History of American Abolitionism / Its four great epochs, embracing narratives of the ordinance of 1787, compromise of 1820, annexation of Texas, Mexican war, Wilmot proviso, negro insurrections, abolition riots, slave rescues, compromise of 1850, Kansas bill of 1854, John Brown insurrection, 1859, valuable statistics, &c., &c., &c., together with a history of the Southern Confederacy.

by F. G. De Fontaine

CHAPTER VIII.

The Influence of Religion and Women—Ruptures in Churches and Church Organizations—Sentiments of Clergymen—“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—The “Impending Crisis”—The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection.

One of the principal agencies by which this extraordinary revolution in the public sentiment of the North has been brought about is the Church. The history of anti-slavery in this connection, however, is too extended to admit of anything more than a narration of general facts. It is sufficient to say that the abolitionists have had the co-operation of a portion of the principal religious sects of the free States ever since the year 1820, since which time their conferences, sessions, assemblies and meetings have been the theatres of the most rancorous discussion, abusive debate and irremediable discord. They have ruptured the Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist churches, and divided into antagonistic parties the American Board of Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society, the American Tract Society, and every other benevolent organization which embraces within its scope of good the common country. They have thus prevented the dissemination of the Bible, the establishing of missionaries, the distribution of tracts, and interrupted all efforts that have been made for the Christian elevation of the slave or the welfare of the master. Instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the interests of religion which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed against each other, two hostile bodies, whose sole occupation is individual abuse, political harangues, and the profanation of the sacred desk. Personal holiness has given way to party spirit, and while men’s hearts around them are blazing with the carnalities of their own fallen nature, ministers have forgotten their vocation in preaching havoc, subverting the Scriptures and setting up as the God of worship the comfortable negroes of the South. Their sentiment is “If the Bible tolerates slavery for an instant, away with it. And God himself!—if he sanctions this hell-born monster, even he is unworthy of respect.” The black portrait of Southern slavery has been indelibly painted upon their imaginations until the pure, solid, consistent religion of our forefathers no longer exists. These reverend Pecksniffs can hardly bear to look upon a Southern man without a feeling of revenge; they seldom look at a Bible without muttering a blasphemy, and cannot speak of the South and its institutions without letting out their dream of blood and desire.

Witness some of their effusions. The Rev. Daniel Foster, one of the chaplains of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1855-6, referring to the Southern clergy, said:—

“He stood on that floor as an orthodox clergyman, but he would as soon exchange with the devil as one of those hireling priests—those traitors to humanity. The professed Church of Christ is false, and its hireling priesthood unworthy of confidence.”

The Rev. Mr. Griswold, of Stonington, said:—

“For the church which sustains slavery, wherever it be, I am ready to say I will welcome the bolt, whether it come from heaven or hell, which shall destroy it. Its pretensions to Christianity are the boldest effrontery and the vilest imposture.”

The Rev. Mr. Howell says, when speaking of the Bible arguments in behalf of slavery:—

“Give up my advocacy of abolition? Never! I will sooner, Jonas like, throw the Bible overboard, and execrate it as the Newgate calendar, denounce God as a slaveholder, and his angels and Apostles as turnkeys and slavedrivers.”

The Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a speech in the Detroit Convention:—

“Damned to the lowest hell all the pastors and churches of the South, as they were a body of thieves, adulterers, pirates and murderers—that the Episcopal Methodist Church is more corrupt and profligate than any bawdy house in the Union—that the Southern ministers of that body are desirous of perpetuating slavery for the purpose of debauchery, and that every clergyman among them is guilty of enormities that would shock a savage.”

The same Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a discussion in Cincinnati, in 1845, in reply to Dr. Rice, who held up to the abolitionists’ imitation the example of the “Angel of the Lord who advised Hagar, the slave of Abraham, to return to her master,” said:—“Well, if the angel did so advise her, I think he was a ruffian.”

We might quote sentiments like the above ad libitum; but these are sufficient to show the drift of a portion, at least, of the clerical mind at the North.

