ANTI-ABOLITION AT THE NORTH
Southerners, save perhaps a few who were wise enough to foresee what the
consequences might be, were deeply gratified when they read (1835-1838)
of the violent opposition in the North to the desperate schemes of the
Abolitionists. Surely these mobs fairly represented public opinion, and
that public opinion certainly was a strong guaranty to the South of
future peace and security.
But the Abolitionists themselves were not dismayed. They may have
misread, indeed it is certain they did misunderstand, the signs of the
times. Garrison in his _Liberator_ took the ground--as do his children
in their life of him, written fifty years later--that the great Faneuil
Hall meeting of August 31, 1835, which they themselves declare
represented "the intelligence, the wealth, the culture, and the religion
of Boston," was but an indication of the "pro-slavery" sentiment then
existing. In reality it was just what it purported to be--an
authoritative condemnation, not of the anti-slavery opinions, but of the
avowed purposes and methods of the new sect. The mobbing of Garrison and
the sacking of his printing office in Boston on September 26th, however,
and the lawless violence to Abolitionists that followed the
denunciations of that despised sect by speakers, and by the public
press, in New York, in Philadelphia, in Cincinnati, and elsewhere in the
North, proved disastrous in the extreme.
While that great wave of anti-Abolition feeling was sweeping over that
whole region from East to West, there were many good people who deluded
themselves with the idea that this new sect with its visionary and
impracticable ideas was being consigned to oblivion, but in what
followed we have a lesson that unfortunately some of our people have not
yet fully learned. Mob law in any portion of our free country, where
there is law with officers to enforce it, is a mistake, a mistake that
is likely to be followed sooner or later by most disastrous results. The
mobs that marked the beginning of our Revolution in 1774 were
legitimate; they meant revolt, revolt against constituted authorities.
But where a mob does not mean the overthrow of government, where it only
means to substitute its own blind will for the arm of the law, not good
but evil--it may be long deferred, but evil eventually--is sure to
follow. When mobs assailed Abolitionists because they threatened the
peace and tranquillity of the country, evil followed swiftly.
Violent and harsh treatment of these mischievous agitators almost
everywhere in the North, and the heroism with which they endured
ignominy and insult, brought about a revulsion of public sentiment. To
understand the philosophy of this, read two extracts from the writings
of that great, and universally admired, pulpit orator, Dr. William E.
Channing of Boston, the first written sometime prior to that August
meeting:
The adoption of the common system of agitation by the Abolitionists
has not been justified by success. From the beginning it has
created alarm in the considerate, and strengthened the sympathies
of the Free States with the slave-holder. It has made converts of
a few individuals, but alienated multitudes. _Its influence at the
South has been almost wholly evil. It has stirred up bitter
passions, and a fierce fanaticism, which have shut every ear and
every heart against its arguments and persuasions._ These efforts
are more to be deplored, because the hope of freedom to the slave
lies chiefly in the dispositions of his master. The Abolitionist
proposed indeed to convert the slave-holder; and for this end he
_approached them with vituperation, and exhausted upon them the
vocabulary of reproach_. And he has reaped as he sowed.... Perhaps
(though I am anxious to repel the thought) something has been lost
to the cause of freedom and humanity.[33]
[33] "Channing's Works," vol. II, ed. 1837, pp. 131-32.
These were Dr. Channing's opinions of the Abolitionists prior to August,
1835, and he seems to have kept silent for a time after the mobbing that
followed that great Faneuil Hall meeting; but a year later, when many
other things had happened along the same line, he spoke out in an open
letter to James G. Birney, an Abolitionist editor who had been driven
from Cincinnati, and whose press, on which _The Philanthropist_ was
printed, had been broken up. In that letter, p. 157, _supra_, speaking
of course not for himself alone, Dr. Channing says:
I think it best ... to extend my remarks to the spirit of violence
and persecution which has broken out against the Abolitionists
throughout the whole country. Of their merits and demerits as
Abolitionists I have formerly spoken.... I have expressed my
fervent attachment to the great end to which they are pledged and
at the same time _my disapprobation, to a certain extent, of their
spirit and measures_.... Deliberate, systematic efforts have been
made, _not here and there, but far and wide_, to wrest from its
adherents that _liberty of speech and the press_, which our fathers
asserted in blood, and which our National and State Governments are
pledged to protect as our most sacred right. Its most conspicuous
advocates have been hunted and stoned, its meetings scattered, its
presses broken up, and nothing but the patience, constancy and
intrepidity of its members has saved it from extinction.... They
are _sufferers for the liberty of thought, speech and press; and in
maintaining this liberty, amidst insult and violence, they deserve
a place among its honorable defenders_.
