ABOLITION
The Philosophy of Abolition--William Lloyd Garrison--The Civil Status
under the Constitution of 1787--Points at which Slavery Could be
Legally Attacked--Garrison's Methods--The Southampton Massacre--The
Attempt to Suppress the Abolition Movement at the North--Growth of the
Abolition Movement--The Methods of the Moderate Abolitionists--The
Abolition Petitions--The Earlier Method of Dealing with the
Petitions--Beginning of the Conflict over the Abolition Petitions--The
New Method for Dealing with Petitions in the House of
Representatives--True View of the Right of Petition--Mr. Polk's Fatal
Error in Regard to the Right of Petition--The Pinckney
Resolutions--The New Rule of the House of Representatives in Regard to
the Abolition Petitions--The Increase of Petitions, and the
Denunciation of the Pinckney Rule--The Final Denial of the Right of
Petition on the Subject of Slavery by the House of
Representatives--The Abolition Petitions in the Senate--Mr. Rives and
Mr. Calhoun in Regard to the Morality of Slavery--Mr. Calhoun's
Resolutions in Regard to the Political Relations of Slavery--The
Anti-Slavery Petition from the Vermont Legislature--The Abolition
Documents and the United States Mails--The Postmaster-General's Ruling
in Regard to the Abolition Documents in the Mails--Jackson on the Use
of the Mails by the Abolitionists--Mr. Calhoun's Report and Bill on
the Subject--Clay's Criticism of Calhoun's Proposition--The Act of
Congress Protecting the Abolition Documents in the Mails--General
Results of the Struggle over the Right of Petition and the Freedom of
the Mails.
[Sidenote: The ends of the state.]
When a state has fairly accomplished the primal end of establishing
its governmental system, its {243} public policy will be found to be
pursuing, in ultimate generalization, two great all-comprehending
purposes, namely, national development and universal human progress.
Rarely, if ever, will any state be found to have succeeded in so
balancing these two principal objects of its public policy as to make
the resultant of its two main lines of progress follow an unchanging
angle. At one period, the principle of national development will
prevail, even to the point of national exclusiveness; at another, an
enthusiastic humanism will almost threaten the existence of national
distinctions. But in all the convulsions of political history,
described as advance and reaction, the scientific student of history
is able to discover that the zigzags of progress are ever bearing in
the general direction which the combined impulses toward nationalism
and humanism compel.
[Sidenote: The purposes of the state, as seen in the history of the
United States.]
After the humanitarian outburst of the revolutionary period in the
latter part of the eighteenth century had expended its force, the
states of the world veered in their policies toward the line of
national development. The United States, which had been excessively
humanitarian during that period, both in its doctrine of rights and in
its policy, became, in the succeeding period, the first three decades
of the nineteenth century, more and more national in disposition and
in practice, until industrial exclusiveness and race domination
appeared, at the close of the period, to be the sole principles of the
policy of the country.
Had the two elements of this policy been equally, or almost equally,
sustained throughout the whole country, there is little question that
the human purpose, the world-purpose, as Hegel calls it, of state
existence, would have been ignored to a higher degree, and for a {244}
longer period, than it was. But curiously and fortunately, the race
domination in the South produced economic conditions which demanded
trade and commerce with the world, and which finally forced upon the
North the conviction that the cause of those conditions--race
domination, slavery--must be removed, in order to secure the
industrial interests of the North against the competition of the
world's markets. The destruction of that domination must proceed,
however, upon a humanitarian principle, namely, the right of man to
personal liberty. Thus it clearly appears that the two elements of the
national exclusiveness of the United States in 1830 were, in the
peculiar relation which finally obtained between them, preparing the
nation for a new advance in the direction of world intercourse and
human rights.
[Sidenote: The Revolution of 1830.]
In the summer of 1830 the wave of revolution rolled again over Europe.
The rights of man, the brotherhood of man, and the sovereignty of the
people, were the principles which pressed again to the front. While no
actual connection can be established between the Revolution of 1830 in
Europe and the rise of Abolition in the United States, yet they belong
to the same period of time, and harmonize in principle. The impulses
which move the human race, or those parts of the human race which
stand upon the same plane of civilization, are not broken by mountain
heights or broad seas. Their manifestations appear spontaneously and
coetaneously in widely separated places.
Before 1830, indeed, as we have so often seen, slavery in the United
States had been regarded as a grievous evil by most of the great
spirits of the age and country, and schemes for gradual emancipation
had been invented, and, in some slight degree, had been put into {245}
operation. It was, however, the humanitarian outburst of 1830, and the
succeeding years, which represented slavery as a sin and a crime
against the universal principle of human liberty and the rights of
man, a sin which called for immediate expiation by instantaneous,
unqualified, and uncompensated abolition.
[Sidenote: The philosophy of Abolition.]
There is nothing strange about the philosophy of Abolition. It is
simply the idealistic view of the beginning and the progress of human
history. It assumes liberty as the original state of man, condemns
every species of modification of liberty suffered by any human being,
or any class of human beings, as resulting from the unrighteous act of
some other human being, or class or race of human beings, and demands
the immediate discontinuance of the tyranny as the only approximately
adequate satisfaction which can be made to those who have suffered
that tyranny. It is the orthodox, paradisaical view of the origin,
unity, and primal perfection of the human race. It is the literal
interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. It is
thorough-going, radical humanitarianism. Its political principle, in
the language of its chief exponent, was: "The world our country, and
all mankind our countrymen."
Over against it stands the pessimistic view of man and of
civilization, which divides the human race into the few intelligent
and good, and the great mass of the ignorant and vicious, and
considers the permanent subjection of the latter to the former as the
divinely constituted, and therefore the permanent, order of the world.
And between the two lies the true historical view, which regards
liberty, equality, and brotherhood as the products of civilization, as
the final, not the primal, status of the human race, and determines
the character of every stage of development from barbarism to {246}
civilization, not by its distance from the perfect condition, but by
the fact of its advance upon, or its retrogression from, the stage
immediately antecedent.
The latter is, unquestionably, the true philosophy of history, but the
former has its uses as well as its abuses. It contains those forces of
mystical enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and reckless disregard of
consequences so necessary, at times, to drag the world out of the ruts
of materialism and the love of peace. Such was its mission in the
fourth decade of the nineteenth century in American history.
[Sidenote: William Lloyd Garrison.]
