Liberty In The Nineteenth Century Part 3

II. The dark age of American literature had ended in 1760. Before that date there were few able books except about theology; and there were not many during the next sixty years except about politics. The works of Franklin, Jefferson, and other statesmen were more useful than brilliant. Sydney Smith was not far wrong in 1820, when he complained in the _Edinburgh Review_ that the Americans "have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for art, for literature." He went on to ask, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" His question was answered that same year by the publication in London of Irving's _Rip Van Winkle_ and _Legend of Sleepy Hoi-low_. Bryant's first volume of poems appeared next year, as did Cooper's popular novel, _The Spy_; and the _North American Review_ had begun half a dozen years before.

But even in 1823, Channing could not claim that there really was any national literature, or much devotion of intellectual labour to great subjects. "Shall America," he asked, "be only an echo of what is thought and written in the aristocracies beyond the ocean?"

This was published during the very year in which President Monroe declared that the people of the United States would look upon attempts of European monarchs "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and liberty." Channing was much interested in the study of German philosophy; but he rested his "chief hopes of an improved literature," on "an improved religion."

He maintained that no man could unfold his highest powers until he had risen above "the prevalent theology, which has come down to us from the Dark Ages," and which was then "arrayed against intellect, leagued with oppression, fettering inquiry, and incapable of being blended with the sacred dictates of reason and conscience."

Unitarianism claimed for every individual, what Protestantism had at most asked for the congregation,--the right to think for one's self.

This right was won earlier in Europe than in America, for here the clergy kept much of their original authority and popularity. Their influence over politics collapsed with Federalism. On all other subjects they were still listened to as "stewards of the mysteries of G.o.d," who had been taught all things by the Holy Spirit, and were under a divine call to preach the truth necessary for salvation. The clergyman was supposed to have acquired by his ordination a peculiar knowledge of all the rights and duties of human life. No one else, however wise and philanthropic, could speak with such authority about what books might be read and what amus.e.m.e.nts should be shunned. Scientific habits of thought, free inquiry about religion, and scholarly study of the Bible were put under the same ban with dancing, card-playing, reading novels, and travelling on Sunday. The pulpit blocked the path of intellectual progress. Its influence on literature was wholly changed by the Unitarian controversy, which was at its height in 1820. Still more beneficial controversies followed.

The trinitarian clergymen tried to retain their imperilled supremacy by getting up revivals. One of these, in the summer of 1828, was carried so far at Cincinnati that many a woman lost her reason or her life. These excesses confirmed the anti-clerical suspicions of Frances Wright, who had come over from England to study the negro character, and had failed, after much labour and expense, to find the slaves she bought for the purpose capable of working out their freedom. She had made up her mind that slavery is only one of many evils caused by ignorance of the duties of man to man, that these duties needed to be studied scientifically, and that scientific study, especially among women, was dangerously impeded by the pulpit.

That autumn she delivered the first course of public lectures ever given by a woman in America. Anne Hutchinson and other women had preached; but she was the first lecturer. The men and women of Cincinnati crowded to hear the tall, majestic woman, who stood in the court-house, plainly dressed in white. Her style was ladylike throughout; but she complained of the many millions wasted on mere teachers of opinions, whose occupation was to set people by the ears, and whose influence was stifling the breath of science. "Listen," she said, "to the denunciations of fanaticism against pleasures the most innocent, recreations the most necessary to bodily health." "See it make of the people's day of leisure a day of penance." Her main theme was the necessity of establis.h.i.+ng schools to teach children trades, and also halls of science with museums and public libraries.

