THE END OF ABOLITIONISM
The original and distinctive Abolition movement that was directed
against slavery in all parts of the land without regard to State or
territorial lines, and because it was assumed to be wrong in principle
and practice, may be said, as far as the country at large was
concerned, to have culminated at the advent of the Republican party.
To a considerable extent it disappeared, but its disappearance was
that of one stream flowing into or uniting with another. The union of
the two currents extended, but did not intensify, the Anti-Slavery
sentiment of the country. It diluted it and really weakened
it. It brought about a crisis of great peril to the cause of
Anti-Slaveryism--in some respects the most critical through which it
was called upon to pass. Many of those attaching themselves to the
Republican party, as the new political organization was called, were
not in sympathy with Abolitionism. They were utterly opposed to
immediate emancipation; or, for that matter, to emancipation of any
kind. They wanted slavery to remain where it was, and were perfectly
willing that it should be undisturbed. They disliked the blacks, and
did not want to have them freed, fearing that if set at liberty they
would overrun what was then free soil.
The writer recollects hearing a prominent man in the new party, who
about that time was making a public speech, declare with great
emphasis that, "as for the niggers, they are where they ought to be."
The speaker on that occasion was one of many who belonged to the
_débris_ of the broken-up Whig party, and who drifted into
Republicanism because there was no other more attractive harbor to go
to. One of these men was Abraham Lincoln, whom I heard declare in his
debate with Douglas at Alton, Illinois: "I was with the old-line Whigs
from the origin to the end of their party." The Whigs were never an
Anti-Slavery party. The recruits to Republicanism from that quarter
were generally very tender on "the nigger question," and the most they
were prepared to admit was that they were opposed to slavery's
extension. These men largely dominated the new party. They generally
dictated its platforms, which, compared with earlier Abolition
utterances, were extremely timid, and they had much to do with making
party nominations. Their favorite candidates were not those whose
opinions on the slavery question were positive and well understood,
but those whose views were unsettled if not altogether unknown. When
General Frémont was nominated for the Presidency, not one in ten of
those supporting him knew what his opinions on that subject were, and
a good many of them did not care. Mr. Lincoln was accepted in much the
same way.
It is true that, from certain expressions about the danger to our
national house from being "half free" and "half slave," and other
generalizations of a more or less academic sort, it was known that
Mr. Lincoln was antagonistic to slavery; but as to whether he favored
that institution's immediate or speedy extinguishment, and, if so, by
what measures, was altogether unknown. We now know, from what has been
set forth in another chapter, that at the time of his first nomination
and election, he had very few things in common with the Abolitionists.
He then evidently had no thought of being hailed as the "liberator of
a race." He preferred, for the time at least, that the race in
question should remain where it was, and as it was, unless it could be
bodily transported to some other country and be put under the
protection of some other flag.
He did not break with the Abolitionists, although he kept on the edge
of a quarrel with them, and especially with what he called the
"Greeley faction," a good part of the time. He never liked them, but
he was a shrewd man--a born politician--and was too sagacious to
discard the principal round in the ladder by which he had climbed to
eminence. He managed to keep in touch with the Anti-Slavery movement
through all its steady advancement, but, as elsewhere stated, it was
as a follower rather than as a leader.
While a resident of the slave State of Missouri, I twice voted for Mr.
Lincoln, which was some evidence of my personal feeling toward him.
Both times I did it somewhat reluctantly. On the first occasion there
were four candidates. Breckenridge and Bell were Southern men--both by
residence and principle--and had no claim on Anti-Slavery support. But
with Douglas the case was different. He had quarreled with the
pro-slavery leaders, although of his own party. He had defied
President Buchanan in denouncing border-ruffianism in Kansas. He had
refused to give up his "popular sovereignty" dogma, although it
clearly meant ultimate free soil. The slave-masters hated him far more
than they did Lincoln. I heard them freely discuss the matter. They
were more afraid of the vindictiveness of the fiery Douglas than of
the opposition of good-hearted, conservative Lincoln. In my opinion
there was good reason for that feeling. Douglas, as President, would
undoubtedly have pushed the war for the Union with superior energy,
and slavery would have suffered rougher treatment from his hands than
it did from Mr. Lincoln's. There was another reason why the
slaveholders preferred the election of Lincoln to that of Douglas.
