If it be urged that the views of Channing, Lincoln, Webster, Douglas
and Ewing were unfair in their estimate of the reactionary influence
of the Abolitionists, because of the temper of the times in which they
lived, it may be well to quote the conclusions of publicists not so
situated. Mr. George Lunt, of Boston, writing in December, 1865, says:
"After the years of 1820-21, during which that great struggle which
resulted in what is called the Missouri Compromise was most active
and came to its conclusion, the States of Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee were earnestly engaged in practical movements for the
gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until
it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists upon their
voluntary action."[75]
Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, writing in 1883, after
describing the discussions in the General Assembly of Virginia in
1831-32, and stating that Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the leader of the
movement for the abolition of slavery, was re-elected in 1833 from
Albemarle, one of the largest slaveholding counties in the state,
because of his position, declares:
"But in the meantime came suddenly the intelligence of what was
doing at the North. It came in an alarming aspect for the peace and
security for the whole South; since it could not be possible that
strangers should combine together to assail the slaveholder as a
sinner and to demand his instant admission of guilt, without
arousing fears of the most dangerous consequences for the safety of
Southern homes, as well as intense indignation against such an
unwarrantable interference. From that time forth emancipation
whether immediate or gradual could not be considered in Virginia or
anywhere else in the South."[76]