principal. The rich commonwealth of Pennsylvania owed about $41,000,000, of which two-thirds was held in England; after the crash of 1837 the state paid its interest out of borrowed money, and in 1841 absolutely suspended.' It was this experience which caused Sydney Smith to say that he never met a Pennsylvanian without a desire to "strip him of his clothes and boots for division among the guests, most of whom had probably suffered by his state's dishonesty." Mississippi had loaned $5,000,000 to a bank, and when it failed the state government insisted that there had been an informality in the issue, and that therefore the state, which had received the proceeds, was not liable. It was in this episode that Jefferson Davis first came to the front, in 1843, as an advocate of repudiation."

So serious was the crisis that application was made to Congress to assume the state debts, and a committee, in March, 1843, reported that the outstanding state debts were then $208,000,000, carrying an interest charge of $10,000,000 a year. Pennsylvania resumed payment in 1845, and returning prosperity enabled all the states that so desired to meet their just debts; but $11,000,000, subscribed by creditors of the states previous to 1840, have never been paid to this day.

1 Scott, Repudiation of State Debts, passim.

2 Lyell, Travels, 1st series, 217-226.

3 Lalor, Cyclopædia, III., 605; Shields, Prentiss, 327; R. Davis, Recollections, 166.

THE

CHAPTER XXI

THE EFFECTS OF ABOLITION

(1830-1860)

HE question still remains, how far did the abolitionists accomplish what they set out to do? After thirty years of agitation, suddenly slavery ceased to be, through the use of that military power which John Quincy Adams had foreseen and almost invoked.' The abolitionists naturally believed that they had pulled down the heavens and let the freedmen escape through the cracks. Are they entitled to the credit for this tremendous result?

The work of the abolitionists can be estimated only in contrast with their aims, motives, and results, up to the breaking out of civil war. So far as the effect upon the conditions of the slave was concerned, the abolitionist accomplished little of what he set out to do: the slave codes were more severe in 1860 than in 1830; the national fugitiveslave act was more drastic; the law of the territories was more favorable to slavery; the square miles open to slavery had doubled in the thirty years; the

1 See chap. xviii., above.

number of slaves had increased from two millions to nearly four millions; even the bulwark against the African slave-trade seemed weakening, under the vigorous demands of the lower south for cheaper slaves.1

As for the attempt to affect the slave-holder by moral suasion or by hard language, it was a total failure. A few slave-holders, like John S. Wise, shocked by the brutality of the system as they saw it, privately put their heads together and “agreed that a system in which things like that were possible was monstrous; and that the question was, not whether it should be abolished and abolished quickly, but as to the manner of its abolition "2; but the community in general defended slavery in all its ramifications, accepting the worst features of it as disagreeable but inevitable incidents.

The insurmountable difficulty in the whole controversy over slavery was that the two sides were not dealing with the same thing. The starting-point in the north was the individual, his inborn Godgiven right to make the best of himself, no matter what his race or color. As Lincoln put it, “in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he [the negro] is my equal, . . . and the equal of every living man.”

xx.

...

1 See Smith, Parties and Slavery (Am. Nation, XVIII.), chap.

Wise, End of an Era, 87; cf. Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 190-192. 'Lincoln, Works, I., 289.

From that stand-point all arguments of social or economic advantage to the whites seemed foreign to the subject. On the other hand, the. slaveholders were thinking of their community, of its vested rights, of the superiority of favored men backed up and supported by a powerful social system which protected them in their hold on the resources of their section, both natural and human. The basis of slavery was the conviction that the negro was put into the world for the benefit of the white man, and his highest glory and advancement was in serving the superior race well. As for the mulattoes, they bore the mark of their sinful origin in their complexions, and their white blood must be submerged in their negro blood for the protection of the white race.

With two such widely differing conceptions of the basis of society and of the right and wrong in human life, the contestants might have argued for a century without convincing each other. Contradiction stood out of every phase of the discussion. With the same breath the pro-slavery advocates declared that the negro was a barely human creature, saved from barbarism only by his contact with the whites; and that he was a docile, affectionate, and faithful servitor, a friend of his master and a fit companion and playmate of his master's family. The negro was incapable of political organization because sunk in sloth and licentiousness; and at the same time a dangerous conspirator, who was kept from cutting

his master's throat only by unceasing watchfulness. Doubtless some negroes were bad and some negroes were good, but as a race the negro could not be at the same time a brute and a happy serf, a criminal and a family friend.

This confusion, which can be traced in almost every southern book dealing with the subject, was combined with a tactical error which gave the north a great advantage in the discussion; and that was the prohibition after 1835 of all open criticism of slavery in the lower south. The reason given was the danger of such discussion before slaves; but it went on habitually in almost every house in the south, for people somehow forgot that those standing behind their chairs had ears to hear and tongues to repeat. To assure the world that slavery was God-given, hallowed by the experience of mankind, enjoined by Scripture, the foundation of republican government, the source of all southern blessings,and then to insist that it could be overthrown by the mere wind of doctrine,-was a confession that it was really unstable and iniquitous. No great institution contributing to human enlightenment has ever needed to be protected by silence.

Another advantage of the abolitionists throughout the controversy was that nobody was able to suggest a remedy for slavery that was any more acceptable to the slave-holders than outright emancipation. Southside Adams's naïve remedy was for the northern people to invite slave-holders to come up and bring