I. The fall of the English aristocracy was hastened by the success of
democracy in America. Nowhere were the masses more willing to obey the
law; and nowhere else were they so intelligent and prosperous. The gains
of the many made the country rich; territory and population increased
rapidly; and Britannia found a dangerous competitor on every sea.
Political liberty and equality were secured by the almost uninterrupted
supremacy of the Democratic party from 1800 to 1860. Twelve presidential
elections out of fifteen were carried by Jefferson and his successors;
and the Congress whose term began in 1841 was the only one out of the
thirty in which both Houses were anti-Democratic.
Political equality was increased in State after State by dispensing with
property qualifications for voting or holding office. Jefferson and
his successor, Madison, refused to appoint days for fasting and giving
thanks, or grant any other special privileges to those citizens who
held favoured views about religion. Congress after Congress refused to
appoint chaplains; so did some of the States; and a national law,
still in force, for opening the post-offices on every day of the week,
was passed in 1810. Many attempts were made by Sabbatarians to stop the
mails; but the Senate voted in 1829, that "Our government is a civil,
and not a religious institution"; and the lower House denied next year
that the majority has "any authority over the minority except in matters
which regard the conduct of man to his fellow-man." The opposition
made by the Federalists to the establishment of religious equality in
Connecticut, in 1816, increased the odium which they had incurred by not
supporting the war against Great Britain. Four years later, the party
was practically extinct; and the disestablishment of Congregationalism
as the state church of Massachusetts, in 1833, was accomplished easily.
The Northern States were already so strong in Congress that they might
have prevented Missouri from entering the Union that year without
any pledge to emancipate her slaves. The sin of extending the area of
bondage so far northwards was scarcely palliated by the other conditions
of the compromise. The admission of Maine gave her citizens no
privileges beyond what they had previously as citizens of Massachusetts;
and the pledge that slavery should not again be extended north of
latitude thirty-six, thirty, proved worthless.
The North was so far from being united in 1820 that it was not even able
to raise the tariff. New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio wished to exclude
foreign competition in manufacturing; but the embargo was too recent
for New England to forget the evils of restricting commerce. The
Salem merchants petitioned for "free trade" "as the sure foundation of
national prosperity"; and the solid men of Boston declared with Webster
that "A system of bounties and protection" "would have a tendency to
diminish the industry, impede the prosperity, and corrupt the morals of
the people."
II. The dark age of American literature had ended in 1760. Before that
date there were few able books except about theology; and there were
not many during the next sixty years except about politics. The works
of Franklin, Jefferson, and other statesmen were more useful than
brilliant. Sydney Smith was not far wrong in 1820, when he complained in
the _Edinburgh Review_ that the Americans "have done absolutely nothing
for the sciences, for art, for literature." He went on to ask, "In the
four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" His question
was answered that same year by the publication in London of Irving's
_Rip Van Winkle_ and _Legend of Sleepy Hoi-low_. Bryant's first volume
of poems appeared next year, as did Cooper's popular novel, _The Spy_;
and the _North American Review_ had begun half a dozen years before.
But even in 1823, Channing could not claim that there really was any
national literature, or much devotion of intellectual labour to great
subjects. "Shall America," he asked, "be only an echo of what is thought
and written in the aristocracies beyond the ocean?"
This was published during the very year in which President Monroe
declared that the people of the United States would look upon attempts
of European monarchs "to extend their system to any portion of this
hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and liberty." Channing was much
interested in the study of German philosophy; but he rested his
"chief hopes of an improved literature," on "an improved religion."
He maintained that no man could unfold his highest powers until he had
risen above "the prevalent theology, which has come down to us from the
Dark Ages," and which was then "arrayed against intellect, leagued with
oppression, fettering inquiry, and incapable of being blended with the
sacred dictates of reason and conscience."
Unitarianism claimed for every individual, what Protestantism had at
most asked for the congregation,--the right to think for one's self.
This right was won earlier in Europe than in America, for here the
clergy kept much of their original authority and popularity. Their
influence over politics collapsed with Federalism. On all other subjects
they were still listened to as "stewards of the mysteries of God," who
had been taught all things by the Holy Spirit, and were under a divine
call to preach the truth necessary for salvation. The clergyman was
supposed to have acquired by his ordination a peculiar knowledge of
all the rights and duties of human life. No one else, however wise and
philanthropic, could speak with such authority about what books might
be read and what amusements should be shunned. Scientific habits of
thought, free inquiry about religion, and scholarly study of the Bible
were put under the same ban with dancing, card-playing, reading novels,
and travelling on Sunday. The pulpit blocked the path of intellectual
progress. Its influence on literature was wholly changed by the
Unitarian controversy, which was at its height in 1820. Still more
beneficial controversies followed.
