrant Aid Company arrived in
+Kansas early in August, 1854, and selected the site for the town
+of Lawrence. During the later months of the year, four other
+parties were sent out, in all numbering nearly seven hundred.
+Through extensive advertisement by the company, through the
+general interest in the subject and the natural flow of
+emigration to the West, Kansas was receiving large accessions of
+free-state settlers.
+
+Meanwhile the men of Missouri, some of whom had striven for a
+decade to secure the privilege of extending slavery into the new
+Territory, were not idle. Instantly upon the removal of legal
+barriers, they occupied adjacent lands, founded towns, staked out
+claims, formed plans for preempting the entire region and for
+forestalling or driving out all intruders. They had at first the
+advantage of position, for they did not find it difficult to
+maintain two homes, one in Kansas for purposes of voting and
+fighting and another in Missouri for actual residence. Andrew H.
+Reeder, a Pennsylvania Democrat of strong pro-slavery prejudices,
+was appointed first Governor of the Territory. When he arrived in
+Kansas in October, 1854, there were already several thousand
+settlers on the ground and others were continually arriving. He
+appointed the 29th of November for the election of a delegate to
+Congress. On that day several hundred Missourians came into the
+Territory and voted. There was no violence and no contest; the
+free-state men had no separate candidate. Notwithstanding the
+violence of language used by opposing factions, notwithstanding
+the organization of secret societies pledged to drive out all
+Northern intruders, there was no serious disturbance until March
+30, 1855, the day appointed for the election of members of the
+territorial Legislature. On that day the Missourians came full
+five thousand strong, armed with guns, bowie-knives, and
+revolvers. They met with no resistance from the residents, who
+were unarmed. They took charge of the precincts and chose
+pro-slavery delegates with one exception. Governor Reeder
+protested and recommended to the precincts the filing of
+protests. Only seven responded, however, and in these cases new
+elections were held and contesting delegates elected.
+
+The Governor issued certificates to these and to all those who in
+other precincts had been chosen by the horde from Missouri. When
+the Legislature met in July, the seven contests were decided in
+favor of the pro-slavery party, the single freestate member
+resigned, and the assembly was unanimous.
+
+Governor Reeder fully expected that President Pierce would
+nullify the election, and to this end he made a journey to
+Washington in April. On the way he delivered a public address at
+Easton, Pennsylvania, describing in lurid colors the outrage
+which had been perpetrated upon the people of Kansas by the
+"border ruffians" from Missouri, and asserting that the accounts
+in the Northern press had not been exaggerated.
+
+While Governor Reeder in contact with the actual events in Kansas
+was becoming an active Free-Boiler, President Pierce in
+association with Jefferson Davis and others of his party was
+developing active sympathies with the people of western Missouri.
+To the President this invasion of territory west of the slave
+State by Northern men aided by Northern corporations seemed a
+violation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and he sought to induce
+Reeder to resign. This, however, the Governor positively refused
+to do unless the President would formally approve his conduct in
+Kansas--an endorsement which required more fortitude than
+President Pierce possessed. On his return to Kansas, determined
+to do what he could to protect the Kansas people from injustice,
+he called the Legislature to meet at Pawnee, a point far removed
+from the Missouri border. Immediately upon their organization at
+that place the members of the Legislature adjourned to meet at
+Shawnee, near the border of Missouri. The Governor, who decided
+that this action was illegal, then refused to recognize the
+Assembly at the new place. A deadlock thus ensued which was
+broken on the 15th of August by the removal of Governor Reeder
+and the appointment of Wilson Shannon of Ohio in his place.
+In the meantime the territorial Legislature had adjourned, having
+"enacted" an elaborate proslavery code made up from the slave
+code of Missouri with a number of special adaptations. For
+example, it was made a penitentiary offense to deny by speaking
+or writing, or by printing, or by introducing any printed matter,
+the right of persons to hold slaves in the Territory; no man was
+eligible to jury service who was conscientiously opposed to
+holding slaves; and lawyers were bound by oath to support the
+territorial statutes.
+
+The free-state men, with the approval of Reeder, refused to
+recognize the Legislature and inaugurated a movement in the fall
+of 1855 to adopt a constitution and to organize a provisional
+territorial Government preparatory to admission as a State,
+following in this respect the procedure in California and
+Michigan. A convention met in Topeka in October, 1855, and
+completed on the 11th of November the draft of a constitution
+which prohibited slavery. On the 15th of December the
+constitution was approved by a practically unanimous vote, only
+free-state men taking part in the election. A month later a
+Legislature was elected and at the same time Charles Robinson was
+elected Governor of the new commonwealth. In the previous
+October, Reeder had been chosen Free-soil delegate to Congress.
+The Topeka freestate Legislature met on the 4th of March, 1856,
+and after petitioning Congress to admit Kansas under the Topeka
+constitution, adjourned until the 4th of July pending the action
+of Congress. Thus at the end of two years two distinct
+Governments had come into existence within the Territory of
+Kansas. It speaks volumes for the self-control and moderation of
+the two parties that no hostile encounter had occurred between
+the contestants. When the armed Missourians came in March, 1855,
+the unarmed settlers offered no resistance. Afterward, however,
+they supplied themselves with Sharp's rifles and organized a
+militia. With the advent of Governor Shannon in September, 1855,
+the proslavery position was much strengthened. In November, in a
+quarrel over a land claim, a free-state settler by the name of
+Dow was killed. The murderer escaped, but a friend of the victim
+was accused of uttering threats against a friend of the murderer.
+For this offense a posse led by Sheriff Jones, a Missourian,
+seized him, and would have carried him away if fourteen freestate
+men had not "persuaded" the Sheriff to surrender his prisoner.
+This interference was accepted by the Missourians as a signal for
+battle. The rescuers must be arrested and punished. A large force
+of infuriated Missourians and pro-slavery settlers assembled for
+a raid upon the town of Lawrence. In the meantime the Lawrence
+militia planned and executed a systematic defense of the town.
+When the two armies came within speaking distance, a parley
+ensued in which the Governor took a leading part in settling the
+affair without a hostile shot. This is known in Kansas history as
+the "Wakarusa War."
+
+The progress of affairs in Kansas was followed with intense
+interest in all parts of the country. North and South vied with
+each other in the encouragement of emigration to Kansas. Colonel
+Buford of Alabama sold a large number of slaves and devoted the
+proceeds to meeting the expense of conducting a troop of three
+hundred men to Kansas in the winter of 1856. They went armed with
+"the sword of the spirit," and all provided with Bibles supplied
+by the leading churches. Arrived in the territory, they were duly
+furnished with more worldly weapons and were drilled for action.
+About the same time a parallel incident is said to have occurred
+in New Haven, Connecticut. A deacon in one of the churches had
+enlisted a company of seventy bound for Kansas. A meeting was
+held in the church to raise money to defray expenses. The leader
+of the company declared that they also needed rifles for
+self-defense. Forthwith Professor Silliman, of the University,
+subscribed one Sharp's rifle, and others followed with like
+pledges. Finally Henry Ward Beecher, who was the speaker of the
+occasion, rose and promised that, if twenty-five rifles were
+pledged on the spot, Plymouth Church in Brooklyn would be
+responsible for the remaining twenty-five that were needed. He
+had already said in a previous address that for the slaveholders
+of Kansas, Sharp's rifles were a greater moral agency than the
+Bible. This led to the designation of the weapons as "Beecher's
+Bibles." Such was the spirit which prevailed in the two sections
+of the country.
+
+President Pierce had now become intensely hostile towards the
+free-state inhabitants of Kansas. Having recognized the
+Legislature elected on March 30, 1855, as the legitimate
+Government, he sent a special message to Congress on January 24,
+1856, in which he characterized as revolutionary the movement of
+the free-state men to organize a separate Government in Kansas.
+>From the President's point of view, the emissaries of the New
+England Emigrant Aid Association were unlawful invaders. In this
+position he not only had the support of the South, but was
+powerfully seconded by Stephen A. Douglas and other Northern
+Democrats.
+
+The attitude of the Administration at Washington was a source of
+great encouragement to Sheriff Jones and his associates, who were
+anxious to wreak their vengeance on the city of Lawrence for the
+outcome of the Wakarusa War. Jones came to Lawrence apparently
+for the express purpose of picking a quarrel, for he revived the
+old dispute about the rescuing party of the previous fall. As a
+consequence one enraged opponent slapped him in the face, and at
+last an unknown assassin entered the sheriff's tent by night and
+inflicted a revolver wound in his back. Though the citizens of
+Lawrence were greatly chagrined at this event and offered a
+reward for the discovery of the assailant, the attack upon the
+sheriff was made the signal for drastic procedure against the
+town of Lawrence. A grand jury found indictments for treason
+against Reeder, Robinson, and other leading citizens of the town.
+The United States marshal gave notice that he expected resistance
+in making arrests and called upon all law-abiding citizens of the
+Territory to aid in executing the law. It was a welcome summons
+to the pro-slavery forces. Not only local militia companies
+responded but also Buford's company and various companies from
+Missouri, in all more than seven hundred men, with two cannon. It
+had always been the set purpose of the free-state men not to
+resist federal authority by force, unless as a last resort, and
+they had no intention of opposing the marshal in making arrests.
+He performed his duty without hindrance and then placed the armed
+troops under the command of Sheriff Jones, who proceeded first to
+destroy the printing-press of the town of Lawrence. Then, against
+the protest of the marshal and Colonel Buford, the vindictive
+sheriff trained his guns upon the new hotel which was the pride
+of the city; the ruin of the building was made complete by fire,
+while a drunken mob pillaged the town.
+
+On May 22, 1856, the day following the attack upon Lawrence,
+Charles Sumner was struck down in the United States Senate on
+account of a speech made in defense of the rights of Kansas
+settlers. The two events, which were reported at the same time in
+the daily press, furnished the key-note to the presidential
+campaign of that year, for nominating conventions followed in a
+few days and "bleeding Kansas" was the all-absorbing issue. In
+spite of the destruction of property in Lawrence and the arrest
+of the leaders of the free-state party, Kansas had not been
+plunged into a state of civil war. The free-state party had fired
+no hostile shot. Governor Robinson and his associates still
+relied upon public opinion and they accepted the wanton attack
+upon Lawrence as the best assurance that they would yet win their
+cause by legal means.
+
+A change, however, soon took place which is associated with the
+entrance of John Brown into the history of Kansas. Brown and his
+sons were living at Osawatomie, some thirty miles south of
+Lawrence. They were present at the Wakarusa War in December,
+1855, and were on their way to the defense of Lawrence on May 21,
+1856, when they were informed that the town had been destroyed.
