I 
 
 :r ■ 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS. 
 
 A SKETCH OF THE STRUGGLE WHICH 
 
 ENDED IN THE ABOLITION OF 
 
 SLAVERY IN THE UNITED 
 
 STATES. 
 
 By JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 
 
 Is true freedom but to break 
 Fetters for our own dear sake, 
 And, with leathern hearts, forget 
 That we owe mankind a debt ? 
 No ! true freedom is to share 
 All the chains our brothers wear, 
 And, with heart and hand, to be 
 Earnest to make others free 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 R. WORTHINGTON, 770 BROADWAY. 
 
 1884 
 
Ef4i 
 
 Copyright, 1883, by 
 JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 ELLIS GRAY LORING 
 
 AND 
 
 LOUISA LORING; 
 
 THE WISE, GENEROUS AND TRUE FRIENDS OF EVERY GOOE 
 CAUSE, 
 THESE CHAPTERS ARE DEDICATED. 
 
 ivii408S5 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED 
 
 STATES. 
 
 Introduction. Beginning of slavery in the United States. England 
 maintains it in her colonies. Its growth. Its character. Early 
 opposition to slavery. John Eliot. Samuel Sewall. The Quak- 
 ers. John Woolman. Anthony Benezet. John Wesley. Sam- 
 uel Hopkins. Elias Hicks. Benjamin Lundy. Constitution of 
 Massachusetts, 1780. Franklin in 1787. John Jay. Alexander 
 Hamilton. Jonathan Edwards. Thomas Jefferson. Their testi- 
 mony against slavery. Dane ordinance of 1787. Constitution of 
 the United States a compromise. Its pro-slavery provisions. 
 Power of the slaveholders. Their sense of danger. Suddenly 
 shown at the time of the Southampton massacre in 1831. Slavery 
 a state of war. Upright and honorable slaveholders. Anti-slav- 
 ery sentiments in Kentucky down to 1840. Anecdotes illustrating 
 this. Old and new courts in Kentucky. Robert J. Breckenridge 
 for emancipation. Duelling in the slave states. Rowan and Mar- 
 shall. Views of Henry Clay. Families separated. Beginning 
 of the Garrison movement, 1832. Character of Garrison. Mobs. 
 Samuel J. May. Burning of Pennsylvania Hall. Activity of the 
 abolitionists. Colonization society. . .... 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIGHT IN CONGRESS. 
 
 Early debates in Congress concerning slavery. George Thacher. 
 Josiah Quincy. The Missouri compromise in 1820. Successive 
 victories of the slave-power. Tristram Burgess. The real strug- 
 gle begins in 1835, for tne abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia. John Quincy Adams. Anecdote of Felix Grundy and 
 Governor Poindexter. Career of John Quincy Adams. Anec- 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 dote of Josiah Quincy and Dr. Freeman. The Gag-Law in Con- 
 gress. Remarkable debate in February, 1837. Mr. Adams stands 
 almost alone against the slave-power in Congress, and conquers. 
 Supported by Joshua R. Giddings. His career and character. 
 Case of the Creole. Mr. Adams presents a petition for the disso- 
 lution of the Union. Scene on this occasion. John P. Hale. 
 Anecdote of a passage between him and Henry Clay. Gamaliel 
 Bailey, editor of the " National Era." Meetings at his house. 
 The Prigg case. Admission of Arkansas in 1836. Florida war. 
 Case of Samuel Hoar. Annexation of Texas. War with Mex- 
 ico. Wilmot proviso. Compromises of 1850. Repeal of the 
 Missouri compromise. Stephen A. Douglas and Squatter Sov- 
 ereignty 39 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ABOLITIONISTS AND FUGITIVE SLAVES. 
 
 Recapitulation of the successive triumphs of the slave-power. In- 
 creased activity of the abolitionists. Their methods. Their meet- 
 ings described. Anecdotes of Stephen Foster and Charles Bur- 
 leigh. Fun in the anti-slavery meetings. Leading abolitionists. 
 Samuel J. May described. Underground railroad. The black 
 woman Moses. Fugitive slaves and their friends. Susan Hil- 
 lard. William and Ellen Crafts. Anecdote of Mr. Booth, a Ken- 
 tucky slaveholder. United States Marshal Barnes, and his 
 methods. General Devens paying the ransom for Burns. Story 
 of Father Henson. The fugitive from Alabama in the Ohio peni- 
 tentiary. Box Brown. Edward Davis. Mr. May's stories of 
 fugitives. The higher law. Free colored people in Cincinnati 
 and elsewhere 69 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FRIENDS AND OPPOSERS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 
 
 Northern opposers of the abolitionists, and their motives. The ter- 
 rible evils of slavery as seen by the abolitionists. Theodore D. 
 Weld's " American Slavery As It Is." Olmstead's travels in the 
 southwest. Extracts from " Laws relating to Slavery," by Geo. 
 W. Stroud. Case of Prudence Crandall. She is obliged to close 
 her school for colored girls. Governor Everett's message. Hear- 
 ing given to the abolitionists by a committee of the legislature. 
 Their treatment by Mr. Lunt. Dr. Channing's appearance on 
 this occasion. Alton mob and murder of Lovejoy. The meeting 
 in Faneuil Hall. First appearanee of Wendell Phillips. James 
 T. Austin. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, and his " South-side View of 
 Slavery." Incident at Old Fort Plantation. Northern ladies 
 who have taught the colored children. Dr. Lord of Dartmouth 
 College, and his pamphlets in defence of slavery. Bishop Hop- 
 kins also defends slavery. His curious argument. Mr. Buchanan 
 and Mr. Cass. Anecdote of an anti-slavery speaker in Pennsyl- 
 vania. Other opponents of anti-slavery at the North. Its 
 defenders. Robert Rantoul. Anecdote of John Quincy 
 
CONTENTS. c. 
 
 Adams, by Captain Boutelle. The Latimer petition. Anecdote 
 of Wendell Phillips in New Hampshire. Early anti-slavery 
 men and women. Whittier's portrait gallery. Character of the 
 abolitionists. .98 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ANTI-SLAVERY IN POLITICS. 
 
 Three political parties. Liberty party, Free-Soil party, Republican 
 partv. The Garrisonians become Disunionists. Their method 
 in tSiis a mistake, though the moral influence of their teaching 
 most important. Anti-slavery clergymen. Dr. Channing. John 
 G. Palfrey. Theodore Parker, His speech in opposition to the 
 Mexican war. Henry Ward Beecher. Compromise of 1850. 
 Daniel Webster and his seventh of March speech. Defence by 
 his friends. This defence examined. Great disappointment of 
 the anti-slavery admirers of Daniel Webster. Dark days of 1850. 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin published. Its great influence. Arrests of 
 fugitives at the North, under the new law. Reminiscences of 
 Austin Bearse. Story of Octave Johnson. John Brown at Har- 
 per's Ferry. My meeting him in Boston, and his account of his 
 purpose. His interview with Charles Sumner 127 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE COMBAT DEEPENS. 
 
 Futility of the compromises of 1850. The struggle renewed. New 
 victories of the slave-power. Election of Pierce in 1852, of Bu- 
 chanan in 1856. Their subservience to the slave-power. The 
 phrase "dough-face." Repeal of the Missouri compromise, May, 
 1854. Struggle in Kansas, 1854. Kansas invaded by the people 
 of Missouri. Polls taken possession of. Free-state settlers mur- 
 dered. Pierce and Buchanan take sides with the border ruffians. 
 Charles Sumner assaulted in the Senate by Brooks, May, 1856. 
 Results. John Brown of Osawatomie. Dred Scott decision, 
 March, 1857, Victims of the fugitive slave law. More anti-slav- 
 ery men in Congress. Chase, Giddings, Horace Mann, Grant, 
 Smith. Fremont's vote in 1856. Lincoln elected in i860. Slave- 
 holders determined to secede. Their folly in this act. Demands 
 of the Republican party. " Cotton is King." The sine qu& non 
 of the slave-power. Douglas opposes it. Attempts at new con- 
 cessions to prevent secession. Southern members of Congress 
 resign and the states secede. Attack on Fort Sumter. Rising of 
 the North. Civil war begins. 158 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CIVIL WAR AND END OF SLAVERY. 
 
 Character of Abraham Lincoln. A man specially adapted to the 
 needs of the hour. Anecdote concerning him told by Joshua 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Speed. Lincoln's call for 7 5, coo men. First successes of the 
 Confederates. The aristocracy of England takes side^vith them. 
 Its working people stand by the North. Charles Francis Adams. 
 Great uprising at the North. All parties unite to resist secession. 
 Immense efforts of the Northern people. National Banks. San- 
 itary commission and Christian commission. The nation falsifies 
 all predictions of evil. Power of the North in its free institutions. 
 Providential events. Anecdotes of Lincoln's humanity. Lincoln 
 and Sumner. Lincoln and Doctor Bellows. Lowell's lines on 
 Lincoln. Grant's victory at Fort Henry. Naval battles. 
 The Merrimac and Monitor. The proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion. Foreseen by John Quincy Adams. John A. Andrew urges 
 the employment of colored troops. Character of Governor An- 
 drew. Turn of the tide in favor of the Union. Capture of Vicks- 
 burg. Gettysburg. Sherman's march to the sea. End of the 
 war. Providential events. The wages of colored soldiers. Gov- 
 ernor Andrew's interest in having justice done to them. Joy at 
 the return of peace. Satisfaction at the South at the end of slav- 
 ery. Facts to show the improvement of the colored people. 
 Lines from Lowell. 187 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The following brief sketch of the conflict which 
 led to the emancipation of four millions of slaves in 
 the .United States, is intended chiefly for the genera- 
 tion which has grown up since those stirring scenes. 
 They are, naturally, for the most part, little ac- 
 quainted with it. Recent history is that ot which 
 people know the least, with the exception of those 
 who have taken part in it. Children are taught in 
 the schools about the battle of Marathon, but not 
 about the battle of Gettysburg. They learn in the 
 Sunday-Schools all about the emancipation of the 
 Hebrews from Egyptian slavery, but very little about 
 that of the colored people in the United States. Yet 
 this story, when it comes to be fitly told, will be 
 found as intensely interesting as any series of events 
 in the records of mankind. - I do not hope to do more 
 in these chapters (originally given as lectures) than 
 to call attention to a few important events and char* 
 acters belonging to the period described. 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The hot passions of that time have now grown 
 cool. The people engaged in that conflict can un- 
 derstand each other better. We, of the North, can 
 see more clearly the difficulties under which the slave- 
 owners labored. Slavery spread like an iron network 
 over their society — it was connected with all their 
 habits and interests. They did not see how it was 
 possible to emancipate their slaves without rending 
 asunder the whole fabric of their society. And if 
 they did not decide to plunge into the unknown 
 dangers and terrors of emancipation, they were com- 
 pelled, by an inexorable logic, to bind the chains of 
 their slaves tighter day by day, and to resist, by every 
 possible means, everything which disturbed their per- 
 fect submission and entire docility. The aggressions 
 of the slave-power, which finally drove the North into 
 the anti-slavery movement, seemed to the slaveholders 
 necessary measures of defence. In their determina- 
 tion not to yield, they seized every weapon which 
 came in their way. Their determined and compact 
 purpose gained them so many successes, that at last 
 they took the fatal leap which ended in the destruction 
 of the whole evil system, and the coming of a better 
 day. 
 
 And now the South and the North are both agreed 
 that emancipation was the greatest of blessings. 
 Now a new prosperity, solid and increasing, has taken 
 the place of the old in all the Southern States. Now 
 
INTRODUCTION. y 
 
 the North and South are really one, as they never 
 were before the war. Now we have a common coun- 
 try, united interests, the same ends. Now we can af- 
 ford to retrace that period of tempestuous struggle, 
 endeavoring to do justice to both contending parties. 
 Now we have in reality, and not in mere words, 
 " Union and Freedom, now and forever, one and in- 
 separable." The terrible war came like the thunder 
 storm, purifying the air, and leaving such a blessing 
 behind it as no war before ever did, enabling us to 
 use sincerely the great words of Lowell : — 
 
 O beautiful ! My country! Ours once more ! 
 
 Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
 
 O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, — 
 
 And letting thy set lips, 
 
 Freed from war's pale eclipse, 
 
 The rosy edges of their smile lay bare . 
 
 What were our lives without thee ? 
 
 What all our lives to save thee ? 
 
 We reck not what we gave thee ; 
 
 We do not dare to doubt thee. 
 
 But ask whatever else and we will dare. 
 
 In these imperfect narrations I have naturally 
 dwelt mostly on the events with which I was per- 
 sonally familiar, and the persons with whom I hap- 
 pened to be best acquainted. I have therefore con- 
 fined my relation within narrower limits than would 
 be proper in anything claiming to be a history. The 
 scenes of the drama which I describe are chiefly laid 
 in Massachusetts, and the characters are New Eng- 
 land men. I have given the view taken by this class 
 
8 INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 of actors, and have only hinted at the way in which 
 men felt and thought in other sections of the coun* 
 try. This little work is, therefore, only one contri- 
 bution to the future history of those days — one of the 
 ° Memoires pour servir " for the more complete work 
 which is to be written hereafter. 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ORIGIN OF ANTI-SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 " If we have whispered truth, 
 Whisper no longer; 
 Speak as the trumpet does, 
 Sterner and stronger." 
 
 — Whittier. 
 
 I propose in this work to give a brief sketch of 
 the greatest moral conflict of modern times. We 
 shall see how an immense institution, fortified by law, 
 solidly bound together by pecuniary interests, upheld 
 by political combinations, sustained by custom, 
 fashion, prejudice, and the fear of change, was at- 
 tacked by a few men whose only weapon was a per- 
 petual appeal to the human reason, the human 
 conscience, and the human heart. We shall see in 
 what way this attack was resisted ; how the institu- 
 tion gathered more and more power ; gained the alli- 
 ance of the two great political parties : annexed 
 vast territories and opened them to slavery ; took 
 
j o , ' : : . • AiYTl^SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 possession of Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, and by a series of Acts 
 of Congress seemed to have entrenched itself against 
 all assaults, and become stronger than ever before 
 We shall see how, while this political power was pass- 
 ing into the hands of slaveholders, the moral power 
 of the country was steadily accumulating in those of 
 their opponents, until at last the war of tongue and 
 pen changed into the greatest military struggle of 
 modern times We shall hear the first Southern gun 
 fired at Fort Sumter, and see the people of the North 
 uniting as one man to put down the rebellion ; vast 
 armies springing as if born out of the earth ; great navies 
 organized to blockade the long coast line of the South ; 
 and shall glance at some events in the terrible war of 
 four years, from the bombardment of Sumter, April 
 1 2th, 1 86 1, to the surrender of Lee, April 9th, 1865. 
 We shall see how slavery went down in that dreadful 
 conflict, never to rise again — how, in a single genera- 
 tion, and in the lifetime of the chief agitator himself, 
 this vast revolution was accomplished. Never in 
 human history has there been such an example of 
 the power of conscience in gaining a victory over 
 worldly interest ; and it ought to be an encourage- 
 ment forever, for all who contend for lowly right 
 against triumphant wrong, for unpopular truth against 
 fashion, prejudice and power. 
 
 It is nearly eighteen years since these events came 
 
/ 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 1 1 
 
 to an end. The passions of men have cooled, a new 
 South has sprung from the ruins of the old, another 
 generation has come upon the stage. The North and 
 South are truly one ; the American Union, this single 
 root of bitterness having been taken away, is vastly 
 more powerful, and more united, than ever. We can 
 now speak I trust, without prejudice or severity of 
 those who differed from us or from whom we differed. 
 Though we may still think they were wrong, we can 
 see how their conduct may have seemed to them right, 
 or, at least, how it was natural for them to think so, 
 under their circumstances. 
 
 The seeds of freedom and of slavery were planted 
 in this country in the same year. In 1620 the May 
 Flower brought the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth ; in 
 1620 a Dutch ship entered James River in Virginia 
 with twenty African slaves. One of these ships 
 brought free institutions to our shores ; the other 
 brought slavery. From that time until the beginning 
 of the American Revolution the whole power of Eng- 
 land supported and encouraged the African slave 
 trade. * Under that encouragement more than 300,. 
 000 African slaves were imported into thirteen British 
 colonies. Alarmed by the rapid increase of slaves 
 the planters of Virginia, in 1 726, levied a tax on their 
 importation, and South Carolina did the same in 1 760. 
 The legislature of Pennsylvania in 17 12 had passed a 
 similar act. Massachusetts endeavored to abolish the 
 
I 2 A NTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 
 
 slave trade in 1771 and 1774 by act of legislature. 
 All of these colonial acts were vetoed by the authority 
 of the British crown. The prosperity of England was 
 thought to be involved in maintaining the slave trade ; 
 and the mother country steadily refused all attempts 
 of the colonists to prohibit it. Thus the evil gradually 
 extended itself, and became rooted in the habits of 
 the people, and especially in the Southern States. 
 Love of power, love of money, and love of ease, all 
 were enlisted on its side. And when by discovery 
 of the cotton-gin, Eli Whitney/ made slavery a source 
 of great wealth, it became dangerous to speak against 
 it in the cotton-growing states. 
 
 There were however, always those who saw and 
 proclaimed the sin and evil of holding a man as a 
 slave. By the laws of slavery, in this country, a man 
 was turned into a thing ; he had no rights ; he could 
 be bought and sold like a horse or an ox ; he could be 
 torn from his wife and children, or they could be taken 
 from him whenever the owner pleased. In the hands 
 of a cruel master, he could be beaten to death, or 
 burned alive, and no power could prevent it. He 
 might have so little negro blood as to pass for a white 
 man, but as long as his mother was a slave, he was a 
 slave too. Young girls, even those almost white 
 might be sold at their master's will to any one who 
 wished to buy them ; and they had no safety, no pro- 
 L * Aided in this invention by the widow of Gen. Greene. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 1 3 
 
 tection. The possession of absolute power often seems 
 to make fiends of men, and that most fiendish of all 
 sins, cruelty, grew and flourished in those whose 
 power over their slaves was unrestrained by conscience 
 or religion. 
 
 It seemed impossible that any thoughtful person 
 could believe such an institution as this to be right. 
 It took from the slave all his rights at one blow — it 
 left him nothing. Christianity said, " Do to others as 
 you would have them do to you," and " Love your 
 neighbor as yourself." The declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, the organic law of our Union, standing above 
 the Constitution itself, begins — " We hold these truths 
 to be self-evident, that all men were made equal, and 
 are created by their Creator with inalienable rights, 
 among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
 piness." How reconcile slavery with these great laws 
 of God and man ? Very early, therefore, there was 
 opposition made to slavery — an opposition founded on 
 moral, religious, social, and political reasons, The 
 apostle Jokn Eliot, in 1675, presented a memorial 
 against the slavery of Indians and others to the Col- 
 onial Legislature of Massachusetts. Judge Samuel 
 Sewally of Boston, in 1700, printed a pamphlet against 
 negro slavery. 
 
 The body of Quakers early agitated the question. 
 Many eminent Friends gave their testimony against 
 slavery. John Wool man, praised by Charles Lamb. 
 
1 4 ANT/SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 travelled through the Middle and Southern States be- 
 tween 17/.6 and 1767, and everywhere told the Friends 
 that the practice of slavery was not right. He said 
 that wherever slavery prevailed " he saw a dark gloom- 
 iness overhanging the land, and the spirit of fierceness 
 and love of dominion in the people.'' 
 
 Anthony Benezet, the Huguenot ; Elias Hicks, 
 founder of the Hicksite sect of Quakers ; Benjamin 
 Lundy, the teacher of Garrison, uttered their protests 
 against the system, ind devoted their lives to point- 
 ing out its evils. John Wesley, who saw it in Georgia, 
 called it " the sum of all villanies." Dr. Samuel Hop- 
 kins, of Newport R.I., a place which was in his time 
 the very seat of the slave trade, preached, in the year 
 1770, against that trade, and against the holding of 
 slaves, to a congregation engaged in that business. 
 And there have been few greater examples of heroism 
 in the pulpit than was shown by him on that occa- 
 sion. 
 
 The Constitution of Massachusetts was adopted in 
 1780, before the end of the revolutionary war, and its 
 Bill of Rights declares that all men are born free and 
 equal. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, by the 
 voice of Judge Lowell, decided that this declaration 
 abolished slavery in Massachusetts forever. By that 
 decision, all the slaves at that time held in Massachu- 
 setts became free. The system had, however, never 
 been oppressive in Massachusetts. It was tempered 
 
ANTI-SLA VER V DA VS. T 5 
 
 by the principles and by the habits of the people. 
 Slaves in New England, generally, were regarded as 
 members of the household. They lived with the 
 family and were treated as belonging to it, and after 
 they were free they usually continued to live as be. 
 fore, working for the family and being taken care of- 
 These former slaves were thus provided for until their 
 death. I, myself, remember seeing, when I was a 
 boy, some of those old colored men and women in 
 several families. I recollect an old woman called 
 Phcebe, who used to sit by the kitchen fire in the 
 family of my uncle Williams, and there was another, 
 old Tillo as he was called, in the family of my grand- 
 father Hull. He considered himself always as much 
 a member of the household as any of the children or 
 grandchildren. 
 
 The first abolition society in this country was 
 formed in Pennsylvania, and Franklin became its 
 President in 1787. The New York Abolition Society 
 was founded in 1785. Chief-Justice John Jay was its 
 first President, and Alexander Hamilton was its Sec- 
 retary. In 1 791, Jonathan Edwards, Jr., declared that 
 to hold a man as a slave is man-stealing, and a great 
 sin in the sight of God. We all remember the senti- 
 ments of President Jefferson on this Subject. We 
 know how, in his " Notes on Virginia," he described 
 the evil effects of slave-holding on the manners and 
 morals of the people, and especially on the young, who, 
 
16 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 from the very hours of childhood, formed habits of 
 violent, arbitrary and wilful conduct. He foresaw 
 that the time must come in which there would be a 
 conflict between slavery and freedom, "And in such a 
 conflict as this," said he " God has no attribute which 
 can take part with the slaveholders." " I tremble for 
 my country when I remember that God is just." 
 
 In the year 1787, in the first continental Congress, 
 there was passed an ordinance, brought forward by 
 Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, prohibiting all slavery 
 north and west of the Ohio. By this ordinance, Ohio, 
 Indiana and Illinois were saved from slavery for free- 
 dom. The inhabitants of Indiana, headed by Wm. 
 H. Harrison, petitioned Congress to be allowed to 
 have that ordinance suspended for a short time so 
 that they might have the use of slaves in opening the 
 country. Many of them had emigrated from Kentucky 
 and were accustomed to slavery. But Congress again 
 and again refused consent to their petition, and the 
 slaveholders in Congress — such men as John Ran- 
 dolph taking the lead — were among the first to de- 
 clare that it would be a great evil to allow slavery to 
 invade that territory. 
 
 There were formerly two opposing sentiments at 
 the South on this question. One party held that 
 slavery was wrong ; that it was an evil, and that it 
 must gradually disappear ; that it must by degrees 
 come to an end. The other maintained that slavery 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 1 7 
 
 was profitable, that it gave power to the South ; that 
 it prevented the necessity of white labor ; and, there- 
 fore, that it must be retained, and, if necessary, ex- 
 tended. Both these sentiments found their way into 
 the Constitution. To please one party, the words 
 " slave '' and " slavery >; are not. mentioned in that in- 
 strument. For ■' slaves " we have the euphemism, 
 " Persons held to labor/' and " all other persons." 
 But the opposite party obtained the advantage«-6f 
 having three provisions inserted in the Constitution, 
 the first and most important ot which was that three- 
 fifths of the slaves were to be counted as voters, so 
 that the slaveowners were allowed to vote not only 
 for themselves, but also for their property. Many of 
 the most important successes of the slave-power after- 
 ward were owing to that undue advantage which they 
 obtained by this constitutional provision. 
 
 The second advantage gained by the slave-holding 
 interest was that the importation of slaves was allowed 
 until the year 1800. Those thus imported, however, 
 are not called slaves, but " such persons as any of the 
 States now existing shall think proper to admit." 
 This was the roundabout way in which it was then 
 considered decent to speak of slavery. 
 
 The third provision in tlje Constitution for main- 
 taining slavery, was that which provided £pr the return 
 of fugitives. This was expressed in a still more ob- 
 scure way. " No person held to labor or service in 
 
1 8 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 one State under the laws thereof, escaping into an- 
 other, shall be discharged from such service or labor, 
 but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to 
 whom such labor or service is due." Some thought 
 that if this were construed grammatically, it declared 
 (as John Quincy Adams once pointed out) that no 
 such refugees should be returned. It was, however, 
 well understood that that was by no means the inten- 
 tion of those who drew up the Constitution, and it was 
 never construed according to the rules of strict gram- 
 mar, but in precisely the opposite way. Many of the 
 Abolitionists claimed that the Constitution was a pro- 
 slavery instrument. Those who belonged to the polit- 
 ical anti-slavery parties called it an anti-slavery in- 
 strument. To me it seems that both were right. It 
 was a pro-slavery instrument, and also an anti-slavery 
 instrument. It was an inconsistent instrument. 
 
 The slaveholders were bound together by the 
 power of a common interest, by the sense of a common 
 danger, and by the superior discipline of will which 
 they developed from their position as masters over 
 people wholly subservient to their will. Down to the 
 time of the civil war they were continually gaining 
 more and more strength and influence in the general 
 government. Although it was computed that there 
 were in the South only some three hundred and fifty 
 or four hundred thousand slaveholders, they neverthe- 
 less had the entire control of the Southern States. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. I g 
 
 They governed nearly five million non-slaveholders 
 among the whites. No non-slaveholder was known 
 to be sent to Congress, ever became Governor of a 
 Southern state, or was admitted to be a member of a 
 Southern legislature. The whole of the Sou^h was 
 therefore united under the control of these three or 
 four hundred thousand slaveholders. Having crushed 
 out every expression of dissent at home, they were 
 able to govern the twenty-five or thirty millions of 
 people at the North, by compelling both political 
 parties to submit to their terms. Going on, step by 
 step, they came at last to declare that slavery was not 
 the evil their fathers had called it, but a blessing ; that 
 the slaves were not wretched but happy ; that slavery 
 was the corner-stone of free institutions ; that no 
 republic could be sustained without resting on slavery • 
 and that it was sanctioned by the Bible itself. Yet 
 all this time an inward sense of danger existed in 
 every slaveholding community. There were two ter- 
 rors constantly before the minds of Southern families 
 — the dread of fire, and that of poison. These were 
 the two weapons which the slaves had in their hands. 
 When one of them had been abused, he might take 
 his revenge on those who had wrought the wrong by 
 setting fire to their houses or by putting poison into 
 their food. I lived long at the South, and know that 
 this was sometimes the case, and that nobody felt se- 
 cure from these two dangers. Yet no newspaper was 
 
2 o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ever allowed to mention it, when either of these events 
 occurred. You would never find in any Southern 
 paper the statement that a building had been burned 
 by slaves, or that a family had been poisoned. That 
 was kept strictly secret, lest it might become an ex- 
 ample to others. 
 
 But there was one occasion in which these truths 
 came suddenly to light, and the hidden feelings of the 
 South were developed. It was when the Southampton 
 massacre occurred in 183 1. Nat Turner, a slave, a 
 religious enthusiast, and, indeed, in reality a half-crazy 
 fanatic, formed a conspiracy to murder the white peo- 
 ple and to give the power to the slaves. In this in- 
 surrection some sixty of the whites were killed, and 
 then the rebellion was conquered, and many of the 
 slaves were put to death. In the next Virginia legis- 
 lature there was an outburst of feeling against slavery. 
 One member called slavery "a great blighting curse," 
 and said " many a brave man, who will readily face 
 death in battle, has felt his blood chill, lest when he 
 went home at night he should find only the murdered 
 bodies of his family." Another declared that slavery 
 " was a mildew that had blighted every region it had 
 touched from the foundation of -the world." Another 
 said, " I thank God that the spell is broken, and that 
 we now, for the first time, can say what we think. If 
 slavery can be eradicated, in God's name let us put an 
 end to it." Another declared, " I raise my voice for 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 2 1 
 
 emancipation. Tax us what you will. Prove us in 
 every way : but let us get rid of this horrid curse of 
 slavery." In reading what was said in that Virginia 
 legislature in this debate, in the year 1831, you would 
 have thought that you were attending a meeting of 
 abolitionists. Who would have supposed that this 
 same State of Virginia, in thirty years' time, would 
 have seceded from the Union in order to defend and 
 preserve this very institution ? 
 
 Abolitionists have stated the evils of slavery very 
 strongly, but they never have been overstated. It was 
 a condition of perpetual warfare. Not only were un- 
 told cruelties inflicted on the slaves almost as a matter 
 of necessity ; but among the whites, deeds of violence, 
 duels, street-shootings, death by lynch law, mob vio- 
 lence, in all its forms, were common. The young men 
 grew up in the midst of license and self-indulgences 
 of all kinds. It is true there were those who main- 
 tained their virtue ; there were upright, honorable 
 pure men and women of the South ; there were those 
 who respected the laws of God and man ; and they de- 
 served all the more credit for acquiring and maintain- 
 ing this character under such influences as those to 
 which they were exposed. There were, also, mistresses 
 and masters who felt a responsiblity for the care and 
 comfort of their slaves, and who devoted themselves 
 to those duties in the most praiseworthy manner. But 
 
2 2 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 the system itself was so evil that it made their best 
 efforts almost useless. 
 
 I, myself, was a citizen of the State of Kentucky 
 from 1833 to 1840. Slavery existed there, it is true, in 
 a comparatively mild form. But its evils were such that 
 I learned to look on it with unmixed aversion. I 
 learned my anti-slavery lessons from slavery itself and 
 from the slaveholders around me. At that time I knew 
 nothing of Mr. Garrison or his movement, and when I 
 heard of him I supposed, as others did, that he was 
 merely a violent fanatic. After I returned to Boston, 
 in 1 84 1, I had the advantage of knowing him and his 
 fellow-laborers, and seeing something of their grand 
 and noble work. 
 
 But the sentiment of Kentucky, in those days, 
 among all the better class of people, was that slavery 
 was a wrong and an evil, and that it ought to be abol- 
 ished. It was also believed that Kentucky would, 
 when the time came for altering its Constitution, in- 
 sert a clause in the new Constitution that would allow 
 slavery to be abolished. 
 
 I will relate one or two anecdotes to show the feel- 
 ing that prevailed at that time. 
 
 A young man from Boston called one day upon me 
 in Louisville. He was a member of one of the very 
 conservative families of New England, who believed 
 that abolition was a fanatical movement, and that abo- 
 litionists were endangering the safety of the Union. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 2 3 
 
 He had been brought up with these sentiments. I 
 took him with me to drive into the country to visit 
 some of the plantations. The first place that we came 
 to was the residence of Judge John J. Marshall, who 
 belonged to one of the old families of Virginia and 
 Kentucky. Mrs. Marshall was the sister of John G. 
 Birney, afterwards candidate of the Free-Soil party for 
 President. The Marshalls owned slaves, and there 
 were a great many little negroes about the house. My 
 Boston friend, seeing he was among slaveholders, 
 thought it was a fitting opportunity for him to say 
 something in favor of the institution. "Mrs. Mar- 
 shall," said he, " I think our people at the North are 
 very much mistaken in attacking slavery as they do. 
 It seems to me there is nothing so very bad about it." 
 Mrs. Marshall replied, "It will not do, sir, to defend 
 slavery in this family. The Marshalls and the Birneys 
 have always been abolitionists." He was a little sur- 
 prised at that very decided statement, coming from 
 slaveholders. We next drove to the house of my dear 
 old friend, Judge John Speed, who had a large planta- 
 tion and fifty or sixty slaves. He had the title of 
 judge, not because he had ever studied law, for he had 
 had very little opportunity for an education. But 
 he was a very intelligent man — a man who had 
 learned much by thinking and by observation. It was 
 a custom at that time in Kentucky to appoint one or 
 two men, whom they called associate judges, not law- 
 
2 4 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 yers, to sit on the bench with the legal judge, in order 
 to keep him from indulging in the supposed quibbles 
 of the law ; and Judge Speed had been one of these 
 associate judges. 
 
 When we reached his house, he took us about the 
 plantation and showed us the negro cabins, having in 
 them various little comforts, such as muslin curtains 
 in the windows, pictures on the walls, or here and 
 there a piece of mahogany furniture. My friend from 
 Boston, thinking, no doubt, that Mrs. Marshall was 
 an exceptional person, and that he should be safe this 
 time in speaking in behalf of slavery, said, " Judge, I 
 do not see but the slaves are as happy as our laboring 
 classes at the North." 
 
 " Well," answered the Judge " I do the best I 
 can to make my slaves comfortable ; but I tell you 
 what it is, you cannot make a slave happy, do what 
 you will. God Almighty never meant a man to be a 
 slave, and he cannot be made happy while he is a 
 slave." 
 
 You may be sure that I felt proud and pleased 
 with my Kentucky friends. 
 
 But the Boston youth continued. " But what can 
 be done about it, sir ? They are not able to take 
 care of themselves, if they were free. How could they 
 manage if slavery were abolished ? " 
 
 " I think I could show you three men on my plan- 
 tation," replied Judge Speed, " who might go to the 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 25 
 
 Kentucky legistature : I am inclined to believe they 
 would make just as good legislators as the average 
 men that you find there now." 
 
 In Kentucky in those days, it was not considered 
 at all improper for a man to ayow anti-slavery senti- 
 ments. I recollect we had a discussion in Louisville, 
 which lasted three nights, in which we debated the 
 whole question of slavery ; one side maintaining that 
 it was right, and a good thing, and that it ought to be 
 maintained ; and the other that it was an evil, socially 
 morally and politically, and that it ought to be abol- 
 ished. The majority were on the side of those who 
 contended that it was an evil and a wrong. Nobody 
 in the State thought that there was anything im- 
 proper or dangerous in having the subject fully dis- 
 cussed. The Louisville Journal, then edited by Geo. 
 D. Prentice, was ready to print articles pointing out 
 the evils of slavery. I, myself, had a discussion in 
 its columns with a St. Louis physician, who main- 
 tained that slavery was right, and that the negroes 
 were little better than monkeys. Mr. Prentice 
 printed my articles, and told me that he was glad to 
 have them. At that time I edited a small monthly 
 magazine, and I printed in it copious extracts from 
 Dr. Channing's work on slavery. At the time of the 
 Alton mob and the murder of Lovejoy, our " Western 
 Messenger," printed in Louisville, took the ground 
 that it was a murder, and a great disgrace to the 
 
2 6 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 place where it occurred. No Kentuckian objected to 
 this being printed in Kentucky, although some of the 
 Alton people discontinued their subscriptions in con- 
 sequence. In those days, every Kentuckian said that 
 Kentucky would be the first State to emancipate, 
 Alas ! it was one of the very last. The question 
 why this was so is one which has a curious answer, 
 and one which throws light on human nature. The 
 truth was that Kentucky at that time was a Whig 
 State. It had been a Whig State for 15 years. The 
 Democrats had been driven from power in conse- 
 quence of committing the great mistake of trying 
 to abolish the old State Courts and substitute new 
 Courts, in order to maintain a State Bank, which the 
 Old Courts had declared contrary to to the Consti- 
 tution of the United States. When it was found that 
 there were two Courts sitting, each claiming equal 
 jurisdiction, the people of the State were so indignant 
 with the Democratic party that it was turned out of 
 power at the next election. But fifteen years after, 
 when the convention was called to revise the Consti- 
 tution, it so happened that the Democratic party had 
 been gradually gaining strength, till it was nearly 
 equal in voters to the Whig party. When the ques- 
 tion was brought forward as to whether an anti-slavery 
 clause should be inserted in the Constitution, each of 
 these two great parties was afraid to do anything 
 about it. They knew that it ought to be done, but 
 
ANTI-SLA VER V DA YS. 2 7 
 
 they were afraid of the injury that might come to 
 their respective parties from doing it, and so neither 
 of them accepted the issue. There were, however, 
 at that time, a small number of genuine anti-slavery 
 people in the State. Among them was Robert J. 
 Breckenridge, one of the most eminent clergymen in 
 the South, and noted for his hostility to slavery. He 
 took the stump at Lexington, and offered to discuss 
 the question of abolition, and to defend emancipation 
 in the State ; and for three days he spoke to the 
 crowds that assembled before the Lexington Court 
 House, He held to his convictions to the last, even 
 after the war broke out, though his nephew, the Vice- 
 President of the United States, became a leader of 
 the Confederates. 
 
 Among the great evils of slavery were the acts of 
 violence produced by it. When I went to Kentucky 
 duelling was considered entirely proper and neces- 
 sary. I preached a sermon against it on the occasion 
 of a very extraordinary duel which had just taken 
 place, and the father of one of the combatants, who 
 had been a U. S. Senator, Judge Rowan, was in the 
 church that day. He said that he " could not under- 
 stand what had got into Mr. Clarke's head to preach 
 against duelling. He might as well preach against 
 courage." 
 
