SLAVERY AND ANTI-SLAVERY
Frederick Douglass was so much a part of the Abolition movement from
1838 to the final overthrow of slavery in the United States, that his
career will be the better understood after a brief review of the
condition of the country as affected by the evil during those years.
At the time of Douglass’s escape from bondage in 1838, slavery was the
one great and overshadowing fact in our national life. According to the
census of 1840, the number of slaves in the United States was about
2,500,000 and the number of free colored people about 300,000. The value
of slave-property was upward of two billions of dollars. No other
interest in the United States at that time approximated in the amount of
its invested capital the sum represented in these human chattels. The
labor of these slaves was to a very considerable extent the basis of
American commerce and credit. Not the South alone, but the entire
nation, was interested directly or indirectly, in preserving the
integrity and maintaining the economic value of slave-labor. The mining,
the manufacturing, and the great grain interests of the present time
were unknown and scarcely dreamed of in those early days of the nation’s
industries. Cotton was “king,” and its dominion affected in some way,
and to some degree, the social, political, and economic life of the
republic.
The results of Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin were such as to
check the current of sentiment in favor of emancipation, which had found
expression in the sayings of Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and other
Revolutionary leaders. In his great speech of March 7, 1850, Daniel
Webster said: “In 1791 the first parcel of cotton of the growth of the
United States was exported and amounted to 19,200 pounds. It has gone on
increasing rapidly until the whole crop may now, perhaps, in a season of
great product and great prices, amount to $100,000,000.” According to
the estimates of the United States Census Bureau in its census of 1900,
cotton production increased from 2,000,025 pounds in 1790 to 987,637,200
pounds in 1849, and 2,397,238,140 pounds in 1859. The enormous capital
invested in this industry created a close community of interest between
the planters of the South and the capitalists of the North; hence the
influence of the cotton trade was felt in both sections.
This enormous interest easily dominated the politics of the times, North
and South. The most prominent statesmen of the nation, after 1850, were
either openly committed to policies and measures to protect and extend
the power of slavery, or were silent, since to oppose these policies and
measures meant, in many instances, political extinction. The trend of
all legislation in our national government at this period was directly
opposed to emancipation. Meanwhile, the evil flourished and became more
and more a part of the spirit and blood of our national life. If there
were no slavery in the Northern states, one reason was that slave-labor
had proven unprofitable. In the early days of the institution, the North
was quite as willing to legalize and protect slavery as the South, and
continued to do so as long as it paid and was practicable. The mere fact
that slavery was profitable where climatic conditions were congenial to
cotton raising, increased the demand for both slaves and territory. The
pressure for more slaves and more territory for slavery, was so
persistent, that it constantly became easier to ignore moral and
religious precepts, to set aside the national maxims, and to override
the laws that stood in the way of its extension and power. For example,
the slave-trade was prohibited by national law, yet so little effort was
made to enforce this law, that importations kept the market well
supplied. The acts of Congress, the messages of our presidents, the
utterances of our cabinet ministers, and correspondence with the
representatives of the nation at foreign courts, contain abundant
evidences of the constant concern of our government that nothing should
be done to impair the security of slave-property in the United States.
The acts of Congress by which every addition to our national domain
south of the Ohio River became slave-territory, clearly show this. When
in 1855, a “slaver” was driven by storm to seek refuge in Bermuda, our
Minister at the Court of St. James was instructed that, “in the present
state of diplomatic relations with the government of his British
Majesty, the most immediately pressing of the matters with which the
United States Legation at London is now charged, is the claim of certain
American citizens against Great Britain, for a number of slaves wrecked
on the island in the Atlantic.” The message contains a polite hint that
“neglect to satisfy these demands might possibly tend to disturb and
weaken the kind and amicable relations that now so happily subsist
between the two countries.”
By sanction of the national government, slavery was legalized and
protected at the national capital. The war with Mexico, which resulted
in the annexation of Texas, was followed by the establishment of slavery
in the territory so acquired. It was fostered and defended as a national
institution not only by numerous acts of the government, but by public
sentiment in the Northern states. It had existed before the foundation
of the Union. It had been accepted as a fact by the framers of the
Constitution. As such, it had a legitimate claim, it was urged, to the
protection of the government. It was generally assumed that, on the
whole, the Negro was better off in slavery than as a free man. Though
the Northern people did not favor the extension of slavery, they were
disposed to meet in a spirit of conciliation every demand for more
protection, more power, and more territory for this traffic.
When opposition, not on grounds of expediency but of fundamental right,
began to manifest itself in Northern states by the circulation of
Abolition papers, the alarm of slave-owners was expressed in no
uncertain tones. Some of the governors of slave-states and their
legislatures made urgent demands that such publications be suppressed.