What has been the influence of these clerical fanatics? They have contributed to the formation of revolutionary societies, throughout the length and breadth of the land, and invited all men to join in the holy crusade. Appealing to their congregations, they have worked with honied phrase and flattering carresses upon the tender imaginations of women until they have learned to look upon a slaveholder as a sort of moral monstrosity. Sewing parties have been turned into abolition clubs, while little children in the Sunday schools have been taught that A. B. stands for abolition, from books illuminated with graphic insignia of terror and oppression; with pictorial chains, handcuffs and whips, in the act of application to naked and crouching slaves. This latter remark is truer of the past than the present generation; but we see the influence around us in the millions of young men that now constitute the bulk of the republican party, who may trace their opinions upon the question of slavery to the early prejudices thus acquired.

John Randolph, of Roanoke, once said, “that the worst government on earth was a government of priests, and the next worst was a government of women.” There is little doubt that if the present movement goes on, we shall have a government of both priests and females. As the revolution of France was hurried forward by the fish-women of Paris, many of the horrible atrocities of that time being perpetrated by them, so the same misguided spirit urges on the women of the present day, until they have become not only regardless of the human suffering which may result from their course, but of the inevitable tendencies of their influence towards the overthrow of the government itself.

Some of these women edit newspapers, write books, peddle tracts, deliver lectures, and constantly, in one shape or another, keep themselves notorious in the public prints. One of the most effective of these feminine offsprings ever brought to bear upon the public mind was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—a story which originally appeared in the National Era, at Washington, in 1852, was afterwards published in a book, and soon created an extraordinary excitement on both sides of the Atlantic. No other book ever passed through so many editions, either in America or Europe. It has been translated into most of the Continental languages, and placed upon the stage in a dramatic form in almost every city of the Union. It served its purpose. What truth could not accomplish, fiction did, and Harriet Beecher Stowe has had the satisfaction of throwing a firebrand into the world, which has kept up a furious blaze ever since. Others have followed in her wake, but their success has been more moderate, making proselytes by hundreds, where she made them by thousands.

Among the publications of a more recent date is that of Hinton Rowan Helper, on the “Impending Crisis,” which appeared in 1858, filled with the most ultra abolition doctrines that could be accumulated, and received the endorsement of the principal leaders of the republican party. It thereafter became the Shibboleth of the organization, by which its members have sworn, and the standard by which its principles have since been measured. While it is a work intrinsically false and worthless, yet, being the production of a Southern man, it had a fictitious value in the eyes of Northern fanatics who were only too glad to use it against the people of the South.

Contemporaneous with the excitement produced by this book, and partially growing out of it, was

THE HARPER’S FERRY INSURRECTION.

The facts are briefly as follows:—On the 17th of October, 1859, the country was startled with the announcement that a party of armed men, whites and blacks, had entered the village of Harper’s Ferry, Va., taken possession of the United States armory at that place, shot two or three whites, placed guards on the railroad bridge, and stopped the passenger trains of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

The President promptly dispatched a detachment of marines to the spot. The insurrectionists were found to number about twenty white men and negroes, under the leadership of the notorious Kansas Free-State man, John Ossawatomie Brown. After some time spent in parley, made for the purpose of saving a number of prominent citizens who were held prisoners by Brown within the enclosures of the United States Armory, the marines made an attack, beat down the gates, and took all who were not killed prisoners.

Among the latter was Brown himself, who had received a number of severe wounds. Brown confessed that his object was to liberate and run off all the slaves in the adjoining counties of Virginia and Maryland. At a farm-house which Brown had hired a few miles from Harper’s Ferry, were found ammunition and arms, consisting of a large number of Sharpe’s rifles, revolvers, pikes and other implements of war, together with a great amount of correspondence, consisting of letters of Gerrit Smith and Fred Douglas. During the whole affair, there were killed ten of the insurrectionists, six citizens and one United States marine, and a number on both sides were wounded.

Brown was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the United States on the 2d of November, was sentenced to be hung, which sentence was carried into effect on the 2d of December, 1859.

It has since been discovered that the following is a portion of the plans of abolitionists, matured in Kansas by Brown and others, and which he attempted in part to carry out:—

“1. To make war (openly or secretly, as circumstances may dictate) upon the property of the slaveholders and their abettors—not for its destruction, if that can be easily avoided, but to convert it to the use of the slaves. If it cannot be thus converted, then we advise its destruction. Teach the slaves to burn their master’s buildings, to kill their cattle and horses, to conceal or destroy farming utensils, to abandon labor in seed time and harvest, and let crops perish. Make slavery unprofitable in this way, if it can be done in no other.

