The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences Part 2

Later, in 1814, a convention of representative New England statesmen met at Hartford, to consider of secession unless the non-intercourse act, which also bore hard on New England, should be repealed; but the war then pending was soon to close, and the danger from that quarter was over.

But secession was not exclusively a New England doctrine. "When the Const.i.tution was adopted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to say there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton, on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason, on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment, entered into by the States, and from which each and every State had the right to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised."[6]

[6] Henry Cabot Lodge's "Webster," p. 176.

As late as 1844 the threat of secession was to come again from Ma.s.sachusetts. The great State of Texas was applying for admission to the Union. But Texas was a slave State; Abolitionists had now for thirteen years been arousing in the old Bay State a spirit of hostility against the existence of slavery in her sister States of the South, and in 1844 the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature resolved that "the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, faithful to the _compact_ between the people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation; but that it is determined, as it _doubts not other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on earth_," and that "the project of the annexation of Texas, unless arrested at the threshold, may tend to drive _these States into a dissolution of the Union_."

This was _just seventeen years before the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts began to arm her sons to put down secession in the South_!

The Southern reader must not, however, conclude from this startling about-face on the question of secession, that the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, and of the North, did not, _in 1861_, honestly believe that under the Const.i.tution the Union was indissoluble, or that the North went to war simply for the purpose of perpetuating its power over the South. Such a conclusion would be grossly unjust. The spirit of nationality, veneration of the Union, was a growth, and, after it had fairly begun, a rapid growth. It grew, as our country grew in prestige and power. The splendid triumphs of our ships at sea, in the War of 1812, and our victory at New Orleans over British regulars, added to it; the masterful decisions of our great Chief Justice John Marshall, pointing out how beneficently our Federal Const.i.tution was adapted to the preservation not only of local self-government but of the liberties of the citizen as well; peace with, and the respect of, foreign nations; free trade between the people of all sections, and abounding prosperity--all these things created a deep impression, and Americans began to hark back to the words of Washington in his farewell address: "The unity of our government, which now const.i.tutes you one people, is also dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize."

But far and away above every other single element contributing to the development of Union sentiment was the wonderful speech of Daniel Webster, January 26, 1830, in his debate in the United States Senate with Hayne, of South Carolina. Hayne was eloquently defending States'

rights, and his argument was unanswerable if his premise was admitted, that, as had been theretofore conceded, the Const.i.tution was _a compact between the States_. Webster saw this and he took new ground; the Const.i.tution was, he contended, not a compact, but the formation of a government. His arguments were like fruitful seed sown upon a soil prepared for their reception. No speech delivered in this country ever created so profound an impression. It was the foundation of a new school of political thought. It concluded with this eloquent peroration: "When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!

Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gracious ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original l.u.s.tre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards,' but everywhere, spread all over with living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American heart--'Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'"

For many years every school-house in the land resounded with these words. By 1861 they had been imprinted on the minds and had sunk into the hearts of a whole generation. Their effect was incalculable.

It is perfectly true that the secession resolution of the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature of 1844 was pa.s.sed fourteen years after Webster's speech, but the Garrisonians had then been agitating the slavery question within her borders for fourteen years, and the old State was now beside herself with excitement.

There was another great factor in the rapid manufacture of Union sentiment at the North that had practically no existence at the South.

It was immigration.

The new-comers from over the sea knew nothing, and cared less, about the history of the Const.i.tution or the dialectics of secession. They had sought a land of liberty that to them was one nation, with one flag flying over it, and in their eyes secession was rebellion. Immigrants to America, practically all settling in Northern States, were during the thirty years, 1831-1860, 4,910,590; and these must, with their natural increase, have numbered at least six millions in 1860. In other words, far more than one-fourth of the people of the North in 1860 were not, themselves or their fathers, in the country in the early days when the doctrine of States' rights had been in the ascendant; and, as a rule, to these new people that old doctrine was folly.

In the South the situation was reversed. Slavery had kept immigrants away. The whites were nearly all of the old revolutionary stock, and had inherited the old ideas. Still, love of and pride in the Union had grown in them too. Nor were the Southerners all followers of Jefferson. From the earliest days much of the wealth and intelligence of the country, North and South, had opposed the Democracy, first as Federalists and later as Whigs. In the South the Whigs have been described as "a fine upstanding old party, a party of blue broadcloth, silver b.u.t.tons, and a coach and four." It was not until anti-slavery sentiment had begun to array the North, as a section, against the South, that Southern Whigs began to look for protection to the doctrine of States' rights.

