“Resolved, That were the slave-holders now willing to abolish slavery, in our opinion the immediate and unconditional emancipation of all the slaves in the United States, without providing for their colonization, would render the condition of both the whites and blacks infinitely worse than it now is, and would be an act of palpable and unpardonable inhumanity to the slaves.”
Signed: Valentine Kieffer, President; Nathan Perrill, John Entrekin, Wm. Renick, Sr., Vice-Presidents; Elias Bentley, W. N. Foresman, A. Huston, Secretaries.
All the officers were well-known and prominent people, and it is not strange that persons of such note and intelligence should have given their approbation and signatures of approval to such a meeting, when we reflect that most pro-slavery men in the free states had been taught to believe or say: If the slaves were liberated, they would come north in swarms and “steal our chickens,” and destroy the peace of society “by marrying every good-looking white woman in the country.”
But there existed no occasion for alarm; the slave-holding states South never had an inclination to emancipate their slaves. They were the wealth of that country, and its growing greatness fostered the desire to found an aristocratic empire on slave labor. The number in bondage was rapidly increasing and their labor was becoming more and more remunerative. They had but to see the increase of this wealth and its products in fifty years, to stimulate the desire to found a government on the aristocracy of the institution.
In 1810, there were in all the states but 1,191,360 slaves; and notwithstanding New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had in the meantime liberated theirs—and the African slave trade had previously been abolished—the underground railroad had been doing a lively business—and the manumissions and colonizations that were going on in the “breeding states”—in 1860 the number had increased to within a small fraction less than four millions.
Slave labor was exceedingly profitable in the cotton states, as the increase of the cotton product shows. In 1801, these states only produced 48,000,000 pounds, while 1860 returned 2,054,698,800 pounds. There were, however, two things inserted in the government plat that were unsatisfactory: “That all men are created equal” in natural rights, and the Missouri Compromise—the thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, Mason and Dixon’s line. It was not so clear as they wished it might be, that “unalienable rights,” “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” belonged only to masters; and when the failure to rescind the “Compromise” in 1853 occurred through democratic influence, of such men as Albert P. Edgerton, the possibility of peacefully enlarging the area of slavery became as hopeless as it was manifestly evident that bondage and freedom could not much longer remain peaceably in the same government. And with amendments to the fugitive slave law the Southern political bosses, who had usurped the control of the national government, knew the constitution found slavery in the states, and as a state institution left its local existence to the chances of state laws. They knew full well it was not made a national institution and that the time was close at hand when they must go to the rear or abandon their northern allies and set up a slavocracy for themselves. They had obtained sufficient to know Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Arthur Tappan and the Boston Liberator were actual facts; and the large meetings of the “dough faces” and their expressions of sympathy was not the kind of “Soothing Syrup” the South desired, although giving great encouragement to secession.
The division of sentiment existing in the free states in regard to the rights of slavery and its extension became more and more expressive, especially along the border lines of the opposing institutions. Consequently Ohio felt a full share of the evils due to political and social disturbances arising from this cause. But the intercommunications given by railroads and the light emanating from a free and fearless press—cheap postage and speedy transportation—infused new life; and mankind began thinking—thinking differently from that of past times when the postage on a letter was twenty-five cents and required four days for an individual to travel one hundred miles and return.
Slave hunting in the land of the free did not prove an agreeable or profitable occupation. The oppressed fugitive generally found friends enough in the North to secure the boon he sought. In almost every community could be found the spirit contained in the lines by Whittier, expressed for George W. Lattimer, who with his wife escaped from Norfolk, Va., in 1841, and was found in Boston. He was the first slave hunted in the North, and was arrested and proceedings began to have him returned to slavery. His cause was championed by such men as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass. The court ruled against the fugitive and his liberty was purchased by the good people of Boston. Lattimer gained great notoriety, and after a long and eventful life died at his home in Lynn, Mass., May 30, 1896, aged seventy-five years. And it can not well be disputed that much of the after changes in public sentiment in regard to the status of the colored man, and his rights in a free state, was brought about by the object lessons in the enforcement of the odious fugitive slave law. “All that was necessary to prove the detestable character of this iniquity and its dangers to liberty was simply to enforce it.”[7] Still the corrupting influences of trade made the evils of slavery felt in the social, moral and educational interests of the entire state; and consequently citizens, who had in their hearts the logical idea that all men are born free and equal, saw the hand of tyranny quite as much on either shore of the river, that constituted geographically the dividing line.
This was more especially true of Cincinnati, where large interests in trade enabled the sentiments of the few to dominate and regulate public acts and opinions parallel with steamboat monopoly, and the creed of the “Divine Institution,” as much as if the city had been located considerably south of “Mason and Dixon’s line;” and as late as 1836 a free soil newspaper, “The Philanthropist,” was destroyed by a mob of leading citizens of Cincinnati, and which will ever remain a historical record of loyalty to the institution on the opposite side of the river, and as penance for some manifestation in favor of freedom.
The Philanthropist was a newspaper ably edited by James G. Birney. After being published some three months, at night, July 14, 1836, the press-room was broken open by well-known citizens of Cincinnati, and the press materials all destroyed. No attempt was made to punish the perpetrators. But rather to sanction the act. A call for a meeting of the citizens was made for July 23d, stating the purpose to be, “to decide whether the people of Cincinnati will permit the publication or distribution of ‘abolition’ papers in the city.”