Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 11

The Southern majority of one on the committees was fatal to Democratic success. In a still more important aspect its influence was in the highest degree prejudicial to the Union of the States.

Const.i.tuted in the manner just indicated, the Committee on Resolutions promptly and unanimously agreed on every article of the Democratic creed, except that relating to slavery. Here they divided, stubbornly and irreconcilably. The fifteen slave States, re-enforced by California and Oregon, gave to the Southern interest a majority of one vote on the committee. The other free States, sixteen in all, were hostile to the extreme Southern demands, and reported a resolution, which they were willing to accept. The South required an explicit a.s.sertion of the right of citizens to settle in the Territories with their slaves,--a right not "to be destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation." They required the further declaration that it is the duty of the Federal Government, when necessary, to protect slavery "in the Territories, and wherever else its const.i.tutional authority extends." This was in substance, and almost identically in language, the extreme creed put forth by the Southern Democratic senators in the winter of 1858-59, after the "popular sovereignty" campaign of Douglas against Lincoln. It was the most advanced ground ever taken by the statesmen of the South, and its authors.h.i.+p was generally ascribed to Judah F.

Benjamin, senator from Louisiana. Its introduction in the Charleston platform was intended apparently as an insult to Douglas. The evident purpose was to lay down doctrines and prescribe tests which Douglas could not accept, and thus to exclude him, not only from candidacy, but from further partic.i.p.ation in the councils of the party.

QUARREL OF DEMOCRATIC FACTIONS.

The courage of the Northern Democrats was more conspicuously shown in their resistance to these demands than in the declarations which they desired to subst.i.tute. They quietly abandoned all their a.s.sertions in regard to popular sovereignty, refrained from any protest against the doctrine that the Const.i.tution carried slavery as far as its jurisdiction extended, and contented themselves with a resolution that "inasmuch as differences of opinion exist in the Democratic party as to the nature and extent of the powers of a Territorial Legislature, and as to the powers and duties of Congress under the Const.i.tution of the United States over the inst.i.tution of slavery within the Territories, the Democratic party will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States upon questions of Const.i.tutional law." This was perhaps the best device practicable at the time; and had it been adopted with Douglas as the candidate, and a united Democracy supporting him, it is not improbable that a successful campaign might have been made. But it was a makes.h.i.+ft, uncandid, unfair, cunningly contrived to evade the full responsibility of the situation. It was a temporizing expedient, and did not frankly meet the question which was engaging the thoughts of the people. Had it succeeded, nothing would have been settled. Every thing would have been postponed, and the crisis would have inevitably recurred. So far as the Supreme Court could determine the questions at issue, it had already been done in the Dred Scott decision; and that decision, so far from being final, was a part of the current controversy. There was, therefore, neither logic nor principle in the proposition of the Douglas minority. The Southern delegates keenly realized this fact, and refused to accept the compromise. They could not endure the thought of being placed in a position which was not only evasive, but might be deemed cowardly. They were brave men, and wished to meet the question bravely. They knew that the Republicans in their forthcoming convention would explicitly demand the prohibition of slavery in the Territories. To hesitate or falter in making an equally explicit a.s.sertion of their own faith would subject them to fatal a.s.sault from their slave-holding const.i.tuencies.

The Douglas men would not yield. They were enraged by the domineering course of the Southern Democrats. They could not comprehend why they should higgle about the language of the platform when they could carry the slave States on the one form of expression as well as the other. In the North it was impossible for the Democrats to succeed with the Southern platform, but in the South it was, in their judgment, entirely easy to carry the Douglas platform. From the committee the contest was transferred to the convention, and there the Douglas men were in a majority. They did not hesitate to use their strength, and by a vote of 165 to 138 they subst.i.tuted the minority platform for that of the majority. It was skillfully accomplished under the lead of Henry B. Payne of Ohio and Benjamin Samuels of Iowa. The total vote of the convention was 303,--the number of Presidential electors; and every vote had been cast on the test question. The South voted solidly in the negative, and was aided by the vote of California and Oregon, and a few scattering delegates from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The other fourteen States of the North voted unanimously on the side of Douglas, and gave him a majority of twenty-seven.

