border counties of the border states. The Underground Railroad, therefore, was calculated not so. much to weaken slavery as to strengthen the antislavery feeling throughout the northern states.1 1 On interstate difficulties, arising out of slavery, see chap. xix., below. then tha and streng feeling of the South that the North was deliver a tiny trying to destray them? CHAPTER XVI THE ABOLITIONIST AND THE SLAVE-HOLDER (1830-1860) LL the relations of the abolitionist to the negro A were intended to bear upon the one purpose of affecting the master either by "moral suasion" or by arousing public sentiment against him. Garrison deliberately chose the latter method, and asked, "What has been so efficacious as this hard language? ... its strength of denunciation bears no proportion to the enormous guilt of the slave system. Although not one planter in a thousand ever heard an abolitionist speak, and not one in a hundred ever read an abolitionist book or paper, this habitual harshness aroused the fiercest resentment; the rank and file of the abolitionists were "silly enthusiasts led away by designing characters"; the leaders were mere ambitious men who cloak their designs under vile and impious hypocrisies, and unable to shine in higher spheres, devote themselves to fanaticism as a trade." " Calhoun said of them: "It is against this relation between the two races that the blind and criminal zeal of the Abolitionists is directed 1 Garrisons, Garrison, I., 336. 'Hammond, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 173. -a relation that now preserves in quiet and security more than 6,500,000 human beings." Even so moderate a slave-holder as Henry Clay wrote, “Abolition is a delusion which cannot last. . . in pursuit of a principle . . . it undertakes to tread down and trample in the dust all opposing principles however sacred. It arrays state against state. To make the black men free it would virtually enslave the white man.' Though "moral suasion" had been going on ever since the days of Justice Sewall, slavery was gaining ground steadily; and Garrison scored a point when he drew up a roll of abolitionists known for their habitual moderation of tone, and asked, "Of the foregoing list, who is viewed with complacency or preferred over another by slave holders or their apologists?" No arguments against slavery pleased the southerners, and no mildness of statements could reconcile them to an habitual questioning of the justice of their practice. A champion of slavery wrote, "Supposing that we were all convinced and thought of slavery precisely as you do, at what era of 'moral suasion' do you imagine you could prevail on us to give up a thousand millions of dollars in the value of our slaves, and a thousand millions of dollars more in the depreciation of our lands?" 4 1 Calhoun, Works, V., 205. ' Clay to Gibson, July, 1842, Colton, Private Corresp. of Clay, 464. 'Garrisons, Garrison, I., 461. 4 Hammond, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 141. Perhaps a stronger argument for the abandonment of moral suasion was that the south would have none of it from its own people, who could speak from experience, and could appreciate the difficulties of the slave-holder. To prevent discussion in print the legislatures enlarged the existing press laws of the south against anything which might have a tendency to cause dissatisfaction among slaves. By the Georgia code of 1835, publications which tended to incite insurrections were punishable by death.' The Virginia code of 1849 provided that, "If a free person by speaking or writing, maintain that owners have no right of property in their slaves, he shall be confined in jail not more than one year and fined not exceeding $500." Cassius M. Clay's anti-slavery paper, The True American, was driven out of Lexington by an organization of citizens. The religious societies of the north found it impossible to carry on their work in the south except through southern men; and northern, and even English books containing criticisms were not allowed to circulate. In 1856 a member of a Texas legislature was threatened with "consequences to which we need not allude" for saying, in his place in the house, that the "Congress of the United States had the constitutional right to legislate on the subject of lavery in the territories." 2 1 Niles' Register, XLVIII., 441. 'Virginia Code, 1849, chap. cxcviii., § 22. |