The following is a sample of some of the resolutions passed by the
legislatures: “Resolved that our sister states are respectfully
requested to enact penal laws prohibiting the printing, within their
respective limits, of all such publications as may have a tendency to
make our slaves discontented.”
The messages of the governors of two Northern states, William L. Marcy
of New York, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, aptly illustrate
sentiment in the North at this time. Governor Marcy said: “Without the
power to pass such laws, the states would not possess all the necessary
means for preserving their external relations of peace among
themselves.” Governor Everett said: “Whatever by direct and necessary
operation is calculated to excite an insurrection among slaves, has been
held by highly respectable legal authority an offense against the peace
of this commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common
law.”
In the same year, 1836, the Rhode Island legislature reported on a bill
in conformity with the demands of the slave-states. The significance of
this action is that it was taken fully two months prior to the request
of the Southern states. Thus it appears that the idea of the suppression
of free speech and free publication against slavery was first broached
in a Northern state.
President Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, in 1835 suggested
“the propriety of passing such laws as will prohibit, under severe
penalties, the circulation in the Southern states, through the mail, of
incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to
insurrection.”
The Postmaster-General, a Northern man, serving under Jackson, refused
to “sanction” or condemn the acts of certain postmasters in arresting
the circulation of Abolition circulars, characterized as “incendiary
matter.”
The state of public feeling at this time fully justified the government
and its officials in everything they did to protect slavery, since their
action was sanctioned by a sentiment national in extent and character.
Just how strong was this public opinion in the North may be further
illustrated by the spirit of mob-violence that forms one of the darkest
chapters in the struggle to make this country, in deed as well as in
name, “the home of the free.” William Lloyd Garrison and Benjamin Lundy,
were repeatedly assaulted while they were running a paper in Baltimore
in 1827. The gentle and pious young Quakeress, Prudence Crandall, of
Canterbury, Conn., was arrested and sent to jail for allowing colored
children to attend her school. Her brother, Dr. Reuben Crandall, was
arrested in the city of Washington, thrown into prison on August 11,
1833, and held there for eight months on the charge of circulating
incendiary publications with the intent of inciting slaves to
insurrection. The only evidence against him was that he had in his trunk
some anti-slavery circulars. He died from the effects of his
imprisonment soon after his release.
On the 4th day of July, 1834, an anti-slavery meeting in New York was
made the occasion of a frightful riot. At Worcester, Mass., in 1835, an
anti-slavery speaker, Rev. O. Scott, son of an ex-governor, was forcibly
prevented from delivering a lecture, and his notes were torn up. On the
same day at Canaan, N. H., an academy was demolished, for the reason
that it was designed for the instruction of colored youth. At Boston, on
October 21, 1835, a mob of “five thousand gentlemen” attacked the Boston
Female Anti-Slavery Society and dispersed one of its meetings while its
president was at prayers. At Syracuse, N. Y., in October, 1833, a crowd
of “prominent” citizens broke up a meeting called by Gerrit Smith to
form an anti-slavery society; and in December, 1836, an anti-slavery
meeting at New Haven, Conn., was dispersed by students of Yale College.
At Alton, Ill., on the 7th day of November, 1837, Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy
was shot and killed and his printing press destroyed by a mob. At
Cincinnati, O., in 1836, and again in 1840, mobs of citizens demolished
the printing press of the _Philanthropist_, owned by James G. Birney, an
ex-slave-holder from Kentucky. Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, built
for the free discussion of all questions interesting to the American
people, was burned by a mob in May, 1838, because Abolitionists had been
allowed to hold a meeting there.
But what was perhaps the most heartless of all instances of violence
occurred on the 1st of August, 1842, at Philadelphia. The colored people
of that city had built a fine church and hall in which they were holding
a temperance celebration on the day of the anniversary of British
emancipation. A mob was formed which burned the building, demolished the
homes of the participants, and in a most savage and brutal manner, beat
and maltreated its innocent victims. This riot lasted two days and the
city authorities offered but feeble protection.
Many other incidents of violence directed against attempts to discuss
the slavery question might be recited, but enough have been mentioned to
indicate public feeling in almost every community in the
non-slave-holding States. All these manifestations of opposition to
anti-slavery agitation and action were at first and for a long time very
generally sanctioned by the churches, the schools and colleges, and by
the politicians of the free North. All the forces of conservatism in the
country were, as might have been expected, in favor of preserving the
_status quo_, and scarcely any cause in the whole history of our country
has ever been so unpopular as this Abolition movement. It seemed that
the slave-holders might rest perfectly secure in the assurance that
their interests would be well guarded by their friends in the
free-states, assisted by the natural inertia of the great mass of the
Northern people, who were instinctively opposed to any sudden or violent
change such as the agitation of the Abolitionists seemed to portend.