The Northern victory brought with it a defeat. A large number of the Southern delegates, though fairly and honorably outvoted, refused to abide by the decision. Seven States--Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas--withdrew from the convention, and organized a separate a.s.semblage, presided over by Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware. By this defection the Douglas men were left in absolute control of the convention.

But the friends of Douglas fatally obstructed his program by consenting to the two-thirds rule, so worded as to required that proportion of a full convention to secure a nomination. The first vote disclosed the full strength of Douglas to be 152. He required 202 to be declared the nominee. After an indefinite number of ballots, it was found impossible to make a nomination; and on the 3d of May the convention adjourned to meet in Baltimore on the 18th of June. In the intervening weeks it was hoped that a more harmonious spirit would return to the party. But the expectation was vain.

The differences were more p.r.o.nounced than ever when the convention re-a.s.sembled, and, all efforts to find a common basis of action having failed, the convention divided. The Southern delegates with California and Oregon, and with some scattering members from other States, among whom were Caleb Cus.h.i.+ng and Benjamin F. Butler of Ma.s.sachusetts, nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice-President. The Northern convention, with a few scattering votes from the South, nominated Stephen A. Douglas for President, and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President. Of the seventeen States that made up the Breckinridge convention, it was deemed probable that he could carry all. Of the sixteen that voted for Douglas, it was difficult to name one in which with a divided party he could be sure of victory. United in support of either candidate, the party could have made a formidable contest, stronger in the North with Douglas, stronger in the South with Breckinridge. Had the Democracy presented Douglas and Breckinridge as their National nominees, they would have combined all the elements of strength in their party.

But pa.s.sion and prejudice prevented. The South was implacable toward Douglas, and deliberately resolved to accept defeat rather than secure a victory under his lead.

DISRUPTION OF THE DEMOCRACY.

The disruption of the Democracy was undoubtedly hastened by the political events which had occurred since the adjournment at Charleston. An organization, styling itself the Const.i.tutional- Union Party, representing the successors of the Old Whigs and Americans, had met in Baltimore, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of Ma.s.sachusetts for Vice-President.

The strength of the party was in the South. In the slave States it formed the only opposition to the Democratic party, and was as firm in defense of the rights of the slave-holder as its rival.

Its members had not been so ready to repeal the Missouri Compromise as the Democrats, and they were unrelenting in their hostility to Douglas, and severe in their exposure of his dogma of popular sovereignty. They had effectively aided in bringing both the doctrine and its author into disrepute in the South, and, if the Democrats had ventured to nominate Douglas, they had their weapons ready for vigorous warfare against him.

With a Southern slave-holder like Mr. Bell at the head of the ticket, and a Northern man of Mr. Everett's well-known conservatism a.s.sociated with him, the Const.i.tutional-Union Party was in a position to make a strong canva.s.s against Douglas in the South. It was this fact which, on the re-a.s.sembling of the Democratic convention at Baltimore, had increased the hostility of the South to Douglas, and made their leaders firm in their resolution not to accept him.

Had the Union party nominated a Northern man instead of Mr. Bell for President, the case might have been different for Douglas; but the Southern Democrats feared that their party would be endangered in half the slave States if they should present Douglas as a candidate against a native Southerner and slave-holder of Bell's character and standing. If they were to be beaten in the contest for the Presidency, they were determined to retain, if possible, the control of their States, and not to risk their seats in the Senate and the House in a desperate struggle for Douglas. It would be poor recompense to them to recover certain Northern States from the Republicans, if at the same time, and by co-ordinate causes, an equal number of Southern States should be carried by Bell, and the destiny of the South be committed to a conservative party, which would abandon threats and cultivate harmony. Bell's nomination had, therefore, proved the final argument against the acceptance of Douglas by the Southern Democracy.