If we must give a name, a date, and a place to the first open
appearance of a movement which was a product of the age, that name is
Garrison; the date, the beginning of the year 1831; and the place,
Boston. The character of William Lloyd Garrison, whether noble or
vulgar; his purposes, whether generous or selfish; and the motives
which impelled him, whether narrow and personal or grandly humane, are
not subjects for treatment in a work upon constitutional history.
Constitutional history has to do only with the doctrines of political
ethics and public jurisprudence which he formulated, and with the
means proposed by him, and those who thought and acted with him, for
their realization; and the historian does neither him nor them any
injustice in saying that, while those doctrines are to be justified
from the point of view of an extreme idealism, the means for their
realization, at first only indicated, but later boldly and rudely
expressed, were revolutionary, almost anarchic.
[Sidenote: The civil status under the Constitution of 1787.]
There is now certainly little question that the determination of the
civil status of all persons is, from an ethical point of view, a
matter of national concern, and that that status must be fixed, in
general principle, by a national act. There is just as little question
that {247} the denial of personal liberty to any human being of adult
years does not comport with the civilization of the nineteenth
century. In espousing these principles the Abolitionists were only
prophets ahead of their time, and must be accorded the honor which
belongs to such. On the other hand, it is entirely unquestionable that
the Constitution of the United States recognized to the Commonwealths,
respectively, the exclusive control of the civil status of persons
belonging within their several jurisdictions, and it is entirely
improbable that the Constitution of 1787 could ever have been
established without the guarantees, expressed and implied in it, of
such power to the Commonwealths. There is no question at all that the
slavery or freedom of the negro race within the several Commonwealths
was, under the Constitution of 1787, not only left, as it had been
before, a matter for each Commonwealth to determine for itself, but
that the exclusive power of determination in regard to it was
guaranteed by the Constitution to the several Commonwealths. The
Commonwealths in which slaveholding generally and extensively
prevailed regarded the guarantee as the principal consideration for
their assent to the "compact." The attempt to violate, or weaken, or
even to cast doubt upon, these guarantees appeared to them to be an
attack upon the fundamental covenants of the Union. The Constitution
might, indeed, be so amended as to withdraw these powers and
guarantees from the Commonwealths, by the regular procedure provided
in the Constitution itself; and the general Government was vested by
the Constitution with the general powers of exclusive government in
the Territories, the District of Columbia, and the places owned by the
United States within Commonwealths and used by the general Government
for {248} governmental purposes. But so long as the Constitution
remained what it was, there was no constitutional power in the general
Government to attack slavery in the Commonwealths; and the
slaveholders could certainly claim that, in the exercise of its powers
in the Territories, the District, and other places where those powers
were exclusive, the general Government should act fairly toward all
the members of the Union.
[Sidenote: Points at which slavery could be legally attacked.]
[Sidenote: Garrison's methods.]
Nevertheless, here were legal points of attack for the Abolitionists.
They might memorialize Congress for the abolition of slavery in the
Territories and in the District, and for the initiation of an
amendment which would abolish slavery in the Commonwealths or would
give Congress the power to do so, and they might appeal to the
legislatures of the Commonwealths to demand of Congress the calling of
a constitutional convention of the United States to initiate such an
amendment. But Garrison would have nothing to do with the
Constitution, or with existing legal methods. He denounced the
Constitution, "as a covenant with death and an agreement with hell,"
and declared that he wanted "no union with slaveholders." His violent
language, his repudiation of vested rights and constitutional
agreements, and his fanatical disregard of other men's opinions and
feelings, led the people both of the North and the South to believe
that his methods were incendiary and his morals loose; that he and his
co-workers were planning and plotting slave insurrection, and thereby
the wholesale massacre of slaveholders; and that he and they were
endeavoring to attain, through violence and anarchy, a leadership
which they could not otherwise reach.
[Sidenote: The Southampton massacre.]
In August of 1831, a slave insurrection broke out in Southampton
County, Va., under the leadership of a {249} negro named Nat Turner,
and more than sixty white persons, most of them women and children,
were massacred in cold blood. The Southerners said, no doubt believed,
that the insurrection was incited by the Abolitionists in the North.
Governor Floyd, of Virginia, declared, in his message to the
legislature upon the subject, that there was ample proof of it in the
documents accompanying the message. The great mass of the people at
the North believed the same thing. The Abolitionist historians assert,
on the contrary, that there was no connection between the work of the
Abolitionists and this event. We shall probably never know whether
there was or not. This much we can say, that the radical character of
the Abolition doctrines and the violence of the language in which they
were expressed--not so much before as after this event,
indeed--produced the universal feeling, both in the North and in the
South, that these doctrines and this event were in perfect harmony,
and that the latter might very naturally be the outcome of the former.
The moral sentiment of the North was not prepared for the destruction
of slavery by any such means. It considered these methods as
containing ten times more evil and barbarism than slavery itself. It
is just to say that what appeared to be the methods of the
Abolitionists were revolting to the moral feelings of all the decent
people of the North, and to ninety-nine one-hundredths of all the
people of the North, while the Southerners saw in them nothing but the
destruction of all law and order, the plunder of their property, the
burning of their firesides, and the massacre of their families. The
pronounced and determined manner in which the people of the North went
about the work of suppressing the agitation occasioned by the
Abolitionists is ample evidence to any sane mind that the indignation
of a {250} righteous conscience was fully aroused, and not the fury of
a guilty conscience.
[Sidenote: The attempt to suppress the Abolition movement at the
North.]
The details of the breaking up of the Abolition meetings and of the
destruction of the Abolition printing-presses by the citizens of the
Northern Commonwealths, as well as those of the Southampton massacre,
may be passed over, in a work like this, with a single remark that
only one person, the Rev. Mr. Lovejoy, was murdered in these
collisions; that this happened under circumstances of some
aggravation; and that, if the excitement at the South over the
massacre of sixty-one innocent persons was out of proportion with the
event, then not too much should be made out of the killing of a single
person, who was not entirely guiltless on his part of giving
provocation.
The things of importance to the student of constitutional history in
connection with these events are the increase of the Abolitionists in
number, their organization into societies, the dissatisfaction of the
Southerners with the unofficial, merely popular, way of dealing with
the agitation at the North, and their demands upon the governments of
the Northern Commonwealths to deal with the Abolitionists through the
processes of their criminal law.
So long as men only talk and write, it is the impulse of our
Anglo-Saxon character to place no further restraint upon them than the
law of slander and libel of private character imposes, no matter what
may be, or may be thought to be, the ultimate consequences of acting
according to what they may say or write. To deny this privilege to
anybody appears like a deprivation of the liberty of speech and of the
press, appears like persecution. There is no country in the world in
which the making of martyrs is an easier procedure than in {251} the
United States. Persecution is the soil in which new movements grow
best, no matter what may be the character of the movement.
