CHAPTER V
SLAVERY AND ANTI-SLAVERY
Frederick Douglass was so much a part of the Abolition movement from 1838 to the final overthrow of slavery in the United States, that his career will be the better understood after a brief review of the condition of the country as affected by the evil during those years.
At the time of Douglass’s escape from bondage in 1838, slavery was the one great and overshadowing fact in our national life. According to the census of 1840, the number of slaves in the United States was about 2,500,000 and the number of free colored people about 300,000. The value of slave-property was upward of two billions of dollars. No other interest in the United States at that time approximated in the amount of its invested capital the sum represented in these human chattels. The labor of these slaves was to a very considerable extent the basis of American commerce and credit. Not the South alone, but the entire nation, was interested directly or indirectly, in preserving the integrity and maintaining the economic value of slave-labor. The mining, the manufacturing, and the great grain interests of the present time were unknown and scarcely dreamed of in those early days of the nation’s industries. Cotton was “king,” and its dominion affected in some way, and to some degree, the social, political, and economic life of the republic.
The results of Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin were such as to check the current of sentiment in favor of emancipation, which had found expression in the sayings of Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and other Revolutionary leaders. In his great speech of March 7, 1850, Daniel Webster said: “In 1791 the first parcel of cotton of the growth of the United States was exported and amounted to 19,200 pounds. It has gone on increasing rapidly until the whole crop may now, perhaps, in a season of great product and great prices, amount to $100,000,000.” According to the estimates of the United States Census Bureau in its census of 1900, cotton production increased from 2,000,025 pounds in 1790 to 987,637,200 pounds in 1849, and 2,397,238,140 pounds in 1859. The enormous capital invested in this industry created a close community of interest between the planters of the South and the capitalists of the North; hence the influence of the cotton trade was felt in both sections.
This enormous interest easily dominated the politics of the times, North and South. The most prominent statesmen of the nation, after 1850, were either openly committed to policies and measures to protect and extend the power of slavery, or were silent, since to oppose these policies and measures meant, in many instances, political extinction. The trend of all legislation in our national government at this period was directly opposed to emancipation. Meanwhile, the evil flourished and became more and more a part of the spirit and blood of our national life. If there were no slavery in the Northern states, one reason was that slave-labor had proven unprofitable. In the early days of the institution, the North was quite as willing to legalize and protect slavery as the South, and continued to do so as long as it paid and was practicable. The mere fact that slavery was profitable where climatic conditions were congenial to cotton raising, increased the demand for both slaves and territory. The pressure for more slaves and more territory for slavery, was so persistent, that it constantly became easier to ignore moral and religious precepts, to set aside the national maxims, and to override the laws that stood in the way of its extension and power. For example, the slave-trade was prohibited by national law, yet so little effort was made to enforce this law, that importations kept the market well supplied. The acts of Congress, the messages of our presidents, the utterances of our cabinet ministers, and correspondence with the representatives of the nation at foreign courts, contain abundant evidences of the constant concern of our government that nothing should be done to impair the security of slave-property in the United States. The acts of Congress by which every addition to our national domain south of the Ohio River became slave-territory, clearly show this. When in 1855, a “slaver” was driven by storm to seek refuge in Bermuda, our Minister at the Court of St. James was instructed that, “in the present state of diplomatic relations with the government of his British Majesty, the most immediately pressing of the matters with which the United States Legation at London is now charged, is the claim of certain American citizens against Great Britain, for a number of slaves wrecked on the island in the Atlantic.” The message contains a polite hint that “neglect to satisfy these demands might possibly tend to disturb and weaken the kind and amicable relations that now so happily subsist between the two countries.”
By sanction of the national government, slavery was legalized and protected at the national capital. The war with Mexico, which resulted in the annexation of Texas, was followed by the establishment of slavery in the territory so acquired. It was fostered and defended as a national institution not only by numerous acts of the government, but by public sentiment in the Northern states. It had existed before the foundation of the Union. It had been accepted as a fact by the framers of the Constitution. As such, it had a legitimate claim, it was urged, to the protection of the government. It was generally assumed that, on the whole, the Negro was better off in slavery than as a free man. Though the Northern people did not favor the extension of slavery, they were disposed to meet in a spirit of conciliation every demand for more protection, more power, and more territory for this traffic.
When opposition, not on grounds of expediency but of fundamental right, began to manifest itself in Northern states by the circulation of Abolition papers, the alarm of slave-owners was expressed in no uncertain tones. Some of the governors of slave-states and their legislatures made urgent demands that such publications be suppressed. The following is a sample of some of the resolutions passed by the legislatures: “Resolved that our sister states are respectfully requested to enact penal laws prohibiting the printing, within their respective limits, of all such publications as may have a tendency to make our slaves discontented.”
The messages of the governors of two Northern states, William L. Marcy of New York, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, aptly illustrate sentiment in the North at this time. Governor Marcy said: “Without the power to pass such laws, the states would not possess all the necessary means for preserving their external relations of peace among themselves.” Governor Everett said: “Whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite an insurrection among slaves, has been held by highly respectable legal authority an offense against the peace of this commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law.”
In the same year, 1836, the Rhode Island legislature reported on a bill in conformity with the demands of the slave-states. The significance of this action is that it was taken fully two months prior to the request of the Southern states. Thus it appears that the idea of the suppression of free speech and free publication against slavery was first broached in a Northern state.
President Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, in 1835 suggested “the propriety of passing such laws as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern states, through the mail, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.”