_Introduction of the Cotton-gin.--Its effect on Slavery.--Fugitive Slave
Law.--Anthony Burns.--The Dred Scott Decision.--Imprisonment for reading
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”--Struggles with Slavery._
The introduction of the cotton-gin into the South, by Whitney of
Connecticut, had materially enhanced the value of slave property; the
emancipation societies of Virginia and Maryland had ceased to petition
their Legislatures for the “Gradual Emancipation” of the slaves; and the
above two States had begun to make slave-raising a profitable business,
when the American Antislavery Society was formed in the city of
Philadelphia, in the year 1833. The agitation of the question in
Congress, the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, the murder
of the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy in Illinois, and the attempt to put down
free speech throughout the country, only hastened the downfall of the
institution.
In the earlier days of the Antislavery movement, not a year, sometimes
hardly a month, passed that did not bear upon its record the report
of mobs, almost always ferocious in spirit, and sometimes cruel and
blood-stained in act. It was the first instinctive and brutal response
of a proslavery people convicted of guilt and called to repentance; and
it was almost universal. Wherever antislavery was preached, honestly,
and effectually, there the mobocratic spirit followed it; so that, in
those times, he who escaped this ordeal was, with some justice, held to
be either inefficient or unfaithful. Hardly a town or city, from Alton
to Portland, where much antislavery labor was bestowed, in the first
fifteen years of this enterprise, that was not the scene of one of
these attempts to crush all free discussion of the subject of slavery by
violence or bloodshed. Hardly one of the earlier public advocates of the
cause that was not made to suffer, either in person or in property,
or in both, from popular violence,--the penalty of obedience to the
dictates of his own conscience. Nor was this all: official countenance
was often given to the mad proceedings of the mob; or, if not given,
its protection was withheld from those who were the objects of popular
hatred; and, as if this were not enough, legislation was invoked to the
same end. It was suggested to the Legislature of one of the Southern
States, that a large reward be offered for the head of a citizen of
Massachusetts who was the pioneer in the modern antislavery movement. A
similar reward was offered for the head of a citizen of New York. Yet so
foul an insult excited neither the popular indignation nor legislative
resentment in either of those States.
Great damage was done to the cause of Christianity by the position
assumed on the question of slavery by the American churches, and
especially those in the Southern States. Think of a religious kidnapper!
a Christian slave-breeder! a slave-trader, loving his neighbor as
himself, receiving the “sacraments” in some Protestant church from the
hand of a Christian apostle, then the next day selling babies by the
dozen, and tearing young women from the arms of their husbands to feed
the lust of lecherous New Orleans! Imagine a religious man selling
his own children into eternal bondage! Think of a Christian defending
slavery out of the Bible, and declaring there is no higher law, but
atheism is the first principle of Republican Government!
Yet this was the stand taken, and maintained, by the churches in the
slave States down to the day that Lee surrendered to Grant.
One of the bitterest fruits of slavery in our land is the cruel spirit
of caste, which makes the complexion even of the free negro a badge
of social inferiority, exposing him to insult in the steamboat and the
railcar, and in all places of public resort, not even excepting the
church; banishing him from remunerative occupations; expelling him from
the legislative hall, the magistrate’s bench, and the jury-box; and
crushing his noblest aspirations under a weight of prejudice and
proscription which he struggles in vain to throw off. Against this
unchristian and hateful spirit, every lover of liberty should enter his
solemn protest. This hateful prejudice caused the breaking up of the
school of Miss Prudence Crandall, in the State of Connecticut, in the
early days of the antislavery agitation.
Next came the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, one of the most beautiful
edifices in the City of Brotherly Love, simply because colored persons
were permitted to occupy seats by the side of whites.
The enactment by Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law caused the friends
of freedom, both at home and abroad, to feel that the General Government
was fast becoming the bulwark of slavery. The rendition of Thomas Sims,
and still later that of Anthony Burns, was, indeed, humiliating in the
extreme to the people of the Northern States.
On that occasion, the sons of free, enlightened, and Christian
Massachusetts, descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, bowed submissively to
the behests of a tyranny more cruel than Austrian despotism; yielded up
their dignity and self-respect; became the allies of slave-catchers, the
associates and companions of bloodhounds. At the bidding of slaveholders
and serviles, they seized the image of God, bound their fellow-man with
chains, and consigned him to torture and premature death under the lash
of a piratical overseer. God’s law and man’s rights were trampled upon;
the self-respect, the constitutional privileges, of the free States,
were ignominiously surrendered. A people who resisted a paltry tax upon
tea, at the cannon’s mouth, basely submitted to an imposition tenfold
greater, in favor of brutalizing their fellow-men. Soil which had
been moistened with the blood of American patriots was polluted by the
footsteps of slave-catchers and their allies.