+Three days after this event Brown and his sons with two or three
+others made a midnight raid upon their pro-slavery neighbors
+living in the Pottawatomie valley and slew five men. The authors
+of this deed were not certainly known until the publication of a
+confession of one of the party in 1879, twenty years after the
+chief actor had won the reputation of a martyr to the cause of
+liberty. The Browns, however, were suspected at the time;
+warrants were out for their arrest; and their homes were
+destroyed.
+
+For more than three months after this incident, Kansas was in a
+state of war; in fact, two distinct varieties of warfare were
+carried on. Publicly organized companies on both sides engaged in
+acts of attack and defense, while at the same time irresponsible
+secret bands were busy in violent reprisals, in plunder and
+assassination. In both of these forms of warfare, the free-state
+men proved themselves fully equal to their opponents, and
+Governor Shannon was entirely unable to cope with the situation.
+It is estimated that two hundred men were slain and two million
+dollars' worth of property was destroyed.
+
+The state of affairs in Kansas served to win many Northern
+Democrats to the support of the Republicans. The Administration
+at Washington was held responsible for the violence and
+bloodshed. The Democratic leaders in the political campaign,
+determined now upon a complete change in the Government of the
+Territory, appointed J. W. Geary as Governor and placed General
+Smith in charge of the troops. The new incumbents, both from
+Pennsylvania, entered upon their labors early in September, and
+before the October state elections Geary was able to report that
+peace reigned throughout the Territory. A prompt reaction in
+favor of the Democrats followed. Buchanan, their presidential
+candidate, rejoiced in the fact that order had been restored by
+two citizens of his own State. It was now very generally conceded
+that Kansas would become a free State, and intimate associates of
+Buchanan assured the public that he was himself of that opinion
+and that if elected he would insure to the free-state party
+evenhanded justice. Thousands of voters were thus won to
+Buchanan's support. There was a general distrust of the
+Republican candidate as a man lacking political experience, and a
+strong conservative reaction against the idea of electing a
+President by the votes of only one section of the country. At the
+election in November, Buchanan received a majority of sixty of
+the electoral votes over Fremont, but in the popular vote he fell
+short of a majority by nearly 400,000. Fillmore, candidate of the
+Whig and the American parties, received 874,000 votes.
+
+There was still profound distrust of the administration of the
+Territory of Kansas, and the free-state settlers refused to vote
+at the election set for the choosing of a new territorial
+Legislature in October. The result was another pro-slavery
+assembly. Governor Geary, however, determined to secure and
+enforce just treatment of both parties. He was at once brought
+into violent conflict with the Legislature in an experience which
+was almost an exact counterpart of that of Governor Reeder; and
+Washington did not support his efforts to secure fair dealings. A
+pro-slavery deputation visited President Pierce in February,
+1857, and returned with the assurance that Governor Geary would
+be removed. Without waiting for the President to act, Geary
+resigned in disgust on the 4th of March. Of the three Governors
+whom President Pierce appointed, two became active supporters of
+the free-state party and a third, Governor Shannon, fled from the
+territory in mortal terror lest he should be slain by members of
+the party which he had tried to serve.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. CHARLES SUMNER
+
+The real successor to John Quincy Adams as the protagonist of the
+anti-slavery cause in Congress proved to be not Seward but
+Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. This newcomer entered the Senate
+without previous legislative experience but with an unusual
+equipment for the role he was to play. A graduate of Harvard
+College at the age of nineteen, he had entered upon the study of
+law in the newly organized law school in which Joseph Story held
+one of the two professorships. He was admitted to the bar in
+1834, but three years later he left his slender law practice for
+a long period of European travel. This three years' sojourn
+brought him into intimate touch with the leading spirits in arts,
+letters, and public life in England and on the Continent, and
+thus ripened his talents to their full maturity. He returned to
+his law practice poor in pocket but rich in the possession of
+lifelong friendships and happy memories.
+
+Sumner's political career did not begin until 1847, when as a
+Whig he not only opposed any further extension of slavery but
+strove to commit his party to the policy of emancipation in all
+the States. Failing in this attempt, Sumner became an active
+Free-Boiler in 1848. He was twice a candidate for Congress on the
+Free-soil ticket but failed of election. In 1851 he was elected
+to the United States Senate by a coalition between his party and
+the Democrats. This is the only public office he ever held, but
+he was continuously reelected until his death in 1874.
+
+John Quincy Adams had addressed audiences trained in the old
+school, which did not defend slavery on moral grounds. Charles
+Sumner faced audiences of the new school, which upheld the
+institution as a righteous moral order. This explains the chief
+difference in the attitude of the two leaders. Sumner, like
+Adams, began as an opponent of pro-slavery aggression, but he
+went farther: he attacked the institution itself as a great moral
+evil.
+
+As a constitutional lawyer Sumner is not the equal of his
+predecessor, Daniel Webster. He is less original, less convincing
+in the enunciation of broad general principles. He appears rather
+as a special pleader marshaling all available forces against the
+one institution which assailed the Union. In this particular
+work, he surpassed all others, for, with his unbounded industry,
+he permitted no precedent, no legal advantage, no incident of
+history, no fact in current politics fitted to strengthen his
+cause, to escape his untiring search. He showed a marvelous skill
+in the selection, arrangement, and presentation of his materials,
+and for his models he took the highest forms of classic forensic
+utterance.
+
+Sumner exhibited the ordinary aloofness and lack of familiarity
+with actual conditions in the South which was characteristic of
+the New England abolitionist. He perceived no race problem, no
+peculiar difficulty in the readjustments of master and slave
+which were involved in emancipation, and he ignored all obstacles
+to the accomplishment of his ends. Webster's arraignment of South
+Carolina was directed against an alleged erroneous dogma and only
+incidentally affected personal morality. The reaction, therefore,
+was void of bitter resentment. Sumner's charges were directed
+against alleged moral turpitude, and the classic form and
+scrupulous regard for parliamentary rules which he observed only
+added to the feeling of personal resentment on the part of his
+opponents. Some of the defenders of slavery were themselves
+devoted students of the classics, but they found that the
+orations of Demosthenes furnished nothing suited to their
+purpose. The result was a humiliating exhibition of weakness,
+personal abuse, and vindictiveness on their part.
+
+There was a conspiracy of silence on the slavery question in
+1852. Each of the national parties was definitely committed to
+the support of the compromise and especially to the faithful
+observance of the Fugitive Slave Law. Free-soilers had distinctly
+declined in numbers and influence during the four preceding
+years. Only a handful of members in each House of Congress
+remained unaffiliated with the parties whose platforms had
+ordained silence on the one issue of chief public concern. It was
+by a mere accident in Massachusetts politics that Charles Sumner
+was sent to the Senate as a man free on all public questions.
+
+While the parties were making their nominations for the
+Presidency, Sumner sought diligently for an opportunity in the
+Senate to give utterance to the sentiments of his party on the
+repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. But not until late in August
+did he overcome the resistance of the combined opposition and
+gain the floor. The watchmen were caught off guard when Sumner
+introduced an amendment to an appropriation bill which enabled
+him to deliver a carefully prepared address, several hours in
+length, calling for the repeal of the law.
+
+The first part of this speech is devoted to the general topic of
+the relation of the national Government to slavery and was made
+in answer to the demand of Calhoun and his followers for the
+direct national recognition of slavery. For such a demand Sumner
+found no warrant. By the decision of Lord Mansfield, said he,
+"the state of slavery" was declared to be "of such a nature, that
+it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or
+political, but ONLY BY POSITIVE LAW . . . . it is so odious, that
+nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law." Adopting
+the same principle, the Supreme Court of the State of
+Mississippi, a tribunal of slaveholders, asserted that "slavery
+is condemned by reason and the Laws of Nature. It exists, and can
+ONLY exist, through municipal regulations." So also declared the
+Supreme Court of Kentucky and numerous other tribunals. This
+aspect of the subject furnished Sumner occasion for a masterly
+array of all the utterances in favor of liberty to be found in
+the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence, in the
+constitutional conventions, in the principles of common law. All
+these led up to and supported the one grand conclusion that, when
+Washington took the oath as President of the United States,
+"slavery existed nowhere on the national territory" and therefore
+"is in no respect a national institution." Apply the principles
+of the Constitution in their purity, then, and "in all national
+territories slavery will be impossible. On the high seas, under
+the national flag, slavery will be impossible. In the District of
+Columbia, slavery will instantly cease. Inspired by these
+principles, Congress can give no sanction to slavery by the
+admission of new slave States. Nowhere under the Constitution can
+the Nation by legislation or otherwise, support slavery, hunt
+slaves, or hold property in man . . . . As slavery is banished
+from the national jurisdiction, it will cease to vex our national
+politics. It may linger in the States as a local institution; but
+it will no longer engender national animosities when it no longer
+demands national support."
+
+The second part of Sumner's address dealt directly with the
+Fugitive Slave Act of 1860. It is much less convincing and
+suggests more of the characteristics of the special pleader with
+a difficult case. Sumner here undertook to prove that Congress
+exceeded its powers when it presumed to lay down rules for the
+rendition of fugitive slaves, and this task exceeded even his
+power as a constitutional lawyer.
+
+The circumstances under which Sumner attacked slavery were such
+as to have alarmed a less self-centered man, for the two years
+following the introduction of the Nebraska bill were marked by
+the most acrimonious debate in the history of Congress, and by
+physical encounters, challenges, and threats of violence. But
+though Congressmen carried concealed weapons, Sumner went his way
+unarmed and apparently in complete unconcern as to any personal
+danger, though it is known that he was fully aware that in the
+faithful performance of what he deemed to be his duty he was
+incurring the risk of assassination.
+
+The pro-slavery party manifested on all occasions a disposition
+to make the most of the weak point in Sumner's constitutional
+argument against the Fugitive Slave Law. He was accused of taking
+an oath to support the Constitution though at the same time
+intending to violate one of its provisions. In a discussion, in
+June, 1854, over a petition praying for the repeal of the
+Fugitive Slave Act, Senator Butler of South Carolina put the
+question directly to Senator Sumner whether he would himself
+unite with others in returning a fugitive to his master. Sumner's
+quick reply was, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this
+thing?" Enraged Southerners followed this remark with a most
+bitter onslaught upon Sumner which lasted for two days. When
+Sumner again got the floor, he said in reference to Senator
+Butler's remark: "In fitful phrase, which seemed to come from
+unconscious excitement, so common with the Senator, he shot forth
+various cries about 'dogs,' and, among other things, asked if
+there was any 'dog' in the Constitution? The Senator did not seem
+to bear in mind, through the heady currents of that moment that,
+by the false interpretation he fastens upon the Constitution, he
+has helped to nurture there a whole kennel of Carolina
+bloodhounds, trained, with savage jaw and insatiable in scent,
+for the hunt of flying bondmen. No, sir, I do not believe that
+there is any 'kennel of bloodhounds,' or even any 'dog' in the
+Constitution." Thereafter offensive personal references between
+the Senators from Massachusetts and South Carolina became
+habitual. These personalities were a source of regret to many of
+Sumner's best friends, but they fill a small place, after all, in
+his great work. Nor were they the chief source of rancor on the
+part of his enemies, for Southern orators were accustomed to
+personalities in debate. Sumner was feared and hated principally
+because his presence in Congress endangered the institution of
+slavery.
