but seven legal executions and forty-nine informal ones.”[24:8]
One does not need to go far in order to find the causes of the increase of lynching in the South after 1850, or for the disorder and commotion both North and South as well.
In 1850 the Fugitive Slave law was passed. The endeavor to enforce it gave great impetus to the abolition cause in the North; this reacted on the South. Indeed, many of the same men who were ready to hang Garrison in 1835, now became his earnest adherents. This great change in the feeling of the North opened the way for the enthusiastic reception of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” when, in 1852, it was published in book form. The author of this book ingeniously made the isolated and exceptional incidents of slavery appear as the general condition of the institution; however, as for the chief character of the book, Uncle Tom, it is very doubtful whether the pure Negro race ever produced such an individual. Nevertheless, this piece of fiction was read by hundreds of thousands both in the North and in foreign countries as if it were “Gospel truth.”
Another thing that added to the excitement and helped the abolitionists was the Dred Scott Decision,
given in 1857. Then, in 1859, came “Helpers’ Impending Crisis,” a book of great influence. At last, in 1859, as if to “cap the climax,” the whole country was startled by John Brown’s Raid. After this, the greater part of the South, suddenly, became an extremely unhealthful place for both abolitionists and unruly, criminal, or insurrectionary Negroes.
“The New Reign of Terror,” mentioned above, published early in 1860, not many months after John Brown’s Raid, has the following, which indicates the then feeling in the South:
“In almost every city, town, and village south of the border slave-holding States, Vigilance Committees have been appointed to put to inquisition every Northern man who makes his appearance in the place, whether as foe or friend. Even harmless young women, who have gone from Northern boarding schools to be teachers of Southern children have been waited upon by respectable and even clerical gentlemen with the polite hint that the sooner they leave the State the better for their safety.”
The Augusta Dispatch[25:9] warned the South against “strange loafing white men, and especially
the one-horse invalid preachers from the North,” for it said:
“We would guard well against imposition from transient ‘candles of the Lord’ lest we suffer them to light the fires of insurrection, instead of bearing aloft the light of the Gospel.”