tracts " ; and Territorial "Black laws " were enacted to sanction this dis
guised slavery. Says McMaster (History, V, 188) : "To all intents and
purposes, slavery was as much a domestic institution of Illinois in 1820 as
of Kentucky."
605. The ten years from the Missouri Compromise to the election
of Jackson (1820-1829) form a transition period. Slavery was
still defended as an evil, but as an evil inevitable and permanent.
Its defenders still stood on the defensive, but they were less
apologetic in tone.
This new attitude was due to a moneyed interest. Slavery was
growing more profitable. The increased efficiency of slave labor
1 Congress reenacted the slave code of Virginia and Maryland for that
District. Accordingly, under the shadow of the Capitol, a strange Negro
might be arrested and advertised on the suspicion of being an escaped slave ;
and if no owner appeared to prove that suspicion, he might still be sold into
slavery to satisfy the jailer's fees. This, however, had been a recent practice
in Northern States for white vagrants ( 202).
607] SLAVERY AGGRESSIVE AFTER 1830 507
because of the cotton gin ( 436) raised the value of a field hand
from $200 in 1790 to $1000 in 1840. The Border States,
where slavery had never been particularly profitable, found
that they could raise and sell slaves at high prices to more
Southern communities. Moreover, the admission of Louisiana
as a slave State, together with the extension of slavery into
the rest of the Southwest, made its overthrow seem less
possible.
The struggle over the Missouri Compromise ( 515) was the
first great indication of this changing attitude. The measure
was distinctly Southern. It won Missouri and Arkansas to
slavery ; and this extension was favored by Clay, Madison, and the
aged Jefferson! Not a Southern congressman voted for a
"free" Missouri; while only fifteen Northerners voted against
the restriction on slavery * and only three of these secured
reelection.
606. Ten or twelve years later, the Slave Power had become
aggressive. It advocated slavery thereafter as a good, economic
and moral, for both slave and master, and as the only corner
stone for the highest type of civilization. In consequence, the
Negro was represented as animal rather than human, and
wholly unfit for freedom. Calhoun devoted the remaining
years of his life to advocating these views.
607. By 1830, slavery had taken on somewhat darker phases
than were common in the earlier period. In Virginia and the
Border States it continued, on the whole, humane and semi-
patriarchal, except for the distressing sale of parts of a slave
family. But the plantation type of slavery, formerly charac
teristic mainly of Carolina or Georgia rice swamps ( 204),
had now been extended over vast cotton areas in all the "Lower
South."
Even in that district, of course, the house servants were
petted and gently cared for, as a rule; and often between
masters and slaves there was warm affection. On most planta
tions, too, where the owner's family resided, master and mis
tress felt a high sense of duty to their helpless " charges," even
508 THE SLAVERY STRUGGLE [ 607
of the field-hand class. 1 But the majority of plantations were
managed by overseers, drawn from the lower strata of the
Whites, brutalized by irresponsible and despotic power, 2 and
forced to be hard taskmasters by the system under which they
lived. The overseer's reputation as a valuable man depended
solely upon the number of bales of cotton he could turn out ;
and he was tempted increasingly to drive harder and more
mercilessly.
It was the general belief, too, that the Negro would work
only under the lash or the fear of it ; and it was a common thing
for the overseer to furnish long whips to the " drivers " (taken
usually from the more brutal slaves), who stalked up and down
between the rows of workers. In the extreme South, it was not
unheard of for a master himself to avow the economic policy of
working to death his gang of slaves every seven years or so, in
favor of a new supply. In general, however, critical observers
had to confess that the same motives which secure reasonable
treatment for a teamster's horses kept the slave in good con
dition.
Among the worst direct evils of the system was the ruin to
family life. The better sort of Whites tried to keep slave
families together ; but legislation did not compel this decency,
and, in practice, the division of families was exceedingly
common. Indeed, the southern branches of the Protestant
churches, by formal resolution, recognized the separate sale of
a husband or wife as a true " divorce," and permitted " remar-
1 James B. Angell, in an address in 1910, recounting reminiscences of a
horseback journey through the South in 1850, gave a forceful illustration.
On a certain Carolina plantation, in the evening, the hostess had warmly de
nounced Northern antislavery agitation. In the early morning from his
window, he chanced to see her returning from the group of Negro cabins,
where, he learned, she had spent the later hours of the night in nursing a
dying Negro baby.