 The occasion of that duel, and the character of it 
 was so remarkable, that I may as well speak of it to 
 
2 8 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 indicate something of the spirit of the South at that 
 time. 
 
 The judges of the courts in Kentucky were paid 
 such very small salaries, that one could seldom find a 
 lawyer of any eminence who would consent to accept 
 the office. Consequently the judges knew very little 
 about law, and were not much respected by the bar. 
 The judge of the district where I lived was one of this 
 inferior class, and the bar did not pay him proper re- 
 spect. But he was a man of a good deal of pride, and 
 on one occasion, when he had been grossly insulted 
 by a lawyer, he ordered the offender to be sent to jail 
 for twenty-four hours for contempt of court. There- 
 upon the rest of the lawyers said they would go there 
 too ; so they all went to the upper chamber of the 
 jail, where they had a supper, and spent the night in 
 carousing together. During the night a little quarrel 
 occurred, during which a young man by the name of 
 Howells threw some wine on Tom Marshall's coat. 
 This called for a challenge. They went across the 
 river and had their duel in Indiana, but it was under- 
 stood that it need not be a deadly one. After ex- 
 changing shots the matter was adjusted, and Marshal, 
 to show that he had spared his opponent, fired his re- 
 maining pistol at a little sapling, and the bark flew 
 from the tree. The second of his opponent, who did 
 not like Marshall, then remarked : " It is a little strange 
 that you should be able to hit a tree at that distance 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 2 9 
 
 and not be able to hit a man who is much nearer." 
 " Ylyon were the man standing opposite to me I should 
 be able to hit you," returned Marshall. " I will give 
 you an opportunity whenever you choose," was the 
 reply. It was then arranged that they should go out 
 and fight each other. As it was understood that they 
 were the best shots in the city, it was supposed that 
 both might be killed. As Mr. Rowan was rather a 
 better shot than Marshall, it was thought that the 
 latter ought to have an opportunity to practice, and 
 the duel was postponed for a fortnight to give him an 
 opportunity. 
 
 Every day Marshall rode into the country after 
 breakfast, and practised an hour or two at a mark. 
 Meanwhile a ball was given at Judge Rowan's, and 
 both opponents were present. At that time John 
 Howard Payne was on a visit in Louisville, and he 
 frequently came to see me at my lodgings. He en- 
 tered my room one morning and said, " I have travelled 
 a great deal, and seen a great variety of customs, but 
 I have never met with anything exactly like this 
 society of yours in Kentucky. I was at the ball last 
 night, and saw Mr. Marshall dancing with a lady to 
 whom he is supposed to be engaged, and opposite him 
 was Mr. Rowan with his lady. Every one knew that 
 they were going out in a few days to fight a deadly 
 duel with each other, but nothing showed itself on 
 the surface." The duel took place, and Mr. Rowan 
 
3° 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 fired a little more quickly than his opponent. His 
 ball hit Marshall on the hip and made him lame dur- 
 ing his after life. 
 
 Peaceful emancipation had long been hoped for. 
 Gradual emancipation was expected by the fathers of 
 the nation — Washington, Jefferson, Madison. But 
 the prosperity of the South had grown so great through 
 slavery, that emancipation became ever more difficult. 
 The cotton crop had reached such vast dimensions 
 that slavery brought great prosperity to the South, 
 and instead of being willing to free the slaves they 
 had, they wanted more. 
 
 I was at Henry Clay's home, at Ashland, about the 
 year 1837. ^ e nac * been riding over his estate on 
 horseback, and came back tired, and lay down on the 
 sofa and talked to me about slavery. He said he 
 had hoped to see the end of it at least in Kentucky, 
 but cotton had become so profitable that the Southern 
 States would not give it up. Production had greatly 
 increased, but the demand had increased still more 
 rapidly. He had expected to see the supply overlap 
 the demand, but the contrary took place. Cotton 
 planters and sugar planters made money so fast that 
 the price of slaves had greatly increased. 
 
 I once met a young man from Pittsburg, who was 
 a decided Presbyterian, and at the same time a strong 
 anti-slavery man. I asked him how he became so. 
 He said that in his church in Pittsburg, most of the 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 3 T 
 
 members defended slavery, and he had supposed it 
 was all right until he once travelled in Virginia. He 
 was riding on the outside of the stage-coach, sitting 
 with the driver. On the top of the coach there was a 
 young colored boy, perhaps 18 or 19 years old. When 
 they came to a cross-road, he said to the driver, "' I 
 get off here, master ; this is as far as I go. I get off 
 here." " No you don't," said the driver. " Yes I do. 
 I get off here to go and see my old grandmother. 
 Master said so." " No, you are not going to see her, 
 you are going with me," replied the driver. As soon 
 as he gave that answer the boy understood that he 
 was sent to be sold South, and that he had been de- 
 ceived about it so that there should be no disturbance 
 about his going away. He would never see his home 
 or friends again. He burst into an anguish, an agony 
 of tears, and cried so bitterly that the heart of the 
 driver was touched, and he said to the young man sit- 
 ting beside him, " Damn them ! I wish they would 
 give their devilish work to somebody else to do," and 
 I think the recording angel dropped a tear on that 
 oath. As it happened, when he looked round after a 
 while, the boy had disappeared. " I am glad he has 
 gone," said the driver, " but I suppose I must stop and 
 pretend to look for him." So he stopped a little while 
 and then drove on. 
 
 That single fact converted this young Presbyterian 
 to anti-slavery ; but this case must be multiplied by 
 
32 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 ten thousand other instances to show the amount of 
 suffering and misery from that single source — the sep- 
 aration of families. It was said that ten thousand 
 slaves were sold every year from Virginia to the cotton 
 States. 
 
 I was once in Baltimore with a friend who was rath- 
 er conservative, and who thought that the abolition- 
 ists were going too far and too fast. He went to a 
 party one night, and when he came home he said to 
 me : " I think that I may become an abolitionist my- 
 self." "How is that?" I asked. u At this party 
 they pointed out to me a lady dressed in rich costume, 
 evidently a very fashionable person, and they told me 
 she derived her support by being the owner of some 
 half dozen married negro women whose husbands 
 were owned by other persons. The children were 
 hers because she owned the mothers, and she derived 
 her income from the sale of these children, disposing 
 of them as fast as they came to an age at which they 
 would bring a good amount. I do not think," said 
 he, " I can stand a system that produces such re- 
 sults." 
 
 Now came the time when the stone cut of the 
 mountain, without hands, was to strike this idol and 
 cause it to fall. 
 
 In 1 8&3, January 6th, an event took place 
 in Boston which few of the inhabitants knew any- 
 thing about, and the importance of which no one sus- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 33 
 
 pected. A fierce snowstorm was raging ; the snow 
 mixed with sleet and rain, and the streets hardly pas- 
 sable. On that dismal night a few men assembled in 
 the African Baptist Church, on Belknap street. Then 
 and there was organized the Anti-Slavery Society, 
 which was like the little mustard seed of the Bible, 
 destined to grow in power and influence till its great 
 object was attained. Those present were David Lee 
 Child, William Snelling, William Lloyd Garrison, 
 Ellis Gray Loring, Oliver Johnson, Samuel E. Sewall, 
 Arnold Buffum and a few others. Twelve signed the 
 constitution. " Not many wise, not many noble ' 
 joined their ranks ; but then, as often, God chose the 
 weak things of the world to confound the mighty, 
 and things that were not, to bring to nought things 
 that were. 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of this move- 
 ment, was endowed with the qualities necessary for a 
 reformer. His intellect was clear and logical ; his pur- 
 pose determined ; he had an iron will, and convic- 
 tions which when once formed knew no doubt and no 
 shadow of turning. * To him right was right and 
 wrong was wrong,' and he saw no half lights or half 
 shadows between the two. He always called a spade 
 a spade, and did not define it as an agricultural in- 
 strument commonly used to alter the position of the 
 soil. His conscience was despotic, and was in the 
 closest alliance with his convictions. Evil to his 
 
34 A NT1-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 mind was inexcusable, intolerable. All the old puri- 
 tan hatred of sin was in him, joined with all the 
 puritan inability to comprehend how there could be a 
 sin without a sinner. In 1832 he was only 27 years 
 old, and had already been confined in jail for his 
 anti-slavery writings. He established his paper, 
 " The Liberator," January 1st, 183 1, without a sub- 
 scriber, and without a dollar of capital. He and his 
 associate printed it themselves ; they lived on bread 
 from the baker, and slept in the printing office, which 
 was in the third story of the building. Oliver John- 
 son describes the dingy walls ; the windows and floors 
 bespattered with ink ; the press in one corner, the 
 composing stands opposite; the writing-table covered 
 with newspapers ; the bed of the editor and publisher 
 on the floor. Lowell also pictures the scene ; quot- 
 ing at the head of the poem this passage from the 
 letter of Harrison Gray Otis, then Major of Boston ; 
 " Some time afterward it was reported to me by 
 the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and 
 its editor ; that his office was an obscure hole, his only 
 visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a 
 very few insignificant persons of all colors." 
 
 "Ina small chamber, friendless and unseen, 
 
 Toiled o'er his types one poor unlearned young man. 
 The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean, 
 Yet there the freedom of a race began. 
 
 " O Truth ! O freedom ! low are ye, still born 
 In the rude stable, in the manger nursed ; 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 35 
 
 What humble hands unbar those gates of morn 
 Through which the splendors of the new day burst. 
 
 " Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, 
 And by the Present's lips repeated still, 
 In our own single manhood to be bold, 
 
 Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will. 
 
 " O small beginnings, ye are great and strong, 
 
 Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain — 
 Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong, 
 Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain." 
 
 Before that crown was won there was a long strug- 
 gle to go through, and many bitter disappointments 
 to encounter. But Garrison held to his purpose to 
 the end — the purpose he announced at the beginning. 
 He was thought by many to be too harsh ; too severe ; 
 too denunciatory. And certainly he chose his words 
 with the careful purpose of making them shock and 
 sting. His programme was this : " I will be as harsh 
 as truth, as uncompromising as justice. ... I am in 
 earnest ; I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse ; I 
 will nott retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." 
 
 I remember once hearing that when George Brad- 
 burn was told that he ought not to call slaveholders 
 thieves and robbers, as he was in the habit of doing, 
 he replied, " If I should go to the stall of that old 
 apple-woman and take away her apples, you would 
 call me a thief : but if I were to take not only the 
 apples, but the old woman herself, you think it would 
 be wrong to say I was a robber." 
 
3 6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 Mr. Garrison's paper very soon roused a nest of 
 hornets. The State of Georgia offered a reward of 
 $5,000 for his arrest and conviction. Similiar offers, 
 sincere or fictitious, were made by other Southern 
 States. Then came a period of mobs. There were mobs 
 all over the North, wherever the anti-slavery mission- 
 aries went. July 4th, 1834, there was a mob in New 
 York, when the house of Louis Tappan was sacked. At 
 the same time, the schoolhouses and churches of color- 
 ed people were attacked and damaged. August 13 th, 
 in the same year, there was a terrible riot in Philadel- 
 phia, that continued for three nights. Forty-four 
 houses of colored people were damaged and destroyed. 
 Many colored people were beaten and cruelly injured, 
 and some were killed. 
 
 In the year 1835, Rev. Samuel J. May was mobbed 
 five times in Vermont. If there was ever a man, at 
 the same time perfectly courageous and straightfor- 
 ward, and also sweet-tempered and fair to his oppo- 
 nents, it was Samuel Joseph May. One would sup- 
 pose him to be the last man to be mobbed. October 
 21, 1835, there was a riot in Utica, and another on 
 the same day in the city of Boston, when the meeting 
 of the Women's Anti-Slavery Society was broken up, 
 and Garrison was carried through the streets with a 
 rope around his body. He was protected by Major 
 Lyman, and put in jail for safety. On the same day, 
 a convention of six hundred delegates met at Utica 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS 3 7 
 
 and formed an Anti Slavery Society. They were 
 shut out of the Court House by a mob, then went 
 into a meeting house, but the assembly was broken- 
 up, and they were driven away with much violence- 
 On the 17 of May, 1838, Penn Hall, built by the 
 friends of free discussion at a cost of $40,009, and dedi- 
 cated on May 14th, was burned by a mob. Colored 
 orphan asylums and churches were, at the same time, 
 attacked and damaged. 
 
 Amid these scenes the Anti-Slavery Society held 
 on its way. Their cause gained more and more in 
 power. Good and able men and women were con- 
 verted to it. The more it was attacked the more it 
 grew. 
 
 In 1838, there were issued from the Anti-Slavery 
 office in New York, 646,000 copies of its various 
 publications. During a five months session of Con- 
 gress, petitions were sent to it for the abolition of 
 slavery in the District of Columbia, signed by 400,000 
 persons. In two years, more than two million signa- 
 tures were obtained to these petitions. 
 
 The poets were largely on the side of the reform. 
 Such writers as William Cullen Bryant, John Pier- 
 pont, James Russell Lowell, Henry W. Longfellow, 
 and more than all, John G. Whittier, gained some of 
 their best laurels in this struggle. 
 
 The American Colonization Society, first organized 
 in 1 8 16, was advocated with great zeal as the wise 
 
38 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 method of removing slavery from the country. The 
 slaves were to be gradually emancipated and sent 
 back to Africa, where they were to act as missionaries 
 of religion and civilization. But its course was in- 
 consistent and illogical. At the North it offered 
 itself as the true means to abolish slavery. At the 
 South it proposed to make slavery more secure by 
 sending away the free colored people, who were a 
 source of danger to the institution. Regarded simply 
 as a missionary society, it was unobjectionable, except 
 from the natural difficulties in its way. But as a 
 means of removing slavery, its plans were absurd. In 
 1840, the annual increase of the negroes in the United 
 States was about 40,000, to remove whom to Africa, 
 at the low estimate of $100 each, would take $4,000,- 
 000. But how were they to live after reaching that 
 deadly coast ? To take two or three millions of 
 laborers from the place where their labor was needed 
 and valuable, and transfer them to a place where 
 there was no demand for it, surely seemed the most 
 chimerical of schemes. As such, it was exposed by 
 Garrison and his friends, and those friends of the 
 slave who had been misled by its claims were un- 
 deceived* 
 
 — *A pamphlet published in i88r, by Geo. R. Stetson, of Boston, 
 called " The Liberian Republic as it is," informs us that there are 
 only about 20,000 American emigrants and their descendants now in 
 Liberia; that the climate is deadly, the people poor, and that there is 
 not a horse, and only one plough in the colony. 
 
ANTI-SLA VERY DA YS. 
 
 39 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIGHT IN CONGRESS. 
 
 u They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 As when, before a violent thunderstorm, low rum- 
 bling sounds are heard from time to time below the 
 horizon, announcing its coming ; so before the great 
 anti-slavery fight in Congress there were occasional 
 indications from time .-to time of the approaching 
 tempest. Such were the debates in 1797, in which 
 one very brave and loyal man, who is not much re- 
 membered I fear, took a distinguished part. This 
 was George Thacher, a member of Congress from 
 Massachusetts. Through many years, all the time 
 that he was in Congress, he opposed openly and 
 decidedly, with all his heart and soul, the aggressions 
 of the slave-power. Such were the conflicts also in 
 which Josiah Quincy took a prominent part. He was 
 one of the very first to foresee the struggle which 
 freedom and the North would be obliged to wage with 
 the slave-power of the South. To the end of his ex- 
 
40 AWTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 treme old age, as long as he lived, he was faithful to 
 the cause of freedom. I have a note from him, written 
 only a month or two before his death, with which he 
 sent me his check in behalf of some effort for the 
 benefit of the colored people. Such also was the con- 
 test which ended with the Missouri compromise in 
 1820, and the admission of the State of Missouri into 
 the Union as a slave state. 
 
 In all these battles the slave-power won the victory 
 by its strength of will, its vehement threats and its 
 compact unity of purpose. The word " slave-power " 
 was first used by John Gorham Palfrey, who charac- 
 terized by this very appropriate name that vast 
 political force united and made compact by slavery. 
 
 Occasionally, however, the Southern fire-eaters 
 would meet with stern resistance from Northern men. 
 So the sea on our coast, with its stormy waves, beats 
 against the old granite rocks of the shore of New 
 England. Such firm opposition they met in Josiah 
 Quincy, and I think they liked him the better for it. 
 Another Northern man who never feared to encounter 
 them, was Tristram Burges, of Rhode Island. He was 
 full of humor and full of pluck. Many stories are 
 told of his retorts when he was in conflict with South- 
 ern men during the years from 1825 to 1835. 
 
 Passing by these preliminary skirmishes between 
 slavery and freedom, we come down to 1835, when 
 the real battle commenced on the floor of Congress, 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 4 1 
 
 which ended in the secession of the Southern mem- 
 bers. 
 
 The question found its way into the debates of 
 Congress in the form of petitions for the abolition of 
 slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. 
 If the slaveholders had allowed these petitions to be 
 received and referred, taking no notice of them, it 
 seems probable that no important results would have 
 followed. But, blinded by rage and fear, they opposed 
 their reception, thus denying a privilege belonging to 
 all mankind, — that of asking the government to redress 
 their grievances. Then came to the front a man 
 already eminent by his descent, his great attainments, 
 his long public service, his great position, and his 
 commanding ability. John Quincy Adams, after 
 having be en President of the United States, accepted 
 a seat in the House of Representatives, and was one 
 of the most laborious and useful of its members. He 
 was not then an Abolitionist, nor in favor even of 
 abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. But 
 he believed that the people had the right to petition 
 the government for anything they desired, and that 
 their respectful petitions should be respectfully re- 
 ceived. Sixty-five years old in 1832, when he began 
 this conflict, his warfare with the slave-power ended 
 only when, struck with death while in his seat, he 
 "saw the last of earth and was content" With what 
 energy, what dauntless courage, what untiring industry, 
 
42 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 what matchless powers of argument, what inexhaustible 
 resources of knowledge, he pursued his object, the 
 future historian of the struggle will take pleasure in 
 describing. 
 
 At first there were only two or three Northern men 
 who stood against the slave-power. John Quincy 
 Adams was for many years almost alone in the House 
 of Representatives, and John P. Hale, for some years 
 was alone in the Senate. The character and career 
 of John Quincy Adams are both equally remarkable. 
 He had immense ability, perfect integrity, and a spot- 
 less reputation. There was no better illustration of 
 his character than those famous lines of Horace about 
 the just man, who is tenacious of his purpose, and 
 able to hold himself equally against the stormy mob 
 and the imperious tyrant. He had vast industry, a 
 great store of knowledge, a keen and penetrating in- 
 sight into men and things. He was respected, but 
 not much liked. He possessed little power of enter- 
 ing into sympathetic relations with others. I suppose 
 that he was one of the most lonely men of his time. 
 His was a temper easily roused to anger ; and he was 
 full of dislikes and distastes. There was no more 
 dangerous antagonist than this man, in whom the rage 
 for battle was ready to kindle at once into an inex- 
 tinguishable fire. 
 
 I recollect that I was once sitting in the parlor of 
 the Louisville Hotel, in Kentucky, somewhere about 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 43 
 
 1835 or 1836, when I heard a conversation about John 
 Quincy Adams between two Southern statesmen, 
 Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Gov. Poindexter, of 
 Missouri. They talked about various subjects, and 
 among the rest about Adams. One of them said, 
 " Our Southern friends in the House find it impossible 
 to do anything with that old man. They cannot contrive 
 any way by which to put him down. If they wish to get 
 any measure through, which he will be likely to oppose, 
 they try to find a time to do it when he is not there ; 
 but there is no such time, because he is always in his 
 place. There is no use in questioning his facts, be- 
 cause he is always right. His memory never fails 
 him. He is a very difficult man to argue with, because 
 he always grows keener and sharper with every attack. 
 At one time they thought it would be a good plan to 
 neglect him, to talk with each other, and pay no at- 
 tention while he was speaking ; but the truth is, he is so 
 infinitely interesting, that it is impossible not to listen 
 to him whenever he begins to speak — and everyone 
 crowds closer to his chair so as not to lose a word." 
 
 Adams was born in 1767 ; the son of a president, and 
 a president himself, he passed through every scene 
 of public life before he entered into the last, which was 
 the most important of all. When he was eleven years 
 old he went with his father to Paris. He began his diary 
 in 1779, at the age of twelve, and ended it in 1848, just 
 before his death, at the age of 81. In 1794 he was 
 
44 
 
 ANTI-SLA VERY DA YS. 
 
 sent ambassador to Holland; in 1797 to Berlin. In 
 1802 he returned^ and was elected a member of the 
 Massachusetts legislature. The next year he was 
 elected to the United States Senate. In 1809, he went 
 as minister to Russia. In 18 14 he signed the treaty 
 of peace with Great Britain with the other Commis- 
 sioners. In 181 5 he became Ambassador at the Court 
 of St. James. In 1 8 1 7, he was appointed Secretary of 
 State to President Monroe. In 1825 he became presi- 
 dent, and after four years was superseded by Andrew 
 Jackson. Then, at 62 years of age, he appeared to 
 have run the whole round of political experience. He, 
 himself thought that his career was over ; but in fact, it 
 had only just begun. Disliked by the old Federalists 
 and leading statesmen in Massachusetts, when nomi- 
 nated for governor and afterwards for senator, he 
 was defeated each time by John Davis, and seemed' 
 to have no more opportunity. But the citizens of the 
 district in which he lived nominated him for Congress 
 in 1830. 
 
 I recollect that at this time his old and warm friend, 
 Josiah Quincy, came over to Newton to see my 
 grandfather, James Freeman, and talk with him about 
 this nomination. Mr. Quincy was strongly convinced 
 that it was a mistake on the part of John Quincy 
 Adams to go to Congress. His argument was that a 
 man who had been president had acquired an influence 
 which he ought to reserve to use on some great oc- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 45 
 
 casion, and not to have it frittered away by debates 
 in Congress. He believed that Mr. Adams should 
 retire and be quiet, until there came some very im- 
 portant crisis, when he might use his reserved in- 
 fluence to advantage. Mr. Quincy was very earnest 
 in this argument. My grandfather said little until he 
 had got through, and then only remarked, " I have al- 
 ways thought that the best way to keep one's influence 
 is to use it.'' That was singularly the case with John 
 Quincy Adams. He went to Congress and used his 
 influence, which 'continued to increase to the last. 
 
 At this time, the Northern abolitionists sent peti- 
 tions to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia. They contended that as this 
 territory was under the control of the United States' 
 Government, the United States was responsible for 
 slavery there ; and that the Free States were bound 
 to do what they could to have slavery brought to an 
 end in that District. But the Slave States were not 
 willing to have anything said on the subject, so 
 they passed what was called a " gag " law in the 
 House of Representatives, and ruled that all petitions 
 which had any relation to slavery should be laid on 
 the table without being debated, printed or referred. 
 John Quincy Adams opposed this rule resolutely, 
 maintaining that it was wrong and unconstitutional. 
 He said, when the resolution was about to pass, * I 
 hold this resolution to be a practical violation of the 
 
46 AATTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 Constitution of the United States, of the rules of this 
 House, and of the rights of my constituents." Notwith- 
 standing this protest, it was passed by a vote of 117 
 to 68. But whenever the rule came up to be renewed 
 he repeated the same declaration, and insisted on his 
 answer being entered in the journal. When he was 
 called upon to vote " yes " or " no " on the resolution, 
 he refused to vote, but made the same statement, that 
 he held the resolution to be in direct violation of the 
 Constitution, etc. The speaker told him that this was 
 not a vote, and that it could not be entered in the 
 journal. Mr. Adams then requested that his state- 
 ment, with the Speaker's decision, that it was not a vote, 
 should both be entered in the journal. He continued 
 to present petitions/ as before, for the abolition of 
 slavery in the District. When the day came for peti- 
 tions he was one of the first to be called upon ; and he 
 would sometimes occupy nearly the whole hour in pre- 
 senting them, though each one was immediately laid 
 on the table. One day he presented 511. There 
 came a day, Monday, February 6, 1836, when there 
 was one of the most extraordinary scenes which, I 
 think, ever took place in any deliberative body. There 
 are few scenes in the history of such assemblies to 
 compare with the dramatic character of that scene, in 
 which, John Quincy Adams, for several days stood 
 alone against a great tumultuous crowd of slavehold- 
 ers, attempting in every way to have him expelled or 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 47 
 
 censured, and in which Mr. Adams got the victory 
 over them all. Adams rose in his seat, and said he 
 had in his possession a paper on which he desired the 
 decision of the Speaker as to whether it would come 
 under the rule of the House respecting subjects con- 
 cerning slavery. " I hold in my hand," said he, " a 
 petition from twenty persons professing to be slaves, 
 in Virginia. Does this come under the rules or not, 
 Mr. Speaker ? " " Send it to me," said the Speaker, 
 "and I will decide upon it." ° No," said Mr. Adams, 
 * if it were sent to you it would then be in possession 
 of the House ; and I do not propose to present it to 
 the House until I have the decision. It may be an 
 imposition." Immediately there rose a most violent 
 uproar, and cries of " Censure him ! Censure him ! " 
 " Expel him ! " Haynes, of Georgia, cried out that it 
 must not be received. Mr. Dixon Lewis, of Alabama, 
 said that Mr. Adams ought to be punished for offering 
 such a petition. He added that the Southern members 
 ought to leave the House in a body. Others cried out 
 that Adams ought to be expelled. Thompson, of South 
 Carolina, moved that Mr. Adams was guilty of gross 
 disrespect to the House, and that he be brought to the 
 bar to receive severe censure for offering this petition. 
 Another Southern member moved that Mr. Adams 
 had rendered himself liable to censure, and is hereby 
 censured, for presenting a petition from slaves. Then 
 Mr. Dixon Lewis moved, " That, whereas John Quincy 
 
48 ANT/SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 Adams, by his attempt to introduce a petition from 
 slaves for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
 Columbia, has committed an outrage ; and as by this 
 flagrant conduct he will excite the slaves to insurrec- 
 rection, he has laid himself liable to censure." 
 
 Then Mr. Adams rose and said very frankly, 4t I 
 wish to save the House from wasting its time on res- 
 olutions founded on a mistake. The gentleman from 
 Alabama had better amend his resolution to make it 
 conform with facts. In the first place I have not at- 
 tempted to introduce a petition. I merely said I had 
 one in my possession, and asked what should be done 
 with it. And, moreover, there is nothing in the peti- 
 tion about the abolition of slavery in the District, but 
 something very different from that. It is something 
 which would please the gentlemen who have attacked 
 me much better than it would suit me." 
 
 Then Mr. Adams sat down, leaving his opponents 
 more angry than before, but somewhat confused. Mr. 
 Waddy Thompson modified his resolution, putting it 
 in this form : That Mr. Adams be censured for 
 "creating the impression, and leaving the House 
 under the impression, that the petition was for the 
 abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia." 
 " But," said Mr. Adams, " I certainly ought not to be 
 censured for your mistakes, or for your follies." After 
 a multitude of other speeches from the enraged 
 
A2VTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 49 
 
 Southern chivalry the debate of the first day came to 
 an end. 
 
 On the next day (February 7), in reply to a ques- 
 tion, Mr. Adams stated again that he had not attempt- 
 ed to present the petition, though his own feelings 
 would have led him to do so, but had kept it in his 
 possession, out of respect to the House. He had 
 said nothing to lead the House to infer that this petit- 
 ion was for the abolition of slavery. He should con* 
 sider before presenting a petition from slaves ; though, 
 in his opinion, slaves had a right to petition, and the 
 mere fact of a petition being from slaves would not 
 of itself prevent him from presenting it. If the peti- 
 tion was a proper one, he should present it. A peti- 
 tion was a prayer, a supplication to a superior being. 
 Slaves might pray to God : was this House so supe- 
 rior that it could not condescend to hear a prayer from 
 those to whom the Almighty listened ? He ended 
 by saying that, in asking the question of the Speaker, 
 he had intended to show the greatest respect to 
 the House, and had not the least purpose of trifling 
 with it. 
 
 These brief remarks of Mr. Adams made it neces- 
 sary for the slaveholders again to change their tactics. 
 Mr. Dromgoole, of Virginia, now brought forward his 
 famous resolution, which Mr. Adams afterwards made 
 so ridiculous, accusing him of having " given color to 
 an idea " that slaves had a right to petition, and that 
 
5 o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 he should be censured by the Speaker for this act. 
 Another member proposed, rather late in the day, 
 that a committee be appointed to inquire whether 
 any attempt had been made, or not, to offer a petition 
 from slaves. Another offered a series of resolutions, 
 declaring that if any one " hereafter " should offer 
 petitions from slaves, he ought to be regarded as an 
 enemy of the South, and of the Union ; but that " as 
 John Quincy Adams had stated that he meant no 
 disrespect to the House, that all proceedings as to 
 his conduct should now cease." And so, after 
 many other speeches, the second day's debate came 
 to an end. 
 
 The next day was set apart to count the votes for 
 President, and so the debate was resumed February 
 9. It soon became more confused than ever. Mo- 
 tions were made to lay the resolutions on the table ; 
 they were withdrawn ; they were renewed ; they 
 were voted down ; and, finally, after much discus- 
 sion, and when at last the final question was about 
 being taken, Mr. Adams inquired whether he was to 
 be allowed to be heard in his own defence before be- 
 ing condemned. So he obtained the floor, and im- 
 mediately the whole aspect of the case was changed. 
 During three days he had been the prisoner at the 
 bar ; suddenly he became the judge on the bench. 
 Never, in the history of forensic eloquence, has a 
 single speech effected a greater change in the pur- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 5 x 
 
 pose of a deliberative assembly. Often as the H ora- 
 tion description has been quoted of the just man, 
 tenacious of his purpose, who fears not the rage of 
 citizens clamoring for what is wrong, it has never 
 found a fitter application than to the unshaken mind 
 of John Quincy Adams, standing alone, in the midst 
 of his antagonists, like a solid monument which tlv* 
 idle storms beat against in vain. 
 
 He began by saying that he had been waiting dur- 
 ing these three days for an answer to the question 
 which he had put to the Speaker, and which the 
 Speaker had put to the House, but which the House 
 had not yet answered, namely, whether the paper he 
 held in his hand came under the rule of the House or 
 not. They had discussed everything else, but had 
 not answered that question. They had wasted the 
 time of the House in considering how they could cen- 
 sure him for doing what he had not done. All he 
 wished to know was, whether a petition from slaves 
 should be received or not. He himself thought that 
 it ought to be received ; but if the House decided 
 otherwise he should not present it. Only one gentle- 
 man had undertaken to discuss that question, and his 
 argument was, that if slavery was abolished by Con- 
 gress in any State, you violated the Constitution ; 
 and, therefore, slaves ought not to be allowed to peti- 
 tion for anything. He, Mr. Adams, was unable to 
 
5 2 ANTI-SLA VERY &A VS. 
 
 see the connection between the premises and the 
 conclusion. 
 
 (Hereupon poor Mr. French, the author of this ar- 
 gument, tried to explain what he meant by it, but left 
 his meaning as confused as before.) 
 
 Then Mr. Adams added, that if you deprive any 
 one in the community of the right of petition, which 
 is only the right of offering a prayer, you will find it 
 difficult to know where to stop : one gentleman had 
 objected to the reception of one petition, because 
 offered by women of a bad character. Mr. Patton, of 
 Virginia, says he knows that one of the names is of a 
 woman of a bad character. 
 
 (Hereupon Mr. Patton explained that he did not 
 himself know the woman, but had been told that her 
 character was not good.) 
 
 "So," said Mr, Adams, "you first deny the right 
 of petition to slaves, then to free people of color, and 
 then you inquire into the moral character of a peti- 
 tioner before you receive his petition. The next step 
 will be to inquire into the political belief of the peti- 
 tioners before you receive their petition." Mr. Rob- 
 ertson, of Virginia, had said that no petition ought to 
 be received for an object which Congress had no 
 power to grant. Mr. Adams replied, with much 
 acuteness, that on most questions the right of grant- 
 ing the petition might be in doubt : a majority must 
 decide that point : it would therefore follow, from Mr. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 53 
 
 Robertson's rule, that no one had a right to petition 
 unless he belonged to the predominant party. Mr. 
 Adams then turned to Mr. Dromgoole, who had 
 charged him with the remarkable crime of " giving 
 color to an idea," and soon made that representative 
 of the Old Dominion appear very ridiculous. 
 
 Mr. Adams then proceeded to rebuke, with dignity 
 but severity, the conduct of those who had proposed to 
 censure him without any correct knowledge of the facts 
 of the case. His criticisms had the effect of compelling 
 these gentlemen to excuse themselves and to offer 
 various explantaions of their mistakes. These assail- 
 ants suddenly found themselves in an attitude of self- 
 defence. Mr. Adams graciously accepted their ex- 
 planations, advising them in future to be careful when 
 they undertook to offer resolutious of censure. He 
 then informed Mr. Waddy Thompson, of South Caro- 
 lina, that he had one or two questions to put to him. 
 By this time it had become a pretty serious business 
 to receive the attentions of Mr. Adams ; and Mr. 
 Waddy Thompson immediately rose to explain. But 
 Mr. Adams asked him to wait until he had fully stated 
 the question which Mr. Thompson was to answer. 
 The southern statesmen had threatened the ex-Presi- 
 dent of the United States with an indictment by the 
 grand jury of the District for words spoken in debate 
 in the House of Representatives, and had added that, 
 if the petition was presented, Mr. Adams should be.. 
 
54 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 sent to the penitentiary. " Sir," said Mr. Adams, 
 " the only answer I make to such a threat from that 
 gentleman, is to invite him, when he returns to his 
 constituents, to study a little the first principles of 
 civil liberty." He then called on a gentleman from 
 the slave States, to say how many of them indorsed 
 that sentiment. " I do not," said Mr. Underwood of 
 Kentucky. " I do not," said Mr. Wise of Virginia. 
 Mr. Thompson was compelled to attempt another ex- 
 planation, and said he meant that, in South Carolina , 
 any member of the Legislature who should present a 
 petition from slaves, could be indicted. " Then," re- 
 plied Mr. Adams, and this produced a great sensation, 
 " if it is the law of South Carolina that members of 
 her Legislature may be indicted by juries for words 
 spoken in debate, God Almighty receive my thanks 
 that I am not a citizen of South Carolina." 
 
 Mr. Adams ended his speech by declaring that the 
 honor of the House of Representatives was always 
 regarded by him as a sacred sentiment, and that he 
 would feel a censure from that House as the heaviest 
 misfortune of a long life, checkered as it had been by 
 many vicissitudes.* 
 
 When Mr. Adams began his defence, not only was 
 a large majority of the House opposed to his course, 
 
 * He added that if the House wished to know what the paper was 
 he would send it to the Speaker's desk. It proved to be a petition 
 purporting to be from slaves, asking that John Quincy Adams be ex* 
 pelled from Congress. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 55 
 
 but they had brought themselves by a series of vio- 
 lent harangues, into a condition of bitter excitement 
 against him. When he ended, the effect of this ex- 
 traordinary speech was such, that all the resolutions 
 were rejected, and out of the whole House only 
 twenty-two members could be found to pass a vote of 
 even indirect censure. The victory was won, and won 
 by Mr. Adams almost single-handed. We count 
 Horatius Codes a hero for holding the Roman 
 bridge against a host of enemies; but greater honors 
 belong to him who successfully defends against over- 
 whelming numbers the ancient safeguards of public 
 liberty. For this reason we have repeated here at 
 such length the story of three days which the people 
 of the United States ought always to remember. It 
 took ten years to accomplish the actual repeal of these 
 gag-laws. But the main work was done when the 
 right of speech was obtained for the friends of free- 
 dom in Congress ; and John Quincy Adams was the 
 great leader in this warfare* 
 
 Although in these debates, Mr. Adams bore the 
 brunt of the battle alone, and was perfectly equal to 
 doing it, there were a few members of the House, and 
 the Senate, who stood by his side in the defence of 
 the Right of Petition. Mr. Lincoln and Caleb Cush- 
 ing, of Massachusetts ; Mr. Evans, of Maine ; Wil- 
 
 * This account has been taken, by permission, from an article in the 
 North American Review, written by the author of the present work. 
 
56 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 liam Slade, of Vermont ; and in the Senate, Morris, 
 of Ohio, stood firm for this right. 
 