“2. To make slaveholders objects of derision and contempt, by flogging them whenever they shall be guilty of flogging their slaves.

“3. To risk no general insurrection until we of the North go to your assistance, or you are sure of success without our aid.

“4. To cultivate the friendship and confidence of the slaves; to consult with them as to their rights and interests, and the means of promoting them; to show your interest in their welfare, and your readiness to assist them; let them know that they have your sympathy, and it will give them courage, self-respect and ambition, and make men of them—infinitely better men to live by, as neighbors and friends, than the indolont, arrogant, selfish, heartless, domineering robbers and tyrants who now keep both yourselves and the slaves in subjection, and look with contempt upon all who live by honest labor.

“5. To change your political institutions as soon as possible, and, in the meantime, give never a vote to a slaveholder; pay no taxes to their government, if you can either resist or evade them; as witnesses and jurors, give no testimony and no verdicts in support of any slaveholding claims; perform no military, patrol or police service; mob slaveholding courts, jails and sheriffs; do nothing, in short, for sustaining slavery, but everything you safely can, publicly and privately, for its overthrow.”

THE END.

We have before given a table of the number of slaves in the United States in 1790. It was then 697,696. The following is a similar estimate for the year 1850, as determined by the seventh census:

1	New Jersey	222
2	Delaware	2,990
3	Maryland	90,368
4	Virginia	472,528
5	North Carolina	288,548
6	South Carolina	384,984
7	Georgia	386,682
8	Florida	39,309
9	Alabama	342,892
10	Mississippi	309,878
11	Louisiana	244,809
12	Texas	58,161
13	Arkansas	47,100
14	Tennessee	239,460
15	Kentucky	210,981
16	Missouri	87,422
17	District of Columbia	3,687
18	Utah	26
	Total	3,204,347

Adding to this sum thirty per cent, a fair estimate of the increase for the last ten years, and we have in 1860, 3,965,651 slaves in the United States, or four millions in round numbers. There were in the United States 347,525 persons owning slaves. Of this number two owned 1,000 each; both resided in South Carolina. Nine only owned between 500 and 1,000, of whom two resided in Georgia, four in Louisiana, one in Mississippi. Fifty-six owned from 300 to 500, of whom one resided in Maryland, one in Virginia, three in North Carolina, one in Tennessee, one in Florida, four in Georgia, six in Louisiana, eight in Mississippi, twenty-nine in South Carolina, one hundred and eighty-seven owned from 200 to 300, of whom South Carolina had sixty-nine, Louisiana thirty-six, Georgia twenty-two, Mississippi eighteen, Alabama sixteen, North Carolina twelve, five other States fourteen, and four States none. Fourteen hundred and seventy-nine owned from 100 to 200. All the slaveholding States, except Florida and Missouri, are represented in this class, South Carolina having one-fourth of the whole; 29,733 persons owned from ten to twenty slaves each. South Carolina, from this statement, owns more slaves in proportion to her population than any other State in the South.

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A few general considerations, and we conclude our narrative. After tracing the course of events recorded in the foregoing pages, the questions naturally arise—What has been the result? what have the abolitionists gained? The answers may be briefly summed up as follows:—

1. They have put an end to the benevolent schemes of emancipation which originated among the real philanthropists of the South, and were calculated, in a proper time and manner, beneficent to all concerned, to produce the desired result. In their wild and fanatical attempts they have counteracted the very object at which they have aimed. Instead of ameliorating the condition of the slaves, they have only aroused the distrust of the master, and led to restrictions which did not before exist. The truth is, the lot of the people of the South is not more implicated in that of the slaves than is the lot of the slaves in the people of the South. In their mutual relations, they must survive or perish together. In the language of another, “The worst foes of the black race are those who have intermeddled in their behalf. By nature, the most affectionate and loyal of all races beneath the sun, they are also the most helpless: and no calamity can befal them greater than the loss of that protection they enjoy under this patriarchal system. Indeed, the experiment has been tried of precipitating them upon a freedom which they know not how to enjoy; and the dismal results are before the world in statistics that may well excite astonishment. With the fairest portions of the earth in their possession, and with the advantage of a long discipline as the cultivators of the soil, their constitutional indolence has converted the most beautiful islands of the sea into howling wastes. It is not too much to say, that if the South should, at this moment, surrender every slave, the wisdom of the entire world, united in solemn council, could not solve the question of their disposal. Freedom would be their doom. Every Southern master knows this truth and feels its power.”

