Emancipation in the District of Columbia was out of the question, if only because the South chose half the Senate. The North was strong enough in the House of Representatives to prevent any pro-slavery legislation; and the annexation of Texas was actually postponed until 1845, in consequence partly of the petitions and partly of remonstrances from the legislatures of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other States. These bodies also protested against the neglect of petitions in Congress. The subsidence of mobs after 1838 was due to a general feeling at the North, not only that the rioters were too violent, but also that the South was too dictatorial in gagging Congress, in tampering with the mails, in asking Northern legislatures to suppress public meetings, and in trying to annex Texas.
VIII. On all these points the Whigs were so far in advance of the Democrats in 1840, as to receive much support from abolitionists. These last, however, were widely and unfortunately divided among themselves. Many of the men still called themselves Democrats; for the old party which had been founded by Jefferson had liberal members, who had formerly been called "Fanny Wright men," and were now known as "Loco Focos." A few abolitionists took the Gospel aphorisms about non-resistance so blindly as to say it would be a sin for them to vote. Garrison renounced the franchise "for conscience" sake and the slave's; but it is hard to see precisely what any slave gained by his friends' refusing to vote for Adams, Sumner, or Lincoln. The most consistent abolitionists voted regularly, and selected a candidate for his work in the cause, without regard to his party record.
The Democrats took decided ground in the national convention of 1840 and afterwards against abolitionism. Their nominee, Van Buren, was then at the head of a corrupt administration. The Whig candidate, Harrison, was in favour of free speech and honest government. He had been chosen in preference to Clay, because of the latter's attacking the abolitionists. Another slave-holder who wanted to lynch them, had, however, been nominated by acclamation for Vice-President at the Whig convention; and the party had no platform.
It is hard to see what ought to have been done under these circumstances by abolitionists. Some who were afterwards known as "Liberty men" set up an independent ticket, headed by a martyr to the cause. They had quite as much right to do this as Garrison had to refuse to vote. He had hitherto taken little responsibility for the proceedings of the national society; but when the annual meeting was held at New York in May, 1840, he brought on more than five hundred of his own adherents from New England, in order to pack the convention. Thus he secured the passage of a declaration that the independent nominations were "injurious to the cause" and ought not to be supported. Garrison has justly been compared to Luther, and this was like Luther at his worst.
Most of the officers and members seceded and organised a rival society which did good work in sympathy not only with the Liberty men but with the Free Soilers; and these parties gained most of the new converts to abolitionism. In 1847 the Liberator published without comment an estimate that it did not represent the views of one active abolitionist in ten; and a coloured clergyman of high ability, Dr. Garnett, declared in 1851 that the proportion was less than one per cent. Most of the clergymen who were friendly to Garrison before 1840 were thenceforth against him. So many pulpits were suddenly closed against the agitators, that one of them, named Foster, kept insisting on speaking in meeting without leave in various parts of New England. He was usually dragged out summarily, and often to the injury of his coat-tails, though never of his temper. Boston was one of the most strongly anti-slavery cities; but twenty pastors out of forty-four refused to asked the people to pray for a fugitive slave who was imprisoned illegally in 1842. Those who complied had comparatively little influence. The rural clergy in New England, New York, Michigan, and Northern Ohio, had much more sympathy with reform than their brethren to the southward, especially in large cities. Garrison's personal unpopularity in the churches had been much increased by his violent language against them, and also by his asserting the injustice of Sunday laws, as well as the right of women to speak for the slave. His position on these points will be considered later.
IX. His worst mistake was the demand, which he published in the Liberator, in May, 1842, for "a repeal of the Union between Northern Liberty and Southern Slavery." This he called "essential" for emancipation. In January, 1843, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society passed the resolution which was afterwards published regularly in the Liberator as the Garrisonist creed. It declared the Union "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" which "should be immediately annulled." This position was held by Garrison, Phillips, and their adherents until 1861. It was largely due, like their refusal to vote, to indignation at the support given to slavery by the national Constitution, the Fugitive Slave Act, and some recent legislation at Washington. Garrison was also confident, as he said at a Disunion convention in 1857, that if the South were to secede, she would not "be able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done." Phillips, too, declared that "All the slave asks of us is to stand out of his way." "Let no cement of the Union bind the slave, and he will right himself." It is true that secession brought on emancipation; but it would not have done so if Phillips and Garrison had succeeded in quenching love of the Union in the North. That patriotic feeling burst out in a fierce flame; and it was the restoration of the Union which abolished slavery. Another important fact is that the chief guilt of slavery rested on the South. The national Government was only an accessory at worst. No Northerner was responsible for any clause in the Constitution which he had not sanctioned, or for any action of Congress which he had done his best to prevent.