This course was repeated in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities. Her audiences were always large, but she charged no admission fee. What were called "f.a.n.n.y Wright societies" were formed in many places. A Baptist church in New York City was turned into a Hall of Science, which remained open for three years, beginning with the last Sunday of April, 1829. It contained a hall for scientific lectures and theological discussions, a free dispensary, a gymnasium, and a bookstore. Here was published _The Free Enquirer_, the only paper in America which permitted the infallibility of Christianity to be called in question. The princ.i.p.al editor, Robert Dale Owen, son of the famous Socialist, claimed to have twenty thousand adherents in that city, and a controlling influence in Buffalo. Celebrations of Paine's birthday were now frequent. It was fortunate for the clergy that controversies about religion soon lost their interest in the fierce struggle about politics.

III. The fame won by Jackson as a conqueror of British invaders in 1815, blinded Americans to a fact which had been made manifest by both Napoleon and Wellington, as it is said to have been still more recently by Grant. The habit of commanding an army has a tendency to create scorn of public opinion, and also of those restrictions on arbitrary authority which are necessary for popular government, as well as for individual liberty. Jackson had the additional defect of holding slaves; and it is probable that if he had never done so, nor even had soldiers under his orders, he would have been sadly indifferent to the rights of his fellow-citizens and to the principles of free government. He was elected in 1828, and proved enough of a Democrat to renounce the policy, which had recently become popular, of making local improvements at the national expense; but he was the first President who dismissed experienced officials, in order to appoint his own partisans without inquiry as to their capacity to serve the nation. He was especially arbitrary about a problem not yet fully solved, namely, what the Government should do with the banks. The public money was then deposited in a National Bank whose const.i.tutionality was admitted by the Supreme Court. Its stock was at a premium and its notes at par in 1829; and it had five hundred officials in various States. Jackson thought it had opposed his election; and he suggested that the public money should be removed to the custody of a branch of the Treasury, to be established for that purpose. The plan has since been adopted; but his friends were too much interested in rival banks, and his opponents thought only of preventing his re-election in 1832. They could not, however, prevent his obtaining a great majority as "the poor man's champion."

The Bank had spent vast sums in publis.h.i.+ng campaign doc.u.ments, and even in bribery; and Jackson suspected that it would try to buy a new charter.

He decided, with no sanction from Congress, and against the advice of his own Cabinet, that the public money already in the Bank should be drawn out as fast as it could be spent, and that no more should be deposited there. He removed the Secretary of the Treasury for refusing to carry out this plan; and obliged his successor to set about it before he was confirmed by the Senate. To all remonstrances he replied, "I take the responsibility"; and he met the vote of the Senators, that he was a.s.suming an authority not conferred by the Const.i.tution, by boasting that he was "the direct representative of the American people." Webster replied that this would reduce the government to an elective monarchy; and the opponents to what they called Jackson's Toryism agreed to call themselves Whigs. Their leader was Henry Clay; and they believed, like the Federalists, in centralisation, internal improvements, and protective tariffs.

Jackson was sustained by the Democrats; but their quarrel with the Whigs prevented Congress from providing any safe place for the public money.

It was loaned to some of the State banks; and all these inst.i.tutions were encouraged to increase their liabilities enormously. Speculation was active and prices high. That of wheat in particular rose so much after the bad harvest of 1836 that there was a bread riot in New York City. Scarcely had Jackson closed his eight years of service, in 1837, when the failure of a business firm in New Orleans brought on so many others that all the banks suspended payment. Prices of merchandise fell so suddenly as to make the dealers bankrupt; many thousand men were thrown out of employment; and so much public money was lost that there was a deficit in the Treasury, where there had been a surplus.