2. Touch the negro, and you touch cotton—the mainspring that keeps the machinery of the world in motion. In teaching slaves to entertain wild and dangerous notions of liberty, the abolitionists have thus jeopardized the commerce of the country and the manufacturing interests of the civilized world. They have likewise destroyed confidence. Northern institutions are no longer filled with the young men and women of the South, but find rivals springing up in every State south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Northern commerce can no longer depend upon the rich places of wealth it has hitherto found in Southern patronage. Northern men can no longer travel in the South without being regarded as objects of suspicion and confounded with the abolitionists of their section. In short, all the kind relations that have ever existed between the North and the South have been interrupted, and a barrier erected, which, socially, commercially and politically, has separated the heretofore united interests of the two sections, and which nothing but a revolution in public sentiment, a higher sense of the moral obligations due our neighbor, a religious training, which will graft upon our nature a truer conscience and inculcate a purer charity, and finally a recognition of abstract right and justice, can ever remove.

3. They have held out a Canadian Utopia, where they have taught the slaves in their ignorance to believe they could enjoy a life of ease and luxury, and having cut them off from a race of kind masters and separated them from comfortable homes, left the deluded beings incapable of self-support upon an uncongenial soil, to live in a state of bestiality and misery, and die cursing the abolitionists as the authors of their wretchedness.

4. They have led a portion of the people of the North, as well as of the South, to examine the question in all its aspects, and to plant themselves upon the broad principle that that form of government which recognizes the institution of slavery in the United States, is the best, the condition of the two races, white and black being considered, for the development, progress and happiness of each. In other words, to regard servitude as a blessing to the negro, and under proper and philanthropic restrictions, necessary to their preservation and the prosperity of the country.

5. Step by step they have built up a party upon an issue which has led to a dissolution of the Union. They have scattered the seeds of abolitionism until a majority of the voters of the free States have become animated by a fixed purpose not only to prevent the further growth of the slave power, but to beard the lion in his den.

The power of the North has been consolidated, and for the first time in the history of the country it is wielded as a sectional weapon against the interests of the South. The government is now in the hands of men elected by Northern votes, who regard slavery as a curse and a crime, and they will have the means necessary to accomplish their purpose.

The utterances that have heretofore come from the rostrum or from irresponsible associations of individuals now come from the throne. “Clad with the sanctities of office, with the anointing oil poured upon the monarch’s head, the decree has gone forth that the institution of Southern slavery shall be constrained within assigned limits. Though Nature and Providence should send forth its branches like the banyan tree to take root in congenial soil, here is a power superior to both, that says it shall wither and die within its own charmed circle.”

If this be not believed, let the following selections from the speeches of the leaders of the Republican party be the proof:—

Hon. Charles Sumner, United States Senator from Mass.:—

“This slave oligarchy will soon cease to exist as a political combination. Its final doom may be postponed, but it is certain. Languishing, it may live yet longer, but it will surely die. Yes, fellow-citizens, surely it will die—when disappointed in its purposes—driven back within the States, and constrained within these limits, it can no longer rule the Republic as a plantation of slaves at home; can no longer menace Territories with its five-headed device to compel labor without wages; can no longer fasten upon the constitution an interpretation which makes merchandise of men, and gives a disgraceful immunity to the brokers of human flesh, and the butchers of human hearts; and when it can no longer grind flesh and blood, groans and sighs, the tears of mothers and the cries of children into the cement of a barbarous political power! Surely, then, in its retreat, smarting under the indignation of an aroused people, and the concurring judgment of the civilized world it must die;—it may be, as a poisoned rat dies, of rage in its hole. (Enthusiastic applause.) Meanwhile all good omens are ours. The work cannot stop. Quickened by the triumph, now at hand,—with a Republican President in power, State after State, quitting the condition of a territory, and spurning slavery, will be welcomed into our plural unit, and joining hands together, will become a belt of fire about the slave States, in which slavery must die.”

