VIEWS OF DOUGLAS
Stephen A. Douglas, speaking at Bloomington, Illinois, July 16, 1859, said:
"There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished and that is by leaving the state according to the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own way. That was the principle upon which this Republic was founded.... Under its operations slavery disappeared from ... six of the twelve original slaveholding states; and this gradual system of emancipation went on quietly, peacefully and steadily so long as we in the free states minded our own business and left our neighbors alone. But the moment the abolition societies were organized throughout the North, preaching a violent crusade against slavery in the Southern States, this combination necessarily caused a counter-combination in the South, and a sectional line was drawn which was a barrier to any further emancipation. Bear in mind that emancipation has not taken place in any one state since the Free-soil Party was organized as a political party in this country.... The moment the North proclaimed itself the determined master of the South, that moment the South combined to resist the attack, and thus sectional parties were formed and gradual emancipation ceased in all the Northern slaveholding states."[[73]]
In this speech, Mr. Douglas not only points out the methods by which slavery had been abolished in six of the twelve original slaveholding states, but he bears testimony, like his great contemporaries, to the reactionary influence resulting from the attitude of the Northern Abolitionists.
This estimate of Senator Douglas was reaffirmed in the frank declaration of Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, who, speaking in the Peace Conference, at Washington, February, 1861, declared: "The North has taken the business of abolition into its own hands and from the day she did so we hear no more of abolition in Virginia. This was but the natural effect of the cause."[[74]]
VIEWS OF LUNT AND CURTIS
If it be urged that the views of Channing, Lincoln, Webster, Douglas and Ewing were unfair in their estimate of the reactionary influence of the Abolitionists, because of the temper of the times in which they lived, it may be well to quote the conclusions of publicists not so situated. Mr. George Lunt, of Boston, writing in December, 1865, says:
"After the years of 1820-21, during which that great struggle which resulted in what is called the Missouri Compromise was most active and came to its conclusion, the States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were earnestly engaged in practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists upon their voluntary action."[[75]]
Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, writing in 1883, after describing the discussions in the General Assembly of Virginia in 1831-32, and stating that Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the leader of the movement for the abolition of slavery, was re-elected in 1833 from Albemarle, one of the largest slaveholding counties in the state, because of his position, declares:
"But in the meantime came suddenly the intelligence of what was doing at the North. It came in an alarming aspect for the peace and security for the whole South; since it could not be possible that strangers should combine together to assail the slaveholder as a sinner and to demand his instant admission of guilt, without arousing fears of the most dangerous consequences for the safety of Southern homes, as well as intense indignation against such an unwarrantable interference. From that time forth emancipation whether immediate or gradual could not be considered in Virginia or anywhere else in the South."[[76]]