Rev. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, who visited Virginia and the South in
1854, published the results of his observations, from which we take
the following extracts.
After describing the activities of the Northern Anti-slavery Societies
in scattering among the Southern negroes publications and pictures
tending to stimulate slave insurrections and to inculcate ideas of
racial equality, Dr. Adams writes:
"When these amalgamation pictures were discovered, husbands and
fathers at the South felt that whatever might be true of slavery as
a system, self-defense, the protection of their households against
servile insurrection, was their first duty. Who can wonder that they
broke into the post-office and seized and burned abolition papers;
indeed no excesses are surprising in view of the perils to which
they saw themselves exposed."[258]
Again he writes: "They seem to be living in a state of self-defense,
of self-preservation against the North."[259]
"As Northern zeal has promulgated bolder sentiments with regard to
the right and duty of slaves to steal, burn, and kill, in effecting
their liberty, the South has intrenched itself by more vigorous laws
and customs.... Nothing forces itself more constantly upon the
thoughts of a Northerner at the South who looks into the history and
present state of slavery, than the vast injury which has resulted
from Northern interference."[260]
In his message to Congress, December, 1860, President Buchanan writes:
"The incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question through
the North for the last quarter of a century has at last produced its
malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions
of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the
family altar. The feeling of peace at home has given place to
apprehension of servile insurrection. Many a matron throughout the
South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and
children before the morning."