The trinitarian clergymen tried to retain their imperilled supremacy by
getting up revivals. One of these, in the summer of 1828, was carried so
far at Cincinnati that many a woman lost her reason or her life. These
excesses confirmed the anti-clerical suspicions of Frances Wright, who
had come over from England to study the negro character, and had failed,
after much labour and expense, to find the slaves she bought for the
purpose capable of working out their freedom. She had made up her mind
that slavery is only one of many evils caused by ignorance of the duties
of man to man, that these duties needed to be studied scientifically,
and that scientific study, especially among women, was dangerously
impeded by the pulpit.
That autumn she delivered the first course of public lectures ever given
by a woman in America. Anne Hutchinson and other women had preached; but
she was the first lecturer. The men and women of Cincinnati crowded to
hear the tall, majestic woman, who stood in the court-house, plainly
dressed in white. Her style was ladylike throughout; but she complained
of the many millions wasted on mere teachers of opinions, whose
occupation was to set people by the ears, and whose influence
was stifling the breath of science. "Listen," she said, "to the
denunciations of fanaticism against pleasures the most innocent,
recreations the most necessary to bodily health." "See it make of
the people's day of leisure a day of penance." Her main theme was the
necessity of establishing schools to teach children trades, and also
halls of science with museums and public libraries.
This course was repeated in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
and other cities. Her audiences were always large, but she charged no
admission fee. What were called "Fanny Wright societies" were formed in
many places. A Baptist church in New York City was turned into a Hall
of Science, which remained open for three years, beginning with the last
Sunday of April, 1829. It contained a hall for scientific lectures
and theological discussions, a free dispensary, a gymnasium, and a
bookstore. Here was published _The Free Enquirer_, the only paper in
America which permitted the infallibility of Christianity to be called
in question. The principal editor, Robert Dale Owen, son of the famous
Socialist, claimed to have twenty thousand adherents in that city, and a
controlling influence in Buffalo. Celebrations of Paine's birthday were
now frequent. It was fortunate for the clergy that controversies about
religion soon lost their interest in the fierce struggle about politics.
III. The fame won by Jackson as a conqueror of British invaders in
1815, blinded Americans to a fact which had been made manifest by both
Napoleon and Wellington, as it is said to have been still more recently
by Grant. The habit of commanding an army has a tendency to create scorn
of public opinion, and also of those restrictions on arbitrary authority
which are necessary for popular government, as well as for individual
liberty. Jackson had the additional defect of holding slaves; and it is
probable that if he had never done so, nor even had soldiers under
his orders, he would have been sadly indifferent to the rights of his
fellow-citizens and to the principles of free government. He was elected
in 1828, and proved enough of a Democrat to renounce the policy,
which had recently become popular, of making local improvements at
the national expense; but he was the first President who dismissed
experienced officials, in order to appoint his own partisans without
inquiry as to their capacity to serve the nation. He was especially
arbitrary about a problem not yet fully solved, namely, what the
Government should do with the banks. The public money was then deposited
in a National Bank whose constitutionality was admitted by the Supreme
Court. Its stock was at a premium and its notes at par in 1829; and it
had five hundred officials in various States. Jackson thought it had
opposed his election; and he suggested that the public money should be
removed to the custody of a branch of the Treasury, to be established
for that purpose. The plan has since been adopted; but his friends were
too much interested in rival banks, and his opponents thought only of
preventing his re-election in 1832. They could not, however, prevent his
obtaining a great majority as "the poor man's champion."
The Bank had spent vast sums in publishing campaign documents, and
even in bribery; and Jackson suspected that it would try to buy a new
charter.
He decided, with no sanction from Congress, and against the advice of
his own Cabinet, that the public money already in the Bank should be
drawn out as fast as it could be spent, and that no more should be
deposited there. He removed the Secretary of the Treasury for refusing
to carry out this plan; and obliged his successor to set about it before
he was confirmed by the Senate. To all remonstrances he replied, "I take
the responsibility"; and he met the vote of the Senators, that he was
assuming an authority not conferred by the Constitution, by boasting
that he was "the direct representative of the American people." Webster
replied that this would reduce the government to an elective monarchy;
and the opponents to what they called Jackson's Toryism agreed to call
themselves Whigs. Their leader was Henry Clay; and they believed,
like the Federalists, in centralisation, internal improvements, and
protective tariffs.
Jackson was sustained by the Democrats; but their quarrel with the Whigs
prevented Congress from providing any safe place for the public money.