2 State laws forbade murdering a slave at the whipping-post ; but a loop
hole was usually provided by some clause pronouncing the owner or overseer
guiltless if a slave " died " as the result of only " moderate correction." In
any case, a Negro's testimony could not be taken against a White man, and
often the merciless overseer was the only White present at his crimes.
608] THE ABOLITIONISTS 509
riage " on such ground. In consequence of this condition, sex
relations remained horribly degraded and confused.
On the other hand, the South pointed to the pitiful condition
of the mass of White labor in Northern factories, and argued
eagerly that the slave was no worse off. Said DeBow's Review,
the leading Southern periodical, "Where a man is compelled
to labor at the will of another, and to give him much the greater
portion of the product of his labor, there Slavery exists; and it is
immaterial by what sort of compulsion the will of the laborer
be subdued. It is what no human being would do without some
sort of compulsion if not blows, then torture to his will by
fear of starvation for himself or his family."
608. The new aggressive attitude of the Slave Power was
caused in some degree by the appearance of new aggressive
antislavery workers, known as Abolitionists, who cried out for
immediate and complete destruction of slavery. For some years
before 1830, Benjamin Lundy had published at Baltimore TJie
Genius of Universal Emancipation, devoted to this teaching.
In 1828 Lundy found a greater disciple in one of his assistant
printers, William Lloyd Garrison. Young, poor, friendless, in
1831 Garrison began in Boston the publication of the Liberator;
and the first number (printed on paper secured with difficulty
on credit, and set up wholly by Garrison's own hand) carried
at its head a declaration of war :
" Let Southern oppressors tremble . . . I shall strenuously contend for
immediate enfranchisement ... I will be as harsh as truth and as uncom
promising as justice ... I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with
moderation ... I am in earnest I will not equivocate I will not re
treat a single inch AND i WILL BE HEARD."
To the end, this remained the keynote of the Garrisonian
Abolitionists. They sought to arouse the moral sense of the
North against slavery as a wrong to human nature. For long
years their vehemence made them social outcasts, even when
they were not in danger of physical violence. Among the
group were Wendell Phillips, a youth of high social position
and opportunity, who forsook his career to become the hated
510
THE SLAVERY STRUGGLE
[608
and despised orator of the Abolition cause ; Whittier, the
gentle Quaker poet, whose verse rang like a bugle call ;
Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister of Boston, "the
terrible pastor of Aboli
tion " ; and, at a later
time, James Russell Low
ell, whose scathing satire
in the Biglow Papers struck
most effective blows for
freedom, and whose estab
lished position helped to
make Abolitionism " re
spectable."
Of this body of agita
tors, Garrison remained
the most extreme. He
could see no part of the
slaveholder's side, and he
dealt only in stern denun
ciation of all opponents
STATUE OF WENDELL PHILLIPS in the and even of moderate sup-
Boston Public Garden. porters. He and his group
had no direct influence upon political action against slavery.
Many of them disclaimed desire for any such influence. Gar
rison once burned in public a copy of the Constitution,
defaming it as " a Covenant with Death and an agreement
with Hell " ; and the only political action advocated by him
for Northern men was secession by the free States. 1
1 So, too, Lowell's "Hosea Biglow " exclaims:
" Ef I'd my way, I bed ruther
We should go to work an' part,
They take one way, we take t'other,
Guess it wouldn : t break my heart.
Men hed ought to put asunder
Them that God has noways jined ;
An' I shouldn't gretly wonder
Ef there's thousands of my mind."
610] "MODERATE" ABOLITIONISTS 511
609. A more moderate group of Abolitionists contained such
men as William Elleiy Channing, James Freeman Clark,
Thomas Wentworth Higgiiison, and Samuel J. May (Unitarian
ministers), Emerson, Longfellow, Gerrit Smith, William Jay,
and the aged Gallatin. For C banning' s logical but temperate
indictment of slavery, Garrison, however, had only abuse. On
the moderate side, Emerson at first condemned the Garrisonian
extremists with unaccustomed harshness ; but later he said
that " they might be wrong-headed, but they were wrong-headed
in the right direction."
