THE NEW WEST, THE SOUTH, AND THE WEST INDIES
The twenty years of the administrations of the first three presidents of
the United States--or, we might say, the three decades between 1790
and 1820--constitute what might be considered the "Dark Ages" of Negro
history; and yet, as with most "Dark Ages," at even a glance below the
surface these years will be found to be throbbing with life, and we have
already seen that in them the Negro was doing what he could on his own
account to move forward. After the high moral stand of the Revolution,
however, the period seems quiescent, and it was indeed a time of
definite reaction. This was attributable to three great events: the
opening of the Southwest with the consequent demand for slaves, the
Haytian revolution beginning in 1791, and Gabriel's insurrection in
1800.
In no way was the reaction to be seen more clearly than in the decline
of the work of the American Convention of Delegates from the Abolition
Societies. After 1798 neither Connecticut nor Rhode Island sent
delegates; the Southern states all fell away by 1803; and while from New
England came the excuse that local conditions hardly made aggressive
effort any longer necessary, the lack of zeal in this section was also
due to some extent to a growing question as to the wisdom of interfering
with slavery in the South. In Virginia, that just a few years before
had been so active, a statute was now passed imposing a penalty of one
hundred dollars on any person who assisted a slave in asserting his
freedom, provided he failed to establish the claim; and another
provision enjoined that no member of an abolition society should serve
as a juror in a freedom suit. Even the Pennsylvania society showed signs
of faintheartedness, and in 1806 the Convention decided upon triennial
rather than annual meetings. It did not again become really vigorous
until after the War of 1812.
1. _The Cotton-Gin, the New Southwest, and the First Fugitive Slave Law_
Of incalculable significance in the history of the Negro in America
was the series of inventions in England by Arkwright, Hargreaves, and
Crompton in the years 1768-79. In the same period came the discovery
of the power of steam by James Watt of Glasgow and its application to
cotton manufacture, and improvements followed quickly in printing and
bleaching. There yet remained one final invention of importance for the
cultivation of cotton on a large scale. Eli Whitney, a graduate of Yale,
went to Georgia and was employed as a teacher by the widow of General
Greene on her plantation. Seeing the need of some machine for the more
rapid separating of cotton-seed from the fiber, he labored until in 1793
he succeeded in making his cotton-gin of practical value. The tradition
is persistent, however, that the real credit of the invention belongs
to a Negro on the plantation. The cotton-gin created great excitement
throughout the South and began to be utilized everywhere. The
cultivation and exporting of the staple grew by leaps and bounds. In
1791 only thirty-eight bales of standard size were exported from the
United States; in 1816, however, the cotton sent out of the country was
worth $24,106,000 and was by far the most valuable article of export.
The current price was 28 cents a pound. Thus at the very time that the
Northern states were abolishing slavery, an industry that had slumbered
became supreme, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of Negroes was
sealed.
Meanwhile the opening of the West went forward, and from Maine and
Massachusetts, Carolina and Georgia journeyed the pioneers to lay the
foundations of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and Alabama and Mississippi.
It was an eager, restless caravan that moved, and sometimes more than a
hundred persons in a score of wagons were to be seen going from a single
town in the East--"Baptists and Methodists and Democrats." The careers
of Boone and Sevier and those who went with them, and the story of their
fights with the Indians, are now a part of the romance of American
history. In 1790 a cluster of log huts on the Ohio River was named in
honor of the Society of the Cincinnati. In 1792 Kentucky was admitted to
the Union, the article on slavery in her constitution encouraging the
system and discouraging emancipation, and Tennessee also entered as a
slave state in 1796.
Of tremendous import to the Negro were the questions relating to the
Mississippi Territory. After the Revolution Georgia laid claim to great
tracts of land now comprising the states of Alabama and Mississippi,
with the exception of the strip along the coast claimed by Spain
in connection with Florida. This territory became a rich field for
speculation, and its history in its entirety makes a complicated story.
