The Influence of Religion and Women--Ruptures in Churches and Church
Organizations--Sentiments of Clergymen--"Uncle Tom's Cabin"--The
"Impending Crisis"--The Harper's Ferry Insurrection.
One of the principal agencies by which this extraordinary revolution in
the public sentiment of the North has been brought about is the Church.
The history of anti-slavery in this connection, however, is too extended
to admit of anything more than a narration of general facts. It is
sufficient to say that the abolitionists have had the co-operation of a
portion of the principal religious sects of the free States ever since the
year 1820, since which time their conferences, sessions, assemblies and
meetings have been the theatres of the most rancorous discussion, abusive
debate and irremediable discord. They have ruptured the Presbyterian,
Methodist and Baptist churches, and divided into antagonistic parties the
American Board of Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society,
the American Tract Society, and every other benevolent organization which
embraces within its scope of good the common country. They have thus
prevented the dissemination of the Bible, the establishing of
missionaries, the distribution of tracts, and interrupted all efforts that
have been made for the Christian elevation of the slave or the welfare of
the master. Instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the
interests of religion which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed
against each other, two hostile bodies, whose sole occupation is
individual abuse, political harangues, and the profanation of the sacred
desk. Personal holiness has given way to party spirit, and while men's
hearts around them are blazing with the carnalities of their own fallen
nature, ministers have forgotten their vocation in preaching havoc,
subverting the Scriptures and setting up as the God of worship the
comfortable negroes of the South. Their sentiment is "If the Bible
tolerates slavery for an instant, away with it. And God himself!--if he
sanctions this hell-born monster, even he is unworthy of respect." The
black portrait of Southern slavery has been indelibly painted upon their
imaginations until the pure, solid, consistent religion of our forefathers
no longer exists. These reverend Pecksniffs can hardly bear to look upon a
Southern man without a feeling of revenge; they seldom look at a Bible
without muttering a blasphemy, and cannot speak of the South and its
institutions without letting out their dream of blood and desire.
Witness some of their effusions. The Rev. Daniel Foster, one of the
chaplains of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1855-6, referring to the
Southern clergy, said:--
"He stood on that floor as an orthodox clergyman, but he would as
soon exchange with the devil as one of those hireling priests--those
traitors to humanity. The professed Church of Christ is false, and
its hireling priesthood unworthy of confidence."
The Rev. Mr. Griswold, of Stonington, said:--
"For the church which sustains slavery, wherever it be, I am ready to
say I will welcome the bolt, whether it come from heaven or hell,
which shall destroy it. Its pretensions to Christianity are the
boldest effrontery and the vilest imposture."
The Rev. Mr. Howell says, when speaking of the Bible arguments in behalf
of slavery:--
"Give up my advocacy of abolition? Never! I will sooner, Jonas like,
throw the Bible overboard, and execrate it as the Newgate calendar,
denounce God as a slaveholder, and his angels and Apostles as
turnkeys and slavedrivers."
The Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a speech in the Detroit Convention:--
"Damned to the lowest hell all the pastors and churches of the South,
as they were a body of thieves, adulterers, pirates and
murderers--that the Episcopal Methodist Church is more corrupt and
profligate than any bawdy house in the Union--that the Southern
ministers of that body are desirous of perpetuating slavery for the
purpose of debauchery, and that every clergyman among them is guilty
of enormities that would shock a savage."
The same Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a discussion in Cincinnati, in 1845, in
reply to Dr. Rice, who held up to the abolitionists' imitation the example
of the "Angel of the Lord who advised Hagar, the slave of Abraham, to
return to her master," said:--"Well, if the angel did so advise her, I
think he was a ruffian."
We might quote sentiments like the above _ad libitum_; but these are
sufficient to show the drift of a portion, at least, of the clerical mind
at the North.
What has been the influence of these clerical fanatics? They have
contributed to the formation of revolutionary societies, throughout the
length and breadth of the land, and invited all men to join in the holy
crusade. Appealing to their congregations, they have worked with honied
phrase and flattering carresses upon the tender imaginations of women
until they have learned to look upon a slaveholder as a sort of moral
monstrosity. Sewing parties have been turned into abolition clubs, while
little children in the Sunday schools have been taught that A. B. stands
for abolition, from books illuminated with graphic insignia of terror and
oppression; with pictorial chains, handcuffs and whips, in the act of
application to naked and crouching slaves. This latter remark is truer of
the past than the present generation; but we see the influence around us
in the millions of young men that now constitute the bulk of the
republican party, who may trace their opinions upon the question of
slavery to the early prejudices thus acquired.