[Sidenote: Growth of the Abolition movement.]
In a single year from the date of the first number of Garrison's
newspaper, _The Liberator_, that is, in January of 1832, the New
England Anti-slavery Society was formed, and in December of 1833 the
American Anti-slavery Society was organized, which soon established
branches in many quarters. The exaggerated demands of the Southerners,
that the Northern Commonwealths should forbid Abolition agitation by
law, thus identifying the interests of slavery with the denial of the
freedom of speaking and writing in the Northern Commonwealths, helped
greatly to swell the ranks of the Abolitionists, and to mollify public
opinion in the North against them.
[Sidenote: The methods of the moderate Abolitionists.]
The new Abolitionists were naturally of a more moderate type than
Garrison, and most of them would listen only to regular legal methods
for the accomplishment of their purposes. The quickening of the public
opinion in the North, the conviction of the slaveholders themselves of
the error, if not the sin, of slavery, and the appeal to the
Government to do all within its constitutional powers against slavery,
were the only means which many of them were willing to employ. Their
petitions to Congress, and the transmission of their literature of
Abolition to the Southerners through the United States mails, brought
the whole question of their rights and purposes before the Government,
and before the nation, for which that Government was bound to act with
impartial justice to all its parts.
[Sidenote: The Abolition petitions.]
Petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia had
been sent to Congress, generally from {252} Quaker sources, almost
from the day that the capital of the country was established there,
but they were not numerous and were not pushed by any anti-slavery
organization. In the session of 1826-27, a petition from citizens of
Baltimore, probably instigated by Benjamin Lundy, was presented, which
contained the same prayer; and in the session of 1827-28, one of like
tenor from citizens of the District itself was presented. Such
petitions were usually read and referred to the committee on the
District. They were irritating to the slaveholders from the first, but
it was not until after the excitement of the Southampton massacre that
they were angrily resented as an interference with the domestic
institutions of the slaveholding Commonwealths.
It was in the session of 1831-32, that the first mutterings of the
petition storm were heard. On December 12th, 1831, Mr. John Quincy
Adams presented, in the House of Representatives, fifteen petitions
from sundry inhabitants of Pennsylvania, the chief prayer of all of
which was for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
Mr. Adams said that he would give no countenance to that prayer, but
that there was a prayer in the petitions for the abolition of the
slave-trade in the District, which, he thought, might properly be
considered, and he moved the reference of the petitions, for this
purpose, to the regular committee of the House for the District.
There was in this little to indicate the terrible earnestness which
Mr. Adams later displayed in behalf of the Abolition petitions. He
seemed at this time to be annoyed at being asked to present them, and
to feel that there were superior moral reasons why a slavery agitation
should not be excited within the halls of Congress. But all this was
soon to change. Mr. Adams's advance {253} toward radical Abolitionism
is as marked a feature of the struggle over the right of petition as
Mr. Calhoun's declaration of the righteousness of slavery.
[Sidenote: The earlier method of dealing with the petitions.]
The committee on the District reported, on December 19th, that as the
District was composed of cessions of territory from Maryland and
Virginia, it would, in the opinion of the members of the committee, be
unwise, if not unjust, for Congress to interfere in the question of
the relation of slave to master in the District, until Virginia and
Maryland should take steps to eradicate the evil from their respective
territories. This report seemed to settle the question for the
session, and no more petitions appeared in either House.
In the middle of the next session, Mr. Hiester, of Pennsylvania,
presented a petition to the House of Representatives from sundry
citizens of Pennsylvania praying for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia. This was again a Quaker petition, as were the
petitions presented by Mr. Adams. Mr. Hiester moved to refer the
petition to the committee on the District, and Mr. Mason, of Virginia,
rashly called for the yeas and nays, which opened the question to
debate. Mr. Adams immediately pointed out this fact to Mr. Mason, and
advised him to withdraw his motion, which advice Mr. Mason wisely
adopted. The petition went to the Committee, and nothing further was
heard of it.
It was first in the session of 1833-34, that petitions for the
abolition of slavery in the District from others than Quakers,
presumably from the members of the new anti-slavery societies,
appeared in both Houses of Congress. Those presented in the Senate
were referred to the committee of the Senate for the District, and
nothing more was heard of them. Those presented in the House of
Representatives were dealt with in the same manner.
{254} It was not until the session of 1834-35, that the first real
note of the conflict was sounded. On January 26th, 1835, Mr. Dickson,
of New York, presented several petitions praying for the abolition of
the slave-trade and of slavery in the District. They were laid over
until February 2nd, when Mr. Dickson called them up, made a rather
irritating speech, in which he said that the committee on the District
had smothered all such petitions referred to it, and moved the
reference of those offered by him to a select committee.
Mr. Chinn, of Virginia, the chairman of the regular committee on the
District, resented Mr. Dickson's rude assault, and moved to lay the
petitions and Mr. Dickson's motion on the table. The House voted Mr.
Chinn's motion by a large majority.
[Sidenote: Beginning of the conflict over the Abolition petitions.]
At length, in the session of 1835-36, the storm broke in all its fury,
in both the Senate and the House. It began in the House, December
16th, 1835, upon the presentation of a petition, containing the usual
prayer in regard to slavery in the District, by Mr. Fairfield, of
Maine. Mr. Cramer, of New York, moved to lay the petition on the
table, and the motion was voted. Mr. Fairfield immediately presented
another petition of like purport, and himself moved that it be laid
upon the table. Mr. Boon, of Indiana, asked that the petition be read,
which was done. Thereupon Mr. Slade, of Vermont, moved that it be
printed. This meant, of course, that Mr. Slade was determined to have
the slavery question agitated in Congress, if he could. Upon him
rather than upon Mr. Adams rests the honor, or the blame, whichever it
may be, of provoking the excitement over the Abolition petitions, and
of upholding the right of petition in the most extreme degree.
The House first voted to lay the petition on the table. {255} The
Speaker, Mr. James K. Polk, then put Mr. Slade's motion to print.
Whereupon Mr. Slade attempted to debate the whole question of slavery
in the District under the motion. The Speaker ruled that the contents
of the petition could not be debated under the motion to print. Mr.
Vanderpoel, of New York, then moved to lay Mr. Slade's motion on the
table, and the House voted to do so by a large majority.