It was loaned to some of the State banks; and all these institutions
were encouraged to increase their liabilities enormously. Speculation
was active and prices high. That of wheat in particular rose so much
after the bad harvest of 1836 that there was a bread riot in New York
City. Scarcely had Jackson closed his eight years of service, in 1837,
when the failure of a business firm in New Orleans brought on so many
others that all the banks suspended payment. Prices of merchandise fell
so suddenly as to make the dealers bankrupt; many thousand men were
thrown out of employment; and so much public money was lost that there
was a deficit in the Treasury, where there had been a surplus.
IV. These bad results of Jackson's administration strengthened the
Whigs. They had not ventured to make protectionism the main issue in
1832; and Clay had acknowledged that all the leading newspapers and
magazines were against it in 1824. Its adoption that year was by close
votes, and in spite of Webster's insisting that American manufactures
were growing rapidly without any unnatural restrictions on commerce. The
duties were raised in 1828 to nearly five times their average height in
1789; and there was so much discontent at the South, that some slight
reductions had to be made in the summer of 1832; but the protectionist
purpose was still predominant. If the opponents of all taxation except
for revenue had done nothing more than appeal to the people that autumn,
they would have had Congress with them; Jackson was already on their
side; and the question might have been decided on its merits after full
discussion. The threat of South Carolina to secede caused the reduction,
which was actually made in 1833, to appear too much like a concession
made merely to avoid civil war; and this second attempt to preserve the
Union by a compromise was a premium upon disloyalty. This bargain, like
that of 1820, was arranged by Henry Clay; and one condition was that the
rates should fall gradually to a maximum of twenty per cent. Before that
process was completed, the Treasury was exhausted by bad management;
and additional revenue had to be obtained by raising the tariff in 1842.
The Whigs were then in power; but they were defeated in the presidential
election of 1844, when the main issue was protectionism. The tariff was
reduced in 1846 by a much larger majority than that of 1842 in the House
of Representatives; and the results were so satisfactory that a further
reduction to an average of twenty per cent, was made in 1857, with the
general approval of members of both parties. The revenue needed for war
had to be procured by increase of taxation in 1861; but the country had
then had for twenty-eight years an almost uninterrupted succession of
low tariffs.
The universal prosperity in America between 1833 and 1842 is mentioned
by a French traveller, Chevalier, by a German philanthropist, Dr.
Julius, by Miss Martineau, Lyell, and Dickens. The novelist was
especially struck by the healthy faces and neat dresses of the factory
girls at Lowell, where they began to publish a magazine in 1840. Lyell
said that the operatives in that city looked like "a set of ladies and
gentlemen playing at factory for their own amusement." Our country had
seven times as many miles of railroads in 1842 as in 1833; our factories
made more than nine times as many dollars' worth of goods in 1860 as
in 1830; and they sold more than three times as many abroad as in 1846.
Twice as much capital was invested in manufacturing in 1860 as in 1850;
the average wages of the operatives increased sixteen per cent, during
these ten years; America became famous for inventions; her farms doubled
in value, as did both her imports and her exports; and the tonnage of
her vessels increased greatly. Such are the blessings of liberty in
commerce.
Especially gratifying is the growth of respect for the right of free
speech. The complaints by Dickens, Chevalier, and Miss Martineau of
the despotism of the majority were corroborated by Tocqueville, who
travelled here in 1831 and published in 1835 a very valuable statement
of the results and tendencies of democracy. The destruction that year
of a Catholic convent near Boston by a mob is especially significant,
because the anniversary was celebrated next year as a public
holiday. The worst sufferers under persecution at that time were the
philanthropists.
V. In order to do justice to all parties in this controversy we should
take especial notice of the amount of opposition to slavery about 1825
in what were afterwards called the Border States. Here all manual labour
could have been done by whites; and much of it was actually, especially
in Kentucky. There slaves never formed a quarter of the population; and
in Maryland they sank steadily from one-fourth in 1820 to one-eighth in
1860. Of masters over twenty or more bondmen in 1856, there were only
256 in Kentucky and 735 in Maryland. It was these large holders who
monopolised the profits, as they did the public offices. White men with
few or no slaves had scarcely any political power; and their chance to
make money, live comfortably, and educate their children, was much
less than if all labour had become free. Such a change would have made
manufacturing prosper in both Kentucky and
Maryland; but all industries languished except that of breeding slaves
for the South. The few were rich at the expense of the many. Only time
was needed in these and other States to make the majority intelligent
enough to vote the guilty aristocrats down.
