CHAPTER V. THE VINDICATION OF LIBERTY
With the changed attitude of the South towards emancipation there was associated an active hostility to dearly bought human liberty. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, the right of assembly, trial by jury, the right of petition, free use of the mails, and numerous other fundamental human rights were assailed. Birney and other abolitionists who had immediate knowledge of slavery early perceived that the real question at issue was quite as much the continued liberty of the white man as it was the liberation of the black man and that the enslavement of one race involved also the ultimate essential enslavement of the other.
In 1831 two slave States and six free States still extended to free negroes the right to vote. During the pro-slavery crusade these privileges disappeared; and not only so, but free negroes were banished from certain States, or were not permitted to enter them, or were allowed to remain only by choosing a white man for a guardian. It was made a crime to teach negroes, whether slaves or free men, to read and write. Under various pretexts free negroes were reduced to slavery. Freedom of worship was denied to negroes, and they were not allowed to assemble for any purpose except under the strict surveillance of white men. Negro testimony in a court of law was invalid where the rights of a white man were involved. The right of a negro to his freedom was decided by an arbitrary court without a jury, while the disputed right of a white man to the ownership of a horse was conditioned by the safeguard of trial by jury.
The maintenance of such policies carries with it of necessity the suppression of free discussion. When Southern leaders adopted the policy of defending slavery as a righteous institution, abolitionists in the South either emigrated to the North or were silenced. In either case they were deprived of a fundamental right. The spirit of persecution followed them into the free States. Birney could not publish his paper in Kentucky, nor even at Cincinnati, save at the risk of his life. Elijah Lovejoy was not allowed to publish his paper in Missouri, and, when he persisted in publishing it in Illinois, he was brutally murdered. Even in Boston it required men of courage and determination to meet and organize an anti-slavery society in 1832, though only a few years earlier Benjamin Lundy had traveled freely through the South itself delivering anti-slavery lectures and organizing scores of such societies. The New York Anti-Slavery Society was secretly organized in 1832 in spite of the opposition of a determined mob. Mob violence was everywhere rife. Meetings were broken up, negro quarters attacked, property destroyed, murders committed.
Fair-minded men became abolitionists on account of the crusade against the rights of white men quite as much as from their interest in the rights of negroes. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio was led to espouse the cause by observing the attacks upon the freedom of the press in Cincinnati. Gerrit Smith witnessed the breaking up of an anti-slavery meeting in Utica, New York, and thereafter consecrated his time, his talents, and his great wealth to the cause of liberty. Wendell Phillips saw Garrison in the hands of a Boston mob, and that experience determined him to make common cause with the martyr. And the murder of Lovejoy in 1837 made many active abolitionists.
It is difficult to imagine a more inoffensive practice than giving to negro girls the rudiments of an education. Yet a school for this purpose, taught by Miss Prudence Crandall in Canterbury, Connecticut, was broken up by persistent persecution, a special act of the Legislature being passed for the purpose, forbidding the teaching of negroes from outside the State without the consent of the town authorities. Under this act Miss Crandall was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.
Having eliminated free discussion from the South, the Southern States sought to accomplish the same object in the North. In pursuance of a resolution of the Legislature, the Governor of Georgia offered a reward of five thousand dollars to any one who should arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction under the laws of Georgia the editor of the Liberator. R. G. Williams, publishing agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, was indicted by a grand jury of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, and Governor Gayle of Alabama made a requisition on Governor Marcy of New York for his extradition. Williams had never been in Alabama. His offense consisted in publishing in the New York Emancipator a few rather mild utterances against slavery.
Governor McDuffie of South Carolina in an official message declared that slavery was the very corner-stone of the republic, adding that the laboring population of any country, "bleached or unbleached," was a dangerous element in the body politic, and predicting that within twenty-five years the laboring people of the North would be virtually reduced to slavery. Referring to abolitionists, he said: "The laws of every community should punish this species of interference with death without benefit of clergy." Pursuant to the Governor's recommendation, the Legislature adopted a resolution calling upon non-slaveholding States to pass laws to suppress promptly and effectively all abolition societies. In nearly all the slave States similar resolutions were adopted, and concerted action against anti-slavery effort was undertaken. During the winter of 1835 and 1836, the Governors of the free States received these resolutions from the South and, instead of resenting them as an uncalled-for interference with the rights of free commonwealths, they treated them with respect. Edward Everett, Governor of Massachusetts, in his message presenting the Southern documents to the Legislature, said: "Whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite an insurrection among the slaves has been held, by highly respectable legal authority, an offense against this Commonwealth which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." Governor Marcy of New York, in a like document, declared that "without the power to pass such laws the States would not possess all the necessary means for preserving their external relations of peace among themselves." Even before the Southern requests reached Rhode Island, the Legislature had under consideration a bill to suppress abolition societies.
When a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature had been duly organized to consider the documents received from the slave States, the abolitionists requested the privilege of a hearing before the committee. Receiving no reply, they proceeded to formulate a statement of their case; but before they could publish it, they were invited to appear before the joint committee of the two houses. The public had been aroused by the issue and there was a large audience. The case for the abolitionists was stated by their ablest speakers, among whom was William Lloyd Garrison. They labored to convince the committee that their utterances were not incendiary, and that any legislative censure directed against them would be an encouragement to mob violence and the persecution which was already their lot. After the defensive arguments had been fully presented, William Goodell took the floor and proceeded to charge upon the Southern States which had made these demands a conspiracy against the liberties of the North. In the midst of great excitement and many interruptions by the chairman of the committee, he quoted the language of Governor McDuffie's message, and characterized the documents lying on the table before him as "fetters for Northern freemen." Then, turning to the committee, he began, "Mr. Chairman, are you prepared to attempt to put them on?"—but the sentence was only half finished when the stentorian voice of the chairman interrupted him: "Sit down, sir!" and he sat down. The committee then arose and left the room. But the audience did not rise; they waited till other abolitionists found their tongues and gave expression to a fixed determination to uphold the liberties purchased for them by the blood of their fathers. The Massachusetts Legislature did not comply with the request of Governor McDuffie of South Carolina to take the first step towards the enslavement of all laborers, white as well as black. And Rhode Island refused to enact into law the pending bill for the suppression of anti-slavery societies. They declined to violate the plain requirements of their Constitution that the interests of slavery might be promoted. Not many years later they were ready to strain or break the Constitution for the sake of liberty.