John Randolph, of Roanoke, once said, "that the worst government on earth
was a government of priests, and the next worst was a government of
women." There is little doubt that if the present movement goes on, we
shall have a government of both priests and females. As the revolution of
France was hurried forward by the fish-women of Paris, many of the
horrible atrocities of that time being perpetrated by them, so the same
misguided spirit urges on the women of the present day, until they have
become not only regardless of the human suffering which may result from
their course, but of the inevitable tendencies of their influence towards
the overthrow of the government itself.
Some of these women edit newspapers, write books, peddle tracts, deliver
lectures, and constantly, in one shape or another, keep themselves
notorious in the public prints. One of the most effective of these
feminine offsprings ever brought to bear upon the public mind was "Uncle
Tom's Cabin"--a story which originally appeared in the National Era, at
Washington, in 1852, was afterwards published in a book, and soon created
an extraordinary excitement on both sides of the Atlantic. No other book
ever passed through so many editions, either in America or Europe. It has
been translated into most of the Continental languages, and placed upon
the stage in a dramatic form in almost every city of the Union. It served
its purpose. What truth could not accomplish, fiction did, and Harriet
Beecher Stowe has had the satisfaction of throwing a firebrand into the
world, which has kept up a furious blaze ever since. Others have followed
in her wake, but their success has been more moderate, making proselytes
by hundreds, where she made them by thousands.
Among the publications of a more recent date is that of Hinton Rowan
Helper, on the "Impending Crisis," which appeared in 1858, filled with the
most ultra abolition doctrines that could be accumulated, and received the
endorsement of the principal leaders of the republican party. It
thereafter became the Shibboleth of the organization, by which its members
have sworn, and the standard by which its principles have since been
measured. While it is a work intrinsically false and worthless, yet, being
the production of a Southern man, it had a fictitious value in the eyes of
Northern fanatics who were only too glad to use it against the people of
the South.
Contemporaneous with the excitement produced by this book, and partially
growing out of it, was
THE HARPER'S FERRY INSURRECTION.
The facts are briefly as follows:--On the 17th of October, 1859, the
country was startled with the announcement that a party of armed men,
whites and blacks, had entered the village of Harper's Ferry, Va., taken
possession of the United States armory at that place, shot two or three
whites, placed guards on the railroad bridge, and stopped the passenger
trains of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
The President promptly dispatched a detachment of marines to the spot. The
insurrectionists were found to number about twenty white men and negroes,
under the leadership of the notorious Kansas Free-State man, John
Ossawatomie Brown. After some time spent in parley, made for the purpose
of saving a number of prominent citizens who were held prisoners by Brown
within the enclosures of the United States Armory, the marines made an
attack, beat down the gates, and took all who were not killed prisoners.
Among the latter was Brown himself, who had received a number of severe
wounds. Brown confessed that his object was to liberate and run off all
the slaves in the adjoining counties of Virginia and Maryland. At a
farm-house which Brown had hired a few miles from Harper's Ferry, were
found ammunition and arms, consisting of a large number of Sharpe's
rifles, revolvers, pikes and other implements of war, together with a
great amount of correspondence, consisting of letters of Gerrit Smith and
Fred Douglas. During the whole affair, there were killed ten of the
insurrectionists, six citizens and one United States marine, and a number
on both sides were wounded.
Brown was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the United States
on the 2d of November, was sentenced to be hung, which sentence was
carried into effect on the 2d of December, 1859.
It has since been discovered that the following is a portion of the plans
of abolitionists, matured in Kansas by Brown and others, and which he
attempted in part to carry out:--
"1. To _make war_ (openly or secretly, as circumstances may dictate)
_upon the property of the slaveholders_ and their abettors--not for
its destruction, if that can be easily avoided, but to convert it to
the _use_ of the _slaves_. If it cannot be thus converted, then we
advise its _destruction_. Teach the slaves to _burn their master's
buildings_, to _kill_ their _cattle_ and _horses_, to conceal or
_destroy farming utensils_, to abandon labor in seed time and
harvest, and _let crops perish_. Make slavery unprofitable in this
way, if it can be done in no other.
"2. To make slaveholders objects of _derision_ and _contempt_, by
_flogging them_ whenever they shall be guilty of flogging their
slaves.