[Sidenote: Mr. Hammond's motion involving the denial of the right of
petition.]
Two days later the play was on again. Mr. Jackson, of Massachusetts,
presented a petition from sundry citizens of Massachusetts, containing
the usual prayer, and moved its reference to a select committee.
Whereupon Mr. Hammond, South Carolina, moved that the petition should
not be received. This was the ultra-Southern position in regard to the
anti-slavery petitions, and Mr. Hammond's enunciation of it in the
House antedates Mr. Calhoun's in the Senate by more than a fortnight.
The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to assemble
peaceably and petition the Government for redress of grievances. The
right to petition certainly includes the right to have the petitions
heard by the body petitioned. If the body refuses to receive the
petition, it prevents its being heard, and by preventing its being
heard it makes the right itself a mockery. On the other hand, the
Constitution vests in each House of Congress the power to make its own
rules of procedure. This power must, of course, be so used as not to
violate any other clause of the Constitution. Under this power,
however, each House may and should protect itself against all
obstacles thrown by outsiders in the way of the discharge of its
duties in legislating for the country. If any number of people
undertake, by an abuse of the right of petition, to obstruct the
legitimate work of the Congress for the whole people, each House {256}
certainly has the right to meet this attempt in any way which will not
deny the right of petition, the right of any one or any number of the
people to be heard in asking for a redress of grievances.
[Sidenote: The new method for dealing with petitions in the House of
Representatives.]
Down to 1834, the custom of procedure in Congress had been to receive,
hear, and refer all petitions. That was going one step farther than
was required by the constitutional right of petition; still it was the
regular course, and such men as Mr. Adams thought it unwise to depart
from the custom in the case of the Abolition petitions. At any rate,
Mr. Hammond's motion was a new proposition. The Speaker said that he
was "not aware that such a motion had ever been sustained by the
former practice of the House," and appeared to rule Mr. Hammond's
motion out of order. A confused wrangle ensued over the attitude
assumed by the Speaker, during which Mr. Hammond made a motion to
reject the petition, and the Speaker, becoming confused by the two
motions, the one not to receive, and the other to reject, and knowing
that the House could of course reject the prayer of a petition,
yielded to the representations of Mr. Hammond, and put Mr. Hammond's
motion not to _receive_ the petition to the House. The House voted not
to refuse to receive the petition, but the ruling of the Speaker in
putting the motion implied that the House possessed the power to
refuse to receive, that is, to refuse to hear, a petition. Another
confused wrangle ensued over the question whether the House had voted
merely not to refuse to receive the petition, or had voted to consider
its contents at once. After a day of heated debate and three days of
adjournment, during which excited feelings were somewhat calmed, the
House reversed all former action, and voted to lay the petition and
all the motions relating to it on the table.
{257} [Sidenote: True view of the right of petition.]
Another petition, which, during this wrangle had been inadvertently
referred to the committee on the District, was now recalled by a
motion to reconsider the vote of reference. It was upon this motion
that Mr. Adams made his first great appeal for the right of petition.
As we have seen, his view before this was that petitions must be
received, heard, and referred. In this speech, however, he indicated
that there should be a report from the committee, and a vote upon the
report. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, met Mr. Adams' assertions quite
successfully, and showed conclusively that, if the right of petition
should be interpreted to reach any farther than the right to have the
petition received and heard, it would so modify the constitutional
right of the House to establish its own rules of procedure as to put
it in the power of a few determined obstructionists outside the House,
acting with a single member of the House, to prevent the House from
doing anything but consider petitions upon a single subject,
sacrificing thus the interests of the whole people to the obstinacy of
a small number of the people.
[Sidenote: The power of Congress over slavery in the District of
Columbia.]
Mr. Jones' argument was so sound and rational that it would probably
have settled the minds of almost all of the members in regard to the
complicated questions of the right of petition, and the powers of the
House over its rules of procedure, had not Mr. Granger, of New York,
and Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, thrown another firebrand into the
House during this debate, in the form of an intimation that Congress
had the constitutional power to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia. The Southerners now advanced to the position of denying that
power to Congress, and Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in a long and violent
speech, demanded that Congress {258} should pass a resolution
disclaiming the possession of any such power. Mr. Slade immediately
accepted the challenge of Mr. Wise, and delivered an anti-slavery
speech in reply, such as had never before been heard upon the floors
of Congress. He not only vindicated the power of Congress over the
question of slavery in the District, but he discussed the whole
question of slavery upon its merits. His words were simply a
declaration of relentless war upon slavery in the halls of Congress.
They created indescribable consternation in all parts of the House,
and roused the resentment and anger of the slaveholders to a veritable
fury. In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Garland, of Virginia, gained
the Speaker's recognition, and made a good argument against some of
Mr. Slade's more radical statements. So soon as he had finished, Mr.
Mann, of New York, moved to stop the debate with the previous
question. This was voted, and the Speaker then put the motion for the
reconsideration of the reference of the petition, under which motion
this debate had proceeded. This was voted, and immediately the motion
was made to lay the recalled petition, with the reconsidered motion to
refer it, on the table. This was voted by a majority of more than two
to one.
Evidently the House thought that, in receiving and hearing the
petitions and then laying them on the table, it had found the solution
of the question, which neither violated the right of petition in the
people, nor encroached upon the power of the House over its rules of
procedure, nor opened the way for anti-slavery agitation in Congress.
[Sidenote: Mr. Polk's fatal error in regard to the right of petition.]
It would have been wise for the slaveholders to have left this
solution of the question undisturbed, but they did not see it so. On
January 4th, 1836, Mr. Adams presented a petition from sundry citizens
of {259} Massachusetts containing the usual prayer, and said that "in
conformity with the course heretofore adopted, he should move that the
petition, without reading, be laid on the table." Mr. Patton
interrupted Mr. Adams with an inquiry addressed to the Speaker as to
whether the petition had been received by the House, and the Speaker
replied that it had not. He said that, upon looking up the
authorities, he "had formed the opinion that the first question to be
decided, upon the motion of a member, was whether the petition be
received or not." The Speaker, Mr. Polk, had now come out of his
uncertainty about the right of petition including the reception of the
petition by the House, as a constitutional obligation, and now
definitely denied that the right of petition included the right to
have the petition received by the House. This was a fatal move, a
fatal mistake upon his part. The object professedly sought by all
parties, except such Abolitionists as Mr. Slade, was the prevention of
agitation upon the slavery question in the halls of Congress. Whether
all were sincere in this profession is questionable. It had been
insinuated that there were agitators upon this question from both
sections of the country, who were disingenuously claiming to be
classed with the maintainers of peace. It does really seem that the
innuendo was justified as to certain of the Southerners by the
position now assumed by Mr. Patton and Mr. Polk, and then by Mr.