Meanwhile, between the adjournment of the Democratic convention at Charleston, and its re-a.s.sembling at Baltimore, the Republicans had held their national convention at Chicago. It was a representative meeting of the active and able men of both the old parties in the North, who had come together on the one overshadowing issue of the hour. Differing widely on many other questions, inheriting their creeds from antagonistic organizations of the past, they thought alike on the one subject of putting a stop to the extension of slavery. Those who wished to go farther were restrained, and an absolute control of opinion and action was commanded on this one line. In the entire history of party conventions, not one can be found so characteristic, so earnest, so determined to do the wisest thing, so little governed by personal consideration, so entirely devoted to one absorbing idea. It was made up in great part of young men, though there were gray-haired veterans in sufficient number to temper action with discretion. A large proportion of the delegates were afterwards prominent in public life. At least sixty of them, till then unknown beyond their districts, were sent to Congress. Many became governors of their States, and in other ways received marks of popular favor. It was essentially a convention of the free States--undisguisedly sectional in the political nomenclature of the day. The invitation was general, but, in the larger portion of the South, no one could be found who would risk his life by attending as a delegate. Nevertheless, there were delegates present from the five slave States which bordered on the free States, besides a partial and irregular representation from Texas.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION.

The anti-slavery character of the a.s.semblage was typified by the selection of David Wilmot for temporary chairman, and its conservative side by the choice of an old Webster Whig, in the person of George Ashmun of Ma.s.sachusetts, for permanent president. This tendency to interweave the radical and conservative elements, and, where practicable, those of Whig with those of Democratic antecedents, was seen in many delegations. John A. Andrew and George S. Boutwell came from Ma.s.sachusetts, William M. Evarts and Preston King from New York, Thaddeus Stevens and Andrew H. Reeder from Pennsylvania, Thomas Corwin and Joshua R. Giddings from Ohio, David Davis and N.

B. Judd from Illinois. Outside of the regular delegations, there were great crowds of earnest men in Chicago, all from the free States. The number in attendance was reckoned by tens of thousands.

Considering the restricted facilities for travel at that time, the mult.i.tude was surprising and significant. The whole ma.s.s was inspired with energy, and believed, without shadow of doubt, that they had come to witness the nomination of the next President of the United States. Confidence of strength is as potential an element in a political canva.s.s as in a military campaign, and never was a more defiant sense of power exhibited than by the Chicago convention of 1860 and by the vast throng which surrounded its meetings. Such a feeling is contagious, and it spread from that centre until it enveloped the free States.

The impression in the country, for a year preceding the convention, was that Mr. Seward would be nominated. As the time drew nigh, however, symptoms of dissent appeared in quarters where it had not been expected. New parties are proverbially free from faction and jealousy. Personal antagonisms, which come with years, had not then been developed in the Republican ranks. It was not primarily a desire to promote the cause of other candidates which led to the questioning of Mr. Seward's availability, nor was there any withholding of generous recognition and appreciation of all that he had done for Republican principles. His high character was gladly acknowledged, his eminent ability conceded, the magnitude and unselfishness of his work were everywhere praised. Without his aid, the party could not have been organized. But for his wise leaders.h.i.+p, it would have been wrecked in the first years of its existence. He was wholly devoted to its principles. He had staked every thing upon its success.

Mr. Seward had, however, some weak points as a candidate. A large proportion of the Republicans had been connected with the American organization, and still cherished some of its principles. Mr.

Seward had been the determined foe of that party. In battling for the rights of the negro, he deemed it unwise and inconsistent to increase the disabilities of the foreign-born citizen. His influence, more than that of any other man, had broken down the proscriptive creed of the American party, and turned its members into the Republican ranks. But many of them came reluctantly, and in a complaining mood against Mr. Seward. This led political managers to fear that Mr. Seward would lose votes which another candidate might secure. Others though that the radicalism of Mr. Seward would make him weak, where a more conservative representative of Republican principles might be strong. He had been at the forefront of the battle for twelve years in the Senate, and every extreme thing he had said was remembered to his injury. He had preached the doctrine of an "irrepressible conflict" between the forces of slavery and the forces of freedom, and timid men dreaded such a trial as his nomination would presage. The South had made continuous a.s.sault on this speech, and on the particular phrase which distinguished it, and had impressed many Northern men with the belief that Mr. Seward had gone too far. In short, he had been too conspicuous, and too many men had conceived predilections against him.