Two thousand citizens of Baltimore petitioned against admitting Missouri
as a slave State in 1820; and several avowed abolitionists ran for
the Legislature shortly before 1830. At this time there were annual
anti-slavery conventions in Baltimore, with prominent Whigs among the
officers, and nearly two hundred affiliated societies in the Border
States. There were fifty in North Carolina, where two thousand slaves
had been freed in 1825, and three-fifths of the whites were reported as
favourable to emancipation. Henry Clay was openly so in 1827; and the
Kentucky Colonisation Society voted in 1830 that the disposition
towards voluntary emancipation was strong enough to make legislation
unnecessary. The abolition of slavery as "the greatest curse that God in
his wrath ever inflicted upon a people" was demanded by a dozen members
of the Virginia Legislature, as well as by the _Richmond Inquirer_, in
1832; and similar efforts were made shortly before 1850 in Kentucky,
Delaware, Maryland, Western Virginia, Western North Carolina, Eastern
Tennessee, and Missouri.
From 1812 to 1845 the Senate was equally divided between free and slave
States; and any transfer, even of Delaware, from one side to the other
would have enabled the North to control the upper House as well as the
lower. The plain duty of a Northern philanthropist was to co-operate
with the Southern emancipationists and accept patiently their opinion
that abolition had better take place gradually, as it had done in New
York, and, what was much more important, that the owner should have
compensation. This had been urged by Wilberforce in 1823, as justice to
the planters in the West Indies; the legislatures of Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and New. Jersey recommended, shortly before 1830, that the nation should
buy and free the slaves; and compensation was actually given by Congress
to loyal owners of the three thousand slaves in the District of Columbia
emancipated in 1862. Who can tell the evils which we should have
escaped, if slavery could have continued after 1830 to be abolished
gradually by State after State, with pecuniary aid from Congress or the
North?
This was the hope of Benjamin Lundy, who passed much of his life in
the South, though he was born in New Jersey. He had advocated gradual
emancipation in nearly every State, visiting even Texas and Missouri,
organising anti-slavery societies, and taking subscriptions to his
_Genius of Universal Emancipation_, which was founded in Tennessee in
1821, but afterwards was issued weekly at Baltimore. He published the
names of nine postmasters among his agents, and copied friendly articles
from more than forty newspapers. One of his chief objects was to prevent
that great extension of slavery, the annexation of Texas.
VI. The election of the first pro-slavery President, Jackson, in 1828,
discouraged the abolitionists; and Lundy was obliged to suspend his
paper for lack of subscribers early next year. When he resumed it in
September, he took an assistant editor, who had declared on the previous
Fourth of July, in a fashionable Boston church: "I acknowledge that
immediate and complete emancipation is not desirable. No rational man
cherishes so wild a vision." Before Garrison set foot on slave soil,
it occurred to him that every slave had a right to instant freedom, and
also that no master had any right to compensation. These two ideas he
advocated at once, and ever after, as obstinately as George the Third
insisted on the right to tax America. Garrison, of course, was a zealous
philanthropist; and he was as conscientious as Paul was in persecuting
the Christians. But he seems to have been more anxious to free his own
conscience than to free the slaves. Immediate emancipation had been
advocated in Lundy's paper at much length, and even as early as
1825, but so mildly as to call out little opposition. Insisting on no
compensation was much more irritating; and Garrison's writings show that
his mind was apt to free itself in bitter words, even against such men
as Whittier, Channing, Longfellow, Douglass, and Sumner. He had been
but three months in Baltimore when he published a censure by name of the
owner and captain of one of the many vessels which were permitted by law
to carry slaves South, as "highway robbers and murderers," who "should
be sentenced to solitary confinement for life," and who deserved "to
occupy the lowest depths of perdition." He was found guilty of libel,
and imprisoned for seven weeks because he could not pay a moderate fine.
The money was given by a generous New Yorker; but Garrison's work in the
South was over, and Lundy's was of little value thenceforth. The man who
brought the libel suit was an influential citizen of Massachusetts; and
Boston pulpits were shut against Garrison on his return. He could not
pay for a hall; but one was given him without cost by the anti-clerical
society, whose leader, Abner Knee-land, was imprisoned thirty days in
1834 for a brief expression of atheism which would not now be considered
blasphemous.
Two weeklies, which were unpopular from the first, began to be published
at Boston early in 1831. Kneeland's _Investigator_ was pledged "to
contend for the abolition of slavery" and "advocate the rights of
women." It was friendly to labour reform as well as to scientific
education, and opposed capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, and
legislation about religion; but its predominant tone has been skeptical
to the present day. Garrison was too orthodox in 1831 to favour the
emancipation of women; he was in sympathy with other reforms; but his
chief theme was the "pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition." The
next mistake of his _Liberator_ was the prominence given to negro
insurrection and other crimes against whites. The Southerners were
naturally afraid to have such subjects mentioned, even in condemnation;
and guilty consciences made slave-holders think the danger much greater
than it was. The first number of the _Liberator_ contained Garrison's
verses about the horrors of the revolt which might bring emancipation.
