Whether the abolitionists of the present time have modified the ideas they promulgated then, we shall see hereafter from a few among the ten thousand specimens that might be adduced.
The effect of these tirades upon the South cannot be well conceived.
Public opinion, just then opening to a free discussion of the question, drew back and shut itself within its castle. The bonds of slavery were bound tighter, the rivets were more strongly fastened, and a reactionary movement commenced that has never yet terminated.
CHAPTER V.
The New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832—More Newspapers and Tracts—New York City Anti-Slavery Society and the Incidents of Its Organization—The American Anti-Slavery Society and its Creed—The Extent and System of their operations—Abolition Riots in New York—An Era of Excitement—Negro Conspiracy in Mississippi—George Thompson, the English Abolitionist—Riot at Alton, Ill., and Death of the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy.
In the year 1832, January 30, the New England or Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society went into operation, but with limited means. From this society have sprung the American Anti-Slavery Society and all its numerous auxiliaries. It was the first organized body that attacked slavery on the principle of its inherent sinfulness, and enforced the consequent duty of “immediate emancipation.” All the events of a historical character which have marked the annals of the last thirty years, may be traced directly to the agitation which this society first set on foot in this country. Men have been forced to throw aside their disguises and stand forth either as the open defenders of slavery or as propagators of the abolition movement. The two great antagonistic parties of the present day are the children of its vile creation. It has excited the very fury of antagonism; it has shaken the pulpit with excommunicating thunders; it has indulged in the most bitter invective, deluged the country with invented instances of Southern barbarity, denounced the Constitution as a “league with hell,” and scattered its venom in every household of the free States, until men, women and children have become imbued with its contaminating infection. Their discourses have all been tirades; their exordium, argument and peroration have turned on epithets, slanders, inuendoes; Southerners have been reviled as “tyrants,” “thieves,” “murderers,” “atrocious monsters,” “violators of the laws of nature, God and man,” while their homes have been designated as “the abodes of iniquity,” and their land “one vast brothel.”
More abolition papers sprang into existence. The New York Evangelist, then conducted by the Rev. Samuel Griswold, espoused the cause. Through the influence of the Tappans, millions of anti-slavery tracts were circulated monthly, and sent by mail to all portions of the country, and especially to clergymen. These publications were likewise scattered through the South, their direct tendency being to stir up the slaves to further insurrection. Recruits of all ages and professions came forward, and the cause numbered amongst its adherents many of the theologians and professional men of the period.
THE NEW YORK CITY ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.—1833.