 But the most courageous supporter of Mr. Adams 
 in Congress, and the most determined opponent of 
 the slave-power, was Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio. 
 Born in Pennsylvania, he was taken by his parents, 
 when he was ten years old, to Ashtabula County, in 
 the Western Reserve in Ohio. This region had been 
 settled from New England, and its inhabitants were 
 an intelligent and energetic people, believing in free- 
 dom and humanity. It was strongly anti-slavery. 
 Elected to Congress in 1838, Giddings immediately 
 placed himself by the side of Mr. Adams as a promi- 
 nent defender of the Right of Petition, and an oppon- 
 ent of the pro-slavery party. In 1842, he brought 
 before Congress the case of the Creole, an American 
 vessel, which sailed from Virginia for New Orleans 
 with a cargo of 136 slaves. The slaves rose against 
 the master and crew, and took the ship into the British 
 port of Nassau, where their right to freedom was rec- 
 ognized. This event created much excitement, and 
 Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, in a letter to 
 Edward Everett, then Minister in London, declared 
 the intention of our Government to demand indemni- 
 fication for the owners. Mr. Giddings maintained, 
 in a series of resolutions offered in Congress, that 
 slavery being an abridgment of natural right, could 
 have no force beyond the territorial jurisdiction which 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 57 
 
 created it, and that a vessel leaving the United States 
 and passing upon the high seas, left slavery behind. 
 Consequently the slaves had become free, and had 
 violated no law in seizing their freedom, and that we 
 had no claim to any indemnity. For taking this 
 ground, the House voted to censure Mr. Giddings. 
 Thereupon he resigned his seat and appealed to his 
 constituents, who re-elected him by a large majority. 
 He was re-elected again and again during twenty-one 
 years. During all this period he was one of the most 
 determined and plucky opponents of the slave- power, 
 and consequently was the subject of frequent abuse 
 and threats. This, however, made no impression on 
 this sturdy Ohio abolitionist, a meet companion of 
 Corwin, Morris, Chase, and Root of that noble State. 
 Jan. 21, 1842, Mr. Adams presented a petition from 
 45 citizens of Haverhill, Mass., praying for the disso- 
 lution of the Union, and moved it be referred to a 
 select committee, with instructions to report why the 
 petition should not be granted. There was at once 
 great excitement and members called out, "Expel 
 him," " Censure him." After a good deal of fruitless 
 endeavor to accomplish something, the House ad- 
 journed, and forty or fifty slaveholders met to decide 
 what kind of resolutions should be presented to meet 
 the case. Thomas F. Marshall of Kentucky was 
 selected by this caucus from Congress to propose the 
 resolutions, which were to the effect that for present- 
 
q 8 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ing such a petition to a body each of whom had taken 
 an oath to maintain the Constitution, Mr. Adams was 
 virtually inviting them to prejure themselves, and 
 that therefore he deserved the severest censure. 
 Marshall supported this with a very violent speech. 
 Mr. Wise followed in another. Then Mr. Adams 
 arose and asked the clerk to read the first paragraph 
 of the Declaration of Independence, being the one 
 which recognizes the right of every people to alter or 
 abolish their form of Government when it ceases to 
 accomplish its ends. He said that those who believed 
 that the present Government was oppressive had the 
 right (according to the Declaration of Independence, 
 on which the whole of our national unity reposes), to 
 petition Congress to do what they believed was desir- 
 able ; and all that Congress could properly do would 
 be to explain to them why such an act could not be 
 performed. He replied with great severity to Mr. 
 Wise and said that Mr. Wise had come into that Hall 
 a few years before with his hands dripping with the 
 blood of one of his fellow beings. In this he alluded 
 to the part which Mr. Wise had taken in the duel be- 
 tween Mr. Graves of Kentucky, and Cilley of Maine, 
 in which the latter had been killed. As for Mr. Mar- 
 shall who had accused him of treason, he spoke of him 
 with great scorn. " I thank God ! " said he " that 
 the Constitution of my country has defined treason, 
 and has not left it to the puny intellect of this young 
 
AATTZ-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 59 
 
 man from Kentucky to say what it is. If I were the 
 father of this gentleman from Kentucky, I should 
 take him from this House and put him to school where 
 he might study his profession for some years until he 
 became a little better qualified to appear in this place." 
 Mr. Adams had on his desk a great many books and 
 references prepared for his use by some anti-slavery 
 gentlemen then in Washington ; after he had gone 
 on for some time with his speech he was asked how 
 much more time he would probably occupy. He re- 
 plied " I believe Mr. Burke took three months for his 
 speech on Warren Hasting's indictment. I think I 
 may probably get through in ninety days, perhaps in 
 less time." Thereupon they thought it just as well to 
 have the whole thing come to an end and it was 
 moved that the matter should be laid on the table. 
 Mr. Adams consented, and it was done. 
 
 In these two cases he defeated his enemies in a 
 hand to hand fight. After this they had so much re- 
 spect for him, that on one occasion when the house 
 met and found itself unable to organize, on account 
 of the clerk's refusing to read the names of certain 
 members from New Jersey who had received their 
 Governor's certificate but whose seats were contested, 
 Mr. Adams was asked if he could point out a way by 
 which the House could be organized. He replied 
 " Yes, I, myself, will call you to order if you will 
 allow me to do so," Thereupon he said, " I call on you 
 
6o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 to come to order and I ask you to nominate a tempo- 
 rary speaker." He was himself chosen the temporary 
 speaker and for several days presided over the House 
 until they were able to appoint a permanent speaker. 
 His career in Congress is very interesting, showing 
 that at his advanced age he still preserved all this 
 wonderful power and was more than a match for his 
 opponents. His firmness was stronger than their 
 violence, for he had justice and right with him. He 
 was a man of such invincible tenacity of purpose that 
 with the right on his side he was perfectly invulner- 
 able. He could not be defeated. 
 
 I have spoken of John P. Hale, who was a very 
 different man. He was a Democrat, chosen by New 
 Hampshire as member of the House of Representatives. 
 While there the project of the annexation of Texas 
 came up, and he opposed it. He went back to New 
 Hampshire and continued to oppose this plan, which 
 had become a party measure to which the Democrats 
 had committed themselves. He took the stump 
 through the whole state showing the evil and wrong 
 of annexation, the object of which was the increase of 
 the slave-power. He succeeded in changing the 
 sentiments of the people on this subject to such a 
 degree that in the course of the year he was returned 
 to the Senate as an Independent Democrat. He was 
 there for several years alone, with no one to stand by 
 him, being elected to the Senate in 1847. He was 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 6 1 
 
 prompt, ready, quick, able to answer any attack at a 
 moment's warning. He had the faculty of thinking 
 on his feet. He also possessed a large fund of good 
 humor and much genuine wit. He was good at 
 repartee, and though the slaveholders did their best 
 to put him down, they seldom got the better of him. 
 
 In the winter of 1851 and 1852, I was in Washing- 
 ton and was frequently on the floor of the Senate 
 chamber, during this session, which was the last 
 attended by Henry Clay. The compromises as they 
 were called, had been passed, the compromises by 
 which the Free Soil party was to be put down and 
 Political anti-slavery was to be brought to an end. 
 All anti-slavery discussion was also expected to cease, 
 and the whole excitement about slavery to be ended. 
 Mr. Clay rose one day in his place, and speaking of 
 the Free Soil party said, " It has been put down ; 
 down, down, down ; so low that it will never rise again. 
 I thank God that it has been put down forever." He 
 spoke with a good deal of indignation in his tones 
 Immediately John P. Hale rose and said, " As a mem- 
 ber of the Free Soil party, I am very much interested 
 in the piece of information I have just received from 
 the Honorable Senator from Kentucky ; namely that 
 the party to which I belong has been put ' down, 
 down, down, so low that we never shall rise again.' I 
 am afraid the Senator may be right. I very much 
 fear he is correct in his statement ; since there is no 
 
62 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 man on this floor who knows better by his own ex- 
 perience what it is to be put down, down, down, and 
 to be kept down, than the Honorable Senator from 
 Kentucky." Gay was hit hard by this rejoinder, he 
 having repeatedly lost the nomination for Presidency. 
 After we left the Senate chamber, I said to Hale, 
 " Mr. Clay will never forgive you for that speech." 
 " No, he never will, but what would you have ? They 
 may trample upon us, but they shall not trample on 
 us without at least hearing something in reply.'' 
 
 On another occasion, some one said to Hale. "The 
 gentleman from New Hampshire will have to eat his 
 words." Mr. Hale at once replied, " If I eat my words 
 I think I shall have a much more palatable meal 
 than that gentleman would have if he were to eat his 
 words." 
 
 Jn the year 1 849, Salmon P. Chase was elected to 
 the Senate as a Free Soiler. The same year William 
 H. Seward was also elected. He was an anti-siavery 
 man from the first. Two years after, in 1851, Charles 
 Sumner was chosen to the Senate, and four years 
 after that, in 1855 Henry Wilson was sent as his 
 colleague. And thus by degrees the strength of the 
 anti-slavery members of the House and Senate was 
 much increased. 
 
 I recollect that in this winter of 1851, I used some- 
 times to go on Saturday evenings to the house of 
 Gamaliel Bailey, Editor of the " National Era." On 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 6$ 
 
 those evenings, anti-slavery members of Congress were 
 wont to assemble and to meet other gentlemen of 
 their way of thinking from^ different parts of the 
 country. I met there Seward, Giddings, Chase, Hale, 
 Julian, Slade, Horace Mann, and I think, also, John 
 G. Palfrey. Such men were at that time unpopular 
 in Congress ; they were in a small minority ; their 
 influence was supposed to amount to little ; but as 
 the wheel of time revolved they came to the summit. 
 Seward became Secretary of State, Hale was ambas- 
 sador to Russia^ Chase was Secretary of the Treasury 
 and afterwards Chief Justice of the United States. 
 Yet, while the power of the anti-slavery sentiment 
 was increasing throughout the Northern States, the 
 slave-power continued to win new triumphs. 
 
 The decision of the Supreme Court in the Prigg 
 case, was also considered a pro-slavery triumph. Prigg 
 seized a slave woman who had escaped into Pennsyl- 
 vania. Under the laws of Pennsylvania he was 
 arrested, indicted and sentenced to fine or imprison- 
 ment,^ because, by the law of that State such an arrest 
 was not allowed. But by this decision of the Supreme 
 Court it was settled that Congress alone had power 
 to legislate concerning fugitives, and it was, moreover, 
 decided that a master might seize his slave wherever 
 he found him, and carry him out of the State without 
 trial. As a result of this, it was assumed that if a 
 man was claimed as a slave he must necessarily be 
 
64 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 one. There were free northern colored people every- 
 where who were arrested under this ruling, and the 
 kidnapping of free colored people frequently took 
 place. They were torn from their homes and carried 
 off to be sold. If some brutal man wanted to make a 
 little money he might seize men, women or children, 
 carry them away and sell them, and they never would 
 be heard of again. 
 
 When this Prigg decision was made, some of the 
 people in the Northern states said, " We have been 
 relieved from all duty in this matter. The Courts say 
 we must not interfere. We will go farther, and say 
 we will not interfere." And so the legislatures 
 passed laws forbidding the Northern jails to receive 
 fugitives, and forbidding their officers to aid in the 
 search for them. 
 
 In 1836 Arkansas was admitted with a constitution 
 preventing slavery from being ever abolished, in spite 
 of the opposition of Adams and others. 
 
 The next triumph of the slave-power was in 1838, 
 when the Florida war occurred. This was occasioned 
 by slaveholders who had gone among the Seminoles 
 to recover their escaped slaves. The soldiers of our 
 army were employed to seize the fugitives. The 
 Seminoles refused to give them up. They were 
 pursued, and finally after a war which lasted eight 
 years, they were overcome, and the Seminoles were 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 65 
 
 obliged to surrender the colored fugitives, and consent 
 to go West themselves. 
 
 The next victory for the slave-power was in 1844, 
 when Mr. Samuel Hoar was sent to South Carolina 
 to collect information about the free colored citizens 
 from the North, then in prison or in slavery. When, 
 in obedience to a resolution of the Massachusetts 
 legislature Mr. Hoar went to South Carolina, there 
 was a great deal of excitement in Charleston, and he 
 was advised to return at once. He refused to go, 
 saying he had come to perform an important duty for 
 the State of Massachusetts, to find out certain facts 
 in regard to her citizens. The duty of the State was 
 to protect its citizens. He was compelled, however, 
 to return, as they threatened to drag him away by 
 force unless he went peaceably. 
 
 In December, 1843, began the agitation for the an- 
 nexation of Texas. Mr. Calhoun had been Secretary 
 of State. The first plan, which was certainly the legal 
 one, was to annex it by treaty. It was urged on the 
 President and Senate, but it required a vote of two- 
 thirds of that body which they could not get. There 
 was immense opposition in the Njrth, and even the 
 Southern States felt certain objections to this meas- 
 ure. It was some time before the South was united 
 in its favor TL Whig press in the South opposed 
 it, and the Whigs voted against it, and it was thus de- 
 feated. Mr. Clay was specially opposed to it on many 
 
66 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 grounds. Through the North it was understood to 
 be a plan of the slaveholders for getting more terri- 
 tory from which to carve slave states. This immense 
 State of Texas, half as large as the orginal thirteen 
 states united, was to be annexed, and slavery allowed 
 to go into it. Finally, by the terms by which it was 
 at last annexed, it was agreed that in the course of 
 time there should be five slave states made out of it, 
 adding ten slaveholders to the United States Senate. 
 The proposed annexation by joint resolution became 
 the measure on which the presidential election turned. 
 Polk announced himself in favor of annexation, and 
 Clay opposed it. Clay was defeated and Polk elected, 
 and in consequence Texas was immediately annexed, 
 President Tyler signing the bill as acting president. 
 This was followed by war with Mexico. General 
 Taylor was ordered by Polk to advance beyond the 
 Nueces, the old boundary of Texas, and this brought 
 on war. Congress voted that " war existed by the 
 act of Mexico," although it really existed in conse- 
 quence of General Taylor going into territory which 
 never had belonged to Texas. This was the next 
 triumph of the slave-power. By this war there was 
 added to the United States territory which the slave- 
 power thought would finally come into their posses- 
 sion. 
 
 About that time, in 1846, David Wilmot, a Demo, 
 crat of Pennsylvania, offered a proviso to the resolu- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 67 
 
 tion of annexation, to exclude slavery from all terri- 
 tories required from Mexico. This was passed by a 
 vote of 87 to 64, but the Senate, which was intensely 
 Democratic, rejected the proviso in spite of the oppo- 
 sition of Mr. Webster and others who defended it, 
 and the House finally relinquished this anti-slavery 
 prohibition. We then paid $15,000,000, and we ac- 
 quired Upper and Lower California and New Mexico. 
 
 In 1850 came the compromise measures, which 
 were to settle all the disputes about slavery. Henry 
 Clay was the father of these measures. The general 
 points included were these : — That California should 
 be admitted as a free state if the inhabitants so deter- 
 mined. That the Wilmot proviso should not be ap- 
 plied to the territories. That the debt of Texas should 
 be paid on condition of its giving up its claim to any 
 part of New Mexico ; and that the Fugitive Slave 
 Law was to be passed. These compromises, as they 
 were called, occasioned a great deal of excitement. 
 The anti-slavery people considered that the slave- 
 power had won a new triumph, and felt that the whole 
 North was beginning to be put under the yoke of 
 slavery. 
 
 In 1853 and 4 came one of the measures which 
 startled the North more than anything else, the re- 
 peal of the Missouri compromise. Missouri had been 
 received as a slave state in 1820. It had been finally 
 admitted with slavery, because there was a condition 
 
68 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 affixed that no slavery should ever after be allowed in 
 any territory north of 36° 30' north latitude, which 
 was the southern boundary of Missouri. By that 
 condition slavery was excluded from Kansas and Ne- 
 braska, and they were secured to freedom. Now, 
 having obtained their share of the bargain, the slave- 
 power determined to have the other part also. Stephen 
 A. Douglas of Illinois declared that the compromises 
 of 1850 had abolished the Missouri compromise, and 
 that slavery might now enter those states. He was 
 opposed by many leading men, as Chase, Sumner, 
 Wade, Giddings, Everett and Seward, who said it was 
 the violation of a sacred pledge. The debate lasted 
 four months, and ended in the triumph of the slave- 
 power, and the repeal of the Missouri restriction. 
 
 Then followed in 1854 the Kansas struggle, of 
 which we will speak later, together with the events 
 which followed. We will now return to the move- 
 ment as it went on outside of Congress. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA KS. 6 9 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ABOLITIONISTS AND THEIR ACTIVITY — FUGITIVE 
 SLAVES. 
 
 " Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide 
 In the strife of Truth with Falsehood for the good or evil side. 
 Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or 
 
 blight, 
 Parts the goats upon the left hand, parts the sheep upon the right." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 In the last chapter I enumerated the successive 
 political triumphs of the slave-power in the United 
 States. These were as follows : — The decision— ^ 
 the Supreme-Co4artin-th^-Prig§-cas% -which- -decision 
 established the doctrine that the Free States had no 
 right to pass any laws in relation to slavery or fugi- 
 tives. It was placed entirely in the power of Con- 
 gress to pass any law for the recovery of fugitives, 
 and the Free States could not interfere to protect their 
 own free colored people. That was one of the first 
 triumphs of the slave-power. The admission of Ar- 
 kansas as a slave state came in 1836 ; the Florida 
 war in 1838, the object of which was to secure slavery 
 in Georgia. In 1844 an attempt was made by Massa- 
 
7 o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 chusetts to protect her free colored seamen in South- 
 ern ports. There were many free colored people at 
 the North who went into the mercantile marine. 
 Some of the Southern states passed laws to the effect 
 'that any colored man entering the state should be ar- 
 rested and confined in jail, and at the same time pay 
 his expenses while there. If he did not have the 
 means, he was sold into slavery to pay the debt. It 
 was understood that free colored men from Massa- 
 chusetts, sailing on her vessels, had been made slaves 
 in this way and attempts were made to test the con- 
 stitutionality of these oppressive laws of the Southern 
 States. Mr. Samuel Hoar was, therefore, sent to 
 South Carolina by the State of Massachusetts to pro- 
 cure evidence and bring the cases before the United 
 States courts. He was, however, compelled to leave, 
 being driven by force out of the State. In the same 
 year came the annexation of Texas, followed by the 
 war with Mexico. The object of this was believed to 
 be to procure additional territory for the purposes of 
 slavery. It was supposed that New Mexico and Cali- 
 fornia, which were obtained from Mexico, as the re- 
 sult of the war, would become slave states. In 1850 
 came what were called the compromise measures, and 
 the defeat of the Wilmot Proviso, which proviso was 
 at first supported by the majority of the Democratic 
 part of the House of Congress, as well as by the 
 Whigs. It was to the effect that any territory that 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 7 r 
 
 should be obtained as the result of the war should be 
 free from slavery. This proviso was finally defeated 
 by the slave-power. Another of these measures was 
 the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, by which it 
 became much more easy for slaveholders to pursue 
 and recover their slaves who had escaped to the other 
 states. In consequence of this law, there were fugi- 
 tives carried from Boston — a fact which had not taken 
 place before in the memory of man. Then came, in 
 1853, the repeal of the Missouri Agreement, to ex- 
 clude slavery north of 36 30', so that slavery was 
 now allowed to go into that territory, from which it 
 had previously been shut out by mutual agreement. 
 The Lecompton Constitution, for Kansas, followed in 
 1857, which was a Pro-slavery Constitution, making 
 Kansas a slave state, and one which was passed in 
 opposition to a majority of the actual inhabitants by 
 the power of Missourians, who invaded the State for 
 that purpose. 
 
 These Missouri slaveholders crowded across the 
 state line to Kansas, and took possession of the polls. 
 In 1856, came the attack on Charles Sumner by 
 Preston Brooks, in consequence of his speech on the 
 wrongs of the people of Kansas. He was struck 
 down by violent blows of a cudgel while in his seat 
 in the Senate Chamber, and was so disabled that he 
 could not return for four years. Brooks resigned his 
 seat, knowing that he might be expelled, but was im* 
 
72 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 mediately re-elected to Congress, and through his act 
 he became a hero. There was scarcely any press, or 
 public man in the South, who did not boldly declare 
 that he had done right. In 1857, came the Dred 
 Scott Decision. This decision delivered by a ma- 
 jority of the judges of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, including Chief Justice Taney, and 
 read by him, decided that the colored people in the 
 United States were not citizens ; that no colored man 
 could become a citizen ; and that he had no rights be- 
 fore the law. In this decision, Judge Taney made the 
 well-known and often-quoted statement,that at the time 
 of the adoption of the Constitution, it was considered 
 that "the colored man had no rights which the white 
 man was bound to respect." This statement was 
 made in apparent forgetfulness of all that had been 
 said by Washington and others concerning the rights 
 of all men. Before that time the South had only 
 claimed, that if a slave escaped to a free state, the 
 slaveholder had a right to take him. It was now de- 
 cided, that if the slaveholder himself took him into a 
 free state, and he escaped, the holder had a right to 
 recover him. 
 
 There were able and conclusive arguments read by 
 Justices McClean and Curtis in opposition to this de- 
 cision. Those of us who had long known Benjamin 
 R. Curtis, and his great ability, were proud of the 
 commanding power with which he gave his dissent 
 
ANTT-SLA VER Y DA YS. 73 
 
 from the decision of Judge Taney. But his argu- 
 ments were overborne by the majority of the Court. 
 
 All these aggressions and successes of the slave- 
 power were new fuel to the fire of the anti-slavery 
 agitation. They supplied fresh and convincing argu- 
 ments for the Northern agitators. Everything that 
 the slaveholders did prevented the anti-slavery meet- 
 ings from becoming commonplace. Every one of these 
 gatherings offered some new grounds for showing the 
 evils of slavery, and the wrongs done by the slave- 
 power to the North. In innumerable meetings held 
 at the North these wrongs were described and ex- 
 posed ; and, I suppose when we come to look back on 
 it, we shall say there never was a people educated so 
 thoroughly in so short a time, as the voters of the 
 North were, to see the evil, the wrongs and dangers 
 of slavery. Perpetual agitation went forward, by the 
 activity and zeal of the anti-slavery orators and 
 writers. They published papers and tracts, held con- 
 ventions, and took every opportunity to keep this sub- 
 ject before the people. For instance, on the first of 
 August, the anniversary of emancipation in the West 
 Indies, they would hold conventions all over the coun- 
 try. Always, too, these were held on the Fourth of 
 July, when they would read the famous introductory 
 sentence to the Declaration of Independence. " We 
 hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
 created equal, and endowed by their Creator with in- 
 
7 4 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 alienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness." Mr. Emerson once said, 
 " Eloquence is dog-cheap in anti-slavery meetings." 
 At another time he spoke of the " enraged eloquence" 
 of Faneuil Hall. Some one said of Luther, that his 
 words were half battles. So we might say of these 
 meetings, that each one was half a battle. The anti- 
 slavery men welcomed contradiction, and rejoiced in 
 the opportunity of meeting an opponent. If any 
 slaveholder was known to be in Boston, he was invited 
 to come upon the platform and state his views ; and 
 there were always plenty of people to answer him. 
 Garrison and his friends were always ready — always 
 prepared with facts and arguments ; and the opponent 
 whom the Lord delivered into their hands was usually 
 much to be pitied. 
 
 Sometimes a man would innocently beseech them 
 to be mild and calm in their treatment of slavehold- 
 ers. The answer to this would be, " Suppose, sir, 
 your wife and child were taken from you, and sent to 
 Alabama to be the slaves of any brute who had money 
 enough to buy them, would you be calm then ? 
 Would you speak gently, and say that in your opin- 
 ion this was an unwise course, and not altogether de- 
 sirable ? We are arguing the cause of thousands of 
 husbands and fathers, liable at any moment to have 
 their families torn from them. To be calm in such a 
 cause would be a sin." Sometimes a Southerner 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. y 5 
 
 would come forward, declaring the slaves happy, well- 
 treated and contented. Immediately the anti-slavery 
 orators would read numerous advertisements in 
 Southern papers, offering rewards for runaway slaves, 
 alive or dead, who were described as marked with 
 stripes, and mutilated, showing the ill-treatment they 
 had endured. " If they are so happy, why do they 
 run away ? If so contented and well-behaved, why 
 are they beaten, and shot, and mutilated ? " 
 
 "The "timid good" might stand aloof from these 
 meetings, but the mob was present, and there was 
 sure to be a crowd, either of friends or foes, and 
 always something worth hearing. There was often 
 disorder and tumult, but the anti-slavery speakers on 
 the platform were perfctly calm. Some. of them 
 seemed to be like the warhorse in the Bcfok of Job, 
 that " scented the battle from afar — the tumult and 
 the shouting." These men delighted in the fury of 
 this battle. I remember on one occasion there was 
 an anti-slavery meeting where everything seemed to 
 be quiet and peaceful, and the orators were listened 
 to with much attention. Then Stephen Foster sud- 
 denly rose and said : " We are not doing our duty. 
 If we were doing our duty this audience, instead of 
 listening to us so quietly, would be throwing brick- 
 bats at us." Charles Burleigh, in the middle of his 
 speech once, had a rotten egg thrown at him, which 
 struck him in the face. With ready wit, as he calm- 
 
7 6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ly wiped his face, he said, " I have always maintained 
 that pro-slavery arguments are very unsound." There 
 were some quite rude jokes made, and a good deal of 
 fun — fun made of the abolitionists as well as of their 
 opponents. They could enjoy a good joke even at 
 their own expense. Mr. Garrison was nearly bald. 
 Charles C. Burleigh had a very long beard, which 
 came almost down to his waist. Once in the midst 
 of a most earnest discussion, some wag cried out, 
 " Burleigh ! why don't you cut off your beard and 
 give it to Garrison to make a wig of ? " This, of 
 course, caused a great deal of fun. On the platform 
 you would always see Garrison ; with him was my 
 classmate and friend, Sam May. Stephen S. Foster 
 was always there. Sometimes Mr. Samuel E. Sewell 
 was to be seen, who was one of the earliest to join 
 this party. He was with Garrison at the first meet- 
 ing, and is still living in an honored old age. There, 
 too, one saw in the early days William W. White, (a 
 brother of Maria White Lowell,) who died too soon. 
 He was a very brilliant man, and always made very 
 admirable speeches. Parker Pilsbury, James Buffum, 
 Arnold Buffum, Elizur Wright, Henry C. Wright, 
 Abigail Kelley, Lucy Stone, Theo. D. Weld, the sis- 
 ters Grimke, from South Carolina ; John T. Sargent, 
 Mrs. Chapman, Mrs. Lydia M. Child, Fred Douglas, 
 Wm. W. Brown and Francis Jackson. The last was . 
 a stern Puritan, conscientious, upright, clear-minded, 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 7 y 
 
 universally respected. Edmund Quincy also was 
 there, and he never spoke without saying something 
 that had a touch of wit as well as of logic. Oliver 
 Johnson is still living, and he was one of the very 
 first members of the Society. Theodore Parker, ? 
 Samuel J. May, John Pierpont, Chas. L. Stearns, 
 Chas. L. Redwood, Geo. Thompson (another wonder- 
 fully eloquent man), and, above all Wendell Phillips. 
 
 I have no doubt I have omitted some whom I ought 
 to remember, but this list shows what men and women 
 met on the Garrison platform to argue this cause. All 
 were intrepid, clear-headed, ready to meet and answer 
 any opponent, and delighted if they could get an op- 
 ponent on the platform to answer. There was no 
 such excitement to be had anywhere else as at these 
 meetings. There was a little of everything going on 
 in them. Sometimes crazy people would come in and 
 insist on taking up the time ; sometimes mobs would 
 interrupt the smooth tenor of their way ; but amid all 
 disturbance each meeting gave us an interesting and 
 impressive hour. I think that some of the Garrisonian 
 orators had the keenest tongues ever given to man. 
 Stephen S. Foster and Henry C. Wright, for ex- 
 ample, said the sharpest things that were ever uttered. 
 Their belief was that people were asleep, and the only 
 thing to be done was to rouse them ; and to do this it 
 was necessary to cut deep and not to spare for their 
 crying. The more angry people were made the bet- 
 
7 8 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ter it was for them. The titles of some of their tracts 
 indicate this purpose. Pilsbury wrote one called 
 " The Church the Forlorn Hope of Slavery ; " Foster 
 another called "The Church the Brotherhood of 
 Thieves." 
 
 Some pursued a different course. Among these 
 must be especially named Samuel J. May, a man who 
 united in a remarkable degree perfect courage with 
 entire kindliness. He was a singular example of the 
 way in which truth can be spoken in love. It was al- 
 most impossible to resist such a fine union of gentle- 
 ness and strength. The motto of his life might have 
 been the words which I once saw upon the great organ 
 in the cathedral at Pisa : " Out of the strong cometh 
 forth sweetness." * 
 
 I recollect Mr. May's once giving me an account of 
 a conversation he had with a Southerner at the house 
 of Henry Colman, in Deerfield, where he was to pass 
 the night. Mr. May arrived just before sundown, 
 after having spent the day at an anti-slavery meeting. 
 Mr. Colman met him at the door and said, '* My dear 
 Mr. May, I hope you will say nothing on the subject 
 of slavery this evening, for we have a Southern gen- 
 tleman here who is very excitable and irritable, and it 
 would be quite unpleasant to have a discussion. Mr. 
 
 * See an interesting volume, written by Mr. May, ^called " Some 
 Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict," Boston, 1S09 J also; " Life 
 of S. J. May," by Thomas Mumford. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. y 9 
 
 May replied, " I will not introduce the subject, but if 
 I am asked any questions I shall be obliged to answer 
 them according to the truth." He was introduced to 
 this Southerner, and sat down beside him in the room. 
 On the other side of the Southerner was a lady who 
 had heard that Mr. May had been to the anti-slavery 
 meeting ; and, leaning forward in front of the South- 
 erner she asked, " What did you do at the anti-slav- 
 ery meeting to-day ? " Thereupon Mr. May proceeded 
 to give her an account of it, so arranging what he 
 said as to convey to this Southern gentleman an idea 
 of what was the real purpose of the anti-slavery peo- 
 ple. He spoke in such a way as to disabuse him of 
 the notion that they had any intention of exciting an 
 insurrection among the slaves. Their appeal was to 
 the reason and conscience of the slaveholder, and the 
 things of which they were often accused were far 
 from their thought. He observed that this man be- 
 came interested and excited, and finally turning to 
 him " Mr. May," he said, " I should like to know what 
 business you have with this thing at all ? What busi- 
 ness is it of yours, sir ? It is our own affair altogether. 
 You people here at the North have nothing to do with 
 it." " But my dear sir," answered Mr. May, very 
 mildly, " you do not believe, certainly, that slavery is 
 right ? " " No, I don't think it is right in the ab- 
 stract ; but you don't know anything about it. You 
 are doing mischief and making trouble by all you try 
 
80 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 to do." Thereupon Mr. May proceeded to argue with 
 him in his gentle, but strong manner, and finally after 
 they had been talking for half an hour or more, this 
 Southerner began to walk up and down the room with 
 a great deal of excitement. At last he turned and 
 said to Mr. May, " You must not think as badly of 
 us as if we had been brought up at the North and had 
 the opportunity of hearing these arguments year after 
 year." " Oh, no," said Mr. May, " I cannot think so 
 badly of you, considering the influences you have 
 been under all your lives. I think it is not unnatural 
 that you should feel as you do. But I do think 
 this, that we at the North, who have always enjoyed 
 the blessings of a free State, ought to take every op- 
 portunity in our power of doing all we can to bring 
 this evil system to an end. I should think very badly 
 of myself if I did not do so." 
 
 Mr. May, while in Syracuse was one of the mana- 
 gers of the underground railroad, the object of which 
 was to enable the slaves to escape. It helped only 
 those who wanted to escape ; those who were dissatis- 
 fied with their condition, and who were willing to en- 
 counter the risks of getting away. There were anti- 
 slavery people all the way along the route — people 
 willing to protect these fugitives and send them on to 
 the next station, where they would be protected. Be- 
 fore a great while had passed, this became so well or- 
 ganized a system, that these station masters knew just 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. g r 
 
 where to send the slaves from their own house to the 
 next station on the road. The system extended from 
 Kentucky and Virginia across Ohio ; from Maryland 
 through Pennsylvania, and New York to New Eng- 
 land and Canada. 
 
 There were many people in the slave states, even 
 slaveholders, who were willing to secrete fugitives if 
 paid enough for doing it. This I learned from a 
 colored woman who was famous for having got off 
 many fugitives from the South. She had helped so 
 many hundred to escape that they called her " Moses." 
 She once passed an evening at my house, and gave us 
 an account of her methods. She said she first obtained 
 enough money, then went to Maryland, where she 
 privately collected a party of slaves and got them ready 
 to start. She first satisfied herself that they had 
 enough courage and firmness to run the risks. She 
 next made arrangements so that they should set out 
 on Saturday night, as there would be no opportunity 
 on Sunday for advertising them, so that they had that 
 day's start on their way north. Then she had places 
 prepared where she knew she could be sure that they 
 could be protected and taken care of if she had the 
 money to pay for that protection. When she was at 
 the North she tried to raise funds until she got a 
 certain amount, and then went south to carry out this 
 plan. She always paid some colored man to follow 
 after the person who put up the posters advertising 
 
8 2 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 the runaways, and pull them down as fast as they were 
 put up, so that about five minutes after each was up 
 it was taken away. She seemed to have indomitable 
 courage herself, and a great deal of prudence. She 
 told me that once when in Baltimore, she found a 
 negro cook, a woman who had suffered very much, 
 who had had her children taken from her and sold, 
 and who was determined to escape. She wanted 
 Moses to help her. Moses rreplied ? " If you are willing 
 to come with me I will take you across to Delaware. " 
 So they went upon a steamer which was to sail from 
 Baltimore to Delaware. When they were abroad she 
 told the woman to stay in one part of the boat, by one 
 of the outside guards, and she herself went to the 
 clerk and asked for two tickets to the place she wished 
 to go. He looked at her and said, cc I do not know 
 whether we can let you have them. You will have to 
 wait a little while." She went back very much alarmed. 
 She knew that if there was any investigation made it 
 would be found that this woman was a slave, and she 
 would be seized. She went and sat down by the side 
 of the woman, and the woman said, softly, " Have you 
 got the tickets ? " Moses made no reply. " I looked 
 straight at the water," she said, " and a great darkness 
 came over me. All at once everything brightened 
 again and I saw a great light which glowed all over 
 the river. 'Yes, I have got them now, I am sure of 
 it,' I replied." After a little while the clerk came to 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 83 
 
 her and said, " Here, Aunty, are your tickets," and 
 she succeeded in escaping with the woman through 
 Delaware to New Jersey. 
 
 In Boston there were many places where fugitives 
 were received and taken care of. Every anti-slavery 
 man was ready to protect them, and among these were 
 some families not known to be anti-slavery. My neigh- 
 bor and friend, Mr. George S. Hillard, was an United 
 States commissioner. It might be his business after 
 the slave law was passed to issue a warrant to the 
 marshal for the capture of slaves. But Mrs. Hillard, 
 his wife, was in the habit of putting the fugitives in 
 the upper chamber of their own house, and I think 
 Mr. Hillard was aware of the fact and never interfered. 
 There was once a colored man, a fugitive, put in this 
 upper room, and when Mrs. Hillard went in she found 
 he had carefully pulled down the shades of the window. 
 She told him she did not think there was any danger 
 of his being seen from the street. M Perhaps not, 
 Missis," he replied, " but I do not want to spoil the 
 place." He knew that after he had gone, there would 
 come some one else who would need to be protected. 
 He did not want any one to see his colored face there, 
 lest it might excite suspicion, to. the injury of his 
 successors. 
 
 Most persons have heard the story of William and 
 Ellen Crafts. Ellen Crafts was a very light mulatto 
 woman, who would easily pass for white. She was 
 
8 4 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 nurse in a family in South Carolina, and did not think 
 of escaping. She was married ,to a man, darker than 
 herself. But on one occasion her mistress intended 
 to go North, and wanted to take this colored nurse. 
 Ellen Crafts had a little babe of her own. She was 
 expecting to take her infant with her, till her mistress 
 said, " You don't think that I am going to have that 
 child with me. No, indeed." So the little babe was left 
 behind and died during its mother's absence. When 
 Ellen got home she made up her mind to escape. It 
 took her a good while to make her plans. At last she 
 determined to disguise herself as a young Southern 
 gentleman and take her husband as a body servant. 
 In order that it might not be seen that she had no 
 beard she professed to have great suffering from her 
 teeth, and had a poultice put round her face. In order 
 that she might not be asked to write she had her right 
 arm in a sling, as though an injury had befallen it- 
 So they got off together one morning. They reached 
 Baltimore safely, although she noticed in the train a 
 gentleman who had often seen her at her master's 
 house. When she got to Baltimore she had to meet 
 the difficulty of getting out of a slave state into a free 
 one, for which a special pass for her servant was 
 necessary. She had none, of course, but she assumed 
 the haughty airs :>t a Southerner, and when they de- 
 clined to give her a ticket for her servant, she said, 
 " Why, what can I do < You see my arm ; you see my 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 8 5 
 
 face in this condition ! I must have him to take care 
 of me." So by dint of perseverance she succeeded, 
 and they arrived finally in Boston. The master of 
 William Crafts heard that he was in Boston, and sent 
 on papers to have him arrested under the fugitive 
 slave law. It was understood that he was to be ar- 
 rested, and he was prepared to defend himself. He 
 said he would kill the United States marshal if he 
 attempted to arrest him. But some of his friends told 
 him that this would be a very bad thing for his race, 
 and would only make their condition worse. Then it 
 was arranged that he should be taken to the house of 
 Ellis Gray Loring at Brookline, Mass. Mr. Loring 
 happened to be away, and the. honorable nature of 
 Crafts was seen when he found that Mr. Loring was 
 not at home. He asked to see Mrs, Loring, and said 
 to her, " I cannot stay when your husband is away.'* 
 " Oh," said Mrs. Loring, " nothing would suit him 
 better than to have you stay." " That may be so," 
 said Crafts, " but he does not know that I am here, 
 and if anything bad happens to you or to him, I shall 
 feel that 1 have done very wrong." It was with dif- 
 ficulty that he was at last persuaded by Mrs. Loring 
 to remain. 
 
