The year 1831 is notable for three events in the history of the
anti-slavery controversy: on the first day of January in that year
William Lloyd Garrison began in Boston the publication of the Liberator;
in August there occurred in Southampton, Virginia, an insurrection of
slaves led by a negro, Nat Turner, in which sixty-one white persons
were massacred; and in December the Virginia Legislature began its long
debate on the question of slavery.
On the part of the abolitionists there was at no time any sudden break
in the principles which they advocated. Lundy did nothing but revive and
continue the work of the Quakers and other non-slaveholding classes
of the revolutionary period. Birney was and continued to be a typical
slaveholding abolitionist of the earlier period. Garrison began his
work as a disciple of Lundy, whom he followed in the condemnation of the
African colonization scheme, though he went farther and rejected every
form of colonization. Garrison likewise repudiated every plan
for gradual emancipation and proclaimed the duty of immediate and
unconditional liberation of the slaves.
The first number of the Liberator contained an Address to the Public,
which sounded the keynote of Garrison's career. "I shall contend for the
immediate enfranchisement of our slave population--I will be as harsh as
truth and as uncompromising as justice on this subject--I do not wish to
think, or speak, or write with moderation--I am in earnest--I will not
equivocate--I will not retreat a single inch, and I WILL BE HEARD!"
The New England Anti-Slavery Society, of which Garrison was the chief
organizer, was in essential harmony with the societies which Lundy had
organized in other sections. Its first address to the public in 1833
distinctly recognized the separate States as the sole authority in
the matter of emancipation within their own boundaries. Through moral
suasion, eschewing all violence and sedition, its authors proposed to
secure their object. In the spirit of civil and religious liberty and by
appealing to the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty party of 1840
and 1844, by the Freesoil party of 1848, and later by the Republican
party, and that nearly all of the abolitionists continued to be faithful
adherents to those principles, are sufficient proof of the essential
unity of the great anti-slavery movement. The apparent lack of harmony
and the real confusion in the history of the subject arose from the
peculiar character of one remarkable man.
The few owners of slaves who had assumed the role of public defenders of
the institution were in the habit of using violent and abusive language
against anti-slavery agitators. This appeared in the first debate on
the subject during Washington's administration. Every form of rhetorical
abuse also accompanied the outbreak of mob violence against the
reformers at the time of Garrison's advent into the controversy. He was
especially fitted to reply in kind. "I am accused," said he, "of using
hard language. I admit the charge. I have not been able to find a soft
word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it." This
was a new departure which was instantly recognized by Southern leaders.
But from the beginning to the bitter end, Garrison stands alone
as preeminently the representative of this form of attack. It was
significant, also, that the Liberator was published in Boston, the
literary center of the country.
There is no evidence that there was any direct connection between the
publication of the Liberator and the servile insurrection which occurred
during the following August. * It was, however, but natural that the
South should associate the two events. A few utterances of the paper
were fitted, if not intended, to incite insurrection. One passage
reads: "Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the
oppressor--the weapons being equal between the parties--God knows that
my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor.
Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave
insurrections." Again: "Rather than see men wearing their chains in
a cowardly and servile spirit, I would, as an advocate of peace, much
rather see them breaking the heads of the tyrant with their chains."
* Garrison himself denied any direct connection with the Nat
Turner insurrection. See "William Lloyd Garrison, the Story
of His Life told by His Children," vol. I, p. 251.
George Thompson, an English co-laborer with Garrison, is quoted as
saying in a public address in 1835 that "Southern slaves ought, or
at least had a right, to cut the throats of their masters." * Such
utterances are rare, and they express a passing mood not in the least
characteristic of the general spirit of the abolition movement; yet
the fact that such statements did emanate from such a source made it
comparatively easy for extremists of the opposition to cast odium upon
all abolitionists. The only type of abolition known in South Carolina
was that of the extreme Garrisonian agitators, and it furnished at
least a shadow of excuse for mob violence in the North and for complete
suppression of discussion in the South. To encourage slaves to cut
the throats of their masters was far from being a rhetorical figure of
speech in communities where slaves were in the majority. Santo Domingo
was at the time a prosperous republic founded by former slaves who had
exterminated the Caucasian residents of the island. Negroes from Santo
Domingo had fomented insurrection in South Carolina. The Nat Turner
incident was more than a suggestion of the dire possibilities of the
situation. Turner was a trusted slave, a preacher among the blacks. He
succeeded in concealing his plot for weeks. When the massacre began,
slaves not in the secret were induced to join. A majority of the slain
were women and children. Abolitionists who had lived in slave States
never indulged in flippant remarks fitted to incite insurrection. This
was reserved for the few agitators far removed from the scene of action.
* Schouler, "History of the United States under the
Constitution," vol. V, p. 217.
