Every iniquity that society allows to subsist for the benefit of the oppressor is a sword with which she herself arms the oppressed. Right is the most dangerous of weapons: woe to him who leaves it to his enemies.
CHAPTER V – GROWTH OF THE SLAVE-POWER
Introduction of the Cotton-gin. – Its effect on Slavery. – Fugitive Slave Law. – Anthony Burns. – The Dred Scott Decision. – Imprisonment for reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” – Struggles with Slavery.
The introduction of the cotton-gin into the South, by Whitney of Connecticut, had materially enhanced the value of slave property; the emancipation societies of Virginia and Maryland had ceased to petition their Legislatures for the “Gradual Emancipation” of the slaves; and the above two States had begun to make slave-raising a profitable business, when the American Antislavery Society was formed in the city of Philadelphia, in the year 1833. The agitation of the question in Congress, the mobbing of William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, the murder of the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy in Illinois, and the attempt to put down free speech throughout the country, only hastened the downfall of the institution.
In the earlier days of the Antislavery movement, not a year, sometimes hardly a month, passed that did not bear upon its record the report of mobs, almost always ferocious in spirit, and sometimes cruel and blood-stained in act. It was the first instinctive and brutal response of a proslavery people convicted of guilt and called to repentance; and it was almost universal. Wherever antislavery was preached, honestly, and effectually, there the mobocratic spirit followed it; so that, in those times, he who escaped this ordeal was, with some justice, held to be either inefficient or unfaithful. Hardly a town or city, from Alton to Portland, where much antislavery labor was bestowed, in the first fifteen years of this enterprise, that was not the scene of one of these attempts to crush all free discussion of the subject of slavery by violence or bloodshed. Hardly one of the earlier public advocates of the cause that was not made to suffer, either in person or in property, or in both, from popular violence, – the penalty of obedience to the dictates of his own conscience. Nor was this all: official countenance was often given to the mad proceedings of the mob; or, if not given, its protection was withheld from those who were the objects of popular hatred; and, as if this were not enough, legislation was invoked to the same end. It was suggested to the Legislature of one of the Southern States, that a large reward be offered for the head of a citizen of Massachusetts who was the pioneer in the modern antislavery movement. A similar reward was offered for the head of a citizen of New York. Yet so foul an insult excited neither the popular indignation nor legislative resentment in either of those States.
Great damage was done to the cause of Christianity by the position assumed on the question of slavery by the American churches, and especially those in the Southern States. Think of a religious kidnapper! a Christian slave-breeder! a slave-trader, loving his neighbor as himself, receiving the “sacraments” in some Protestant church from the hand of a Christian apostle, then the next day selling babies by the dozen, and tearing young women from the arms of their husbands to feed the lust of lecherous New Orleans! Imagine a religious man selling his own children into eternal bondage! Think of a Christian defending slavery out of the Bible, and declaring there is no higher law, but atheism is the first principle of Republican Government!
Yet this was the stand taken, and maintained, by the churches in the slave States down to the day that Lee surrendered to Grant.
One of the bitterest fruits of slavery in our land is the cruel spirit of caste, which makes the complexion even of the free negro a badge of social inferiority, exposing him to insult in the steamboat and the railcar, and in all places of public resort, not even excepting the church; banishing him from remunerative occupations; expelling him from the legislative hall, the magistrate’s bench, and the jury-box; and crushing his noblest aspirations under a weight of prejudice and proscription which he struggles in vain to throw off. Against this unchristian and hateful spirit, every lover of liberty should enter his solemn protest. This hateful prejudice caused the breaking up of the school of Miss Prudence Crandall, in the State of Connecticut, in the early days of the antislavery agitation.
Next came the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, one of the most beautiful edifices in the City of Brotherly Love, simply because colored persons were permitted to occupy seats by the side of whites.
The enactment by Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law caused the friends of freedom, both at home and abroad, to feel that the General Government was fast becoming the bulwark of slavery. The rendition of Thomas Sims, and still later that of Anthony Burns, was, indeed, humiliating in the extreme to the people of the Northern States.