"3. To risk no general insurrection until we of the North go to your
assistance, or you are sure of success without our aid.
"4. To cultivate the friendship and confidence of the slaves; to
consult with them as to their rights and interests, and the means of
promoting them; to show your interest in their welfare, and your
readiness to assist them; let them know that they have your sympathy,
and it will give them courage, self-respect and ambition, and make
men of them--infinitely better men to live by, as neighbors and
friends, than the indolont, arrogant, selfish, heartless, domineering
robbers and tyrants who now keep both yourselves and the slaves in
subjection, and look with contempt upon all who live by honest labor.
"5. To change your political institutions as soon as possible, and,
in the meantime, give never a vote to a slaveholder; pay no taxes to
their government, if you can either resist or evade them; as
witnesses and jurors, give no testimony and no verdicts in support of
any slaveholding claims; perform no military, patrol or police
service; mob slaveholding courts, jails and sheriffs; do nothing, in
short, for sustaining slavery, but everything you safely can,
_publicly and privately, for its overthrow_."
THE END.
We have before given a table of the number of slaves in the United States
in 1790. It was then 697,696. The following is a similar estimate for the
year 1850, as determined by the seventh census:
1 New Jersey 222
2 Delaware 2,990
3 Maryland 90,368
4 Virginia 472,528
5 North Carolina 288,548
6 South Carolina 384,984
7 Georgia 386,682
8 Florida 39,309
9 Alabama 342,892
10 Mississippi 309,878
11 Louisiana 244,809
12 Texas 58,161
13 Arkansas 47,100
14 Tennessee 239,460
15 Kentucky 210,981
16 Missouri 87,422
17 District of Columbia 3,687
18 Utah 26
----------
Total 3,204,347
Adding to this sum thirty per cent, a fair estimate of the increase for
the last ten years, and we have in 1860, 3,965,651 slaves in the United
States, or _four millions in round numbers_. There were in the United
States 347,525 persons owning slaves. Of this number two owned 1,000 each;
both resided in South Carolina. Nine only owned between 500 and 1,000, of
whom two resided in Georgia, four in Louisiana, one in Mississippi.
Fifty-six owned from 300 to 500, of whom one resided in Maryland, one in
Virginia, three in North Carolina, one in Tennessee, one in Florida, four
in Georgia, six in Louisiana, eight in Mississippi, twenty-nine in South
Carolina, one hundred and eighty-seven owned from 200 to 300, of whom
South Carolina had sixty-nine, Louisiana thirty-six, Georgia twenty-two,
Mississippi eighteen, Alabama sixteen, North Carolina twelve, five other
States fourteen, and four States none. Fourteen hundred and seventy-nine
owned from 100 to 200. All the slaveholding States, except Florida and
Missouri, are represented in this class, South Carolina having one-fourth
of the whole; 29,733 persons owned from ten to twenty slaves each. South
Carolina, from this statement, owns more slaves in proportion to her
population than any other State in the South.
* * * * *
A few general considerations, and we conclude our narrative. After tracing
the course of events recorded in the foregoing pages, the questions
naturally arise--What has been the result? what have the abolitionists
gained? The answers may be briefly summed up as follows:--
1. They have put an end to the benevolent schemes of emancipation
which originated among the real philanthropists of the South, and
were calculated, in a proper time and manner, beneficent to all
concerned, to produce the desired result. In their wild and fanatical
attempts they have counteracted the very object at which they have
aimed. Instead of ameliorating the condition of the slaves, they have
only aroused the distrust of the master, and led to restrictions
which did not before exist. The truth is, the lot of the people of
the South is not more implicated in that of the slaves than is the
lot of the slaves in the people of the South. In their mutual
relations, they must survive or perish together. In the language of
another, "The worst foes of the black race are those who have
intermeddled in their behalf. By nature, the most affectionate and
loyal of all races beneath the sun, they are also the most helpless:
and no calamity can befal them greater than the loss of that
protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system. Indeed, the
experiment has been tried of precipitating them upon a freedom which
they know not how to enjoy; and the dismal results are before the
world in statistics that may well excite astonishment. With the
fairest portions of the earth in their possession, and with the
advantage of a long discipline as the cultivators of the soil, their
constitutional indolence has converted the most beautiful islands of
the sea into howling wastes. It is not too much to say, that if the
South should, at this moment, surrender every slave, the wisdom of
the entire world, united in solemn council, could not solve the
question of their disposal. Freedom would be their doom. Every
Southern master knows this truth and feels its power."