IV. These bad results of Jackson's administration strengthened the Whigs. They had not ventured to make protectionism the main issue in 1832; and Clay had acknowledged that all the leading newspapers and magazines were against it in 1824. Its adoption that year was by close votes, and in spite of Webster's insisting that American manufactures were growing rapidly without any unnatural restrictions on commerce. The duties were raised in 1828 to nearly five times their average height in 1789; and there was so much discontent at the South, that some slight reductions had to be made in the summer of 1832; but the protectionist purpose was still predominant. If the opponents of all taxation except for revenue had done nothing more than appeal to the people that autumn, they would have had Congress with them; Jackson was already on their side; and the question might have been decided on its merits after full discussion. The threat of South Carolina to secede caused the reduction, which was actually made in 1833, to appear too much like a concession made merely to avoid civil war; and this second attempt to preserve the Union by a compromise was a premium upon disloyalty. This bargain, like that of 1820, was arranged by Henry Clay; and one condition was that the rates should fall gradually to a maximum of twenty per cent. Before that process was completed, the Treasury was exhausted by bad management; and additional revenue had to be obtained by raising the tariff in 1842.

The Whigs were then in power; but they were defeated in the presidential election of 1844, when the main issue was protectionism. The tariff was reduced in 1846 by a much larger majority than that of 1842 in the House of Representatives; and the results were so satisfactory that a further reduction to an average of twenty per cent, was made in 1857, with the general approval of members of both parties. The revenue needed for war had to be procured by increase of taxation in 1861; but the country had then had for twenty-eight years an almost uninterrupted succession of low tariffs.

The universal prosperity in America between 1833 and 1842 is mentioned by a French traveller, Chevalier, by a German philanthropist, Dr.

Julius, by Miss Martineau, Lyell, and d.i.c.kens. The novelist was especially struck by the healthy faces and neat dresses of the factory girls at Lowell, where they began to publish a magazine in 1840. Lyell said that the operatives in that city looked like "a set of ladies and gentlemen playing at factory for their own amus.e.m.e.nt." Our country had seven times as many miles of railroads in 1842 as in 1833; our factories made more than nine times as many dollars' worth of goods in 1860 as in 1830; and they sold more than three times as many abroad as in 1846.

Twice as much capital was invested in manufacturing in 1860 as in 1850; the average wages of the operatives increased sixteen per cent, during these ten years; America became famous for inventions; her farms doubled in value, as did both her imports and her exports; and the tonnage of her vessels increased greatly. Such are the blessings of liberty in commerce.

Especially gratifying is the growth of respect for the right of free speech. The complaints by d.i.c.kens, Chevalier, and Miss Martineau of the despotism of the majority were corroborated by Tocqueville, who travelled here in 1831 and published in 1835 a very valuable statement of the results and tendencies of democracy. The destruction that year of a Catholic convent near Boston by a mob is especially significant, because the anniversary was celebrated next year as a public holiday. The worst sufferers under persecution at that time were the philanthropists.

V. In order to do justice to all parties in this controversy we should take especial notice of the amount of opposition to slavery about 1825 in what were afterwards called the Border States. Here all manual labour could have been done by whites; and much of it was actually, especially in Kentucky. There slaves never formed a quarter of the population; and in Maryland they sank steadily from one-fourth in 1820 to one-eighth in 1860. Of masters over twenty or more bondmen in 1856, there were only 256 in Kentucky and 735 in Maryland. It was these large holders who monopolised the profits, as they did the public offices. White men with few or no slaves had scarcely any political power; and their chance to make money, live comfortably, and educate their children, was much less than if all labour had become free. Such a change would have made manufacturing prosper in both Kentucky and

Maryland; but all industries languished except that of breeding slaves for the South. The few were rich at the expense of the many. Only time was needed in these and other States to make the majority intelligent enough to vote the guilty aristocrats down.

Two thousand citizens of Baltimore pet.i.tioned against admitting Missouri as a slave State in 1820; and several avowed abolitionists ran for the Legislature shortly before 1830. At this time there were annual anti-slavery conventions in Baltimore, with prominent Whigs among the officers, and nearly two hundred affiliated societies in the Border States. There were fifty in North Carolina, where two thousand slaves had been freed in 1825, and three-fifths of the whites were reported as favourable to emanc.i.p.ation. Henry Clay was openly so in 1827; and the Kentucky Colonisation Society voted in 1830 that the disposition towards voluntary emanc.i.p.ation was strong enough to make legislation unnecessary. The abolition of slavery as "the greatest curse that G.o.d in his wrath ever inflicted upon a people" was demanded by a dozen members of the Virginia Legislature, as well as by the _Richmond Inquirer_, in 1832; and similar efforts were made shortly before 1850 in Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, Western Virginia, Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and Missouri.