 There were a great many people who could never 
 be made to believe that it was right to return a 
 fugitive. If a man had the courage, determination 
 and love of liberty which would enable him to encoun- 
 
86 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ter the dangers of escaping, they thought it was the 
 height of meanness to send him back. Even some 
 Southerners took that view. I recollect when I lived 
 in Kentucky, there was a friend of mine, Mr, Good- 
 win from Plymouth, who had hired a little girl named 
 Milly. She had grown up with him and his wife, and 
 Mrs. Goodwin had taught her to read and write, to sew, 
 and given her a knowledge of housekeeping. She was 
 at that time seventeen or eighteen years old. The 
 owner of the girl was an English gentleman, named 
 Booth, who had lived in Kentucky for many years. I 
 was sitting in Mr. Goodwin's office one day with Mr. 
 Booth, when a letter came to Mr. Goodwin from his 
 wife, in which was enclosed a letter to herself from 
 Milly. Milly said that she had decided to go away 
 to a free state. Mr. Goodwin read aloud Milly's 
 letter : " It breaks my heart," said the letter, " to leave 
 you, my dear mistress. I shall never find so good a 
 friend in the world as you have been to me, never any 
 one that I shall love so much. But you have taught 
 me many things, and among them the value of free- 
 dom. All the education you have given me has gone 
 to make me feel that I have no right to remain a 
 slave when I can be free. I am obliged to leave you. 
 I hope I may some time see you again, but I do not 
 know. I want you to know how grateful I am and 
 always shall be for all your kindness." 
 
 While this letter was being read aloud I watched 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS 87 
 
 the face of the owner of this girl. It was a hard face 
 and I could not tell what he was thinking or feeling. 
 This was a loss to him of from $1,500 to $2,000. 
 When the letter was through he turned to me and 
 said, " Mr. Clarke, if you or I had been in the girl's 
 place we should have done the same thing. I do not 
 blame her. I shall not try to get her back." That 
 is the way honorable men at the South felt in those 
 days. 
 
 I recollect, after Burns had been arrested in Boston, 
 and taken south, I met Marshal Barnes, formerly 
 United States Marshal, under a Democratic adminis- 
 tration, and he said to me, " Friend Devens has made 
 a mistake." " How so ? " said I, n When I was a 
 marshal, and they tried to make me find their slaves, 
 I would say, ' I don't know where your niggers are, 
 but I will see if I can find out.' So I always went to 
 Garrison's office and said, ' I want you to find such 
 and such a negro ; tell me where he is.' The next 
 thing I knew, the fellow would be in Canada." 
 But if it is true, as Marshal Barnes said, that Judge 
 Devens made a mistake, he did it honestly, and with 
 an honorable purpose. He thought, when he had 
 taken the oath of United States Marshal, he ought 
 not to shrink from the duties of the office. He made 
 a noble atonement for this error, if error it was. Be- 
 fore he went to the war, he called on Mrs. Lydia 
 Maria Child, and told her that he was in negotiation 
 
88 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 with the owner of Burns to have him ransomed and 
 brought north, and made free. The negotiation was 
 not quite complete, and he would deposit $1,800 with 
 Mrs. Child to settle the thing ; which she did. Burns 
 thus became a free man, General Devens having paid 
 the full amount to his master. 
 
 One of the most interesting stories of the fugitives, 
 was that of a man called Father Henson, who has 
 just died at the age of ninety-five years. He was 
 often in Boston, and was much esteemed and liked by 
 all who knew him. He was brought up as a slave in 
 Virginia. He grew to be a young man without ever 
 hearing a sermon. The first one he heard, at a camp- 
 meeting converted him, and made of him a religious 
 man. That single sermon did more for him than a 
 great many for the most of us. On his way home 
 from the meeting, the sense of God's presence, and 
 his own needs, came over him with such power, that 
 he knelt down in a corner of the fence and prayed. 
 Then light and peace came to him, and he rose a new 
 man. He was entirely trusted by his master, who, 
 having got into some pecuniary trouble, and being 
 afraid that the sheriff would come and attach the 
 slaves on his plantation, called Henson and said to 
 him, " I am going to trust you with something which 
 is very important. You know I have a brother in 
 Kentucky. I am going to send my slaves to Ken- 
 tucky under your care. I will give you this money to 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 89 
 
 use by the way." Henson took these twenty or thirty 
 slaves through Virginia, to the Ohio river, and there 
 bought a flat boat and went down the river. He 
 stopped at Cincinnati, where, if he had chosen, he 
 could have escaped with all of them, but he felt that 
 he had been trusted, and must fulfil the trust. When 
 he told me this, he said, " If the Lord will forgive me 
 for not setting them free, and I ever have another 
 opportunity, I am quite sure I shall do better than 
 that." He took the slaves on to Kentucky, and there 
 delivered them over to the Kentucky master, and 
 there they remained. After a while some of them 
 were sold to the South to pay the debts of the Virginia 
 master. Henson being a kind of Methodist preacher, 
 was sometimes allowed to go away and preach, and 
 after preaching he would take up a little collection. 
 This he would lay by to purchase freedom. At last 
 he went to his master in Virginia, to see if he could 
 buy his liberty. At first the owner refused his consent, 
 but his son said, " Father ! remember all Henson has 
 done ; you ought to let him pay for his freedom." The 
 master finally consented, or pretended to consent. He 
 took the money, and gave him his free papers, and 
 Henson set out to return to Kentucky. On his way 
 down the river the boat came opposite to the planta- 
 tion; but instead of landing at his master's house, he 
 went ashore near his own cabin. When he got there 
 his wife said, " There is news about you." " What is 
 
9 o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 it ? " " Some of the servants overheard them talking 
 in the big house. Master said that you thought you 
 had bought yourself, but that he was going to take 
 your papers and keep them, and you would not be free 
 till you had paid a good deal more." Henson said, 
 " That is too bad. Wife, look here ! I did have my 
 papers ! I had them when I was in Cincinnati. I saw 
 them there in my bag. If you find them there, do 
 what you please with them." She took the papers 
 and put them between two slabs of board, and buried 
 them. The next morning he went to the master's 
 house, when the horn sounded to call the servants to 
 work. The master called out. "You have got 
 back, have you, Henson ? What did you do ? 
 Have you got your free papers ? " " Oh, master, I 
 had them when I was in Cincinnati. I saw them in 
 my bag there." " What ! lost them ? Where did 
 you get off ? " u I landed near my cabin, and walked 
 through the woods to it." a You must have lost them 
 on the way. Go back and see if you can find them." 
 " Do you think so, master, I'll go and look. So he 
 went back and pretended to search diligently for the 
 papers ; but, naturally, he did not see them anywhere. 
 The next thing that happened was that the master 
 determined to send him down the river with his son, 
 taking charge of aflatboat loaded with bacon and corn. 
 The understanding was, that after the cargo and the 
 flatboat were sold, Henson was to be sold in New 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 9 1 
 
 Orleans, away from wife and children and home. That 
 came to his knowledge, and made him almost crazy. 
 On the way down the river, he and his young 
 master being alone — his master being asleep — he 
 sat and thought of all the wrongs he had suffered ; 
 and how hard after all he had done, that he should be 
 so treated. He could bear it no longer. He took the 
 axe in his hand, intending to kill his young master. 
 As he approached the place, he seemed to hear a voice 
 saying, " Henson, will you throw it all away ? will 
 you throw it all away ? " and he understood that some 
 voice from Heaven was asking him if he would throw 
 away all the good he had tried to do, by this act of 
 violence. He threw the axe aside, and went back to 
 his place, and said, " I leave it all to you, Lord ; let it 
 be done as you will ; I leave it all to you." When 
 they reached New Orleans, and the cargo had been 
 sold, it so chanced, or it came by Providence, that the 
 young man was taken ill with yellow fever ; and 
 when he was well enough to go North, he said, " You 
 must go back with me, Henson ; I must have you as 
 a nurse." So he went back to Kentucky. When he 
 reached home he said to his wife, " Now, wife, you 
 must do as you think best, but as for me, I am bound 
 for freedom." His wife said she would go, too ; and 
 as they had some small children, it was arranged that 
 they should have a bag made big enough to hold the 
 two children. He had, also, some stilts made in order 
 
9 2 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 to escape the scent of bloodhounds. He practised 
 every night walking on the stilts and carrying the 
 little children. When the time came for going, they 
 all went up the big chimney of the cabin to the roof, 
 got on their stilts and walked away, carrying the little 
 ones in the bag, until they reached a stream. They 
 went down the brook to the river, crossed it in a skiff 
 that he had prepared, and in that way they es- 
 caped, 
 
 These fugitives stories produced a ^reat effect on 
 all who heard them. It was impossible to convince 
 the people that it was right to send back to slavery 
 men who were so desirous of freedom as to run such 
 risks. All our education, from boyhood up to man- 
 hood, had taught us to believe that it was the duty of 
 all men to struggle for freedom. " Give me liberty, 
 or give me death." These men took their lives in 
 their hands. They were pursued by bloodhounds, 
 exposed to famine. They were frozen and starved 
 while hiding in the swamps. If caught, they were 
 subjected to most severe punishments. They dared 
 it all, and finally, if some of them escaped, ought they 
 to be sent back again ? The human conscience, reason, 
 and heart, all said " No," 
 
 I was once, with my wife, in Columbus, Ohio, and 
 having a day to spare, we employed it in visiting the 
 public institutions. Among other places we went to 
 the Penitentiary, and were introduced by the warden 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 93 
 
 to a colored man who had escaped from Alabama. 
 He had taken a whole year in coming from Alabama 
 to Cincinnati. He had travelled only in the night, 
 hiding in the woods during the day. He had nothing 
 to eat but what he could get from the fields, sometimes 
 finding a chicken, green corn, or perhaps a small pig. 
 At last he reached Cincinnati. Then he thought he 
 was in a free city, and that he was safe. He went 
 around to get something to do, and was told by a man 
 who had a horse to sell that he would give him ten 
 dollars to sell it. It was a stolen horse. The poor 
 fellow was arrested as a thief, and sent to the peniten- 
 tiary. The warden told me he had no doubt the man's 
 story was true, and it was his intention to get him 
 pardoned by the Governor. Meantime the lawyer 
 who had undertaken to defend him, had written to 
 the colored man once or twice that he should try for 
 a pardon; but the warden feared it was the object of 
 this lawyer to turn the fugitive over to his master, and 
 so obtain a reward. " But," said the warden, " I shall 
 not allow him to do so. When the time comes for 
 the Governor to pardon him, he will go at once to 
 Canada." A month after this we were in Buffalo, at 
 a hotel. A waiter came behind my chair and asked 
 if he could see us in our room. It proved to be this 
 man. I asked him why he was not in Canada. He 
 said he had been to Canada, but there was so little 
 means of getting a support there that he had decided 
 
94 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS 
 
 to come to Buffalo, and as soon as he got enough to 
 buy a small farm he would go back. 
 
 There was one fugitive called " Box Brown," be- 
 cause he had himself packed up in a wooden box and 
 was brought thus from Virginia to Pennsylvania. 
 
 Another man, Edward Davis, escaped under the 
 guards of a teamer which left Charleston for Phila- 
 delphia. H~ remained under the guards during a 
 large part of the night until he was nearly drowned. 
 Finding he could encu ; ; it no longer, he called out to 
 the sailors. On reaching Philadelphia he was turned 
 over to the police and sent back to slavery. 
 
 Mr. May, in his " Recollections/' has given an ac- 
 count of the fugitives who often were in his house in 
 Syracuse, N. Y. They came from all the Southern 
 States, and arrived at all hours of the night. They 
 were often very dirty and squalid ; but to be received 
 by that benign and kindly friend, whose very look was 
 a benediction, must have been like entering Heaven. 
 He tells of one man who refused to enter the house, 
 saying, " O, Massa, not fit." " No/' answered the 
 philanthropist, tc you are not now, but soon shall be.'' 
 So taking into the barn a tub of warm water, soap, 
 towels, and a suit of clothes, he made him wash him- 
 self thoroughly, throw all his clothes on the dunghill, 
 and dress in the suit of clean clothes. Another 
 young colored man arrived well-dressed, and with a 
 soft hand. He had been employed to drive his mis- 
 
A NTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. g 5 
 
 tress and daughters, and wait on the table. He had 
 been treated kindly, and taught to read by his young 
 mistress ; but he learned that he was to be sold, and 
 so ran away. Another day there came a well-dressed 
 young lady of so light a color that she could pass for 
 white. She had been employed as chambermaid on a 
 boat, and had laid up money given her in presents, 
 but was about to be sold, and so she escaped in an 
 English ship to New York, and was forwarded from 
 there to Syracuse by the underground road, and was 
 then sent by Mr. May to Canada. 
 
 When those who helped fugitives were asked why 
 they did so, they referred to cases in history to show 
 that it had always been considered a duty to shelter 
 fugitives. There was the story in Herodotus of the 
 message sent by the Athenians to the oracle at Del- 
 phos, to ask if they should protect fugitives from the 
 great king even at the risk of war. The oracle said, 
 "No! send them back." The messengers, seeing 
 that birds had built their nests in the temple, began 
 to pull them down. The priestess asked why they 
 disturbed these suppliants. " Because you tell us to 
 send away our suppliants." " I did so," answered the 
 oracle, " but it was because you have offended me, 
 and I wished you to suffer the penalty which the Gods 
 will inflict on you, if you refuse to protect your sup- 
 pliants." So, too, there was the story of Sir John 
 Jervis, Lord St. Vincent, who was asked by a bio 
 
9 6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 grapher what he considered the chief exploit of his 
 life. " I was once/' he answered, " lying in the har- 
 bor of Algiers, and two slaves swam from the shore 
 and came on board. The Dey of Algiers demanded 
 their surrender. I refused. He threatened to order 
 his forts to fire on my vessel. I replied that on the 
 first shot fired, I would place my ship abreast of the 
 fort and blow it to atoms. 1 heard no more of the 
 matter." This action pleased the great naval com- 
 mander more than the victory which brought him his 
 earldom. 
 
 Those who defended slavery were accustomed to 
 speak of the free colored people as idle, as beggars 
 and criminals. But this was a libel. You seldom 
 saw a colored person begging in the Northern cities, 
 and the criminal statistics showed that in proportion 
 to their numbers few were committed to the prisons. 
 In Cincinnati, in 1851, there were many colored peo- 
 ple who possessed a considerable amount of property. 
 One of the best hotels, the Dumas House, was owned 
 and managed by colored people. One of them had 
 the best shop for family groceries. Another was the 
 best photographer. So it probably was in other cities. 
 I, however, know that this was the case in Cincin- 
 nati, having spent some days in investigating the con- 
 dition of the colored people in 1851. I recollect ask- 
 ing about their habits of temperance, and was told 
 that at one time nearly all the colored people of Cin- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 9 7 
 
 cinnati belonged to the Temperance Society, having 
 been induced to join it by the generous and devoted 
 labors among them of Theodore D. Weld, a Divinity 
 Student in Lane Seminary, 
 
9 3 
 
 ANTISLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FRIENDS AND OPPOSERS IN THE FREE-STATES, OP 
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. 
 
 '* New occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good un- 
 couth, 
 
 They must upward still and onward who would keep abreast with 
 Truth. 
 
 Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
 
 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter 
 
 sea." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 The subject of this chapter is the friends of the 
 anti-slavery movement and its opposers. We will 
 begin with those who opposed it. In the former 
 chapter I mentioned how many influences were com- 
 bined to resist anti-slavery. Some of these were 
 natural and inevitable. There was the natural con- 
 servatism of age ; there was the fear of change ; the 
 dread of danger to the Union ; the conviction that we 
 had made a contract with the South, and had no right 
 to violate our contract. From such considerations as 
 these, and from the belief that the anti-slavery men 
 were mad fanatics, who cared not what means they 
 used to attain their end, there were found in the 
 
ANTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 99 
 
 North many very respectable, kind-hearted and con- 
 scientious people, resisting tor a long time the anti- 
 slavery movement. Dr. Channing found fault with 
 the bitterness and violence of the Garrison party. 
 When Mr. Garrison declared the Constitution of the 
 United States " a covenant with death and an agree- 
 ment with hell," when Wendell Phill'ps uttered his 
 " curse on the Constitution," when the Church was 
 called " a brotherhood of thieves/' it was natural 
 enough for those who looked from the outside to think 
 the movement a fanaticism. Yet on the othet hand, 
 how natural it was for the abolitionists to use any 
 language, and seize any weapon which would rouse a 
 generation asleep, over the awful iniquities and dan- 
 gers of this evil system. They had to cry aloud and 
 spare not. If they called the indifferent and hostile 
 community " a generation of vipers," John the Bap- 
 tist had done the same. The gentle Jesus called the 
 Pharisees, " Hypocrites," " blind guides, ' " children 
 of hell," " tombs fair on the outside but inwardly full 
 of dead men's bones," " serpents," " generation of 
 vipers." No one can understand the terrible severity 
 of the abolitionists, who does not know what the .'ior- 
 rors of slavery were, with which, however, they had 
 become more familiar than the slaveholders them- 
 selves. I recollect reading for the first time, in Ken- 
 tucky, Theodore D. Weld's " American Slavery as it 
 is ; or, Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses ; " and I 
 
I oo ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 still feel the sickening sensation of suffering which it 
 caused me. It was long before I could get over the 
 fearful impression. Another work was Frederick 
 Law Olmstead's travels through the Southwestern 
 States, containing a description of the way in which 
 the slaves were treated. Other books were, " The 
 Fugitive Slave Law and its Victims," a tract pub- 
 lished by the Anti-Slavery Society. " The New 
 Reign of Terror," and Stroud's " Laws of Slavery," 
 which last showed slavery not as it was practised by 
 cruel and brutal masters, but as the laws of the Slave 
 States made it. 
 
 I give a few extracts from this work, the authenti- 
 city of which was never questioned: — 
 
 " Every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of 
 religious worship, when such worship is conducted by 
 a negro, shall be an unlawful assembly, and a justice 
 may issue his warrant to an officer or other person, 
 requiring him to enter any place where such assem- 
 blage may be, and seize any negro therein, and he or 
 any other justice may order such negro to be punished 
 with stripes." — Code of Virgina, 1849. 
 
 By the laws of several of the slaveholding States 
 manumitted and other free persons of color, however 
 respectable their character, might he arrested when 
 in the prosecution of lawful business, and if documen- 
 tary evidence of their right to freedom could not be 
 produced by them, they were thrust into prison by 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS. IO i 
 
 law, and advertised and sold as runaway slaves. 
 (Laws of Maryland and Mississippi). " If a slave was 
 found beyond the limits of the town in which he lived, 
 or off the plantation where he was usually employed, 
 without the company of a white person, or without 
 the written permission of his master or employer, any 
 person might apprehend and punish him with a whip 
 on the bare back, and if he should assail and strike 
 such white person, he might be lawfully killed." — 
 (Laws of South Carolina, Brevard's Digest). 
 
 Or you may read if you please the description of 
 slavery on her husband's plantation, given by Mrs. 
 Frances Anne Kemble : or you may read the stories 
 told by the fugitives in the " Life of Isaac T. Hopper." 
 Even now, when it is all over, the flesh creeps, and 
 the blood curdles in the veins, at the account of the 
 dreadful cruelties practised on the slaves in many 
 parts of the South. I would advise no one to read 
 such histories to-day unless his nerves are very well 
 strung. What was it then when the stories were told 
 by the fugitives themselves ? What was it when the 
 cries of the sufferers were going up every hour ? 
 When the slaveholders were adding new territory to 
 defile with blood ? Under such conditions you could 
 hardly expect from those who knew these facts, mod- 
 erate language and soft words. The anti-slavery 
 men were like a cannon ball which flies straight to its 
 mark and shatters everything in its way. They were 
 
I r 2 ANTISLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 terribly in earnest, and like Luther, every one of their 
 words was half a battle. 
 
 Let me give a few examples of the fanaticism of 
 the other side ; of the bitterness and narrowness 
 of the opposition to the abolitionists in the Northern 
 States. 
 
 Take the case of Miss Prudence Crandall, a re- 
 spectable white lady, and a member ol the Society of 
 Friends. In 1832, she opened a school for girls in 
 Canterbury, Conn. A colored girl applied for admis- 
 sion to the school ; there was a violent opposition to 
 her admission, and when Miss Crandall refused to dis- 
 miss her, the white girls left. It was then made a 
 school for colored girls. Miss Crandall then became 
 the object of insult and persecution from her neigh- 
 bors, and they tried to expel her by law from the town. 
 
 Failing in this, they had a law passed by the Legis- 
 lature, that no school for colored people should be 
 opened in the State, to which any colored pupils from 
 outside of the State should come. Miss Crandall was 
 arrested and put into jail because she was willing to 
 help educate respectable and well-behaved colored 
 girls. Mr. Samuel J. May, who lived in an adjacent 
 town, defended her in her loneliness, and stood by her 
 through it all. Arthur Tappan, of New York, sent 
 money to secure counsel for her. After she was re- 
 leased on bail, the people continued to molest her. 
 Even the physician refused to visit her house when 
 
ANTTSLA VER Y DAYS. : j 
 
 there was sickness there. The trustees of the church 
 in the town refused to let her bring her children to 
 the house of God. When she was tried they did not 
 succeed in convicting her, but so much violence was 
 threatened, and so much terror was caused to the 
 young girls in her family, that, by the advice of her 
 friends, she closed her school and sent home the 
 children. And all this happened, not in the slave 
 States, but in New England, among the descendants 
 of the Puritans. In 1836, Edward Everett, Gover--*? 
 nor of Massachusetts, an eminent scholar and a true 
 patriot, as was afterward shown in the civil war, sent 
 a message to the Legislature suggesting that some 
 legislative action should be taken to prevent the anti- 
 slavery agitation in Massachusetts, when calculated 
 to stir up agitation in the South. The members of 
 the Anti-Slavery Society asked to be heard before a 
 committee, to which this part of the message was 
 referred. They had a hearing, and Mr. George Lunt,^e 
 0: Newbiirvpcrt. was :r.:.:rrr. .1:: ::' :*.:e ;:~::v.:::ee. ;.:..i 
 the meeting was addressed by Mr. Samuel J. May, 
 Ellis Gray Loring, Garrison, and Professor Charles 
 Follen. The last was a scholar and friend of liberty, 
 who was exiled irom Germany because an advocate of 
 the freedom of the people there. In his argument he 
 suggested that if any law was passed by the Legisla- 
 ture which seemed to be aimed at the Anti-Slavery 
 Society, there would be danger that it might produce 
 
I 04 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 mobs. As soon as he said this, Mr. Lunt ordered him 
 to sit down, and said that such suggestions were dis- 
 respectful to the committee, and refused to allow 
 Doctor Follen to proceed. The anti-slavery men ap- 
 plied for another hearing to the Legislature, and 
 Samuel E. Sewall, Dr. Follen and Wm. Goodell spoke 
 again. Both were again interrupted by Mr. Lunt. 
 Mr. George Bond, an eminent merchant, universally 
 respected, arose and protested against the course 
 taken by Mr. Lunt, who replied to him in the same 
 insolent tone as to the other gentlemen. Mr. Lunt 
 has recently questioned the truth of the description 
 of his overbearing conduct as given in Wilson's History 
 and in Samuel J. May's " Recollections ; " but the evi- 
 dence of this conduct is full and positive.* 
 
 On this occasion an incident occurred which is 
 mentioned by Harriet Martineau, and printed in an 
 article in the Westminster Review, called the " Martyr 
 Age in America." She says that while this discus- 
 sion was going on, tne door of the room opened, and 
 Dr. William E. Channing appeared. He was very 
 much of an invalid. It was a harsh day, and he did 
 not go out much in the winter. He stood a moment 
 in the doorway, wrapped in his cloak. As soon as he 
 
 * The account of Mr. Lunt's behavior is given in full in Samuel J. 
 
 I May's " Recollections," and " Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave- 
 Power/' and I have letters from Samuel E. Sewall and Charles K. 
 Whipple, who were both present, and who assure me that the account 
 
 . in Wilson is not at all exaggerated. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 1 05 
 
 was seen, several gentlemen stepped forward and of- 
 fered him a seat, but without taking it, he looked 
 around until he saw where Mr. Garrison was sitting, 
 and went and sat down by his side. The striking 
 thing about this action was, that Dr. Channing and 
 Mr. Garrison did not agree about the mode of putting 
 an end to slavery. They had differed on this matter 
 and Mr. Garrison had spoken with considerable sharp- 
 ness of Dr. Channing and his course. But on 
 this occasion Dr. Channing meant to have it seen 
 that he was in full sympathy with Mr. Garrison's pur- 
 poses, and wholly opposed to any attempt to stifle 
 free discussion in Massachusetts. The next event 
 which occurred was the Alton mob and the murder of 
 Lovejoy. The city of Alton, opposite St. Louis, was 
 at that time a growing place, and Mr. Elijah P. Love- 
 joy the editor of an orthodox newspaper in St. Louis, 
 opposed to slavery, but also opposed to Mr. Garrison 
 and immediate emancipation. But because he was op- 
 posed to slavery he was driven from St. Louis. He 
 went to Alton and established his newspaper there. 
 His press was destroyed by a mob ; he obtained a 
 second and third, and the mob destroyed them also. 
 He then procured a fourth press, and had forty armed 
 men ready to protect it as it was brought from the 
 steamer into a stone building. It was thought that it 
 would be safe there, and most of the defenders went 
 away. After the night came on, Lovejoy and a few 
 
! q6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 friends remained to protect the press and the build- 
 ing. A large mob collected ; they fired at the windows 
 and the defenders returned the fire, and one man on 
 the outside was killed, The Mayor tried in vain to 
 repress the mob. Finally they put ladders to the 
 roof and set fire to it. Mr. Lovejoy came out with his 
 men and looked for the assailants ; one man fired at him 
 from behind a pile of boards and killed him. When 
 this news came to Boston, Dr. Channing and others 
 applied for the use of Faneuil Hall to protest against 
 such mob violence. It was refused. Dr. Channing 
 then appealed to the citizens of Boston, asking, " Has 
 Boston fallen so low that its citizens cannot be trusted 
 to come together to defend the principles of liberty 
 for which their fathers died ? Are our fellow-citizens 
 to be murdered in defending their rights, and are we 
 not to be allowed to express our abhorrence of the 
 deed ? " In response to this address a public meeting 
 was called in another place ; George Bond was the 
 chairman, and Benjamin F. Hallett the secretary. 
 They again applied for the use of the hall, and were so 
 strongly supported that Faneuil Hall was granted them, 
 and the meeting was held December 8th, 1837. Mr. 
 ■^James T. Austin, who was the Attorney-General of 
 the State, made a violent speech in reply to Dr. 
 Channing. He declared that Lovejoy was responsible 
 for his own death, and " died as a fool dieth." He 
 compared the Alton mob to the men who threw the 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS 107 
 
 tea into Boston harbor, the slaves to lions, tigers and 
 monkeys, who had to be chained in a menagerie. 
 Then Wendell Phillips arose ; he had not expected to 
 speak, so he tells me. He came in like other specta- 
 tors ; he went upon the platform and addressed the 
 audience. In the midst of much confusion, he replied 
 with just severity to Mr. Austin, and said among 
 other things, " When I heard him place the murderers 
 of Lovejoy by the side of Hancock, Adams, Otis and 
 Quincy, I thought those pictured lips would have 
 broken into voice to rebuke this recreant American." 
 This was the beginning of the career of Phillips as an 
 anti- slavery orator. 
 
 I have in my possession a pamphlet written at that 
 time by Mr. Austin, and will quote a single sentence 
 to show its temper and tone. " ' What is to be done 
 in regard to slavery ?' I answer, ' Nothing.' It is not 
 desirable that domestic slavery should cease in the 
 United States." I have already shown that the two 
 great political parties were both opposed to the anti- 
 slavery movement ; a large part of the church and the 
 leading theologians were also opposed to it. I will 
 give but one or two examples of this. 
 
 ^Doctor Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, an eminent 
 divine, a man of intelligence and influence, much 
 esteemed by his friends for his personal and good 
 qualities, went to Port Royal, in South Carolina on a 
 visit. On his return he was so unfortunate as to 
 
! g ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 write a book called " A South-side View of Slavery." 
 He gave a rose-colored view of that institution ; said 
 the slaves were contented and happy ; said they had 
 many privileges, and were treated very kindly ; that 
 they were not cruelly used ; that he heard them sing- 
 ing in the churches, and he therefore came to the con- 
 elusion that the Abolitionists were very much mis- 
 taken, and that slavery was not very bad after all. 
 The evil which seemed to him the most intolerable 
 was that a Southern gentleman might come to a 
 Northern State and bring a colored coachman, and 
 this coachman might be enticed away, and so the 
 slaveholder would be subject to a good deal of annoy- 
 ance. The place where he wrote this book was the 
 Old Fort Plantation at Port Royal. There is a large 
 grove of live oaks there, and in one of them is a seat ; 
 there he wrote this defence of slavery. It is a curious 
 fact that where Dr. Adams composed this book, there 
 on the 1st of January, 1863, the officer in command 
 of the United States troops read to a large assembly 
 of people, white and colored, the Proclamation of 
 Emancipation by Abraham Lincoln. A programme 
 of proceedings had been arranged, but it was inter- 
 rupted very suddenly. No sooner had this proclama- 
 tion been read, than the colored people struck up with 
 their whole heart, " My country 'tis of thee, sweet 
 Land of Liberty." Where they had learned this 
 hymn I do not know, but they had learned it, and 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y. 1 09 
 
 used it on the first occasion in their lives, when they 
 were able to say in truth, " My Country," and to call 
 it in reality a " Land of Liberty." In this place also 
 Miss Botume, a Northern lady, has during nearly 
 twenty years, taught a large school of colored chil- 
 dren. She went down to South Carolina, as many other 
 Northern teachers did, as soon as the capture of the 
 Sea Islands by the battle of Hilton Head, made it 
 possible to teach the colored people. Miss Botume, 
 Miss Towne and other teachers have seen a whole 
 generation of free colored children grow up to a use" 
 ful manhood under their instructions. 
 
 Another Northern man, also a strenuous champion 
 of slavery, was Dr. Lord, President of Dartmouth X 
 College. I have two pamphlets of his, the first called, 
 " A Letter of Inquiry to Ministers of the Gospel of 
 all Denominations," and the other " A Second Letter, 
 by Nathan Lord." This gentleman, a president of a 
 New England college, took the ground that slavery is 
 an institution of God according to natural religion ; 
 that it is not opposed to the law of Love or the Gold- 
 en Rule ; that anti-slavery is a heresy, and a false 
 doctrine ; that slavery is a very useful and wholesome 
 institution ; that it ought to be allowed to extend 
 itself over free territory ; that instead of opposing 
 slavery, Christians should oppose anti-slavery; and 
 that believing slavery to be a divine ordinance, he 
 
I j o ANT/SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 would himself gladly own or hire slaves, if conve- 
 nient.* 
 
 According to Dr. Lord, the great evil was not 
 slavery but freedom. It was not Pharaoh, but Moses 
 who was to be blamed ; and, when the prophet Isaiah 
 said that we must " break every yoke, and let the op- 
 pressed go free, ,; Dr. Lord would have called his sen- 
 timent " a destructive fallacy," and would have said 
 that the prophet showed himself " a romantic and ex- 
 citable person." 
 
 Not long after these pamphlets by Dr. Lord, an- 
 other Christian minister in the Free States came to 
 the defence of slavery ; and this time it was a bishop 
 9t of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Hopkins of Ver- 
 mont, in 1857 wrote a book called "The American 
 Citizen." It was a curious farrago, containing a little 
 of everything. He gave a translation of a part of 
 Cicero ; he told his readers how to choose a wife, and 
 opposed the use of salaratus in bread. The bishop, 
 giving his views on female education, was of the opin- 
 ion that while it was proper for a young lady to paint 
 in water-colors, she must by no means be allowed to 
 paint in oils. He then proceeded to treat of slavery, 
 maintaining that the slaves were the happiest class of 
 
 * Compare these declarations with those of Henry Clay, who, 
 though a slaveholder, declared slavery an evil and a wrong, and said 
 that nothing on earth would induce him to consent to its going to any 
 place where it did not exist. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. in 
 
 laborers in the world. Like Dr. Lord, he defended 
 the slave-trade ; and, finally, having proved to his 
 own satisfaction that slavery was right in itself, sanc- 
 tioned by Christianity, and even commanded by God, 
 and was every way a blessed institution, he very 
 curiously turned round and began to ask how it could 
 be abolished ! He proceeded to show that it might 
 easily be brought to an end by sending the whole 
 colored race back to Africa. If the people of the 
 United States would pay sixty millions annually for 
 twenty-five years, we could thus send away 40,000 a 
 year. He did not say what these emigrants were to 
 do when they reached Africa, or how they could sup- 
 port themselves there. This was regarded as wisdom 
 and conservatism in those days. And this was only 
 six years before the Proclamation of Emancipation. 
 Was it any wonder when such books as these were 
 published by the most eminent men in the Northern 
 churches, that the abolitionists should say in their 
 haste that the American church was " The Bulwark 
 of Slavery," "The Refuge of Oppression," and "A 
 Brotherhood of Thieves ? " And yet the large ma- 
 jority of men in the Northern church were opposed 
 to slavery, and furnished the recruits for abolition. 
 But Whittier described well these blind leaders of 
 the blind, as those who 
 
 u tortured the pages of the blessed bible, 
 
 To sanction crime and robbery and blood, 
 
! j 2 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS 
 
 And, in oppression's hateful service, libel 
 Both man and God." 
 
 Those people in the North who opposed the anti- 
 slavery movement might thus be classed : First, there 
 were the political opponents who feared that this 
 movement would in j ure the party machine. The word 
 " Dough-faces " was invented to describe those among 
 them who were ready to sacrifice everything to the 
 South to help their party. Mr. Calhoun was not a 
 Dough-face ; he maintained that slavery was right 
 and necessary. Southern politicians were manly and 
 outspoken, and did not conceal their sentiments. But 
 some Northern politicians were supple and cunning. 
 They were aiming at a national office, seeking per- 
 haps the presidency, and they saw very plainly that 
 the South was so sensitive on the subject of slavery, 
 and so united, that no Northern man would obtain a 
 national office unless he went all lengths in showing 
 his willingness to support the claims of the slave-power. 
 Their object was to satisfy the South and deceive the 
 North. They exhausted all devices to give a plausible 
 appearance to their concessions to the slave-power. 
 # The most eminent of these leaders were Mr. Bu- 
 chanan and Mr. Cass. Perhaps Buchanan went 
 further than Cass, for the Democrats in Mr. Cass's 
 state of Michigan were less tractable than those of 
 Pennsylvania. At the time Mr. Buchanan was nomi- 
 nated for the presidency I cut from a Richmond paper 
 
A NTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. r T 3 
 
 an article which said that Mr. Buchanan, from the very 
 first, never failed to vote for every measure the South 
 had demanded, and gave a list of these votes.* 
 
 He was rewarded for his complete subserviency to 
 the slave-power by being chosen President in 1856. 
 Whether he found himself happy in the Presidential 
 chair or not, I do not undertake to say. None of his 
 Pro-Slavery votes disturbed the confidence of the Penn- 
 sylvania Democrats. The voters of Pennsylvania, of 
 
 * This is what the Richmond Inquirer said of Mr. Buchanan when a 
 candidate for the Presidency in 1856 : 
 
 1. In 1836, Mr. Buchanan supported a bill to prohibit the circula- 
 tion of Abolition Papers through the mail. 
 
 2. In the same year he proposed and voted for the admission of 
 Arkansas . 
 
 3. In 1836-7 he denounced and voted to reject petitions for the Abo- 
 lition of Slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 
 4. In 1837 he voted for Mr. Calhoun's famous resolutions, defining 
 the rights of the States and the limits of Federal authority, and affirm- 
 ing it to be the duty of the Government to protect and uphold the 
 institutions of the South. 
 