2. Touch the negro, and you touch cotton--the mainspring that keeps
the machinery of the world in motion. In teaching slaves to entertain
wild and dangerous notions of liberty, the abolitionists have thus
jeopardized the commerce of the country and the manufacturing
interests of the civilized world. They have likewise destroyed
confidence. Northern institutions are no longer filled with the young
men and women of the South, but find rivals springing up in every
State south of Mason and Dixon's line. Northern commerce can no
longer depend upon the rich places of wealth it has hitherto found in
Southern patronage. Northern men can no longer travel in the South
without being regarded as objects of suspicion and confounded with
the abolitionists of their section. In short, all the kind relations
that have ever existed between the North and the South have been
interrupted, and a barrier erected, which, socially, commercially and
politically, has separated the heretofore united interests of the two
sections, and which nothing but a revolution in public sentiment, a
higher sense of the moral obligations due our neighbor, a religious
training, which will graft upon our nature a truer conscience and
inculcate a purer charity, and finally a recognition of abstract
right and justice, can ever remove.
3. They have held out a Canadian Utopia, where they have taught the
slaves in their ignorance to believe they could enjoy a life of ease
and luxury, and having cut them off from a race of kind masters and
separated them from comfortable homes, left the deluded beings
incapable of self-support upon an uncongenial soil, to live in a
state of bestiality and misery, and die cursing the abolitionists as
the authors of their wretchedness.
4. They have led a portion of the people of the North, as well as of
the South, to examine the question in all its aspects, and to plant
themselves upon the broad principle that that form of government
which recognizes the institution of slavery in the United States, is
the best, the condition of the two races, white and black being
considered, for the development, progress and happiness of each. In
other words, to regard servitude as a blessing to the negro, and
under proper and philanthropic restrictions, necessary to their
preservation and the prosperity of the country.
5. Step by step they have built up a party upon an issue which has
led to a dissolution of the Union. They have scattered the seeds of
abolitionism until a majority of the voters of the free States have
become animated by a fixed purpose not only to prevent the further
growth of the slave power, but to beard the lion in his den.
The power of the North has been consolidated, and for the first time in
the history of the country it is wielded as a sectional weapon against the
interests of the South. The government is now in the hands of men elected
by Northern votes, who regard slavery as a curse and a crime, and they
will have the means necessary to accomplish their purpose.
The utterances that have heretofore come from the rostrum or from
irresponsible associations of individuals now come from the throne. "Clad
with the sanctities of office, with the anointing oil poured upon the
monarch's head, the decree has gone forth that the institution of Southern
slavery shall be constrained within assigned limits. Though Nature and
Providence should send forth its branches like the banyan tree to take
root in congenial soil, here is a power superior to both, that says it
shall wither and die within its own charmed circle."
If this be not believed, let the following selections from the speeches of
the leaders of the Republican party be the proof:--
Hon. Charles Sumner, United States Senator from Mass.:--
"This slave oligarchy will soon cease to exist as a political
combination. Its final doom may be postponed, but it is certain.
Languishing, it may live yet longer, but it will surely die. Yes,
fellow-citizens, surely it will die--when disappointed in its
purposes--driven back within the States, and constrained within these
limits, it can no longer rule the Republic as a plantation of slaves
at home; can no longer menace Territories with its five-headed device
to compel labor without wages; can no longer fasten upon the
constitution an interpretation which makes merchandise of men, and
gives a disgraceful immunity to the brokers of human flesh, and the
butchers of human hearts; and when it can no longer grind flesh and
blood, groans and sighs, the tears of mothers and the cries of
children into the cement of a barbarous political power! Surely,
then, in its retreat, smarting under the indignation of an aroused
people, and the concurring judgment of the civilized world it must
die;--it may be, as a poisoned rat dies, of rage in its hole.
(Enthusiastic applause.) Meanwhile all good omens are ours. The work
cannot stop. Quickened by the triumph, now at hand,--with a
Republican President in power, State after State, quitting the
condition of a territory, and spurning slavery, will be welcomed into
our plural unit, and joining hands together, will become a belt of
fire about the slave States, in which slavery must die."