He announced at the same time that he was going to review a recent
pamphlet which he described thus: "A better promoter of insurrection was
never sent forth to an oppressed people." His contributors spoke often
of the right of slaves to resist, and asked, "In God's name, why should
they not cut their masters' throats?" Many women and children were
massacred by rebel slaves in Virginia that autumn; and Garrison promptly
declared that the assassins "deserve no more blame than our fathers did
for slaughtering the British," and that "When the contest shall have
again begun, it must again be a war of extermination." Similar language
was often used in the _Liberator_ afterwards.
Garrison was too firm a non-resistant to go further than this; but
the majority of Northerners would have agreed with the Reverend Doctor
Wayland, President of Brown University, who declared slavery "very
wicked," but declined to have the _Liberator_ sent him, and wrote to
Mr. Garrison that its tendency was to incite the slaves to rebellion.
Of course this was not the editor's intention; but history deals mainly
with causes and results.
The consequences were especially bad at the South. Calhoun and other
Democrats were striving to unite all her people in resistance to
emancipation, as well as to protectionism. They appealed to the
insurrection in 1831, and to the treatment of this subject in the
_Liberator_, as proofs that abolitionism was incendiary; and the feeling
was so intense in Georgia, that the Governor was authorised by the
Legislature, before the end of 1831, to offer five thousand dollars
for the head of the editor or of any of his agents in that State.
Southerners were generally provoked at such comparisons of slave-holders
to thieves as were often made in the _Liberator_ and were incorporated
into the formal declaration made by Garrison and the other founders of
the New England Anti-Slavery Society at Boston early in 1832. Planters
friendly to emancipation were discouraged by Garrison's insisting that
they ought not to have compensation, an opinion which was adopted by
the American Anti-Slavery Society at its organisation at Philadelphia
in 1833. Such protests on moral grounds were of great use to politicians
who opposed any grant of money for emancipation, because they wished to
preserve slavery. The national Constitution provided that emancipation
should not take place in any State which did not give its consent;
and this was much less attainable in 1835 than it had been ten years
earlier.
So fierce was the hatred of anti-slavery periodicals, that many pounds
of them were taken from the Charleston post-office and burned by the
leading citizens in July, 1835; and this action was praised by a public
meeting, which was attended by all the clergy. The papers were printed
in New York, and do not seem to have been destroyed on account of their
own mistakes, but of those made by the Liberator. Southern postmasters
refused after this to deliver any anti-slavery matter; and their conduct
was approved by the Postmaster-General, as well as by the President. The
legislatures of North Carolina and Virginia demanded, in the session of
1835 and 1836, that all such publications be suppressed legally by the
Northern States.
South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama took the same course; and it was
agreed everywhere that abolitionists were to be lynched. Loyalty
to slavery was required of all preachers and editors; no other
qualification for every office, in the service either of the nation
or of the State, was exacted so strictly; other controversies lost
interest; and men who would have gained greatly from the introduction
of free labour helped the slave-holders silence those intelligent
Southerners who knew what urgent need there was in their section of
emancipation for the general welfare.
Garrison, meantime, made both friends and enemies at the North. He had
the support of nearly four hundred anti-slavery societies in 1835; but
some of these had been founded in Ohio by Lundy on the principle of
gradual emancipation, and others in New York by Jay, whose main objects
were repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act and emancipation in the District
of Columbia. Agitation for immediate abolition without compensation was
nowhere active at that time, except in New England. The highest estimate
of its partisans in 1840 was only two hundred thousand; most of them had
already renounced the leadership of Garrison; and there is no reason to
believe that the number of his thorough going followers ever reached one
hundred thousand.
Most of the original abolitionists were church members; and the
agitation was never opposed, even at first, by so large a proportion of
the clergy at the North as of the people generally. Several ministers
joined Garrison at once; 125 enrolled their names for publication as
abolitionists in 1833; and two years later he had the open support of
the New England Methodist Conference, the Maine Baptist Convention, and
the Detroit Presbytery, as well as of many Congregationalists, and
of most of the Quakers, Unitarians, and Free-Will Baptists. Preaching
against slavery was not common in denominations where the pastor was
more liable to be gagged by ecclesiastical superiors.
One reason that this authority, as well as that of public opinion in
the Northern cities, was directed against agitation, was the pressure
of business interests. The South sent most of her products, especially
cotton, to manufacturers or merchants in Philadelphia, New York, and
New England. This region in return supplied her with clothes, tools,
and furniture. Much of her food came from the Western farmers; and these
latter were so unable to send grain or cattle eastward until after 1850,
that the best road for most of them to market was the Mississippi.