Still admitting that "their writings have been blemished by a spirit of
intolerance, sweeping censure, and rash, injurious judgment," this great
man now threw all the weight of his influence on the side of the
Abolitionists, because they were _the champions of free speech_. Their
moral worth and steady adherence to their ideas of non-resistance he
pointed to admiringly, and it must always be remembered to their credit
that the private lives of Garrison and his leading co-workers were
irreproachable. Indeed, the unselfish devotion of these agitators and
their high moral character were in themselves a serious misfortune. They
soon attracted a lot of zealots, male and female, who became as reckless
as they were. And these out-and-out fanatics were not themselves
office-seekers. What they feared, they said, was that a "lot of soulless
scamps would jump on to their shoulders to ride into office";[34] and
there really was the great danger, as appeared later.
[34] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 214.
In the results that followed the mobbing of Abolitionists in the North,
from 1834 to 1836, is to be found another lesson for those voters of
this day who can profit by the teachings of history. The violent
assaults on the Abolitionists by the friends of the Constitution and the
Union constituted an epoch in the lives of these people. It gave them a
footing and a hearing and many converts.
We have already noted some wonderful and instructive changes in the tide
of events set in motion by the radical teachings of the New
Abolitionists. The churches, as has been shown, to save the country,
North and South, changed their attitude on slavery itself. Dr. Channing,
who had opposed the methods of the Abolitionists, became, as many others
did with him, when mobs had assailed these people, their defender and
eulogist, because they were martyrs for the sake of free speech; and now
we are to see in John Quincy Adams another change, equally notable, a
change that was to make Mr. Adams thenceforward the most momentous
figure, at least during its earlier stages, in the tragic drama that is
the subject of our story.
Elected to the House of Representatives after the expiration of his term
as President, Mr. Adams was not in sympathy with the methods of the
Abolitionists. Indeed, prior to December 31, 1831, he had shown as
little interest in slavery as he did when on that day in presenting to
the House fifteen petitions against slavery he "deprecated a discussion
which would lead to ill-will, to heart-burning, to mutual hatred ...
without accomplishing anything else."[35]
[35] Hart's "Slavery and Abolition," p. 256.
The petitions presented by Mr. Adams were referred to a committee.
The Southerners had not then become so exasperated as to insist on
Congress refusing to receive Abolition petitions. But multiplying these
petitions was a ready means of provoking the slave-holders, and soon
petitions poured in from many quarters, couched, most of them, in
language, not disrespectful to Congress but provoking to slave-holders.
Unfortunately, the lower house of Congress on May 26, 1836, which was
while mobs in the North were still trying to put down the Abolitionists,
passed a resolution that all such petitions, etc., should thereafter be
laid upon the table, _without further action_. Adams voted against it as
"a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States." The
Constitution forbids any law "abridging the freedom of speech ... or the
right ... to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The
resolution to lay all anti-slavery petitions on the table without
further action was passed, "with the hope that it might put a stop to
the agitation that seemed to endanger the existence of the Union." But
it had the opposite effect. It soon became known as the "gag
resolution," and was, for years, the centre of the most aggravating
discussions that had, up to that time, ever occurred in Congress. Mr.
Adams in these debates became, without, it seems, ever having been in
full sympathy with the agitators, thenceforward their champion in
Congress, and so continued until the day of his death in 1848.
The Abolitionists were happy. They were succeeding in their
programme--making the Southern slave-holder odious by exasperating him
into offending Northern sentiment.