Stephen A. Douglas, speaking at Bloomington, Illinois, July 16, 1859,
said:
"There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished and
that is by leaving the state according to the principle of the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, perfectly free to form and regulate its
institutions in its own way. That was the principle upon which this
Republic was founded.... Under its operations slavery disappeared
from ... six of the twelve original slaveholding states; and this
gradual system of emancipation went on quietly, peacefully and
steadily so long as we in the free states minded our own business
and left our neighbors alone. But the moment the abolition societies
were organized throughout the North, preaching a violent crusade
against slavery in the Southern States, this combination necessarily
caused a counter-combination in the South, and a sectional line was
drawn which was a barrier to any further emancipation. Bear in mind
that emancipation has not taken place in any one state since the
Free-soil Party was organized as a political party in this
country.... The moment the North proclaimed itself the determined
master of the South, that moment the South combined to resist the
attack, and thus sectional parties were formed and gradual
emancipation ceased in all the Northern slaveholding states."[73]
In this speech, Mr. Douglas not only points out the methods by which
slavery had been abolished in six of the twelve original slaveholding
states, but he bears testimony, like his great contemporaries, to the
reactionary influence resulting from the attitude of the Northern
Abolitionists.
This estimate of Senator Douglas was reaffirmed in the frank
declaration of Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, who, speaking in the Peace
Conference, at Washington, February, 1861, declared: "The North has
taken the business of abolition into its own hands and from the day
she did so we hear no more of abolition in Virginia. This was but the
natural effect of the cause."[74]