Woodrow Wilson says, in "Division and Reunion," p. 47, of Daniel Webster's great speech in 1830: "The North was now beginning to insist upon a national government; the South was continuing to insist upon the original understanding of the Const.i.tution; that was all."

And in those att.i.tudes the two sections stood in 1860-61, one upon the modern theory of an indestructible Union; the other upon the old idea that States had the right to secede from the Union.

In 1848 there occurred in Ireland the "Rebellion of the Young Irishmen."

Among the leaders of that rebellion were Thomas F. Meagher and John Mitchel. Both were banished to Great Britain's penal colony. Both made their way, a few years later, to America. Both were devotees of liberty, both men of brilliant intellect and high culture. Meagher settled in the North, Mitchel in the South. This was about 1855. Each from his new stand-point studied the history and the Const.i.tution of his adopted country. Meagher, when the war between the North and South came on, became a general in the Union army. Mitchel entered the civil service of the Confederacy and his son died a Confederate soldier.

The Union or Confederate partisan who has been taught that his side was "eternally right, and the other side eternally wrong," should consider the story of these two "Young Irishmen."

How fortunate it is that the ugly question of secession has been settled, and will never again divide Americans, or those who come to America!

CHAPTER II

EMANc.i.p.aTION PRIOR TO 1831

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and American vessels brought many thousands of negroes from Africa, and sold them as slaves in the British West Indies and in the British-American colonies. William Goodell, a distinguished Abolitionist writer, tells us[7] that "in the importation of slaves for the Southern colonies the merchants of New England competed with those of New York and the South" (which never had much shipping). "They appear indeed to have outstripped them, and to have _almost monopolized_ at one time the profits of this detestable trade. Boston, Salem, and Newburyport in Ma.s.sachusetts, and Newport and Bristol in Rhode Island, ama.s.sed, in the persons of a few of their citizens, vast sums of this rapidly acquired and ill-gotten wealth."[7]

[7] "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," 3d ed., 1885.

The slaves coming to America went chiefly to the Southern colonies, because there only was slave labor profitable. The laws and conditions under which these negroes were sold in the American colonies were precisely the same as in the West Indies, except that the whites in the islands, so far as is known, never objected, whereas the records show that earnest protests came from Virginia[8] and also from Georgia[9] and North Carolina.[10] The King of England was interested in the profits of the iniquitous trade and all protests were in vain.

[8] _Am. Archives_, 4th series, vol. I, p. 696.

[9] _Ib._, p. 1136.

[10] _Ib._, p. 735.

Of the rightfulness, however, of slavery itself there was but little question in the minds of Christian peoples until the closing years of the eighteenth century. Then the cruelties practised by ship-masters in the Middle Pa.s.sage attracted attention, and then came gradually a revolution in public opinion. This revolution, in which the churches took a prominent part, originated in England, but it soon swept over America also, both North and South.

England abolished the slave trade in 1807. The United States followed in 1808; the Netherlands in 1814; France in 1818; Spain in 1820; Portugal in 1830. The great Wilberforce, Buxton, and others, who had brought about the abolition of the slave trade in England, continued their exertions in favor of the slave until finally, in 1833, Parliament abolished slavery in the British West Indies, appropriating twenty millions sterling ($100,000,000) as compensation to owners--this because investments in slave property had been made under the sanction of existing law.

"Great Britain, loaded with an unprecedented debt and with a grinding taxation, contracted a new debt of a hundred millions of dollars to give freedom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded African. This was not an act of policy, but the work of statesmen. Parliament but registered the edict of the people. The English nation, with one heart and one voice, under a strong Christian impulse and without distinction of rank, s.e.x, party, or religious names, decreed freedom to the slave. I know not that history records a national act so disinterested, so sublime."

So wrote Dr. Channing, the great New England pulpit orator, in his celebrated letter on Texas annexation, to Henry Clay, in 1837.

While the rightfulness of slavery was being discussed in England, the American conscience had also been aroused, and emanc.i.p.ation was making progress on this side of the water.