The best work against slavery which could be done in 1843 and 1844 was to defeat a new attempt to annex Texas. This scheme was avowedly for the extension of slavery over a great region where it had been prohibited by Mexico. There would probably be war with that country; and success would increase the power of the slave-holders in the Senate. One half of its members were from the slave States in 1844; but annexation was rejected in June by a vote of two to one; and the House of Representatives was plainly on the same side, though otherwise controlled by the Democrats.
Public warning of the danger to liberty had been given by Adams and other Whigs in Congress early in 1843; but little heed was taken either by the clergy or by the Garrisonists. Both were too busy with their own plans. Channing died in 1842; and Parker went to Europe in September, 1843. It was not until two months later that the Liberator found room for Texas. Garrison never spoke against annexation until too late; and it was scarcely mentioned in the May meetings of 1843 at New York and Boston, in the one hundred anti-slavery conventions which were held that summer in Western New York, Ohio, and Indiana, with the powerful aid of Frederick Douglass, or in the one hundred conventions in Massachusetts early in 1844. At the May meeting in New York, Foster said he should rejoice to see Texas annexed; and Phillips exulted in the prospect that this would provoke the North to trample on the Constitution. Annexation had been opposed by three candidates for the presidency: Birney, who had already been selected by the "Liberty men"; Van Buren, who was rejected soon after on this account by the Democrats; and Clay, who had already been accepted by the Whigs. All three were formally censured, under various pretexts, in company with John Quincy Adams, at this and other gatherings of the Garrisonians. Their convention soon after in Boston voted ten to one for disunion, and closed on June 1st with the presentation to Garrison of a red flag bearing on one side the motto, "No Union with Slave-holders," and on the other an eagle wrapped in the American flag and trampling on a prostrate slave. Two months later, and three before the election, this banner was carried through gaily decorated streets in Hingham, amid ringing of church bells, to a meeting attended by several thousand disunionists. The Garrisonians thought so much about getting out of the Union, that they had nothing to say in favour of keeping out Texas.
Among the few abolitionists who saw the duty of the hour were Whittier
and Lowell. The full force of their poetry was not much felt before
1850; but among the stirring publications early in 1842 was a
Rallying-Cry for New England against the Annexation of Texas, which
Lowell sent forth anonymously. It was reprinted in Harper's Weekly for
April 23, 1892, but not in the earlier editions of the poems. Among the
most striking lines are these:
"Rise up New England, buckle on your mail of proof sublime,
Your stern old hate of tyranny, your deep contempt of crime.
One flourish of a pen,
And fetters shall be riveted on millions more of men.
One drop of ink to sign a name, and Slavery shall find
For all her surplus flesh and blood a market to her mind.
Awake New England! While you sleep, the foe advance their lines,
Already on your stronghold's wall their bloody banner shines.
Awake and hurl them back again in terror and despair!
The time has come for earnest deeds: we 've not a man to spare."
If the Whigs had nominated Webster that May, on a platform opposing both annexation and disunion, they would have gained more votes at the North than they would have lost at the South. They might possibly have carried that election; and their strength in the Border States would have enabled them, sooner or later, to check the extension of slavery without bringing on civil war. Their platform was silent about Texas, as well as about the Union; their chief candidate, Clay, had already made compromises in the interest of the South in 1820 and 1833; he did so again in 1850; and he admitted, soon after the convention, that he "should be glad to see" Texas annexed, if it could be done without war. This failure of the Whigs to oppose the extension of slavery, together with their having made the tariff highly protective in 1842, cost them so many votes in New York and Michigan that they lost the election.