The two great national parties were the Democrats and the Whigs, the voters somewhat equally divided between them. For years both parties had regarded the Abolitionists precisely as did the non-partisan meeting at Faneuil Hall, in August, 1835—as a band of agitators, organized for the purpose of interfering with slavery where it was none of their business; and both parties had meted out to this new and, as they deemed it, pestilent sect, unstinted condemnation. But at last the voters of this despised cult had turned a presidential election and were making inroads in both parties. Half a dozen Northern States, in which in 1835 "no protest had been made against the fugitive slave law of 1793," had already passed "personal liberty laws" intended to obstruct and nullify that law. And now it was "slave-catchers" and not Abolitionists who were being mobbed in the North.
Boston had reversed its attitude toward the Abolitionists. On May 31, 1849, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was holding its annual convention in that very Faneuil Hall where, in 1835, Abolitionism had been so roundly condemned; and now Wendell Phillips, pointing to one of two fugitive slaves, who then sat triumphantly on the platform, said, "amid great applause, ... 'We say that they may make their little laws in Washington, but that Faneuil Hall repeals them, in the name of the humanity of Massachusetts.'"[38]
Poets headed by Whittier and Longfellow, authors like Emerson and Lowell, and orators like Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips, had joined the agitators, and all united in assaulting the fugitive slave law. The following, from James Russell Lowell's "Biglow Papers," No. 1, June, 1840, is a specimen of the literature that was stirring up hostility against slavery and the "slave-catcher" in the breasts of many thousands, who were joining in an anti-slavery crusade while disdaining companionship with the Abolitionists:
"Ain't it cute to see a Yankee
Take such everlastin' pains
All to get the Devil's Thankee
Helpin' on 'em weld their chains?"
W'y it's jest es clear es figgers,
Clear es one and one makes two,
Chaps that makes black slaves of niggers
Want to make w'ite slaves o' you.
In the meantime the people of the South, much excited, were resorting to repression, passing laws to prevent slaves from being taught to read, and laws, in some States, inhibiting assemblages of slaves above given numbers, unless some white person were present—all as safeguards against insurrection. Thus, in 1835, an indictment was found in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, against one Williams, who had never been in Alabama, for circulating there an alleged incendiary document, and Governor Gayle made requisition on Governor Marcy, of New York, for the extradition of Williams. Governor Marcy denied the request. The case was the same as that more recently decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, when it held that editors of New York and Indiana papers could not be brought to the District of Columbia for trial.
The South, all the while clamoring to have the agitators put down, had by still other means than these contributed to the ever-increasing excitement in the North. Southerners had mobbed Abolitionists, and whipped and driven out of the country persons found in possession of The Liberator or suspected of circulating other incendiary literature. And violence in the South against the Abolitionists had precisely the same effect on the Northern mind as the violence against them in the North had from 1835 to 1838, but there was this difference: the refugee from the distant South, whether he were an escaped slave or a fleeing Abolitionist, could color and exaggerate the wrongs he had suffered and so parade himself as a martyr. While this was true, it was also quite often true that the outrage committed in the South against the suspect was real enough—a mob had whipped and expelled him without any trial. And this is another of the lessons as to the evil effects of mob law that crop out all through the history of the anti-slavery crusade. No good can come from violating the law.
In 1848 another presidential election turned on the anti-slavery vote, this time again in New York State. Anti-slavery Democrats bolted the Democratic ticket, thus electing General Taylor, the Whig candidate.
In the canvass preceding this election originated, we are told, the catch-phrase applied to Cass, the Democratic candidate—"a Northern man with Southern principles." The phrase soon became quite common, South and North—"a Southern man with Northern principles," and vice versa.
The invention and use of it in 1848 shows the progress that had been made in arraying one section of the Union against the other. Later, a telling piece of doggerel in Southern canvasses, and it must also have been used North, was
He wired in and wired out,
Leaving the people all in doubt,
Whether the snake that made the track
Was going North, or coming back.