Emanc.i.p.ation was an easy task in the Northern States, where slaves were few, their labor never having been profitable, and by 1804 the last of these States had provided for the ultimate abolition of slavery within its borders. But the problem was more difficult in the Southern States, where the climate was adapted to slave labor. There slaves were numerous, and slavery was interwoven, economically and socially, with the very fabric of existence. Naturally, it occurred to thoughtful men that there ought to be some such solution as that which was subsequently adopted in England, and which, as we have seen, was so highly extolled by Dr. Channing--emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves with compensation to the owners by the general government. The difficulty in our country was that the Federal Const.i.tution conferred upon the Federal Government no power over slavery in the States--no power to emanc.i.p.ate slaves or compensate owners; and that for the individual States where the negroes were numerous the problem seemed too big. Free negroes and whites in great numbers, it was thought, could not live together. To get rid of the negroes, if they should be freed, was for the States a very serious, if not an unsurmountable task.

On the seventeenth of January, 1824, the following resolutions, proposed as a solution of the problem, were pa.s.sed by the legislature of Ohio:[11]

[11] "State Doc.u.ments on Federal Relations," Ames, pp. 203-4.

_Resolved_, That the consideration of a system providing for the gradual emanc.i.p.ation of the people of color, held in servitude in the United States, be recommended to the legislatures of the several States of the American Union, and to the Congress of the United States.

_Resolved_, That, in the opinion of the general a.s.sembly, a system of foreign colonization, with correspondent measures, might be adopted that would in due time effect the entire emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves of our country without any violation of the national compact, or infringement of the rights of individuals; by the pa.s.sage of a law by the general government (with the consent of the slave-holding States) which would provide that all children of persons now held in slavery, born after the pa.s.sage of the law, should be free at the age of twenty-one years (being supported during their minority by the persons claiming the service of their parents), provided they then consent to be transported to the intended place of colonization. Also:

_Resolved_, That it is expedient that such a system should be predicated upon the principle that the evil of slavery is a national one, and that the people and the States of the Union ought mutually to partic.i.p.ate in the duties and burthens of removing it.

_Resolved_, That His Excellency the Governor be requested to forward a copy of the foregoing resolutions to His Excellency the Governor of each of the United States, requesting him to lay the same before the legislature thereof; and that His Excellency will also forward a like copy to each of our senators and representatives in Congress, requesting their co-operation in all national measures having a tendency to effect the grave object embraced therein.

By June of 1825 eight other Northern States had endorsed the proposition, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts. Six of the slave-holding States emphatically disapproved of the suggestion, _viz._, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.[12]

[12] Ames, p. 203.

Reasons which in great part influenced all the Southern States thus rejecting the proposition may be gathered from the following words of Governor Wilson, of South Carolina, in submitting the resolutions: "A firm determination to resist, at the threshold, every _invasion of our domestic tranquillity_, and to _preserve our sovereignty and independence as a State_, is earnestly recommended."[13]

[13] _Ib._, p. 206.

The resolutions required of the Southern States a complete surrender in this regard of their reserved rights; they feared what Governor Wilson called "the overwhelming powers of the general government," and were unwilling to make the admission required, that the slavery in the South was a question for the nation.

Another reason was that, although there was a quite common desire in the Southern States to get rid of slavery, the majority sentiment doubtless was not yet ready for the step.

Basing this plan on the "consent of the slave-holding States," as the Ohio legislature did, was an acknowledgment that the North had no power over the matter; while the proposition to share in the expense of transporting the negroes, after they were manumitted, seems to be a recognition of the joint responsibility of both sections for the existence of slavery in the South. However that may be, the generous concurrence of nine of the thirteen Northern States indicates how kindly the temper of the North toward the South was before the rise of the "New Abolitionism" in 1831. Had emanc.i.p.ation been, under the Federal Const.i.tution, a national and not a local question, it is possible that slavery might have been abolished in America, as it was in the mother country, peacefully and with compensation to owners.

The Ohio idea of freeing and at the same time colonizing the slaves, was no doubt suggested by the scheme of the African Colonization Society.

This Colonization Society grew out of a resolution pa.s.sed by the General a.s.sembly of Virginia, December 23, 1816. Its purpose was to rid the country of such free negroes and subsequently manumitted slaves as should be willing to go to Liberia, where a home was secured for them, and a government set up that was to be eventually controlled by the negro from America. The plan was endorsed by Georgia in 1817, Maryland in 1818, Tennessee in 1818, and Vermont in 1819.[14]

[14] Ames, 195.