A series of sales to what were known as the Yazoo Companies, especially
in that part of the present states whose northern boundary would be a
line drawn from the mouth of the Yazoo to the Chattahoochee, resulted in
conflicting claims, the last grant sale being made in 1795 by a corrupt
legislature at the price of a cent and a half an acre. James Jackson
now raised the cry of bribery and corruption, resigned from the United
States Senate, secured a seat in the state legislature, and on February
13, 1796, carried through a bill rescinding the action of the previous
year,[1] and the legislature burned the documents concerned with the
Yazoo sale in token of its complete repudiation of them. The purchasers
to whom the companies had sold lands now began to bombard Congress with
petitions and President Adams helped to arrive at a settlement by which
Georgia transferred the lands in question to the Federal Government,
which undertook to form of them the Mississippi Territory and to pay
any damages involved. In 1802 Georgia threw the whole burden upon the
central government by transferring to it _all_ of her land beyond her
present boundaries, though for this she exacted an article favorable
to slavery. All was now made into the Mississippi Territory, to which
Congress held out the promise that it would be admitted as a state as
soon as its population numbered 60,000; but Alabama was separated from
Mississippi in 1816. The old matter of claims was not finally disposed
of until an act of 1814 appropriated $5,000,000 for the purpose. In
the same year Andrew Jackson's decisive victories over the Creeks at
Talladega and Horseshoe Bend--of which more must be said--resulted in
the cession of a vast tract of the land of that unhappy nation and thus
finally opened for settlement three-fourths of the present state of
Alabama.
[Footnote 1: Phillips in _The South in the Building of the Nation_, II,
154.]
It was in line with the advance that slavery was making in new territory
that there was passed the first Fugitive Slave Act (1793). This grew out
of the discussion incident to the seizure in 1791 at Washington, Penn.,
of a Negro named John, who was taken to Virginia, and the correspondence
between the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Governor of Virginia with
reference to the case. The important third section of the act read as
follows:
_And be it also enacted_, That when a person held to labor in any of
the United States, or in either of the territories on the northwest
or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape
into any other of the said states or territory, the person to whom
such labor or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby
empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take
him or her before any judge of the circuit or district courts of the
United States, residing or being within the state, or before any
magistrate of a county, city or town corporate, wherein such seizure
or arrest shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such
judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken
before and certified by a magistrate of any such state or territory,
that the person so seized or arrested, doth, under the laws of the
state or territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor
to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such
judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant,
his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for
removing the said fugitive from labor, to the state or territory
from which he or she fled.
It will be observed that by the terms of this enactment a master had
the right to recover a fugitive slave by proving his ownership before a
magistrate without a jury or any other of the ordinary forms of law. A
human being was thus placed at the disposal of the lowest of courts and
subjected to such procedure as was not allowed even in petty property
suits. A great field for the bribery of magistrates was opened up, and
opportunity was given for committing to slavery Negro men about whose
freedom there should have been no question.
By the close of the decade 1790-1800 the fear occasioned by the Haytian
revolution had led to a general movement against the importation of
Negroes, especially of those from the West Indies. Even Georgia in 1798
prohibited the importation of all slaves, and this provision, although
very loosely enforced, was never repealed. In South Carolina, however,
to the utter chagrin and dismay of the other states, importation,
prohibited in 1787, was again legalized in 1803; and in the four years
immediately following 39,075 Negroes were brought to Charleston, most of
these going to the territories.[1] When in 1803 Ohio was carved out of
the Northwest Territory as a free state, an attempt was made to
claim the rest of the territory for slavery, but this failed. In the
congressional session of 1804-5 the matter of slavery in the newly
acquired territory of Louisiana was brought up, and slaves were allowed
to be imported if they had come to the United States before 1798, the
purpose of this provision being to guard against the consequences of
South Carolina's recent act, although such a clause never received rigid
enforcement. The mention of Louisiana, however, brings us concretely to
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the greatest Negro in the New World in the period
and one of the greatest of all time.
[Footnote 1: DuBois: _Suppression of the Slave-Trade_, 90.]
_2. Toussaint L'Ouverture, Louisiana, and the Formal Closing of the
Slave-Trade_
When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, it was not long before its
general effects were felt in the West Indies. Of special importance was
Santo Domingo because of the commercial interests centered there. The
eastern end of the island was Spanish, but the western portion was
French, and in this latter part was a population of 600,000, of which
number 50,000 were French Creoles, 50,000 mulattoes, and 500,000 pure
Negroes. All political and social privileges were monopolized by the
Creoles, while the Negroes were agricultural laborers and slaves; and
between the two groups floated the restless element of the free people
of color.