From 1812 to 1845 the Senate was equally divided between free and slave States; and any transfer, even of Delaware, from one side to the other would have enabled the North to control the upper House as well as the lower. The plain duty of a Northern philanthropist was to co-operate with the Southern emanc.i.p.ationists and accept patiently their opinion that abolition had better take place gradually, as it had done in New York, and, what was much more important, that the owner should have compensation. This had been urged by Wilberforce in 1823, as justice to the planters in the West Indies; the legislatures of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New. Jersey recommended, shortly before 1830, that the nation should buy and free the slaves; and compensation was actually given by Congress to loyal owners of the three thousand slaves in the District of Columbia emanc.i.p.ated in 1862. Who can tell the evils which we should have escaped, if slavery could have continued after 1830 to be abolished gradually by State after State, with pecuniary aid from Congress or the North?

This was the hope of Benjamin Lundy, who pa.s.sed much of his life in the South, though he was born in New Jersey. He had advocated gradual emanc.i.p.ation in nearly every State, visiting even Texas and Missouri, organising anti-slavery societies, and taking subscriptions to his _Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation_, which was founded in Tennessee in 1821, but afterwards was issued weekly at Baltimore. He published the names of nine postmasters among his agents, and copied friendly articles from more than forty newspapers. One of his chief objects was to prevent that great extension of slavery, the annexation of Texas.

VI. The election of the first pro-slavery President, Jackson, in 1828, discouraged the abolitionists; and Lundy was obliged to suspend his paper for lack of subscribers early next year. When he resumed it in September, he took an a.s.sistant editor, who had declared on the previous Fourth of July, in a fas.h.i.+onable Boston church: "I acknowledge that immediate and complete emanc.i.p.ation is not desirable. No rational man cherishes so wild a vision." Before Garrison set foot on slave soil, it occurred to him that every slave had a right to instant freedom, and also that no master had any right to compensation. These two ideas he advocated at once, and ever after, as obstinately as George the Third insisted on the right to tax America. Garrison, of course, was a zealous philanthropist; and he was as conscientious as Paul was in persecuting the Christians. But he seems to have been more anxious to free his own conscience than to free the slaves. Immediate emanc.i.p.ation had been advocated in Lundy's paper at much length, and even as early as 1825, but so mildly as to call out little opposition. Insisting on no compensation was much more irritating; and Garrison's writings show that his mind was apt to free itself in bitter words, even against such men as Whittier, Channing, Longfellow, Dougla.s.s, and Sumner. He had been but three months in Baltimore when he published a censure by name of the owner and captain of one of the many vessels which were permitted by law to carry slaves South, as "highway robbers and murderers," who "should be sentenced to solitary confinement for life," and who deserved "to occupy the lowest depths of perdition." He was found guilty of libel, and imprisoned for seven weeks because he could not pay a moderate fine.

The money was given by a generous New Yorker; but Garrison's work in the South was over, and Lundy's was of little value thenceforth. The man who brought the libel suit was an influential citizen of Ma.s.sachusetts; and Boston pulpits were shut against Garrison on his return. He could not pay for a hall; but one was given him without cost by the anti-clerical society, whose leader, Abner Knee-land, was imprisoned thirty days in 1834 for a brief expression of atheism which would not now be considered blasphemous.

