George Tucker, Professor of Political Economy, in the University of
Virginia, in his work, _The Progress of the United States in
Population and Wealth_, published in 1843, referring to the subject,
writes:
"This is not the place for assailing or defending slavery; but it
may be confidently asserted that the efforts of Abolitionists have
hitherto made the people in the slaveholding states cling to it more
tenaciously. Those efforts are viewed by them as an intermeddling in
their domestic concerns that is equally unwarranted by the comity
due to sister states, and to the solemn pledges of the Federal
compact. In the general indignation which is thus excited, the
arguments in favor of negro emancipation, once open and urgent, have
been completely silenced, and its advocates among the slaveholders,
who have not changed their sentiments, find it prudent to conceal
them.... Such have been the fruits of the zeal of Northern
Abolitionists in those states in which slavery prevails; and the
fable of the Wind and the Sun never more forcibly illustrated the
difference between gentle and violent means in influencing men's
wills."[67]
In 1847, Dr. Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College, delivered
an address upon the subject of slavery in Virginia which attracted
widespread attention. In this speech, made in the midst of the growing
controversy, he refers to the reactionary influence of the
Abolitionists as follows:
"But this unfavorable change of sentiment is due chiefly to the
fanatical violence of those Northern anti-slavery men usually called
Abolitionists.... They have not, by honourable means, liberated a
single slave, and they never will by such a course of procedure as
they have pursued. On the contrary they have created new
difficulties in the way of all judicious schemes of emancipation by
prejudicing the minds of slaveholders, and by compelling us to
combat their false principles and rash schemes in our rear; whilst
we are facing the opposition of men and the natural difficulties of
the case in our front."[68]
If it be thought, that Mr. Randolph, Professor Tucker, and Dr. Ruffner
were influenced by their environment and a desire to shift from the
people of Virginia to the Abolitionists responsibility for the growth
in the state of reactionary sentiments, with regard to slavery, it may
be well to quote the contemporary views of prominent anti-slavery men
of the North.