When the General Assembly in France decreed equality of rights to
all citizens, the mulattoes of Santo Domingo made a petition for the
enjoyment of the same political privileges as the white people--to the
unbounded consternation of the latter. They were rewarded with a
decree which was so ambiguously worded that it was open to different
interpretations and which simply heightened the animosity that for years
had been smoldering. A new petition to the Assembly in 1791 primarily
for an interpretation brought forth on May 15 the explicit decree that
the people of color were to have all the rights and privileges of
citizens, provided they had been born of free parents on both sides. The
white people were enraged by the decision, turned royalist, and trampled
the national cockade underfoot; and throughout the summer armed strife
and conflagration were the rule. To add to the confusion the black
slaves struck for freedom and on the night of August 23, 1791, drenched
the island in blood. In the face of these events the Conventional
Assembly rescinded its order, then announced that the original decree
must be obeyed, and it sent three commissioners with troops to Santo
Domingo, real authority being invested in Santhonax and Polverel.
On June 20, 1793, at Cape François trouble was renewed by a quarrel
between a mulatto and a white officer in the marines. The seamen came
ashore and loaned their assistance to the white people, and the Negroes
now joined forces with the mulattoes. In the battle of two days that
followed the arsenal was taken and plundered, thousands were killed
in the streets, and more than half of the town was burned. The French
commissioners were the unhappy witnesses of the scene, but they were
practically helpless, having only about a thousand troops. Santhonax,
however, issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves who were
willing to range themselves under the banner of the Republic. This was
the first proclamation for the freeing of slaves in Santo Domingo, and
as a result of it many of the Negroes came in and were enfranchised.
Soon after this proclamation Polverel left his colleague at the Cape and
went to Port au Prince, the capital of the West. Here things were quiet
and the cultivation of the crops was going forward as usual. The slaves
were soon unsettled, however, by the news of what was being done
elsewhere, and Polverel was convinced that emancipation could not be
delayed and that for the safety of the planters themselves it was
necessary to extend it to the whole island. In September (1793) he set
in circulation from Aux Cayes a proclamation to this effect, and at the
same time he exhorted all the planters in the vicinity who concurred in
his work to register their names. This almost all of them did, as they
were convinced of the need of measures for their personal safety; and on
February 4, 1794, the Conventional Assembly in Paris formally approved
all that had been done by decreeing the abolition of slavery in all the
colonies of France.
All the while the Spanish and the English had been looking on with
interest and had even come to the French part of the island as if to aid
in the restoration of order. Among the former, at first in charge of
a little royalist band, was the Negro, Toussaint, later called
L'Ouverture. He was then a man in the prime of life, forty-eight years
old, and already his experience had given him the wisdom that was needed
to bring peace in Santo Domingo. In April, 1794, impressed by the decree
of the Assembly, he returned to the jurisdiction of France and took
service under the Republic. In 1796 he became a general of brigade; in
1797 general-in-chief, with the military command of the whole colony.
He at once compelled the surrender of the English who had invaded his
country. With the aid of a commercial agreement with the United States,
he next starved out the garrison of his rival, the mulatto Rigaud, whom
he forced to consent to leave the country. He then imprisoned Roume, the
agent of the Directory, and assumed civil as well as military authority.
He also seized the Spanish part of the island, which had been ceded to
France some years before but had not been actually surrendered. He then,
in May, 1801, gave to Santo Domingo a constitution by which he not only
assumed power for life but gave to himself the right of naming his
successor; and all the while he was awakening the admiration of the
world by his bravery, his moderation, and his genuine instinct for
government.
Across the ocean, however, a jealous man was watching with interest the
career of the "gilded African." None knew better than Napoleon that
it was because he did not trust France that Toussaint had sought the
friendship of the United States, and none read better than he the logic
of events. As Adams says, "Bonaparte's acts as well as his professions
showed that he was bent on crushing democratic ideas, and that he
regarded St. Domingo as an outpost of American republicanism, although
Toussaint had made a rule as arbitrary as that of Bonaparte himself....
By a strange confusion of events, Toussaint L'Ouverture, because he was
a Negro, became the champion of republican principles, with which he
had nothing but the instinct of personal freedom in common. Toussaint's
government was less republican than that of Bonaparte; he was doing
by necessity in St. Domingo what Bonaparte was doing by choice in
France."[1]
[Footnote 1: _History of the United States_, I, 391-392.]
