2d. The decision of Commissioner Loring in the case of Burns, a fugitive slave.
3d. The charge to the Grand Jury of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis in reference to the effort of a mob to secure a fugitive slave.
4th. "Then, holding up the United States Constitution, he branded it as the source and parent of all other atrocities, 'a covenant with death and an agreement with hell,' and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming, 'So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say, Amen!' A tremendous shout of 'Amen!' went up to heaven in ratification of the deed, mingled with a few hisses and wrathful exclamations from some, who evidently were in a rowdyish state of mind, but who were at once cowed by the popular feeling."[30]
The Abolitionist movement was radical; it was revolutionary. When an accredited teacher of history, in one of the greatest of our universities, writes a volume on "Abolition and Slavery," why should he restrict himself in comment, as Dr. Hart thus does in his preface? The book is "intended to show that there was more than one side to the controversy, and that both the milder form of opposition called anti-slavery and the extreme form called Abolition, were confronted by practical difficulties which to many public men seemed insurmountable."
Why should not the historian, in addition to pointing out the "difficulties" encountered by these extremists, show how and why the people of that day condemned their conduct?
Condonation of the Abolitionists, and a proper regard for the Constitution of the United States, cannot be taught to the youth of America at one and the same time.
The writer has been unable to find any of the incendiary pamphlets that had proved so inflammatory. He has, however, before him a little anonymous publication entitled "Slavery Illustrated in its Effects upon Woman," Isaac Knapp, Boston, 1837. It was for circulation in the North, being "Affectionately Inscribed to all the Members of Female Anti-Slavery Societies," and it is only cited here as an illustration of the almost inconceivable venom with which the crusade was carried on to embitter the North against the South. It is a vicious attack upon the morality of Southern men and women, and upon Southern churches. None of its charges does it claim to authenticate, and it gives no names or dates. One incident, related as typical, is of two white women, all the time in full communion with their church, under pretence of a boarding-house, keeping a brothel, negro women being the inmates.
In the chapter entitled "Impurity of the Christian Churches" is this sentence: "At present the Southern Churches are only one vast consociation of hypocrites and sinners."
The booklet was published anonymously, but at that time any prurient story about slavery in the South would circulate, no matter whether vouched for or not.