+
+Sumner's speech on the crime against Kansas was perhaps the most
+remarkable effort of his career. It had been known for many weeks
+that Sumner was preparing to speak upon the burning question, and
+his friends had already expressed anxiety for his personal
+safety. For the larger part of two days, May 19 and 20, 1856, he
+held the reluctant attention of the Senate. For the delivery of
+this speech he chose a time which was most opportune. The crime
+against Kansas had, in a sense, culminated in March of the
+previous year, but the settlers had refused to submit to the
+Government set up by hostile invaders. They had armed themselves
+for the defense of their rights, had elected a Governor and a
+Legislature by voluntary association, had called a convention,
+and had adopted a constitution preparatory to admission to the
+Union. That constitution was now before the Senate for approval.
+President Pierce, Stephen A. Douglas, and all the Southern
+leaders had decided to treat as treasonable acts the efforts of
+Kansas settlers to secure an orderly government. Their plans for
+the arrest of the leaders were well advanced and the arrests were
+actually made on the day after Sumner had concluded his speech.
+
+A paragraph in the address is prophetic of what occurred within a
+week. Douglas had introduced a bill recognizing the Legislature
+chosen by the Missourians as the legal Government and providing
+for the formation of a constitution under its initiative at some
+future date. After describing this proposed action as a
+continuation of the crime against Kansas, Sumner declared: "Sir,
+you cannot expect that the people of Kansas will submit to the
+usurpation which this bill sets up and bids them bow before, as
+the Austrian tyrant set up the ducal hat in the Swiss
+market-place. If you madly persevere, Kansas will not be without
+her William Tell, who will refuse at all hazards to recognize the
+tyrannical edict; and this will be the beginning of civil war."
+
+To keep historical sequence clear at this point, all thought of
+John Brown should be eliminated, for he was then unknown to the
+public. It must be remembered that Governor Robinson and the
+free-state settlers were, as Sumner probably knew, prepared to
+resist the general Government as soon as there should be a clear
+case of outrage for which the Administration at Washington could
+be held directly responsible. Such a case occurred when the
+United States marshal placed federal troops in the hands of
+Sheriff Jones to assist in looting the town of Lawrence. Governor
+Robinson no longer had any scruples in advising forcible
+resistance to all who used force to impose upon Kansas a
+Government which the people had rejected.
+
+In the course of his address Sumner compared Senators Butler and
+Douglas to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, saying: "The Senator
+from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes
+himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and
+courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made
+his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to
+him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his
+sight. I mean the harlot Slavery. Let her be impeached in
+character, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the
+extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or
+hardihood of assertion is then too great for the Senator."
+
+When Sumner concluded, the gathering storm broke forth. Cass of
+Michigan, after saying that he had listened to the address with
+equal surprise and regret, characterized it as "the most
+unAmerican and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of the
+members of that high body." Douglas and Mason were personal and
+abusive. Douglas, recalling Sumner's answer to Senator Butler's
+question whether he would assist in returning a slave, renewed
+the charge made two years earlier that Sumner had violated his
+oath of office. This attack called forth from Sumner another
+attempt to defend the one weak point in his speech of 1852, for
+he was always irritated by reference to this subject, and at the
+same time he enjoyed a fine facility in the use of language which
+irritated others.
+
+One utterance in Douglas's reply to Sumner is of special
+significance in view of what occurred two days later: "Is it his
+object to provoke some of us to kick him as we would a dog in the
+street, that he may get sympathy upon the just chastisement?" Two
+days later Sumner was sitting alone at his desk in the Senate
+chamber after adjournment when Preston Brooks, a nephew of
+Senator Butler and a member of the lower House, entered and
+accosted him with the statement that he had read Sumner's speech
+twice and that it was a libel on South Carolina and upon a
+kinsman of his. Thereupon Brooks followed his words by striking
+Sumner on the head with a cane. Though the Senator was dazed and
+blinded by the unexpected attack, his assailant rained blow after
+blow until he had broken the cane and Sumner lay prostrate and
+bleeding at his feet. Brooks's remarks in the House of
+Representatives almost a month after the event leave no doubt of
+his determination to commit murder had he failed to overcome his
+antagonist with a cane. He had also taken the precaution to have
+two of his friends ready to prevent any interference before the
+punishment was completed. Toombs of Georgia witnessed a part of
+the assault and expressed approval of the act, and everywhere
+throughout the South, in the public press, in legislative halls,
+in public meetings, Brooks was hailed as a hero. The resolution
+for his expulsion introduced in the House received the support of
+only one vote from south of Mason and Dixon's Line. A large
+majority favored the resolution, but not the required two-thirds
+majority. Brooks, however, thought best to resign but was
+triumphantly returned to his seat with only six votes against
+him. Nothing was left undone to express Southern gratitude, and
+he received gifts of canes innumerable as symbols of his valor.
+Yet before his death, which occurred in the following January, he
+confessed to his friend Orr that he was sick of being regarded as
+the representative of bullies and disgusted at receiving
+testimonials of their esteem.
+
+With similar unanimity the North condemned and resented the
+assault that had been made upon Sumner. From party
+considerations, if for no other reasons, Democrats regretted the
+event. Republicans saw in the brutal attack and in the manner of
+its reception in the South another evidence of the irrepressible
+conflict between slavery and freedom. They were ready to take up
+the issue so forcibly presented by their fallen leader. A part of
+the regular order of exercises at public meetings of Republicans
+was to express sympathy with their wounded champion and with the
+Kansas people of the pillaged town of Lawrence, and to adopt ways
+and means to bring to an end the Administration which they held
+responsible for these outrages. Sumner, though silenced, was
+eloquent in a new and more effective way. A half million copies
+of "The Crime against Kansas" were printed and circulated. On the
+issue thus presented, Northern Democrats became convinced that
+their defeat at the pending election was certain, and their
+leaders instituted the change in their program which has been
+described in a previous chapter. They had made an end of the war
+in Kansas and drew from their candidate for the Presidency the
+assurance that just treatment should at last be meted out to
+harassed Kansas.
+
+Though Sumner's injuries were at first regarded as slight, they
+eventually proved to be extremely serious. After two attempts to
+resume his place in the Senate, he found that he was unable to
+remain; yet when his term expired, he was almost unanimously
+reelected. Much of his time for three and a half years he spent
+in Europe. In December, 1859, he seemed sufficiently recovered to
+resume senatorial duties, but it was not until the following June
+that he again addressed the Senate. On that occasion he delivered
+his last great philippic against slavery. The subject under
+discussion was still the admission of Kansas as a free State,
+and, as he remarked in his opening sentences, he resumed the
+discussion precisely where he had left off more than four years
+before.
+
+Sumner had assumed the task of uttering a final word against
+slavery as barbarism and a barrier to civilization. He spoke
+under the impelling power of a conviction in his God-given
+mission to utilize a great occasion to the full and for a noble
+end. For this work his whole life had been a preparation.
+Accustomed from early youth to spend ten hours a day with books
+on law, history, and classic literature, he knew as no other man
+then knew what aid the past could offer to the struggle for
+freedom. The bludgeon of the would-be assassin had not impaired
+his memory, and four years of enforced leisure enabled him to
+fulfill his highest ideals of perfect oratorical form.
+Personalities he eliminated from this final address, and
+blemishes he pruned away. In his earlier speeches he had been
+limited by the demands of the particular question under
+discussion, but in "The Barbarism of Slavery" he was free to deal
+with the general subject, and he utilized incidents in American
+slavery to demonstrate the general upward trend of history. The
+orator was sustained by the full consciousness that his
+utterances were in harmony with the grand sweep of historic truth
+as well as with the spirit of the present age.
+
+Sumner was not a party man and was at no time in complete harmony
+with his coworkers. It was always a question whether his speeches
+had a favorable effect upon the immediate action of Congress;
+there can, however, be no doubt of the fact that the larger
+public was edified and influenced. Copies of "The Crime against
+Kansas" and "The Barbarism of Slavery" were printed and
+circulated by the million and were eagerly read from beginning to
+end. They gave final form to the thoughts and utterances of many
+political leaders both in America and in Europe. More than any
+other man it was Charles Sumner who, with a wealth of historical
+learning and great skill in forensic art, put the irrepressible
+conflict between slavery and freedom in its proper setting in
+human history.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. KANSAS AND BUCHANAN
+
+In view of the presidential election of 1856 Northern Democrats
+entertained no doubts that Kansas, now occupied by a majority of
+free-state men, would be received as a free State without further
+ado. The case was different with the Democrats of western
+Missouri, already for ten years in close touch with those
+Southern leaders who were determined either to secure new
+safeguards for slavery or to form an independent confederacy.
+Their program was to continue their efforts to make Kansas a
+slave State or at least to maintain the disturbance there until
+the conditions appeared favorable for secession.
+
+In February, 1857, the pro-slavery territorial Legislature
+provided for the election of delegates to a constitutional
+convention, but Governor Geary vetoed the act because no
+provision was made for submitting the proposed constitution to
+the vote of the people. The bill was passed over his veto, and
+arrangements were made for registration which free-state men
+regarded as imperfect, inadequate, or fraudulent.
+
+President Buchanan undoubtedly intended to do full justice to the
+people of Kansas. To this end he chose Robert J. Walker, a
+Mississippi Democrat, as Governor of Kansas. Walker was a
+statesman of high rank, who had been associated with Buchanan in
+the Cabinet of James K. Polk. Three times he refused to accept
+the office and finally undertook the mission only from a sense of
+duty. Being aware of the fate of Governor Geary, Walker insisted
+on an explicit understanding with Buchanan that his policies
+should not be repudiated by the federal Administration. Late in
+May he went to Kansas with high hopes and expectations. But the
+free-state party had persisted in the repudiation of a Government
+which had been first set up by an invading army and, as they
+alleged, had since then been perpetuated by fraud. They had
+absolutely refused to take part in any election called by that
+Government and had continued to keep alive their own legislative
+assembly. Despite Walker's efforts to persuade them to take part
+in the election of delegates to the constitutional convention,
+they resolutely held aloof. Yet, as they became convinced that he
+was acting in good faith, they did participate in the October
+elections to the territorial Legislature, electing nine out of
+the thirteen councilors and twenty-four out of the thirty-nine
+representatives. Gross frauds had been perpetrated in two
+districts, and the Governor made good his promise by rejecting
+the fraudulent votes. In one case a poll list had been made up by
+copying an old Cincinnati register.