Two weeklies, which were unpopular from the first, began to be published at Boston early in 1831. Kneeland's _Investigator_ was pledged "to contend for the abolition of slavery" and "advocate the rights of women." It was friendly to labour reform as well as to scientific education, and opposed capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, and legislation about religion; but its predominant tone has been skeptical to the present day. Garrison was too orthodox in 1831 to favour the emanc.i.p.ation of women; he was in sympathy with other reforms; but his chief theme was the "pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition." The next mistake of his _Liberator_ was the prominence given to negro insurrection and other crimes against whites. The Southerners were naturally afraid to have such subjects mentioned, even in condemnation; and guilty consciences made slave-holders think the danger much greater than it was. The first number of the _Liberator_ contained Garrison's verses about the horrors of the revolt which might bring emanc.i.p.ation.

He announced at the same time that he was going to review a recent pamphlet which he described thus: "A better promoter of insurrection was never sent forth to an oppressed people." His contributors spoke often of the right of slaves to resist, and asked, "In G.o.d's name, why should they not cut their masters' throats?" Many women and children were ma.s.sacred by rebel slaves in Virginia that autumn; and Garrison promptly declared that the a.s.sa.s.sins "deserve no more blame than our fathers did for slaughtering the British," and that "When the contest shall have again begun, it must again be a war of extermination." Similar language was often used in the _Liberator_ afterwards.

Garrison was too firm a non-resistant to go further than this; but the majority of Northerners would have agreed with the Reverend Doctor Wayland, President of Brown University, who declared slavery "very wicked," but declined to have the _Liberator_ sent him, and wrote to Mr. Garrison that its tendency was to incite the slaves to rebellion.

Of course this was not the editor's intention; but history deals mainly with causes and results.

The consequences were especially bad at the South. Calhoun and other Democrats were striving to unite all her people in resistance to emanc.i.p.ation, as well as to protectionism. They appealed to the insurrection in 1831, and to the treatment of this subject in the _Liberator_, as proofs that abolitionism was incendiary; and the feeling was so intense in Georgia, that the Governor was authorised by the Legislature, before the end of 1831, to offer five thousand dollars for the head of the editor or of any of his agents in that State.

Southerners were generally provoked at such comparisons of slave-holders to thieves as were often made in the _Liberator_ and were incorporated into the formal declaration made by Garrison and the other founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society at Boston early in 1832. Planters friendly to emanc.i.p.ation were discouraged by Garrison's insisting that they ought not to have compensation, an opinion which was adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society at its organisation at Philadelphia in 1833. Such protests on moral grounds were of great use to politicians who opposed any grant of money for emanc.i.p.ation, because they wished to preserve slavery. The national Const.i.tution provided that emanc.i.p.ation should not take place in any State which did not give its consent; and this was much less attainable in 1835 than it had been ten years earlier.

So fierce was the hatred of anti-slavery periodicals, that many pounds of them were taken from the Charleston post-office and burned by the leading citizens in July, 1835; and this action was praised by a public meeting, which was attended by all the clergy. The papers were printed in New York, and do not seem to have been destroyed on account of their own mistakes, but of those made by the Liberator. Southern postmasters refused after this to deliver any anti-slavery matter; and their conduct was approved by the Postmaster-General, as well as by the President. The legislatures of North Carolina and Virginia demanded, in the session of 1835 and 1836, that all such publications be suppressed legally by the Northern States.

South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama took the same course; and it was agreed everywhere that abolitionists were to be lynched. Loyalty to slavery was required of all preachers and editors; no other qualification for every office, in the service either of the nation or of the State, was exacted so strictly; other controversies lost interest; and men who would have gained greatly from the introduction of free labour helped the slave-holders silence those intelligent Southerners who knew what urgent need there was in their section of emanc.i.p.ation for the general welfare.

Garrison, meantime, made both friends and enemies at the North. He had the support of nearly four hundred anti-slavery societies in 1835; but some of these had been founded in Ohio by Lundy on the principle of gradual emanc.i.p.ation, and others in New York by Jay, whose main objects were repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act and emanc.i.p.ation in the District of Columbia. Agitation for immediate abolition without compensation was nowhere active at that time, except in New England. The highest estimate of its partisans in 1840 was only two hundred thousand; most of them had already renounced the leaders.h.i.+p of Garrison; and there is no reason to believe that the number of his thorough going followers ever reached one hundred thousand.