Glascock, who, immediately after the ruling of the Speaker, moved that
this petition be not received. While Mr. Adams, who sincerely believed
that reference as well as reception was a necessary consequence of the
right of petition, had accommodated himself to the decision which the
House had made a fortnight before, these Southern gentlemen were now
proposing to drive the House from {260} the solid middle ground, then
occupied, toward a position which the majority considered to be an
encroachment upon the constitutional right of petition, a movement
upon their part which was certain, and known by all to be certain, to
provoke an excited debate upon the question of slavery. It may be that
they thought the refusal to receive one of these anti-slavery
petitions would prevent any more from being presented, and that it was
better to have it out once for all than to be continually receiving,
and listening to the reading of, these petitions. If so, they were
wofully mistaken.
[Sidenote: Mr. Adams' futile attempt to prevent slavery agitation in
Congress.]
Mr. Adams now made one more effort to preserve the Southerners against
the consequences of their own folly. He undertook to arrest the debate
by calling for the application of the forty-fifth rule of the House,
which required that no petition should be debated or decided on the
day of its presentation. But the Speaker now decided that this rule
could not apply to a petition until it had been received. The gates of
Janus were flung wide open, and the House went into an agitation upon
the subject, to which all that had gone before was only a prelude. The
struggle lasted for more than four months, during which period
petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District, signed by over
thirty thousand persons, were poured into the House. The slavery
question was at last brought before the people of the United States in
a way most highly satisfactory to the most radical Abolitionist, and
no matter what the immediate compromise upon the subject might be, it
was evident to all farseeing minds then that a death-blow had been
struck at slavery.
[Sidenote: The Pinckney resolutions.]
There is not space in this work to recount the scenes enacted on the
floor of the House during these four exciting months, or even to give
a resume of the debate. {261} The conflict was ended for the moment by
the adoption, on May 25th (1836), of a series of resolutions reported
by a committee appointed for the purpose, of which Mr. Pinckney, of
South Carolina, was the chairman. These resolutions provided: "That
Congress possesses no constitutional authority to interfere in any way
with the institution of slavery in any of the States of this
Confederacy; that Congress ought not to interfere with slavery in the
District of Columbia; and whereas it is extremely important and
desirable that the agitation of this subject should be finally
arrested, for the purpose of restoring tranquillity to the public
mind, ... that all petitions, memorials, propositions, or papers,
relating in any way, or to any extent whatsoever, to the subject of
slavery, or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being printed or
referred, be laid upon the table, and that no further action whatever
shall be had thereon."
[Sidenote: The new rule of the House of Representatives in regard to
the Abolition petitions.]
The solution thus reached by the House of the question of the power of
the House to control its procedure, over against the right of a number
of individuals to excite interminable discussions and paralyze the
business of the House by flooding it with petitions upon one and the
same subject, was the laying of all such petitions on the table _as a
rule of the House_.
Of course this rule must be readopted at the beginning of each
session, and a debate upon the readoption might be thus precipitated,
but, so long as a majority supported the rule, the previous question
could be voted after giving a reasonable opportunity to discuss the
question of readoption, and such discussion was then not likely to be
renewed during the session. It was possible also for petitions to be
{262} presented, at the beginning of the session, before the
readoption of the rule, and these could be disposed of only by a
special vote in each case to lay upon the table. There were thus still
opportunities for the Abolitionists to cause the House to resolve
itself into something more like a bear-garden than an assembly of
Witan, as was evident from the scenes which were enacted on February
6th, 1837, when Mr. Adams came into the House with a petition in
regard to slavery signed by some twenty slaves, and asked the Speaker
if it came under the rule for laying such petitions on the table.
Everybody supposed that the petition contained the usual prayer for
the abolition of slavery, and that the Abolitionists had incited the
slaves to the act. Mr. Adams allowed the excitement produced by this
supposition to rage for a time, and then coolly and derisively
informed the House that the prayer of the petition was not for
abolition but against it. The members now felt that Mr. Adams was
playing with the peace, order, and dignity of the House in a
scandalous way, and for several days the question of censuring him was
considered, but the matter was finally disposed of by a resolution
declaring: "That slaves do not possess the right of petition secured
to the people of the United States by the Constitution."
At the beginning of the next session, that of 1837-38, Mr. Slade
seized the opportunity to present an abolition petition before the
re-enactment of the Pinckney rule, and to provoke a debate on the
subject of slavery. He was substantially foiled, however, by a vote to
adjourn, and, upon reassembly, by a suspension of the rules and a
re-enactment of the resolution to lay everything in reference to
slavery on the table. This rule covered all matters relating to
slavery in the Territories as well as in the Commonwealths and the
District.
{263} [Sidenote: The increase of petitions, and the denunciation of
the Pinckney rule.]
The more the House did to discourage the petitions the more they
increased. In two years from the adoption of the Pinckney resolutions
the number of petitioners was tenfold greater than it was before their
enactment. At the same time the legislatures of the New England
Commonwealths were passing resolutions declaring the rule of the House
of Representatives in regard to the abolition petitions to be a
violation of the people's constitutional right, and also declaring
that Congress possessed the power to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia.
[Sidenote: The final denial of the right of petition on the subject of
Slavery by the House of Representatives.]
To meet these demonstrations of increasing strength and increasing
determination on the part of the Abolitionists, the House not only
repeated its rule, but made it more stringent, until, at last,
irritated beyond measure at the persistence of the petitioners, it
took the fatal step, and, on January 8th, 1840, enacted as a standing
rule of the House: "That no petition, memorial, resolution, or other
paper, praying the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
or any State or Territory, or the slave-trade between the States or
Territories of the United States in which it now exists, _shall be
received by this House, or entertained in any way whatever_."
At last the House had encroached upon the most essential part of the
right of petition, the right to have the petition heard. The moderate
men of the South and twenty-eight members from the North had given way
before the radical men of the South, and had fallen into the ranks
under their lead. The Southern radicals thought that they had won a
great victory, but it was not so. They had only identified the denial
of the right of petition with the interests of slavery. They {264} had
only demonstrated that slavery was a matter of national concern, since
its interests required that limitations should be placed upon the well
understood rights of the people in the non-slaveholding Commonwealths.