On that occasion, the sons of free, enlightened, and Christian Massachusetts, descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, bowed submissively to the behests of a tyranny more cruel than Austrian despotism; yielded up their dignity and self-respect; became the allies of slave-catchers, the associates and companions of bloodhounds. At the bidding of slaveholders and serviles, they seized the image of God, bound their fellow-man with chains, and consigned him to torture and premature death under the lash of a piratical overseer. God’s law and man’s rights were trampled upon; the self-respect, the constitutional privileges, of the free States, were ignominiously surrendered. A people who resisted a paltry tax upon tea, at the cannon’s mouth, basely submitted to an imposition tenfold greater, in favor of brutalizing their fellow-men. Soil which had been moistened with the blood of American patriots was polluted by the footsteps of slave-catchers and their allies.
The Boston Court House in chains, two hundred rowdies and thieves sworn in as special policemen, respectable citizens shoved off the side-walks by these slave-catchers; all for the purpose of satisfying “our brethren of the South.” But this act did not appease the feelings, or satisfy the demands, of the slave-holders, while it still further inflamed the fire of abolitionism.
The “Dred Scott Decision” added fresh combustibles to the smouldering heap. Dred Scott, a slave, taken by his master into free Illinois, and then beyond the line of 36° 30’, and then back into Missouri, sued for and obtained his freedom on the ground, that, having been taken where by the Constitution slavery was illegal, his master had lost all claim. But the Supreme Court, on appeal, reversed the judgment; and Dred Scott, with his wife and children, was taken back into slavery. By this decision in the highest court of American law, it was affirmed that no free negro could claim to be a citizen of the United States, but was only under the jurisdiction of the separate State in which he resided; that the prohibition of slavery in any Territory of the Union was unconstitutional; and that the slave-owner might go where he pleased with his property, throughout the United States, and retain his right.
This decision created much discussion, both in America and in Europe, and materially injured the otherwise good name of our country abroad.
The Constitution, thus interpreted by Judge Taney, became the emblem of the tyrants and the winding sheet of liberty, and gave a boldness to the people of the South, which soon showed itself, while good men at the North felt ashamed of the Government under which they lived.
The slave-holders in the cotton, sugar, and rice growing States began to urge the re-opening of the African slave-trade, and the driving out from the Southern States of all free colored persons.
In the Southern Rights’ Convention, which assembled at Baltimore, June 8, 1800, a resolution was adopted, calling on the Legislature to pass a law driving the free colored people out of the State. Nearly every speaker took the ground that the free colored people must be driven out to make the slave’s obedience more secure. Judge Mason, in his speech, said, “It is the thrifty and well-to-do free negroes, that are seen by our slaves, that make them dissatisfied.” A similar appeal was made to the Legislature of Tennessee. Judge Catron, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a long and able letter to “The Nashville Union,” opposed the driving out of the colored people. He said they were among the best mechanics, the best artisans, and the most industrious laborers in the State, and that to drive them out would be an injury to the State itself. This is certainly good evidence in their behalf.
The State of Arkansas passed a law driving the free colored people out of the State, and they were driven out three years ago. The Democratic press howled upon the heels of the free blacks until they had all been expatriated; but, after they had been driven out, “The Little Rock Gazette” – a Democratic paper – made a candid acknowledgment with regard to the character of the free colored people. It said, “Most of the exiled free negroes are industrious and respectable. One of them, Henry King, we have known from our boyhood, and take the greatest pleasure in testifying to his good character. The community in which he casts his lot will be blessed with that noblest work of God, an honest man.”
Yet these free colored people were driven out of the State, and those who were unable to go, as many of the women and children were, were reduced to slavery.
“The New Orleans True Delta” opposed the passage of a similar law by the State of Louisiana. Among other things, it said, “There are a large free colored population here, correct in their general deportment, honorable in their intercourse with society, and free from reproach so far as the laws are concerned; not surpassed in the inoffensiveness of their lives by any equal number of-persons in any place, North or South.”
And yet these free colored persons were not permitted by law to school their children, or to read books that treated against the institution of slavery. The Rev. Samuel Green, a colored Methodist preacher, was convicted and sent to the Maryland penitentiary, in 1858, for the offence of being found reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The growth of the “Free-Soil” party, which had taken the place of the “Liberty” party; and then the rapid increase of the “Republican” party; the struggle in Kansas; the “Oberlin Rescue Trials;” and, lastly, the “John Brown Raid,” carried the discussion of slavery to its highest point.
All efforts, in Congress, in the proslavery political conventions, and in the churches, only added fuel to the flame that was fast making inroads upon the vitals of the monster.
CHAPTER VI. – THE JOHN BROWN RAID
John Brown. – His Religious Zeal. – His Hatred to Slavery. – Organization of his Army. – Attack on Harper’s Ferry. – His Execution. – John Brown’s Companions, Green and Copeland. – The Executions.