Hon. John Wentworth, Editor of the _Chicago Democrat_, and Mayor of
Chicago:--
"We might as well make up our minds to fight the battle now, as at
any other time. It will have to be fought, and the longer the evil
day is put off, the more bloody will be the contest when it comes. If
we do not place slavery in the process of extinction now, by hemming
it in, where it is, and not suffering it to expand, it will
extinguish us, and our liberties.
"If the Union be preserved, and if the Federal government be
administered for a few years by Republican Presidents, a scheme may
be devised, and carried out, which will result in the peaceful,
honorable and equitable EMANCIPATION of ALL the SLAVES.
"The States must be made ALL FREE, and if a Republican government is
intrusted with the duty of making them FREE, the work will be done
without bloodshed, without revolution, without disastrous loss of
property. The work will be one of time and patience, but it MUST BE
DONE!"
Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State (his Rochester speech of Oct. 25,
1858):
"Our country is a theatre which exhibits, in full operation, two
radically different political systems--the one resting on the basis
of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor
of freemen. * * * * * * * *
"The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But never
have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.
* * * These antagonistic systems are continually coming in closer
contact, and collision ensues.
"Shall I tell you what this collision means? It is an irrepressible
conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the
United States must, and will, sooner or later, become entirely a
slaveholding nation, or entirety a free labor nation. Either the
cotton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations
of Louisiana, will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston
and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or
else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York
must again be surrendered by their farmers to the slave culture and
to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more
markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men."
At a later period, in the Senate of the United States, the same Senator
uttered the following language:--
"A free Republican government like this, notwithstanding all its
constitutional checks, cannot long resist and counteract the progress
of society.
"Free labor has at last apprehended its rights and its destiny, and
is organizing itself to assume the government of the Republic. It
will henceforth meet you boldly and resolutely here (Washington); it
will meet you everywhere, in the Territories and out of them,
wherever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in
California and in Kansas, it will invade you soon in Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. It will meet you in Arizona,
in Central America, and even in Cuba.
* * * * *
"You may, indeed, get a start under or near the tropics, and seem
safe for a time, but it will be only a short time. Even there you
will found States only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The
interest of the whole race demands the ultimate emancipation of all
men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with
needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or
be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. The
white man needs this continent to labor upon. His head is clear, his
arm is strong, and his necessities are fixed.
* * * * *
"It is for yourselves, and not for us, to decide how long and through
what further mortifications and disasters the contest shall be
protracted before freedom shall enjoy her already assured triumph.
"You may refuse to yield it now, and for a short period, but your
refusal will only animate the friends of freedom with the courage and
the resolution, and produce the union among them, which alone is
necessary on their part to attain the position itself, simultaneously
with the impending overthrow of the existing Federal Administration
and the constitution of a new and more independent Congress."
Hon. Joshua Giddings, Member of Congress from Ohio:--
"I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection
in the South; when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and
led on by British officers, shall assert his freedom, and wage a war
of extermination against his master; when the torch of the incendiary
shall light up the towns and cities of the South, and blot out the
last vestige of slavery. And though I may not mock at their calamity,
nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will hail it as the dawn of a
political millennium."
Hon. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States:--
"I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave, and
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect
the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where
the public mind shall rest in the belief, that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, until it
shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new,
North as well as South."
"I have always hated slavery as much as any abolitionist. I have
always been an old line Whig. I have always hated it, and I always
believed it in a course of ultimate extinction. If I were in
Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery
should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott
decision I would vote that it should."
These are a few only of the extracts of a similar nature which may be
selected from multitudes of speeches that have been delivered by the
leading men of the party. The same sentiment, however, runs through them
all, and abolition, in one way or another, is not less a doctrine of the
Republican party of 1860 than it was of the Liberty party of 1840, to
which it owes its birth. "Abolitionism is clearly its informing and
actuating soul; and fanaticism is a blood-hound that never bolts its track
when it has once lapped blood. The elevation of their candidate is far
from being the consummation of their aims. It is only the beginning of
that consummation; and if all history be not a lie, there will be coercion
enough till the end of the beginning is reached, and the dreadful banquet
of slaughter and ruin shall glut the appetite."
And now the end has come. The divided house, which Mr. Lincoln boastfully
said would not fall, has fallen. The ruins of the Union are at the feet as
well of those who loved and cherished it as of those who labored for its
destruction. The Constitution is at length a nullity, and our flag a
mockery. Fanaticism, too, must have its apotheosis.
HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.