"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 effects are more to be deplored because the hope of freedom to the slaves lies chiefly in the disposition of his master. The Abolitionist proposed indeed to convert the slaveholders; and for this reason he approached them with vituperation and exhausted upon them the vocabulary of reproach. And he has reaped as he sowed.... Thus, with good purpose, nothing seems to have been gained. Perhaps (though I am anxious to repel the thought) something has been lost to the cause of freedom and humanity."[[69]]

VIEWS OF LINCOLN

In 1837, the Legislature of Illinois adopted a series of resolutions of a pro-slavery character reprobating the methods of the Abolitionists. Against the resolutions as adopted, Abraham Lincoln prepared a memorandum and, together with Daniel Stone, a fellow member of the body, had the same spread upon its journal as a more accurate expression of their views. After referring to the resolutions, the paper declares:

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils."[[70]]

This declaration of Mr. Lincoln was at once a protest and a prophecy.

It is sometimes urged that because of Mr. Lincoln's youth, at this time, his estimate of the injuries wrought by the "promulgation of abolition doctrines" is not entitled to much weight. It is true that he was then in his twenty-ninth year. A quotation from an even more notable deliverance, made fifteen years later, will show that reflection and observation served to confirm his convictions of the earlier date. In his eulogy on Henry Clay, delivered in the State House, at Springfield, Illinois, July 16th, 1852, he said:

"Cast into life when slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil even to the cause of human liberty itself. His feeling and his judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose both extremes of opinion on the subject. Those who would shiver into fragments the Union of these states, tear to tatters its now venerated constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving their just execration; and the name and opinion and influence of Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them."[[71]]

VIEWS OF WEBSTER

This estimate of Mr. Lincoln had already been anticipated by that of Mr. Webster who, in his speech of March 7th, 1850, in the United States Senate made a special reference to the disastrous influence exerted by the Abolitionists upon the cause of emancipation in Virginia.

"Public opinion," he said, "which in Virginia had begun to be exhibited against slavery and was opening out for the discussion of the question, drew back and shut itself up in its castle. I would like to know whether anybody in Virginia can now talk openly as Mr. Randolph, Governor McDowell and others talked in 1832, and sent their remarks to the press? We all know the facts and we all know the cause; and everything that these agitating people have done has been not to enlarge but to restrain, not to set free, but to bind the faster the slave population of the South."[[72]]