+
+In the meantime, thanks to the abstention of the free-state
+people, the pro-slavery party had secured absolute control of the
+constitutional convention. Yet there was the most absolute
+assurance by the Governor in the name of the President of the
+United States that no constitution would be sent to Congress for
+approval which had not received the sanction of a majority of the
+voters of the Territory. This was Walker's reiterated promise,
+and President Buchanan had on this point been equally explicit.
+
+When, therefore, the pro-slavery constitutional convention met at
+Lecompton in October, Kansas had a free-state Legislature duly
+elected. To make Kansas still a slave State it was necessary to
+get rid of that Legislature and of the Governor through whose
+agency it had been chosen, and at the same time to frame a
+constitution which would secure the approval of the Buchanan
+Administration. Incredible as it may seem, all this was actually
+accomplished.
+
+John Calhoun, who had been chosen president of the Lecompton
+convention, spent some time in Washington before the adjourned
+meeting of the convention. He secured the aid of master-hands at
+manipulation. Walker had already been discredited at the White
+House on account of his rejection of fraudulent returns at the
+October election of members to the Legislature. The convention
+was unwilling to take further chances on a matter of that sort,
+and it consequently made it a part of the constitution that the
+president of the convention should have entire charge of the
+election to be held for its approval. The free-state legislature
+was disposed of by placing in the constitution a provision that
+all existing laws should remain in force until the election of a
+Legislature provided for under the constitution.
+
+The master-stroke of the convention, however, was the provision
+for submitting the constitution to the vote of the people. Voters
+were not permitted to accept or reject the instrument; all votes
+were to be for the constitution either "with slavery" or "with no
+slavery." But the document itself recognized slavery as already
+existing and declared the right of slave property like other
+property "before and higher than any constitutional sanction."
+Other provisions made emancipation difficult by providing in any
+case for complete monetary remuneration and for the consent of
+the owners. There were numerous other provisions offensive to
+free-state men. It had been rightly surmised that they would take
+no part in such an election and that "the constitution with
+slavery" would be approved. The vote on the constitution was set
+for the 21st of December. For the constitution with slavery 6226
+votes were recorded and 569 for the constitution without slavery.
+
+While these events were taking place, Walker went to Washington
+to enter his protest but resigned after finding only a hostile
+reception by the President and his Cabinet. Stanton, who was
+acting Governor in the absence of Walker, then called together
+the free-state Legislature, which set January 4, 1858, as the
+date for approving or rejecting the Lecompton Constitution. At
+this election the votes cast were 138 for the constitution with
+slavery, 24 for the constitution without slavery, and 10,226
+against the constitution. But President Buchanan had become
+thoroughly committed to the support of the Lecompton
+Constitution. Disregarding the advice of the new Governor, he
+sent the Lecompton Constitution to Congress with the
+recommendation that Kansas be admitted to the Union as a slave
+State.
+
+Here was a crisis big with the fate of the Democratic party, if
+not of the Union. Stephen A. Douglas had already given notice
+that he would oppose the Lecompton Constitution. In favor of its
+rejection he made a notable speech which called forth the
+bitterest enmity from the South and arrayed all the forces of the
+Administration against him. Supporters of Douglas were removed
+from office, and anti-Douglas men were put in their places. In
+his fight against the fraudulent constitution Douglas himself,
+however, still had the support of a majority of Northern
+Democrats, especially in the Western States, and that of all the
+Republicans in Congress. A bill to admit Kansas passed the
+Senate, but in the House a proviso was attached requiring that
+the constitution should first be submitted to the people of
+Kansas for acceptance or rejection. This amendment was finally
+accepted by the Senate with the modification that, if the people
+voted for the constitution, the State should have a large
+donation of public land, but that if they rejected it, they
+should not be admitted as a State until they had a population
+large enough to entitle them to a representative in the lower
+House. The vote of the people was cast on August 2, 1858, and the
+constitution was finally rejected by a majority of nearly twelve
+thousand. Thus resulted the last effort to impose slavery on the
+people of Kansas.
+
+Although the war between slavery and freedom was fought out in
+miniature in Kansas, the immediate issue was the preservation of
+slavery in Missouri. This, however, involved directly the
+prospect of emancipation in other border States and ultimate
+complete emancipation in all the States. The issue is well stated
+in a Fourth of July address which Charles Robinson delivered at
+Lawrence, Kansas, in 1855, after the invasion of Missourians to
+influence the March election of that year, but before the
+beginning of bloody conflict:
+
+"What reason is given for the cowardly invasion of our rights by
+our neighbors? They say that if Kansas is allowed to be free the
+institution of slavery in their own State will be in danger ....
+If the people of Missouri make it necessary, by their unlawful
+course, for us to establish freedom in that State in order to
+enjoy the liberty of governing ourselves in Kansas, then let that
+be the issue. If Kansas and the whole North must be enslaved, or
+Missouri become free, then let her be made free. Aye! and if to
+be free ourselves, slavery must be abolished in the whole
+country, then let us accept that due. If black slavery in a part
+of the States is incompatible with white freedom in any State,
+then let black slavery be abolished from all. As men espousing
+the principles of the Declaration of the Fathers, we can do
+nothing else than accept these issues."
+
+The men who saved Kansas to freedom were not abolitionists in the
+restricted sense. Governor Walker found in 1857 that a
+considerable majority of the free-state men were Democrats and
+that some were from the South. Nearly all actual settlers, from
+whatever source they came, were free-state men who felt that a
+slave was a burden in such a country as Kansas. For example,
+during the first winter of the occupation of Kansas, an owner of
+nineteen slaves was himself forced to work like a trooper to keep
+them from freezing; and, indeed, one of them did freeze to death
+and another was seriously injured.
+
+In spite of all the advertising of opportunity and all the
+pressure brought to bear upon Southerners to settle in Kansas, at
+no time did the number of slaves in the Territory reach three
+hundred. The climate and the soil made for freedom, and the
+Governors were not the only persons who were converted to
+free-state principles by residence in the Territory.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE SUPREME COURT IN POLITICS
+
+The decision and arguments of the Supreme Court upon the Dred
+Scott case were published on March 6, 1857, two days after the
+inauguration of President Buchanan. The decision had been agreed
+upon many months before, and the appeal of the negro, Dred Scott,
+had been decided by rulings which in no way involved the validity
+of the Missouri Compromise. Nevertheless, a majority of the
+judges determined to give to the newly developed theory of John
+C. Calhoun the appearance of the sanctity of law. According to
+Chief Justice Taney's dictum, those who made the Constitution
+gave to those clauses defining the power of Congress over the
+Territories an erroneous meaning. On numerous occasions Congress
+had by statute excluded slavery from the public domain. This, in
+the judgment of the Chief Justice, they had no right to do, and
+such legislation was unconstitutional and void. Specifically the
+Missouri Compromise had never had any binding force as law.
+Property in slaves was as sacred as property in any other form,
+and slave-owners had equal claim with other property owners to
+protection in all the Territories of the United States. Neither
+Congress nor a territorial Legislature could infringe such equal
+rights.
+
+According to popular understanding, the Supreme Court declared
+"that the negro has no rights which the white man is bound to
+respect." But Chief Justice Taney did not use these words merely
+as an expression of his own or of the Court's opinion. He used
+them in a way much more contemptible and inexcusable to the minds
+of men of strong anti-slavery convictions. He put them into the
+mouths of the fathers of the Republic, who wrote the Declaration
+of Independence, framed the Constitution, organized state
+Governments, and gave to negroes full rights of citizenship,
+including the right to vote. But how explain this strange
+inconsistency? The Chief Justice was equal to the occasion. He
+insisted that in recent years there had come about a better
+understanding of the phraseology of the Declaration of
+Independence. The words, "All men are created equal," he
+admitted, "would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if
+they were used in a similar instrument at this day they would be
+so understood." But the writers of that instrument had not, he
+said, intended to include men of the African race, who were at
+that time regarded as not forming any part of the people.
+Therefore--strange logic!--these men of the revolutionary era who
+treated negroes actually as citizens having full equal rights did
+not understand the meaning of their own words, which could be
+comprehended only after three-quarters of a century when,
+forsooth, equal rights had been denied to all persons of African
+descent.
+
+The ruling of the Court in the Dred Scott case came at a time
+when Northern people had a better idea of the spirit and
+teachings of the founders of the Republic regarding the slavery
+question than any generation before or since has had. The
+campaign that had just closed had been characterized by a high
+order of discussion, and it was also emphatically a reading
+campaign. The new Republican party planted itself squarely on the
+principles enunciated by Thomas Jefferson, the reputed founder of
+the old Republican party. They went back to the policy of the
+fathers, whose words on the subject of slavery they eagerly read.
+>From this source also came the chief material for their public
+addresses. To the common man who was thus indoctrinated, the
+Chief Justice, in describing the sentiments of the fathers
+respecting slavery, appeared to be doing what Horace Greeley was
+wont to describe as "saying a thing and being conscious while
+saying it that the thing is not true."
+
+The Dred Scott decision laid the Republicans open to the charge
+of seeking by unlawful means to deprive slaveowners of their
+rights, and it was to the partizan interest of the Democrats to
+stand by the Court and thus discredit their opponents. This
+action tended to carry the entire Democratic party to the support
+of Calhoun's extreme position on the slavery question.
+Republicans had proclaimed that liberty was national and slavery
+municipal; that slavery had no warrant for existence except by
+state enactment; that under the Constitution Congress had no more
+right to make a slave than it had to make a king; that Congress
+had no power to establish or permit slavery in the Territories;
+that it was, on the contrary, the duty of Congress to exclude
+slavery. On these points the Supreme Court and the Republican
+party held directly contradictory opinions.
+
+The Democratic platform of 1856 endorsed the doctrine of popular
+sovereignty as embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska legislation, which
+implied that Congress should neither prohibit nor introduce
+slavery into the Territories, but should leave the inhabitants
+free to decide that question for themselves, the public domains
+being open to slaveowners on equal terms with others. But once
+they had an organized territorial Government and a duly elected
+territorial Legislature, the residents of a Territory were
+empowered to choose either slave labor or exclusively free labor.
