With the changed attitude of the South towards emancipation there was
associated an active hostility to dearly bought human liberty. Freedom
of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, the right of
assembly, trial by jury, the right of petition, free use of the mails,
and numerous other fundamental human rights were assailed. Birney
and other abolitionists who had immediate knowledge of slavery early
perceived that the real question at issue was quite as much the
continued liberty of the white man as it was the liberation of the black
man and that the enslavement of one race involved also the ultimate
essential enslavement of the other.
In 1831 two slave States and six free States still extended to free
negroes the right to vote. During the pro-slavery crusade these
privileges disappeared; and not only so, but free negroes were banished
from certain States, or were not permitted to enter them, or were
allowed to remain only by choosing a white man for a guardian. It was
made a crime to teach negroes, whether slaves or free men, to read and
write. Under various pretexts free negroes were reduced to slavery.
Freedom of worship was denied to negroes, and they were not allowed to
assemble for any purpose except under the strict surveillance of white
men. Negro testimony in a court of law was invalid where the rights of a
white man were involved. The right of a negro to his freedom was decided
by an arbitrary court without a jury, while the disputed right of a
white man to the ownership of a horse was conditioned by the safeguard
of trial by jury.
The maintenance of such policies carries with it of necessity the
suppression of free discussion. When Southern leaders adopted the policy
of defending slavery as a righteous institution, abolitionists in the
South either emigrated to the North or were silenced. In either case
they were deprived of a fundamental right. The spirit of persecution
followed them into the free States. Birney could not publish his paper
in Kentucky, nor even at Cincinnati, save at the risk of his life.
Elijah Lovejoy was not allowed to publish his paper in Missouri,
and, when he persisted in publishing it in Illinois, he was brutally
murdered. Even in Boston it required men of courage and determination
to meet and organize an anti-slavery society in 1832, though only a
few years earlier Benjamin Lundy had traveled freely through the South
itself delivering anti-slavery lectures and organizing scores of such
societies. The New York Anti-Slavery Society was secretly organized in
1832 in spite of the opposition of a determined mob. Mob violence was
everywhere rife. Meetings were broken up, negro quarters attacked,
property destroyed, murders committed.
Fair-minded men became abolitionists on account of the crusade against
the rights of white men quite as much as from their interest in the
rights of negroes. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was led to espouse the cause
by observing the attacks upon the freedom of the press in Cincinnati.
Gerrit Smith witnessed the breaking up of an anti-slavery meeting in
Utica, New York, and thereafter consecrated his time, his talents, and
his great wealth to the cause of liberty. Wendell Phillips saw Garrison
in the hands of a Boston mob, and that experience determined him to make
common cause with the martyr. And the murder of Lovejoy in 1837 made
many active abolitionists.
It is difficult to imagine a more inoffensive practice than giving
to negro girls the rudiments of an education. Yet a school for this
purpose, taught by Miss Prudence Crandall in Canterbury, Connecticut,
was broken up by persistent persecution, a special act of the
Legislature being passed for the purpose, forbidding the teaching
of negroes from outside the State without the consent of the town
authorities. Under this act Miss Crandall was arrested, convicted, and
imprisoned.
Having eliminated free discussion from the South, the Southern States
sought to accomplish the same object in the North. In pursuance of a
resolution of the Legislature, the Governor of Georgia offered a reward
of five thousand dollars to any one who should arrest, bring to trial,
and prosecute to conviction under the laws of Georgia the editor of
the Liberator. R. G. Williams, publishing agent for the American
Anti-Slavery Society, was indicted by a grand jury of Tuscaloosa County,
Alabama, and Governor Gayle of Alabama made a requisition on Governor
Marcy of New York for his extradition. Williams had never been in
Alabama. His offense consisted in publishing in the New York Emancipator
a few rather mild utterances against slavery.