 5. In 1838, 1839 and 1840, he invariably voted with Southern Sena- 
 tors against the consideration of anti-slavery petitions. 
 
 6. In 1844-5, ne advocated and voted for the Annexation of Texas. 
 
 7. In 1847, he sustained the Clayton Compromise. 
 
 8. In 1850, he proposed and urged the extension of the Missouri 
 Compromise to the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 9. But he promptly acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850, and em- 
 ployed all his influence in favor of the faithful execution of the Fugi- 
 tive Slave law. 
 
 10. In 1854 he remonstrated against an enactment of the Pennsylva- 
 nia Legislature for obstructing the arrest and return of fugitive slaves. 
 
 11. In 1844 he negotiated for the acquisition of Cuba. 
 
 12. In 1856 he approves the repeal of the Missouri restriction, and 
 supports the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 
 
 13. He never gave a vote against the interest of slavery and never 
 uttered a word which could pain the most sensitive Southern heart. 
 
ii 4 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 both parties, have always gladly submitted to the 
 government of the politicians. There was a story 
 among the anti-slavery speakers, about one of their 
 number who once went as a missionary into Bucks 
 county, Va., where there were many German Demo- 
 crats. He tried to convince his audience that Democ- 
 racy ought to ally itself to anti-slavery. "Why, 
 what do you call a Democrat ? " said the orator. " Is 
 he not one who believes in equal rights for all ? Is 
 he not one who believes in the freedom of all man- 
 kind?" Then an old German cried out, "That's not 
 what I calls a Democrat ; I calls a Democrat a man 
 what votes a Democratic ticket." 
 
 There were others who refused to join the anti- 
 slavery ranks, because they feared that this movement 
 would imperil the Union. To this class belonged 
 ^fMr. Webster, Mr. Everett, and Mr. Choate. Then 
 there were the ecclesiastical opponents, who dreaded 
 lest it should divide the churches. Then came the 
 commercial opponents, who were afraid that it would 
 injure trade. To these were added another class who 
 said, M We have made a contract with the South, and 
 we ought to keep that contract." The result of it 
 was that the political opposition to slavery grew 
 weaker down to the time of the formation of the 
 Republican party. In the early days both the North 
 and South agreed that slavery must be abolished, and 
 that sooner or later it would disappear. The Dane 
 
ANTI-SI. A VER Y DAYS. I r 5 
 
 proviso, to exclude it from the Northern territory, 
 was supported, as we have seen, by the Southerners 
 as well as by the Northerners in Congress. But 
 when cotton-growing began to grow profitable, the 
 belief in the abolition of slavery died out at the South. 
 The next view was that it was to divide with freedom 
 the national territory. This opinion asserted itself 
 and triumphed when the Missouri compromise was 
 passed. Then came the determination to extend the 
 domain of slavery by the annexation of Texas. Next 
 it was asserted that slavery was to be prohibited no- 
 where, but to be maintained everywhere ; that where- 
 ever slaveholders went with their slaves, they were to 
 be protected ; and finally that slavery was to command, 
 and liberty to obey. This doctrine was enforced in 
 Kansas so far a s they were able by President Pierce 
 and President Buchaman, who made themselves the 
 obedient instruments of the slave-power. 
 
 Meantime the anti-slavery movement, an ever- 
 advancing stream, " an exulting and abounding river " 
 of thought and action grew deeper, and spread more 
 widely. Among members of Congress it had such 
 advocates as those of whom I have already spoken, 
 Sumner, Chase, John P. Hale, Amos Tuck, Robert 
 Rantoul, Jr., Henry Wilson, John G. Calfrey, Joshua 
 Giddings, Charles Allen of Worcester, Stephen C. Phil- 
 lips of Salem, Slade of Vermont, Julian of Indiana. 
 Among these, Robert Rantoul of Newburyport, Mass., 
 
j i 6 • A NTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 was one of the greatest promise ; but he was too early 
 lost to his State, and to the nation. A Democrat from 
 conviction and party affiliation, he yet, like John P. 
 Hale of New Hampshire and Morris of Ohio, refused 
 to be led by his party to the support or defence of 
 slavery. His speeches show a remarkable power of 
 keen perception, prompt retort, and ready extempo- 
 raneous argument. In the latter respect I have 
 scarcely seen his equal. His face was of a Southern 
 type, and his keen eye showed the fire within. 
 
 To what has already been said of John Quincy 
 Adams, I will add the following anecdote, received 
 from Capt. Boutelle, of the Coast Survey. He tells 
 me that when he was a very young man, he went to 
 Washington to ask for a position on the Coast Survey. 
 He had one or two letters to John Quincy Adams, 
 and the old gentleman took quite an interest in this 
 youth. " I had heard him called cold," says he, " but 
 if he had been my father he could not have done 
 more for me. He went to the Secretary of the Navy, 
 and waited in the ante-chamber an hour, till he had 
 the opportunity of seeing the Secretary and securing 
 for me the position. The same week, or about that 
 time, the famous ' Latimer petition' was brought into 
 Congress. Latimer was a fugitive slave who had 
 been arrested and ransomed. This petition was in 
 favor of the right of petition in regard to slavery. 
 It was signed by 300,000 persons, and made an 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. ny 
 
 enormous roll. It was placed upon Mr. Adams' 
 de c k, in front of him ; and as he was rather a short 
 person, only his head appeared above the roll 
 He said, ' I suppose, Mr. Speaker, it is hardly neces- 
 sary to send this petition to the desk. It would take 
 two strong men to carry it ; the pag^s cannot take it. 
 It is a petition headed by George Latimer.' Then a 
 Virginian sprang up and said, ' Does Mr. Adams know 
 who this George Latimer is, who heads that petition ? ' 
 Mr. Adams, who had probably been expecting some 
 such interruption, cried out, in his chrill voice, which 
 rang through the hall, ' Yes I know very well who he 
 is. I have been credibly informed, and I certainly 
 believe the fact, that he is a descendant of one of the 
 first families of Virginia." Latimer was said to be the 
 son of his owner. 
 
 Northern men who joined the anti-slavery societies 
 were educated by reading the Liberator, the New 
 York Tribune, the New York Independent, and 
 National Era, all of which papers stood up manfully 
 for the righto of the North, and the cause of freedom. 
 These were sturdy men, and their character cannot be 
 better illustrated than by an anecdote I once heard 
 from Wendell Phillips in regard to a lecture which he 
 was to deliver in some town in New Hampshire. 
 When he arrived at the town, and went to the hall, he 
 was met outside by the President, who said to him, 
 " Mr. Phillips, what are you going to lecture about 
 
1 1 8 ANTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 
 
 this evening?" Phillips replied, "Street Life in 
 Europe." " You are not going to lecture on Abolition, 
 then ? " He answered, " No sir ; Iwas not asked to 
 do so." " There seems to be some mistake, Mr. 
 Phillips," resumed the President. " No mistake on 
 my part," responded the lecturer ; " I was asked to 
 come and give a lecture here to-night, and I have 
 come." " Please to walk into the hall," said the Pres- 
 ident of the Lyceum. He went on the platform and 
 asked, "Is the Secretary of the Lyceum in the 
 house?" Some one called out "Yes" from the 
 middle of the hall. " I told you, Mr. Secretary, when 
 you wrote to Mr. Phillips, to ask him to lecture to- 
 night on abolition. Did you do so, or did you not? " 
 " I did not" was the reply. ** Why did you not do it, 
 when the Committee told you to do so ? " " Because," 
 returned the other, " I do not mean to have abolition 
 rammed down my throat." To which the President 
 promptly responded, " I will give you to understand, 
 Mr. Secretary, that we do not mean to have you 
 rammed down our throats." A vote was taken, and i'; 
 was decided by a considerable majority thai: Mr. Phil- 
 lips should lecture on abolition, and he spoke on that 
 familiar topic during two hours. 
 
 Among the citizens of Boston who took part in this 
 anti-slavery movement were many who inherited 
 historic names, like Samuel E. Sewall, who was with 
 Garrison at the beginning, and was faithful to the end. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. 11-9 
 
 He is one of the few who remain from that early day' 
 of small things. Oliver Johnson was also one of the 
 earliest, and still remains vigorous and active in New 
 York. Mr. Robert Wallcutt was also one of the 
 earliest and most faithful, and is still living. Samuel 
 May, of Leicester, was one who never wavered in his 
 loyalty to the movement. Theodore D. Weld, who 
 by his eloquence is said to have converted most of 
 the theological students in Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, 
 to anti-slavery, and also to have made a convert of 
 James G. Birney, then a slaveholder, and to have in- 
 duced him to emancipate his slaves, is also still 
 vigorous and active. So is Henry Ward Beecher, 
 whose services in the cause were so very great. 
 
 The sons of Dr. Bowditch, the great mathematician, 
 William I. Bowditch and Henry I. Bowditch, both 
 active champions of the slave, are living still. So are 
 Parker Pillsbury, and the twaJELoats, with Charles L. 
 Remond and Mr. Buffum. But Edmund Quincy and 
 Horace Mann are gone ; and David Lee Child and 
 Lydia Maria Child, Ellis Gray Loring and Louisa 
 Loring, Dr. Follen and Eliza Follen, Wm. Goodell, 
 Francis Jackson, Richard Hildreth, Samuel G. Howe 
 and William Jay. One man whose eloquence then 
 thrilled us is also living, I mean Frederick Douglass, 
 a wonderful proof of the power which is born out of 
 terrible experience. Beside this, Douglass has a great 
 gift of language, and a fine sense of art, which places 
 
1 2 o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 him among the first orators of our time. There were 
 great numbers of noble men and women whose names 
 were scarcely heard of, but who were as devoted as 
 those I have mentioned. They had no care for fame 
 or notoriety, and it was only by accident if they 
 became distinguished. Such were the two Misses 
 Grimke, who left South Carolina because they could 
 no longer endure the atmosphere of slavery. Brought 
 up in the Episcopal Church, they left it when they 
 found it wedded to slavery, and joined the Friends 
 and became able advocates of human rights. Such 
 was Mattie Griffiths and her sister, who left 
 Kentucky for the same reason, emancipating their 
 slaves and leaving themselves without a support. 
 
 Many of these admirable men and women have been 
 immortalized in the poems of Whittier, which are like 
 a gallery of portraits — a portrait-gallery devoted to 
 the heroes, saints and martyrs of our time. There 
 you find the picture of Garrison,— 
 
 11 Champion of those who groan beneath 
 Oppression's iron hand." 
 
 By his side is that of Governor Ritner, of Pennsyl- 
 vania, the only Northern Governor who, when the 
 slave-power demanded that the Northern States should 
 put down abolition, answered that he " would never 
 submit to give up the free discussion of any subject." 
 
ANTI-SLA VEP Y D/YS. 121 
 
 " Thank God for the token— one lip is still free, 
 One spirit untrammelled, unbending one knee ; 
 Thank God that one arm from the shackle has broken; 
 Thank God that one man as a freeman has spoken." 
 
 And near by is the portrait of Captain Jonathan 
 Walker, of Massachusetts, who was fined, imprisoned 
 and branded on the hand for helping slaves to escape 
 from Florida. 
 
 " Welcome home again, brave seaman, with thy thoughtful brow and 
 
 [gray. 
 And the old heroic spirit of an earlier, better day ; 
 With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain, 
 Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain." 
 
 And there is the portrait of Charles Follen, so 
 sweet and so brave, banished from Europe for loving 
 freedom there, yet keeping his love of freedom here. 
 Not like many others, fleeing from tyranny abroad to 
 become the allies of tyrants in their new home ; not 
 like too many of the European patriots, who merely 
 hated despotism when they themselves suffered from 
 it. Such a mean-souled patriot was John Mitchell, 
 who declared that he would like a plantation in 
 Alabama "stocked with fat negroes." But Follen 
 was not such a man. He allied himself to the anti- 
 slavery cause when it was most unpopular, and sacri- 
 ficed his position in that cause. 
 
 " Friend of my soul ! as with moist eye 
 I look up from this page of thine — 
 Is it a dream that thou art nigh ? 
 Thy mild face gazing into mine ? 
 
! 2 2 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 "The calm brow through the parted hair, 
 The gentle lips which knew no guile, 
 Softening the blue eyes' thoughtful care 
 With the bland beauty of their smile." 
 
 And there, in Whittier's gallery, is the portrait of 
 Leggett, the New York journalist, the Democrat who 
 believed in real democracy and contended for entire 
 freedom of thought and speech. And there also, in 
 this impartial collection, is Silas Wright, one of the 
 great Leaders of the Democratic party, who saw the 
 perils from the slave-power and was man enough to 
 resist it. 
 
 " Man of the millions ! thou art lost too soon." 
 
 And then comes Channing, a nobler form — hero 
 and saint in one. 
 
 " In vain shall Rome her portals bar, 
 And shut from him her saintly prize, 
 Whom in the world's great calendar, 
 All men shall canonize." 
 
 Then comes the picture of the chivalric Torrey, 
 born near Plymouth Rock, and full of the Pilgrim 
 soul, Going to a convention at Annapolis, as a 
 reporter for a Washington paper, and being known as 
 an abolitionist, he was thrust into a prison-cell, and 
 afterward, when delivered, he went to Virginia to aid 
 a family to escape, and was arrested and sentenced to 
 six months in the penitentiary, where he died of 
 hardship and privation.. His body was brought to 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 1 2 3 
 
 Boston, and Park Street Church, where his brother 
 worshipped, was refused for the funeral service. He 
 rests in Mount Auburn, and his soul is enshrined by 
 Whittier. 
 
 Another picture is of Daniel Neall, a friend of the 
 slave. 
 
 " Formed on the good old plan, 
 
 A true, and brave, and downright honest man ; 
 Who tranquilly in life's great task-field wrought.'' 
 
 And there is the portrait of Robert Rantoul. 
 
 " He who had sat at Sidney's feet, 
 And walked with Pym and Vane apart, 
 And through the centuries felt the beat 
 Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's heart ; 
 
 ' No wild enthusiast of the right, 
 Self-poised and clear, he showed alway 
 The coolness of this Northern night, 
 The ripe repose of autumn's day." 
 
 And there is the best portrait ever taken of Dr. 
 Howe — the hero, the knight, the Bayard of our time 
 — he who fought by the side of Byron in Greece ; he 
 who fought with the Poles against Russia ; he who 
 stood by the side of the patriots behind the barricades 
 of Paris in 1830 ; he who helped old John Brown, of 
 Osawatomie, in 1859, and who was the friend of the 
 blind, the deaf and dumb, the sufferers and the weak. 
 
 " Wouldst know him now ? Behold him ! 
 The Cadmus of the blind — 
 Giving the dumb lips language, 
 The idiot clay a mind. 
 
124 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 " Walking his round of duty 
 Serenely, day by day ; 
 With the strong man's hand of labor 
 And childhood's heart of play. 
 
 " Wherever outraged Nature 
 Asks word or action brave ; 
 Wherever struggles labor, 
 Wherever groans a slave. 
 
 " Wherever rise the peoples, 
 Wherever sinks a throne, 
 The throbbing heart of Freedom finds 
 An answer in his own." 
 
 And here is the picture of Charles Sumner — in 
 which he is described as combining the scathing power 
 of Brougham, with Canning's grace — described as 
 having been nourished by all the Muses, springing 
 from their arms an athlete to smite the Python of 
 our time ; described as placing on the shrine of free- 
 dom the gifts of Cumae and of Delphi ; and as stand- 
 ing strong as truth, tranquil-fronted, and above all the 
 tumult of earth. 
 
 Next, Whittier gives us the sight of Barbour, 
 killed in Kansas by the border ruffians — dying in de- 
 fence of freedom. 
 
 11 Bear him, comrades, to his grave, 
 Never over one more brave, 
 Shall the prairie grasses wave. 
 
 " Bear him up the frozen hill, 
 O'er the land he came to till, 
 And his poor hut roofed with sod. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 125 
 
 Patience friends! the human heart 
 Everywhere shall take our part; 
 Everywhere for us shall pray 
 
 " On our side are Nature's laws, 
 And God's life is in the cause 
 That we suffer for to-day. 
 
 M Frozen earth to frozen breast, 
 Lay our slain one down to rest, 
 
 Lay him down in hope and faith." 
 
 Then we see the fair face and clear eye of Starr 
 King. 
 
 " The great work laid upon his twoscore years, 
 Is done and well done ; if we drop our tears, 
 Who loved him as few men were ever loved, 
 We mourn no blighted hope, or broken plan 
 With him whose life stands rounded and approved 
 In the full growth and stature of a man. 
 O East and West ! O morn and sunset ! twain 
 No more forever ! Has he lived in vain, 
 Who, Priest of Freedom, made you one, and told 
 Your bridal service from his lips of gold." 
 
 When we ask what was the power, what the mo- 
 tive, which united these anti-slavery men, and enabled 
 them to resist and finally conquer the immense array 
 of force opposed to them, we must say first that it 
 was because they had on their side justice and truth, 
 "and who knows not," said Milton, "that truth is 
 strong — next the Almighty." 
 
 But to this motive was joined another. Man's 
 courage and energy is often roused by the very diffi- 
 culty and danger of the task before him. Why do 
 men climb the Matterhorn ; go out to India to shoot 
 
126 ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS. 
 
 tigers ; go to the North Pole to be frozen in those 
 awful deserts of cold ; find their way to the sources 
 of the Nile, or of the Congo ? Partly, I think, be- 
 cause of the very danger and difficulty of these enter- 
 prises. God has put in the human brain the organ 
 of combat; not that man shall fight bitter battles 
 with his brother-man, but that he may fight against 
 evils, falsehoods, wrongs and cruelties. Every re- 
 former must have a large organ of combativeness, 
 and an equally large organ of destructiveness. Then, 
 besides all other motives, he is inspired by the joy of 
 the combat — the dread delight of battle. A desire to 
 battle with wrongs and destroy them is not inconsis- 
 tent with good will towards the wrong-doer. Such 
 was the temper of the abolitionists — their words were 
 sharp, and pointed, and like the Sword of the Spirit 
 pierced through to the dividing asunder of all sophis- 
 tries and falsehoods. But their hearts were kind and 
 their feelings tender, and those who knew them best 
 will testify that they were, after all, a good-natured 
 and affectionate people. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 27 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ANTI-SLAVERY IN POLITICS. 
 
 u Count me o'er earths chosen heroes. They were men who stood 
 alone, 
 While the crowd they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone ; 
 Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline 
 To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine," 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 There have been three parties in the United 
 States which had for their main object to resist the 
 aggressions of the slave-power by political action. 
 First came the " Liberty Party" formed in 1840 by 
 a convention at Albany, presided over by Alvin 
 Smith, an early abolitionist, and a man of great 
 ability. It nominated James G, Birney for President, 
 and at the election which made Gen. Harrison, Presi- 
 dent, it cast only 7000 votes out of 2,000,000. In 1841, 
 Salmon P. Chase joined its ranks. In 1843 it held a 
 convention at Buffalo, which Stephen S Foster said, 
 " was one of the most earnest, patriotic, and intelligent 
 bodies which ever met on this continent." In 1844, 
 it cast 60,000 votes, held the balance in New York, 
 and defeated Henry Clay, and so caused the election 
 of Polk and the annexation of Texas — which was proba 
 bly a great mistake. 
 
 The next political anti-slavery party was the " Free- 
 
1 2 3 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 Soil" party — formed in 1848, to oppose the extension 
 of slavery into new territories. It met at Buffalo, 
 August 9, and nominated Mr. Van Buren for the 
 Presidency and threw 270,000 votes, most of which 
 being taken from the Democratic party, caused Gen. 
 Cass to lose the State of New York, and gave the 
 election to Gen. Taylor. The third political party op- 
 posed to Slavery was the " Republican " party, which 
 Mr. Wilson says was formed and christened in Michi- 
 gan by a fusion of Free-Soilers and Whigs opposed 
 to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. This bill passed in 
 May 1854, repealed the Missouri Compromise, and 
 admitted slavery into all the territories of the United 
 States. 
 
 July 6th, 1854, a convention in Michigan of Free- 
 Soilers and Whigs formed a new union and called it 
 the Republican party. This was followed by a gen- 
 eral uprising of the people of the North. It nomi- 
 nated Gen. Fremont for the Presidency. He was 
 defeated in 1856, by James Buchanan. There were 
 three candidates, Buchanan, (Democrat) Fillmore, 
 (American) and Fremont (Republican). Fremont 
 received 1,340,000 votes. In the next election, in 
 i860, the Republican party elected Lincoln as Presi- 
 dent by a popular vote of 1,866,000 against 1,575,000 
 for Douglas, 847,000 for Breckenridge, and 590,000 
 for the Bell and Everett ticket. In 20 years it rose 
 ora 7,000 votes to nearly 2,000,000. While these 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. l2 g 
 
 political anti-slavery movements were going on, the old 
 abolitionists under the lead of Garrison, Phillips antf 
 others had decided to oppose all voting and all politi- 
 cal efforts under the Constitution. They adopted as 
 their motto, " No Union with Slaveholders." Their 
 hope for abolishing slavery was in inducing the North 
 to dissolve the Union. Edmund Quincy said the 
 Union was " a confederacy with crime " that " the 
 experiment of a great nation with popular institutions 
 had signally failed ; " that the Republic was " not a 
 model, but a warning to the nations ; " that the whole 
 people must be " either slaveholders or slaves ; " that 
 the only escape for " the slave from his bondage was 
 over the ruins of the American Church and the 
 American State ; " and that it was the unalterable 
 purpose of the Garrisonians to labor for the dissolu- 
 tion of the Union." Wendell Phillips said on one 
 occasion, " Thank God, I am not a citizen of the 
 United States." As late as 1861, he declared the 
 Union a failure, and argued for the Dissolution of the 
 Union as " the best possible method of abolishing 
 slavery."* 
 
 *Speech in Music Hall, Boston, Jan. 20th, 1861. 
 " I have recently received a note from Wendell Phillips, in which 
 he says — " I have heard that you said in your lectures something of 
 this kind, that the Garrisonians abstained from voting as one means 
 of abolishing, or their means of abolishing slavery — which does not 
 correctly represent us. As I am very proud of the stand we took, 
 and the reason we gave for it, allow me to explain. We abstained 
 from voting because we thought it wrong to do an act which implied 
 
i3° 
 
 ANH-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 1 
 
 In thus contending for the abolition of slavery by 
 disunion, and arguing that this was the true anti- 
 slavery course, we now see that Garrison, Phillips and 
 their friends were mistaken. Slavery was abolished 
 not by disunion, but by the power which opposed 
 disunion. If the North had agreed to disunion and 
 had followed the advice of Phillips in January 1861, 
 to " build a bridge of gold to take the Slave States 
 out of the Union," slavery would probably be still ex- 
 isting in all the Southern States. At all events, it 
 was not abolished by those who wished for disunion, 
 but by those who were determined at all hazards and 
 by every sacrifice to maintain the Union. 
 
 Meantime, though the Garrison party were mis- 
 taken as to their methods, they contributed a mighty 
 influence in other ways toward the abolition of sla- 
 very. As agitators they were unwearied in pointing 
 out the evils of slavery. Garrison, Phillips, Quincy, 
 Wright, Foster, Burleigh, Pilsbury, Buffum — Mrs. 
 
 j an oath to support the United States Constitution — a Constitution 
 which we held to be a covenant with Death, and an agreement with 
 
 • Hell — one that pledged its citizens to help return fugitive slaves, 
 which we never intended to do, but just the contrary." 
 
 No doubt that Mr. Phillips only did what was right and honorable 
 
 \ in refusing to vote while holding these views. He, however, did more. 
 He advocated the dissolution of the Union. He said (Jan. 15, 1875), 
 — " For my parti am for the dissolution of the Union, and I seek it 
 as an abolitionist. I seek it, first and primarily, to protect the slave. 
 Primarily, it is an Anti-Slavery measure." See also the passage quoted 
 above from his speech of Jan. 20, 1861. The fact remains that sla- 
 very was abolished, not by the Dissolution of the Union, but by those 
 
 I who resisted its dissolution. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS, ^l 
 
 Child, Mrs. Chapman, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelley, 
 Lucy Stone, Mrs. Follen, Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring, the 
 Mays, the Grimke sisters, and many more labored in- 
 cessantly for the object. Though the churches in a 
 large degree were lukewarm, or opposed to anti- 
 slavery, many clergymen of all denominations were 
 actively on the side of this movement. Conspicuous 
 among these were such men as Beriah Green and 
 Henry Ward Beecher ; and among the Unitarian 7 
 ministers, whom I remember the best as being one of ' 
 their body, who took an open part in the anti-slavery 
 struggle, I may mention Dr. Channing, John Pier- 
 pont, Wm. Henry Furness, Theodore Parker, Dr, 
 Follen, Noah Worcester, Dr. Willard, Henry Ware, 
 Jr., John G. Palfrey, Thos. T. Stone, Rufus P. Steb- 
 bins, Wm. Henry Channing, John T. Sargent, John 
 Parkman, Jr., Caleb Stetson, O. B. Frothingham, Dr. 
 Charles Lowell, Dr. Francis, George F. Simmons, 
 John Weiss, Geo. W. Briggs, Thomas W. Higginson, 
 Fred. Frothingham, R. F. Wallcutt, S. R. Craft, i 
 Charles T. Brooks, and others. In 1845, one hun-j 
 dred and seventy Unitarian Ministers signed a protest 
 against slavery, prepared by a Committee appointed 
 for that purpose, of which I was one. It was drawn 
 up by myself, and accepted by the Committee with 
 some slight alterations * 
 
 *The following reminiscences of Dr. Channing by Mrs. Child were 
 written after his death, and published in his Memoir : — 
 
 " I shall always recollect the first time I ever saw Dr. Channing in 
 
132 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 One of the most eminent opponents of slavery 
 among the body of the clergy, was Dr John G. Pal- 
 private. It was immediately after I published my ' Appeal in favor 
 of that class of Americans called Africans,' in 1833. A publication 
 taking broad anti-slavery ground was then a rarity. I sent a copy to 
 Dr. Channing, and a few days after he came to see me at Cottage 
 Place, a mile and a half from his residence on Mt. Vernon Street. It 
 was a very bright sunny day ; but he carried his cloak on his arm for 
 fear of changes in temperature, and he seemed fatigued with the long 
 walk. He stayed nearly three hours, during which time we held a 
 most interesting conversation on the general interests of humanity, 
 and on slavery in particular. He expressed great joy at the publica- 
 tion of the ' Appeal/ and added, ' The reading of it has aroused my 
 conscience to the query whether I ought to remain silent on the sub- 
 ject.' He urged me never to desert the cause through evil report or 
 good report. 
 
 " We afterwards had many interviews. He often sent tor me when 
 I was in Boston, and always urged me to come and tell him of every 
 new aspect of the anti-slavery cause. At every interview I could see 
 that he grew bolder and stronger on the subject, while I felt that I 
 grew wiser and more just. At first I thought him timid, and even 
 slightly time-serving, but I soon discovered that I formed this esti- 
 mate merely from ignorance of his character. I learned that it was 
 justice to all, not popularity for himself, which rendered him so cau- 
 tious. He constantly grew upon my respect, until I came to regard 
 him as the wisest as well as the gentlest apostle of humanity. I owe 
 him thanks for helping to preserve me from the one-sidedness into 
 which zealous reformers are apt to run. He never sought to under- 
 value the importance of anti-slavery, but he said many things to pre- 
 vent my looking upon it as the only question interesting to humanity. 
 My mind needed this check, and I never think of his many-sided con- 
 versations without deep gratitude. His interest in the subject con- 
 stantly increased, and I never met him without being struck with the 
 progress he had made in overcoming some difficulty which for a time 
 troubled his sensitive conscience. I can distinctly recollect several 
 such steps. At one time he was doubtful whether it was right to pe- 
 tition Congress on the subject, because such petitions exasperated our 
 Southern brethren, and, as he thought, made them more tenacious of 
 their system. He afterwards headed petition himself. In all such 
 cases he was held back by the conscientious fear of violating some 
 
ANTI-SLA VERY DA YS. 
 
 133 
 
 frey. His father dying in New Orleans, left to his 
 children his property, a part of which was in slaves. 
 Dr. Palfrey's brother wrote to him that, as he probably 
 would not wish to receive slaves as his share, they 
 would make an arrangement by which his part of the 
 estate should consist of something else, which he 
 could conscientiously take. " No ! " said Dr. Palfrey, 
 " that would be exactly the same as though I had sold 
 the slaves. I prefer to take the slaves, and I propose 
 to emancipate them." But he found that he could 
 not do it without an act of the legislature of Louisiana. 
 He went to Louisiana and succeeded in getting per- 
 mission to emancipate them, he took the people to 
 Boston and by the help of some anti-slavery friends 
 they soon became able to support themselves. But 
 Palfrey was not the man to speak of such things ; he 
 never said anything about it, but let it drop into for- 
 getfulness as soon as possible. Another clergyman 
 who was filled with zeal on this subject was Theodore 
 Parker, who not only preached continually in regard 
 to all the events that occurred, but published many 
 pamphlets and papers in regard to slavery. I recol- 
 lect that they began as early as the time of the Mexi- 
 can war. There was to be a meeting at that time in 
 Faneuil Hall to oppose the war, as unnecessary and 
 
 other duty while endeavoring to fulfil his duty to the slave. Some 
 zealous reformers misunderstood this, and construed into a love of 
 popularity what was, in fact, but a fine sense of justice, a more univer- 
 sal love of his species." 
 
I3 4 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 wrong. The hall was largely filled with men who had 
 enlisted to go to Mexico, and were there to prevent the 
 speakers from being heard. I sat next to Theodore 
 Parker on the platform. When he attempted to. speak 
 they interrupted him, calling out, " Throw him over !" 
 He stopped and said, " What good will it do you to 
 throw me over ? You are men of Massachusetts, 
 you would not hurt me, I have not the least fear on 
 that subject ; I shall go home to-night unarmed and 
 unattended, and none of you here will do me any 
 harm." Then they cheered him. 
 
 I know of churches which were ready from first to 
 last, always to hear whatever might be said on this 
 subject on both sides. I have been present in church- 
 meetings at discussions on slavery at which Mr. Gar- 
 rison, Mr. Samuel J. May, Horace Greely, and other 
 anti-slavery men spoke, and were, I remember, re- 
 plied to by the friends of Mr. Webster, and by those 
 who strongly opposed abolition. 
 
 A rather amusing incident took place in my own 
 church in Boston, on one occasion. A member of the 
 society had left us and had gone to Theodore Parker's. 
 Mr. Parker said to us, " There is a curious man who 
 has come to my church from yours. He said he 
 heard so much anti-slavery preaching in your church, 
 that he meant to leave it and come to mine." 
 
 This was rather droll, considering that Theodore 
 Parker was the most determined and constant anti- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. j 3 5 
 
 slavery preacher in the city. The motive, however, 
 which induced this gentleman to go, was a strong ser- 
 mon he had recently heard in my pulpit from S. J. 
 May. Shortly after this there was a meeting in Bos- 
 ton of a body of come-outers, who were Non-Residents 
 and Radicals of an extreme type. They could not 
 get a hall in which to hold their meetings and asked 
 leave to occupy our church on Sunday afternoon. It 
 was granted them. I went to see what they were 
 about, and, as I entered, some brother from the rural 
 districts was saying, " all the clergy of the churches 
 are utterly opposed to reform. I do not know what 
 this church is where we are meeting, and I do not 
 know who the minister is, but I venture to say that it 
 is wholly pro-slavery, and that the minister is a pro- 
 slavery man too." I rose and told them the story of 
 this friend who had gone from us to Parker, in order 
 to hear less anti-slavery preaching, and added, " If 
 you have any doubt as to the accuracy of this state- 
 ment, you can inquire of the man himself, for I see 
 the gentleman here this afternoon in this congrega- 
 tion. 
 
 In 1850 came the '« Compromises," as they were 
 called, between the North and the South, between 
 slavery and freedom. They were called Compromises, 
 but as usual their influence was against the cause of 
 liberty. There had been for a long time a bitter 
 struggle on the floor of Congress between the Repre- 
 
1 36 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 sentatives from the North and the South on the sub- 
 ject of slavery. This ended in a bill proposed by 
 Henry Clay which was supported both by the Whigs 
 and Democrats. After a long struggle which 
 lasted fully four months, these "" Compromises," so 
 called, finally passed, and the bill was signed by the 
 Acting President, Millard Fillmore. The object was 
 to put an end to all further discussion in regard to 
 slavery, and to put down all anti-slavery agitation. 
 Both parties pledged themselves to prevent any more 
 discussion. The bill was introduced by Henry Clay 
 on May 8, 1850, and passed Sept. 9, the same year. 
 The particular points were these : 
 
 1. That when the time came, four more slave states 
 were to be admitted from Texas. 
 
 2. California was to be admitted as a free state. 
 
 3. There was to be no Wilmot proviso passed to 
 forbid slavery in the territories. 
 
 4. Ten million dollars was to be given to Texas for 
 agreeing to assent to a corrected boundary of New 
 Mexico. 
 
 5. The New Fugitive Slave Law was to be made 
 effective, by which slaveholders could more easily re- 
 cover their fugitive slaves. By that law it was de- 
 cided that any person claiming a slave might go before 
 any U. S. Commissioner, and by proving to the Com- 
 missioner's satisfaction the identity of the man, and 
 that he had escaped from slavery, he could carry him 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. 1 3 7 
 
 into slavery without any trial by jury. The question 
 was to be decided by the simple opinion of the U. S. 
 Commissioner on those two points. 
 
 6. The last point of the compromise was that the 
 slave trade was to be prohibited in the District of 
 Columbia, but slavery was not to be abolished there. 
 
 It was at this time that Mr. Webster made his 7th 
 of March speech supporting all these measures. We 
 have not space to discuss here the question of the 
 position of Mr. Webster. It is undeniable that great 
 disappointment was felt at the North, not only by the 
 anti-slavery people, but also by Mr. Webster's personal 
 friends and supporters. It is a fact sufficiently vouched 
 for that Mr. Thomas B. Stevenson, one of Mr. Web- 
 ster's strongest friends and supporters, was so aston- 
 ished and confounded when this report came, that he 
 took to his bed for some days. This fact has been 
 publicly stated by Mr. Stevenson's own sister. 
 
 The Massachusetts legislature were much agitated 
 by Mr. Webster's speech. Conventions were called 
 to express disapprobation, and the whole feeling in 
 Massachusetts was of great gloom and discourage- 
 ment. The feeling was that Mr. Webster had gone 
 over from his former position, that he had allied him- 
 self to the South, and that his speech was a bid for 
 the Presidency, His course was severely criticised 
 by many leading men of the Whig party, to which he 
 belonged. J. T. Buckingham said in the legislature 
 
1 38 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 that he had been a personal friend of Daniel Web- 
 ster's for thirty years ; that he had looked up to him 
 as a mentor and guide, but " we are now on the opposite 
 sides of the moral universe." 
 
 In 1830, when Webster made his great speech in 
 answer to Hayne of South Carolina, I recollect the 
 effect produced on myself as on others, by that fa- 
 mous sentence in which he speaks of Massachusetts * 
 
 I know I felt at that time that to have heard that 
 speech delivered I would willingly have walked from 
 Boston to Washington. And those of my own age 
 who had been brought up with these feelings of rev- 
 erence for Daniel Webster, and also had been taught 
 by him and others to abhor slavery, naturally felt all 
 the more grieved and wounded, at what seemed to us 
 the apostacy of our great chief. Nothing could better 
 express our feelings than Browning's well known 
 lines on " The Lost Leader," slightly modified thus : 
 
 " We who had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 
 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
 Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die. 
 
 * u Mr. President, I will enter into no encomium on Massachusetts. 
 She needs none. There she is. Look at her, and judge for yourselves. 
 There is her history. The world knows it by heart. The past, at 
 least, is secure. There are Concord and Lexington, Boston and 
 Bunker Hill, and there they will stand forever. The bones of her 
 sons, fallen in the great struggle for Independence, lie mingled with 
 the soil of every State, from Maine to Georgia, and there thev will lie 
 forever." 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 1 39 
 
 "Chatham was for us, Franklin was of us, 
 Washington, Jefferson watched from their graves, 
 He alone, breaks from the van and the freemen — 
 He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves." 
 
 After the years which have passed, softening all 
 feelings, these words may be too severe. But even 
 now we can read with sympathy Whittier's solemn 
 dirge, repeated by Horace Mann in the House of 
 Representatives, in reference to this 7th of March 
 speech. 
 
 " So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn, 
 Which once he wore ! 
 The glory from his grey hairs gone 
 For evermore. 
 
