Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

With a few unimportant omissions, the two volumes now published contain a full history of slavery and antislavery from the Ordinance of 1787 and the compromises of the Constitution down to the election of Lincoln and the outbreak of the civil war. As a work of reference they are invaluble, for each event in the long struggle for freedom is distinctly and accurately told, while the calm story advances through its various stages. Instead of following this narrative in detail, which our space will not allow, we prefer to call our readers' attention to some of the more striking incidents of this great revolution.

Our fathers, when they founded the nation, had little thought that slavery was ever to attain such vast extension. They supposed that it would gradually die out from the South, as it had disappeared from the North. Yet the whole danger to their work lay here. Slavery, if anything, was the wedge which was to split the Union asunder. When the Constitution was formed, in 1787, the slaveholders, by dint of great effort, succeeded in getting the little end of the wedge inserted. It was very narrow, a mere sharp line, and it went in only a very little way; so it seemed to be nothing at all. The slaveholders at that time did not contend that slavery was right or good. They admitted that it was a political evil. They confessed, many of them, that it was a moral evil. All the great Southern revolutionary bodies had accustomed themselves to believe in the rights of man, in the principles of humanity, in the blessings of liberty; and they could not defend slavery. Mason of Virginia, in the debates in the Federal Convention, denounced slavery and the slave-trade. "The evil of slavery," said he, "affects the whole Union. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when done by slaves. They prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich a country. They produce the most pernicious effects on the manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country." Williamson of North Carolina declared himself in principle and practice opposed to slavery. Madison "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in man." But the extreme Southern States, South Carolina and Georgia, insisted on the right of importing slaves, at least for a little while; and so they were allowed to import them for twenty years. They also insisted on having their slaves represented by themselves in Congress, and so they were allowed to count three fifths of the slaves in determining the ratio. This seemed a small thing, but it was the entering of the wedge. It was tolerating the principle of slavery; not admitting it, but tolerating it. At the same time that this Convention was forming, the Federal Constitution Congress was prohibiting slavery in all the territory northwest of the Ohio. This prohibition of slavery was adopted by the unanimous votes of the eight States present, including Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Two years later it was recognized and confirmed by the first Congress under the Constitution. Jefferson, a commissioner to revise the statute law of Virginia, prepared a bill for gradual emancipation in that State. In 1790 a petition was presented to Congress, signed by Benjamin Franklin, the last public act of his life, declaring equal liberty to be the birthright of all, and asking Congress to "devise means for restoring liberty to the slaves, and so removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people." In 1804 the people of Virginia petitioned Congress to have the Ordinance of 1787 suspended, that they might hold slaves; but a committee of Congress, of which John Randolph of Virginia was chairman, reported that it would be "highly dangerous and inexpedient to impair a provision wisely calculated to promote the happiness and prosperity of the Northwest Territory."

But in 1820 the first heavy blow came on the wedge to drive it into the log. The Union is a tough log, and the wedge could be driven a good way in without splitting it; but the first blow which drove it in was the adopting the Missouri Compromise, allowing slavery to come North and take possession of Missouri.

The thirty years of prosperity which had followed the adoption of the Constitution had changed the feelings of men both North and South. The ideas of the Revolution had receded into the background; the thirst for wealth and power had taken their place. So the Southern States, which had cordially agreed thirty years before to prohibit the extension of slavery, and had readily admitted it to be a political evil, now demanded as a right the privilege of carrying slaves into Missouri. They threatened to dissolve the Union, talked of a fire only to be extinguished by seas of blood, and proposed to hang a member from New Hampshire who spoke of liberty. Some of the Northern men were not frightened by these threats, and valued them at their real worth. But we know that the result was a compromise. Slavery was to take possession of Missouri, on condition that no other State as far north as Missouri should be slave-holding. Slavery was to be excluded from the rest of the territory forever. This bargain was applauded and justified by Southern politicians and newspapers as a great triumph on their part; and it was. That fatal compromise was a surrender of principle for the sake of peace, bartering conscience for quiet; and we were soon to reap the bitter fruits.

Face to face, in deadly opposition, each determined on the total destruction of his antagonist, stood this Goliath of the slave power and the little David of antislavery, at the beginning of the ten years which extended from 1830 to 1840. The giant was ultimately to fall from the wounds of his minute opponent, but not during this decade or the next. For many years each of the parties was growing stronger, and the fight was growing fiercer. Organization on the one side was continually becoming more powerful; enthusiasm on the other continually built up a more determined opinion. The slave power won repeated victories; but every victory increased the number and ardor of its opponents.

The first attempt to destroy antislavery principles was by means of mobs. Mobs seldom take place in a community unless where the upper stratum of society and the lower are in sympathetic opposition to some struggling minority. Then the lower class takes its convictions from the higher, and regards itself as the hand executing what the head thinks ought to be done. Respectability denounces the victim, and the rabble hastens to take vengeance on him. Even a mob cannot act efficiently unless inspired by ideas; and these it must receive from some higher source. So it was when Priestley was mobbed at Birmingham; so it was when Wesley and his friends were mobbed in all parts of England. So it was also in America when the office of the "Philanthropist" was destroyed in Cincinnati; when halls and churches were burned in Philadelphia; when Miss Crandall was mobbed in Connecticut; when Lovejoy was killed at Alton. Antislavery meetings were so often invaded by rioters, that on one occasion Stephen S. Foster is reported to have declared that the speakers were not doing their duty, because the people listened so quietly. "If we were doing our duty," said he, "they would be throwing brick-bats at us."