Other foes of slavery, like Lincoln, rejected the name
Abolitionist, altogether, and believed that the Garrisonian
group harmed more than they helped. Such a charge is al
ways made against extreme reformers. Garrison and his
friends did rouse bitter antagonism and make their opponents
more aggressive : but they achieved their purpose by being "heard."
The nation would have been glad to forget the wrongs of
slavery : these men made that impossible sometimes by ex
aggerating and misrepresenting those wrongs and they trusted
to the moral sense of the people to do the rest. They made
slavery a topic of discussion at every Northern fireside, and
slavery could not stand discussion.
610. A slaveholding community lives always over a sleep
ing volcano. The unspoken dread of all southern Whites was a
possible slave insurrection, with its unimaginable horrors. Earlier
in the century, two plots had been discovered, by fortunate acci
dents, just in time to avert terrible disaster. Then, in 1831,
came Nat Turner's rising.
Turner was a Negro preacher arid slave in Virginia. The
plot so far miscarried that only a handful of slaves took part ;
but sixty Whites, including several children, were ferociously
massacred, and, before order was restored, a hundred Negroes
(five times the number in the rising) were shot, hanged, tor
tured, or burned. The South was thrown into a frenzy of
terror and rage. Excited opinion charged that the rising was
due directly to inflammatory articles in Garrison's Liberator.
512 THE SLAVERY STRUGGLE [ 611
Southern States enacted stricter laws against the education
and freedom of movement of slaves, and even of free Negroes,
and the legislature of Georgia offered a reivard of $5000 to any
kidnaper ivho should bring Garrison to that State for trial under
her laws against inciting servile insurrection.
611. The Slave Power now attacked the rights of White men.
After 1831 the former freedom of discussion about slavery
vanished south of Mason and Dixon's Line. Antislavery
societies dissolved ; antislavery meetings could no longer find
halls or audiences ; antislavery publications were forced out.
In many cases these ends were secured by mob violence.
In 1835 James G. Birney, a Kentuckian who had long worked
valiantly against slavery in Alabama and in his native State,
was driven to move his antislavery paper across the Ohio to
Cincinnati. Even there, his office was sacked, and his life
sought, by a bloodthirsty proslavery mob, largely from Ken
tucky, while respectable Cincinnati citizens merely advised
him to seek safety in silence.
This was in 1836. The year before, a Boston mob, " in broad
cloth and silk hats," had broken up one of Garrison's meetings,
gutted his printing office, and dragged Garrison himself through
the streets by a rope around his body until he was rescued
and protected by the mayor by being jailed! And in Alton,
Illinois, the year after (1837), mobs twice sacked the office of
Elijah Lovejoy, an Abolitionist editor, and finally murdered
Lovejoy, when he tried to defend his property from a third
assault.
A free press was the particular object of attack ; and for
many years practically every Abolitionist paper in cities large
or small ran danger of such destruction. Scores of cases might
be given. In the little frontier village of St. Cloud, Minnesota,
a proslavery mob sacked the printing office of Mrs. Jane G.
Swisshelm, and threw her press into the Mississippi.
There was this difference in the matter, however, between
North and South. In the South, discussion was absolutely
strangled. In the North, Lovejoy was the only martyr to suffer
613] AND FREE SPEECH 513
death ; and resolute men and women found it possible to con
tinue the discussion, and eventually to win a hearing. 1
Respectable people and large property interests showed a curious cow
ardice in these conflicts. Alton, in a measure, was dependent upon
trade from the Missouri side of the Mississippi. Cincinnati's prosperity,
in like fashion, was supposed to depend upon Kentucky trade. In both
towns the cry arose that antislavery publications alienated the Slave
State visitors and customers, and "hurt business"; and, before this
direful threat, mayors, ministers, bankers, and every newspaper in both
cities were whipped into submission.
612. These mob attacks upon free speech were ominous to
all men who really cared for their own rights, and they sum
moned to the antislavery cause many who had never been
moved by wrong to the Negro. Still more significant were
demands by the South that the National government and the
Northern States should by law stifle discussion.
In 1835, in response to vehement appeals from Southern
legislatures, President Jackson recommended Congress to pass
laws that would exclude " incendiary publications " from the
mails. " But," cried antislavery men and many others never
before so counted " Wlio is to judge what is incendiary?
On such a charge, the Bible or the Constitution might be ex
cluded." And after a sharp struggle, the bill failed to pass.