The slave-holders were such good customers, that people along the Ohio
River, as well as in Eastern seaports and factory towns, were slow to
see how badly the slaves were oppressed.
Enlightenment on this subject, as well as about capacity for free
labour, was also delayed by prejudices of race and colour, while there
was much honest ignorance throughout the North. What was best understood
about slavery was that it was merely a State institution, not to be
abolished or even much ameliorated by the national Government. The main
responsibility rested accordingly upon the Southern States; and the
danger that these might be provoked to secede could not be overlooked.
These considerations prevented the majority of the Northerners, and
especially the leading members of every sect, from opposing slavery as
actively as they would otherwise have been glad to do.
The most active partisan of the slave-holders was the politician who
knew they had votes in Congress and in the electoral college for all the
whites in the South and also for three-fifths of the coloured people.
The views of the Democratic party about the tariff, the bank, and State
rights had made it in 1832 victorious everywhere south of Maryland and
Kentucky; and its preponderance in the cotton States, as well as in
Virginia, enabled it long to resist the growing disaffection at the
North. The Whigs went far enough in the same course for their own
destruction; and the principle of individual liberty found few
champions.
VII. Politicians and merchants worked together in getting up the series
of mobs against abolitionists, which began in 1833, under the lead of
a Methodist bishop in New York, and kept breaking out in that city,
Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Boston, and less important places, until they
culminated in the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838. After that year,
they were neither frequent nor violent. The worst crime of the rioters
was murdering a clergyman named Lovejoy in 1837 for trying to save
his printing-press. Most of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian
preachers and editors were now doing what they could to suppress the
agitation; but the riots called out no indignation like that which had
poured forth from all the churches in 1828 against Sunday mails.
There was little freedom of speech for unpopular opinions in America
in 1835, when Channing declared that the mob against Garrison had made
abolitionism "the cause of Freedom." There were many readers, even in
the South, for the little book in which he insisted that "Slavery ought
to be discussed." He protested against depriving the slave of his
right to improve and respect himself, and vindicated "the sacredness of
individual man." He was the first to appeal from the Fugitive Slave
Law to that "everlasting and immutable rule of right revealed in
conscience." And few other clergymen gave such help to John Quincy
Adams, who was then asserting the right of petition and of discussion
in Congress. Memorials with a hundred and fifty thousand signatures
had been presented against the annexation of Texas, and in favour of
emancipation in the District of Columbia, when it was voted by all
the Southern Representatives, as well as by the Northern Democrats, in
January, 1837, that all petitions relating to slavery "shall be laid on
the table and no action taken thereon." The ex-President, who was then
a Representative from Massachusetts, protested indignantly, as did other
Whigs, and they continued to plead for the constitutional rights of
the North until 1844, when the gag-rule was abolished. On July 4, 1837,
Adams told the people that "Freedom of speech is the only safety-valve
which, under the high pressure of slavery, can preserve your political
boiler from a fearful explosion." The number of names, including many
repetitions, signed in the next two years to anti-slavery petitions was
two millions.
Emancipation in the District of Columbia was out of the question, if
only because the South chose half the Senate. The North was strong
enough in the House of Representatives to prevent any pro-slavery
legislation; and the annexation of Texas was actually postponed until
1845, in consequence partly of the petitions and partly of remonstrances
from the legislatures of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
and other States. These bodies also protested against the neglect of
petitions in Congress. The subsidence of mobs after 1838 was due to
a general feeling at the North, not only that the rioters were too
violent, but also that the South was too dictatorial in gagging
Congress, in tampering with the mails, in asking Northern legislatures
to suppress public meetings, and in trying to annex Texas.
VIII. On all these points the Whigs were so far in advance of the
Democrats in 1840, as to receive much support from abolitionists. These
last, however, were widely and unfortunately divided among themselves.
Many of the men still called themselves Democrats; for the old party
which had been founded by Jefferson had liberal members, who had
formerly been called "Fanny Wright men," and were now known as
"Loco Focos." A few abolitionists took the Gospel aphorisms about
non-resistance so blindly as to say it would be a sin for them to vote.
Garrison renounced the franchise "for conscience" sake and the slave's;
but it is hard to see precisely what any slave gained by his friends'
refusing to vote for Adams, Sumner, or Lincoln. The most consistent
abolitionists voted regularly, and selected a candidate for his work in
the cause, without regard to his party record.
The Democrats took decided ground in the national convention of 1840 and
afterwards against abolitionism. Their nominee, Van Buren, was then at
the head of a corrupt administration. The Whig candidate, Harrison, was
in favour of free speech and honest government. He had been chosen in
preference to Clay, because of the latter's attacking the abolitionists.