Most of the original abolitionists were church members; and the agitation was never opposed, even at first, by so large a proportion of the clergy at the North as of the people generally. Several ministers joined Garrison at once; 125 enrolled their names for publication as abolitionists in 1833; and two years later he had the open support of the New England Methodist Conference, the Maine Baptist Convention, and the Detroit Presbytery, as well as of many Congregationalists, and of most of the Quakers, Unitarians, and Free-Will Baptists. Preaching against slavery was not common in denominations where the pastor was more liable to be gagged by ecclesiastical superiors.

One reason that this authority, as well as that of public opinion in the Northern cities, was directed against agitation, was the pressure of business interests. The South sent most of her products, especially cotton, to manufacturers or merchants in Philadelphia, New York, and New England. This region in return supplied her with clothes, tools, and furniture. Much of her food came from the Western farmers; and these latter were so unable to send grain or cattle eastward until after 1850, that the best road for most of them to market was the Mississippi.

The slave-holders were such good customers, that people along the Ohio River, as well as in Eastern seaports and factory towns, were slow to see how badly the slaves were oppressed.

Enlightenment on this subject, as well as about capacity for free labour, was also delayed by prejudices of race and colour, while there was much honest ignorance throughout the North. What was best understood about slavery was that it was merely a State inst.i.tution, not to be abolished or even much ameliorated by the national Government. The main responsibility rested accordingly upon the Southern States; and the danger that these might be provoked to secede could not be overlooked.

These considerations prevented the majority of the Northerners, and especially the leading members of every sect, from opposing slavery as actively as they would otherwise have been glad to do.

The most active partisan of the slave-holders was the politician who knew they had votes in Congress and in the electoral college for all the whites in the South and also for three-fifths of the coloured people.

The views of the Democratic party about the tariff, the bank, and State rights had made it in 1832 victorious everywhere south of Maryland and Kentucky; and its preponderance in the cotton States, as well as in Virginia, enabled it long to resist the growing disaffection at the North. The Whigs went far enough in the same course for their own destruction; and the principle of individual liberty found few champions.

VII. Politicians and merchants worked together in getting up the series of mobs against abolitionists, which began in 1833, under the lead of a Methodist bishop in New York, and kept breaking out in that city, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Boston, and less important places, until they culminated in the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838. After that year, they were neither frequent nor violent. The worst crime of the rioters was murdering a clergyman named Lovejoy in 1837 for trying to save his printing-press. Most of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian preachers and editors were now doing what they could to suppress the agitation; but the riots called out no indignation like that which had poured forth from all the churches in 1828 against Sunday mails.

There was little freedom of speech for unpopular opinions in America in 1835, when Channing declared that the mob against Garrison had made abolitionism "the cause of Freedom." There were many readers, even in the South, for the little book in which he insisted that "Slavery ought to be discussed." He protested against depriving the slave of his right to improve and respect himself, and vindicated "the sacredness of individual man." He was the first to appeal from the Fugitive Slave Law to that "everlasting and immutable rule of right revealed in conscience." And few other clergymen gave such help to John Quincy Adams, who was then a.s.serting the right of pet.i.tion and of discussion in Congress. Memorials with a hundred and fifty thousand signatures had been presented against the annexation of Texas, and in favour of emanc.i.p.ation in the District of Columbia, when it was voted by all the Southern Representatives, as well as by the Northern Democrats, in January, 1837, that all pet.i.tions relating to slavery "shall be laid on the table and no action taken thereon." The ex-President, who was then a Representative from Ma.s.sachusetts, protested indignantly, as did other Whigs, and they continued to plead for the const.i.tutional rights of the North until 1844, when the gag-rule was abolished. On July 4, 1837, Adams told the people that "Freedom of speech is the only safety-valve which, under the high pressure of slavery, can preserve your political boiler from a fearful explosion." The number of names, including many repet.i.tions, signed in the next two years to anti-slavery pet.i.tions was two millions.