This was the man to whom the United States ultimately owes the purchase
of Louisiana. On October 1, 1801, Bonaparte gave orders to General Le
Clerc for a great expedition against Santo Domingo. In January, 1802, Le
Clerc appeared and war followed. In the course of this, Toussaint--who
was ordinarily so wise and who certainly knew that from Napoleon he had
most to fear--made the great mistake of his life and permitted himself
to be led into a conference on a French vessel. He was betrayed and
taken to France, where within the year he died of pneumonia in the
dungeon of Joux. Immediately there was a proclamation annulling the
decree of 1794 giving freedom to the slaves. Bonaparte, however, had not
estimated the force of Toussaint's work, and to assist the Negroes in
their struggle now came a stalwart ally, yellow fever. By the end of the
summer only one-seventh of Le Clerc's army remained, and he himself died
in November. At once Bonaparte planned a new expedition. While he was
arranging for the leadership of this, however, the European war broke
out again. Meanwhile the treaty for the retrocession of the territory
of Louisiana had not yet received the signature of the Spanish king,
because Godoy, the Spanish representative, would not permit the
signature to be affixed until all the conditions were fulfilled; and
toward the end of 1802 the civil officer at New Orleans closed the
Mississippi to the United States. Jefferson, at length moved by the plea
of the South, sent a special envoy, no less a man than James Monroe, to
France to negotiate the purchase; Bonaparte, disgusted by the failure
of his Egyptian expedition and his project for reaching India, and
especially by his failure in Santo Domingo, in need also of ready money,
listened to the offer; and the people of the United States--who within
the last few years have witnessed the spoliation of Hayti--have not yet
realized how much they owe to the courage of 500,000 Haytian Negroes who
refused to be slaves.
The slavery question in the new territory was a critical one. It was
on account of it that the Federalists had opposed the acquisition; the
American Convention endeavored to secure a provision like that of the
Northwest Ordinance; and the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends in
Philadelphia in 1805 prayed "that effectual measures may be adopted
by Congress to prevent the introduction of slavery into any of the
territories of the United States." Nevertheless the whole territory
without regard to latitude was thrown open to the system March 2, 1805.
In spite of this victory for slavery, however, the general force of the
events in Hayti was such as to make more certain the formal closing
of the slave-trade at the end of the twenty-year period for which the
Constitution had permitted it to run. The conscience of the North had
been profoundly stirred, and in the far South was the ever-present fear
of a reproduction of the events in Hayti. The agitation in England
moreover was at last about to bear fruit in the act of 1807 forbidding
the slave-trade. In America it seems from the first to have been an
understood thing, especially by the Southern representatives, that even
if such an act passed it would be only irregularly enforced, and the
debates were concerned rather with the disposal of illegally imported
Africans and with the punishment of those concerned in the importation
than with the proper limitation of the traffic by water.[1] On March 2,
1807, the act was passed forbidding the slave-trade after the close of
the year. In course of time it came very near to being a dead letter,
as may be seen from presidential messages, reports of cabinet officers,
letters of collectors of revenue, letters of district attorneys, reports
of committees of Congress, reports of naval commanders, statements
on the floor of Congress, the testimony of eye-witnesses, and the
complaints of home and foreign anti-slavery societies. Fernandina and
Galveston were only two of the most notorious ports for smuggling. A
regular chain of posts was established from the head of St. Mary's River
to the upper country, and through the Indian nation, by means of which
the Negroes were transferred to every part of the country.[2] If dealers
wished to form a caravan they would give an Indian alarm, so that the
woods might be less frequented, and if pursued in Georgia they would
escape into Florida. One small schooner contained one hundred and thirty
souls. "They were almost packed into a small space, between a floor laid
over the water-casks and the deck--not near three feet--insufficient for
them to sit upright--and so close that chafing against each other their
bones pierced the skin and became galled and ulcerated by the motion
of the vessel." Many American vessels were engaged in the trade under
Spanish colors, and the traffic to Africa was pursued with uncommon
vigor at Havana, the crews of vessels being made up of men of all
nations, who were tempted by the high wages to be earned. Evidently
officials were negligent in the discharge of their duty, but even if
offenders were apprehended it did not necessarily follow that they
would receive effective punishment. President Madison in his message
of December 5, 1810, said, "It appears that American citizens are
instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in
violation of the laws of humanity, and in defiance of those of their own
country"; and on January 7, 1819, the Register of the Treasury made
to the House the amazing report that "it doth not appear, from an
examination of the records of this office, and particularly of the
accounts (to the date of their last settlement) of the collectors of
the customs, and of the several marshals of the United States, that any
forfeitures had been incurred under the said act." A supplementary and
compromising and ineffective act of 1818 sought to concentrate efforts
against smuggling by encouraging informers; and one of the following
year that authorized the President to "make such regulations and
arrangements as he may deem expedient for the safe keeping, support, and
removal beyond the limits of the United States" of recaptured Africans,
and that bore somewhat more fruit, was in large measure due to the
colonization movement and of importance in connection with the founding
of Liberia.