The year 1859 will long be memorable for the bold attempt of John Brown and his companions to burst the bolted door of the Southern house of bondage, and lead out the captives by a more effectual way than they had yet known: an attempt in which, it is true, the little band of heroes dashed themselves to bloody death, but, at the same time, shook the prison-walls from summit to foundation, and shot wild alarm into every tyrant-heart in all the slave-land. What were the plans and purposes of the noble old man is not precisely known, and perhaps will never be; but, whatever they were, there is reason to believe they had been long maturing, – brooded over silently and secretly, with much earnest thought, and under a solemn sense of religious duty. As early as the fall of 1857, he began to organize his band, chiefly from among the companions of his warfare against the “Border Ruffians” in Kansas. Nine or ten of these spent the winter of 1857-8 in Iowa, where a Col. Forbes was to have given them military instruction; but he, having-fallen out with Brown, did not join them, and Aaron D. Stevens, one of the company, took his place.
About the middle of April, 1858, they left Iowa, and went to Chatham, Canada, where, on the 8th of May, was held a convention, called by a written circular, which was sent to such persons only as could be trusted. The convention was composed mostly of colored men, a few of whom were from the States, but the greater part residents in Canada, with no white men but the organized band already mentioned. A “Provisional Constitution,” which Brown had previously prepared, was adopted; and the members of the convention took an oath to support it. Its manifest purpose was to insure a perfect organization of all who should join the expedition, whether free men or insurgent slaves, and to hold them under such strict control as to restrain them from every act of wanton or vindictive violence, all waste or needless destruction of life or property, all indignity or unnecessary severity to prisoners, and all immoral practices; in short, to keep the meditated movement free from every possibly avoidable evil ordinarily incident to the armed uprising of a long-oppressed and degraded people.
And let no one who glories in the revolutionary struggles of our fathers for their freedom deny the right of the American bondsman to imitate their high example. And those who rejoice in the deeds of a Wallace or a Tell, a Washington or a Warren; who cherish with unbounded gratitude the name of Lafayette for volunteering his aid in behalf of an oppressed people in a desperate crisis, and at the darkest hour of their fate, – cannot refuse equal merit to this strong, free, heroic man, who freely consecrated all his powers, and the labors of his whole life, to the help of the most needy, friendless, and unfortunate of mankind.
The picture of the Good Samaritan will live to all future ages, as the model of human excellence, for helping one whom he chanced to find in need.
John Brown did more: he went to seek those who were lost that he might save them.
On Sunday night, Oct. 16, John Brown, with twenty followers (five of them colored), entered the town of Harper’s Ferry, in the State of Virginia; captured the place, making the United-States Armory his headquarters; sent his men in various directions in search of slaves with which to increase his force.
The whole thing, though premature in its commencement, struck a blow that rang on the fetters of the enslaved in every Southern State, and caused the oppressor to tremble for his own safety, as well as for that of the accursed institution.
John Brown’s trial, heroism, and execution, an excellent history of which has been given to the public by Mr. James Redpath, saves me from making any lengthened statement here. His life and acts are matters of history, which will live with the language in which it is written. But little can be said of his companions in the raid on slavery. They were nearly all young men, unknown to fame, enthusiastic admirers of the old Puritan, entering heartily into all of his plans, obeying his orders, and dying bravely, with no reproach against their leader.
Of the five colored men, two only were captured alive, – Shields Green and John A. Copeland. The former was a native of South Carolina, having been born in the city of Charleston in the year 1832. Escaping to the North in 1857, he resided in Rochester, N.Y., until attracted by the unadorned eloquence and native magnetism of the hero of Harper’s Ferry. The latter was from North Carolina, and was a mulatto of superior abilities, and a genuine lover of liberty and justice. The following letter, written a short time before his execution, needs no explanation: —
“Charlestown, Va., Dec. 10, 1859.