The inherent weakness of slavery in this country appeared when the very
laws that were passed to sustain and support it served merely to arouse
the public to a real comprehension of its evils. Gradually it became
clear to an ever-increasing number of citizens that it had no place in a
republic. It was out of harmony with the doctrines and principles fought
for in the Revolutionary War, and it did violence to the consciences of
large numbers of men and women, North and South, who, uncontrolled by
prejudice, were free to think and act for themselves. Thousands of
Southern people who felt that slavery was a wrong, emancipated their
slaves; others were moved to treat them with unusual kindness, and still
others held them because they could not help themselves.
Many influences were at work to arouse and quicken the moral sense of
the public and to make it conscious of the issues involved in the
question. Such agencies as the missionary movement, in its effort to
“evangelize” the world; the work of the Bible, tract and educational
societies, the religious awakening of the masses, in response to the
appeals of such eloquent preachers as Beecher, Rice, and Summerfield;
and the new interest in the former teachings of Hopkins and Edwards:—all
these forces, along with the new enthusiasm for social and political
reform, which found expression in the work of temperance and peace
societies and the fight against the cruel treatment of the Indians,
especially the Cherokees, aroused the people and prepared them to take
part in the discussion of public questions, giving them a new sense of
the significance and the responsibility of self-government. This revived
public spirit was aided and advanced by the growing influence of the
modern newspaper press, and of journals dealing with a variety of
subjects other than politics. Each moral and social question came to
have an organ to spread its views. Every one who had a gift for writing
had the opportunity to impress his opinions upon the public, if he could
but get hold of a press and printing outfit. A noted author of that
period says: “No one can comprehend in their real and distinctive
characteristics, the existing agitations of America, if he does not take
into account the new power and changed direction of the public press
constituting a new era in human history.”
With these agencies for the education of the masses, there came into
being the lecture platform. Any man or woman with a talent for fluent
speech and a “cause,” was at liberty to take the rostrum and attempt to
get a hearing. The same writer, above quoted, says: “The railway car of
1838, and the electric telegraph ten years after, were scarcely greater
innovations or greater curiosities than were the voluntary lectures,
free public conventions, and the moral and religious weekly journals
with their correspondence from 1825 to 1830.”
The development of these moral and religious agencies furnished the
masses of the American people with the means of creating a more active
interest in public affairs. Out of these grew that broader knowledge and
more acute moral sense which led them to inquire into the sanctions that
seemed to hedge about and protect the institution of slavery.
It was in such an atmosphere, in which religious enthusiasm touched and
quickened the sense of responsibility of the people in social and
political conditions, that the Abolition spirit grew and became a power
in public affairs. The question of slavery was definitely put before the
people as a political issue in the Missouri Compromise in 1820. During
the debate that followed they heard for the first time, the doctrine of
“immediate and unconditional emancipation of the slave.” Interest in
this new and radical doctrine was immediate and wide-spread. To those
who owned slaves, and indeed to the vast majority of the people, North
and South, who accepted slavery as an established institution with a
legitimate claim to protection from attack, this new doctrine seemed at
once revolutionary and dangerous.
The cry at once went up, “Put down the discussion and silence the
agitation!” It was indeed a question that could not survive debate. As a
matter of fact, the opposition which Abolition aroused was the one thing
that insured its final triumph. Men felt instinctively—it was the
republican habit of mind—that there must be something essentially
unsound in a system that could not tolerate open and free discussion.
Hence it was that every attempt to suppress the agitation defeated its
own purposes. The characters who now began to push to the front in the
ranks of the Abolitionists were men of stern American fibre. Facts,
figures, and arguments began to pile up which showed that this country
could not long exist “half-slave and half-free.” The terms “pro-slavery”
and “anti-slavery” came into the vocabulary of political discussion
during this new conflict. The breach between the forces represented by
these names grew wider and wider as the strife continued. The very
nature of the issue caused a degree of bitterness that has never before
or since been equaled in political argument in the United States. There
could be no such thing as compromise. A test of moral and physical
strength was sooner or later inevitable.
The issues of the contest may be summarized with advantage.
PRO-SLAVERY
The powers and privileges the conservative party sought to maintain and
defend were:
The unlimited authority of the master or owner of slaves.
Abrogation of marriage and the family relation among slaves.