Emanc.i.p.ation in the District of Columbia was out of the question, if only because the South chose half the Senate. The North was strong enough in the House of Representatives to prevent any pro-slavery legislation; and the annexation of Texas was actually postponed until 1845, in consequence partly of the pet.i.tions and partly of remonstrances from the legislatures of Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other States. These bodies also protested against the neglect of pet.i.tions in Congress. The subsidence of mobs after 1838 was due to a general feeling at the North, not only that the rioters were too violent, but also that the South was too dictatorial in gagging Congress, in tampering with the mails, in asking Northern legislatures to suppress public meetings, and in trying to annex Texas.

VIII. On all these points the Whigs were so far in advance of the Democrats in 1840, as to receive much support from abolitionists. These last, however, were widely and unfortunately divided among themselves.

Many of the men still called themselves Democrats; for the old party which had been founded by Jefferson had liberal members, who had formerly been called "f.a.n.n.y Wright men," and were now known as "Loco Focos." A few abolitionists took the Gospel aphorisms about non-resistance so blindly as to say it would be a sin for them to vote.

Garrison renounced the franchise "for conscience" sake and the slave's; but it is hard to see precisely what any slave gained by his friends'

refusing to vote for Adams, Sumner, or Lincoln. The most consistent abolitionists voted regularly, and selected a candidate for his work in the cause, without regard to his party record.

The Democrats took decided ground in the national convention of 1840 and afterwards against abolitionism. Their nominee, Van Buren, was then at the head of a corrupt administration. The Whig candidate, Harrison, was in favour of free speech and honest government. He had been chosen in preference to Clay, because of the latter's attacking the abolitionists.

Another slave-holder who wanted to lynch them, had, however, been nominated by acclamation for Vice-President at the Whig convention; and the party had no platform.

It is hard to see what ought to have been done under these circ.u.mstances by abolitionists. Some who were afterwards known as "Liberty men" set up an independent ticket, headed by a martyr to the cause. They had quite as much right to do this as Garrison had to refuse to vote. He had hitherto taken little responsibility for the proceedings of the national society; but when the annual meeting was held at New York in May, 1840, he brought on more than five hundred of his own adherents from New England, in order to pack the convention. Thus he secured the pa.s.sage of a declaration that the independent nominations were "injurious to the cause" and ought not to be supported. Garrison has justly been compared to Luther, and this was like Luther at his worst.

Most of the officers and members seceded and organised a rival society which did good work in sympathy not only with the Liberty men but with the Free Soilers; and these parties gained most of the new converts to abolitionism. In 1847 the _Liberator_ published without comment an estimate that it did not represent the views of one active abolitionist in ten; and a coloured clergyman of high ability, Dr. Garnett, declared in 1851 that the proportion was less than one per cent. Most of the clergymen who were friendly to Garrison before 1840 were thenceforth against him. So many pulpits were suddenly closed against the agitators, that one of them, named Foster, kept insisting on speaking in meeting without leave in various parts of New England. He was usually dragged out summarily, and often to the injury of his coat-tails, though never of his temper. Boston was one of the most strongly anti-slavery cities; but twenty pastors out of forty-four refused to asked the people to pray for a fugitive slave who was imprisoned illegally in 1842. Those who complied had comparatively little influence. The rural clergy in New England, New York, Michigan, and Northern Ohio, had much more sympathy with reform than their brethren to the southward, especially in large cities. Garrison's personal unpopularity in the churches had been much increased by his violent language against them, and also by his a.s.serting the injustice of Sunday laws, as well as the right of women to speak for the slave. His position on these points will be considered later.

