The Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a speech in the Detroit Convention:—
“Damned to the lowest hell all the pastors and churches of the South, as they were a body of thieves, adulterers, pirates and murderers—that the Episcopal Methodist Church is more corrupt and profligate than any bawdy house in the Union—that the Southern ministers of that body are desirous of perpetuating slavery for the purpose of debauchery, and that every clergyman among them is guilty of enormities that would shock a savage.”
The same Rev. Mr. Blanchard, in a discussion in Cincinnati, in 1845, in reply to Dr. Rice, who held up to the abolitionists’ imitation the example of the “Angel of the Lord who advised Hagar, the slave of Abraham, to return to her master,” said:—“Well, if the angel did so advise her, I think he was a ruffian.”
We might quote sentiments like the above ad libitum; but these are sufficient to show the drift of a portion, at least, of the clerical mind at the North.
What has been the influence of these clerical fanatics? They have contributed to the formation of revolutionary societies, throughout the length and breadth of the land, and invited all men to join in the holy crusade. Appealing to their congregations, they have worked with honied phrase and flattering carresses upon the tender imaginations of women until they have learned to look upon a slaveholder as a sort of moral monstrosity. Sewing parties have been turned into abolition clubs, while little children in the Sunday schools have been taught that A. B. stands for abolition, from books illuminated with graphic insignia of terror and oppression; with pictorial chains, handcuffs and whips, in the act of application to naked and crouching slaves. This latter remark is truer of the past than the present generation; but we see the influence around us in the millions of young men that now constitute the bulk of the republican party, who may trace their opinions upon the question of slavery to the early prejudices thus acquired.
John Randolph, of Roanoke, once said, “that the worst government on earth was a government of priests, and the next worst was a government of women.” There is little doubt that if the present movement goes on, we shall have a government of both priests and females. As the revolution of France was hurried forward by the fish-women of Paris, many of the horrible atrocities of that time being perpetrated by them, so the same misguided spirit urges on the women of the present day, until they have become not only regardless of the human suffering which may result from their course, but of the inevitable tendencies of their influence towards the overthrow of the government itself.
Some of these women edit newspapers, write books, peddle tracts, deliver lectures, and constantly, in one shape or another, keep themselves notorious in the public prints. One of the most effective of these feminine offsprings ever brought to bear upon the public mind was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—a story which originally appeared in the National Era, at Washington, in 1852, was afterwards published in a book, and soon created an extraordinary excitement on both sides of the Atlantic. No other book ever passed through so many editions, either in America or Europe. It has been translated into most of the Continental languages, and placed upon the stage in a dramatic form in almost every city of the Union. It served its purpose. What truth could not accomplish, fiction did, and Harriet Beecher Stowe has had the satisfaction of throwing a firebrand into the world, which has kept up a furious blaze ever since. Others have followed in her wake, but their success has been more moderate, making proselytes by hundreds, where she made them by thousands.
Among the publications of a more recent date is that of Hinton Rowan Helper, on the “Impending Crisis,” which appeared in 1858, filled with the most ultra abolition doctrines that could be accumulated, and received the endorsement of the principal leaders of the republican party. It thereafter became the Shibboleth of the organization, by which its members have sworn, and the standard by which its principles have since been measured. While it is a work intrinsically false and worthless, yet, being the production of a Southern man, it had a fictitious value in the eyes of Northern fanatics who were only too glad to use it against the people of the South.
Contemporaneous with the excitement produced by this book, and partially growing out of it, was
THE HARPER’S FERRY INSURRECTION.