Governor McDuffie of South Carolina in an official message declared
that slavery was the very corner-stone of the republic, adding that
the laboring population of any country, "bleached or unbleached," was
a dangerous element in the body politic, and predicting that within
twenty-five years the laboring people of the North would be virtually
reduced to slavery. Referring to abolitionists, he said: "The laws of
every community should punish this species of interference with death
without benefit of clergy." Pursuant to the Governor's recommendation,
the Legislature adopted a resolution calling upon non-slaveholding
States to pass laws to suppress promptly and effectively all abolition
societies. In nearly all the slave States similar resolutions
were adopted, and concerted action against anti-slavery effort was
undertaken. During the winter of 1835 and 1836, the Governors of the
free States received these resolutions from the South and, instead of
resenting them as an uncalled-for interference with the rights of free
commonwealths, they treated them with respect. Edward Everett, Governor
of Massachusetts, in his message presenting the Southern documents to
the Legislature, said: "Whatever by direct and necessary operation is
calculated to excite an insurrection among the slaves has been held, by
highly respectable legal authority, an offense against this Commonwealth
which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." Governor Marcy
of New York, in a like document, declared that "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." Even
before the Southern requests reached Rhode Island, the Legislature had
under consideration a bill to suppress abolition societies.
When a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature had been duly
organized to consider the documents received from the slave States, the
abolitionists requested the privilege of a hearing before the committee.
Receiving no reply, they proceeded to formulate a statement of their
case; but before they could publish it, they were invited to appear
before the joint committee of the two houses. The public had been
aroused by the issue and there was a large audience. The case for
the abolitionists was stated by their ablest speakers, among whom was
William Lloyd Garrison. They labored to convince the committee that
their utterances were not incendiary, and that any legislative censure
directed against them would be an encouragement to mob violence and the
persecution which was already their lot. After the defensive arguments
had been fully presented, William Goodell took the floor and proceeded
to charge upon the Southern States which had made these demands a
conspiracy against the liberties of the North. In the midst of great
excitement and many interruptions by the chairman of the committee, he
quoted the language of Governor McDuffie's message, and characterized
the documents lying on the table before him as "fetters for Northern
freemen." Then, turning to the committee, he began, "Mr. Chairman, are
you prepared to attempt to put them on?"--but the sentence was only half
finished when the stentorian voice of the chairman interrupted him: "Sit
down, sir!" and he sat down. The committee then arose and left the room.
But the audience did not rise; they waited till other abolitionists
found their tongues and gave expression to a fixed determination to
uphold the liberties purchased for them by the blood of their fathers.
The Massachusetts Legislature did not comply with the request of
Governor McDuffie of South Carolina to take the first step towards the
enslavement of all laborers, white as well as black. And Rhode Island
refused to enact into law the pending bill for the suppression of
anti-slavery societies. They declined to violate the plain requirements
of their Constitution that the interests of slavery might be promoted.
Not many years later they were ready to strain or break the Constitution
for the sake of liberty.
In the general crusade against liberty churches proved more pliable
than States. The authority of nearly all the leading denominations
was directed against the abolitionists. The General Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church passed in 1836 a resolution censuring two of
their members who had lectured in favor of modern abolitionism. The
Ohio Conference of the same denomination had passed resolutions urging
resistance to the anti-slavery movement. In June, 1836, the New York
Conference decided that no one should be chosen as deacon or elder who
did not give pledge that he would refrain from agitating the church on
the subject.
The same spirit appeared in theological seminaries. The trustees of Lane
Seminary, near Cincinnati, Ohio, voted that students should not organize
or be members of anti-slavery societies or hold meetings or lecture or
speak on the subject. Whereupon the students left in a body, and many
of the professors withdrew and united with others in the founding of an
anti-slavery college at Oberlin.
A persistent attack was also directed against the use of the United
States mails for the distribution of anti-slavery literature. Mob
violence which involved the post-office began as early as 1830, when
printed copies of Miss Grimke's Appeal to the Christian Women of the
South were seized and burned in Charleston. In 1835 large quantities of
anti-slavery literature were removed from the Charleston office and
in the presence of the assembled citizens committed to the flames.