When the convention a.s.sembled, notwithstanding all adverse influences, Mr. Seward was still the leading and most formidable candidate.

His case was in strong and skillful hands. Mr. Thurlow Weed, who had been his lifelong confidential friend, presented his claims, before the formal a.s.sembling of the convention, with infinite tact.

Mr. Weed, though unable to make a public speech, was the most persuasive of men in private conversation. He was quiet, gentle, and deferential in manner. He grasped a subject with a giant's strength, presented its strong points, and marshaled its details with extraordinary power. Whatever Mr. Weed might lack was more than supplied by the eloquent tongue of William M. Evarts. Seldom if ever in the whole field of political oratory have the speeches of Mr. Evarts at Chicago been equaled. Even those who most decidedly differed from him followed him from one delegation to another allured by the charm of his words. He pleaded for the Republic, for the party that could save it, for the great statesman who had founded the party, and knew where and how to lead it. He spoke as one friend for another, and the great career of Mr. Seward was never so illumined as by the brilliant painting of Mr. Evarts.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION.

With all the potential efforts and influences in his behalf, Mr.

Seward was confronted with obstacles which were insuperable. He was seriously injured by the open defection of Horace Greeley.

Not able, or even desirous, to appear on the New-York delegation, Mr. Greeley sat in the convention as a representative from Oregon.

The old firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, according to his own humorous expression, had been dissolved by the withdrawal of the junior partner; and a bitter dissension had in fact existed for six years without public knowledge. With his great influence in the agricultural regions of the country, Mr. Greeley was enabled to turn a strong current of popular feeling against the eminent senator from New York. Mr. Seward sustained further injury by the action of the States which were regarded as politically doubtful.

Pennsylvania and Indiana took part against him. Henry S. Lane had just been nominated for governor of Indiana, with Oliver P. Morton --not then known beyond his State--for lieutenant-governor. It was understood that Lane would be sent to the Senate if the Republicans should carry the State, and that Morton, whose strength of character was known and appreciated at home, would become governor. Both candidates, having each a personal stake in the contest, united in declaring that the nomination of Mr. Seward meant a Democratic victory in Indiana. Andrew G. Curtin, who had been nominated for governor of Pennsylvania, gave the same testimony respecting that State; and his judgment was sustained by his faithful friend and adviser, Alexander K. McClure. Delegates from other States, where the contest was close, sympathized with the views of Pennsylvania and Indiana, and there was a rapid and formidable combination against Mr. Seward. The reformer and his creed rarely triumph at the same time, and the fate of Mr. Seward was about to add one more ill.u.s.tration of this truth.

But if not Mr. Seward, who? The Blairs and Horace Greeley answered, "Edward Bates of Missouri,"--an old Whig, a lawyer of ability, a gentleman of character. Though still in vigorous life, he had sat in the convention which framed the const.i.tution of Missouri in 1820. He had revered the Compromise of that year, and had joined the Republicans in resentment of its repeal. Ohio, in a half- hearted manner, presented Salmon P. Chase, who, with great ability and spotless fame, lacked the elements of personal popularity.

Pennsylvania, with an imposing delegation, named Simon Cameron; New Jersey desired William L. Dayton; Vermont wanted Jacob Collamer; and delegates here and there suggested Judge McLean or Benjamin F. Wade. The popular candidate of 1856, John C. Fremont, had forbidden the use of his name.

Illinois had a candidate. He was held back with sound discretion, and at the opportune moment presented with great enthusiasm. Ever since the discussion with Douglas, Mr. Lincoln had occupied a prominent place before the public; but there had been little mention of his name for the Presidency. His friends at home had apparently hoped to nominate him for Vice-President on the ticket with Mr.

Seward. But as the proofs of hostility to Seward multiplied, speculation was busy as to the man who could be taken in his stead.