 ** Revile him not, the tempter hath 
 A snare for all ! 
 And pitying tears., not scorn and wrath, 
 Befit his fall. 
 
 " O 1 dumb be passion's stormy rage, 
 
 When he who might 
 
 Have lighted up and led his age 
 
 Falls back in night. 
 ***** 
 
 " Of all we loved and honored, naught 
 
 Save power remains, — 
 
 A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
 
 Still strong in chains. 
 
 All else is gone ; from those great eyes 
 
 The soul has fled; 
 
 When faith is lost, when honor dies 
 
 The man is dead." 
 
 Now the friends of Mr. Webster say that this is all 
 unjust ; that Mr. Webster was actuated simply by his 
 
t 4 q A NTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 desire to save the Union and maintain the Constitu- 
 tion, and the rights which the South had under the 
 Constitution ; to keep the contract which the fathers 
 had made, and that it was on this account alone that 
 he made this speech. They say that he felt that the 
 Union stood in great peril, and that he must go as far 
 as he could in doing what might be done in support- 
 ing some kind of compromise on which the North and 
 South could unite. There is no doubt that he ought 
 to have the credit of this reasoning. I certainly be- 
 lieve that this was in a large measure the motive which 
 actuated Mr. Webster at the time. Nevertheless 
 there was this conviction in the minds of men that he 
 had made a change, and a great change. He had 
 again and again denounced slavery, and the slave- 
 power. For instance in his first speech on Foote's 
 Resolutions, he said this of Dane's resolution exclud- 
 ing slavery from the Northwest Territories. (Web- 
 ster's works, vol. 3, page 263.) 
 
 " I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, 
 ancient or modern, has produced effects of more dis- 
 tinct, marked and lasting a character than the Ordi- 
 nance of 1787. The instrument was drawn by Nathan 
 Dane, then and now, a citizen of Massachusetts. It 
 fixed forever the character of the population in the vast 
 region northwest of the Ohio, by excluding from them 
 involuntary servitude. It impressed on the soil itself, 
 while yet a wilderness, an incapacity to sustain any 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. 141 
 
 other than freemen." Webster calls it " a vast good 
 obtained," " a great and salutary measure of preven- 
 tion." He asks any intelligent Kentuckian if such an 
 ordinance had been offered to his State when a wilder- 
 ness, "whether he does not suppose it would have 
 contributed to the ultimate greatness of that common- 
 wealth." 
 
 And now it was proposed to affix a similar legal 
 barrier by the Wilmot Proviso to prevent slavery from 
 entering the newly acquired territory of New Mexico 
 and California, and Mr. Webster refused to do it. 
 
 He had said, (Aug. 12, 1848), "I shall consent to 
 no extension of slavery on this continent nor to any 
 increase of slave representation in the other House of 
 Congress." After taking this position, to leave it be- 
 cause he believed that from the conformation of the 
 land in New Mexico, slavery could not enter it, show- 
 ed a very important change of position. He said that 
 the law of nature, and the law of physical geography 
 settled forever the fact that slavery could not exist in 
 California and New Mexico. But there were silver 
 mining and gold mining in those territories and there 
 has never been a gold or silver mining country where 
 slavery has not been welcome. If the land is fertile, 
 slavery comes in to increase the amount of wealth 
 produced from the soil, as is the case in the cotton 
 regions. If the soil is barren and sterile, slavery 
 comes in to take the hard labor from the hands of the 
 
142 
 
 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS 
 
 people and put it on the shoulders of the slave. Mr. 
 Webster said, " if a bill were now before us to provide 
 a territorial government for New Mexico, I would not 
 vote to put any prohibition of slavery into it what- 
 ever." That was one of the things which shocked the 
 North. 
 
 Mr. Webster gave, as his only reason for refusing to 
 exclude slavery by law from the new territories, that 
 it was already excluded by a law of nature, and that he 
 would not uselessly re-affirm an ordinance of nature, or 
 re-enact the will of God. But did not Mr. Webster know 
 that all our laws are meant to carry out the will of God, 
 that when we make a law against theft or murder "wo 
 re-enact the will of God ?" 
 
 He maintained, however, that this proviso was use- 
 less, because the formation of the earth in these ter- 
 ritories settled forever that slavery could not exist in 
 California or New Mexico. He explained his meaning 
 by saying, " California and New Mexico are Asiatic 
 in their formation and scenery. They are composed 
 of vast ridges of mountains of great height." If 
 an "Asiatic" conformation could exclude slavery, 
 it is somewhat remarkable that slavery exists now, 
 and has existed for centuries in every country of Asia, 
 as I believe without one exception, unless where it has 
 been abolished by positive enactment of European 
 Governments. 
 
 Another serious complaint made against Mr. Web- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA KS*. T 43 
 
 ster was this — that after declaring that a trial by jury 
 ought to be given under the fugitive law, he voted for 
 Mr. Mason's bill, by which no such right was con- 
 ferred. In 1848 (Aug. 12), he had said, " It was a 
 maxim of the Civil Law that between slavery and 
 freedom, freedom should always be preserved, and 
 slavery must be proved." " Such, I suppose, is the 
 general law of mankind." But, by Mr. Mason's bill, 
 slavery was preserved, and liberty had to be proved. 
 A colored man, living in a free State, paying taxes as 
 a free man, regarded by all as free, could be seized 
 and carried away as a slave without seeing either a 
 judge or a jury. And this, though the Constitution 
 of the United States declares that " No one shall be 
 deprived of life, liberty or property without due pro- 
 cess of law." 
 
 Mr. Wilson, in his history of the " Rise and Fall of 
 t.he Slave-Power," charges Mr. Webster also with 
 gratuitously volunteering his opinion that Congress 
 was bound to divide Texas hereafter into four slave- 
 holding States. I think that this charge, (which I 
 also on one occasion endorsed in public), can hardly 
 be maintained, in view of the fact that four new States 
 were allowed in the joint resolution by which Texas 
 was annexed to the Union, though it did not deter- 
 mine that they should necessarily be slave States." 
 
 Now we might consider that Mr. Webster was ac- 
 tuated by a desire to preserve the Union from danger 
 
! 44 ANTI-S.LA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 and dissolution, and to do justice to the provisions of 
 the Constitution if he had done no more than this. 
 But he did a great deal more. The anti-slavery peo- 
 ple always said that one of his motives was a desire 
 to be President of the United States, and his friends 
 have admitted that fact. They have admitted not 
 only that he desired to be President of the United 
 States, but that he was very much disappointed in not 
 getting a nomination. A pamphlet has lately been 
 published containing the address of Mr. Stephen M. 
 Allen, President of the Webster Historical Society, 
 made at the Webster Centennial, October 12, 1882. 
 In his address, Mr. Allen says, " That Daniel Web- 
 ster wanted to be President of the United States, I 
 concede. But that was a laudable ambition." " He 
 believed to his dying day that if the people had had 
 their own way, unbiased by selfish and jealous party- 
 leaders, he would have been elected President of the 
 United States." 
 
 But if Mr. Webster had fixed his heart upon that 
 position, what follows ? That he must have known, 
 perfectly well, by his long experience in Washington, 
 that no one could be elected President in 1852 but by 
 the consent of the slave-power. He knew that the 
 slave-power would not consent to the election of any 
 man who did not show to them that he was on their 
 side in their determination to extend slavery into all 
 the territories, and to maintain it by all means where 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS. I45 
 
 it existed. He could not have hoped for a nomination 
 unless he was willing to show them that he would go 
 as far as any other leading Whig to satisfy them on 
 these points, and that he was able and willing to de- 
 fend their interests more powerfully than any other 
 man who could be nominated. He made quite a 
 number of campaign speeches, in which he violently 
 denounced the anti-slavery party, abused the aboli- 
 tionists, called them a "rub-a-dub" party, and said 
 many other similar things. When speaking in Vir- 
 ginia he said that the higher law was an absurdity. 
 " What is the higher law ? " said he, " How high is 
 it ? Is it higher than the Blue Ridge ? Higher 
 than the Alleghany Mountains ? " It seems impossi- 
 ble to believe that a man of his great intelligence 
 could have said such things as this, unless his motive 
 was to please the South and to obtain the next presi- 
 dential nomination. 
 
 But, after all, we must remember his great services. 
 The power which he exercised in creating and main- 
 taining a Union sentiment was certainly one great 
 factor in the war for Union and Freedom. There 
 were two great forces which united to enable the 
 North to conquer — the love of the Union and the love 
 of Freedom. Mr. Webster had contributed mightily 
 to create that love of the Union which resisted Seces 
 sion, and which sternly opposed the dissolution of 
 that Union. Meantime, the anti-slavery movement, 
 
i 4 6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 led by Garrison and his friends, with the aid of the 
 great political anti-slavery parties, had done as much 
 to create an abhorrence of slavery and its extension. 
 And these two great forces united in their opposition 
 to Secession, which struck its blow at once against 
 Union and against Freedom. The dissolution of the 
 Union would have perpetuated slavery. There cer- 
 tainly has never been in this country any other public 
 man who had such a commanding genius as Daniel 
 Webster — never one who had so much reserved force. 
 One of the most pathetic and tragic features of the 
 whole affair was that he never seemed to have a cause 
 equal to his capacity, and that the only cause which 
 would have been sufficiently great to bring out all his 
 ability was the anti-slavery movement. If he had put 
 himself at the head of the movement, all other intel- 
 lects would have paled before the majesty of his intel- 
 ligence. Mr. Bryant, on one occasion, in the Evening 
 Post, quoted Milton's description of one of the rebel 
 angels, applying it to Mr. Webster, and the descrip- 
 tion of his person and bearing is very accurate. 
 
 " With grave 
 Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
 A pillar of state. Deep on his brow engraved 
 Deliberation sat and public care, 
 And princely counsel in his face yet shone, 
 Majestic though in ruin. Sage he stood, 
 With atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
 The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look 
 Drew audience and attention still as night 
 And summer's noontide air, while thus he spoke." 
 
ANTI-SLA VERY DA YS. 
 
 147 
 
 If this description had been written expressly for 
 Mr. Webster, it could^ not have been more exact. 
 Probably, Milton, who was in London during the 
 debates of the Long Parliament, meant to give recol- 
 lections of Pym's oratory in these lines, and that of 
 Wentworth in the description of Belial. 
 
 There never was so dark a time in the history of 
 this conflict as after these compromises of 1850. Mr. 
 Webster's speeches exercised an immense influence 
 to check the whole anti-slavery movement. It was 
 agreed by the leaders of public opinion that nothing 
 more should be said on the subject ; the anti-slavery 
 men must be silenced. And then a woman spoke, 
 and the whole world began again to talk about slavery. 
 Uncle Tom's Cabin was printed in the National Era 
 in numbers between the 5th of June, 185 1, and April 
 1st, 1852, while Mr. Gamaliel Bailey was editor. He 
 had written to Mrs. Stowe, asking if she could not 
 write a story bringing in facts about slavery, long 
 enough to fill a column or two, in two or three suc- 
 cessive numbers of the Era. But it grew under her 
 hands until it resulted in the most popular work of 
 modern times. It was published in book form in 
 1852. In eight weeks 100,000 copies were sold ; in 
 a year 200,000. In 1856, 313,000 had been circu- 
 lated. In London thirty editions were published in 
 six months. In the British Museum, there are forty- 
 three different editions in English. In 1852 one 
 
X 48 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 million copies had been sold in England. All over 
 Europe the book had a like rapid and large success. 
 Translations were made into French, German, Dutch, 
 Italian, Russian, Magyar, Wallachian, Welsh, Danish, 
 Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Armenian, 
 Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese. There are more 
 than fifty-five different translations of this book now 
 in the British Museum. It was one of the most won- 
 derful successes in literature. I was travelling in 
 Europe a year or two after it was written, and was 
 told in some bookstores in Germany and Italy, that 
 they found it difficult to publish any other novels. 
 They sold nothing but " Uncle Tom," or some other 
 book connected with it. In every picture gallery, we 
 saw scenes from " Uncle Tom's Cabin." It was said 
 that a colored man obtained a great deal of success in 
 England by pretending that he was " George," and 
 that he had just got back from Liberia. This novel 
 seemed almost like a work of inspiration. It was 
 full of accurate knowledge of the South, although 
 Mrs. Stowe had scarcely been in any of the Slave 
 States. Her pictures of southern life were vivid and 
 charming. The story was intensely interesting ; 
 justice was done to the kind masters and slaveholders. 
 Slave manners and customs were graphically painted ; 
 plantation scenes vividly described. The terrible 
 tragedy of the book was relieved by fortunate escapes, 
 by droll incidents and frequent touches of quiet 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 1 49 
 
 humor. What can be better, for instance, to mention 
 one out of many points, than the account of the Ohio 
 Senator who is introduced arguing with his wife that 
 slaves must be returned to their owners, that it is 
 highly improper not to execute the fugitive slave 
 law ; and then when the door opens and the poor 
 runaway slave-girl comes in, what does this senator 
 do but tackle up his horse and wagon and carry her 
 to the nearest station on the underground Railroad ? 
 It is a book to rank forever with the five or six im- 
 mortal stories which will never die, Don Quixote, the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's 
 Travels, the Vicar of Wakefield. Its influence in the 
 progress of the movement was great but quite incal- 
 culable. A flood of light was thrown upon the ques- 
 tion of slavery. It was held up before all mankind, 
 and the power of the public opinion of the world was 
 brought to bear on it. Everything else that was ever 
 written on this subject sinks to comparative insigni- 
 ficance beside this book. It reaches the common 
 heart of man, in cot or castle, in Arctic zone or 
 African sands. 
 
 A pamphlet by Austin Bearse, " Reminiscences of 
 Fugitive Slave Law days in Boston, 1880," — contains 
 an account of the Vigilance Committee in that city, 
 which was organized to protect fugitives from slavery 
 and keep them from being returned. The names of 
 the officers and members are given, including many 
 
j 50 - ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 of the best men of the city. The pamphlet describes 
 in a vivid manner the sufferings and heroism of the 
 fugitives and the way in which they were taken care 
 of by this Committee. He mentions that when Mrs. 
 Stowe was about to write her " Key to Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin," she was taken by Mr. R. F. Walcutt and Mr. 
 Bearse to Lewis Hayden's house, where she saw 
 thirteen newly escaped slaves, 
 
 Another interesting pamphlet, published in 1864 
 by James McKaye, Esq., as a report to Mr. Stanton, 
 is called " The emancipated slave, face to face with 
 his old master." Mr. McKaye was one of the com- 
 mission appointed by Secretary Stanton to obtain in- 
 formation concerning the past and present condition 
 of the colored people in the slave states. Its account 
 of the cruelties inflicted on slaves is too harrowing 
 to be more than referred to. One story, however, 
 will bear repeating. It is of Octave Johnson, who 
 was in 1864 a corporal in the Cofps d'Afrique. His 
 owner, a Mr. Coutsell, of Louisiana, had ordered him 
 to be whipped severely for falling asleep over his 
 work. Octave had never been whipped, and imme- 
 diately ran for the swamp. He was a very fast run- 
 ner, and escaped his pursuers, and after some days 
 found a band of refugees in the depths of the jungles. 
 His master, determined not to lose him, hired a 
 famous professional slave-hunter with a pack of 
 twenty hounds to recover him. Notice of this was 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. 151 
 
 given in advance to the fugitives who put their 
 women in a place of safety, rubbing the soles of their 
 feet with the blood of rabbits to deceive the hounds, 
 and then waited their coming with clubs. They 
 killed eight of the dogs, slowly retreating as they 
 fought. Toward sundown, being completely exhaust- 
 ed and torn by the teeth of the dogs, they scattered 
 and fled. Octave and some of his companions ran 
 for a bayou, which they found full of alligators. They 
 scrambled across, over roots and fallen trees and es- 
 caped. The hounds followed, but the alligators, not 
 attacking the negroes, killed six of the dogs, and the 
 rest were recalled. Octave being asked why it was 
 that the alligators had spared the men, replied, 
 " Dunno, Massa. Some of 'em said dey tought it 
 was God made 'em do it ; but 'pears to me de alliga- 
 tors loved dog's flesh better'n personal flesh!** 
 
 Octave lived in the swamp with this party of ten 
 women and twenty men for eighteen months. At the 
 end of that time New Orleans fell into the hands of 
 the Union troops, and it became the turn of the mas- 
 ters to escape. 
 
 But perhaps the most interesting narratives of es- 
 caped slaves is to be found in Mrs. Child's " Life of 
 Isaac Hopper." Mr. Hopper, a member of the Society 
 of Friends, was the protector during many years, of 
 the escaped fugitives who came to Philadelphia. By 
 his courage, coolness, knowledge of law, tact and 
 
^2 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 readiness of mind, he almost always found some way 
 to baffle the slave-hunter. 
 
 To the slaveholder, brought up to regard slaves as 
 his lawful property, alt such proceedings seemed 
 wholly unjustifiable. To help a fugitive to escape was 
 to them the same as taking so much money out of 
 their purse. But to most Northern men the right of 
 every man to his own freedom was a self-evident 
 truth. If told that the Constitution and laws forbade 
 helping a fugitive to escape, they appealed to " the 
 higher law," recognized by the greatest jurists as 
 superior to human enactments. They quoted the dec- 
 laration of the apostles to the Jewish authorities, — 
 " Whether it be right in the sight of God to harken 
 unto you more than unto God, judge ye." 
 
 Once when the minds of the community were oc- 
 cupied with these discussions, I was expecting a visit 
 from some relatives, a gentleman and his wife, natives 
 of Georgia, and slaveholders. All my family were 
 strictly warned not to say a word about slaves or 
 slavery. But this Southerner had hardly been in the 
 house half an hour before he introduced the subject, 
 and we spent the whole evening in an earnest, but 
 amicable discussion. Among other things, he asked 
 me how I, as a Christian, could help slaves to escape 
 when the Apostle Paul, in the epistle to Philemon, 
 had set the example of sending one back into slavery. 
 I requested him to read the epistle with me, calling 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. 153 
 
 his attention to the passage in which Paul asked Phil- 
 emon to receive back this fugitive, " not now as a ser- 
 vant, but above a servant, a brother beloved." I told 
 my Southern friend that I would readily send back a 
 fugitive, if I could depend on his not being received 
 as a slave, but as a brother. The good Georgian, 
 being a man of candor, admitted that the tone of 
 this epistle was not much of a support to the fugitive 
 slave law. 
 
 When combustible substances have been accumu_ 
 lating for years, a single flash of lightning will set 
 them into flames. This flash was the raid of John 
 Brown at Harper's Ferry. He has been often charged 
 with going there to excite an insurrection among 
 the slaves. Such was not his intention. His pur- 
 pose was to run off gangs of slaves into Pennsylvania 
 and make them free, in order to make slavery insecure 
 in the border states. I first saw John Brown at 
 Charles Sumner's house in Hancock street, Boston. 
 I called to see how Mr. Sumner was. I was shown 
 to his chamber, where he was reclining on the bed. 
 Three men were in the room with him, Captain John 
 Brown, one of his sons, and James Redpath. In the 
 course of the conversation the circumstances of the 
 assault on Sumner were referred to, and he said, 
 " The coat I had on is hanging in that closet." John 
 Brown went to the closet, took out the coat, and look- 
 ed at it as a devotee would contemplate the relic of a 
 
1 5 4 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 saint. Mr. Sanborn in his life of of John Brown, says 
 this was the only time in which he and Sumner are 
 known to have met. 
 
 Then came the days of John Brown, of Oswatomie. 
 He appeared in Kansas resisting the attacks of the 
 Missonrians. He was brought up in the hatred of 
 slavery. He was born in Torrington, Conn., in the 
 year 1800, and taken to the Western Reserve in 1805 
 by his father, who was an anti-slavery man and an 
 Old Testament Christian. John Brown believed in 
 fighting, as the saints of the Old Testament believed 
 in it, and he went to Kansas taking with him six 
 sons simply for the purpose of aiding the people of 
 Kansas to make that a free state. 
 
 In 1858, I met him in Dr. Howe's office. He was 
 then arranging his raid on Harper's Ferry. He said 
 that he was proposing to do something which should 
 alarm the slaveholders along the northern line of 
 slavery, and make them feel that they could not hold 
 their slaves in safety, and so induce them to move 
 South, and he hoped thus, by a series of attacks along 
 the border, that slavery would gradually be pushed fur- 
 ther South, and all the rest of the territory would be 
 free soil. That was his plan. He said, " I am pro- 
 posing to do on a larger scale what I did in Kansas. 
 When I found that the Missouri people were in the 
 habit of attacking us in Kansas, I saw that we must 
 fight fire with fire. So I organized a party and in- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. l55 
 
 vaded Missouri, and carried off a whole party of slaves 
 some 20 or 30. I took them into Kansas, and march- 
 ed them through Nebraska and Iowa into Illinois, and 
 finally carried them over into Canada, where they 
 were free. Though the papers told every day where 
 we were, yet on one occasion only was I hindered 
 on my march. I was crossing into Nebraska, when 
 the United States marshal came into the hut or log 
 cabin where I was with only a few men, and ordered 
 me to give up the slaves to him, and to his orders. 
 I took my rifle," said old John Brown, " and I told 
 him I would give him two minutes to leave in, and no 
 more. But if I had known he was one of the men 
 who murdered my friends in Kansas, I wouldn't have 
 given him those two minutes." The next day the 
 marshal, with a large posse of men waited for Brown's 
 party to cross the river. John Brown had only about 
 20 men. He formed his men into two lines ; and 
 they charged into the river, and by the time they had 
 reached the other side the marshal's party broke and 
 ran. Brown's men pursued, caught the marshal, made 
 him dismount, and put an old colored woman and her 
 baby on his horse, which they compelled him to lead 
 during the rest of the day. 
 
 The following incident was related to me by General 
 Carrington : 
 
 " When I was a boy and went to school in Torring- 
 ton, there came into the schoolroom one day a tall 
 
i 5 6 ANT/SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 man. rather slender, with grayish hair, who said to the 
 boys : ' I want to ask you some questions, in geo- 
 graphy. Where is Africa ? ' 'It is on the other side 
 of the ocean, of course,' said a boy. ' Why " of 
 course " ' asked the man. The boy couldn't say, ' why 
 " of course. " ' Then the man proceeded to tell them 
 something about Africa and the negroes, and the evil 
 of the slave trade, the wrongs and sufferings of the 
 slaves, and then said, ' How many of you boys will 
 agree to use your influence, whatever it may be, 
 against this great curse, when you grow up ? ' They 
 held up their hands. He then said that he was afraid 
 some of them might forget it, and added, ' Now I 
 want those who are quite sure that they will not for- 
 get it, who will promise to use their time and influence 
 toward resisting this great evil, to rise.' Another boy 
 and I stood up. Then, this man put his hands on our 
 heads, and said, ' Now may my Father in heaven, who 
 is your Father, and who is the Father of the African ; 
 and Christ, who is my Master and Saviour, and your 
 Master and Saviour, and the Master and Saviour of 
 the African ; and the Holy Spirit, which gives me 
 strength and comfort when I need it, and will give 
 you strength and comfort when you need it, and 
 which gives strength and comfort to the African, — 
 enable you to keep this resolution which you have now 
 taken.' And that man was John Brown. 5 ' 
 
 I have in my possession two autograph letters 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. t ^ 
 
 written by him in prison, before his execution ; one 
 to Mrs. Marcus Spring, who went to Virginia to offer 
 him whatever comfort or assistance he might need. 
 In this note he thanks her warmly for her kindness, 
 and invokes on her the blessing of the God of his 
 fathers. In the other he writes to a clergyman whom 
 he knew and esteemed. He tells him that he is at 
 perfect peace j that his death will do more than his 
 life would have done, and he should on the whole be 
 sorry to be released, because if he lived he might do 
 something which would let him down to a lower level 
 than that on which he had previously lived. 
 
 We remember how when John Brown was being 
 led to execution, he remarked on the beauty of the 
 scenery. He saw on the way a colored woman with 
 a colored infant in her arms. He took the colored 
 infant in his arms and kissed it. Only a few months 
 after that, I was riding through Virginia woods by 
 moonlight, and a regiment of Wisconsin soldiers were 
 marching by, singing, " John Brown's body lies moul- 
 dering in the ground. His soul is marching on." And 
 his soul was marching on. It marched on until the 
 whole South was redeemed. 
 
1 58 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS> 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE COMBAT DEEPENS. 
 
 " Up to our altars, then, 
 Haste we, and summon 
 Courage and loveliness 
 
 Manhood and woman ! 
 Deep let our pledges be, 
 
 Freedom forever ! 
 
 Truce with oppression ? 
 
 Never, O, never ! " 
 
 Whittier. 
 
 The compromises of 1850 were intended to settle 
 the question between slavery and anti-slavery for all 
 time. But it is a mistake to suppose that you can 
 compromise principles. It is always right and proper 
 to effect compromises if possible between opposing 
 interests, but not between opposing principles. In 
 the latter case it is saying '■ Peace ! Peace ! where 
 there is no peace." It is as the scripture forcibly 
 puts it, u daubing a wall with untempered mortar, so 
 that when a fox runs up on it, he will break it down." 
 
 Scarcely had these compromises of 1850 been ar- 
 ranged when the war of tongue and pen, and political 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. Y S9 
 
 action, recommenced and raged more violently than 
 ever. During the next ten years, from 1850 to i860, 
 the slave-power gained many victories. It elected 
 Pierce in 1856 and Buchanan in 1856. They were 
 both Northerners and both were subservient to the 
 slave-power. The slaveholders had found that the 
 Southern men, like Zachary Taylor, though slave- 
 holders, were not so submissive to their dictation, as 
 northern men like Pierce and Buchanan. 
 
 The slaveholders had secured the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had divided the 
 territories between slavery and freedom. This start- 
 ling event opened Kansas and Nebraska to slavery. 
 This was accomplished under the lead of Stephen A. 
 Douglas, an eminent northern Democrat. He took 
 the ground which was called " Squatter Sove- 
 reignty ; " namely, that the people of the territory were 
 themselves to decide whether they would allow slavery 
 to exist among them when the territory became a 
 state. Congress was not allowed to prohibit slave- 
 holders from settling with their slaves in any place, 
 while under territorial government, Of course, it 
 was intended and expected that when the time came 
 for adopting a state constitution, slavery would be 
 already there, and the territory would become a slave 
 state as a matter of necessity. Under the influence 
 of Stephen A. Douglas the law of " Squatter Sove- 
 reignty " was pressed through Congress, and this was 
 
i 60 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 Mr. Douglas' offer for the presidency. He gave to 
 the slave-power all the territories, to be turned into 
 slave states. 
 
 The next act of the slave-power was to establish 
 the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas. This con- 
 stitution had been formed by Missouri slaveholders 
 who had gone into Kansas and taken possession of 
 the polls. They had, to support therri, the whole 
 strength of the executive power under Pierce and 
 Buchanan, and they used it as far as they could to 
 put down freedom in Kansas. The history of the 
 Kansas struggle is still to be written. It is full of 
 lights and shades, heroisms and villany, tragic ad- 
 venture and romantic exploits. As Kentucky was 
 the w dark and bloody ground " in an earlier day, so 
 Kansas was the dark and bloody ground during the 
 conflict of freedom and slavery. It was a struggle be- 
 tween powers so unequal that it seemed like desper- 
 ation on the part of the anti-slavery party to hope for 
 success. The slaveholders of Missouri, close at hand 
 and far more numerous than the Kansas population, 
 invaded the territory, massacred the free settlers, took 
 possession of the polls, elected a slaveholders^ legis 
 lature and formed a slave state constitution. A Con- 
 gress controlled by the slave-power, and two presi- 
 dents, accepted these acts as legal, and gave the mili- 
 tary forces of the Union to enforce them. This was 
 the outcome of " Squatter Sovereignty " — that neither 
 
AtfTf-SLA VER Y DAYS. 1 6 1 
 
 the squatters nor the bona fide settlers in Kansas were 
 permitted to form their own Constitution ; Congress 
 Lad abdicated in favor of the border ruffians of Mis- 
 souri. 
 
 But the free state settlers of Kansas were not easily 
 discouraged. They knew they had right on their side, 
 and were determined to maintain it. Their right was 
 so clear, indeed, that a number of governors, selected 
 and appointed by Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, 
 with the purpose of putting down freedom, were con- 
 verted by the sight of the terrible facts, and became 
 opposed to the slaveholders' iniquity. Like Balaam 
 they went to curse, and they remained to bless. So 
 it was with Governor Reeder, who was opposed to free 
 soil when sent out as governor in 1854. He ordered 
 an election for the legislature. The Missourians came 
 across the line, took possession of the polls, and chose 
 the legislators. This was more than Governor Reeder 
 could bear, and he set aside the election. For this he 
 was removed by Pierce, and Shannon appointed in his 
 place, who made a speech on his way, to the Missouri 
 people, telling them he was in favor of slavery in 
 Kansas. But he, too, was converted by the sight of 
 the cruel persecutions and murders inflicted on the 
 people of Kansas, and was therefore removed, and Gov- 
 ernor Geary appointed. He also became disgusted, 
 and resigned, and Robert J. Walker was then made 
 govern er. Walker had been in high favor with the 
 
X 6 2 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 slave-power, but he too resigned, not rinding himself 
 willing to do the work required of him by President 
 Buchanan. Meanwhile, in spite of opposition, the 
 free state settlers had poured into Kansas in such 
 numbers that they were becoming as numerous as the 
 invaders from Missouri, and able to hold their own 
 against them, in battle. 
 
 For the condition of things in Kansas was that of 
 war. Those who find fault with Captain John Brown 
 of Osawatomie for fighting fire with fire, should re, 
 member the murders and assassinations of the free 
 state men, which were being done with impunity. John 
 Brown was an Old Testament hero, who believed in 
 retaliation, and was determined that these murders 
 should cease. He resisted the invaders, and defeated 
 them in the field. He also approved of killing those 
 who had murdered free state men in cold blood, and 
 who could not be punished by law. In this I think 
 him wrong. 
 
 The people of the North determined that slavery 
 should be excluded by the majority of the inhabitants. 
 Emigration aid societies were formed in Massachu- 
 setts, which sent colonists to Kansas to make it a free 
 state. In July, 1854, one of these founded Lawrence ; 
 another followed and founded Topeka. As soon as it 
 was understood that this was being done, the people 
 of Missouri invaded Kansas and attempted to drive 
 the free settlers away. They entered Kansas again 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 1 63 
 
 and again, as we have seen, at the time of elections, 
 and elected a pro-slavery delegate to Congress ; and 
 this was done by the advice of a Senator from Mis- 
 souri. 
 
 The free-state men met at Topeka and formed the 
 Topeka Constitution in October, 1855. 
 
 The Missourians continued to enter Kansas and to 
 murder the free-state men. One man named Barber, 
 an unoffensive man, was shot down by an Indian 
 agent named Clark, for refusing to follow him when 
 ordered to do so. Yet, though this was well known, 
 President Pierce retained this man in office. The 
 Missouri people attempted to destroy Lawrence, but 
 Governor Shannon permitted the residents to arm and 
 protect themselves. Thereupon the Missourians de- 
 nounced Shannon as an abolitionist, and he was re- 
 moved. In 1856, Ccl. Buford brought from the South 
 to Kansas a regiment, with the avowed purpose of 
 driving out the free-state men. The President and 
 Senator Douglas supported the invaders. In May, 
 the town of Lawrence was attacked by the Missouri 
 slaveholders, and the hotel, printing offices, and other 
 buildings were destroyed. The free state legislature 
 was dispersed by Col. Sumner, an officer of the United 
 States army, under orders from Washington. He 
 told the members that it was contrary to his own feel- 
 ings and wishes, but he was obliged to do so under 
 positive orders from the President. 
 
! 64 ANTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 
 
 In 1857, the Lecompton Constitution was adopted 
 by a convention chosen by the Missourians. Presi- 
 dent Pierce maintained that this was the true consti- 
 tution for Kansas, although he knew that it was formed 
 entirely by those who were from outside the State. 
 He knew that a great majority of the people wanted 
 to make it a free state. The Lecompton Constitu- 
 tion passed Congress under the influence of Pierce 
 and the Democrats ; but the people of Kansas refused 
 to accept it. They were supported by the people of 
 New England. There was a free state league, which 
 met at the house of Dr. Samuel Cabot in Boston. He 
 was the President. It sent out Sharp's rifles to enable 
 the people to defend themselves. George L. Stearns 
 was another friend of John Brown who aided the 
 cause of freedom in Kansas with great generosity. 
 Another free-state league was formed with Mrs. 
 Cabot at the head, which sent out food and clothing 
 from all parts of New England. This was brought to 
 Boston and forwarded to Kansas. These efforts had 
 much to do with the final result, which caused Kansas 
 to become a free State. 
 
 On the 19th and 20th of May, 1856, Charles Sum- 
 ner delivered his speech in the United States Senate 
 on the " Crime against Kansas." It combined argu- 
 ment and invective, and exposed in plain language the 
 cruel injustice done to the free citizens of Kansas by 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 1 65 
 
 the United States Government. Whittier said " it 
 was the severe and awful truth, which the sharp agony 
 of the national crisis demanded." The slaveholders 
 in Congress were excited to madness by this exposure, 
 and to inflict personal injury on Sumner was the only 
 answer in their power. Sumner was assaulted in his 
 seat, as he was writing, after the adjournment of the 
 Senate, by Preston S. Brooks, of South Carolina. The 
 injuries were so severe that it was four years before 
 he took his seat again in the Senate, during which 
 time Massachusetts left his chair empty.* If this 
 atrocious attack on the freedom of speech in Congress 
 had been the work of a single assassin, as was the 
 murder of Lincoln by Booth, it would have been less 
 injurious to the Southern interests. But while the 
 South repudiated Booth, it endorsed Brooks. Brooks 
 was censured by a majority of the House, resigned 
 his seat, and was triumphantly re-elected. His action 
 in assaulting Sumner was applauded by the Southern 
 press with almost entire unanimity. He was pre- 
 sented with canes ; he was congratulated by South- 
 ern statesmen. Toombs, Jefferson Davis, Mason, 
 expressed their entire approval of his course. Presi- 
 dent Buchanan, while he called Sumner's speech " the 
 most vulgar tirade of abuse ever delivered in a repre- 
 
 *As Tacitus says of the absent statues of Brutus and Cassius at 
 the funeral of Junia, he was the more conspicuous because not there. 
 
1 66 ' ANTI-SLAVERY. 
 
 sentative body, added that " Mr. Brooks was incon- 
 siderate." 
 
 This murderous assault on freedom, in the person 
 of its defender, like every other triumph of the slave- 
 power, was in reality a defeat and a disaster. Many 
 who before had stood aloof from the anti-slavery move- 
 ment, now made up their minds that resistance to 
 the lawless arrogance of the slaveholders, had become 
 a matter of necessity. 
 
 Mr. Sumner once showed me an " Album Amico- 
 rum," such as were kept by European scholars at the 
 revival of learning, in which to receive the autographs 
 of their brother scholars throughout Europe. The 
 one in the possession of Charles Sumner contained 
 some lines in the handwriting of John Milton. They 
 consisted of his name — the two last lines of Comus : — 
 
 " Or, if virtue feeble were, 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her." 
 
 and the Latin line, slightly modified thus — 
 
 "Ccelum, non animam, muto, cum trans mare curio." 
 
 Sumner, when he showed me this autograph, told 
 me he was especially desirous of possessing an auto- 
 graph of Milton, because of what happened after his 
 injury. He was much discouraged one day, and 
 thought he should never be able to resume his seat in 
 the Seriate. But taking up a volume of Milton, his 
 eye fell on Milton's sonnet on his blindness, and it 
 encouraged Sumner, as if Milton were himself speaking 
 to him from another world, — 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS. 167 
 
 * What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them, overplied 
 
 In liberty's defence, my noble task 
 
 Of which all Europe rings from side to side." 
 
 Another victory of the slave-power was won in 1857, 
 when the Supreme Court of the United States decided 
 by the mouth of Chief Justice Taney, that Congress 
 had no right to forbid the extension of slavery through 
 the territories of the Union, and that no colored per- 
 son could be a citizen of the United States, if his an- 
 cestors had ever been slaves ; consequently no free 
 colored man, though a citizen of Massachusetts under 
 its laws, could sue or be sued in the United States 
 Courts. This paper defied the facts of history by 
 saying that when the Constitution was formed the 
 colored people were regarded as of an inferior order, 
 and " having no rights which the white men were bound 
 to respect." Judge Taney declared that the signers of 
 the Declaration of Independence regarded the blacks 
 only as property, not as persons. When he wrote 
 this, Judge Taney had before him the declaration of 
 Jefferson, Franklin, and others of their generations, 
 on the injustice of holding colored men as slaves. The 
 court then decided that the Missouri Compromise, 
 and all other acts of Congress restricting slaveholders 
 from carrying their slaves into the territory of the 
 Union, were unconstitutional. 
 