Postmasters on their own motion examined the mails and refused
to deliver any matter that they deemed incendiary. Amos Kendall,
Postmaster-General, was requested to issue an order authorizing such
conduct. He replied that he had no legal authority to issue such an
order. Yet he would not recommend the delivery of such papers. "We owe,"
said he, "an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities
in which we live, and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter,
it is patriotism to disregard them. Entertaining these views, I cannot
sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken." This is an
early instance of the appeal to the "higher law" in the pro-slavery
controversy. The higher law was invoked against the freedom of the
press. The New York postmaster sought to dissuade the Anti-slavery
Society from the attempt to send its publications through the mails into
Southern States. In reply to a request for authorization to refuse to
accept such publications, the Postmaster-General replied: "I am
deterred from giving an order to exclude the whole series of abolition
publications from the Southern mails only by a want of legal power, and
if I were situated as you are, I would do as you have done."
Mr. Kendall's letters to the postmasters of Charleston and New York
were written in July and August, 1835. In December of the same year,
presumably with full knowledge that a member of his Cabinet was
encouraging violations of law in the interest of slavery, President
Jackson undertook to supply the need of legal authorization. In his
annual message he made a savage attack upon the abolitionists and
recommended to Congress the "passing of such a law as will prohibit,
under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through
the mail, of incendiary publications."
This part of the President's message was referred to a select committee,
of which John C. Calhoun was chairman. The chairman's report was against
the adoption of the President's recommendation because a subject of
such vital interest to the States ought not to be left to Congress.
The admission of the right of Congress to decide what is incendiary,
asserted the report, carries with it the power to decide what is
not incendiary and hence Congress might authorize and enforce the
circulation of abolition literature through the mails in all the States.
The States should themselves severally decide what in their judgment is
incendiary, and then it would become the duty of the general Government
to give effect to such state laws. The bill recommended was in harmony
with this view. It was made illegal for any deputy postmaster "to
deliver to any person whatsoever, any pamphlet, newspaper, handbill, or
other printed paper, or pictorial representation touching the subject
of slavery, where by the laws of the said State, territory, or district
their circulation is prohibited." The bill was defeated in the Senate by
a small margin. Altogether there was an enlightening debate on the whole
subject. The exposure of the abuse of tampering with the mail created a
general reaction, which enabled the abolitionists to win a spectacular
victory. Instead of a law forbidding the circulation of anti-slavery
publications, Congress enacted a law requiring postal officials under
heavy penalties to deliver without discrimination all matter committed
to their charge. This act was signed by President Jackson, and Calhoun
himself was induced to admit that the purposes of the abolitionists were
not violent and revolutionary. Henceforth abolitionists enjoyed their
full privileges in the use of the United States mail. An even more
dramatic victory was thrust upon the abolitionists by the inordinate
violence of their opponents in their attack upon the right of petition.
John Quincy Adams, who became their distinguished champion, was not
himself an abolitionist. When, as a member of the lower House of
Congress in 1831, he presented petitions from certain citizens of
Pennsylvania, presumably Quakers, requesting Congress to abolish
slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, he refused to
countenance their prayer, and expressed the wish that the memorial
might be referred without debate. At the very time when a New England
ex-President was thus advising abolitionists to desist from sending
petitions to Congress, the Virginia Legislature was engaged in the
memorable debate upon a similar petition from Virginia Quakers, in which
most radical abolition sentiment was expressed by actual slaveowners.
Adams continued to present anti-slavery memorials and at the same time
to express his opposition to the demands of the petitioners. When
in 1835 there arose a decided opposition to the reception of such
documents, Adams, still in apparent sympathy with the pro-slavery South
on the main issue, gave wise counsel on the method of dealing with
petitions. They should be received, said he, and referred to a
committee; because the right of petition is sacred. This, he maintained,
was the best way to avoid disturbing debate on the subject of slavery.
He quoted his own previous experience; he had made known his opposition
to the purposes of the petitioners; their memorials were duly referred
to a committee and there they slept the sleep of death. At that time
only one voice had been raised in the House in support of the abolition
petitioners, that of John Dickson of New York, who had delivered a
speech of two hours in length advocating their cause; but not a voice
was raised in reply. Mr. Adams mentioned this incident with approval.
The way to forestall disturbing debate in Congress, he said, was
scrupulously to concede all constitutional rights and then simply to
refrain from speaking on the subject.