At the moment when doubts of Seward's success were most prevalent, and when excitement in regard to the nomination was deepest, the Republicans of Illinois met in State convention. It was but a few days in advance of the a.s.sembling of the National convention. By a spontaneous movement they nominated Mr. Lincoln for President.

It was a surprise to the convention that did it. The man who created the great outburst for Mr. Lincoln in that Illinois a.s.semblage, who interpreted the feelings of delegates to themselves, was Richard J. Oglesby, a speaker of force and eloquence, afterward honorably prominent and popular in military and civil life. He was seconded with unanimity, and with boisterous demonstrations of applause. The whole State was instantly alive and ablaze for Lincoln. A delegation competent for its work was sent to the convention. David Davis, O. H. Browning, Burton C. Cook, Gustavus Koerner, and their a.s.sociates, met no abler body of men in a convention remarkable for its ability. They succeeded in the difficult task a.s.signed to them. They did not in their canva.s.s present Mr. Lincoln as a rival to Mr. Seward, but rather as an admirer and friend. The votes which were given to Mr. Lincoln on the first ballot were, in large part, from delegations that could not be induced in any event to vote for Mr. Seward. The presentation of Mr. Lincoln's name kept these delegates from going to a candidate less acceptable to the immediate friends of Mr. Seward. No management could have been more skillful, no tact more admirable. The result attested the vigor and wisdom of those who had Mr. Lincoln's fortunes in charge.

Mr. Seward's support, however, after all the a.s.saults made upon it, was still very formidable. On the first ballot he received 175 votes, while Mr. Lincoln received but 102. Delegates to the number of 190 divided their votes between Bates, Chase, Cameron, Dayton, McLean, and Collamer. They held the balance of power, and on the second ballot it was disclosed that the ma.s.s of them favored Mr. Lincoln as against Mr. Seward. The latter gained but nine votes, carrying his total up to 184, while Mr. Lincoln received 181. On the third ballot, Mr. Lincoln was nominated by general consent.

NOMINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

It is one of the contradictions not infrequently exhibited in the movement of partisan bodies, that Mr. Seward was defeated because of his radical expressions on the slavery questions, while Mr.

Lincoln was chosen in spite of expressions far more radical than those of Mr. Seward. The "irrepressible conflict" announced by Mr. Seward at Rochester did not go so far as Mr. Lincoln's declaration at Springfield, that "the Union could not exist half slave, half free." Neither Mr. Seward nor Mr. Lincoln contemplated the destruction of the government, and yet thousands had been made to believe that Mr. Seward made the existence of the Union depend on the abolition of slavery. Mr Lincoln had announced the same doctrine in advance of Mr. Seward, with a directness and bluntness which could not be found in the more polished phrase of the New-York senator. Despite these facts, a large number of delegates from doubtful States--delegates who held the control of the convention --supported Mr. Lincoln, on the distinct ground that the anti- slavery sentiment which they represented was not sufficiently radical to support the author of the speech in which had been proclaimed the doctrine of an "irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery.

In a final a.n.a.lysis of the causes and forces which nominated Mr.

Lincoln, great weight must be given to the influence which came from the place where the convention was held, and from the sympathy and pressure of the surrounding crowd. Illinois Republicans, from Cairo to the Wisconsin line, were present in uncounted thousands.

The power of the mob in controlling public opinion is immeasurable.

In monarchical governments it has dethroned kings, and in republics it dictates candidates. Had the conditions been changed and the National convention of the Republicans a.s.sembled in Albany, it is scarcely to be doubted that Mr. Seward would have been nominated.

It is quite certain that Mr. Lincoln would not have been nominated.

The great achievement at Chicago was the nomination of Mr. Lincoln without offending the supporters of Seward. This happy result secured victory for the party in the national contest. No wounds were inflicted, no hatreds planted, no harmonies disturbed. The devotion to the cause was so sincere and so dominant, that the personal ambitions of a lifetime were subordinated in an instant upon the demand of the popular tribunal whose decision was final.