 It was a satisfaction to some of us in Massachusetts, 
 that Judge Benjamin R. Curtis dissented from this 
 
1 68 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 opinion, and demolished the argument of the Chief 
 Justice by the weight of facts which could not be 
 denied and a logic which could not be resisted. We 
 who were fellow-citizens, fellow-classmates, and aware 
 of the ability of Judge Curtis, were thankful that he 
 was then on the bench to destroy the sophisms and 
 expose the ignorance of Judge Taney. 
 
 The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, passed as a part 
 of the Compromise," was liable to very grave objec- 
 tions. The Constitution of the United States declares 
 that " in suits at common law, where the value of con- 
 troversy exceeds twenty dollars the right of trial by 
 jury shall be preserved," and that " no one shall be 
 deprived of life, liberty and property without due 
 process of law." But by the action of the Fugitive 
 Slave Law, a colored man in a free state, living as a 
 free man, might be seized as a slave and taken into 
 Southern slavery without seeing either a judge or a 
 jury. Such cases occurred. In one case a colored 
 man, Adam Gibson, was seized as a slave in Pennsyl- 
 vania, and surrendered by Edward D. Ingraham, 
 United States Commissioner, with indecent haste. 
 He was taken to Elkton, Maryland. There the sup- 
 posed owner, Mr. William T. Knight, refused to 
 receive him, saying he was not the man, and he was 
 restored to freedom. In this instance the slaveholder 
 was far more honorable than the United States Com- 
 missioner. But this case showed how easy it was for 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 1 69 
 
 a free colored man to be kidnapped under this law. 
 Mr. Webster had said " there is no danger of any such 
 violation " (by a false claim) " being perpetrated." In 
 five months after Mr. Webster had given this re- 
 assuring promise, the above case of a false claim and 
 delivery of a free man into slavery took place. In 
 fact, under this law, the kidnapping of free persons 
 became a regular business. The courts decided that 
 a man claiming a slave had the right to seize him 
 without a warrant and take him away. Oliver Ander- 
 son, a colored man living near Chillicothe, Ohio, was 
 dragged from his house in the night of October nth, 
 1859, and carried to Kentucky without any examina- 
 tion or trial. Two Ohio kidnappers who assisted the 
 Kentuckian, were tried and acquitted on the ground 
 that under the Prigg decision, a master, (or one claim 
 ing to be an owner) may seize his slave, and call any 
 person to help him and take him away, without any 
 process of law. In all these decisions it was assumed, 
 prima facie, that the person claimed as a slave must 
 be a slave, and the person claiming him, the owner. 
 This was the tacit assumption of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law itself. The possibility that the person seized 
 might be a free man, falsely claimed, was quietly 
 ignored. A tract was published by the American 
 Anti-Slavery Society, called " The Fugitive Slave Law 
 and its victims," which gives the names of hundreds 
 of colored people taken from the North into slavery 
 
i 7 o ANTI-S.LA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 under this law in the ten years following its enactment. 
 The place, date and circumstances are given in each 
 case. 
 
 The most important cases in Boston were those of 
 Shadrach (February, 185 1), Thomas Sims (April, 
 185 1), and Anthony Burns (May, 1854). Shadrach 
 was rescued, Sims was delivered by the decision of 
 George Ticknor Curtis, Burns by that of Edward G. 
 Loring. Probably, few things made so many con- 
 verts in Boston to anti-slavery as these events. It 
 brought the matter home to the people. It so hap- 
 pened that to prevent a rescue in the case of Sims, 
 the court house was surrounded by heavy chains, 
 which seemed the natural symbol of the degradation 
 of Massachusetts and her laws. 
 
 After the rescue of Shadrach several persons were 
 indicted for the offence in the United States court. 
 One of these was Lewis Hayden, himself a fugitive 
 slave, who had escaped from Kentucky in former 
 years. I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted 
 with him when he first came to Boston. He told one 
 evening the story of his slavery and escape, in the 
 church of which I am the pastor, and moved us all 
 deeply by the pathos of his narrative. At the time of 
 the rescue of Shadrach I was residing in Western 
 Pennsylvania, and hearing of the indictment of Mr. 
 Hayden, wrote to him expressing my sympathy. In 
 reply, I received the following characteristic letter, 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 171 
 
 written at his request by John A. Andrew, afterwarsd 
 the war governor of Massachusetts. 
 
 Boston, 5th March, 1857. 
 
 Dear Friend : — 
 
 Lewis Hayden received a line from you 
 last evening, which he begged me to answer in his be- 
 half, and to express for him the gratitude he feels for 
 the kindness and sympathy you entertain towards 
 him. It gratified him, beyond measure, that you 
 should thus remember him. He is bound over to an- 
 swer to the next term of the United States district 
 court. But I have no idea that he, or any other per- 
 son, will be convicted. The poorest colored man 
 finds no difficulty in procuring bail at a moment's 
 warning. I think there is a reaction commencing, 
 . . . The rescue of Shadrach was a noble thing — 
 nobly done. . . . The thing was the result of the 
 extemporaneous effort, energy and enthusiasm of one 
 old man, a personal friend of Shadrach, who stimu- 
 lated by his own stubborn zeal the few with whom he 
 came in contact, to follow him in his determination to 
 save his friend (whose horror of a return to slavery he 
 had always known) from the hands of the law, at what- 
 ever personal hazard. That man will never be found. 
 Indeed, all the principal actors are, as I understand, 
 beyond the reach of process. 
 
 God grant that no man may ever be sent from 
 Massachusetts into the prison house of slavery. I 
 
! 7 2 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 hate war and love peace ; but I should less regret the 
 death of a hundred men defending successfully the 
 sacred rights of human nature and the blood-bought 
 liberties of freemen, alike cloven down by this infer- 
 nal law, than I would the return to bondage of a single 
 fugitive. 
 
 Your friend, 
 
 John A. Andrew. 
 
 The prayer of John Andrew was not granted ; Sims 
 and Burns were both remanded to slavery. But the 
 excitement produced by these renditions created many 
 new and determined foes to this aggressive system. 
 I read, in Western Pennsylvania, the terrible denun- 
 ciation of " The Sims Commissioner," from the plat- 
 form in the Music Hall, where Theodore Parker, 
 every Sunday, poured forth his floods of fiery elo- 
 quence. At the rendition of Burns I was in Boston. 
 I saw the crowds assembled in State Street and 
 Washington Street on that gloomy day, when the 
 slave-power triumphed, as George the Third triumphed 
 at Bunker Hill. " One more such victory," they 
 might have said, " and we are ruined." I saw, from 
 the window of John A. Andrew's chambers, the 
 lawyers' offices hung with black. I saw the cavalry, 
 artillery, marines and police, a thousand strong, 
 escorting, with shotted guns, one trembling colored 
 man to the vessel which was to carrv him to slavery. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. ^ 73 
 
 I heard the curses, both loud and deep, poured on 
 these soldiers ; I saw the red flush in their cheek as 
 the crowd yelled at them, " Kidnappers ! Kidnap- 
 pers ! " It was evident that a very trifling incident 
 might have brought on a collision, and flooded the 
 streets with blood. 
 
 Meantime, in the ten years which preceded the 
 civil war, the anti-slavery cause won a succession of 
 moral as well as political victories. 
 
 The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, not only 
 electrified the whole world, but poured a flood of 
 light into the mysteries of slavery in the South. 
 
 More champions of freedom were constantly elected 
 to Congress. After John P. Hale had stood alone 
 for some years in the Senate, he was reinforced by 
 Salmon P. Chase, who was elected in 1849 from 
 Ohio ; by William H. Seward from New York in 
 1850 ; by Charles Sumner in 185 1, and Henry Wilson 
 in 1854. Other strong men were added to the Sen- 
 ate, like Benj. F. Wade, in 185 r. "Is it not hard," 
 asked Mr. Badger of North Carolina, during the 
 debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, " if I should 
 emigrate to Kansas, that I should be forbidden to 
 take my old mammy " (slave-nurse) " along with me ?" 
 " The Senator entirely mistakes our position," re- 
 sponded Mr. Wade, "We have not the least objection 
 to the Senator's migrating to Kansas, and taking his 
 old mammy with him. We only insist that he shall 
 
iy 4 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 not be permitted to sell her, after he has taken her 
 there." 
 
 In the House of Representatives, a strong body of 
 determined anti-slavery men gradually collected. A 
 leader among them was Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, 
 one who never feared the face of man, and so devoted 
 to the cause of liberty that he seized every oppor- 
 tunity of bearding the lion in his den. With him 
 were associated at one time John Gorham Palfrey of 
 Massachusetts, Horace Mann of Illinois, a brother of 
 the murdered Lovejoy, and other men of the same 
 sterling quality. 
 
 Meantime Mr. Garrison and his friends were show- 
 ing increased activity, and were using powerful mo- 
 tives outside of all politics, and which appealed only 
 to the reason and conscience. At the same time 
 there was a steady increase of the political party op- 
 posed to slavery. When in 1856 General Fremont 
 received over a million votes, it indicated what was 
 coming four years later when Lincoln was elected 
 President. And the South well understood that it 
 was as certain as anything could be, that the anti- 
 slavery principle was to triumph eventually, as it did 
 in Lincoln's election. This determined the Slave 
 States to dissolve the Union by seceding from it. It 
 was a long time before the North could be made to 
 believe that the South was in earnest in this. I re- 
 member that Wendell Phillips used to laugh at the 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. T y^ 
 
 idea. He said it was like a set of paupers in a poor- 
 house saying that they were going to dissolve their 
 union with the town. He thought it was rather brag 
 and bluster than a sincere purpose. The slaveholders, 
 on the other hand, thought the North would never 
 fight. They were sure, as one of their orators said 
 directly after the organization of the Confederacy, 
 that in fifty days the flag of the Confederacy would 
 float over Washington, and in a few more weeks over 
 Faneuil Hall in Boston ! 
 
 As we look back now on this act of secession, it il- 
 lustrates what has often been shown in history, the 
 truth of the old proverb : " Whom God wishes to de- 
 stroy, he first makes mad." It was madness in the 
 slave-power to give up all they had gained. They 
 held the government of the country in their hands. 
 Before Alexander H. Stephens accepted the vice- 
 presidency of the Southern Confederacy, he made a 
 speech before the State Convention of Georgia, in 
 which he pointed out how the South had everything 
 in its hands ; all the majorities in Congress ; more 
 than their share of presidents, secretaries of state, 
 judges in the Supreme Court ; and great public offices. 
 It was throwing it all away to secede. They had on 
 their side the Democratic party. The northern Dem- 
 ocrats were politically subservient to the slave-power, 
 but this power deliberately broke down this party by 
 insisting on the protection of slavery in the territories 
 
x y 6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 by the Federal Government. Douglas had gone so 
 far as to accept the principle of " Squatter-sovereign- 
 ty," which had a Democratic sound, and which left 
 the people themselves to decide in every place what 
 their institutions should be. But when the southern 
 leaders insisted that he should turn squarely round, 
 and maintain that the people of a territory should not 
 decide, but that their institutions should be decided 
 for them ; that they should be obliged to admit slavery, 
 and that the Federal Government should enforce this 
 obligation, it was evident that neither Mr. Douglas 
 nor his supporters could take that step. Therefore, 
 because the Democratic party was unwilling to go 
 all lengths with them, the slaveholders were willing 
 to break down its power. 
 
 What did the Republican party contend for ? Only 
 this : that slavery should not be permitted to go into 
 the territories where it did not already exist. Henry 
 Clay had said over and over again, that, by his con- 
 sent, no foot of soil then free from slavery should ever 
 support a slave ; and that was all that the Republican 
 party demanded in electing Lincoln. They had 
 declared that they did not believe Congress had any 
 power to interfere with the institution of slavery in 
 the slave states, The Southerners had secured the 
 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. It was in full 
 operation and declared by the U. S. Supreme Court 
 to be Constitutional. They had the immense terri- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. xyy 
 
 ritory of Texas to fill with slaves, and the promise 
 that four more states should be cut out of it from 
 which to make slave states. The state of Texas con- 
 tains 273,000 square miles, an amount of territory 
 equal to the whole of New England, added to New 
 York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey 
 and Virginia, They had all this territory to over- 
 spread with slavery, and the Republican party made 
 no opposition to it. But made confident "by continued 
 success, animated by a haughty contempt of the 
 North, thinking that the people of the Free States 
 were so peaceful and devoted to money-making, and 
 so much in love with trade and commerce that they 
 would never resist secession ; believing that " Cotton 
 was King," and that they could have an alliance with 
 foreign powers whenever they wished it, they deter- 
 mined to form a great slaveholding empire. Then I 
 think there was another reason which made them 
 secede. Notwithstanding their assertion that slavery 
 was right, there was a constant disturbance of con- 
 science coming to them by being compelled to hear 
 anti-slavery doctrines. As long as they were in rela- 
 tion with the North they could not wholly escape it. 
 They imagined, if they separated from the North, 
 they could shut out all this, and that these obnoxious 
 truths might be prevented from filling their ears. 
 Their consciences were in an irritable state and they 
 wanted quiet. 
 
1 7 8 ANTISLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 Therefore, in the Democratic Convention in i860, 
 the Representatives of the Slave States insisted on 
 the Federal protection of slavery in all the territories 
 as a sine qua non. Because Douglas could not agree 
 to this suicidal proposition, they seceded from the 
 Convention in which he had the majority, and held 
 one of their own, in which they nominated John C. 
 Breckenridge for President. 
 
 We see how the demands of the slave-power had 
 steadily increased. At first the slaveholders admit- 
 ted that slavery was bad and wrong, but they believed 
 it would be gradually abolished. That was the doc- 
 trine held by Jefferson and the Revolutionary Fathers. 
 Then they said that slavery must be maintained for 
 the present wherever it exists, but ought not to be 
 extended to the territories. That was the view held 
 at the time of the Dane ordinance. It excluded 
 slavery from all territory north of the Ohio. Next, 
 the slaveholders demanded that slavery should share 
 the territories, equally with freedom. That was the 
 ground taken in 1820, at the time of the Missouri 
 Compromise. Then they maintained that slavery 
 should not be shut out of any of the territories, but 
 the question should be decided by the people them- 
 selves. That was the ground taken at the time of the 
 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, under the lead 
 of Douglas. Finally, the slaveholders declared that 
 slavery was right, and in accordance with' Chris- 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. x jg 
 
 tianity ; that it was the only foundation of freedom 
 and of the Republic ; that it must therefore be pro- 
 tected by law, not only in the Slave States, but in 
 every part of the country. 
 
 When it became evident that there was danger of 
 Southern Secession, there was for a time no little 
 probability that for the sake of union, these last 
 demands would also be granted to them. There was 
 danger that more concessions would be offered to 
 induce them to remain, and that the conscience of 
 the North would submit altogether to their claims. 
 Horace Greeley says, in his history, that " those 
 who had reduced servility to a science, demanded 
 that the North should make new concessions and 
 prostrations and abasements. 
 
 The New York Herald declared that the South had 
 the right to secede, and that New York City, New 
 Jersey, and probably Connecticut would go too. The 
 New York Tribune declared that journal would resist 
 all coercive attempts to keep the South in the Union ; 
 for the right to secede, though a revolutionary right, 
 was a real one. The ground was taken by a great 
 many anti-slavery men, who would have preferred 
 to have the South become an independent State, 
 rather than have more concessions made to them. 
 This was the opinion which I myself expressed in the 
 pamphlet which I published at the time, called " Se- 
 cession, Concession, or Self-Possession.'' 
 
1 80 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 The truth was that no one then knew the amount 
 of patriotism in the heart of the northern people. 
 When the New York Herald said that the City of 
 New York would go with the seceders, it did not 
 seem such a very improbable statement. The busi- 
 ness of New York was largely with the South. The 
 city was in the hands of the Democratic party. The 
 negro was hated there by the rabble. Anti- slavery 
 had scarcely obtained a foothold with the mass of the 
 people. The events which were to follow the attack 
 on Fort Sumter ; the great uprising of the North ; 
 the tide of patriotic devotion which would sweep over 
 every Northern State and city, silencing all opposition 
 and making disunion odious, was all hidden alike from 
 friends and foes. The slave-power hoped for an easy 
 and unresisted triumph. The friends of human lib- 
 erty apprehended that to prevent secession the North 
 would give up the last defences of freedom, justice 
 and humanity. 
 
 If the South had seceded peacefully; if it had not 
 attacked our forts and troops, but had simply taken a 
 negative position towards the United States, refusing 
 to send members to Congress, I think after a while 
 we should have been obliged to allow them to form a 
 separate and independent state. . Mr. Seward and his 
 friends were seeking how to make concessions. He 
 had great faith in compromises, and was very anxious 
 that something should be done. He was one of those 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. r 8i 
 
 who believed that almost anything could be done by 
 skilful management. He who originated the phrase, 
 u Irrepressible conflict," seemed to have forgotten 
 that there was any conflict of principles which must 
 continue its course regardless of politicians. There 
 was a great meeting held in Ohio, in December, i860, 
 for pacifying the South, at which resolutions were 
 passed saying that anti-slavery discussion at the 
 North should be frowned down ; that slavery need 
 not be excluded from the territories ; and that no one 
 must meddle with the institutions of the Slave States. 
 
 About the same time George William Curtis hav- 
 ing made an engagement to lecture in Philadelphia, 
 on the " Policy of Honesty," was prevented from 
 speaking on the ground that there would probably be 
 a riot if he did. 
 
 Under these circumstances was the 36th Congress 
 assembled in December, i860. Buchanan was still 
 President. He said in his last message that a State 
 could not be coerced, and argued that he had no right 
 to prevent the Slave States from seceding. He had 
 been elected President for the purpose, as the Con 
 stitution declared, of seeing that the laws should be 
 faithfully executed, and he declined to execute them 
 at the South. Judge Black, Mr. Buchanan's Attor- 
 ney-General, argued to the same effect. He asserted 
 the impotence of the United States to maintain its 
 own existence. 
 
!82 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 Congress appointed a committee to see how these 
 seceders could be conciliated ; but they did not wish 
 to be conciliated. They were in earnest in their con- 
 viction that their safety was in secession, and that 
 only by a dissolution of the Union, and the formation 
 of a Southern Confederacy, could the system of chat- 
 tel slavery be maintained. 
 
 Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, said, " they meant to se- 
 cede, and nothing Congress could do would prevent 
 them. There would be no war." He compared 
 Northerners to a " switched dog. A Southern Con- 
 federacy would soon be formed, and would be the 
 most successful government in the world, able to re- 
 sist any force." 
 
 Mr, John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, proposed a 
 series of resolutions virtually surrendering to the 
 slaveholders all they had ever asked for. 
 
 Mr. Clark, of Rhode Island, offered a resolution to 
 the effect that no compromise or concession was nec- 
 essary, and that the Constitution as it stood was suffi- 
 cient, and ought to be enforced. 
 
 In a committee of thirteen, appointed to see what 
 could be done to prevent secession, Mr. Seward moved 
 the following resolution : " No amendment shall be 
 made to the Constitution which will give Congress 
 power over slavery in the States." 
 
 When, therefore, we read the history of these few 
 months from the election of Lincoln to the assault on 
 
ANTI-SLA VER V DA YS. 
 
 :8 3 
 
 Fort Sumter, we shall see that the great danger of 
 the hour was that the North, for the sake of peace, 
 would yield up everything to slavery, and then call 
 this also a compromise. 
 
 Governor Seymour, of New York, said, at an im- 
 mense Democratic convention at Albany : " The only 
 question is, shall we have a compromise after a war, 
 or without a war ? " 
 
 A peace conference was called and held in Wash- 
 ington and adopted a series of resolutions, which, 
 however, was voted down in the United States 
 Senate. 
 
 The compromise of 1850 having proved to be a 
 wall so feebly built that it had already fallen down, it 
 was now proposed to daub it with a little more un- 
 tempered mortar. This, as Lowell said, was attempt- 
 ing " to coax an earthquake with a bun." 
 
 The secession of the Southern States then began : 
 
 South Carolina, seceded Dec. 20, i860. 
 
 Georgia, 
 
 Mississippi, 
 
 Florida, 
 
 Louisiana, 
 
 Texas, 
 
 North Carolina, 
 
 Tennessee, 
 
 Virginia, 
 
 Jan. 19, 1861 
 
 Jan. 7, " 
 
 Jan. 10, " 
 
 Jan. 25, " 
 
 Feb. 1, " 
 
 May 21, " 
 
 June 26, " 
 
 Apr. 17, " 
 
1 84 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 Kentucky tried to secede, but failed, Maryland and 
 and Missouri also remained in the Union, though 
 containing a large number in full sympathy with se- 
 cession. 
 
 The Confederate Government was formed, by the 
 choice of Jefferson Davis as President, February 9, 
 1861. 
 
 Without waiting for any action at the North, the 
 United States forts, thirty in all, were seized by the 
 Confederates. 
 
 Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney, South Carolina, 
 on December, i860. 
 
 Fort Sumter surrendered April 13, 1861. 
 
 Fort Pulaski, Mount Jackson and the United States 
 Arsenal, in Georgia, were seized January, 1861. 
 
 The Arsenal at Augusta followed. 
 
 The Florida Navy Yards and three forts in Florida 
 were seized in January, 1861. 
 
 Fort Morgan in Alabama and the Mount Vernon 
 Arsenal also fell. 
 
 Immense quantities of arms, ammunition, etc., were 
 seized by the Confederacy, in all the Southern States. 
 Thirty forts, with 3000 guns, thus fell into iheir 
 hands. 
 
 But when the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter a 
 wonderful result took place at the North ; a result 
 which no one had foreseen. We ourselves, in the 
 North, did not know what a love for the country 
 
ANTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 1 85 
 
 there was in the hearts of the people. The Southern 
 people had not the remotest idea that the North 
 would attempt to resist them. But when Fort Sumter 
 was attacked, a flame of fire seemed run through the 
 whole North, and all parties were united to resist this 
 assault on the national flag. There was no more 
 talk of any compromises with the South. Lincoln 
 issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 troops, and 
 more troops were offered than the Government was 
 willing to accept ; and so the civil war began. A 
 month before that gun was fired at Sumter there were 
 many parts of New York where it would have been 
 dangerous for any anti-secession man to express his 
 sentiments ; the next day after, it would have been 
 dangerous for anybody to have said a word in favor of 
 secession, even in the worst parts of that city. 
 
 Who that lived in that time can ever forget those 
 memorable days ? Who can forget the immense ex- 
 citements, the expectations, the disappointments, the 
 trials, the great sorrows, the tragedies, the hopes and 
 fears, the struggles, the devotion, the numerous forms 
 of generous effort which were displayed at the North ? 
 Who that lived in such hours can forget what it is to 
 live in a nation the whole heart and soul of which are 
 devoted to generous and patriotic purposes, among 
 men and women who are fogetting private interests, 
 money-making, everything but saving the country ? 
 
 No doubt there were people who made money out 
 
1 86 ANTI-SLA VER Y. 
 
 of the war, and who were selfish, but that was not the 
 spirit of the land. The feeling of most Northern 
 men was that the Union must be saved at all hazards 
 and at every sacrifice. They said, " if the Union goes, 
 everything goes. It will be ruin to every interest- 
 We may as well sacrifice all we have to save the 
 country, for unless it is preserved, nothing we have 
 will be of any value." This conviction was expressed 
 by Judge Rockwood Hoar, who said to me at the be- 
 ginning of the contest : " I suppose that the people 
 of the Northern States have made up their minds 
 that they will not give up a single shovelful of sand 
 from the southern cape of Florida, nor a single para- 
 lytic negro from the rice-swamps of South Carolina." 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. jSj 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 " The roll of drums and the bugle's wailing, 
 Vex the air of our vales no more ; 
 The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning, 
 The share is the sword the soldier wore. 
 
 " Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river, 
 Under thy banks of laurel bloom, 
 Softly and sweet, as the hour becometh, 
 Sing us the songs of peace and home." 
 
 Whitttee. 
 
 In this story of the anti-slavery conflict, we have not 
 been able to keep to any strict chronological order, 
 but have preferred to hold mainly the succession of 
 subjects. We, therefore, have now to go back to the 
 time before the rebellion, and examine some points of 
 interest which preceded it. 
 
 We must first speak of Abraham Lincoln, the man 
 providentially raised up to be the saviour of the Union 
 and the emancipator of the slaves. No such place has 
 been occupied in modern history as he was called to 
 fill. Singularly fitted by his character and experience 
 for his great work, his whole life seemed to have been 
 a preparation for it. We needed a man in that trying 
 
I £ 8 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 hour who should be prudent but decided, cautious but 
 firm — a man of supreme good sense ; a conscientious 
 man, but no enthusiast or fanatic. We needed one 
 around whom the whole loyal people could unite; 
 therefore, one against whom no prejudices existed, 
 and not an extreme partisan of any creed. The North- 
 ern people were broken into many parties. There 
 was New England, strongly anti-slavery and Republi- 
 can ; the Middle States leaning to the Democratic 
 party, and filled with men who hated abolition ; the 
 Border States just on the verge of secession, and only 
 to be kept in the Union by a firm, yet kind, hand. 
 There were Douglas men, Bell and Everett men, Web- 
 ster Whigs ; and men of influence like Vallandigham, 
 ex-President Pierce and Fernando Wood, whose sym- 
 pathies were with the rebels. An anti-slavery man* 
 would have made a large part of the Union men in- 
 different and neutral. An old-fashioned Whig would 
 have killed the enthusiasm of the anti-slavery North, 
 Although at the beginning of the war, and for a long 
 time after the beginning,no steps were taken bythe Gov- 
 ernment toward the emancipation of the slaves, though 
 General Fremont's proclamation of emancipation in 
 Missouri was modified by the President so as to make 
 it inoperative, and though General Hunter's emanci- 
 pation order in the South was also annulled by Lin- 
 coln, yet the anti-slavery men, though grieved, still ad- 
 hered to him. They knew that he was an enemy to 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 1 89 
 
 slavery, and they believed that the progress of events 
 would certainly bring the end of that institution 
 through his means. They, as well as Lincoln, knew 
 how to "bide their time." Lincoln was patient, 
 hopeful, determined, wise. He was one of the people, 
 and knew them well. He had that instinct of human- 
 ity which alone enables a man to measure public sen- 
 timent. Trained in poverty and hardship, he was not 
 easily discouraged by difficulties. With a heart ten- 
 der as that of a woman, he had a cool, calm brain. At 
 the root of all was "the strong-siding champion, con- 
 science." Whatever might happen, in evil report or 
 good report, he was determined to do his duty, and he 
 did it to the end. A sad man, on whom the burden 
 of responsibility weighed heavily, his quick, rugged 
 humor furnished him a little distraction and relief. 
 
 Some hitherto unpublished anecdotes of Lincoln's 
 early life in Springfield, throwing light on his character, 
 were communicated, to me by one of my old Kentucky 
 friends, who was also one of the oldest friends of Lin- 
 coln. I have spoken before of Judge Speed, the Ken- 
 tucky farmer, who, though a slaveholder, was an utter 
 unbeliever in slavery, and whose slaves were set free 
 by his children at his death. One of his sons, named 
 Joshua, went, while quite young, to Springfield, Illi- 
 nois, and there kept a country shop. Abraham Lin- 
 coln, who had recently opened his lawyer's office in 
 the town, came into the store one day, and said, ' Mr. 
 
190 
 
 ANTIS'LA VERY DA YS. 
 
 Speed, I have put a bedstead in my back office, and now 
 I want the furniture of the bed — a mattrass, pillows, 
 blankets and sheets. I cannot pay you now, but sup- 
 pose I can when the next term of court is held." 
 Speed, who knew him somewhat, told him the price, 
 but added, "Mr. Lincoln, I have a large room and a 
 large bed above my shop ; if y ou like, you can come 
 and stay there with me." " How do I get there ? " 
 asked Lincoln ; and mounting the staircase, with his 
 saddlebags, deposited them in the corner of the room, 
 and coming down again, said, "Mr. Speed, I have 
 moved in." 
 
 They lived together thus for five years, and became 
 warm friends. When Lincoln was President, he se- 
 lected a brother of Joshua, James Speed, who was an 
 excellent lawyer, and also possessing the fine integrity 
 of the family, as his Attorney-General. 
 
 I spent a summer afternoon with Joshua Speed, at 
 his late residence in Kentucky, and he told me many 
 anecdotes showing some of the early traits of Lincoln's 
 character. During all the time he knew him, he said 
 that Lincoln was devoted to his profession — conscien- 
 tious, truthful, honorable. He indulged in none of the 
 dissipations, still less in the vices, all too common in 
 those days. He did not drink, and was temperate in 
 all things. Of his interest in the law, the following is 
 an illustration : — " He once was retained in a case in 
 which the question at issue concerned the boundary of 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS, i 9 i 
 
 a piece of land on the prairie. Now, as there are no 
 trees nor stones on the prairie, the surveyors were in 
 the habit of fixing the corners of the lots by shovelling 
 up a little mound of earth. But it seemed that the prairie 
 squirrel, there called a gopher, built a somewhat similar 
 mour.d over his house. The question then was 
 whether, in this particular instance, the mound at the 
 corner had been put up by the surveyor or by the 
 gopher. Lincoln sent to New York to get books on 
 natural history, and studied in them the habits of the 
 little animal. When the trial came, he went into court 
 and explained to the judge and jury the difference be- 
 tween the surveyor's mound and that raised by the 
 gopher. The latter being anxious for the comfort of 
 his small family below, was careful to beat down the 
 roof firmly, and make it slope up to a point in the 
 middle, so that the rain might run off. The surveyor, 
 less anxious, was apt to leave his mound with a flat or 
 hollow top. After the trial was over, the judge, who 
 happened in this instance to be Lincoln's future rival, 
 Stephen A. Douglas, went to Lincoln's office, and 
 found him, with his books of natural history, still 
 studying the habits of these animals. He had no more 
 practical need of the knowledge, but had become in- 
 terested in the subject, and so went on with the study. 
 Judge Douglas and Lincoln spent the evening over 
 these books, little thinking of the future time when 
 their mutual struggles would shake the country, and 
 
x n 2 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 make one of them the President of the United States. 
 
 Sunday morning, April 14th, 1861, Fort Sumter 
 was surrendered by Major Anderson to the chivalry 
 of South Carolina. Lincoln had then been President 
 a little more than a month. On the 15th he issued 
 his proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand 
 troops to enforce the laws in the States in insur- 
 rection. The war then began, which ended four 
 years after by the surrender of Lee's army, April 9th, 
 1865. 
 
 At first everything in this war seemed to go against 
 the North. The South had every advantage. They 
 had secured the munitions of war, and had dispersed 
 the U, S. troops to the farthest parts of the west and 
 southwest. The Union had no navy, no army, and 
 had an empty treasury. The Government had to bor- 
 row of the New York banks a few million dollars to 
 commence operations. The Southerners had been 
 brought up to the use of weapons ; the Northerners 
 had not. The Southern men were quite accustomed to 
 fight ; they lived in a permanent condition of war, and 
 therefore it was natural enough, though it seemed mel- 
 ancholy, that we should be defeated in our first 
 battles. Those were very gloomy times for Union 
 men. We looked abroad for sympathy, but we did 
 not find it. We had hoped that the influence of Eng- 
 land would be on our side, as it had made such strong 
 anti-slavery professions, but the leading men there 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. x 93 
 
 were all opposed to us. The aristocracy, the army and 
 navy, the church and literary men, all took sides with 
 the slaveholders, and there were only on our side a few 
 men like John Bright, Richard Cobden, Goldwin 
 Smith, J. Stuart Mill, and the laboring class among 
 the people. With that instinct, deeper than reason 
 and larger than knowledge, that led the common people 
 to hear Christ gladly, while the wise and prudent re- 
 fused to listen to him, the common laborers in the 
 mills of Lancashire, the manufacturing classes, though 
 depending on cotton for their daily bread, neverthe- 
 less refused to echo the public sentiment against the 
 Union. They stood by it to the last, even though 
 many were on the point of starvation in consequence 
 of their position. 
 
 We sent to England as our ambassador, a man who 
 was singularly well-fitted to be our representative, Mr. 
 Charles Francis Adams. He was calm, cool, prudent, 
 wise, very determined, very inflexible — like his father 
 before him. He had a very hard time living in the 
 midst of all this sentiment in favor of the Confederacy, 
 but he held his own against it. When Lord Russell 
 refused to stop the building of rams for the Confeder- 
 ates, Mr. Adams simply said, " Of course, your lord- 
 ship is aware that this is war." Orders were then 
 given by Lord Russell to suspend the building of these 
 Confederate rams. Lord Russell had said that " Jef- 
 ferson Davis had created a nation." Most English- 
 
1 94 ANTI-S-LA VER V DA VS. 
 
 men were quite certain that the North could never 
 conquer the South. They called it a war of ambition 
 on the part of the North, and said we ought to let the 
 South go. The English aristocracy, literary men and 
 merchants wished to see our nation divided and weak- 
 ened. Their motive was, that they found the United 
 States growing into too powerful a nation ; it was as 
 suming altogether too much importance, and it would 
 be extremely satisfactory to have it broken into two 
 or three divisions. For all this there came the judg- 
 ment, when England was not only obliged to pay for 
 the destruction caused by these Confederate cruisers 
 that she had allowed to be built in her ports to destroy 
 American shipping, but to admit that she had done 
 wrong in letting them go. 
 
 When the great uprising of the Northern people 
 came, there was seen in the Northern States c< the 
 might that slumbers in a freeman's arm." The Whig 
 party, led by such men as Webster and Clay, and the 
 Democrats of the North under their own great leaders, 
 had been taught to believe in the importance of the 
 Union and the Constitution. And the Republican 
 party, which had grown up under the teaching of the 
 political and non-political sections of their anti-slavery 
 teachers, had been taught to believe that the great 
 danger to the country, was from slavery. When 
 secession came it struck a blow at both these great 
 sentiments. It attacked the national union, and it 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. ^ 
 
 attacked it in behalf of slavery and its extension. It 
 thus struck a blow at the same time at the Union 
 sentiment and the anti-slavery sentiment, and the 
 Northern States united as one man against seces^ 
 sion 
 
 Immense armies were speedily improvised. Fifty 
 days after the battle of Bull Run, when the army of 
 the Potomac had been apparently demoralized, another 
 army, of a hundred thousand men was collected in 
 Washington, under McClellan, and were organized by 
 him into a highly disciplined body of troops. A 
 blockade of the Southern States was declared. Abroad 
 this was thought to be utterly impracticable, but the 
 Southern coast for fifteen hundred miles was soon 
 watched and guarded. It is true that many blockade 
 runners got through, but our blockade was admitted 
 to be, on the whole efficient. 
 
 There had never been in this country any truly 
 organized banking system. Salmon P. Chase, Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, has the credit of having first 
 established the National banking system, which cer- 
 tainly has proved from that day to this a vastly better 
 one than any that had before existed in this country. 
 Down to that time, exchange was to be paid on the 
 notes of one state in another, and there were continual 
 failures of the state banks all over the country. But 
 our new banks were even better than the old United 
 States Bank under Nicholas Biddle. 
 
1 9 6 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 The arsenals in the country were soon at work 
 turning out thousands of guns and rifles every day. 
 
 And very soon, by the foresight and eloquence of 
 Henry W. Bellows, the Sanitary Commission was in 
 full operation. This was a new gift to mankind 
 showing how the horrors of war could be soothed and 
 its evils be alleviated by the power of kind, generous* 
 wise and faithful care on the part of those at home 
 for those who were at the front. The best women of 
 the land joined the army as nurses. They were to be 
 found in all the hospitals ; at work, everywhere, on 
 the field, and at home providing comforts for the 
 soldiers. I recollect, one Sunday, when news came 
 that there had been a battle, and that a quantity of 
 goods were wanted for the comfort of the soldiers. It 
 was advertised that they might be sent to a place 
 opposite the Tremont House, in Boston. The whole 
 of that sidewalk, on Sunday afternoon was filled with 
 boxes from many towns around, sent in for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
 After two or three years the largest, best disciplined, 
 best commanded army the world has ever seen had 
 been organized, composed of " those bayonets which 
 could not only fight but also think." Our generals 
 were at first inexperienced, but they became wise and 
 skilful, until we had such men as Grant, Sherman, 
 Sheridan, Thomas, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade at 
 the head of our armies. 
 
A N'T/SLA VER Y DA 7S. 197 
 
 Meantime the nation was ready to give all, bear all 
 and do all. Every prophecy of evil made concerning 
 it failed. It had been said that no nation could carry 
 on a civil war and at the same time allow free speech 
 and a free press. We did both. The newspapers at 
 the North which were favorable to the Confederates 
 continued to be printed, and were allowed to say what 
 they thought. Meetings were held to denounce the 
 war, conventions were called to oppose the war and 
 the people who sat in them were allowed full freedom 
 to speak. It was said that when Mason and Slidell 
 were taken and there was such an outbreak of glad 
 enthusiasm at the North, that the American people 
 would never consent to their being given up to Eng- 
 land. When the nation found that this was the 
 necessary thing to do, no opposition was made to it 
 anywhere, It took place in silence. It was said that 
 a free election of a President was not possible in the 
 midst of such a war ; but when Lincoln's four years 
 of service expired, another election took place, which 
 was carried through as though it had been in the 
 midst of profound peace. 
 