They only made it manifest that, sooner or later, the nation must deal
with the question. Their most violent enemies could not have wished
them a more disastrous result.
[Sidenote: The Abolition petitions in the Senate.]
The proceedings in the Senate in regard to the Abolition petitions
must be even more concisely stated. The course pursued and the result
reached were similar to what has been described in the account of the
experiences of the House. The Senate first received and heard the
petitions, and voted immediately to deny their prayer. Then, when it
became evident that this would not prevent anti-slavery agitation on
the floor of the Senate, the body adopted the custom of hearing a
motion not to receive a petition, and voting immediately to lay the
motion not to receive, and along with it the petition itself, on the
table. This practice was modified a little later, by a ruling of the
presiding officer, to the effect that an objection to the petition by
any member would raise the question of the reception of the petition
without a formal motion. Mr. Calhoun had contended for this method of
raising the question in regard to the reception of the petitions from
the beginning of the struggle over the subject, in January of 1836. He
seemed, however, to desire to dispose of them by simply voting not to
receive them. In fact, he made a motion to this effect, at the very
outset of the contest, but without success. While thus the Senate did
not formally adopt the practice finally reached in the House of
refusing to receive the petitions, it arrived at about the same result
in practice. It is true that the presiding officer of the Senate
allowed the petitions to be {265} read before putting the motion upon
their reception, which seems to have been an illogical practice
indeed, and that any member might move to call up the motion not to
receive, and with it the petition or petitions to which that motion
referred; but the reading before the motion not to receive, or before
the objection to receiving, was perfunctory, and there was no member
of the Senate who desired to call up the tabled petitions or persisted
in so doing. As a matter of fact, the public opinion which the
Abolitionists succeeded in creating in the North concerning the
attitude of the Senate toward the Abolition petitions was that the
Senate had done the same violence to the people's constitutional right
of petition that the House had done. It was held and believed
throughout the North, in 1840, that the Congress of the United States,
in both of its branches, had set the interests of slavery above the
liberties of the people of the North.
There were two incidents which happened during the course of the
proceedings in the Senate upon the subject to which brief reference
should be made. One was the noted passage of words between Mr. Calhoun
and Mr. Rives, of Virginia, in regard to the morality of slavery, and
the other was the petition from the legislature of Vermont for the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
[Sidenote: Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun in regard to the morality of
slavery.]
The Abolitionists had assumed to have the ethical principle entirely
upon their side, and this had not, down to 1836, been clearly disputed
by the slaveholders. The slaveholders had, themselves, as we have so
often seen, acknowledged slavery to be an evil, and had, therefore,
defended it chiefly from the point of view of positive law. Of course
so profound a thinker as Mr. Calhoun knew that positive law cannot
permanently withstand the {266} assaults of ethical principle. He knew
that the moral arguments against slavery must be met upon moral
grounds, as well as upon legal grounds. The discussion was carried
over upon ethical premises by the remark of Mr. Rives that he, though
a slaveholder, was not in favor of slavery in the abstract, and
differed on that point with the gentleman from South Carolina. Mr.
Calhoun immediately denied that he had expressed any opinion in regard
to the question of slavery in the abstract, and said he had spoken of
slavery only "as existing where two races of men, of different color,
and striking dissimilarity in conformation, habits, and a thousand
other particulars, were placed in immediate juxtaposition." Mr.
Calhoun elaborated his argument in many directions, but the gist of it
was that where a civilized race and a barbarous race, nearly equal
numerically, must live together, the civilized race must, in the
interests of the civilization of both races, control the barbarous
race, through the relation of the slavery of the latter to the former,
and that the only alternative to this would be the barbarizing of the
whole society by the uncontrolled deeds and passions of the barbarous
race, if the two races are left to themselves, or the establishment of
a barbaric despotism over the civilized race, if the barbaric race be
aided by successful interference from without. In contrast with either
of these conditions, Mr. Calhoun contended that the slavery of the
barbarous race to the civilized race was a moral good.
From a metaphysical point of view the only question between Mr. Rives
and Mr. Calhoun was whether every departure from the perfect good must
be considered an evil, or whether a nearer approximation to the
perfect good may be called a good in contrast with a lower
approximation. Mr. Rives was looking at the subject {267} from an
abstract, transcendental point of view, while Mr. Calhoun was
regarding it from the historical point of view. Mr. Rives was with the
Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but against them as to the
time and means of applying it. Mr. Calhoun was not against the
Abolitionists upon the abstract principle, but the time of its
possible application appeared to him so far distant, and the
impropriety and unfairness of interference by outsiders in the matter
and the disastrous consequences which must flow from such interference
seemed to him so plain and so certain, that he almost lost sight of
the abstract height upon which the Abolitionists stood behind the many
intervening elevations, which must be first attained and traversed in
order to reach their position.
[Sidenote: The moral ground upon which Calhoun and the Abolitionists
could have met.]
There was a possible moral ground upon which Mr. Calhoun and the
Abolitionists might have met. Could the Abolitionists have conceived
that the existence of certain conditions would justify domestic
slavery as a relation which could _temporarily_ produce a better state
of morals in a particularly constituted society than any other
relation, that is, could they have taken the historical view of
ethics, the evolutionary view of morals, and could Mr. Calhoun have
seen that the time had come for a modification of the existing form of
negro slavery in the South, for a step toward a greater degree of
personal liberty for the slave, an approach between him and them might
have been, at least, begun; but their implacable dogmatism, and his
stern resentment at their persistent interference in what he thought
no concern of theirs, widened the gulf between him and them from day
to day. They regarded him as a sinner and a criminal because he held
persons to service and labor who had not freely agreed to the same,
and he {268} considered them to be greater sinners and criminals
because they would overturn the existing order of society in
communities where they had no personal interests to be affected, and
would introduce into these communities the reign of plunder, rapine,
and murder.
[Sidenote: Mr. Calhoun's resolutions in regard to the political
relations of slavery.]
When Mr. Calhoun saw that he could not bring the Senate to refuse
formally to receive the Abolition petitions, he undertook to bring the
Senate over to his views of the "States' sovereignty" character of the
Union, of the obligation of the general Government to protect slavery
in the slaveholding Commonwealths, of the ethical obligation of the
people of the non-slaveholding Commonwealths not to attack the
institution of slavery, and of the practical impotence of Congress to
deal with slavery in the District of Columbia and in the Territories.
