The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences Part 4

If this surmise be correct, knowledge that Walker, a free negro, had been responsible for the Turner insurrection, would have lessened neither the guilt of the Abolitionists nor the fears of the Southerners.

But in 1832 Abolition agitation and the fears of insurrection had not as yet entirely stifled the discussion of slavery in the South. A debate on slavery took place that year in the Virginia a.s.sembly, the immediate cause of which was no doubt the Turner insurrection. The members of that body had not been elected on any issue of that character. The discussion thus precipitated shows, therefore, the state of public opinion in Virginia on slavery. Of this debate a distinguished Northern writer says:[26]

[26] "Life of James Buchanan," George Ticknor Curtis, vol. II, pp.

277-78.

"In the year 1832 there was, nowhere in the world, a more enlightened sense of the wrong and evil of slavery than there was among the public men and people of Virginia."

In the a.s.sembly of that year Mr. Randolph brought forward a bill _to accomplish gradual emanc.i.p.ation_. Mr. Curtis continues:

"No member of the House defended slavery.... There could be nothing said anywhere, there had been nothing said out of Virginia, stronger and truer in deprecating the evils of slavery, than was said in that discussion, by Virginia gentlemen, debating in their own legislature, a matter that concerned themselves and their people."

The bill was not pressed to a vote, but the House, by a vote of 65 to 38, declared "that they were profoundly sensible of the great evils arising from the condition of the colored population of the Commonwealth and were induced by policy, as well as humanity, to attempt the immediate removal of the free negroes; but that further action for the _removal of the slaves should await a more definite development of public opinion_."

Mr. Randolph, who was from the large slave-holding county of Albemarle, was re-elected to the next a.s.sembly.

But when the early summer of 1835 had come the fear of insurrection had created such wide-spread terror throughout the whole South that every emanc.i.p.ation society in that region had long since closed its doors; and now the Abolitionists were sending South their circulars in numbers.

Many were sent to Charleston, South Carolina,[27] where fifteen years before[28] the free negro, Denmark Vesey, had laid the plot to ma.s.sacre the whites, that had been discovered just in time to prevent its consummation.

[27] Referred to in "Life of Andrew Jackson," W. G. Sumner, p. 350.

[28] Hart, _supra._

The President, Andrew Jackson, in his next message to Congress, December, 1835, called their "attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails _inflammatory appeals addressed to the pa.s.sions of the slaves, in prints and in various sorts of publications calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of a servile war_."

The good people of Boston were now thoroughly aroused. They had from the first frowned on the Abolition movement. Garrison was complaining that in all the city his society could not "hire a hall or a meeting-house."

The Abolition idea had been for a time thought chimerical and therefore negligible. Later, civic, business, social, and religious organizations had all of them in their several spheres been earnest and active in their opposition; now it seemed to be time for concerted action.

In Garrison's "Garrison" (vol. I, p. 495), we read that "the _social_, _political_, _religious and intellectual elite_ of Boston filled Faneuil Hall on the afternoon of Friday, August 3, 1835, to frame an indictment against their fellow-citizens."

This "indictment" the _Boston Transcript_ reported as follows:

_Resolved_, That the people of the United States by the Const.i.tution under which, by the Divine blessing, they hold their most valuable political privileges, have solemnly agreed with each other to leave to their respective States the jurisdiction pertaining to the relation of master and slave within their boundaries, and that no man or body of men, except the people of the governments of those States, can of right do any act to dissolve or impair the obligations of that contract.

_Resolved_, That we hold in reprobation all attempts, in whatever guise they may appear, to coerce any of the United States to abolish slavery by _appeals to the terror of the master or the pa.s.sions of the slave_.

_Resolved_, That we disapprove of all a.s.sociations inst.i.tuted in the non-slave-holding States with the intent to act, within the slave-holding States, on the subject of slavery in those States without their consent. For the purpose of securing freedom of individual thought they are needless--and they afford to those persons in the Southern States, whose object is to effect a dissolution of the Union (if any such there may be now or hereafter), a pretext for the furtherance of their schemes.