 It was said that a nation spending two million dol- 
 lars a day in war expenses would soon become a 
 bankrupt. At one time the paper money of the 
 United States had depreciated immensely ; neverthe- 
 less we were never bankrupt. We never repudiated 
 our debts. It was said that if the South was con- 
 
198 
 
 ANTI-SLA VERY DA VS. 
 
 quered in the field, it would carry on a perpetual 
 guerrilla warfare. But when Lee and Johnson sur- 
 rendered, the war came to an end. It was said that 
 reconstruction would be impossible ; that the South- 
 ern States were so hostile to the North that they 
 would never come back ; but we very soon saw them 
 willingly taking their places in the Union, consenting 
 /to alter their Constitutions to abolish slavery. We 
 1 have seen a new prosperity, a new contentment come 
 I over the whole land. It was said that this enormous 
 debt could never be paid off, but about half of it has 
 already been paid. It was said that the immense 
 Northern army would never consent to be disbanded, 
 but would reduce the country under military control ; 
 but as soon as the war was over the army melted 
 away and disappeared ; glad to return to private life 
 and to take up its old occupations. It was said that 
 if the negroes were emancipated, they would not 
 work, but would gradually die out ; but at present the 
 fear expressed is that they are increasing so rapidly 
 that they will finally drive out the white people from 
 the Southern States. 
 
 What gave this power to the people of the Union ? 
 Free schools, free churches, a free press, popular in- 
 stitutions. The people of the country knew that it 
 was their country ; that it belonged to them ; that 
 they had a right to make of it anything they chose, 
 to do anything they wished with it. They felt the 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 199 
 
 immense benefit rendered to them by these free in- 
 stitutions. They had been educated by free schools 
 to understand these principles ; they had been taught 
 in free churches to make sacrifices for the general 
 good. They knew that the country was their com- 
 mon country ; and that it must be defended and pre- 
 served for the common welfare. 
 
 There were many providential circumstances to be 
 noticed in those times. A friend of mine once said 
 to me during the war, " Mr. Clarke, it does not now 
 require any faith to see the presence of a divine Prov- 
 idence in our affairs ; it only requires common 
 sense." 
 
 It was a providential thing that we had such a man 
 as Abraham Lincoln for President. If we had had a 
 man who was more satisfactory to the abolitionist 
 and anti-slavery party, he would not have united the 
 whole nation. At any rate he would not have in- 
 duced the Border States to remain in the Union. On 
 the other hand, if we had had a man opposed to the 
 anti-slavery movement, neither would he have united 
 the nation. As it was, we had a man who in heart 
 and conviction was opposed to slavery, but whose 
 main object was to save the Union. He said on one 
 occasion, " If the Union can be best saved by eman- 
 cipating all the slaves, I am willing to emancipate 
 them all. If it can be best saved by emancipating a 
 part, I am ready to emancipate a part. And if it can 
 
200 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 be best saved by not emancipating any, I will emanci- 
 pate none." He did not go too fast, and yet he kept 
 moving on. He knew the people. Every great states- 
 man has been able to divine what the people need 
 and want. I remember hearing Gov. Andrew tell a 
 story of Andrew Jackson. He was advised that some 
 measure which he favored was not Democratic. " I 
 don't want any one to tell me what is Democratic," 
 he cried ; " if I want to know what is Democratic, I 
 ask old Andrew Jackson ; he knows what is Demo- 
 cratic if no one else does. He is a Democrat if any 
 one is." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had no military knowledge. Jefferson 
 Davis was an educated soldier. Mr. Lincoln was at 
 first obliged to put himself entirely in the hands of 
 General Scott and other generals, and do as they 
 said. When Gen. McClellan still lingered so long 
 after the army had been prepared, and found it so 
 difficult to move forward, Mr. Lincoln said to one of 
 his friends, " I wonder whether McClellan means to 
 do anything. If not I should like to borrow the army 
 of him for a week or two." He took an immense in- 
 terest in everything connected with the war, and he 
 had that faculty which enables a man to make use of 
 men different from himself. He could see the good 
 in men of all sorts ; in Mr. Seward, for example, who 
 was a politician ; in Sumner, a scholar and thinker. 
 They both were great friends of Lincoln. He was 
 
ANTf-SLA YAK y DAYS. 201 
 
 also very fond of Stanton, who opposed Lincoln in 
 almost everything. He made use of them all for the 
 purposes of the national life. 
 
 So though Lincoln was thought to be slow at first, 
 and though he was distrusted by many, he grew in 
 the love and esteem of the whole nation, and also in 
 real strength and power. At last he felt himself able 
 to decide for himself, on the measures needed at the 
 hour, forming his own conclusions, and acting deci- 
 dedly upon them. No one ever could take more to 
 heart than Lincoln did the terrible burdens of the 
 war. Some of our generals seemed to act as though 
 they were going through a rou-tme and needed not to 
 trouble themselves much about their work. Not so 
 with Lincoln. On him this awful struggle rested as 
 a dreadful weight, and he would have been crushed 
 but for three things. He had faith in the justice of 
 God. He was a profoundly religious man at heart, 
 though without any religious formality or cant. He 
 had a strong faith also in free institutions, and was 
 sure that they must ultimately triumph. Then he 
 had a sense of humor and social sympathy which were 
 often a help to him in the hours of greatest calamity. 
 When he told his Cabinet that he had decided on 
 issuing the Proclamation of Emancipation, he said 
 that he had been waiting for the right time to come, 
 and he was sure that the time had arrived. He had 
 watched the sentiment of the people, and he was sat' 
 
2 02 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 isfied that the whole nation was prepared for this step. 
 Then he added in a low voice, heard only by one 
 person, " When Lee was driven out of Maryland I 
 promised my God that I would abolish slavery." 
 
 When Gen. McClellan's army was defeated in the 
 Peninsula, Lincoln said that he was about as incon- 
 solable as any man could be and live. 
 
 Lincoln's humanity and sympathy were very great. 
 There was a story told me by Mr. James Speed, his 
 attorney-general, to this effect. One day when he 
 met Mr. Lincoln to consult him on some point, the 
 officer on guard came in and said, " Your excellency, 
 there is a poor woman outside crying. She has been 
 there two or three days, asking if she cannot see you/' 
 " Let her come in," said Lincoln. She came in and 
 said, "Oh, Mr. President, I have three sons in the 
 army. I am a widow. I had one son at home, and 
 now he is dead. Won't you lend me one of my sons- 
 to carry on my farm and help support me." " Well," 
 said Lincoln, <4 1 have three children; it does seem as 
 though you ought to have one. Where is your son ?" 
 " Oh, sir, he is with the army at Fredericksburg." 
 " What is his name, and with what command is he ? " 
 When he had learned these facts he sat down and 
 wrote an order for his discharge. She blessed him 
 and took the paper and was going out when Lincoln 
 said, where are you going ? " " Please, sir, I am 
 going directly to Fredericksburg to get my son. 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 2 03 
 
 " How do you expect to get through the lines to find 
 him ? " " The Lord will take care of that, so long as 
 I have your paper." " I do not know," said Lincoln, 
 " whether it is necessary to trouble-the Lord about it ; 
 I can attend to that myself." So he sat down and 
 wrote an order passing her through the lines and 
 directing every one to give her the help she needed. 
 
 A gentleman who was in the office of Secretary 
 Stanton told me that when any soldier had committed 
 an offence for which he was sentenced to death by 
 the Court Martial, the sentence was never executed 
 till the proceedings of the Court had been revised 
 both by Stanton and Lincoln. Then it almost always 
 happened that Lincoln wished to commute, and Stan- 
 ton to execute the sentence. Stanton once said, 
 " Mr. President, you think you will be doing an act of 
 mercy in pardoning this man " (who had disobeyed 
 orders, deserted in battle, or committed some outrage 
 on peaceful citizens), " it is not mercy, it is cruelty. 
 For every such rascal pardoned, a hundred good and 
 honest soldiers will be killed." " It may be so," re- 
 plied Lincoln ; "but then that is only a possibility,; 
 but if I let this man be shot, it will be a certainty that 
 I have allowed the death of one soldier." 
 
 It is said that on one occasion, when it was thought 
 that it was absolutely necessary that there should be 
 a new Surgeon-General appointed, and Dr. Bellows 
 was asked to go to Washington to urge the appoint- 
 
204 
 
 ANTISLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ment of Dr. Hammond, he went, and had an inter- 
 view with Lincoln, whom he found signing papers. 
 
 " Go on," said Lincoln, " I can hear you while I 
 write." So Dr. Bellows made his plea with his usual 
 energy. Lincoln kept signing his papers. At last, 
 after Bellows had got through, and stopped, Lincoln 
 said, " I like to hear you talk, Doctor ; but I rather 
 think Hammond has been appointed, at least a week 
 ago." " Is that so ? " asked Dr. Bellows. " Yes, that 
 is so ; but I thought I would like to hear your 
 oration." 
 
 He was a sad-eyed, earnest, wise, kind man, but 
 this fondness for fun perhaps saved his life more than 
 once. He was once called upon to address a crowd 
 from the window of a hotel. He was tall, and his 
 wife, who was very short, was standing at the window 
 with him. The whole speech was in these words : 
 " My friends, here am I, and here is Mrs. Lincoln. 
 That is the long and the short of the whole matter." 
 
 The best description that has ever been given of 
 him was that of James Russell Lowell, in his Com- 
 memoration Ode at Cambridge : 
 
 Nature, they say, doth dote, 
 
 And cannot make a man, 
 
 Save on some worn-out plan, 
 Repeating us by rote. 
 For him her Old World moulds aside she threw, 
 
 And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
 
 Of the unexhausted west, 
 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 2 05 
 
 Wise, zealous in the strength of God, and true. 
 How beautiful to see 
 
 Once more, a shepherd of mankind, indeed, 
 
 Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 
 One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. . . . 
 They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
 They could not choose, but trust 
 
 In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
 
 And supple-tempered will, 
 That bent, like perfect steel, to spring again and thrust. 
 Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
 
 Disturb our judgment for the hour ; 
 But, at last, silence comes; 
 
 These all are gone, and standing like a tower, 
 Our children shall behold his fame — 
 
 The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame ; 
 
 New birth of our new soil — the first American." 
 
 In February, 1862, an assault was made by the 
 Federal troops on Fort Henry in Tennessee. This 
 was one of the first Federal successes of the war. At 
 that time the gunboats which Fremont had ordered 
 to be built came into most efficient use. The Gov- 
 ernment had refused to accept these boats : and it is 
 said that the contractors, having turned them over to 
 the Government, and the Government not being 
 willing to accept them, they lay three days at the 
 Cairo landing without any owner at all. There were 
 twelve of these armored gunboats under Flag Officer 
 Foote, which went up the Tennessee river in order to 
 break the Confederate lines. The Confederates had 
 established a line of posts across the country to pre- 
 vent the Union army from getting down through 
 Kentucky. General Grant commanded the Union 
 
2 06 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 troops, and Foote the gunboats. They captured Fort 
 Henry in two hours, and then attacked Fort Donald- 
 son, on the Cumberland river. In the last, 20,000 
 men were in garrison, under Pillow and Floyd, of 
 whom 13,500 surrendered to Grant. This success 
 gave great confidence to the North, and showed that 
 some of our commanders believed in carrying on the 
 war in earnest. 
 
 One of the discouragements of the Northern people 
 was, that they thought justly or otherwise, that some 
 of the generals in command had no faith in the war; 
 no expectation of success ; no sympathy with the 
 cause for which they fought. The Northern people 
 gave their lives and their fortunes for union and 
 freedom, and it was a bitter thought that those in 
 command sometimes were not in earnest in this great 
 cause. 
 
 But, however that might be with the army, no one 
 doubted the devoted courage and chivalry of the 
 naval commanders. With what science and what 
 calm skill did the Union fleet steam past the forts at 
 Hilton Head, silencing their batteries, and putting the 
 United States in possession of the sea-islands of 
 Georgia and South Carolina. How thrilling was the 
 description of the passage by Farragut, of the Con- 
 federate forts on the Mississippi, which resulted in the 
 taking of New Orleans ; and his daring entrance into 
 Mobile harbor, in spite of forts, ships and torpedoes ! 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 207 
 
 The defences of New Orleans consisted of a fort 
 on each side the river, together with a heavy boom 
 across the stream, bound with chains and anchored ; 
 a fleet of war steamers behind it, together with five 
 ships. This defence was thought to make the city 
 impregnable. The attack on the forts began with 
 Porter's mortar fleet of 21 schooners, each carrying a 
 mortar which threw a shell weighing two hundred 
 pounds. With these, Admiral Porter bombarded 
 Forts Philip and Jackson, during six days. Then 
 Farragut, on the night of April 23d, 1862, ran past 
 them with his fleet of eighteen vessels, and broke the 
 boom. Having passed the forts he encountered the 
 Confederate vessels. The Cayuga was attacked by 
 sixteen, and though struck forty-two times, took three 
 of them. The Varuna drove three ashore, and sank 
 a fourth, and then ran ashore herself and sank. In 
 an hour and a half the forts were passed, and the 
 Confederate fleet taken or sunk. New Orleans then 
 surrendered to General Butler and the Union army. 
 
 How exciting was the account of the battle between 
 the Merrimac and the Monitor. The United States 
 war-ship Merrimac, taken by the Confederates at Nor- 
 folk, had been turned by them into a great iron-clad. 
 At that time little was known of the power of iron- 
 clad vessels. The Merrimac was the first floating 
 steam battery ; and it demonstrated that a new ele- 
 
2 08 A NT IS LA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 ment had appeared in naval warfare. It bad been for 
 some time rumored that she was in preparation. On 
 March 8th, 1862, she was seen moving down the James 
 river, looking like a black ark of iron. She approached 
 the United States vessels lying in the bay. The 
 Merrimac ran at the United States frigate Cumber- 
 land, and rammed it with its powerful beak, and with a 
 tremendous blow laid open half the side of the vessel, 
 which, with all aboard, and with her flag flying, went 
 down, in 54 feet of water.* 
 
 The Merrimac then destroyed the United States 
 frigate Congress in a few minutes, notwithstanding 
 the repeated broadsides poured at the ironclad from 
 its heavy batteries. The shot glanced off harmless 
 from her iron roof, like hail from a housetop. Having 
 accomplished so easily the destruction of two of the 
 best war vessels of the Union, the Confederate iron- 
 clad turned to another. The Minnesota, the most 
 powerful vessel in the service, was lying at anchor, or 
 aground, when the Confederate went to attack her. 
 One or two broadsides were delivered on either side, 
 when the commanding officer of the Confederate 
 vessel, fearing to get aground himself, turned and went 
 back to Norfolk. 
 
 All that night the telegrams sent the terrible news 
 through the North. This impregnable vessel would, no 
 
 * In 1^54, on my way to Grant's headquarters, I saw the topmast 
 still out of water. 
 
ANTI-SLA VERY DA VS. 
 
 209 
 
 doubt, return the next day, and easily destroy the 
 Minnesota. What then ? Why should she not, after 
 taking Fortress Monroe, enter any of our harbors, 
 and demolish, or capture, New York or Boston. The 
 wildest apprehension prevailed wherever the news 
 went. But a power had been providentially prepared 
 to put an end to her career of terror. 
 
 Mr. Erricson, an eminent engineer and inventor, 
 had foreseen with the intuition of genius, the change 
 which must take place in naval warfare in consequence 
 of the introduction of ironclads. At his own expense, 
 and with only partial encouragement from the United 
 States Government, he had built a small vessel, show, 
 ing little surface above the water, plated heavily, and 
 with a revolving tower of iron, containing one heavy 
 gun. This vessel, the existence of which was scarcely 
 known, had just been finished, and was towed round 
 by a steamer to Fortress Monroe. Once or twice on 
 the passage, she came near being lost. But she ar- 
 rived in time. When the Merrimac came down the 
 river the next morning to complete her work of de- 
 struction, this little machine which looked like a large 
 cheese-box on the water, interposed, and pounded 
 away with her heavy balls at every open porthole. 
 She was too alert for her massive opponent, and finally 
 drove it back to Norfolk, from which it never came 
 out again. 
 
 This battle revolutionized naval warfare throughout 
 
2 1 o ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 the world. Wooden ships were made useless, and 
 England, France, and other countries, began to build 
 ironclads. 
 
 / January I, 1863, came the proclamation of President 
 Lincoln, which declared the slaves in all the rebel 
 states to be free. That was what the Northern people 
 had been longing for, and hoping, but were by no 
 means sure it would ever come. I Long ago, when John 
 Quincy Adams stood alone in Congress, and when it 
 was said that under no circumstance could the United 
 States Government abolish slavery, he replied, " I 
 don't agree to that. There is one state of things in 
 which slavery can be abolished in this government. 
 If there should be an insurrection or rebellion in the 
 United States, it would be competent for the war- 
 power in the hands of the President or even of any 
 General in command, to abolish slavery."* 
 
 At this time the plan of enlisting regiments of col- 
 ored troops was begun, chiefly by the urgent efforts 
 of Governor Andrew of Massachusetts. 
 
 John Albion Andrew has been called, and justly 
 the great war governor. We may also apply to him 
 the words said of William Pitt. He was " the pilot 
 that weathered the storm." A lawyer in Boston, 
 working hard in his profession, few persons were 
 
 * The abolitionists, whom nothing escaped which bore on the sub- 
 ject of slavery, published a tract at the time, containing extracts from 
 these declarations of J. Q. Adams, concerning the constitutional right 
 of the war-power to abolish slavery. 
 
ANT/SLA VER Y DAYS. 2 1 1 
 
 aware of his great abilities until he was chosen gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts in 1861. He had been de- 
 voted and consistent in his anti-slavery principles 
 from his youth. Fearless in doing and saying what- 
 ever he believed right, he was wise, kindly and toler- 
 ant of differences of opinion ; though with a power of 
 indignation which, when roused, swept everything be- 
 fore it. He was one of the best tempered men I ever 
 knew. His sagacity was like intuition. He had an 
 immense working power, and in his office at the State 
 House would tire out all his clerks and amanuenses, 
 and then send them home, and continue working 
 alone till late at night. His influence at Washing- 
 ton was great, and he used it to urge forward all 
 means of putting down the rebellion. He was in 
 constant communication with Lincoln, Stanton, Sew- 
 ard, Chase, the governors of the Northern States, and 
 the Senators and Representatives of Massachusetts. 
 On the very day of his inauguration as governor, 
 January 1st, 1861, three months before the attack on 
 Sumter, he sent messages to the governors of each of 
 the New England States, assuring them that war was 
 imminent, and that they had best begin at once to 
 prepare font. He himself put Massachusetts in such 
 a state of readiness, that as soon as Lincoln's war- 
 proclamation was issued, April 15th, he called out 
 four regiments to go to Washington, and they were 
 assembled the next day, April 16th, on Boston Com- 
 
212 A .VTI-SLA VER V DA VS. 
 
 mon, every company full. The Sixth regiment left 
 for Washington that evening, passed through Balti- 
 more, where some of its number were killed by the 
 mob, and was the first full regiment that reached 
 Washington. During the war Governor Andrew was 
 untiring, using his own private means when neces- 
 sary, for public objects, and died leaving to his family 
 as their inheritance his great reputation and noble 
 character. ; As soon as the war was over he urged rec- 
 onciliation and reunion. " After a vigorous prosecu* 
 tion of the war," said he, in his farewell address, " let 
 us now devote ourselves to a vigorous prosecution of 
 peace."* 
 
 *The following passages are from an article in a journal reviewing 
 Gen. Schouler's " History of Massachusetts in the Civil War." 
 
 On the fifth of January, 1861, John Albion Andrew entered on his 
 duties as Governor of Massachusetts His apprehension of the ap- 
 proaching conflict were clearly shown in his inaugural speech. That 
 very night he forwarded to each of the other five New England Gov- 
 ernors letters confidential, in which he urged the necessity of prepara- 
 tion for the crisis he so clearly saw impending. The next day a gen- 
 eral order required that national salutes should be fired in the large 
 towns, on the approaching eighth of January, to commemorate not 
 only the great victory of New Orleans, but also ajor Anderson's 
 " gallant conduct and wise foresight ' in taking possession of Fort 
 Sumter Eight days latei came General Order No. 4, calling for ex- 
 act returns of all the volunteer militia, requiring that every company 
 should be full, and that none should be kept on the rolls who could 
 not, or who would not, respond tc any call that might come for active 
 service. On the first of February the legislature put at the Gover- 
 nor's disposal an " emergency fund " of one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars, It also appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars to provide 
 overcoats and equipage for two thousand men, and authorized the 
 Governor to organize as many companies and regiments as the public 
 exigency might require. Accordingly, earnest efforts were made to 
 
AATT/-SLA VER Y DAYS. 213 
 
 Always a friend of the colored people, Governor 
 Andrew was unwearied in urging on the government 
 
 strengthen the militia; the overcoats were procured; a wide corre- 
 spondence was kept up ; a cipher for secret messages was devised ; the 
 condition of the seaboard forts was scrutinized, and the quickest, 
 safest route for troops to Washington was carefully considered. No 
 pains were spared in obtaining constant and reliable information from 
 the seat of government. 
 
 Thus, for four anxious months, things went on amid alternating 
 hopes and fears, and then came Sumter. On the 15th of April a mes- 
 sage by the wire called on Governor Andrew to send two regiments to 
 Washington. Four colonels, namely, Wardrop, Packard, Jones and 
 Monroe, were instantly ordered to muster their regiments on Boston 
 Common. On the morning of the 16th the troops began to come in — 
 three companies from Marblehead being first on the ground. In the 
 evening of the same day the Sixth Regiment (Colonel Jones) left Bos- 
 ton by rail. At the same hour on the 17th the Third Regiment 
 (Colonel Wardrop) embarked for Fortress Monroe and almost simul- 
 taneously the Fourth Regiment (Colonel Packard,' "having the same 
 destination, started on the Old Colony Railroad. The Eighth Regi- 
 ment (Colonel Monroe), after two days' detention in Boston, left on 
 the 18th by the Worcester road, accompanied by General Butler, who 
 had been appointed to command the brigade. On Saturday, the 20th, 
 the Third Battalion of Rifles (Major Devens) took the cars at Wor- 
 cester for the South, and the next morning the Fifth Regiment (Col- 
 onel Lawrence) started on the same road from the station in Boston. 
 With them went also Major Cook's Light Battery, with seventy horses 
 and six brass six-pounders. Of the regiments thus forwarded during 
 that memorable week, the Sixth Massachusetts bears the high distinc- 
 tion of being the first to shed its blood in the great conflict, and the 
 first to enter Washington. 
 
 Such was the noble response of Massachusetts when the country 
 called on her for help. And this community — be it ever remembered 
 — thus suddenly fired with patriotic ardor, — these troops which set 
 out so promptly for distant fields of unknown difficulty and danger, 
 were the peace-loving, money-getting, unwarlike " Yankees " of the 
 North, of whom the seceding Southerners could speak only with con- 
 tempt 
 
 How strange it seems that the generous ardor and willing service 
 of Massachusetts in that perilous crisis of the nation should meet with 
 
2 1 4 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 the employment of colored troops. At last he was 
 permitted to raise them, and send them to the front 
 as part of the Massachusetts quota. 
 
 After many defeats of the Army of the Potomac, 
 under McLellan, Pope, Burnside and Hooker, it was 
 at last victorious at Gettysburg, under General Meade, 
 July ist, 1863 ; and on July 4th, Vicksburg was sur- 
 rendered to General Grant. The Mississippi was 
 thus opened through its entire course to New 
 Orleans. 
 
 May 6th, 1864, General Sherman commenced his 
 " march to the sea." By a series of skilful manoeuvres, 
 he had passed round the army of Johnson, who was 
 then relieved by order of Jefferson Davis. Hood was 
 placed in command of the Confederate army opposed 
 to Sherman, he being believed to be more of a fight- 
 ing man. But he proved unable to stop the progress 
 of General Sherman, who sent back whatever he did 
 not need by General Thomas, who was left to resist 
 
 anything but a cordial welcome at the seat of government! Early in 
 May, 1861, ten thousand Massachusetts men had organized in com- 
 panies, and were ready, even anxious, to enlist for the three years' 
 service. Governor Andrew offered them to the War Department, 
 and in repeated messages urged that they should be accepted. Days, 
 weeks even, passed without a word of reply from the War Office. It 
 was not till the 22d of May that a frigid answer came from Secretary 
 Cameron, consenting that Massachusetts should send six regiments, 
 but strongly hinting that there was no need of so many. How Gover- 
 nor Andrew felt in view of this strange coldness and neglect, — this 
 evident failure to appreciate the magnitude and the dangers of the 
 situation, — very clearly appears in his admirable letter to Montgomery 
 Blair. 
 
A NTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 2 i$ 
 
 Hood. Sherman with the rest of his force marched 
 into the heart of Georgia, cutting loose from his base 
 of supplies, and disappearing from the knowledge of 
 the Northern people, who did not hear for a long time 
 anything about his movements. He had made up his 
 mind that he could march through Georgia, although 
 such a great army had perhaps never before been 
 turned into a detached corps. He was satisfied that 
 he could supply his troops from the country, and he 
 succeeded. It was predicted that they would be de- 
 stroyed, but they had an easy and cheerful march, 
 though the Southern journals kept sending word that 
 we should never hear of Sherman or his army again. 
 Sherman went on, without difficulty, till, reaching the 
 sea, he took Savannah, and caused the fall of Charles- 
 ton. He then marched through South Carolina 
 and North Carolina, till he was able to co-operate 
 with Grant before Richmond. 
 
 Finally, Lee was defeated by utter exhaustion, after 
 making a grand military resistance during many years, 
 and showing all the qualities of a great general. Gen 
 eral Grant's persistency and ability at last was 
 crowned with success, and so ended this war of 
 giants. 
 
 Then came the assassination of Lincoln, and the 
 long period of reconstruction, in which a great many 
 difficult problems were to be solved. One by one the 
 
2 ! 6 A NTI-SLA VER Y DAYS. 
 
 Southern States were re-admitted into the Union, on 
 the condition of abolishing slavery. 
 
 / Looking back now we can easily see how many 
 things which seemed very sad and mysterious at the 
 time, were in reality blessings in disguise. All can 
 now understand what a blessing it was that the North 
 had been taught, in its schools and churches, and by 
 its two great parties, the value of the Union. We can 
 also recognize a providence in having Lincoln for a 
 President. But it was also providential that the South 
 at first had better success in the war than the North- 
 ern armies. It has been often said, and said truly, 
 that if we had won victories at the beginning of the 
 ! war, there would have been a compromise, which 
 \ would have allowed slavery to continue. Our early 
 disasters were an advantage in another way. If we 
 had had great successes at first, and if the Southern 
 armies had been defeated, they would have been scat- 
 tered through the South, and we might have had to 
 carry on a long guerilla warfare. How difficult that 
 would have been, we know by the experience of Napo- 
 leon in his attempt to conquer Spain, which he could 
 not do with an army of veterans of three hundred 
 thousand men, under his best generals. It was an 
 advantage to the North that the South possessed such 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 2 1 7 
 
 a splendid general in Lee. They had such confidence 
 in him that they put all their men into his hands, till, 
 when he and his army were destroyed, there were 
 none left to make any further resistance. 
 
 It was good for us that we were forced, almost 
 against our will, to use negro troops. We did it re- 
 luctantly, but we found they fought nobly. They 
 were braver even than the white troops, for they / 
 fought often with a halter around their necks. They 
 knew that the slaveholders would give them no quar- 
 ter if they were taken prisoners. Still, while we paid 
 the white troops thirteen dollars a month and cloth- 
 ing, the colored troops received only ten dollars, and 
 out of that they paid about three dollars for clothing, 
 leaving only seven dollars, instead of thirteen, for 
 their pay Gov. Andrew felt great indignation at this 
 unjust discrimination on account of color. He once 
 showed me a letter he had just written to the Massa- 
 chusetts Senators, m which he requested them to 
 urge upon Congress and the President the great in- 
 justice done in not having the colored troops on an / 
 equality with the white. " I will not rest," said he, 
 in conclusion, " until this injustice is removed. I will 
 not allow you any rest until it is removed. I will not 
 die till I have seen justice done ; or, if I should die, 
 and should I have any standing in the other world, I 
 will pursue the matter there before the throne of In- 
 finite Justice." I told Governor Andrew that I 
 
f 
 
 2 18 ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 was going to Washington, and that I would 
 take the letter to Mr. Sumner and Mr Wilson, 
 and try to see the Attorney-General. I was to 
 preach in the House of Representatives the fol- 
 lowing Sunday, and I took occasion to describe in 
 my sermon the character and conduct of those colored 
 troops. I told how the Massachusetts legislature had 
 voted that money should be taken to the colored regi- 
 ments in South Carolina, so as to make up the full 
 amount to the men for all the time they had been in 
 the service. These troops had steadily refused to 
 accept the ten dollars, and had gone without pay for 
 some time. The agents of Massachusetts who carried 
 the money explained to the troops that the State of 
 Massachusetts, unwilling that they should serve with- 
 out full pay, had sent this money as justly due to 
 them. They were to add that Governor Andrew was 
 anxious that they should accept it. This was done, 
 and after the soldiers had consulted among them- 
 selves, one was appointed to reply. He said they 
 were much obliged to the State of Massachusetts, to 
 Governor Andrew, and to the gentlemen who had 
 come there to bring the money, but they did not con- 
 sider themselves as the troops of Massachusetts. 
 They were now United States soldiers, and they 
 would not take any money, not even the ten dollars 
 offered by Government, though their families were 
 suffering for it, until they could have what was justly 
 
ANTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 2 r g 
 
 their due ; meantime, they meant to do their duty 
 just as well as if paid. When I had told that story, I 
 said to the members of Congress before me : — " If 
 this had been done by Greeks or Romans, an account 
 of it would have been put into all our schoolbooks, 
 and our children would have been taught to read it as 
 an example of heroism. But as it is only done by 
 colored people, we do not think much of it. Never- 
 theless in the sight of humanity and of history, I had 
 rather be one of those colored soldiers, doing my duty 
 as a man, and refusing this money till I could get jus- 
 tice with it, than a member of Congress, receiving my 
 pay regularly, and sitting in my comfortable seat, and; 
 not able to muster courage to pass a law to pay those 
 soldiers their just debt." When I said that I sup- 
 posed they would be displeased ; but instead of that 
 they applauded. 
 
 Who that was not then living can tell how, when 
 peace came, the very air seemed full of joy, hope and 
 content ! This feeling of the joy of returning peace, 
 of re-established union, of the end of the great evil and 
 danger of the nation, filled all hearts with a grateful 
 sense of the Divine love. This was best expressed 
 by Whittier in one of his fine lyrics, of which the fol- 
 lowing stanzas are a part : — 
 
 It is done ! 
 Clang of bell and roar of gun 
 Send the tidings up and down. 
 
2 2 O ANTI-SLA VER Y DA VS. 
 
 How the belfries rock and reel ! 
 How the great guns peal on peal, 
 Fling the joy from town to town 1 
 
 Let us kneel : 
 
 God's own voice is in that peal, 
 And this spot is holy ground. 
 
 Lord, forgive us ! What are we, 
 
 That our eyes this glory see, 
 That our ears have heard the sound! 
 
 Did we dare, 
 
 In our agony of prayer, 
 Ask for more than He has done ? 
 
 When was ever his right hand 
 
 Over any time or land 
 Stretched as now beneath the sun? 
 
 No description can convey the sense of gratitude 
 and gladness which we had, not only because peace 
 had come and our sufferings and trials were at an 
 end, but because peace brought freedom and union ; 
 because the country was once more to be united, and 
 without the blot of slavery existing in it. Slavery 
 was ended ! The great danger and evil was gone ; 
 and the South itself in a little while was glad that it 
 was gone. A few years after the war was over I 
 went to the Sea Islands of South Carolina, to Char- 
 leston, and Savannah, and I found scarcely a man 
 even then who did not admit that it was the best 
 thing for the Southern States to have slavery abol- 
 ished. Though they suffered so much in the process, 
 
ANTI-SLA VEK Y DAYS. 221 
 
 they would not have it back. They admitted that the 
 colored people were working well, and making great 
 progress. It is not too much to say that there is not 
 one sensible man in a thousand who would have 
 slavery back. Last winter I was told by a Boston 
 gentleman that he had a conversation with two grand- 
 sons of Calhoun, who was the embodiment of the pro- 
 slavery theory. He asked how many sensible people 
 would be glad to see slavery re-established. One re- 
 plied, " Not a man in a hundred," and the other said, 
 " Not one in a thousand." " Well," asked my 
 informant, "what would your grandfather have said 
 to that ? " " If our grandfather were now living he 
 would say the same thing," was the reply, 
 
 Before the civil war, the cotton crop of the whole 
 South amounted to some four millions of bales. Last 
 year the cotton crop was seven million bales. That is 
 the best possible proof of two important facts in re- 
 gard to the progress of the colored people. Since the , 
 land in the cotton-growing States belongs mostly to 
 the white people, and the labor mostly to the colored 
 people, the great production of cgitefi shows, first, 
 that the colored people -si'^trWorking better than they 
 did as slaves, and secondly, that the whites and colored 
 people are working together in peaceful relations. 
 
 The colored people also feel the need of getting an J 
 education. Every opportunity they have for going to 
 school they eagerly seize. Old and young go to school. 
 
222 A NTI-SLA VER Y DA YS. 
 
 Those who think themselves too old to learn, are 
 grateful that their children can learn. I remember 
 being told by a lady, who has been a teacher of the 
 colored people in Port Royal, South Carolina, ever 
 since it fell into the hands of our troops, that she one 
 day saw an old colored woman kneeling by the side of 
 the schoolhouse. " Why, mammy," she asked, "what 
 are you doing there ? " " Oh, missis, I'm too old for 
 laming myself, but I was just thanking the good Lord 
 that my little children in there can have their lam- 
 ing." 
 
 According to the last census, of the 4,600,000 colored 
 people of ten years old and upward, 1,400,000 (or about 
 30 per cent.) have learned to read and write. There 
 have been two colored men in the United States 
 Senate, and several in the different departments of 
 government, and many in the legislatures of all the 
 States. Frederick Douglass, who once escaped from 
 the hands of the United States marshal of the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia, has since been the United States 
 marshal in the same District. 
 
 In every way we have reason to be thankful for the 
 [great progress made throughout the whole Southern 
 icountry both by the whites and the colored people. 
 
 Although slavery was virtually destroyed by the 
 proclamation of Lincoln, it was legally ended only 
 when the following amendments became part of the 
 Constitution of the United States. 
 
AM -SLAVERY 
 
 223 
 
 The thirteenth amendment is as follows : — 
 
 Article XIV. — Section 1. — Neither slavery nor 
 involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for 
 crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convict- 
 ed, shall exist within the United States, or any place 
 subject to their jurisdiction. 
 
 The fourteenth amendment defines who are citizens, 
 to be equally protected in all the States. 
 The fifteenth amendment is this : — 
 
 Article XV. — Section 1. — The right of citizens 
 of the United States to vote shall not be denied or 
 abridged by the United States, or by any State, on 
 account of race, color, or previous condition of servi- 
 tude. 
 
 The proclamation of Lincoln was the corner-stone ; 
 these amendments to the Constitution were the key- 
 stone of the arch of Liberty. 
 
 In view of these great results of the struggle I have 
 thus briefly described, we can well adopt the language 
 of Lowell's commemoration poem, the finest English 
 ode, perhaps, since Wordsworth's Ode to Immortality, 
 to express a nation's joy in the coming of universal 
 freedom, and the creation of a better union in our 
 land. 
 
 k< Boom, cannon, boom, to all the hills and waves ! 
 Clash out glad bells from every rocking steeple ! 
 Banners, advance in triumph ! bend your staves ! 
 And from every mountain peak, 
 Let beacon fires to answering beacons speak, 
 Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, 
 
224 
 
 ANTI-SLAVERY DA YS. 
 
 And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
 
 Making the earth more firm and the air breathe braver. 
 
 Be proud, for she is saved, and all have helped to save her, 
 
 She. that lifts up the manhood of the poor, 
 
 She of the open soul and open door, 
 
 With room about her hearth for all mankind ! 
 
 The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more ; 
 
 From her bold front the helm she doth unbind, 
 
 Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, 
 
 And bids her navies that so lately hurled 
 
 Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in, 
 
 Swimming, like birds of calm, along the unharmful shore. 
 
 No challenge sends she to the elder world, 
 
 That looked askance and hated ; a light scorn 
 
 Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty knees 
 
 She calls her children back, and waits the morn 
 
 Of nobler day enthroned between her subject seas." 
 
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