"THE STAR THAT NEVER SETS."
There is little to interest any but the politician in the political
history of the State during the uneventful years of three decades
following the War of 1812. At the next election after the close of the
war the Republican party proved strong enough to elect to the
governorship its candidate, Jonas Galusha, who was continued in that
office for the five succeeding terms. When, in consequence of the
abduction of Morgan, the opposing parties were arrayed as Masonic and
anti-Masonic in the battle of ballots, the Masonic party of Vermont went
to the wall.
When the two great parties of the nation rallied under their distinctive
banners as Whigs and Democrats, Vermont took its place with the first,
and held it steadfastly alike through defeats and infrequent triumphs of
the party until its dissolution. So constantly was its vote given to the
state and national candidates of the Whigs that it gained the title of
"The Star that never sets."
From the adoption of its Constitution[108] in 1777, which prohibited
slave-holding, Vermont has been the opponent of slavery. The brave
partisan leader, Captain Ebenezer Allen, only expressed the
freedom-loving sentiment of the Green Mountain Boys when he declared he
was "conscientious that it is not right in the sight of God to keep
slaves," and set free those taken prisoners with the British troops on
Lake Champlain.
It was natural that among the descendants of those people, the
inhabitants of a mountain land such as ever nourishes the spirit of
liberty and wherein slavery has never found a congenial soil, there
should be found many earnest men ready to join the crusade which, under
the leadership of Garrison, began in 1833 to assail the great national
sin with a storm of denunciation.
They denounced the scheme of African colonization, which had a
respectable following in Vermont, as a device of the slave power to rid
itself of the dangerous element of free blacks, under pretense of
Christianizing Africa while here gradual emancipation should be brought
about; and thus they aroused the antagonism of the body of the clergy,
who had been hoodwinked by the pious plausibility of the plan.
A line of the Underground Railroad held its hidden way through Vermont,
along which many a dark-skinned passenger secretly traveled, concealed
during the day in the quiet stations, at night passing from one to
another, helped onward by friendly hands till he reached Canada and
gained the protection of that government which in later years was to
become the passive champion of his rebellious master.
The star-guided fugitive might well feel an assurance of liberty when
his foot touched the soil that in the old days had given freedom to
Dinah Mattis and her child, and draw a freer breath in the State whose
judge in later years demanded of a master, before his runaway slave
would be given up to him, that he should produce a bill of sale from the
Almighty.[109]
The abolitionists were no more given than other reformers to the choice
of soft words in their objurgations of what they knew to be a sin
against God and their fellow-men; yet they were men of peace, almost
without exception,--non-resistants,--and freedom of speech was their
right. It is humiliating to remember that there was an element in this
State base enough to oppose them by mob violence. An anti-slavery
meeting convened at the capital in 1835 was broken up by a ruffianly
rabble, who pelted the speakers with rotten eggs, and became so violent
in their demonstrations that it was unsafe for the principal speaker,
Rev. Samuel J. May of Boston, to leave the building, till a Quaker lady
quietly stepped forward, and, taking his arm, walked out with him
through the turbulent crowd, which, though noisy and threatening, had
decency enough to respect a lady and her escort. There were like
disturbances in some other Vermont towns where the abolitionists
gathered to advocate their cause, but the intensity of bitterness
against them gradually wore away, and they continued to gain adherents,
till the question of the extension of slave territory became the
all-absorbing subject of political controversy.
In 1820 the representatives of Vermont in Congress opposed the admission
of Missouri as a slave State, though her senators were divided. In 1825
the legislature passed resolutions deprecating slavery as an evil, and
declaring, "This General Assembly will accord in any measures which may
be adopted by the general government for its abolition in the United
States that are consistent with the right of the people and the general
harmony of the States." Ten years later, in the same year that the
anti-slavery meeting was broken up by the rabble in the very shadow of
the capitol, the legislature assembled there declared, that "neither
Congress nor the state governments have any constitutional right to
abridge the free expression of opinions, or the transmission of them
through the public mail," and that Congress possessed the power to
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
In 1841 the anti-slavery sentiment had so far increased in the State as
to take political form, and votes enough were cast for the candidate of
the Liberty party for governor to prevent an election by the people. Two
years later the assembly enacted that no officer or citizen of the State
should seize or assist in the seizure of "any person for the reason
that he is or may be claimed as a fugitive slave," and that no officer
or citizen should transport or assist in the transportation of such
person to any place in or out of the State; and that, for like reason,
no person should be imprisoned "in any jail or other building belonging
to the State, or to any county, town, city, or person therein." When
Congress in 1850, after a fierce storm of debate, passed the odious
Fugitive Slave Law, which made United States marshals, and at their
behest every citizen of the republic, servants of the arrogant slave
power, and withheld from whoever might be claimed as a slave the right
of testifying in his own behalf, Vermont was faithful to freedom and the
spirit of her Constitution. Her legislature of the same year passed an
act requiring States' attorneys "diligently and faithfully to use all
lawful means to protect, defend, and procure to be discharged, every
such person so arrested or claimed as a fugitive slave," and judicial
and executive officers in their respective counties to inform their
State's attorney of the intended arrest of any person claimed as a
fugitive slave.
In many of the Northern States slave-hunting waxed hot and eager under
the national law, but the hunters never attempted to seize their prey in
the land of the Green Mountain Boys, though there were fugitive slaves
living there, and an occasional passenger still fared along the
mysterious course of the Underground Railroad.
Consequent upon the annexation of Texas came war with Mexico,--a war
waged wholly in the interest of slavery extension, and forced by the
great republic upon her younger sister, weak and distracted by swiftly
recurring revolutions.
Having a purpose so opposite to the interest and sentiment of the people
of Vermont, no possible appeal to arms could have been less popular
among them. Yet upon the call of President Polk for volunteers, a
company was soon recruited in the State. Under Captain Kimball of
Woodstock, it formed a part of the 9th regiment, whose colonel was
Truman B. Ransom, a Vermonter, who had been a military instructor in the
Norwich University, and in a similar institution at the South. The 9th
was attached to the brigade of General Pierce, in General Pillow's
division, under General Scott. The army of Americans, always
outnumbered, often three to one, by the enemy, could not have fought
more bravely in a better cause; and the little band of Green Mountain
Boys gave gallant proof that, in the more than thirty years which had
elapsed since they were last called forth to battle, the valor of their
race had not abated. Colonel Ransom fell while leading his regiment in a
charge at Chepultepec; and the Vermont company was one of the foremost
at the storming of the castle, it being claimed for Captain Kimball and
Sergeant-Major Fairbanks that they hauled down the Mexican colors, and
raised the stars and stripes above the captured fortress.[110]
Upon the dissolution of the Whig party, the least subservient to the
slavery propagandists of the two great political parties in the North,
Vermont at once took her place under the newly unfurled banner of the
Republicans,--a place which she has ever since steadfastly maintained
through victory and defeat. In 1856 her vote was cast for Fremont, and
four years later, by an increased majority, for Lincoln. Few who cast
their votes at this memorable election foresaw that its result would so
soon precipitate the inevitable conflict. But five brief months passed,
and all were awakened to the terrible reality of war.
FOOTNOTES:
[108] E. P. Walton, in _Governor and Council_, vol. i. p. 92, says,
"This was the first emancipation act in America."
[109] Theophilus Harrington.
[110] Dana's _History of Woodstock_.