[Footnote 1: See DuBois, 95, ff.]
[Footnote 2: Niles's _Register_, XIV, 176 (May 2, 1818).]
Thus, while the formal closing of the slave-trade might seem to be a
great step forward, the laxness with which the decree was enforced
places it definitely in the period of reaction.
3. _Gabriel's Insurrection and the Rise of the Negro Problem_
Gabriel's insurrection of 1800 was by no means the most formidable
revolt that the Southern states witnessed. In design it certainly did
not surpass the scope of the plot of Denmark Vesey twenty-two years
later, and in actual achievement it was insignificant when compared not
only with Nat Turner's insurrection but even with the uprisings sixty
years before. At the last moment in fact a great storm that came up made
the attempt to execute the plan a miserable failure. Nevertheless coming
as it did so soon after the revolution in Hayti, and giving evidence
of young and unselfish leadership, the plot was regarded as of
extraordinary significance.
Gabriel himself[1] was an intelligent slave only twenty-four years old,
and his chief assistant was Jack Bowler, aged twenty-eight. Throughout
the summer of 1800 he matured his plan, holding meetings at which a
brother named Martin interpreted various texts from Scripture as bearing
on the situation of the Negroes. His insurrection was finally set for
the first day of September. It was well planned. The rendezvous was to
be a brook six miles from Richmond. Under cover of night the force of
1,100 was to march in three columns on the city, then a town of 8,000
inhabitants, the right wing to seize the penitentiary building which had
just been converted into an arsenal, while the left took possession of
the powder-house. These two columns were to be armed with clubs, and
while they were doing their work the central force, armed with muskets,
knives, and pikes, was to begin the carnage, none being spared except
the French, whom it is significant that the Negroes favored. In Richmond
at the time there were not more than four or five hundred men with about
thirty muskets; but in the arsenal were several thousand guns, and the
powder-house was well stocked. Seizure of the mills was to guarantee the
insurrectionists a food supply; and meanwhile in the country districts
were the new harvests of corn, and flocks and herds were fat in the
fields.
[Footnote 1: His full name was Gabriel Prosser.]
On the day appointed for the uprising Virginia witnessed such a storm
as she had not seen in years. Bridges were carried away, and roads and
plantations completely submerged. Brook Swamp, the strategic point for
the Negroes, was inundated; and the country Negroes could not get
into the city, nor could those in the city get out to the place of
rendezvous. The force of more than a thousand dwindled to three hundred,
and these, almost paralyzed by fear and superstition, were dismissed.
Meanwhile a slave who did not wish to see his master killed divulged the
plot, and all Richmond was soon in arms.
A troop of United States cavalry was ordered to the city and arrests
followed quickly. Three hundred dollars was offered by Governor Monroe
for the arrest of Gabriel, and as much more for Jack Bowler. Bowler
surrendered, but it took weeks to find Gabriel. Six men were convicted
and condemned to be executed on September 12, and five more on September
18. Gabriel was finally captured on September 24 at Norfolk on a vessel
that had come from Richmond; he was convicted on October 3 and executed
on October 7. He showed no disposition to dissemble as to his own plan;
at the same time he said not one word that incriminated anybody else.
After him twenty-four more men were executed; then it began to appear
that some "mistakes" had been made and the killing ceased. About the
time of this uprising some Negroes were also assembled for an outbreak
in Suffolk County; there were alarms in Petersburg and in the country
near Edenton, N.C.; and as far away as Charleston the excitement was
intense.
There were at least three other Negro insurrections of importance in the
period 1790-1820. When news came of the uprising of the slaves in Santo
Domingo in 1791, the Negroes in Louisiana planned a similar effort.[1]
They might have succeeded better if they had not disagreed as to the
hour of the outbreak, when one of them informed the commandant. As a
punishment twenty-three of the slaves were hanged along the banks of the
river and their corpses left dangling for days; but three white men who
assisted them and who were really the most guilty of all, were simply
sent out of the colony. In Camden, S. C, on July 4, 1816, some other
Negroes risked all for independence.[2] On various pretexts men from the
country districts were invited to the town on the appointed night, and
different commands were assigned, all except that of commander-in-chief,
which position was to be given to him who first forced the gates of the
arsenal. Again the plot was divulged by "a favorite and confidential
slave," of whom we are told that the state legislature purchased the
freedom, settling upon him a pension for life. About six of the leaders
were executed. On or about May 1, 1819, there was a plot to destroy the
city of Augusta, Ga.[3] The insurrectionists were to assemble at Beach
Island, proceed to Augusta, set fire to the place, and then destroy the
inhabitants. Guards were posted, and a white man who did not answer when
hailed was shot and fatally wounded. A Negro named Coot was tried as
being at the head of the conspiracy and sentenced to be executed a few
days later. Other trials followed his. Not a muscle moved when the
verdict was pronounced upon him.