The Boston Court House in chains, two hundred rowdies and thieves sworn
in as special policemen, respectable citizens shoved off the side-walks
by these slave-catchers; all for the purpose of satisfying “our brethren
of the South.” But this act did not appease the feelings, or satisfy the
demands, of the slave-holders, while it still further inflamed the fire
of abolitionism.
The “Dred Scott Decision” added fresh combustibles to the smouldering
heap. Dred Scott, a slave, taken by his master into free Illinois, and
then beyond the line of 36° 30’, and then back into Missouri, sued for
and obtained his freedom on the ground, that, having been taken where by
the Constitution slavery was illegal, his master had lost all claim.
But the Supreme Court, on appeal, reversed the judgment; and Dred
Scott, with his wife and children, was taken back into slavery. By this
decision in the highest court of American law, it was affirmed that no
free negro could claim to be a citizen of the United States, but was
only under the jurisdiction of the separate State in which he resided;
that the prohibition of slavery in any Territory of the Union was
unconstitutional; and that the slave-owner might go where he pleased
with his property, throughout the United States, and retain his right.
This decision created much discussion, both in America and in Europe,
and materially injured the otherwise good name of our country abroad.
The Constitution, thus interpreted by Judge Taney, became the emblem of
the tyrants and the winding sheet of liberty, and gave a boldness to
the people of the South, which soon showed itself, while good men at the
North felt ashamed of the Government under which they lived.
The slave-holders in the cotton, sugar, and rice growing States began to
urge the re-opening of the African slave-trade, and the driving out from
the Southern States of all free colored persons.
In the Southern Rights’ Convention, which assembled at Baltimore, June
8, 1800, a resolution was adopted, calling on the Legislature to pass
a law driving the free colored people out of the State. Nearly every
speaker took the ground that the free colored people must be driven out
to make the slave’s obedience more secure. Judge Mason, in his speech,
said, “It is the thrifty and well-to-do free negroes, that are seen by
our slaves, that make them dissatisfied.” A similar appeal was made to
the Legislature of Tennessee. Judge Catron, of the Supreme Court of
the United States, in a long and able letter to “The Nashville Union,”
opposed the driving out of the colored people. He said they were among
the best mechanics, the best artisans, and the most industrious laborers
in the State, and that to drive them out would be an injury to the State
itself. This is certainly good evidence in their behalf.
The State of Arkansas passed a law driving the free colored people out
of the State, and they were driven out three years ago. The Democratic
press howled upon the heels of the free blacks until they had all been
expatriated; but, after they had been driven out, “The Little Rock
Gazette”--a Democratic paper--made a candid acknowledgment with regard
to the character of the free colored people. It said, “Most of the
exiled free negroes are industrious and respectable. One of them, Henry
King, we have known from our boyhood, and take the greatest pleasure in
testifying to his good character. The community in which he casts his
lot will be blessed with that noblest work of God, an honest man.”
Yet these free colored people were driven out of the State, and those
who were unable to go, as many of the women and children were, were
reduced to slavery.
“The New Orleans True Delta” opposed the passage of a similar law by the
State of Louisiana. Among other things, it said, “There are a large free
colored population here, correct in their general deportment, honorable
in their intercourse with society, and free from reproach so far as the
laws are concerned; not surpassed in the inoffensiveness of their lives
by any equal number of-persons in any place, North or South.”
And yet these free colored persons were not permitted by law to school
their children, or to read books that treated against the institution
of slavery. The Rev. Samuel Green, a colored Methodist preacher, was
convicted and sent to the Maryland penitentiary, in 1858, for the
offence of being found reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The growth of the “Free-Soil” party, which had taken the place of the
“Liberty” party; and then the rapid increase of the “Republican” party;
the struggle in Kansas; the “Oberlin Rescue Trials;” and, lastly, the
“John Brown Raid,” carried the discussion of slavery to its highest
point.
All efforts, in Congress, in the proslavery political conventions,
and in the churches, only added fuel to the flame that was fast making
inroads upon the vitals of the monster.