It was under the reign of law and with the forces of the Union as its allies that the institution of slavery could meet with success, all assaults coming from beyond the states where it existed. Amid the clash of arms and with the Federal Government no longer protecting their rights, slaveholders were most open to successful attack and slavery most likely to receive its mortal blow.
Wendell Phillips expressed the idea when he declared:
"The storm which rocked the vessel of state almost to foundering snapped forever the chain of the French slave. Look, too, at the history of the Mexican and South America emancipation and you will find that it was in every instance, I think, the child of convulsion. The hour will come—God hasten it!—when the American people shall so stand on the deck of their Union—'built i' th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.' If I live to see the hour I shall say to every slave, 'Strike now for Freedom.'"[[337]]
SECESSION NOT LOGICAL DEFENSE
It would seem most unreasonable and illogical to suppose that the people of Virginia turned to secession and civil war from a selfish desire to safeguard slavery from the attacks of the Abolitionists. Such a course augmented rather than lessened the dangers which beset the institution.
If, however, worn out with the assaults upon their constitutional rights and wounded in their pride by the fierce arraignments of their character and civilization, they turned to separation as a means of preserving their self-respect and as showing a determination to live no longer in political association with their enemies, then their action becomes intelligible—whatever may be the judgment as to the just proportion between the wrongs complained of and the remedy proposed.
| [329] | William Lloyd Garrison, by his children, Vol. III, p. 508. |
| [330] | Thurlow Weed, Barnes, Vol. II, p. 305. |
| [331] | Twenty Years of Congress, Blaine, Vol. I, 176. |