This sound advice was not followed. For several months a considerable
part of the time of the House was occupied with the question of handling
abolition petitions. And finally, in May, 1836, the following resolution
passed the House: "Resolved, That all petitions, memorials, resolutions,
propositions, or papers relating in any way or to any extent whatever to
the subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being
either printed or referred, be laid on the table, and that no further
action whatever shall be had thereon." This is commonly known as the
"gag resolution." During four successive years it was reenacted in one
form or another and was not repealed by direct vote until 1844.
When the name of Mr. Adams was called in the vote upon the passage of
the above resolution, instead of answering in the ordinary way, he said:
"I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of
the United States, of the rules of this House, and of the rights of my
constituents." This was the beginning of the duel between the "old man
eloquent" and a determined majority in the House of Representatives.
Adams developed undreamed-of resources as a debater and parliamentarian.
He made it his special business to break down the barrier against the
right of petition. Abolitionists cooperated with zeal in the effort.
Their champion was abundantly supplied with petitions. The gag
resolution was designed to prevent all debate on the subject of slavery.
Its effect in the hands of the shrewd parliamentarian was to foment
debate. On one occasion, with great apparent innocence, after presenting
the usual abolition petitions, Adams called the attention of the Speaker
to one which purported to be signed by twenty-two slaves and asked
whether such a petition should be presented to the House, since he was
himself in doubt as to the rules applicable in such a case. This led to
a furious outbreak in the House which lasted for three days. Adams was
threatened with censure at the bar of the House, with expulsion, with
the grand jury, with the penitentiary; and it is believed that only his
great age and national repute shielded him from personal violence. After
numerous passionate speeches had been delivered, Adams injected a few
important corrections into the debate. He reminded the House that he
had not presented a petition purporting to emanate from slaves; on the
contrary, he had expressly declined to present it until the Speaker
had decided whether a petition from slaves was covered by the rule.
Moreover, the petition was not against slavery but in favor of slavery.
He was then charged with the crime of trifling with the sensibilities
of the House; and finally the champion of the right of petition took
the floor in his own defense. His language cut to the quick. His
calumniators were made to feel the force of his biting sarcasm. They
were convicted of injustice, and all their resolutions of censure were
withdrawn. The victory was complete.
After the year 1838 John Quincy Adams had the effective support of
Joshua R. Giddings from the Western Reserve, Ohio--who also fought a
pitched battle of his own which illustrates another phase of the crusade
against liberty. The ship Creole had sailed from Baltimore to New
Orleans in 1841 with a cargo of slaves. The negroes mutinied on the high
seas, slew one man, gained possession of the vessel, sailed to Nassau,
and were there set free by the British Government. Prolonged diplomatic
negotiations followed in which our Government held that, as slaves were
property in the United States, they continued to be such on the high
seas. In the midst of the controversy, Giddings introduced a resolution
into the House, declaring that slavery, being an abridgment of liberty,
could exist only under local rules, and that on the high seas there can
be no slavery. For this act Giddings was arraigned and censured by
the House. He at once resigned, but was reelected with instructions to
continue the fight for freedom of debate in the House.
In the campaign against the rights of freemen mob violence was first
employed, but in the South the weapon of repressive legislation was
soon substituted, and this was powerfully supplemented by social and
religious ostracism. Except in a few districts in the border States,
these measures were successful. Public profession of abolitionism was
suppressed. The violence of the mob was of much longer duration in the
North and reached its height in the years 1834 and 1835. But Northern
mobs only quickened the zeal of the abolitionists and made converts to
their cause. The attempt to substitute repressive state legislation had
the same effect, and the use of church authority for making an end of
the agitation for human liberty was only temporarily influential.
As early as 1838 the Presbyterian Church was divided over questions of
doctrine into Old School and New School Presbyterians. This served to
forestall the impending division on the slavery question. The Old School
in the South became pro-slavery and the New School in the North became
anti-slavery. At the same time the Methodist Church of the entire
country was beset by a division on the main question. In 1844 Southern
Methodist Episcopalian conferences resolved upon separation and
committed themselves to the defense of slavery. The division in the
Methodist Church was completed in 1846. A corresponding division took
place in the Baptist Church in 1845. The controversy was dividing the
country into a free North and an enslaved South, and Southern white men
as well as negroes were threatened with subjection to the demands of the
dominant institution.