The many attendant evils of slavery cannot here be mentioned. Slaves were largely kept in ignorance. In some States it was considered a crime, with heavy penalties, for any white person to teach a colored person to read or write.
The traffic in human beings, as it then existed, is awful to think of. Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters were often sold and separated never to meet again. When the master died, his negroes were sold to the highest bidder, just like other property.
Abraham Lincoln was always opposed to slavery. When a young man he witnessed the cruelties of a slave market in New Orleans, where men, women, and children were sold like brutes. He then and there said, "If I ever have a chance to hit that institution, I will hit it hard." In 1837, when he was only twenty-eight years old, he heard a sermon preached by a noted minister, in Illinois, on the interpretation of prophecy in its relation to the breaking down of civil and religious tyranny. The sermon greatly impressed Mr. Lincoln, and he at that time said to a friend, "Odd as it may seem, when he described those changes and revolutions, I was deeply impressed that I would be somehow strangely mixed up with them."
Many slaveholders were otherwise good people, and their slaves were well treated. Ministers of the gospel and church-members held slaves. Some of the author's maternal relatives were slaveholders. He remembers, when a small boy, during "cruel slavery days," hearing his grandfather relate a conversation he had with a slave while on a late visit to his slaveholding brothers in Kentucky. The slave, a young man, was entering some complaint against slavery. Grandfather asked him, "Is your master kind to you?" "Yes, sir," answered the slave. "Do you have plenty to eat and wear?" "Oh, yes, sir." "Then why are you not satisfied?" "Oh, Mr. Todd, freedom, freedom."
I have a letter, dated June 2, 1861, written to my grandfather by one of his Kentucky brothers. I remember seeing this great uncle in 1865, when he was visiting in Indiana. He had administered on a brother's estate. The letter contains the following: "You wrote to know what I had done with the negroes. I sold them last March, one year ago. William Hocker bought Dicey and her youngest boy for $1,100. Franklin Todd, the son of brother Peter, bought the oldest boy for $700. I bought the second boy, the one born when you were here, for $535." My great-uncle says, in the same letter, that, on account of governmental affairs, "property" is not bringing its full value.
The people of the North were generally opposed to slavery, and great bitterness of feeling was engendered between the Northern and Southern States. Among the great leaders in the anti-slavery movement were William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Wendell Phillips, John G. Whittier, Joshua R. Giddings, William H. Seward, and Charles Sumner. The institution of slavery had become a great power, and had interwoven itself into the social, moral, religious, and political fabrics of the country.
Whenever a territory sought admission into the Union as a State, a great controversy arose as to whether it should be admitted as a free or a slave State. The halls of Congress resounded with the eloquence of great statesmen on both sides of the question, because "there were giants in those days." A good portion of the time of Congress was taken in discussing some phase of the slavery question. Bad temper was often exhibited, and great interests were at stake. On some occasions Henry Clay would propose a compromise, which being accepted, would have a tendency to lull the storm which, sooner or later, was to burst forth in all its fury. Anti-slavery, abolition, and various organizations were formed.
In the North various opinions existed on the subject of slavery. Some were opposed to its extension, but did not wish to interfere with it where it already existed. Others were more ultra, chief of whom was William Lloyd Garrison, whose motto was to destroy slavery or destroy the Union. He finally came to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States favored slavery, and declared it to be "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell."
In 1820 the territory of Missouri sought admission into the Union. The question as to whether it should be admitted as a free or a slave State was so warmly and violently discussed in Congress that many were alarmed lest it would lead to the dissolution of the Union. The territory was finally admitted as a slave State, but on the express condition that slavery would forever be excluded from all that part of the territory of the United States lying north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes. This provision was known as "the Missouri Compromise."