Southern planters who had determined at all hazards to perpetuate the
institution of slavery were peculiarly sensitive on account of what was
taking place in Spanish America and in the British West Indies. Mexico
abolished slavery in 1829, and united with Colombia in encouraging Cuba
to throw off the Spanish yoke, abolish slavery, and join the sisterhood
of New World republics. This led to an effective protest on the part of
the United States. Both Spain and Mexico were advised that the
United States could not with safety to its own interests permit the
emancipation of slaves in the island of Cuba. But with the British
Emancipation Act of 1833, Cuba became the only neighboring territory in
which slavery was legal. These acts of emancipation added zeal to the
determination of the Southern planters to secure territory for the
indefinite extension of slavery to the southwest. When Lundy and Birney
discovered these plans, their desire to husband and extend the direct
political influence of abolitionists was greatly stimulated. To this
end they maintained a moderate and conservative attitude. They took
care that no abuse or misrepresentation should betray them into any
expression which would diminish their influence with fair-minded,
reasonable men. They were convinced that a clear and complete revelation
of the facts would lead a majority of the people to adopt their views.
The debate in the Virginia Legislature in the session which met three
months after the Southampton massacre furnishes a demonstration that the
traditional anti-slavery sentiment still persisted among the rulers of
the Old Dominion. It arose out of a petition from the Quakers of the
State asking for an investigation preparatory to a gradual emancipation
of the slaves. The debate, which lasted for several weeks, was able and
thorough. No stronger utterances in condemnation of slavery were ever
voiced than appear in this debate. Different speakers made the statement
that no one presumed to defend slavery on principle--that apologists for
slavery existed but no defenders. Opposition to the petition was in the
main apologetic in tone.
A darker picture of the blighting effects of slavery on the industries
of the country was never drawn than appears in these speeches. Slavery
was declared to be driving free laborers from the State, to have already
destroyed every industry except agriculture, and to have exhausted the
soil so that profitable agriculture was becoming extinct, while pine
brush was encroaching upon former fruitful fields. "Even the wolf," said
one, "driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after
the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery."
Contrasts between free labor in northern industry and that of the South
were vividly portrayed. In a speech of great power, one member referred
to Kentucky and Ohio as States "providentially designated to exhibit in
their future histories the differences which necessarily result from a
country free from, and a country afflicted with the curse of slavery."
The debate was by no means confined to industrial or material
considerations. McDowell, who was afterwards elected Governor of the
State, thus portrays the personal relations of master and slave "You
may place the slave where you please--you may put him under any process,
which, without destroying his value as a slave, will debase and crush
him as a rational being--you may do all this, and the idea that he
was born to be free will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of
immortality--it is the ethereal part of his nature which oppression
cannot reach--it is a torch lit up in his soul by the hand of the Deity,
and never meant to be extinguished by the hand of man."
Various speakers assumed that the continuance of slavery involved a
bloody conflict; that either peaceably or through violence, slavery
as contrary to the spirit of the age must come to an end; that the
agitation against it could not be suppressed. Faulkner drew a lurid
picture of the danger from servile insurrection, in which he referred to
the utterances of two former speakers, one of whom had said that, unless
something effective was done to ward off the danger, "the throats of all
the white people of Virginia will be cut." The other replied, "No, the
whites cannot be conquered--the throats of the blacks will be cut."
Faulkner's rejoinder was that the difference was a trifling one, "for
the fact is conceded that one race or the other must be exterminated."
The public press joined in the debate. Leading editorials appeared in
the Richmond Enquirer urging that effective measures be instituted to
put an end to slavery. The debate aroused much interest throughout the
South. Substantially all the current abolition arguments appeared in the
speeches of the slave-owning members of the Virginia Legislature. And
what was done about it? Nothing at all. The petition was not granted;
no action looking towards emancipation was taken. This was indeed a
turning-point. Men do not continue to denounce in public their own
conduct unless their action results in some effort toward corrective
measures.
Professor Thomas Dew, of the chair of history and metaphysics in William
and Mary College and later President of the College, published an essay
reviewing the debate in the Legislature and arguing that any plan for
emancipation in Virginia was either undesirable or impossible.
This essay was among the first of the direct pro-slavery arguments.
Statements in support of the view soon followed. In 1835 the Governor of
South Carolina in a message to the Legislature said, "Domestic slavery
is the corner-stone of our republican edifice." Senator Calhoun,
speaking in the Senate two years later, declared slavery to be a
positive good. W. G. Simms, Southern poet and novelist, writing in 1852,
felicitates himself as being among the first who about fifteen years
earlier advocated slavery as a great good and a blessing. Harriet
Martineau, an English author who traveled extensively in the South in
1885, found few slaveholders who justified the institution as being in
itself just. But after the debates in the Virginia Legislature, there
were few owners of slaves who publicly advocated abolition. The spirit
of mob violence had set in, and, contrary to the utterances of Virginia
statesmen, free speech on the subject of slavery was suppressed in the
slave States. This did not mean that Southern statesmen had lost
the power to perceive the evil effects of slavery or that they were
convinced that their former views were erroneous. It meant simply that
they had failed to agree upon a policy of gradual emancipation, and the
only recourse left seemed to be to follow the example of James G. Birney
and leave the South or to submit in silence to the new order.