“My dear Brother, – I now take my pen to write you a few lines to let you know how I am, and in answer to your kind letter of the 5th inst. Dear brother, I am, it is true, so situated at present as scarcely to know how to commence writing: not that my mind is filled with fear, or that it has become shattered in view of my near approach to death; not that I am terrified by the gallows which I see staring me in the face, and upon which I am so soon to stand and suffer death for doing what George Washington, the so-called father of this great but slavery-cursed country, was made a hero for doing while he lived, and when dead his name was immortalized, and his great and noble deeds in behalf of freedom taught by parents to their children. And now, brother, for having lent my aid to a general no less brave, and engaged in a cause no less honorable and glorious, I am to suffer death. Washington entered the field to fight for the freedom of the American people, – not for the white man alone, but for both black and white. Nor were they white men alone who fought for the freedom of this country. The blood of black men flowed as freely as that of white men. Yes, the very first blood that was spilt was that of a negro. It was the blood of that heroic man (though black he was), Crispus Attucks. And some of the very last blood shed was that of black men. To the truth of this, history, though prejudiced, is compelled to attest. It is true that black men did an equal share of the fighting for American independence; and they were assured by the whites that they should share equal benefits for so doing. But, after having performed their part honorably, they were by the whites most treacherously deceived, – they refusing to fulfil their part of the contract. But this you know as well as I do; and I will therefore say no more in reference to the claims which we, as colored men, have on the American people…
“It was a sense of the wrongs which we have suffered that prompted the noble but unfortunate Capt. Brown and his associates to attempt to give freedom to a small number, at least, of those who are now held by cruel and unjust laws, and by no less cruel and unjust men. To this freedom they were entitled by every known principle of justice and humanity; and, for the enjoyment of it, God created them. And now, dear brother, could I die in a more noble cause? Could I, brother, die in a manner and for a cause which would induce true and honest men more to honor me, and the angels more readily to receive me to their happy home of everlasting joy above? I imagine that I hear you, and all of you, mother, father, sisters and brothers, say, ‘No, there is not a cause for which we, with less sorrow, could see you die!’”
“Your affectionate brother,
“John A. Copeland.”
“The Baltimore Sun” says, “A few moments before leaving the jail, Copeland said, ‘If I am dying for freedom, I could not die for a better cause. I had rather die than be a slave!’ A military officer in charge on the day of the execution says, ‘I had a position near the gallows, and carefully observed all. I can truly say I never witnessed more firm and unwavering: fortitude, more perfect composure, or more beautiful propriety, than were manifested by young Copeland to the very last.’”
Shields Green behaved with equal heroism, ascending the scaffold with a firm and unwavering step, and died, as he had lived, a brave man, and expressing to the last his eternal hatred to human bondage, prophesying that slavery would soon come to a bloody end.
CHAPTER VII – THE FIRST GUN OF THE REBELLION
Nomination of Fremont. – Nomination of Lincoln. – The Mob Spirit. – Spirit of Slavery. – The Democracy. – Cotton. – Northern Promises to the Rebels. – Assault on Fort Sumter. – Call for 75,000 Men. – Response of the Colored Men.
The nomination of John C. Fremont by the Republican party in 1856, and the large vote given him at the election that autumn, cleared away all doubts, if any existed as to the future action of the Federal Government on the spread and power of slavery. The Democratic party, which had ruled the nation so long and so badly, saw that it had been weighed, and found wanting; that it must prepare to give up the Government into the hands of better men.
But the party determined to make the most of Mr. Buchanan’s administration, both in the profuse expenditure of money among themselves, and in getting ready to take the Southern States out of the Union.
Surrounded by the men who believed that the Government was made for them, and that their mission was to rule the people of the United States, Mr. Buchanan was nothing more than a tool, – clay in the hands of the potters; and he permitted them to prepare leisurely for disunion, which culminated, in 1860, in the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.
The proslavery Democracy became furious at the prospect of losing the control of the situation, and their hatred of free speech was revived. From the nomination of Mr. Lincoln to his inauguration, mob-law ruled in most of the cities and large villages. These disgraceful scenes, the first of which commenced at the antislavery-meeting at the Tremont Temple, Boston, was always gotten up by members of the Democratic party, who usually passed a series of resolutions in favor of slavery. New York, Philadelphia, Albany, Buffalo, Troy, Cincinnati, and Chicago, all followed the example set by Boston.
These demonstrations were caused more by sympathy with the South, and the long-accustomed subserviency of the Northern people to slaveholding dictation, than to any real hatred to the negro.
During all this time the Abolitionists were laboring faithfully to widen the gulf between the North and South.
Towards the close of the year 1860, the spirit of compromise began to show itself in such unmistakable terms as to cause serious apprehension on the part of the friends of freedom for the future of American liberty. The subdued tone of the liberal portion of the press, the humiliating offers of Northern political leaders of compromises, and the numerous cases of fugitive slaves being returned to their masters, sent a thrill of fear to all colored men in the land for their safety, and nearly every train going North found more or less negroes fleeing to Canada.
