Why should the Southerners of that day go wild over conduct for which the professor of this era has no word of condemnation?
Dr. Hart follows Professor Sumner's treatment. These are his words:
"The free negroes of the South, the Abolitionists could not reach except by mailing publications to them, a process which fearfully exasperated the South without reaching the persons addressed."—Hart's "Abolition and Slavery," p. 216.
Why should Southerners be "fearful" when they were intercepting all the dangerous circulars, etc., they could find? And why should they be exasperated at all?
Dr. Hart's chair at Harvard is within gunshot of Faneuil Hall, yet the great meeting there of August 31, 1835, is not mentioned in either his or Professor Sumner's book, nor is there to be found in either of them any explanation of the reasons underlying the general and emphatic condemnation throughout the North at that period of the Abolitionists and their methods.
[30] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 412.
[31] "Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade," Andrews, pp. 156-57.
[32] Within perhaps a year Mr. Lincoln was compelled to bring these negroes home; they were starving.
[33] "Channing's Works," vol. II, ed. 1837, pp. 131-32.
[34] Garrison's "Garrison," vol. III, p. 214.