Lincoln's election would furnish the better pretext for the rebellion
on which they were bent, and which they had already largely planned.
They were resolved to defeat Douglas at all hazards, and they
succeeded.
Douglas had been very distasteful to the Abolitionists. They called
him a "dough-face." Nevertheless, quite a number of them where I lived
in Missouri voted for him. Missouri was the only State he carried, and
there he had less than five hundred majority. He got more than that
many free-soil votes. I was strongly tempted to give him mine. Chiefly
on account of political associations, I voted for Lincoln.
When it came to the second election, I again voted for Mr. Lincoln
with reluctance. The principal reason for my hesitancy was his
treatment of the Anti-Slavery people of the border slave States, and
especially of Missouri. The grounds for my objection on that score
will appear in the next chapter, which deals with the Missouri
embroglio, as it was called.
From what has just been stated, it will be seen that the cause of
Anti-Slaveryism had, at the formation of the Republican party, reached
a most perilous crisis. It was in danger of being submerged and
suffocated by unsympathetic, if not positively unfriendly,
associations. It ran the risk, after so many years of toil and
conflict, of being undone by those in whose support it was forced to
confide. Such would undoubtedly have been its fate if, owing to
circumstances over which no political party or other organization of
men had control, the current of Anti-Slavery sentiment had not risen
to a flood that swept all before it.
It is rather a curious circumstance that, at the crisis just alluded
to, the nearest approach to original Abolitionism that was to be
found, was in a slave State. In Missouri there was an organized
opposition to slavery that had been maintained for several years, and
which was never abandoned. The vitality displayed by this movement was
undoubtedly due in large measure to the inspiration of the man who was
its originator, if not its leader. That man was Thomas H. Benton.
Whether Benton was ever an Abolitionist or not, has been a
much-disputed question, but one thing is certain, and that is that the
men who sat at his feet, who were his closest disciples and imbibed
the most of his spirit--such as B. Gratz Brown, John How, the Blairs,
the Filleys, and other influential Missourians,--were Abolitionists.
Some of them weakened under the influence of the national
administration, but not a few of them maintained their integrity. Even
in the first days of the Civil War, when all was chaos there, an
organization was maintained, although at one time its only working and
visible representatives consisted of the members of a committee of
four men--a fifth having withdrawn--who were B. Gratz Brown,
afterwards a United States Senator; Thomas C. Fletcher, afterwards
Governor of the State; Hon. Benjamin R. Bonner, of St. Louis, and the
writer of this narrative. They issued an appeal that was distributed
all over the State, asking those in sympathy with their views to hold
fast to their principles, and to keep up the contest for unconditional
freedom. To that appeal there was an encouraging number of favorable
responses.
And thus it was that when Abolitionism may be said to have been lost
by merger elsewhere, it remained in its independence and integrity in
slaveholding Missouri, where it kept up a struggle for free soil, and
in four years so far made itself master of the situation that a
constitutional State convention, chosen by popular vote, adopted an
ordinance under which an emancipationist Governor issued his
proclamation, declaring that "hence and forever no person within the
jurisdiction of the State shall be subject to any abridgment of
liberty, except such as the law shall prescribe for the common good,
or know any master but God."
The writer entered on this work with no purpose of relating or
discussing the story of the Republican party, in whole or in any part.
His subject was Abolitionism, and his task would now be completed but
for the movement in the State of Missouri, to which reference has just
been made. That manifestation, he thinks, is deserving of recognition,
both on its own account and as a continuation of the original
movement, and he is the more inclined to contribute to its discussion
because he was then a Missourian by residence, and had something to do
with its successful prosecution.