At the South, the people were in earnest, and would listen to no proposals whatever in favor of their continuance in the Union.
The vast wealth realized by the slave-holder had made him feel that the South was independent of the rest of the world.
Prosperity had made him giddy. Cotton was not merely king: it was God. Moral considerations were nothing. The sentiment of right, he argued, would have no influence over starving operatives; and England and France, as well as the Eastern States of the Union, would stand aghast, and yield to the masterstroke which should deprive them of the material of their labor. Millions were dependent on it in all the great centres of civilization; and the ramifications of its power extended into all ranks of society and all departments of industry and commerce. It was only necessary to wave this imperial sceptre over the nations; and all of them would fall prostrate, and acknowledge the supremacy of the power which wielded it. Nothing could be more plausible than this delusion. Satan himself, when about to wage war in heaven, could not have invented one better calculated to marshal his hosts, and give promise of success in rebellion against the authority of the Most High. But, alas! the supreme error of this anticipation lay in omitting from the calculation all power of principle. The right still has authority over the minds of men and in the counsels of nations. Factories may cease their din; men and women may be thrown out of employment; the marts of commerce may be silent and deserted: but truth and justice still command some respect among men; and God yet remains the object of their adoration.
Drunk with power, and dazzled with prosperity, monopolizing cotton, and raising it to the influence of a veritable fetich, the authors of the Rebellion did not admit a doubt of the success of their attack on the Federal Government. They dreamed of perpetuating slavery, though all history shows the decline of the system as industry, commerce, and knowledge advance. The slave-holders proposed nothing less than to reverse the currents of humanity, and to make barbarism flourish in the bosom of civilization.
Weak as were the Southern people in point of numbers and political power, compared with those of the opposite section, the haughty slave-holders easily persuaded themselves and their dependents that they could successfully cope in arms with the Northern adversary, whom they affected to despise for his cowardly and mercenary disposition. Proud and confident, they indulged the belief that their great political prestige would continue to serve them among their late party associates in the North, and that the counsels of the adversary would be distracted, and his power weakened, by the fatal effects of dissension.
The proslavery men in the North are very much to blame for the encouragement that they gave the rebels before the breaking out of the war. The Southerners had promises from their Northern friends, that, in the event of a rebellion, civil war should reign in the free States, – that men would not be permitted to leave the North to go South to put down their rebellions brethren.
All legitimate revolutions are occasioned by the growth of society beyond the growth of government; and they will be peaceful or violent just in proportion as the people and government shall be wise and virtuous or vicious and ignorant. Such revolutions or reforms are generally of a peaceful nature in communities in which the government has made provision for the gradual expansion of its institutions to suit the onward march of society. No government is wise in overlooking, whatever may be the strength of its own traditions, or however glorious its history, that human institutions which have been adapted for a barbarous age or state of society will cease to be adapted for more civilized and intelligent times; and, unless government makes a provision for the gradual expansion, nothing can prevent a storm, either of an intellectual or a physical nature. Slavery was always the barbarous institution of America; and the Rebellion was the result of this incongruity between it and freedom.
The assault on Fort Sumter on the 12th of April, 1861, was the dawn of a new era for the negro. The proclamation of President Lincoln, calling for the first 75,000 men to put down the Rebellion, was responded to by the colored people throughout the country. In Boston, at a public meeting of the blacks, a large number came forward, put their names to an agreement to form a brigade, and march at once to the seat of war. A committee waited on the Governor three days later, and offered the services of these men. His Excellency replied that he had no power to receive them. This was the first wet blanket thrown over the negro’s enthusiasm. “This is a white man’s war,” said most of the public journals. “I will never fight by the side of a nigger,” was heard in every quarter where men were seen in Uncle Sam’s uniform.
Wherever recruiting offices were opened, black men offered themselves, and were rejected. Yet these people, feeling conscious that right would eventually prevail, waited patiently for the coming time, pledging themselves to go at their country’s call, as the following will show: —
“Resolved, That our feelings urge us to say to our countrymen that we are ready to stand by and defend the Government as the equals of its white defenders; to do so with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, for the sake of freedom and as good citizens; and we ask you to modify your laws, that we may enlist, – that full scope may be given to the patriotic feelings burning in the colored man’s breast.” —Colored Men’s Meeting, Boston.