PRO-SLAVERY PREJUDICE
The intensity--perhaps density would be a better word in this
connection--of the prejudice that confronted the Abolitionists when
they entered on their work is not describable by any expressions we
have in our language. In the South it was soon settled that no man
could preach Anti-Slaveryism and live. In the North the conditions
were not much better. Every man and woman--because the muster-roll of
the Abolition propagandists was recruited from both sexes--carried on
the work at the hazard of his or her life. Sneers, scowls, hootings,
curses, and rough handling were absolutely certain. One incident
throws light on the state of feeling at that time.
When Pennsylvania Hall, which the Abolitionists of
Philadelphia--largely Quakers--had erected for a meeting place at a
cost of forty thousand dollars was fired by a mob, the fire department
of that city threw water on surrounding property, but not one drop
would it contribute to save the property of the Abolitionists.
Why was it that this devotion to slavery and this hostility to its
opposers prevailed in the non-slaveholding States? They had not always
existed. Indeed, there was a time, not so many years before, when
slavery was generally denounced; when men like Washington and
Jefferson and Henry, although themselves slave-owners, led public
opinion in its condemnation. Everybody was anticipating the day of
universal emancipation, when suddenly--almost in the twinkling of an
eye--there was a change. If it had been a weather-cock--as to a
considerable extent it was, and is--public opinion could not have more
quickly veered about.
Slavery became the popular idol in the North as well as in the South.
Opposition to it was not only offensive, but dangerous. It was
sacrilege.
So far as the South was concerned the revolution is easily accounted
for. Slavery became profitable. A Yankee magician had touched it with
a wand of gold, and from being a languishing, struggling system, it
quickly developed into a money-maker.
Whitney, the Connecticut mechanical genius, by the invention of the
cotton-gin, made the production of cotton a highly lucrative industry.
The price of negroes to work the cotton fields at once went up, and
yet the supply was inadequate. Northernly slave States could not
produce cotton, but they could produce negroes. They shared in the
golden harvest. Such cities as Baltimore, Washington, Richmond,
Wheeling, and Louisville became centers of a flourishing traffic in
human beings. They had great warehouses, commonly spoken of as "nigger
pens," in which the "hands" that were to make the cotton were
temporarily gathered, and long coffles--that is, processions of men
and women, each with a hand attached to a common rope or
chain--marched through their streets with faces turned southward.
The slave-owners were numerically a lean minority even in the South,
but their mastery over their fellow-citizens was absolute. Nor was
there any mystery about it. As the owners of four million slaves, on
an average worth not far from five hundred dollars each, they formed
the greatest industrial combination--what at this time we would call a
trust--ever known to this or any other country. Our mighty Steel
Corporation would have been a baby beside it. If to-day all our great
financial companies were consolidated, the unit would scarcely come up
to the dimensions of that one association. It was not incorporated in
law, but its union was perfect. Bound together by a common interest
and a common feeling, its members--in the highest sense co-partners in
business and in politics, in peace and in war--were prepared to act
together as one man.
But why, I again ask, were the Northern people so infatuated with
slavery? They raised no cotton and they raised no negroes, but many of
them, and especially their political leaders, carried their adulation
almost to idolatry.
When Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot down like a dog, and William Lloyd
Garrison was dragged half naked and half lifeless through the streets
of Boston, and other outrages of like import were being perpetrated
all over the North, it was carefully given out that those deeds were
not the work of irresponsible rowdies, but of "gentlemen"--of
merchants, manufacturers, and members of the professions. They claimed
the credit for such achievements. There were reasons for such a state
of things--some very solid, because financial.
The North and the South were extensively interlaced by mutual
interests. With slave labor the Southern planters made cotton, and
with the proceeds of their cotton they bought Northern machinery and
merchandise. They sent their boys and girls to Northern schools. They
came North themselves when their pockets were full, and freely spent
their money at Northern hotels, Northern theatres, Northern
race-tracks, and other Northern places of entertainment.
Then there were other ties than those of business. The great political
parties had each a Southern wing. Religious denominations had their
Southern members. Every kind of trade and calling had its Southern
outlet.
But social connections were the strongest of all, and probably had
most to do in making Northern sentiment. Southern gentlemen were
popular in the North. They spent money lavishly. Their manners were
grandiose. They talked boastfully of the number of their "niggers,"
and told how they were accustomed to "wallop" them.