[Footnote 1: Gayarré: _History of Louisiana_, III, 355.]
[Footnote 2: Holland: _Refutation of Calumnies_.]
[Footnote 3: Niles's _Register_, XVI, 213 (May 22, 1819).]
The deeper meaning of such events as these could not escape the
discerning. More than one patriot had to wonder just whither the
country was drifting. Already it was evident that the ultimate problem
transcended the mere question of slavery, and many knew that human
beings could not always be confined to an artificial status. Throughout
the period the slave-trade seemed to flourish without any real check,
and it was even accentuated by the return to power of the old royalist
houses of Europe after the fall of Napoleon. Meanwhile it was observed
that slave labor was driving out of the South the white man of small
means, and antagonism between the men of the "up-country" and the
seaboard capitalists was brewing. The ordinary social life of the Negro
in the South left much to be desired, and conditions were not improved
by the rapid increase. As for slavery itself, no one could tell when or
where or how the system would end; all only knew that it was developing
apace: and meanwhile there was the sinister possibility of the alliance
of the Negro and the Indian. Sincere plans of gradual abolition were
advanced in the South as well as the North, but in the lower section
they seldom got more than a respectful hearing. In his "Dissertation on
Slavery, with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of
Virginia," St. George Tucker, a professor of law in the University
of William and Mary, and one of the judges of the General Court of
Virginia, in 1796 advanced a plan by which he figured that after sixty
years there would be only one-third as many slaves as at first. At
this distance his proposal seems extremely conservative; at the time,
however, it was laid on the table by the Virginia House of Delegates,
and from the Senate the author received merely "a civil acknowledgment."
Two men of the period--widely different in temper and tone, but
both earnest seekers after truth--looked forward to the future with
foreboding, one with the eye of the scientist, the other with the vision
of the seer. Hezekiah Niles had full sympathy with the groping and
striving of the South; but he insisted that slavery must ultimately be
abolished throughout the country, that the minds of the slaves should
be exalted, and that reasonable encouragement should be given free
Negroes.[1] Said he: "_We are ashamed of the thing we practice_;...
there is no attribute of heaven that takes part with us, and _we know
it_. And in the contest that must come and _will come_, there will be a
heap of sorrows such as the world has rarely seen."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Register_, XVI, 177 (May 8, 1819).]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., XVI, 213 (May 22, 1819).]
On the other hand rose Lorenzo Dow, the foremost itinerant preacher of
the time, the first Protestant who expounded the gospel in Alabama and
Mississippi, and a reformer who at the very moment that cotton was
beginning to be supreme, presumed to tell the South that slavery was
wrong.[1] Everywhere he arrested attention--with his long hair, his
harsh voice, and his wild gesticulation startling all conservative
hearers. But he was made in the mold of heroes. In his lifetime he
traveled not less than two hundred thousand miles, preaching to more
people than any other man of his time. Several times he went to Canada,
once to the West Indies, and three times to England, everywhere drawing
great crowds about him. In _A Cry from the Wilderness_ he more than
once clothed his thought in enigmatic garb, but the meaning was always
ultimately clear. At this distance, when slavery and the Civil War are
alike viewed in the perspective, the words of the oracle are almost
uncanny: "In the rest of the Southern states the influence of these
Foreigners will be known and felt in its time, and the seeds from the
HORY ALLIANCE and the DECAPIGANDI, who have a hand in those grades of
Generals, from the Inquisitor to the Vicar General and down...!!! The
STRUGGLE will be DREADFUL! the CUP will be BITTER! and when the agony is
over, those who survive may see better days! FAREWELL!"
[Footnote 1: For full study see article "Lorenzo Dow," in _Methodist
Review_ and _Journal of Negro History_, July, 1916, the same being
included in _Africa and the War_, New York, 1918.]