The power to enforce labor without wages.
Incapacity of the slaves to acquire and hold property.
Incapacity to enjoy civil, domestic, and political rights.
Incapacity to make contracts or bargains.
The liability of the slave to be sold like other chattels, and separated
from relatives.
The authorized prosecution of the inter-state slave-trade.
The power of the master to forbid education, and to permit religious
gatherings at his own discretion.
The power of the legislatures of slave-states to prohibit education of
slaves by their masters.
ANTI-SLAVERY
The principles for which the Abolitionists contended were the following:
All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
Slavery, or more properly, the practice of slave-holding, is a crime
against human nature and a sin against God.
Like all other sins, slavery should be abolished unconditionally,
repented of, and abandoned. It is always safe to leave off doing wrong
and never safe to continue in wrong-doing.
It is the duty of all men to bear testimony against wrong-doing, and
consequently to bear testimony against slave-holding.
Immediate and unconditional emancipation, is preëminently safe and
beneficial to all parties concerned.
No compensation is due to the slave-holder for emancipating his slaves;
and emancipation creates no necessity for such compensation because it
is of itself a pecuniary benefit, not only to slaves, but to masters.
There should be no compromise in legislation, jurisprudence, or the
executive action of the government, any more than in the activities and
responsibilities of private life.
No wicked enactments can be morally binding. There are at the present
time the highest obligations resting upon the people of the free-states
to remove slavery, by moral and political action, as prescribed in the
Constitution of the United States.[1]
Footnote 1:
See William Lloyd Garrison—“The Story of His Life Told by His
Children,” vol. 1, p. 408, _et. seq._, where the full text of the
Declaration of Sentiments of the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1833 is
given.
Societies were formed on all sides. On the 10th day of January, 1832,
the New England Anti-Slavery Society was established in Boston. In 1833,
another society was organized in New York City. A call was issued for a
national anti-slavery convention, to be held in Philadelphia, December
4th, 5th, and 6th, in 1833, for the purpose of forming a National
Anti-Slavery Society. Upward of sixty delegates came to this meeting
from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. This was the
beginning of the national anti-slavery movement. Arthur Tappan, a
well-known merchant of New York City, was chosen president. Among the
delegates in attendance were such distinguished men as John G. Whittier,
the poet; Beriah Green, William Lloyd Garrison, Elizur Wright, A. L.
Cox, and William Goodell. After this time anti-slavery societies were
formed in every Northern state, men and women alike being eligible to
membership.
The Quaker element in this anti-slavery movement was strong and
important. Benjamin Lundy was the pioneer Abolitionist and no single
American ever did more for emancipation. In an appeal to the public in
1830, he said: “In a period of ten years prior to 1830, I have
sacrificed several thousand dollars of my own hard earnings; have
traveled upward of five thousand miles on foot and more than twenty
thousand miles in other ways; have visited nineteen states of this Union
and held more than two hundred public meetings, and have performed two
voyages to the West Indies, by which means the liberation of a
considerable number of slaves has been effected.”
The anti-slavery movement was a warfare, but its weapons were those of
peace. Appeal to the people by public addresses and through the medium
of the press, constituted the only method of fighting. Agitators in
behalf of this cause flooded the country with facts, figures, and
arguments. They brought the republic back to the principles of liberty
and justice upon which it was founded. They urged this issue so
persistently that no other question was permitted to equal it in public
interest. They set out with the determination that there was to be no
peace, no ease of conscience, no further prosperity, no national glory
until this question of slavery was settled and settled right. As the
subject grew in interest and importance, it attracted to itself some of
the brightest minds of the country; men who afterward became
distinguished as statesmen, poets, authors, orators. Even men of wealth,
whose natural interest would have inclined them to aid in preserving
existing conditions, joined the ranks. They gave to the movement a
character for respectability and made it a power that must be reckoned
with. The new party demanded a new dispensation, and with such
persistency, upon grounds which appealed so directly to the fundamental
political beliefs of the people, that finally there was not enough
inertia in the nation to oppose its demands.
While these revolutionary forces were gathering strength, the great mass
of the Negro people in the United States were dumb. In the plantation
states, the black man was a chattel; in the Northern states, he was a
good deal of an outlaw.
He was not permitted to share in the responsibilities and benefits of
citizenship sufficiently to be able to make his abilities known and his
purposes respected. “A man without force,” to use Mr. Douglass’s words,
“is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so
constituted that it cannot honor a helpless man, though it can pity him,
and even this it cannot do long, if signs of power do not arise; you can
put a man so far beneath the level of his kind that he loses all just
ideals of his natural position.”