These were the abolitionists whose chief seat was Boston, whose place of rendezvous was Faneuil Hall, a place made historic by great speeches and great meetings there in the early days, by the lovers of free institutions. Plymouth pulpit added its voice, and the days of slavery were then numbered; but the country was to be baptized with fire, and with blood, if nothing better. These people were fanatics, and fanaticism has been defined as “a popular movement acting without reason or judgment, always, however, founded upon some religious or philanthropic idea or sentiment, to give it character and volume.”
This bird of dark plumage and portentous croak, winged its way from Exeter Hall, London, the parent body of the American society meeting there. Results will forever mark an object lesson for true patriots, and practical statesmen and sound a note of warning against incorporating altruistic, philanthropic fads, and the various cults growing out of idealism into party platforms and making use of such explosive material to gain political advantage.
Slavery was abolished in the English colonies and elsewhere peacefully, as would have ultimately happened here; and though it may have been delayed a half century, nay, even a century, the net moral gain would have been far greater.
England had slavery also, and the Exeter Hall people, like those of Faneuil Hall, were fanatics. They exalted the negro and ascribed to him attributes, qualities and possibilities equal to those of the white race, and hated his owners and the constitution, government and laws of this republic as founded by the fathers. To-day many of the triflers with the stern facts of anthropological and ethnological science, who distort the truths of history while laboring under the magic spell of this fanaticism, confound all dark, dusky or colored peoples with the true negro of Africa. They have credited the ancient civilization of Egypt to the negro race, when many school boys know that the Egyptians, the founders of Thebes, of Memphis, the builders of the pyramids, and the carvers of the Sphinx, were Coptics, not negroes. Neither Pharaoh, Ptolemy nor Cleopatra, the fair sorceress of the Nile, were negroes, though natives of Africa.
When the Constitution of the United States was framed many of the delegates to the convention traveled by private conveyance; and as slavery existed both at the North and South, many of them brought negro drivers or servants to the meeting place. Slavery was even then fully established, recognized and protected by a clause inserted in the Constitution as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
This provision was adopted by the convention without opposition, and this solemn instrument, creating a government among men, which was to become at once the wonder and admiration of the statesmen of the world, bore the signatures of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison, but Senator Sumner, the leading spirit of rabid fanaticism, in the Senate of the United States, said that it was “a covenant with hell;” and advised resistance, by force if necessary. Many Northern states enacted “personal liberty laws” prohibiting the return of fugitive slaves to their owners.
The Republican party was formed upon this new-born craze, and incorporated these new and strange doctrines into its platform at Chicago, in June, 1860; and in five months the movement culminated in the election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency.
If there is one thing more than another sedulously taught to Southern youth as a political creed it was that our government was based upon a written constitution which should be obeyed, upheld and respected; to do otherwise was treasonable. The South then viewed the situation with horror and alarm.
Nat Turner, a negro preacher in North Carolina, had, some years before, fomented a servile insurrection and in the night time the negroes rose and murdered many white families.
John Brown, a white fanatic from the West, had gone down to Virginia and incited servile insurrection; and having armed men, made war against Virginia. He was taken, and after trial for treason, was legally executed. When his remains crossed the Potomac river, going North, his casket was covered with flowers, thus testifying that his aborted efforts in Virginia had many sympathizers. A servile insurrection thenceforth became a possibility to be thought of. A servile insurrection meant efforts at midnight assassination. The South is now, as then, desirous of preserving good order, peace and quiet, between the two races, and the people of other sections do not realize the situation.