He did not, however, succeed. The Senate did not repudiate his
"States' sovereignty" view of the Union, but, while it was willing to
say that neither the Northern Commonwealths nor the Northern people
had any legal right to attack slavery under moral or religious
pretexts, it would not say that they were under moral or religious
obligations to abstain from the attack. Neither would the Senate say
that the general Government must so exercise its powers as to give
increased security to slavery, nor that the general Government had no
power over the subject of slavery in the District and the Territories.
It modified these demands of Mr. Calhoun so as to make them read, that
the general Government should not so exercise its powers as to
interfere with the security of the domestic institutions of the
Commonwealths, and that the general Government ought not in good faith
to undertake to abolish slavery in the District or in the Territories,
except under certain conditions.
{269} [Sidenote: The anti-slavery petition from the Vermont
legislature.]
The immediate occasion of the presentation of these resolutions of
December 27th, 1837, by Mr. Calhoun, was probably the other incident
to which reference has been made, the introduction, by Senator Swift,
of Vermont, of a petition from the legislature of Vermont praying for
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This shaft had
struck Mr. Calhoun in his most vulnerable part. Here was, according to
his own doctrine, a "sovereign State" instructing its governmental
agent for general affairs. Could that agent refuse to receive the
instructions of one of his principals? There certainly was no
precedent for any such procedure as that in any system of
jurisprudence known to the world. Mr. Calhoun recognized fully the
embarrassment of his position. He begged that the communication from
the Vermont legislature might lay upon the table until he could
prepare his mind for action upon the subject, and pledged himself to
call it up very shortly, if no one else should do so. Mr. Swift helped
the Senate, and Mr. Calhoun especially, out of the dilemma by
withdrawing the petition for the time being. This incident occurred on
December 19th.
Mr. Swift assumed that Mr. Calhoun's resolutions of the 27th contained
the results of his preparation of mind to meet the Vermont memorial,
and after the consideration of them by the Senate, Mr. Swift
reintroduced the memorial on January 16th (1838). The Southerners had
been thrown into such confusion by the _coup de surprise_ sprung upon
them by the Vermonters that they had not been able to agree upon any
plan for meeting the exigency. Some of them denounced the action of
the Vermont legislature as incendiary, outrageous, and degrading. Mr.
King gave his "States' sovereignty" creed entirely away in saying: "We
{270} defend the legitimate rights of the States, but we do not defend
a sovereign State when she asserts calumny and falsehood."
Mr. Calhoun was measured in his language, but evidently greatly
disturbed in mind. He said that as a "States' rights" man, in the
strongest sense, he believed that the "State" of Vermont had a right
to come there and be heard; that, on the best reflection he could give
to the matter, he could not vote against receiving the petition; but
that, on the other hand, he considered the language of the memorial so
objectionable that he could not vote to receive it.
It does seem as if this incident should have taught Mr. Calhoun the
fallacy of his logic in insisting upon the power of the Senate to
refuse to receive a petition. Here was a case in which his doctrine of
parliamentary procedure had absolutely broken down, according to his
own acknowledgment. Mr. Strange, of North Carolina, committed the
folly of objecting to the reception of the petition, and moving that
the question of reception, and with it the petition, be laid on the
table. The motion was defeated by a vote of twenty-six to twelve. The
memorial was received and the debate upon it was in order. The
Southerners were helpless, and had not Mr. Swift himself come to their
rescue, no man can say what would have happened. Mr. Swift moved that
the papers from the Vermont legislature be laid upon the table,
without being printed. They had accomplished their immediate purpose,
and it was wise as well as patriotic to let them rest in dignity and
honor.
[Sidenote: The Abolition documents and the United States mails.]
The Abolitionists were more successful in their attempt to use the
United States mails for the distribution of their literature
throughout the South. During the course of the year 1835, it became
known that {271} their opinions and doctrines were being disseminated
by this means. The Southerners considered these opinions to be
incendiary and dangerous to the peace and safety of their communities
and their firesides. They thought that they had the legal right to
prevent the delivery of such mail matter in their respective
communities. They did not wait, however, to deal with the subject
through legal forms. On the night of July 29th, 1835, a mob of
respectables broke into the post-office at Charleston, S. C., in
search of Abolition documents. They found a sack full of them, took it
away with them, and publicly burned its contents. On August 4th
following, a meeting of the citizens took place, at which a committee
of public safety was elected, which should, in understanding with the
postmaster, determine what mail matter should not be delivered by him
to the addressees. The postmaster apparently acquiesced in this
arrangement, but he wrote, upon his own responsibility, a letter to
the postmaster of New York City, whence the Abolition pamphlets had
come, requesting him not to forward any more such documents. The
postmaster at New York endeavored to induce the Abolitionists not to
put any more of their literature into the mails until he could receive
instructions from the Postmaster-General at Washington in regard to
the question; and when the Abolitionists repelled his request, he
refused to forward their documents, pending his conference with the
Postmaster-General.
[Sidenote: The Postmaster-General's ruling in regard to the Abolition
documents in the mails.]
The Postmaster-General, Mr. Amos Kendall, one of the shrewdest of
politicians, though no great constitutional lawyer, answered the
appeal from the postmaster at New York immediately. He instructed his
subordinate that the executive power of the Government had no legal
authority to exclude mail matter, as defined by {272} Congress, from
the mails on account of the character of its contents, real or
supposed. If Mr. Kendall had stopped with this he would have been
entirely correct; but he went on to say that he would not direct the
postmaster at New York to forward the Abolition documents or the
postmaster at Charleston to deliver them, commended their assumption
of the responsibility of withholding them from the addressees, and
declared that the United States officials owed an obligation to the
laws of the United States, but a higher one to the communities in
which they lived. Mr. Kendall probably meant this part of his
communication as the advice of one private citizen to another. Looked
at in the most charitable light possible, however, it was
unjustifiable and pernicious. It was nothing less than an
encouragement to his subordinates to suspend the execution of the laws
which they were appointed to execute and sworn to execute, when in
their several opinions the welfare of the communities in which they
might live should require it. This was nullification, not by a "State"
convention, but by an individual United States officer. How the
President, who had always so sternly denounced any attempt to prevent
the execution of the laws, could approve this is difficult to
understand. His indignation at the Abolitionists in persisting in what
he considered an abuse of the freedom of the mails probably blinded
him to the real significance of the matter.
[Sidenote: Jackson on the use of the mails by the Abolitionists.]