+This at least was the view expounded by Stephen A. Douglas,
+though the theory was apparently rendered untenable by the ruling
+of the Court which extended protection to slave-owners in all the
+Territories remaining under the control of the general
+Government. It followed that if Congress had no power to
+interfere with that right, much less had a local territorial
+Government, which is itself a creature of Congress. A state
+Government alone might control the status of slave property. A
+Territory when adopting a constitution preparatory to becoming a
+State would find it then in order to decide whether the proposed
+State should be free or slave. This was the view held by
+Jefferson Davis and the extreme pro-slavery leaders. Aided by the
+authority of the Supreme Court, they were prepared to insist upon
+a new plank in future Democratic platforms which should guarantee
+to all slave-owners equal rights in all Territories until they
+ceased to be Territories. Over this issue the party again divided
+in 1860.
+
+Republicans naturally imagined that there had been collusion
+between Democratic politicians and members of the Supreme Court.
+Mr. Seward made an explicit statement to that effect, and
+affirmed that President Buchanan was admitted into the secret,
+alleging as proof a few words in his inaugural address referring
+to the decision soon to be delivered. Nothing of the sort,
+however, was ever proven. The historian Von Holst presents the
+view that there had been a most elaborate and comprehensive
+program on the part of the slavocracy to control the judiciary of
+the federal Government. The actual facts, however, admit of a
+simpler and more satisfactory explanation.
+
+Judges are affected by their environment, as are other men. The
+transition from the view that slavery was an evil to the view
+that it is right and just did not come in ways open to general
+observation, and probably few individuals were conscious of
+having altered their views. Leading churches throughout the South
+began to preach the doctrine that slavery is a divinely ordained
+institution, and by the time of the decision in the Dred Scott
+case a whole generation had grown up under such teaching.
+
+A large proportion of Southern leaders had become thoroughly
+convinced of the righteousness of their peculiar system. Not
+otherwise could they have been so successful in persuading others
+to accept their views. Even before the Dred Scott decision had
+crystallized opinion, Franklin Pierce, although a New Hampshire
+Democrat of anti-slavery traditions, came, as a result of his
+intimate personal and political association with Southern
+leaders, to accept their guidance and strove to give effect to
+their policies. President Buchanan was a man of similar
+antecedents, and, contrary to the expectation of his Northern
+supporters, did precisely as Pierce had done. It is a matter of
+record that the arguments of the Chief Justice had captivated his
+mind before he began to show his changed attitude towards Kansas.
+In August, 1857, the President wrote that, at the time of the
+passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, slavery already existed and
+that it still existed in Kansas under the Constitution of the
+United States. "This point," said he, "has at last been settled
+by the highest tribunal known in our laws. How it could ever have
+been seriously doubted is a mystery." Granted that slavery is
+recognized as a permanent institution in itself--just and of
+divine ordinance and especially united to one section of the
+country--how could any one question the equal rights of the
+people of that section to occupy with their slaves lands acquired
+by common sacrifice? Such was undoubtedly the view of both Pierce
+and Buchanan. It seemed to them "wicked" that Northern
+abolitionists should seek to infringe this sacred right.
+
+By a similar process a majority of the Supreme Court justices had
+become converts to Calhoun's newly announced theory of 1847. It
+undoubtedly seemed strange to them, as it did later to President
+Buchanan, that any one should ever have held a different view. If
+the Court with the force of its prestige should give legal
+sanction to the new doctrine, it would allay popular agitation,
+ensure the preservation of the Union, and secure to each section
+its legitimate rights. Such apparently was the expectation of the
+majority of the Court in rendering the decision. But the decision
+was not unanimous. Each judge presented an individual opinion.
+Five supported the Chief Justice on the main points as to the
+status of the African race and the validity of the Missouri
+Compromise. Judge Nelson registered a protest against the
+entrance of the Court into the political arena. Curtis and McLean
+wrote elaborate dissenting opinions. Not only did the decision
+have no tendency to allay party debate, but it added greatly to
+the acrimony of the discussion. Republicans accepted the
+dissenting opinions of Curtis and McLean as a complete refutation
+of the arguments of the Chief Justice; and the Court itself,
+through division among its members, became a partizan
+institution. The arguments of the justices thus present a
+complete summary of the views of the proslavery and anti-slavery
+parties, and the opposing opinions stand as permanent evidence of
+the impossibility of reconciling slavery and freedom in the same
+government.
+
+It was through the masterful leadership of Stephen A. Douglas
+that the Lecompton Constitution was defeated. In 1858 an election
+was to be held in Illinois to determine whether or not Douglas
+should be reelected to the United States Senate. The Buchanan
+Administration was using its utmost influence to insure Douglas's
+defeat. Many eastern Republicans believed that in this emergency
+Illinois Republicans should support Douglas, or at least that
+they should do nothing to diminish his chances for reelection;
+but Illinois Republicans decided otherwise and nominated Abraham
+Lincoln as their candidate for the senatorship. Then followed the
+memorable Lincoln-Douglas debates.
+
+This is not the place for any extended account of the famous duel
+between the rival leaders, but a few facts must be stated.
+Lincoln had slowly come to the perception that a large portion of
+the people abhorred slavery, and that the weak point in the armor
+of Douglas was to be found in the fact that he did not recognize
+this growing moral sense. Douglas had never been a defender of
+slavery on ethical grounds, nor had he expressed any distinct
+aversion to the system. In support of his policy of popular
+sovereignty his favorite dictum had been, "I do not care whether
+slavery is voted up or voted down."
+
+This apparent moral obtuseness furnished to Lincoln his great
+opportunity, for his opponent was apparently without a conscience
+in respect to the great question of the day. Lincoln, on the
+contrary, had reached the conclusion not only that slavery was
+wrong, but that the relation between slavery and freedom was such
+that they could not be harmonized within the same government. In
+the debates he again put forth his famous utterance, "A house
+divided against itself cannot stand," with the explanation that
+in course of time either this country would become all slave
+territory or slavery would be restricted and placed in a position
+which would involve its final extinction. In other words,
+Lincoln's position was similar to that of the conservative
+abolitionists. As we know, Birney had given expression to a
+similar conviction of the impossibility of maintaining both
+liberty and slavery in this country, but Lincoln spoke at a time
+when the whole country had been aroused upon the great question;
+when it was still uncertain whether slavery would not be forced
+upon the people of Kansas; when the highest court in the land had
+rendered a decision which was apparently intended to legalize
+slavery in all Territories; and when the alarming question had
+been raised whether the next step would not be legalization in
+all the States.
+
+Lincoln was a long-headed politician, as well as a man of sincere
+moral judgments. He was defining issues for the campaign of 1860
+and was putting Douglas on record so that it would be impossible
+for him, as the candidate of his party, to become President.
+Douglas had many an uncomfortable hour as Lincoln exposed his
+vain efforts to reconcile his popular sovereignty doctrine with
+the Dred Scott decision. As Lincoln expected, Douglas won the
+senatorship, but he lost the greater prize.
+
+The crusade against slavery was nearing its final stage. Under
+the leadership of such men as Sumner, Seward, and Lincoln, a
+political party was being formed whose policies were based upon
+the assumption that slavery is both a moral and a political evil.
+Even at this stage the party had assumed such proportions that it
+was likely to carry the ensuing presidential election. Davis and
+Yancey, the chief defenders of slavery, were at the same time
+reaching a definite conclusion as to what should follow the
+election of a Republican President. And that conclusion involved
+nothing less than the fate of the Union.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. JOHN BROWN
+
+The crusade against slavery was based upon the assumption that
+slavery, like war, is an abnormal state of society. As the tyrant
+produces the assassin, so on a larger scale slavery calls forth
+servile insurrection, or, as in the United States, an implacable
+struggle between free white persons and the defenders of slavery.
+
+The propaganda of Southern and Western abolitionists had as a
+primary object the prevention of both servile insurrection and
+civil war. It was as clear to Southern abolitionists in the
+thirties as it was to Seward and Lincoln in the fifties that,
+unless the newly aroused slave power should be effectively
+checked, a terrible civil war would ensue. To forestall this
+dreaded calamity, they freely devoted their lives and fortunes.
+Peaceable emancipation by state action, according to the original
+program, was prevented by the rise of a sectional animosity which
+beclouded the issue. As the leadership drifted into the hands of
+extremists, the conservative masses were confused, misled, or
+deceived. The South undoubtedly became the victim of the
+erroneous teachings of alarmists who believed that the anti-
+slavery North intended, by unlawful and unconstitutional federal
+action, to abolish slavery in all the States; while the North had
+equally exaggerated notions as to the aggressive intentions of
+the South.
+
+The opposing forces finally met on the plains of Kansas, and
+extreme Northern opposition became personified in John Brown of
+Osawatomie. He was born in Connecticut in May, 1800, of New
+England ancestry, the sixth generation from the Mayflower. A
+Calvinist, a mystic, a Bible-reading Puritan, he was trained to
+anti-slavery sentiments in the family of Owen Brown, his father.
+He passed his early childhood in the Western Reserve of Ohio, and
+subsequently moved from Ohio to New York, to Pennsylvania, to
+Ohio again, to Connecticut, to Massachusetts, and finally to New
+York once more. He was at various times tanner, farmer, sheep-
+raiser, horse-breeder,wool-merchant, and a follower of other
+callings as well. From a business standpoint he may be regarded
+as a failure, for he had been more than once a bankrupt and
+involved in much litigation. He was twice married and was the
+father of twenty children, eight of whom died in infancy.
+
+Until the Kansas excitement nothing had occurred in the history
+of the Brown family to attract public attention. John Brown was
+not conspicuous in anti-slavery efforts or in any line of public
+reform. As a mere lad during the War of 1812 he accompanied his
+father, who was furnishing supplies to the army, and thus he saw
+much of soldiers and their officers. The result was that he
+acquired a feeling of disgust for everything military, and he
+consistently refused to perform the required military drill until
+he had passed the age for service. Not quite in harmony with
+these facts is the statement that he was a great admirer of
+Oliver Cromwell, and Rhodes says of him that he admired Nat
+Turner, the leader of the servile insurrection in Virginia, as
+much as he did George Washington. There seems to be no reason to
+doubt the testimony of the members of his family that John Brown
+always cherished a lively interest in the African race and a deep
+sympathy with them. As a youth he had chosen for a companion a
+slave boy of his own age, to whom he became greatly attached.
+This slave, badly clad and poorly fed, beaten with iron shovel or
+anything that came first to hand, young Brown grew to regard as
+his equal if not his superior. And it was the contrast between
+their respective conditions that first led Brown to "swear
+eternal war with slavery." In later years John Brown, Junior,
+tells us that, on seeing a negro for the first time, he felt so
+great a sympathy for him that he wanted to take the negro home
+with him. This sympathy, he assures us, was a result of his
+father's teaching. Upon the testimony of two of John Brown's sons
+rests the oft-repeated story that he declared eternal war against
+slavery and also induced the members of his family to unite with
+him in formal consecration to his mission. The time given for
+this incident is previous to the year 1840; the idea that he was
+a divinely chosen agent for the deliverance of the slaves was of
+later development.