These demonstrations only roused and intensified the ardor of the Abolitionists, while bringing to their side those who loved fair play, and those in whom the element of battle was strong. Mobs also were an excellent advertisement for the Antislavery Society; and this is what every new cause needs most for its extension. Every time that one of their meetings was violently broken up, every time that any outrage or injury was offered to the Abolitionists, all the newspapers in the land gave them a gratuitous advertisement by conspicuous notices of the event. So the public mind was directed to the question, and curiosity was excited. The antislavery conventions were more crowded from day to day, their journals were more in demand, and their plans and opinions became the subject of conversation everywhere.

And certainly there could be no more interesting place to visit than one of these meetings of the Antislavery Society. With untiring assiduity the Abolitionists brought to their platform everything which could excite and impress their audience. Their orators were of every kind,—rough men and shrill-voiced women, polished speakers from the universities, stammering fugitives from slavery, philosophers and fanatics, atheists and Christian ministers, wise men who had been made mad by oppression, and babes in intellect to whom God had revealed some of the noblest truths. They murdered the King's English, they uttered glaring fallacies, the blows aimed at evildoers often glanced aside and hit good men. Invective was, perhaps, the too frequent staple of their argument, and any difference of opinion would be apt to turn their weapons against each other. This church-militant often became a church-termagant. Yet, after all such abatement for errors of judgment or bad taste, their meetings were a splendid arena on which was fought one of the greatest battles for mankind. The eloquence we heard there was not of the schools, and had nothing artificial about it. It followed the rule of Demosthenes, and was all directed to action. Every word was a blow. There was no respect for dignities or authorities. The Constitution of the United States, the object of such unfeigned idolatry to the average American, was denounced as "a covenant with hell." The great men of the nation, Webster, Clay, Jackson, were usually selected as the objects of the severest censure. The rule was to strike at the heads which rose above the crowd, as deserving the sternest condemnation. Presidents and governors, heads of universities, eminent divines, great churches and denominations, were convicted as traitors to the right, or held up to unsparing ridicule. No conventional proprieties were regarded in the terrible earnestness of this enraged speech. It was like the lava pouring from the depths of the earth, and melting the very rocks which opposed its resistless course.

Of course this fierce attack roused as fierce a defense. One extreme generated the other. The cry for "immediate abolition" was answered by labored defenses of slavery itself. Formerly its advocates only excused it as a necessary evil; now they began to defend it as a positive good. Then was seen the lamentable sight of Christian ministers and respected divines hurrying to the support of the "sum of all villanies." The Episcopal bishop of a New England State defended with ardor the system of slavery as an institution supported by the Bible and commanded by God himself. The president of a New England college declared slavery to be a positive institution of revealed religion, and not inconsistent with the law of love. The minister of a Boston church, going to the South for his health, amused his leisure by writing a book on slavery, in which it is made to appear as a rose-colored and delightful institution, and its opposers are severely censured. One of the most learned professors in a Massachusetts theological school composed a treatise to refute the heresy of the higher law, and to maintain the duty of returning fugitive slaves to bondage. Under such guidance it was natural that the churches should generally stand aloof from the Abolitionists and condemn their course. It was equally natural that the Abolitionists should then denounce the churches as the bulwark of slavery. Nevertheless, from the Christian body came most of those who devoted their lives to the extirpation of this great evil and iniquity. And Mr. Garrison, at least, always maintained that his converts were most likely to be made among those whose consciences had been educated by the Church and the Bible.

From public meetings in the North, the conflict of ideas next extended itself to the floor of Congress, where it continued to rage during nearly thirty years, until "the war of tongue and pen" changed to that of charging squadrons, the storm of shot and the roll of cannon. The question found its way into the debates of Congress in the form of petitions for the abolition of slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. If the slaveholders had allowed these petitions to be received and referred, taking no notice of them, it seems probable that no important results would have followed. But, blinded by rage and fear, they opposed their reception, thus denying a privilege belonging to all mankind,—that of asking the government to redress their grievances. Then came to the front a man already eminent by his descent, his great attainments, his long public service, his great position, and his commanding ability. John Quincy Adams, after having been President of the United States, accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and was one of the most laborious and useful of its members. He was not then an Abolitionist, nor in favor even of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. But he believed that the people had the right to petition the government for anything they desired, and that their respectful petitions should be respectfully received. Sixty-five years old in 1832, when he began this conflict, his warfare with the slave power ended only when, struck with death while in his seat, he saw the last of earth and was content. With what energy, what dauntless courage, what untiring industry, what matchless powers of argument, what inexhaustible resources of knowledge, he pursued his object, the future historian of the struggle who can fully paint what Mr. Wilson is only able to indicate, will take pleasure in describing. One scene will remain forever memorable as one of the most striking triumphs of human oratory; and this we must describe a little more fully.