Then there were marriage ties between the sections. Many domestic
alliances strengthened the bond between slavery and the aristocracy of
the North.
In the circles in which these things were going on, it was the fashion
to denounce the Abolitionists. Women were the most bitter. The
slightest suspicion of sympathy with the "fanatics" was fatal to
social ambition. Mrs. Henry Chapman, the wife of a wealthy Boston
shipping merchant who gave orders that no slaves should be carried on
his vessels, was a brilliant woman and a leader in the highest sense
in that city. But when she consented to preside over a small
conference of Anti-Slavery women, society cut her dead, her former
associates refusing to recognize her on the street. The families of
Arthur and Lewis Tappan, the distinguished merchants of New York, were
noted for their intelligence and culture, but when the heads of the
families came to be classified as Abolitionists the doors of all
fashionable mansions were at once shut against them. They in other
ways suffered for their opinions. The home of Lewis Tappan was invaded
by a mob, and furniture, books, and _bric-a-brac_ were carried to the
street and there burned to ashes.
The masses of the Northern people were, however, led to favor slavery
by other arguments. One of them was that the slaves, if manumitted,
would at once rush to the North and overrun the free States. I have
heard that proposition warmly supported by fairly intelligent persons.
Another argument that weighed with a surprisingly large number of
people, was that civil equality would be followed by social equality.
As soon as they were free, negro men, it was said, would marry white
wives. "Do you want your son or your daughter to marry a nigger?" was
regarded as a knockout anti-Abolitionist argument. The idea, of
course, was absurd. "Is it to be inferred that because I don't want a
negro woman for a slave, I do want her for a wife?" was one of the
quaint and pithy observations attributed to Mr. Lincoln. I heard
Prof. Hudson, of Oberlin College, express the same idea in about the
same words many years before.
And yet there were plenty of Northern people to whom
"Amalgamation"--the word used to describe the apprehended union of the
races--was a veritable scarecrow. A young gentleman in a neighborhood
near where I lived when a boy was in all respects eligible for
matrimony. He became devoted to the daughter of an old farmer who had
been a Kentuckian, and asked him for her hand. "But I am told," said
the old gentleman, "that you are an Abolitionist." The young man
admitted the justice of the charge. "Then, sir," fairly roared the old
man, "you can't have my daughter; go and marry a nigger."
But what probably gave slavery its strongest hold upon the favor of
Northern people was the animosity toward the negro that prevailed
among them. Nowhere was he treated by them like a human being. The
"black laws," as those statutes in a number of free States that
regulated the treatment of the blacks were appropriately called, were
inhuman in the extreme. Ohio was in the main a liberal State. She was
called a free State, but her negroes were not free men. Under her laws
they could only remain in the State by giving bonds for good behavior.
Any one employing negroes, not so bonded, was liable to a fine of one
hundred dollars. They could not vote, of course. They could not
testify in a case in which a white man was interested. They could not
send their children to schools which they helped to support. The only
thing they could do "like a white man" was to pay taxes.
The prejudice against the poor creatures in Ohio was much stronger
than that they encountered on the other side of the Ohio River in the
slave State of Kentucky. Here--in Kentucky--they were property, and
they generally received the care and consideration that ownership
ordinarily establishes. The interest of the master was a factor in
their behalf. In many instances there was genuine affection between
owner and slave. "How much better off they would be if they only had
good masters," was a remark I very often heard in Ohio, as the negroes
would go slouching by with hanging heads and averted countenances.
There is no doubt that at this time the physical condition of the
blacks was generally much better in slavery than it was in freedom.
What stronger testimony to the innate desire for liberty--what Byron
has described as "The eternal spirit of the chainless mind"--than the
fact that slaves who were the most indulgently treated, were
constantly escaping from the easy and careless life they led to the
hostilities and barbarities of the free States, and they never went
back except under compulsion.
"O carry me back to old Virginy,
To old Virginy's shore,"
was the refrain of a song that was very popular in those days, and
which was much affected by what were called "negro minstrels." It was
assumed to express the feelings of colored fugitives from bondage when
they had time to realize what freedom meant in their cases, but I
never heard the words from the lips of a man who had lived in a state
of servitude.
