exercise of this power by Congress, to which President Monroe and his Cabinet (of which Calhoun was a member) gave their consent. 3. The Missouri struggle indicated a notable change in Southern sentiment on the slavery question. Formerly, Southern leaders had spoken out against slavery. But now a growing slave interest had evidently produced a sentiment in support of slavery that was determined to insist upon the protection of slavery by the federal government.1 1 After the agreement we have described another struggle arose over Missouri. This was over the Missouri constitution, which required the state legislature to forbid free negroes or mulattoes from settling in that state. The antislavery men refused to admit Missouri under this constitution, and Missouri had to give a pledge that this provision would not be carried out. Clay's work in this last phase of the Missouri struggle gave rise to the subsequent error that he was the author of the Missouri Compromise. He said (February 6, 1850) that “nothing struck him with so much amazement as the fact that historical circumstances so soon passed out of recollection "; and he instanced as a case in point the error of attributing to him the act of 1820. JOHNSTON and WOODBURN'S "American Orations," Vol. III, p. 351. CHAPTER XXVII THE ABOLITION AGITATION 381. Garrison and the Liberator. After the excitement over the Missouri question, very little attention was given to the subject of slavery for ten years. But in 1831 William Lloyd Garrison, a young editor, established the Liberator in Boston. Garrison and Isaac Knapp were the publishers of this little sheet, which bore for its motto, "Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind." Garrison demanded "that the slaves be set free immediately, without paying the masters and without being taken out of the country." He denounced the Colonization Society, which had been organized in 1816 for the purpose of getting rid of the free blacks by taking them back to Africa. Garrison said this only helped the slaveholders to keep their slaves in bondage. The forerunner of Garrison in the cause of abolition was Benjamin Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker, who traveled all over the country on horseback and on foot, sacrificing his money and his time to arouse consciences everywhere against the sin and wrong of slavery. 382. The American Antislavery Society. In 1831 Garrison helped to organize the New England Antislavery Society; and two years later, in 1833, the American Antislavery Society was organized by Garrison, Whittier, Joshua Leavitt, Elizur Wright, Samuel J. May, Arthur Tappan, and others. The declaration of the principles of this society "constitutes one of the most important boundary marks in the history of the United States." This is so because, in the launching of the Liberator and in the organization of these Abolition societies, we find the beginning of Abolitionism, the greatest moral movement in our Abolitionnational history. It brought a new and powerful ism. force into American politics, one destined within the next thirty years to control public discussion, disrupt parties, and divide the Union. Methods The purpose of abolition was to put an end to slavery immediately, without paying the masters for their slaves. The abolitionists denounced slaveholding in unsparing terms, as a sin and crime and disgrace. They proposed to organize antislavery societies all over the land; to send forth agents to agitate; to circulate literature; to enlist the pulpit and of Aboli- the church; to spare no exertion or lawful means to destroy slavery. They pledged themselves to do all in their power to deliver their land from what they considered its deadliest curse, 66 no matter what may come to us in our persons, our interests, or our reputations, whether we live to witness the triumph of liberty and humanity or perish untimely as martyrs in this benevolent and holy cause." tionists. Here was uncompromising moral war declared on the labor system of the South. There could now be no more peace with Abolitionists declare war on slavery. slavery. The abolition agitation meant a state of war between the sections. Leaders on both sides believed that the slaveholding states of the South and the free states of the North would never be able to live in harmony after it began. Either abolitionism or slavery must be put down. "Union-savers "Union-savers" and "dough-faces" and "compromisers" on both sides might cry "Peace" and "Union," but no permanent peace or union could be had without removing the cause of the strife, that is, slavery. Evi 383. The Slaveholders are aroused to defend Slavery. dently, a struggle was coming. Slavery was going to be discussed, and the slaveholders saw that they had either to give up slavery or fight in its defense. They chose to fight. They replied with indignation and anger to what they considered the outrageous insult and injury of the abolition attacks. The governors of Georgia and Virginia called on the mayor of Boston to suppress the Liberator. Harrison Gray Otis, mayor of Boston, replied that no member of the city government in Boston had ever heard of the Liberator, but that finally the officers had "ferreted out the paper and its editor"; that Garrison's office "was an obscure hole, his only visible help a negro boy, and his supporters a few insignificant persons of all colors." James Russell Lowell made this the text of his poem, "To W. L. Garrison," beginning, "In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, Toiled o'er his types one poor unlearned young man; The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean; Yet there the freedom of a race began." The legislature of Georgia offered five thousand dollars to any person who would kidnap Garrison and secure his conviction under the laws of that state. The slave laws of the Southern states were strengthened; voluntary emancipation was restrained; the life of the free colored people in the South was made harder; demands were increased for the return of fugitive slaves; and Southern leaders instead of speaking of slavery as a social and political evil now came to defend slavery as a "positive good," as Calhoun put it. Governor McDuffie of South Carolina said: "Slavery is the most perfect system of political and social happiness that ever existed; instead of being a political evil, domestic slavery is the corner stone of our republican edifice. The black man is designed by Providence for slavery. No human institution is more manifestly consistent with the will of God." Almost the entire South united to defend slavery. It is hardly to be wondered at that the slaveholders were indignant and angry at the abolition attacks. had over a billion dollars invested in slaves. law had recognized slaves as property for two hundred fended beyears. They had inherited this property, had grown the Aboliup with it, and all their contracts and customs and their whole system of society were based on it. were proud and high-spirited, and it was not human citizens and proposed nature meekly to submit and give up their property. to destroy And the abolitionists were attacking not only the erty. property of the Southerners, but also their characters. The slaveholders were painted as oppressors. They Their The South They was of cause tionists their prop Abolition almanacs and papers were sent broadcast with pictures of the slave mother on the auction block being sold from her children, or of a slave being whipped at the stake or being branded with a hot iron, or of a black fugitive being pursued with guns and bloodhounds. The fact is, these were the exceptions and excesses in slavery. The great mass of the slaves were well-treated; their masters were kind to them and they were attached to their masters. The white people in the South felt that the blacks had to be cared for, that they were not capable of freedom, and that a horrible race war would result if the slaves were set free. Southern Southern defenders of slavery claimed that the condition of the blacks had been improved by their enslavement in America; that the slaves were better off than factory hands in defense of the North; and they asserted that Southern slavery slavery in was no business of the Northern people and that they answer to the Abolihad no right to intermeddle or advise. The Southtionists. erners believed that emancipation could only lead to intermarriage of the races, which was abhorrent to all their feelings; or to a race conflict, which would certainly lead to the destruction of one race or the other. They had an awful dread of a slave insurrection, and they thought the Abolitionists, whether they intended it or not, were instigating the negroes to rise and slaughter their masters and desolate the homes of the whites. 384. The Nat Turner Insurrection, 1831. — In the same year that Garrison started his Liberator, the Nat Turner insurrection occurred at South Hampton, Virginia. Turner was a negro slave, a reader of the Bible, who stirred up the slaves against their masters. More than sixty whites, men, women, and children, and more than one hundred negroes, were killed before the insurrection was put down. This horrible affair threw the whole South into a state of intense excitement. No connection was ever shown to exist between this affair and the abolitionists, but the latter were blamed for it, and the slaveholders felt that their homes, their lives, and their whole social system were threatened. They demanded that the Abolitionists be put down |