The discipline of defeat was endured with grace, and self-abnegation was accepted as the supreme duty of the hour.

A wise selection was made for Vice-President. Hannibal Hamlin belonged originally to the school of Democrats who supported Jackson, and who took Silas Wright as their model. After the repeal of the Missouri Compromise he separated himself from his old a.s.sociates, and proved to be a powerful factor in the formation of the Republican party. His candidacy for Governor of Maine, in 1856, broke down the Democratic party in that State, and gave a great impulse to the Republican campaign throughout the country. In strong common sense, in sagacity and sound judgment, in rugged integrity of character, Mr. Hamlin has had no superior among public men. It is generally fortunate for a political party if the nominee for Vice- President does not prove a source of weakness in the popular canva.s.s.

Mr. Hamlin proved a source of strength, and the imparted confidence and courage to the great movement against the Democratic party.

In the four Presidential tickets in the field, every shade of political opinion was represented, but only two of the candidates embodied positive policies. Mr. Lincoln was in favor of prohibiting the extension of slavery by law. Mr. Breckinridge was in favor of protecting its extension by law. No issue could have been more p.r.o.nounced than the one thus presented. Mr. Douglas desired to evade it, and advocated his doctrine of non-intervention which was full of contradictions, and was in any event offensive to the anti- slavery conscience. It permitted what was considered a grievous moral wrong to be upheld, if a majority of white men would vote in favor of upholding it. Mr. Bell desired to avoid the one question that was in the popular mind, and to lead the people away from every issue except the abstract one of preserving the Union. By what means the Union could be preserved against the efforts of Southern secessionists, Mr. Bell's party did not explain. The popular apprehension was that Mr. Bell would concede all they asked, and insure the preservation of the Union by yielding to the demands of the only body of men who threatened to destroy it.

ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

As the canva.s.s grew animated, and the questions at issue were elaborately discussed before the people, the conviction became general that the supporters of Breckinridge contemplated the destruction of the government. This was not simply the belief of the Republicans. It was quite as general among the supporters of Douglas and the supporters of Bell. In an earlier stage of the anti-slavery contest, this fact would have created great alarm in the Northern States, but now the people would not yield to such a fear. They were not only inspired by the principles they upheld, but there was a general desire to test the question thus presented.

If a President, const.i.tutionally elected, could not be inaugurated, it was better then and there to ascertain the fact than to postpone the issue by an evasion or a surrender. The Republicans were constantly strengthened by recruits from the Douglas ranks. Many of the friends of Douglas had become enraged by the course of the Southern Democrats, and now joined the Republicans, in order to force the issue upon the men who had been so domineering and offensive in the Charleston and Baltimore conventions. Mr. Lincoln gained steadily and derived great strength from the division of his opponents. But their union could not have defeated him. In New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, but one electoral ticket was presented against Mr. Lincoln, his opponents having coalesced in a joint effort to defeat him. In New Jersey, the "Fusion"

ticket, as the combination was termed, was made up of three Douglas, two Bell, and two Breckinridge representatives. Owing to the fact that some of the supporters of Douglas refused to vote for the Breckinridge and Bell candidates, Mr. Lincoln received four electoral votes in New Jersey, though, in the aggregate popular vote, the majority was against him. In California and Oregon he received pluralities. In every other free State he had an absolute majority.

Breckinridge carried every slave State except four,--Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee voting for Bell, and Missouri voting for Douglas.

The long political struggle was over. A more serious one was about to begin. For the first time in the history of the government, the South was defeated in a Presidential election where an issue affecting the slavery question was involved. There had been grave conflicts before, sometimes followed by compromise, oftener by victory for the South. But the election of 1860 was the culmination of a contest which was foreshadowed by the Louisiana question of 1812; which became active and angry over the admission of Missouri; which was revived by the annexation of Texas, and still further inflamed by the Mexican war; which was partially allayed by the compromises of 1850; which was precipitated for final settlement by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by the consequent struggle for mastery in Kansas, and by the aggressive intervention of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. These are the events which led, often slowly, but always with directness, to the political revolution of 1860. The contest was inevitable, and the men whose influence developed and encouraged it may charitably be regarded as the blind agents of fate. But if personal responsibility for prematurely forcing the conflict belongs to any body of men, it attaches to those who, in 1854, broke down the adjustments of 1820 and of 1850. If the compromises of those years could not be maintained, the North believed that all compromise was impossible; and they prepared for the struggle which this fact foreshadowed.