+
+As early as 1834 Brown had shown some active interest in the
+education of negro children, first in Pennsylvania and later in
+Ohio. In 1848 the Brown family became associated with an
+enterprise of Gerrit Smith in northern New York, where a hundred
+thousand acres of land were offered to negro families for
+settlement. During the excitement over the Fugitive Slave Act of
+1850 Brown organized among the colored people of Springfield,
+Massachusetts, "The United States League of Gileadites." As an
+organization this undertaking proved a failure, but Brown's
+formal written instructions to the "Gileadites" are interesting
+on account of their relation to what subsequently happened. In
+this document, by referring to the multitudes who had suffered in
+their behalf, he encouraged the negroes to stand for their
+liberties. He instructed them to be armed and ready to rush to
+the rescue of any of their number who might be attacked:
+
+"Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together
+as quickly as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries who
+are taking an active part against you. Let no able-bodied man
+appear on the ground unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to
+view: let that be understood beforehand. Your plans must be known
+only to yourself, and with the understanding that all traitors
+must die, wherever caught and proven to be guilty. "Whosoever is
+fearful or afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount
+Gilead" (Judges, vii. 3; Deut. xx. 8). Give all cowards an
+opportunity to show it on condition of holding their peace. Do
+NOT DELAY ONE MOMENT AFTER YOU ARE READY: YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR
+RESOLUTION IF YOU DO. LET THE FIRST BLOW BE THE SIGNAL FOR ALL TO
+ENGAGE: AND WHEN ENGAGED DO NOT DO YOUR WORK BY HALVES, BUT MAKE
+CLEAN WORK WITH YOUR ENEMIES,--AND BE SURE YOU MEDDLE NOT WITH
+ANY OTHERS. By going about your business quietly, you will get
+the job disposed of before the number that an uproar would bring
+together can collect; and you will have the advantage of those
+who come out against you, for they will be wholly unprepared with
+either equipments or matured plans; all with them will be
+confusion and terror. Your enemies will be slow to attack you
+after you have done up the work nicely; and if they should, they
+will have to encounter your white friends as well as you; for you
+may safely calculate on a division of the whites, and may by that
+means get to an honorable parley."
+
+He gives here a distinct suggestion of the plans and methods
+which he later developed and extended.
+
+When Kansas was opened for settlement, John Brown was fifty-four
+years old. Early in the spring of 1855, five of his sons took up
+claims near Osawatomie. They went, as did others, as peaceable
+settlers without arms. After the election of March 30, 1855, at
+which armed Missourians overawed the Kansas settlers and thus
+secured a unanimous pro-slavery Legislature, the freestate men,
+under the leadership of Robinson, began to import Sharp's rifles
+and other weapons for defense. Brown's sons thereupon wrote to
+their father, describing their helpless condition and urging him
+to come to their relief. In October, 1855, John Brown himself
+arrived with an adequate supply of rifles and some broadswords
+and revolvers. The process of organization and drill thereupon
+began, and when the Wakarusa War occurred early in December,
+1855, John Brown was on hand with a small company from Osawatomie
+to assist in the defense of Lawrence. The statement that he
+disapproved of the agreement with Governor Shannon which
+prevented bloodshed is not in accord with a letter which John
+Brown wrote to his wife immediately after the event. The Governor
+granted practically all that the freestate men desired and
+recognized their trainbands as a part of the police force of
+the Territory. Brown by this stipulation became Captain John
+Brown, commander of a company of the territorial militia.
+
+Soon after the Battle of Wakarusa, Captain Brown passed the
+command of the company of militia to his son John, while he
+became the leader of a small band composed chiefly of members of
+his own family. Writing to his wife on April 7, 1856, he said:
+"We hear that preparations are making in the United States Court
+for numerous arrests of free-state men. For one I have not
+desired (all things considered) to have the slave power cease
+from its acts of aggression. 'Their foot shall slide in due
+time.'" This letter of Brown's indicates that the writer was
+pleased at the prospect of approaching trouble.
+
+When, six weeks later, notice came of the attack upon Lawrence,
+John Brown, Junior, went with the company of Osawatomie Rifles to
+the relief of the town, while the elder Brown with a little
+company of six moved in the same direction. In a letter to his
+wife, dated June 26, 1856, more than a month after the massacre
+in Pottawatomie Valley, Brown said:
+
+"On our way to Lawrence we learned that it had been already
+destroyed, and we encamped with John's company overnight .... On
+the second day and evening after we left John's men, we
+encountered quite a number of pro-slavery men and took quite a
+number of prisoners. Our prisoners we let go, but kept some four
+or five horses. We were immediately after this accused of
+murdering five men at Pottawatomie and great efforts have been
+made by the Missourians and their ruffian allies to capture us.
+John's company soon afterwards disbanded, and also the Osawatomie
+men. Since then, we have, like David of old, had our dwelling
+with the serpents of the rocks and the wild beasts of the
+wilderness."
+
+There will probably never be agreement as to Brown's motives in
+slaying his five neighbors on May 24, 1856. Opinions likewise
+differ as to the effect which this incident had on the history of
+Kansas. Abolitionists of every class had said much about war and
+about servile insurrection, but the conservative people of the
+West and South had mentioned the subject only by way of warning
+and that they might point out ways of prevention. Garrison and
+his followers had used language which gave rise to the impression
+that they favored violent revolution and were not averse to
+fomenting servile insurrection. They had no faith in the efforts
+of Northern emigrants to save Kansas from the clutches of the
+slaveholding South, and they denounced in severe terms the
+Robinson leadership there, believing it sure to result in
+failure. To this class of abolitionists John Brown distinctly
+belonged. He believed that so high was the tension on the slavery
+question throughout the country that revolution, if inaugurated
+at any point, would sweep the land and liberate the slaves. Brown
+was also possessed of the belief that he was himself the divinely
+chosen agent to let loose the forces of freedom; and that this
+was the chief motive which prompted the deed at Pottawatomie is
+as probable as any other.
+
+Viewed in this light, the Pottawatomie massacre was measurably
+successful. Opposing forces became more clearly defined and were
+pitted against each other in hostile array. There were reprisals
+and counter-reprisals. Kansas was plunged into a state of civil
+war, but it is quite probable that this condition would have
+followed the looting of Lawrence even if John Brown had been
+absent from the Territory.
+
+Coincident with the warfare by organized companies, small
+irregular bands infested the country. Kansas became a paradise
+for adventurers, soldiers of fortune, horse thieves, cattle
+thieves, and marauders of various sorts. Spoiling the enemy in
+the interest of a righteous cause easily degenerated into common
+robbery and murder. It was chiefly in this sort of conflict that
+two hundred persons were slain and that two million dollars'
+worth of property was destroyed.
+
+During this period of civil war the members of the Brown family
+were not much in evidence. John Brown, Junior, captain of the
+Osawatomie Rifles, was a political prisoner at Topeka. Swift
+destruction of their property was visited upon all those members
+who were suspected of having a share in the Pottawatomie murders,
+and their houses were burned and their other property was seized.
+Warrants were out for the arrest of the elder Brown and his sons.
+Captain Pate who, in command of a small troop, was in pursuit of
+Brown and his company, was surprised at Black Jack in the early
+morning and induced to surrender. Brown thus gained control of a
+number of horses and other supplies and began to arrange terms
+for the exchange of his son and Captain Pate as prisoners of war.
+The negotiations were interrupted, however, by the arrival of
+Colonel Sumner with United States troops, who restored the horses
+and other booty and disbanded all the troops. With the Colonel
+was a deputy marshal with warrants for the arrest of the Browns.
+When ordered to proceed with his duty, however, the marshal was
+so overawed that, even though a federal officer was present, he
+merely remarked, "I do not recognize any one for whom I have
+warrants."
+
+After the capture of Captain Pate at Black Jack early in June,
+little is known about Brown and his troops for two months. Apart
+from an encounter of opposing forces near Osawatomie in which he
+and his band were engaged, Brown took no share in the open
+fighting between the organized companies of opposing forces, and
+his part in the irregular guerrilla warfare of the period is
+uncertain. Towards the close of the war one of his sons was shot
+by a preacher who alleged that he had been robbed by the Browns.
+After peace had been restored to Kansas by the vigorous action of
+Governor Geary, Brown left the scene and never again took an
+active part in the local affairs of the Territory.
+
+John Brown's influence upon the course of affairs in Kansas, like
+William Lloyd Garrison's upon the general anti-slavery movement
+of the country, has been greatly misunderstood and exaggerated.
+Brown's object and intention were fundamentally contradictory to
+those of the freestate settlers. They strove to build a free
+commonwealth by legal and constitutional methods. He strove to
+inaugurate a revolution which would extend to all pro-slavery
+States and result in universal emancipation. John Brown was in
+Kansas only one year, and he never made himself at one with those
+who should have been his fellow-workers but went his solitary
+way. Only in three instances did he pretend to cooperate with the
+regular freestate forces. He could not work with them because his
+conception of the means to be adopted to attain the end was
+different from theirs. Probably before he left the Territory in
+1856, he had realized that his work in Kansas was a failure and
+that the law-and-order forces were too strong for the execution
+of his plans. Certain it is that within a few weeks after his
+departure he had transferred the field of his operations to the
+mountains of Virginia. Kansas became free through the persistent
+determination of the rank and file of Northern settlers under the
+wise leadership of Governor Robinson. It is difficult to
+determine whether the cause of Kansas was aided or hindered by
+the advent of John Brown and the adventurers with whom his name
+became associated.
+
+During the fall of 1856 and until the late summer of 1857 Brown
+was in the East raising funds for the redemption of Kansas and
+for the reimbursement of those who had incurred or were likely to
+incur losses in defense of the cause. For the equipment of a
+troop of soldiers under his own command he formulated plans for
+raising $30,000 by private subscription, and in this he was to a
+considerable extent successful. It can never be known how much
+was given in this way to Brown for the equipment of his army of
+liberation. It is estimated that George L. Stearns alone gave in
+all fully $10,000. Because Eastern abolitionists had lost
+confidence in Robinson's leadership, they lent a willing ear to
+the plea that Captain Brown with a well-equipped and trained
+company of soldiers was the last hope for checking the enemy. Not
+only would Kansas become a slave State without such help, it was
+said, but the institution of slavery would spread into all the
+Territories and become invincible.