613. Then followed an even more arrogant attempt to destroy
the ancient right of petition. Since 1820, petitions had poured
upon Congress in ever increasing bulk for the abolition of slav
ery in the District of Columbia. In the ordinary course, such
a petition was referred to an appropriate committee, and if
ever reported upon, it was rejected. But in 1836, the sensitive
Southern members secured a " gag resolution " which each new
Congress for eight years incorporated in its standing rules,
so that all petitions concerning slavery should be " laid on the
table " without being discussed or printed or read.
1 At St. Cloud, a mass meeting, excited not in behalf of Abolitionism, but
by the attack upon free speech, promptly subscribed money to replace the
press, no small thing in a petty frontier village of workingmen.
514 THE SLAVERY STRUGGLE [ 614
The Slave Power thought exultantly that it had choked off
discussion. Instead, it had merely identified the antislavery
movement with a traditional right of the English-speaking
people. The " Old Man Eloquent," John Quincy Adams, now
Representative from a Massachusetts district and formerly
indifferent to slavery, crowned his long public life with its
chief glory by standing forth as the unconquerable champion
of the right of petition, which, he insisted, meant that his
constituents and others had not merely the right to send
petitions to the Congressional waste-paper basket, but the right
to have their petitions read and considered. Tireless, skillful,
indomitable, unruffled by tirades of abuse, quick to take advan
tage of all parliamentary openings, Adams wore out his oppo
nents and roused the country ; and in 1844 the gag rule was
abandoned.
614, Thus while Garrisonian Abolitionists were trying to
persuade the North that slavery was a moral wrong to the
Negro, the folly of the Slave Power called into being a new Aboli
tionist party which thought of slavery first and foremost as dan
gerous to Northern rights. This party went into politics to limit
slavery by all constitutional means in the hope of sometime
ending it. The " political Abolitionists " were strongest in
the Middle and North Central States ; and among their leading
representatives were Birney and the young lawyer, Salmon P.
Chase.
"Like thousands of other antislavery men . . . Chase was aroused,
not by the wrongs of the slave, but by the dangers to free White men.
He did not hear the cries of the Covington whipping post across the river
[the Ohio], but he could not mistake the shouts of the mob which de
stroyed Birney's property and sought his life ; and his earliest act as an
antislavery man was to stand for the everyday right of a fellow resident of
Cincinnati to express his mind." Hart, Salmon P. Chase, 48.
CHAPTER LIII
SLAVERY AND EXPANSION
615. IN 1825, Mexico became independent of Spain ( 504)
and decreed gradual emancipation of all slaves. In 1835, Santa
Anna made himself dictator of the country. Texas was one of
the States of Mexico. Its settlers were mainly from the South
western States of our Union. They held slaves, and until Santa
Anna's usurpation, they had had a large amount of self-govern
ment. Now they seceded from Mexico, organized an independent
state, with slavery, and chose for their president " Sam " Houston,
a famous Indian fighter and an old friend of Andrew Jackson.
A Mexican army " invaded " Texas, captured a small Texan
garrison in the Alamo (a fortified Mission), after a gallant
resistance, and massacred every prisoner. April 21, 1836, it
met the main body of Texan frontiersmen under Houston at
San Jacinto. The Texans charged six times their number with
the vengeful cry, " Remember the Alamo," and won a complete
victory. The independence of Texas was promptly recognized
by the United States. Mexico, however, did not give up her
claims.
616. The Texans hoped to be annexed to the United States.
Indeed, many of them had gone to the country years before
with that express plan as other Americans still earlier had
gone into West Florida ( 464). War between the United States
and the proud and sensitive Mexicans would almost certainly
follow ; but our South, too, clamored for the annexation. Texas
was an immense territory, and was expected to make at
least five slave States. The West, also, was eager for more
territory, and had few scruples against fighting Mexico to get
it ; but in the Northwest there was some opposition to extending
the area of slavery. New England opposed annexation fiercely.
515
516 SLAVERY AND EXPANSION [ 617
In 1844 President Tyler negotiated with Texas an annexa
tion treaty, but the Whig Senate rejected it by a decisive
vote. Shortly before, John Quiiicy Adams and twenty-one
other Northern members of Congress had united in a letter to
their constituents advising New England to secede from the
Union if Tyler's " nefarious " scheme went through. ( Of. 608.)