_Resolved_, That all measures adopted, _the natural and direct tendency of which is to excite the slaves of the South to revolt, or of spreading among them a spirit of insubordination_, are repugnant to the duties of the man and the citizen, and that where such measures become manifest by overt acts, which are recognizable by const.i.tutional laws, we will aid by all means in our power in the support of those laws.

_Resolved_, That while we recommend to others the duty of sacrificing their opinions, pa.s.sions and sympathies upon the altar of the laws, we are bound to show that a regard to the supremacy of those laws is the rule of our conduct--and consequently to deprecate all tumultuous a.s.semblies, all riotous or violent proceedings, all outrages on person and property, and all illegal notions of the right or duty of executing summary and vindictive justice in any mode unsanctioned by law.

The allusion in the last resolution is to a then recent lynching of negroes in Mississippi charged with insurrection.

In speaking to these resolutions, Harrison Gray Otis, a great conservative leader, denounced the Abolition agitators, accusing them of "wis.h.i.+ng to 'scatter among our Southern brethren _firebrands_, _arrows_, and _death_,' and of attempting to force Abolition by appeals to the terror of the masters and the pa.s.sions of the slaves," and decrying their "measures, the natural and direct tendency of which is to excite the slaves of the South to revolt," etc.

Another of the speakers, ex-Senator Peleg Sprague, said (p. 496, Garrison's "Garrison") that "if their sentiments prevailed it would be all over with the Union, which would give place to two hostile confederacies, with forts and standing armies."

These resolutions and speeches, viewed in the light of what followed, read now like prophecy.

It is a familiar rule of law that a contemporaneous exposition of a statute is to be given extraordinary weight by the courts, the reason being that the judge then sitting knows the surrounding circ.u.mstances.

That Boston meeting p.r.o.nounced the deliberate judgment of the most intelligent men of Boston on the situation, as they knew it to be that day; it was in their midst that _The Liberator_ was being published; there the new sect had its head-quarters, and there it was doing its work.

Quite as strong as the evidence furnished by that great Faneuil Hall meeting is the testimony of the churches.

The churches and religious bodies in America had heartily favored the general anti-slavery movement that was sweeping over all America between 1770 and 1831, while it was proceeding in an orderly manner and with due regard to law.

In 1812 the Methodist General Conference voted that no slave-holder could continue as a local elder. The Presbyterian General a.s.sembly in 1818 unanimously resolved that "slavery was a gross violation of the most precious and moral rights of human nature," etc.

These bodies represented both the North and the South, and this paragraph shows what was, and continued to be, the general att.i.tude of American churches until after the Abolitionists had begun their a.s.sault on both slavery in the South and the Const.i.tution of the United States, which protected it. Then, in view of the awful social and political cataclysm that seemed to be threatened, there occurred a stupendous change. We learn from Hart that Garrison "soon found that neither minister _nor church anywhere in the lower South continued_ (as before) to protest against slavery; _that the cloth in the North was arrayed against him_; and that many Northern divines vigorously opposed him."

Also that Moses Stuart, professor of Hebrew in Andover Theological Seminary; President Lord, of Dartmouth College, and Hopkins, the Episcopal bishop of Vermont, now became defenders of slavery. "The positive opposition of churches soon followed."

And then we have cited, condemnations of Abolitionism by the Methodist Conference of 1836, by the New York Methodist Conference of 1838, by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, by the American Home Missionary Society, the American Bible Society, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Baptists. See for these statements, Hart, pp.

211-12.

The import of all this is unmistakable; and this "about-face" of religious organizations on the question of the morality of slavery has no parallel in all the history of Christian churches. Its significance cannot be overstated. It took place North and South. It meant opposition to a movement that was outside the church _and with which religion could have no concern, except in so far as it was a vital a.s.sault upon the State, and the peace of the State_. To make their opposition effective the Christians of that day did this remarkable thing. _They reversed their religious views on slavery, which the Abolitionists were now a.s.sailing, and which they themselves had previously opposed._ They re-examined their Bibles and found arguments that favored slavery. These arguments they used in an attempt to stem an agitation that, as they saw it, was arraying section against section and threatening the perpetuity of the Union.