Hon. John Wentworth, Editor of the Chicago Democrat, and Mayor of Chicago:—

“We might as well make up our minds to fight the battle now, as at any other time. It will have to be fought, and the longer the evil day is put off, the more bloody will be the contest when it comes. If we do not place slavery in the process of extinction now, by hemming it in, where it is, and not suffering it to expand, it will extinguish us, and our liberties.

“If the Union be preserved, and if the Federal government be administered for a few years by Republican Presidents, a scheme may be devised, and carried out, which will result in the peaceful, honorable and equitable EMANCIPATION of ALL the SLAVES.

“The States must be made ALL FREE, and if a Republican government is intrusted with the duty of making them FREE, the work will be done without bloodshed, without revolution, without disastrous loss of property. The work will be one of time and patience, but it MUST BE DONE!”

Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State (his Rochester speech of Oct. 25, 1858):

“Our country is a theatre which exhibits, in full operation, two radically different political systems—the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of freemen. * * * * * * * *

“The two systems are at once perceived to be incongruous. But never have permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.

* * * These antagonistic systems are continually coming in closer contact, and collision ensues.

“Shall I tell you what this collision means? It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must, and will, sooner or later, become entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirety a free labor nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina, and the sugar plantations of Louisiana, will ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye fields and wheat fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be surrendered by their farmers to the slave culture and to the production of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men.”

At a later period, in the Senate of the United States, the same Senator uttered the following language:—

“A free Republican government like this, notwithstanding all its constitutional checks, cannot long resist and counteract the progress of society.

“Free labor has at last apprehended its rights and its destiny, and is organizing itself to assume the government of the Republic. It will henceforth meet you boldly and resolutely here (Washington); it will meet you everywhere, in the Territories and out of them, wherever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in California and in Kansas, it will invade you soon in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. It will meet you in Arizona, in Central America, and even in Cuba.

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“You may, indeed, get a start under or near the tropics, and seem safe for a time, but it will be only a short time. Even there you will found States only for free labor to maintain and occupy. The interest of the whole race demands the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consummation shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precautions against sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by violence, is all that remains for you to decide. The white man needs this continent to labor upon. His head is clear, his arm is strong, and his necessities are fixed.

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“It is for yourselves, and not for us, to decide how long and through what further mortifications and disasters the contest shall be protracted before freedom shall enjoy her already assured triumph.

“You may refuse to yield it now, and for a short period, but your refusal will only animate the friends of freedom with the courage and the resolution, and produce the union among them, which alone is necessary on their part to attain the position itself, simultaneously with the impending overthrow of the existing Federal Administration and the constitution of a new and more independent Congress.”

Hon. Joshua Giddings, Member of Congress from Ohio:—

“I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South; when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and led on by British officers, shall assert his freedom, and wage a war of extermination against his master; when the torch of the incendiary shall light up the towns and cities of the South, and blot out the last vestige of slavery. And though I may not mock at their calamity, nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet I will hail it as the dawn of a political millennium.”

Hon. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States:—

“I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave, and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief, that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

“I have always hated slavery as much as any abolitionist. I have always been an old line Whig. I have always hated it, and I always believed it in a course of ultimate extinction. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision I would vote that it should.”

These are a few only of the extracts of a similar nature which may be selected from multitudes of speeches that have been delivered by the leading men of the party. The same sentiment, however, runs through them all, and abolition, in one way or another, is not less a doctrine of the Republican party of 1860 than it was of the Liberty party of 1840, to which it owes its birth. “Abolitionism is clearly its informing and actuating soul; and fanaticism is a blood-hound that never bolts its track when it has once lapped blood. The elevation of their candidate is far from being the consummation of their aims. It is only the beginning of that consummation; and if all history be not a lie, there will be coercion enough till the end of the beginning is reached, and the dreadful banquet of slaughter and ruin shall glut the appetite.”

And now the end has come. The divided house, which Mr. Lincoln boastfully said would not fall, has fallen. The ruins of the Union are at the feet as well of those who loved and cherished it as of those who labored for its destruction. The Constitution is at length a nullity, and our flag a mockery. Fanaticism, too, must have its apotheosis.

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