I have elsewhere referred to the fact that women were often the most
bitter in their denunciations of the Abolitionists. In the
neighborhood in which I passed my early days was a lady who was born
and raised in the North, and who probably had no decided sentiment,
one way or the other, on the slavery question; but who about this time
spent several months in a visit to one of the slave States. She came
back thoroughly imbued with admiration for "the institution." She
could not find words to describe the good times that were enjoyed by
the wives and daughters of the slave-owners. They had nothing to do
except to take the world easy, and that, according to her account,
they did with great unanimity. The slaves, were, she declared, the
happiest people in the world, all care and responsibility being taken
from their shoulders by masters who were kind enough to look out for
their wants.
But one day she unwittingly exposed a glimpse of the reverse side of
the picture. She told the story of a young slave girl who had been
accused of larceny. She had picked up some trifling article that
ordinarily no one would have cared anything about; but at this time it
was thought well to make an example of somebody. The wrists of the
poor creature were fastened together by a cord that passed through a
ring in the side of the barn, which had been put there for that
purpose, and she was drawn up, with her face to the building, until
her toes barely touched the ground. Then, in the presence of all her
fellow-slaves, and with her clothing so detached as to expose her
naked shoulders, she was flogged until the blood trickled down her
back.
"I felt almost as bad for her," said the narrator, "as if she had been
one of my own kind."
"Thank God she was not one of your kind!" exclaimed a voice that
fairly sizzled with rage.
The speaker who happened to be present was a relative of the author
and a red-hot Abolitionist.
Then came a furious war of words, the two enraged women shouting
maledictions in each other's faces. As a boy, I enjoyed the
performance hugely until I began to see that there was danger of a
collision. As the only male present, it would be my duty to interfere
in case the combatants came to blows, or rather to scratches and
hair-pulling. I did not like the prospect, which seemed to me to be
really alarming, and was thinking of some peaceable solution, when the
two women, looking into each other's inflamed faces, suddenly realized
the ridiculousness of the situation and broke into hearty peals of
laughter. That, of course, ended the controversy, not a little to the
relief of the writer.
If the influence of a great majority of the women of that day was
thrown on the side of slavery, as was undoubtedly the case, the
minority largely made up for the disparity of numbers by the spunk and
aggressiveness of their demonstrations. A good many of the most
indomitable and effective Abolition lecturers were women--such as Mrs.
Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Abby Kelly, and others whose names
are here omitted, although they richly deserve to be mentioned. Of
all that sisterhood, the most pugnacious undoubtedly was Abby Kelly, a
little New England woman, with, as the name would indicate, an Irish
crossing of the blood. I heard her once, and it seemed to me that I
never listened to a tongue that was so sharp and merciless. Her eyes
were small and it appeared to me that they contracted, when she was
speaking, until they emitted sparks of fire. Although she went by her
maiden name, she was a married woman, being the wife of Stephen
Foster, a professional Abolitionist agitator and lecturer. Although
himself noted for the bitterness of his speech, when it came to
hard-hitting vituperation he could not begin to "hold a candle" to his
little wife.
The two traveled together and spoke from the same platforms. They were
constantly getting into hot water through the hostility of mobs, which
they seemed to enjoy most heartily. Foster's life was more than once
in serious danger, but they kept right on and never showed the
slightest fear. The only meeting addressed by them that I attended,
though held on the Sabbath, was ended by the throwing of stones and
sticks and addled eggs.
But if the current of public opinion in the North suddenly turned, and
for a long time ran with overwhelming force in favor of slavery, it
changed about almost as suddenly and ran with equal force in the
opposite direction. The county in which I lived when a boy, that
furnished only one vote for the first Abolitionist presidential
ticket, became a Republican stronghold. It was in what had been a Whig
district, and when the Whig party went to pieces, the most of its
_débris_ drifted into the Republican lines.
On the occasion of one of the pro-slavery mobs I elsewhere tell about,
when a supply of eggs with which to garnish the Abolitionists, was
wanted, and the money for their purchase was called for, the town
constable--the peace officer of the community--put his hand in his
pocket and supplied the funds.
A few years thereafter, on my return to the village after a
considerable absence, I found that I had come just in time to attend a
Republican rally which was that day to be held in a near-by grove.
When I reached the scene of operations a procession to march to the
grove was being formed. There was considerable enthusiasm and noise,
but by far the most excited individual was the Grand Marshal and
Master of Ceremonies. Seated on a high horse, he was riding up and
down the line shouting out his orders with tremendous unction. He was
the constable of the egg-buying episode.