Another slave-holder who wanted to lynch them, had, however, been
nominated by acclamation for Vice-President at the Whig convention; and
the party had no platform.
It is hard to see what ought to have been done under these circumstances
by abolitionists. Some who were afterwards known as "Liberty men" set up
an independent ticket, headed by a martyr to the cause. They had quite
as much right to do this as Garrison had to refuse to vote. He had
hitherto taken little responsibility for the proceedings of the national
society; but when the annual meeting was held at New York in May, 1840,
he brought on more than five hundred of his own adherents from New
England, in order to pack the convention. Thus he secured the passage
of a declaration that the independent nominations were "injurious to the
cause" and ought not to be supported. Garrison has justly been compared
to Luther, and this was like Luther at his worst.
Most of the officers and members seceded and organised a rival society
which did good work in sympathy not only with the Liberty men but with
the Free Soilers; and these parties gained most of the new converts
to abolitionism. In 1847 the _Liberator_ published without comment an
estimate that it did not represent the views of one active abolitionist
in ten; and a coloured clergyman of high ability, Dr. Garnett, declared
in 1851 that the proportion was less than one per cent. Most of the
clergymen who were friendly to Garrison before 1840 were thenceforth
against him. So many pulpits were suddenly closed against the agitators,
that one of them, named Foster, kept insisting on speaking in meeting
without leave in various parts of New England. He was usually dragged
out summarily, and often to the injury of his coat-tails, though never
of his temper. Boston was one of the most strongly anti-slavery cities;
but twenty pastors out of forty-four refused to asked the people to pray
for a fugitive slave who was imprisoned illegally in 1842. Those who
complied had comparatively little influence. The rural clergy in New
England, New York, Michigan, and Northern Ohio, had much more sympathy
with reform than their brethren to the southward, especially in large
cities. Garrison's personal unpopularity in the churches had been
much increased by his violent language against them, and also by his
asserting the injustice of Sunday laws, as well as the right of women
to speak for the slave. His position on these points will be considered
later.
IX. His worst mistake was the demand, which he published in the
_Liberator_, in May, 1842, for "a repeal of the Union between
Northern Liberty and Southern Slavery." This he called "essential" for
emancipation. In January, 1843, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
passed the resolution which was afterwards published regularly in the
_Liberator_ as the Garrisonist creed. It declared the Union "a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell" which "should be immediately
annulled." This position was held by Garrison, Phillips, and their
adherents until 1861. It was largely due, like their refusal to vote,
to indignation at the support given to slavery by the national
Constitution, the Fugitive Slave Act, and some recent legislation
at Washington. Garrison was also confident, as he said at a Disunion
convention in 1857, that if the South were to secede, she would not "be
able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done." Phillips,
too, declared that "All the slave asks of us is to stand out of his
way." "Let no cement of the Union bind the slave, and he will right
himself." It is true that secession brought on emancipation; but
it would not have done so if Phillips and Garrison had succeeded in
quenching love of the Union in the North. That patriotic feeling burst
out in a fierce flame; and it was the restoration of the Union which
abolished slavery. Another important fact is that the chief guilt
of slavery rested on the South. The national Government was only an
accessory at worst. No Northerner was responsible for any clause in the
Constitution which he had not sanctioned, or for any action of Congress
which he had done his best to prevent.
The best work against slavery which could be done in 1843 and 1844 was
to defeat a new attempt to annex Texas. This scheme was avowedly for the
extension of slavery over a great region where it had been prohibited by
Mexico. There would probably be war with that country; and success would
increase the power of the slave-holders in the Senate. One half of its
members were from the slave States in 1844; but annexation was rejected
in June by a vote of two to one; and the House of Representatives was
plainly on the same side, though otherwise controlled by the Democrats.
Public warning of the danger to liberty had been given by Adams and
other Whigs in Congress early in 1843; but little heed was taken either
by the clergy or by the Garrisonists. Both were too busy with their own
plans. Channing died in 1842; and Parker went to Europe in September,
1843. It was not until two months later that the _Liberator_ found room
for Texas. Garrison never spoke against annexation until too late; and
it was scarcely mentioned in the May meetings of 1843 at New York and
Boston, in the one hundred anti-slavery conventions which were held that
summer in Western New York, Ohio, and Indiana, with the powerful aid of
Frederick Douglass, or in the one hundred conventions in Massachusetts
early in 1844. At the May meeting in New York, Foster said he should
rejoice to see Texas annexed; and Phillips exulted in the prospect that
this would provoke the North to trample on the Constitution. Annexation
had been opposed by three candidates for the presidency: Birney, who had
already been selected by the "Liberty men"; Van Buren, who was rejected
soon after on this account by the Democrats; and Clay, who had already
been accepted by the Whigs. All three were formally censured, under
various pretexts, in company with John Quincy Adams, at this and other
gatherings of the Garrisonians. Their convention soon after in
Boston voted ten to one for disunion, and closed on June 1st with the
presentation to Garrison of a red flag bearing on one side the motto,
"No Union with Slave-holders," and on the other an eagle wrapped in the
American flag and trampling on a prostrate slave. Two months later,
and three before the election, this banner was carried through gaily
decorated streets in Hingham, amid ringing of church bells, to a meeting
attended by several thousand disunionists. The Garrisonians thought so
much about getting out of the Union, that they had nothing to say in
favour of keeping out Texas.