+
+The money was given to Brown to redeem Kansas, but he had
+developed an alternative plan. Early in the year 1857, he met in
+New York Colonel Hugh Forbes, a soldier of fortune who had seen
+service with Garibaldi in Italy. They discussed general plans for
+an aggressive attack upon the South for the liberation of the
+slaves, and with these plans the needs of Kansas had little or no
+connection. "Kansas was to be a prologue to the real drama,"
+writes his latest biographer; "the properties of the one were to
+serve in the other." In April six months' salary was advanced out
+of the Kansas fund to Forbes, who was employed at a hundred
+dollars a month to aid in the execution of their plans. Another
+significant expenditure of the Kansas fund was in pursuance of a
+contract with a Mr. Blair, a Connecticut manufacturer, to furnish
+at a dollar each one thousand pikes. Though the contract was
+dated March 80, 1857, it was not completed until the fall of
+1859, when the weapons were delivered to Brown in Pennsylvania
+for use at Harper's Ferry.
+
+Instead of rushing to the relief of Kansas, as contributors had
+expected, the leader exercised remarkable deliberation. When
+August arrived, it found him only as far as Tabor, Iowa, where a
+considerable quantity of arms had been previously assembled. Here
+he was joined by Colonel Forbes, and together they organized a
+school of military tactics with Forbes as instructor. But as
+Forbes could find no one but Brown and his son to drill, he soon
+returned to the East, still trusted by Brown as a co-worker. It
+would seem that Forbes himself wished to play the chief part in
+the liberation of America.
+
+While he was at Tabor, Brown was urged by Lane and other former
+associates of his in Kansas to come to their relief with all his
+forces. There had, indeed, been a full year of peace since
+Geary's arrival, but early in October there was to occur the
+election of a territorial Legislature in which the free-state
+forces had agreed to participate, and Lane feared an invasion
+from Missouri. But although the appeal was not effective, the
+election proved a complete triumph for the North. Late in
+October, after the signal victory of the law-and-order party at
+the election, Brown was again urged with even greater insistence
+to muster all his forces and come to Kansas, and there were hints
+in Lane's letter that an aggressive campaign was afoot to rid the
+Territory of the enemy. Instead of going in force, however, Brown
+stole into the Territory alone. On his arrival, two days after
+the date set for a decisive council of the revolutionary faction,
+he did not make himself known to Governor Robinson or to any of
+his party but persuaded several of his former associates to join
+his "school" in Iowa. From Tabor he subsequently transferred the
+school to Springdale, a quiet Quaker community in Cedar County,
+Iowa, seven miles from any railway station. Here the company went
+into winter quarters and spent the time in rigid drill in
+preparation for the campaign of liberation which they expected to
+undertake the following season.
+
+While he was at Tabor, Brown began to intimate to his Eastern
+friends that he had other and different plans for the promotion
+of the general cause. In January, 1858, he went East with the
+definite intention of obtaining additional support for the
+greater scheme. On February 22, 1858, at the home of Gerrit Smith
+in New York, there was held a council at which Brown definitely
+outlined his purpose to begin operations at some point in the
+mountains of Virginia. Smith and Sanborn at first tried to
+dissuade him, but finally consented to cooperate. The secret was
+carefully guarded: some half-dozen Eastern friends were apprised
+of it, including Stearns, their most liberal contributor, and two
+or three friends at Springdale.
+
+As early as December, 1857, Forbes began to write mysterious
+letters to Sanborn, Stearns, and others of the circle, in which
+he complained of ill-usage at the hands of Brown. It appears that
+Forbes erroneously assumed that the Boston friends were aware of
+Brown's contract with him and of his plans for the attack upon
+Virginia; but, since they were entirely ignorant on both points,
+the correspondence was conducted at cross-purposes for several
+months. Finally, early in May, 1858, it transpired that Forbes
+had all the time been fully informed of Brown's intentions to
+begin the effort for emancipation in Virginia. Not only so, but
+he had given detailed information on the subject to Senators
+Sumner, Seward, Hale, Wilson, and possibly others. Senator Wilson
+was told that the arms purchased by the New England Aid Society
+for use in Kansas were to be used by Brown for an attack on
+Virginia. Wilson, in entire ignorance of Brown's plans, demanded
+that the Aid Society be effectively protected against any such
+charge of betrayal of trust. The officers of the Society were, in
+fact, aware that the arms which had been purchased with Society
+funds the year before and shipped to Tabor, Iowa, had been placed
+in Brown's hands and that, without their consent, those arms had
+been shipped to Ohio and just at that time were on the point of
+being transported to Virginia. This knowledge placed the officers
+of the New England Aid Society in a most awkward position.
+Stearns, the treasurer, had advanced large sums to meet pressing
+needs during the starvation times in Kansas in 1857. Now the arms
+in Brown's possession were, by vote of the officers, given to the
+treasurer in part payment of the Society's debt, and he of course
+left them just where they were.* On the basis of this arrangement
+Senator Wilson and the public were assured that none of the
+property given for the benefit of Kansas had been or would be
+diverted to other purposes by the Kansas Committee. It was
+decided, however, that on account of the Forbes revelations the
+attack upon Harper's Ferry must be delayed for one year and that
+Brown must go to Kansas to take part in the pending elections.
+
+* "When the denouement finally came, however, the public and
+press did not take a very favorable view of the transaction; it
+was too difficult to distinguish between George L. Stearns, the
+benefactor of the Kansas Committee, and George L. Stearns, the
+Chairman of that Committee." Villard, "John Brown," p. 341.
+
+Though Brown arrived in Kansas late in June, he took no active
+part in the pending measures for the final triumph of the free-
+state cause. It is something of a mystery how he was occupied
+between the 1st of July and the middle of December. Under the
+pseudonym of "Shubal Morgan" he was commander of a small band in
+which were a number of his followers in training for the Eastern
+mission. The occupation of this band is not matter of history
+until December 20, 1858, when they made a raid into the State of
+Missouri, slew one white man, took eleven slaves, a large number
+of horses, some oxen, wagons, much food, arms, and various other
+supplies. This action was in direct violation of a solemn
+agreement between the border settlers of State and Territory. The
+people in Kansas were in terror lest retaliatory raids should
+follow, as would undoubtedly have happened had not the people of
+Missouri taken active measures to prevent such reprisals.
+
+Rewards were offered for Brown's arrest, and free-state residents
+served notice that he must leave the Territory. In the dead of
+winter he started North with some slaves and many horses,
+accompanied by Kagi and Gill, two of his faithful followers. In
+northern Kansas, where they were delayed by a swollen stream, a
+band of horsemen appeared to dispute their passage. Brown's party
+quickly mustered assistance and, giving chase to the enemy, took
+three prisoners with four horses as spoils of war. In Kansas
+parlance the affair is called "The Battle of the Spurs." The
+leaders in the chase were seasoned soldiers on their way to
+Harper's Ferry with the intention of spending their lives
+collecting slaves and conducting them to places of safety. For
+this sort of warfare they were winning their spurs. It was their
+intention to teach all defenders of slavery to use their utmost
+endeavor to keep out of their reach. As Brown and his company
+passed through Tabor, the citizens took occasion at a public
+meeting to resolve "that we have no sympathy with those who go to
+slave States to entice away slaves, and take property or life
+when necessary to attain that end."
+
+A few days later the party was at Grinnell, Iowa. According to
+the detailed account which J. B. Grinnell gives in his
+autobiography, Brown appeared on Saturday afternoon, stacked his
+arms in Grinnell's parlor and disposed of his people and horses
+partly in Grinnell's house and barn and partly at the hotel. In
+the evening Brown and Kagi addressed a large meeting in a public
+hall. Brown gave a lurid account of experiences in Kansas,
+justified his raid into Missouri by saying the slaves were to be
+sold for shipment to the South, and gave notice that his surplus
+horses would be offered for sale on Monday. "What title can you
+give?" was the question that came from the audience. "The best--
+the affidavit that they were taken by black men from land they
+had cleared and tilled; taken in part payment for labor which is
+kept back."
+
+Brown again addressed a large meeting on Sunday evening at which
+each of the three clergymen present invoked the divine blessing
+upon Brown and his labors. The present writer was told by an eye-
+witness that one of the ministers prayed for forgiveness for any
+wrongful acts which their guest may have committed. Convinced of
+the rectitude of his actions, however, Brown objected and said
+that he thanked no one for asking forgiveness for anything he had
+done.
+
+Returning from church on Sunday evening, Grinnell found a message
+awaiting him from Mr. Werkman, United States marshal at Iowa
+City, who was a friend of Grinnell. The message in part read:
+"You can see that it will give your town a bad name to have a
+fight there; then all who aid are liable, and there will be an
+arrest or blood. Get the old Devil away to save trouble, for he
+will be taken, dead or alive." Grinnell showed the message to
+Brown, who remarked: "Yes, I have heard of him ever since I came
+into the State . . . . Tell him we are ready to be taken, but
+will wait one day more for his military squad." True to his word
+he waited till the following afternoon and then moved directly
+towards Iowa City, the home of the marshal, passing beyond the
+city fourteen miles to his Quaker friends at Springdale. Here he
+remained about two weeks until he had completed arrangements for
+shipping his fugitives by rail to Chicago. In the meantime, where
+was Marshal Werkman of Iowa City? Was he of the same mind as the
+deputy marshal who had accompanied Colonel Sumner? Two of Brown's
+men had visited the city to make arrangements for the shipment.
+The situation was obvious enough to those who would see. The
+entire incident is an illuminating commentary on the attitude of
+both government and people towards the Fugitive Slave Law. In
+March the fugitives were safely landed in Canada and the rest of
+the horses were sold in Cleveland, Ohio. The time was approaching
+for the move on Virginia.
+
+Brown now expended much time and attention upon a constitution
+for the provisional government which he was to set up. In January
+and February, 1858, Brown had labored over this document for
+several weeks at the home of Frederick Douglass at Rochester, New
+York. A copy was in evidence at the conference with Sanborn and
+Gerrit Smith in February, and the document was approved at a
+conference held in Chatham, Canada, on May 8, 1858, just at the
+time when Forbes's revelations caused the postponement of the
+enterprise. It is an elaborate constitution containing forty-
+eight articles. The preamble indicates the general purport:
+
+Whereas, Slavery throughout its entire existence in the United
+States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and
+unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another
+portion the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment
+and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination; in utter
+disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths
+set forth in our Declaration of Independence: Therefore, we the
+citizens of the United States, and the Oppressed People, who, by
+a decision of the Supreme Court are declared to have no rights
+which the White Man is bound to respect; together with all other
+people degraded by the laws thereof, Do, for the time being
+ordain and establish for ourselves, the following PROVISIONAL
+CONSTITUTION AND ORDINANCES, the better to protect our Persons,
+Property, Lives and Liberties and to govern our actions.