They had come to believe that the house divided against itself could not stand; that the Republic half slave, half free, could not endure. They accepted as their leader the man who proclaimed these truths. The peaceful revolution was complete when Abraham Lincoln was chosen President of the United States.

In the closing and more embittered period of the political struggle over the question of Slavery, public opinion in the South grew narrow, intolerant, and cruel. The ma.s.s of the Southern people refused to see any thing in the anti-slavery movement except fanaticism; they cla.s.sed Abolitionists with the worst of malefactors; they endeavored to shut out by the criminal code and by personal violence the enlightened and progressive sentiment of the world.

Their success in arousing the prejudice and unifying the action of the people in fifteen States against the surging opinion of Christendom is without parallel. Philanthropic movements elsewhere were regarded with jealousy and distrust. Southern statesmen of the highest rank looked upon British emanc.i.p.ation in the West Indies as designedly hostile to the prosperity and safety of their own section, and as a plot for the ultimate destruction of the Republic.

Each year the hatred against the North deepened, and the boundary between the free States and the slave States was becoming as marked as a line of fire. The South would see no way of dealing with Slavery except to strengthen and fortify it at every point. Its extinction they would not contemplate. Even a suggestion for its amelioration was regarded as dangerous to the safety of the State and to the sacredness of the family.

BRITISH SUPPORT OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

Southern opinion had not always been of this type. It had changed with the increase in the number of slaves, and with the increased profit from their labor. Before the Revolutionary war, Virginia had earnestly pet.i.tioned George III. to prohibit the importation of slaves from Africa, and the answer of His Majesty was a peremptory instruction to the Royal Governor at Williamsburg, "not to a.s.sent to any law of the Colonial Legislature by which the importation of slaves should in any respect be prohibited or obstructed." Anti- slavery opinion was developed in a far greater degree in the American Colonies than in the mother country. When the Convention of 1787 inserted in the Federal Const.i.tution a clause giving to Congress the power to abolish the slave-trade after the year 1808, they took a step far in advance of European opinion. A society was formed in London, in the year 1787, for the suppression of the slave-trade.

Although it was organized under the auspices of the distinguished philanthropists, William Clarkson and Granville Sharp, it had at the time as little influence upon the popular opinion of England as the early efforts of William Lloyd Garrison and the Society for the Abolition of Domestic Slavery had upon the public opinion of the United States. It was not until 1791 that Mr. Wilberforce introduced in Parliament his first bill for the suppression of the slave-trade, and though he had the enlightened sympathy of Mr.

Pitt, the eminent premier did not dare to make it a ministerial measure. The bill was rejected by a large vote. It was not until fifteen years later that the conscience of England won a victory over the organized capital engaged in the infamous traffic. It was the young and struggling Republic in America that led the way, and she led the way under the counsel and direction of Southern statesmen. American slave-holders were urging the abolition of the traffic while London merchants were using every effort to continue it, and while Bristol, the very headquarters of the trade, was represented in Parliament by Edmund Burke. Even among the literary men of England,--if Boswell's gossip may be trusted,--Dr.

Johnson was peculiar in his hatred of the infamy--a hatred which is obsequious biographer mollifies to an "unfavorable notion," and officiously ascribes to "prejudice and imperfect or false information."

The anti-slavery work of England was originally inspired from America, and the action of the British Parliament was really so directed as to make the prohibition of the slave-trade correspond in time with that prescribed in the Federal Const.i.tution. The American wits and critics of that day did not fail to note the significance of the date, and to appreciate the statesmans.h.i.+p and philosophy which led the British Parliament to terminate the trade at the precise moment when the American Congress closed the market.