In his message of the following December, the President denounced the
methods of the Abolitionists in sending their incendiary literature
into the South as calculated and intended to excite a servile war with
all its horrors, and recommended Congress to pass a law prohibiting,
"under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, {273}
through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the
slaves to insurrection."
Mr. Calhoun himself moved the reference of this part of the
President's message to a select committee in the Senate. Mr. Calhoun
was appointed the chairman of the committee, and on February 4th,
1836, he brought in a report and a bill.
[Sidenote: Mr. Calhoun's report and bill on the subject.]
In the report Mr. Calhoun took the ground that the freedom of the
mails was a necessary part of the freedom of the press, and argued
that, as Congress was prohibited by the first amendment to the
Constitution from passing any law abridging the freedom of the press,
so Congress possessed no power to pass any law excluding mail matter
from the mails on account of the character of its contents or
authorizing such matter to be withheld from the addressees. Mr.
Calhoun's conclusion was that only the "States" could make such laws
as would effect these things. He proposed in his bill, therefore, that
no deputy postmaster in any "State," Territory, or district of the
Union should knowingly receive and put into the mail any printed or
written paper or pictorial representation touching the subject of
slavery, addressed to a person or a post-office within any "State,"
Territory, or district in which the circulation of such papers and
representations was forbidden by the local laws; that the officers and
agents of the Post-Office Department should co-operate with the local
officials in preventing the circulation of such papers and
representations where their circulation was prohibited by the local
laws; that the matter so detained from transmission by a post-office
official should be burned, after one month's notice, if the person
depositing the same should not claim it within that period; and that
the post-office officials who should violate these duties should not
be {274} protected by the laws of the United States against the
jurisdiction of the local law and government.
[Sidenote: Clay's criticism of Calhoun's proposition.]
Mr. Clay immediately pointed out the fatal weaknesses of this
proposition. He argued that it attributed to Congress either the power
to adopt the laws of the "States" upon subjects in regard to which
Congress itself had not the power to legislate, or the power to pass
laws in execution of laws which it had no power to make. The argument
was unanswerable, and the conclusion was unavoidable that if Congress
could not itself pass a law excluding the Abolition papers and
documents from the mail, or forbidding their delivery to the
addressees, it could not enact Mr. Calhoun's proposition. After four
months of deliberation the Senate rejected the proposed bill by a vote
of twenty-five to nineteen. Mr. Calhoun thus lost the aid of the
general Government in his contest with the Abolitionists over the use
of the mails chiefly through his exaggerated "States' rights"
doctrine.
[Sidenote: The act of Congress protecting the Abolition documents in
the mails.]
Encouraged by this victory, the friends of free mails succeeded in
having a provision incorporated into the Act of July 2nd, 1836, for
changing the organization of the Post-Office Department, which ordains
that any postmaster intentionally detaining any mail matter from the
addressees shall be fined and imprisoned, and incapacitated to hold
thereafter the office of a postmaster in the United States.
[Sidenote: General results of the struggle over the right of petition
and the freedom of the mails.]
It would not be extravagant to say that the whole course of the
internal history of the United States from 1836 to 1861 was more
largely determined by the struggle in Congress over the Abolition
petitions and the use of the mails for the distribution of the
Abolition literature than by anything else.
{275} In the first place, it did more than anything else to make a
political party out of the Abolitionists, through the conviction which
it produced throughout the North that the demands of the slavery
system in the South would ultimately destroy civil and political
liberty in the North, and it increased the strength of the
Abolitionists an hundredfold in less than four years. The development
and ultimate triumph of this party in the North became inevitable from
the moment that it was clearly recognized that the preservation of
slavery at the South required and demanded the denial of the freedom
of speech and of the press, and of the right of petition, to the
people of the North.
In the second place, it taught the South that there was a growing
party in the North which was determined to attack slavery at every
possible legal point, and prosecute its warfare at every hazard, and
that the only safety for the South, with its slavery system, in the
Union, was to hold at least equal power in the Congress with the
representation from the North. In self-defence the South must secure,
therefore, the formation of new slaveholding Commonwealths. At the
moment the representation in the Senate was evenly balanced, but in
the House it stood against the South, one hundred and forty-one to
ninety-nine. One more non-slaveholding Commonwealth, without an offset
on the other side, would destroy the balance in the Senate and enable
the North to undertake legislation hostile to slavery. The extension
of slavery to new Commonwealths was thus manifestly a necessity to its
permanent security, and even continuance, in the Commonwealths where
it already existed. The policy of the slaveholders must be to allow no
new non-slaveholding Commonwealth to be formed without another
slaveholding Commonwealth to match it, and to secure the {276}
extension of the territory of the United States toward the South.
In the third place, it aroused the apprehension of slave insurrection,
by Abolition incitement, throughout the South, and caused thereby two
marked movements in the South, the one legal and the other social. The
first was the legislation sharpening and increasing the police power
of the public authorities over the slaves, for the purpose of
preventing the access of the Abolition doctrines to their minds, and
of preventing communication and intercourse between strangers and
slaves, and between the slaves themselves. The control of the slave by
the master was thus more and more interfered with by the public
authorities, for the purpose indeed of aiding the master, which,
however, did not alter the fact that from being primarily for the most
part a household affair, slavery was becoming more and more an affair
of the community. This meant no improvement to the condition of the
slave; quite the contrary. The intervention of the whites in the South
who owned no slaves in the control of the slaves marks an increase of
rigor in the treatment of the slaves. In fact much of the cruelty
inflicted upon the slaves during the twenty years between 1840 and
1860 was executed by non-slaveholders, by virtue of the increased
control assumed by the public authorities over the relation between
master and slave, through the local legislation of that period. The
other movement was toward the development of a military caste in the
society. The slaveholders, and especially the sons of the
slaveholders, now began to understand that they must unite in military
organization and make themselves the exclusive military class. The
spirit of chivalry and the practices of knighthood were largely
developed during this period, with both their good and their bad
consequences. On the one side they produced {277} a high-toned society
of proud, noble women, and courtly, haughty men, among the
slaveholders. On the other, they degraded all other classes, both
white and black. In fact they degraded the poor whites more than they
did the blacks. The blacks felt, and were proud of, the increased
importance of their masters. And, naturally, this spirit and life
among the slaveholding class made the generation which grew up under
them eager for adventure and war, intensely tenacious of rights,
sensitive to every only apparent discourtesy, and resentful of every
semblance of interference from without. The War with Mexico, the
filibustering expeditions, and the Civil War itself, were all national
consequences of the social development in the South after 1836.
{278}