+
+Article Forty-six reads:
+
+The foregoing articles shall not be construed so as in any way to
+encourage the overthrow of any State Government or of the general
+government of the United States; and look to no dissolution of
+the Union, but simply to Amendment and Repeal. And our flag shall
+be the same that our Fathers fought under in the Revolution.
+
+In Article Forty, "profane swearing, filthy conversation, and
+indecent behavior" are forbidden. The document indicates an
+obvious intention to effect a revolution by a restrained and
+regulated use of force.
+
+Mobilization of forces began in June, 1859. Cook, one of the
+original party, had spent the year in the region of Harper's
+Ferry. In July the Kennedy farm, five miles from Harper's Ferry,
+was leased. The Northern immigrants posed as farmers, stock-
+raisers, and dealers in cattle, seeking a milder climate. To
+assist in the disguise, Brown's daughter and daughter-in-law,
+mere girls, joined the community. Even so it was difficult to
+allay troublesome curiosity on the part of neighbors at the
+gathering of so many men with no apparent occupation. Suspicion
+might easily have been aroused by the assembling of numerous
+boxes of arms from the West and the thousand pikes from
+Connecticut. Late in August, Floyd, Secretary of War, received an
+anonymous letter emanating from Springdale, Iowa, giving
+information which, if acted upon, would have led to an
+investigation and stopped the enterprise.
+
+The 24th of October was the day appointed for taking possession
+of Harper's Ferry, but fear of exposure led to a change of plan
+and the move was begun on the 16th of October. Six of the party
+who would have been present at the later date were absent. The
+march from Kennedy farm began about eight o'clock Sunday evening.
+Before midnight the bridges, the town, and the arsenal were in
+the hands of the invaders without a gun having been fired. Before
+noon on Monday some forty citizens of the neighborhood had been
+assembled as prisoners and held, it was explained, as hostages
+for the safety of members of the party who might  be taken.
+During the early forenoon Kagi strongly urged that they should
+escape into the mountains; but Brown, who was influenced, as he
+said, by sympathy for his prisoners and their distressed
+families, refused to move and at last found himself surrounded by
+opposing forces. Brown's men, having been assigned to different
+duties, were separated. Six of them escaped; others were killed
+or wounded or taken prisoners. Brown himself with six of his men
+and a few of his prisoners made a final stand in the engine-
+house. This was early in the afternoon. All avenues of escape
+were now closed. Brown made two efforts to communicate with his
+assailants by means of a flag of truce, sending first Thompson,
+one of his men, with one of his prisoners, and then Stevens and
+Watson Brown with another of the prisoners. Thompson was received
+but was held as a prisoner; Stevens and Watson Brown were shot
+down, the first dangerously wounded and the other mortally
+wounded. Later in the afternoon Brown received a flag of truce
+with a demand that he surrender. He stated the conditions under
+which he would restore the prisoners whom he held, but he refused
+the unconditional surrender which was demanded.
+
+About midnight Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived from Washington with
+a company of marines. He took full command, set a guard of his
+own men around the engine-house and made preparation to effect a
+forcible entrance at sunrise on Tuesday morning in case a
+peaceable surrender was refused. Lee first offered to two of the
+local companies the honor of storming the castle. These, however,
+declined to undertake the perilous task, and the honor fell to
+Lieutenant Green of the marines, who thereupon selected two
+squads of twelve men each to attempt an entrance through the
+door. To Lee's aide, Lieutenant Stuart, who had known Brown in
+Kansas, was committed the task of making the formal demand for
+surrender. Brown and Stuart, who recognized each other instantly
+upon their meeting at the door, held a long parley, which
+resulted, as had been expected, in Brown's refusal to yield.
+Stuart then gave the signal which had been agreed upon to
+Lieutenant Green, who ordered the first squad to advance. Failing
+to break down the door with sledge-hammers, they seized a heavy
+ladder and at the second stroke made an opening near the ground
+large enough to admit a man. Green instantly entered, rushed to
+the back part of the room, and climbed upon an engine to command
+a better view. Colonel Lewis Washington, the most distinguished
+of the prisoners, pointed to Brown, saying, "This is Osawatomie."
+Green leaped forward and by thrust or stroke bent his light sword
+double against Brown's body. Other blows were administered and
+his victim fell senseless, and it was believed that the leader
+had been slain in action according to his wish.
+
+The first of the twelve men to attempt to follow their leader was
+instantly killed by gunshot. Others rushed in and slew two of
+Brown's men by the use of the bayonet. To save the prisoners from
+harm, Lee had given careful instruction to fire no shot, to use
+only bayonets. The other insurgents were made prisoners. "The
+whole fight," Green reported, "had not lasted over three
+minutes."
+
+Of all the prisoners taken and held as hostages, not one was
+killed or wounded. They were made as safe as the conditions
+permitted. The eleven prisoners who were with Brown in the
+engine-house were profoundly impressed with the courage, the
+bearing, and the self-restraint of the leader and his men.
+Colonel Washington describes Brown as holding a carbine in one
+hand, with one dead son by his side, while feeling the pulse of
+another son, who had received a mortal wound, all the time
+watching every movement for the defense and forbidding his men to
+fire upon any one who was unarmed. The testimony is uniform that
+Brown exercised special care to prevent his men from shooting
+unarmed citizens, and this conduct was undoubtedly influential in
+securing generous treatment for him and his men after the
+surrender.
+
+For six weeks afterwards, until his execution on the 2d of
+December, John Brown remained a conspicuous figure. He won
+universal admiration for courage, coolness, and deliberation, and
+for his skill in parrying all attempts to incriminate others.
+Probably less than a hundred people knew beforehand anything
+about the enterprise, and less than a dozen of these rendered aid
+and encouragement. It was emphatically a personal exploit. On the
+part of both leader and followers, no occasion was omitted to
+drive home the lesson that men were willing to imperil their
+lives for the oppressed with no hope or desire for personal gain.
+Brown especially served notice upon the South that the day of
+final reckoning was at hand.
+
+It is natural that the consequences of an event so spectacular as
+the capture of Harper's Ferry should be greatly exaggerated.
+Brown's contribution to Kansas history has been distorted beyond
+all recognition. The Harper's Ferry affair, however, because it
+came on the eve of the final election before the war, undoubtedly
+had considerable influence. It sharpened the issue. It played
+into the hands of extremists in both sections. On one side, Brown
+was at once made a martyr and a hero; on the other, his acts were
+accepted as a demonstration of Northern malignity and hatred,
+whose fitting expression was seen in the incitement of slaves to
+massacre their masters.
+
+The distinctive contribution of John Brown to American history
+does not consist in the things which he did but rather in that
+which he has been made to represent. He has been accepted as the
+personification of the irrepressible conflict.
+
+Of all the men of his generation John Brown is best fitted to
+exemplify the most difficult lesson which history teaches: that
+slavery and despotism are themselves forms of war, that the
+shedding of blood is likely to continue so long as the rich, the
+strong, the educated, or the efficient, strive to force their
+will upon the poor, the weak, and the ignorant. Lincoln uttered a
+final word on the subject when he said that no man is good enough
+to rule over another man; if he were good enough he would not be
+willing to do it.
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+Among the many political histories which furnish a background for
+the study of the anti-slavery crusade, the following have special
+value:
+
+J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States from the Compromise
+of 1860," 7 vols. (1893-1906). The first two volumes cover the
+decade to 1860. This is the best-balanced account of the period,
+written in an admirable judicial temper. H. E. von Holst,
+Constitutional anal Political History of the United States," 8
+vols. (1877-1892). A vast mine of information on the slavery
+controversy. The work is vitiated by an almost virulent antipathy
+toward the South. James Schouler, "History of the United States,"
+7 vols. (1895-1901). A sober, reliable narrative of events.
+Henry Wilson, "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power
+in America," 3 vols. (1872-1877). The fullest account of the
+subject, written by a contemporary. The material was thrown
+together by an overworked statesman and lacks proportion.
+
+Three volumes in the "American Nation Series" aim to combine the
+treatment of special topics of commanding interest with general
+political history. A. B. Hart's "Slavery and Abolition" (1906)
+gives an account of the origin of the controversy and carries the
+history down to 1841. G. P. Garrison's "Westward Extension"
+(1906) deals especially with the Mexican War and its results. T.
+C. Smith's "Parties and Slavery" (1906) follows the gradual
+disruption of parties under the pressure of the slavery
+controversy.
+
+>From the mass of contemporary controversial literature a few
+titles of more permanent interest may be selected. William
+Goodell's "Slavery and Anti-slavery" (1852) presents the
+anti-slavery arguments. A. T. Bledsoe's "An Essay on Liberty and
+Slavery" (1856) and "The Pro-slavery Argument" (1852), a series
+of essays by various writers, undertake the defense of slavery.
+
+Only a few of the biographies which throw light on the crusade
+can be mentioned. "William Lloyd Garrison," 4 vols. (1885-1889)
+is the story of the editor of the Liberator told exhaustively by
+his children. Less voluminous but equally important are the
+following: W. Birney, "James G. Birney and His Times" (1890); G.
+W. Julian, "Joshua R. Giddings" (1892); Catherine H. Birney,
+"Sarah and Angelina Grimke" (1885); John T. Morse, "John Quincy
+Adams." Those who have not patience to read E. L. Pierce's
+ponderous "Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner," 4 vols. (1877-
+1893), would do well to read G. H. Haynes's "Charles Sumner"
+(1909).
+
+The history of the conflict in Kansas is closely associated with
+the lives of two rival candidates for the honor of leadership in
+the cause of freedom. James Redpath in his "Public Life of
+Captain John Brown" (1860), Frank B. Sanborn in his "Life and
+Letters of John Brown" (1885), and numerous other writers give to
+Brown the credit of leadership. The opposition view is held by F.
+W. Blackmar in his "Life of Charles Robinson" (1902), and by
+Robinson himself in his Kansas Conflict (2d ed., 1898). The best
+non-partizan biography of Brown is O. G. Villard's "John Brown, A
+Biography Fifty Years After" (1910).
+
+The Underground Railroad has been adequately treated in W. H.
+Siebert's "The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom"
+(1898), but Levi Coffin's "Reminiscences" (1876) gives an earlier
+autobiographical account of the origin and management of an
+important line, while Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" throws the
+glamour of romance over the system.
+
+For additional bibliographical information the reader is referred
+to the articles on "Slavery, Fugitive Slave Laws, Kansas, William
+Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, James Gillespie Birney," and
+"Frederick Douglass" in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica" (11th
+Edition).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Anti-Slavery Crusade
+by Jesse Macy
+
diff --git a/old/ascru10.zip b/old/ascru10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80154a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/ascru10.zip