United testimony from all these Christian bodies is more conclusive contemporaneous evidence against the agitators and their methods than even the proceedings of all conservative Boston at Faneuil Hall in August, 1835.

This new att.i.tude of the church toward slavery meant perhaps also something further--it meant that slavery, as it actually existed, was not then as horrible to Northerners, who could go across the line and see it, which many of them did, as it is now to those whose ideas of it come chiefly from "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

In view of this phenomenal movement of Northern Christians it is not strange that Southern churches adhered, throughout the deadly struggle that was now on, to the position into which they had been driven--that slavery was sanctioned by the Bible--nor is it matter of wonder that, as Professor Hart makes prominent on p. 137, "not a single Southern man of large reputation and influence failed to stand by slavery."

Historians of to-day usually narrate without comment that nearly all the American churches and divines at first opposed the Abolitionists. It ill.u.s.trates the courage with which the Abolitionists stood, as Dr. Hart delights to point out, "for a despised cause." They a.s.suredly did stand by their guns.

Later, another change came about in the att.i.tude of the churches. In 1844 the Abolitionists were to achieve their first victory in the great religious world. The Methodist Church was then disrupted, "squarely on the question whether a bishop could own slaves, and all the Southern members withdrew and organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, South."

Professor Hart, p. 214, says of this: "Clearly, the impa.s.sioned agitation of the Abolitionists had made it impossible for a great number of Northern anti-slavery men _to remain on terms of friends.h.i.+p with their Southern brethren_."

That great Faneuil Hall meeting of August 31, 1835, was followed some weeks later by a lamentable anti-Garrison mob, which did not stand alone. In the years 1835, 1836, and 1837 a great wave of anti-Abolition excitement swept over the North. In New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Alton (Illinois), and many other places, there were anti-Abolition riots, sometimes resulting in arson and bloodshed.

The heart of the great, peace-loving, patriotic, and theretofore happy and contented North, was at that time stirred with the profoundest indignation against the Abolitionists. Northern opinion then was that the Abolitionists, by their unpatriotic course and their nefarious methods, were driving the South to desperation and endangering the Union. If the North at that time saw the situation as it really was, the historian of the present day should say so. If, on the other hand, the people of both the North and South were then laboring under delusions, as to the facts that were occurring among them, those of this generation, who are wiser than their ancestors, should give us the sources of their information. To know the lessons of history we must have the facts.[29]

[29] The late Professor William Graham Sumner, of Yale, in his "Life of Andrew Jackson," 1888, treats of the excitement at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1835, during Jackson's administration, over Abolition circulars, etc. Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard, in his "Abolition and Slavery," 1906, treats of the same subject. The following extracts from these books will show how these authors picture that exciting period, and our italics will emphasize the _sang-froid_ with which they touch off what so profoundly affected public sentiment, both North and South, _when the events were occurring_. Professor Sumner has this to say:

"The Abolition Society adopted the policy of sending doc.u.ments, papers, and pictures against slavery to the Southern States.

"_If the intention was_, as charged, to excite the slaves to revolt, _the device, as it seems to us now_, must have fallen short of its object, for the chance that anything could get into the hands of the black man must _have been poor indeed_.

"These publications, however, caused _a panic_ and _a wild indignation_ in the South."--Sumner's "Jackson," p. 350.

Why should the Southerners of that day go _wild_ over conduct for which the professor of this era has no word of condemnation?

Dr. Hart follows Professor Sumner's treatment. These are his words:

"The free negroes of the South, the Abolitionists could not reach except by _mailing publications to them_, a process which _fearfully exasperated_ the South _without reaching the persons addressed_."--Hart's "Abolition and Slavery," p. 216.

Why should Southerners be "fearful" when they were intercepting all the dangerous circulars, etc., they could find? And why should they be exasperated at all?