On the other side, "fire-eating" Southerners were shouting,
" Texas or disunion ! "
617. The Slave Power now raised the cry that England would
get Texas if we did not, and it played artfully on the sentiment
for expansion. Calhoun warned the slave States of the South
west that England was trying to persuade Texas to abolish
slavery ; and the Northwest was won over by the shrewd device of
combining with the demand for Texas a demand for " all of
Oregon"
Oregon was a vast territory bounded by the 42nd parallel on the South
( 503) and by the line of 54, 40' on the North (505). The agreement
with England for "joint occupation" was still in force ( 503 ) ; but of
late thousands of emigrants had been setting forth from Missouri with the
boast that they would secure and hold the country for the United States.
Twice England had proposed a division of the region ; but the plan had
been rejected by our government.
In the spring of 1844, Clay and Van Buren were the leading
candidates for the Whig and Democratic nominations for the
presidency. On April 20 they each gave out a public letter on
political issues, and both advised against agitation for expan
sion. The country exclaimed that the two leaders were trying
in secret conjunction to say what the people should not do.
The Whigs, with some hesitation, submitted, and nominated
Clay. The Democrats revolted. Three Southern States that
had instructed delegates for Van Buren called new conventions
and revoked the instructions. The Democratic National Con
vention nominated James K. Polk, and the platform declared
for "the ^occupation of Oregon and the jReannexation of
Texas.' 7 In the Northwest, Democratic stump orators at once
added the slogan "Fifty-four forty or fight." This war cry
620] TEXAS, 1836-1845 517
was sounded jubilantly in every Democratic meeting in the
campaign. Some Western leaders did not hesitate to promise
that their party would also get California and Canada for the
United States, and hinted even at Mexico and Central America.
618. The political Abolitionists ( 614), under the name of the
Liberty party, nominated Birney, and drew enough antislavery
votes from the Whigs in New York to give that close State, and
the election, to Polk. Tyler and Congress accepted this result
as a verdict for annexation ; and on the last day of the old
administration a "joint resolution" of the two Houses of Con
gress made Texas one of the States of the Union (March 3, 1845).
Texas, however, never consented to be divided, and so the
Slave Power gained less power in the Senate than it had
planned.
619. Polk's inaugural indicated the intention to take all of
Oregon, even at the cost of war with England. Such Western
supporters as Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Lewis Cass of
Michigan seemed ready for that result. Calhoun and other
Southern leaders, however, feared that war with England might
end in loss of Texas ; Webster, powerful in the Senate, stood
for compromise, as did also some enthusiastic Western expan
sionists like Benton ; England renewed her sensible offer to
divide Oregon, by extending the boundary line of the 49th par
allel (already adopted east of the mountains) through the dis
puted district to the Pacific ; and a treaty to this effect was
ratified by our Senate. The dividing line was practically
identical with the Northern watershed of the Columbia ; and it
gave us all that we could claim on the basis of " occupation,"
leaving to England that half of the district which Englishmen
had " occupied." The Northwest, however, claimed bitterly
that its interests had been betrayed by the President, and that
he had surrendered to England's power in order the better to
prey on Mexico' s weakness.
620. Polk wanted California also, to which we had no claim
whatever. He tried to buy, but could not bully Mexico into
selling the coveted district. But other means remained.
518 SLAVERY AND EXPANSION [ 621
Texas extended without question to the Nueces River. Not
content with that southern boundary, she claimed to the Rio
Grande on grounds at least questionable. For the United
States to back up this claim was to make war with Mexico
certain. General Zachary Taylor, in command of American
troops in Texas, was ordered to remove to the Rio Grande,
where his position threatened a Mexican city across the river.
The Mexicans demanded a withdrawal. Taylor refused, was
attacked, won a victory, and crossed the river. Polk announced
to Congress (May 11, 1846), "War exists, and, notwithstanding
all our efforts to avoid it^ exists by the act of Mexico ! " Con
gress accepted the pretext and adopted the war.
621. Abolitionists again talked secession. But, outside New
England, the unjust war was popular. Certainly it was waged
brilliantly. General Taylor invaded from the north, and Gen
eral Winfield Scott advanced from the Gulf. The Mexicans
were both brave and subtle ; but American armies won amazing