We come now to consider the fourth force or factor with which Virginia
had to reckon, namely, the Abolitionists. These constituted a body of
earnest, tireless agitators—men and women who had devoted mind and
heart to the work of destroying slavery. No consideration of the
maintenance of law, the national peace, nor the preservation of the
Union availed to moderate their zeal or circumscribe their efforts.
Slavery was a sin against God—and to the King of kings they owed
their first allegiance. To counsels of moderation, to suggestions of
expediency, to appeals for law, they returned the oft reiterated
answer—_Delenda est Cathargo!_ The orderly processes of time—the
force of public opinion exerted through law, rather than against law,
were to them but the suggestions of cowardice and a means for
prolonging the life of an institution, the measure of whose sin cried
unto Heaven. Fight Slavery!—now and always—wherever found and by
every weapon known to the wit of man, was the burden of their message.
Keep it out of the territories? Yes! and for the contest depend not
alone upon the laws of Congress; but send armed men to the prairies of
Kansas and hold the land against the slaveholders and their slaves by
fire and the sword. Opposed to a Fugitive Slave Statute? Yes!—contest
its enactment by Congress and defeat its execution when it becomes a
law. Let the free states nullify this Federal statute by state laws;
let mobs rescue from Federal officials the fugitives in their custody;
and then cover the land with the conspiracy of the "Underground
Railroad" by means of which the slave might pass to the freedom which
awaited him beyond the Canadian border.
But it was slavery in its citadel—the existence of the institution in
the slave states—that aroused their fiercest antagonism and rallied
their forces to a battle which should never end but with its complete
destruction. From this body of militant agitators and reformers, the
slaveholders of Virginia could expect no quarter, and the commonwealth
no surcease from the agitations so destructive of her peace.