IX. His worst mistake was the demand, which he published in the _Liberator_, in May, 1842, for "a repeal of the Union between Northern Liberty and Southern Slavery." This he called "essential" for emanc.i.p.ation. In January, 1843, the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society pa.s.sed the resolution which was afterwards published regularly in the _Liberator_ as the Garrisonist creed. It declared the Union "a covenant with death and an agreement with h.e.l.l" which "should be immediately annulled." This position was held by Garrison, Phillips, and their adherents until 1861. It was largely due, like their refusal to vote, to indignation at the support given to slavery by the national Const.i.tution, the Fugitive Slave Act, and some recent legislation at Was.h.i.+ngton. Garrison was also confident, as he said at a Disunion convention in 1857, that if the South were to secede, she would not "be able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done." Phillips, too, declared that "All the slave asks of us is to stand out of his way." "Let no cement of the Union bind the slave, and he will right himself." It is true that secession brought on emanc.i.p.ation; but it would not have done so if Phillips and Garrison had succeeded in quenching love of the Union in the North. That patriotic feeling burst out in a fierce flame; and it was the restoration of the Union which abolished slavery. Another important fact is that the chief guilt of slavery rested on the South. The national Government was only an accessory at worst. No Northerner was responsible for any clause in the Const.i.tution which he had not sanctioned, or for any action of Congress which he had done his best to prevent.

The best work against slavery which could be done in 1843 and 1844 was to defeat a new attempt to annex Texas. This scheme was avowedly for the extension of slavery over a great region where it had been prohibited by Mexico. There would probably be war with that country; and success would increase the power of the slave-holders in the Senate. One half of its members were from the slave States in 1844; but annexation was rejected in June by a vote of two to one; and the House of Representatives was plainly on the same side, though otherwise controlled by the Democrats.

Public warning of the danger to liberty had been given by Adams and other Whigs in Congress early in 1843; but little heed was taken either by the clergy or by the Garrisonists. Both were too busy with their own plans. Channing died in 1842; and Parker went to Europe in September, 1843. It was not until two months later that the _Liberator_ found room for Texas. Garrison never spoke against annexation until too late; and it was scarcely mentioned in the May meetings of 1843 at New York and Boston, in the one hundred anti-slavery conventions which were held that summer in Western New York, Ohio, and Indiana, with the powerful aid of Frederick Dougla.s.s, or in the one hundred conventions in Ma.s.sachusetts early in 1844. At the May meeting in New York, Foster said he should rejoice to see Texas annexed; and Phillips exulted in the prospect that this would provoke the North to trample on the Const.i.tution. Annexation had been opposed by three candidates for the presidency: Birney, who had already been selected by the "Liberty men"; Van Buren, who was rejected soon after on this account by the Democrats; and Clay, who had already been accepted by the Whigs. All three were formally censured, under various pretexts, in company with John Quincy Adams, at this and other gatherings of the Garrisonians. Their convention soon after in Boston voted ten to one for disunion, and closed on June 1st with the presentation to Garrison of a red flag bearing on one side the motto, "No Union with Slave-holders," and on the other an eagle wrapped in the American flag and trampling on a prostrate slave. Two months later, and three before the election, this banner was carried through gaily decorated streets in Hingham, amid ringing of church bells, to a meeting attended by several thousand disunionists. The Garrisonians thought so much about getting out of the Union, that they had nothing to say in favour of keeping out Texas.

Among the few abolitionists who saw the duty of the hour were Whittier and Lowell. The full force of their poetry was not much felt before 1850; but among the stirring publications early in 1842 was a _Rallying-Cry for New England against the Annexation of Texas_, which Lowell sent forth anonymously. It was reprinted in _Harper's Weekly_ for April 23, 1892, but not in the earlier editions of the poems. Among the most striking lines are these:

"Rise up New England, buckle on your mail of proof sublime, Your stern old hate of tyranny, your deep contempt of crime.