In the year 1831, a negro named Turner, supported by six desperate and misguided fellow countrymen, started out on what they regarded as a practical crusade against slavery. Turner professed to have seen visions such as inspired Joan of Arc, and he proceeded to fulfill what he regarded as his divine mission, in a very fanatical manner. First, the white man who owned Turner was murdered, and then the band proceeded to kill off all white men in sight or within convenient reach. Within two days nearly fifty white men were destroyed by those avenging angels, as they were called, and then the insurrection or crusade was terminated by the organizing of a handful of white men who did not propose to be sacrificed as had been their fellows.
Turner's bravery was great when there was no resistance, but he recognized that discretion was the better part of valor the moment organized resistance was offered. Taking to the woods, he left his followers to shift for themselves. For more than a week he lived on what he could find in the wheat fields, and then, coming in contact with an armed white man, he speedily surrendered. A week later he was hanged, and seventeen other colored men suffered a like penalty for connection with the conspiracy. The murderous outbreak had other dire results for the negro, and caused many innocent men to be suspected and punished.
A year later, Garrison started the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which was followed by many similar organizations. So intense did the feeling become that President Jackson thought it advisable to recommend legislation excluding Abolition literature from the mails. The measure was finally defeated, but in the Southern States, particularly, a great deal of mail was searched and even condemned. Rewards were offered in some of the slave-holding States for the apprehension of some of the leading Abolitionists, and feeling ran very high, every outbreak being laid at the doors of the men who were preaching the new gospel of equal rights, regardless of color.
Mobs frequently took a hand in the proceedings, and several men were attacked and arrested on very flimsy pretexts. In 1836, the Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, was burned, because it had been dedicated by an anti-slavery meeting. So bitter did the feeling become that every attempt to open schools for colored children was followed by disturbance, the teachers being driven away and the books destroyed. Numerous petitions on the subject were sent to Congress, and there was an uproar in the House when it was proposed to refer a petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia to a committee. The Southern Congressmen withdrew from the House as a formal protest, and the word "secession," which was subsequently to acquire such a much more significant meaning, was first applied to this action on their part.
A compromise, however, was effected, and the seceding members took their seats on the following day. Feeling, however, ran very high. Some people returned fugitive slaves to their owners, while others established what was then known as the underground railway. This was a combination between Abolitionists in various parts, and involved the feeding and housing of slaves, who were passed on from house to house and helped on their road to Canada. Much excitement was caused in 1841 by the ship "Creole," which sailed from Richmond with a cargo of 135 slaves from the Virginia plantation. Near the Bahama Islands one of the slaves named Washington, as by the way a good many thousand slaves were named from time to time, headed a rebellion. The slaves succeeded in overpowering the crew and in confining the captain and the white passengers. They forced the captain to take the boat to New Providence, where all except the actual members of the rebelling crowd were declared free.
Joshua Giddings, of Ohio, offered a resolution in the House of Representatives claiming that every man who had been a slave in the United States was free the moment he crossed the boundary of some other country. The way in which this resolution was received led to the resignation of Mr. Giddings. He offered himself for re-election, and was sent back to Congress by an enormous majority. As Ohio had been very bitter in its anti-negro demonstrations, the vote was regarded as very significant. The Supreme Court decided differently from the people, and a ruling was handed down to the effect that fugitive slaves were liable to re-capture. The court held that the law as to slavery was paramount in free as well as slave States, and that every law-abiding citizen must recognize these rights and not interfere with them. Feeling became very intense after this, and for a time it threatened to extend far beyond rational limits. In the church the controversy waxed warm, and in more than one instance division as well as dissension arose.
In 1858, a new phase was given to the controversy by John Brown. Every one has heard of this remarkable man, who was regarded by some as a martyr, and by others as a dangerous crank. As one writer very aptly puts it, John Brown was both the one and the other. That his intentions were in the main good, few doubt, but his methods were open to the gravest censure, and according to some deep thinkers he was, in a large degree, responsible for the bitter feeling which made war between the North and the South inevitable. Probably this is giving undue importance to this much-discussed enthusiast, who regarded himself as a divine messenger sent to liberate the slaves and punish the slave-holders.
He conceived the idea of rallying all the colored people around him in the impregnable mountains of Virginia, and having drafted a constitution, he proceeded to unfurl his flag and call out his supporters. In October, 1859, he took possession of the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry, interfered with the running of trains, and practically held the town with a force of some eighteen men, of whom four were colored. Colonel Robert E. Lee quickly came on the scene with a detachment of troops and drove the Brown following into an engine-house. They declined to surrender, and thirteen were either killed or mortally wounded. Two of Brown's sons were among those who fell, and the leader himself was captured. He treated his trial with the utmost indifference, and went to the scaffold erect and apparently unconcerned. His body was taken to his old home in New York State, where it was buried.
Abraham Lincoln must not be included in the list of enthusiastic Abolitionists, although he eventually freed the slaves. In speeches made prior to the war he expressed the opinion that in slave States general emancipation would be ill-advised, and although his election was looked upon as dangerous to slave-holders' interests, the fear seems to have been prophetic in a large measure. It was not until the war had lasted far longer than originally anticipated that Lincoln definitely threatened to liberate the colored slaves. That threat he carried into execution on January 1st, 1863, when 3,000,000 slaves became free. The cause of the Confederacy had not yet become the "lost cause," and the leaders on the Southern side were inclined to ridicule the decree, and to regard it rather as a "bluff" than anything of a serious order. But it was emancipation in fact as well as in deed, as the colored orator never tired of explaining.
Such in outline is the history of the colored man during the days of enforced servitude. Of his condition during that period volumes have been written. Few works printed in the English language have been more widely circulated than "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which has been read in every English-speaking country in the world, and in many other countries besides. It has been dramatized and performed upon thousands of stages before audiences of every rank and class. As a descriptive work it rivals in many passages the very best ever written. Much controversy has taken place as to how much of the book is history--how much of it is founded upon fact and how much is pure fiction. The ground is a rather dangerous one to touch. It is safest to say that while the brutality held up to scorn and contempt in this book was not general in the slave States or on plantations in the South, what is depicted might have taken place under existing laws, and the book exposed iniquities which were certainly perpetrated in isolated cases.