Among the few abolitionists who saw the duty of the hour were Whittier
and Lowell. The full force of their poetry was not much felt before
1850; but among the stirring publications early in 1842 was a
_Rallying-Cry for New England against the Annexation of Texas_, which
Lowell sent forth anonymously. It was reprinted in _Harper's Weekly_ for
April 23, 1892, but not in the earlier editions of the poems. Among the
most striking lines are these:
"Rise up New England, buckle on your mail of proof sublime,
Your stern old hate of tyranny, your deep contempt of crime.
One flourish of a pen,
And fetters shall be riveted on millions more of men.
One drop of ink to sign a name, and Slavery shall find
For all her surplus flesh and blood a market to her mind.
Awake New England! While you sleep, the foe advance their lines,
Already on your stronghold's wall their bloody banner shines.
Awake and hurl them back again in terror and despair!
The time has come for earnest deeds: we 've not a man to spare."
If the Whigs had nominated Webster that May, on a platform opposing both
annexation and disunion, they would have gained more votes at the North
than they would have lost at the South. They might possibly have carried
that election; and their strength in the Border States would have
enabled them, sooner or later, to check the extension of slavery without
bringing on civil war. Their platform was silent about Texas, as well
as about the Union; their chief candidate, Clay, had already made
compromises in the interest of the South in 1820 and 1833; he did so
again in 1850; and he admitted, soon after the convention, that he
"should be glad to see" Texas annexed, if it could be done without war.
This failure of the Whigs to oppose the extension of slavery, together
with their having made the tariff highly protective in 1842, cost them
so many votes in New York and Michigan that they lost the election.
Negligence and dissension at the North had enabled the South to set
aside Van Buren in favour of Polk at the Democratic convention. The
party was pledged to annex Texas; and Northern members were appeased
by a crafty promise that all which was worth having in British America,
west of the Rocky Mountains, should be acquired also. The declaration
in the platform of 1840, that the government ought not "to foster one
branch of industry to the detriment of others," was repeated in 1844, as
often afterwards, but it was so cunningly explained away in Pennsylvania
that this State voted for the President who signed the low-tariff bill
of 1846.
The election of 1844 strengthened the influence of the South. Texas was
soon annexed by the same Congress which had refused to do so
previously, and was admitted like Florida, as a slave State, in spite of
remonstrances made by the legislatures of Massachusetts and Vermont, as
well as by two-thirds of the Unitarian ministers.
In March, 1846, Polk's army invaded Mexico; her soldiers resisted; the
Democrats in Congress voted that she had begun the war, which lasted for
the next eighteen months; and the Whigs assented reluctantly. Most of
the volunteers were Southerners, and there was much opposition at the
North to warfare for the extension of slavery. The indignation was
increased by the publication of Whittier's pathetic poem, _The Angels
of Buena Vista_, as well as of that series of powerful satires, Lowell's
_Biglow Papers_, The greatest achievement of literary genius thus far
in America was the creation of _Birdofre-dom Sawin_; and no book except
Mrs. Stowe's famous novel did so much for emancipation.
A foremost place among abolitionists was taken by Parker in 1845, when
he began to preach in Boston. His first sermon against the war with
Mexico was delivered the same month as the publication of the first of
the _Biglow Papers_, June, 1846.
Early in 1847 he spoke with such severity, at an indignation meeting in
Faneuil Hall, that his life was threatened by drunken volunteers. Other
preachers that year in Massachusetts followed his example so generally
as to win praise from the Garrisonians, as well as from the most
patriotic abolitionists; and great effect was produced by his _Letter to
the People_, which showed, early in 1848, that slavery was ruining the
prosperity, as well as the morals, of the South. More about his work
may be found in Chapter V. There we shall see how active the
Transcendentalists were in carrying on the revolt begun by Channing. The
most important victory for liberty recorded in this chapter was that
of 1844 over the protectionists. The defeat of the Garrisonians was
due largely to their mistakes; and there was urgent need of a new
anti-slavery movement on broader ground.