UNITED STATES. 



767 



voted their efforts to defeat the operations of 

 the law for the recovery of fugitives, to aid the 

 slave in escaping from his servitude, to thwart 

 on every occasion, if possible, all measures 

 tending to promote the interests of slavehold- 

 ers, and to persuade persons tenderly conscien- 

 tious, that slavery was a sin which it was their 

 duty to exterminate, and that the black man 

 was the equal of the white man. The remain- 

 der of the people held the same opinion on the 

 powers of the Federal Government over the in- 

 stitutions of the States. Indeed, it may be said 

 there was not a dissentient opinion on that 

 subject. But while the great mass of the peo- 

 ple in the Northern States held these views 

 they also considered that slavery was an insti- 

 tution abolished as profitless at the North, and, 

 therefore, one in which they had no concern. 



The thoughtful reader will see that here 

 were the seeds of a dissolution of the Union 

 of the States. So long as the persons of anti- 

 slavery or abolition views were few and insig- 

 nificant, they remained in obscurity, but if the 

 hour should ever come in which they should 

 hold the control of the Federal Government, it 

 would involve a concession on their part, or on 

 that of the slaveholders, or a rupture. There 

 was nothing to encourage the patriotic citizen 

 to hope that concessions would be made if 

 this hour of fate should ever come. The anti- 

 slavery men of the Northern States and the 

 slaveholding citizens of the Southern States 

 quickly grew to be antagonists, and their dif- 

 ferences and disputes were conducted with the 

 most bitter and vindictive denunciations to be 

 found in human language. On the floor of 

 Congress members from the Northern States, 

 holding high positions for intelligence and 

 piety, denounced the slaveholding citizens of 

 the Southern States as " bartering their own 

 children,'' as ' dealing in the image of God," 

 as " buying and selling the souls of men," as 

 "making merchandise of the Holy Ghost."* 

 The reply to such expressions was " contempti- 

 ble fanatic," &c., &c. 



Meanwhile the anti-slavery sentiment grew 

 ap'ace, and there became enough who held those 

 views to control State elections, by acting as a 

 third party, and thus in one instance to control 

 the vote of a great State at a Presidential elec- 

 tion, which was thereby decided. The progress 

 of these views now was more rapid : slavery 

 was attacked in both Senate and House of 

 Congress at every assailable point. To satisfy 

 the scruples of the citizen who knew his duty 

 of non-interference under the Constitution, and 

 the stints of a conscience called to act under 

 a belief that citizenship with a slaveholder was 

 sin, the principle of a " higher law " was pro- 

 claimed which relieved the conscience from 

 the obligations of the Federal Constitution. 

 The progress of anti-slavery views now was 

 rapid. One of the great political parties 



* See speeches of Horace Mann, successor to Ex- President 

 John Quincy Adams, and others. 



of the country was demoralized and broken 

 up, and an anti-slavery candidate fur the 

 Presidency brought forward who c-arri<_'<l cvc-rv 

 free State but four, and thus was almost suc- 

 cessful. Four years of bitter anti-slavery con- 

 tests ensued in which the object was to defeat 

 the extension of slavery to any Territory by 

 preventing the creation of any authority for its 

 existence there. This was to be done by a 

 direct prohibition by Congress, as some u: 

 or by absolute non-interference by Con. 

 but by the decision of the settlers. Meantime 

 the slaveholders were told that the contest 

 was u irrepressible," that it would go on, from 

 the very nature of the question, until all the 

 States became free, or all became slaveholding. 

 At length, by the Presidential election of 1860, 

 the administration of the Federal Government 

 was put into the hands of the anti-slavery 

 party. Such had been the bitterness of the 

 contest that seven of the extreme Southern 

 States took steps immediately to withdraw from 

 the Union. The reason on which they at- 

 tempted to justify their acts was that, in their 

 opinion, it was the determined purpose of the 

 Republican or anti-slavery party to so interfere 

 with their domestic institutions as to ren- 

 der it unsafe for them longer to continue in 

 the Union. (See AXXUAL CYCLOPAEDIA, 1861, 

 CONGRESS, U. S.) Such, however, was the at- 

 tachment of the mass of the people in those 

 seven states to the Union, and such their indif- 

 ference to these movements that if the Re- 

 publican President and party had not enter- 

 tained such designs of interference, and had 

 boldly, promptly, and fully denied it, the peo- 

 ple would have been satisfied and secession 

 would have been a failure from the start. On 

 the other hand, this great party after a struggle 

 of years had won the rightful possession to 

 the sceptre of the nation, and were indignant 

 at these proceedings. They preserved a moody 

 silence, and defied the consequences. But it 

 was the design of a portion of them to inter- 

 fere with the institution of slavery and destroy 

 it if possible. The radical abolitionists of the 

 party preferred disunion to a longer continuance 

 under the Constitution as it was and the Union 

 as it had^been. The anti-slavery men of the 

 party hoped for some way to be opened to re- 

 move this institution which they regarded as a 

 national sin. Others were determined if possi- 

 ble to divorce the Government from all connec- 

 tion with the institution, and secure " its ail- 

 ministration on the side of freedom." Not- 

 withstanding these were the views of consider- 

 able portions of the friends of the incoming 

 administration, yet the great mass of them had 

 the highest attachment to the Constitution and 

 the Union. President Lincoln, representing 

 their views, in his inaugural said " the proper- 

 ty and peace of no section are to be in no wise 

 endangered by the now incoming Administra- 

 tion."" In all his messages of the year 1861 in 

 the despatches of the State Department, and in 

 the resolutions of Congress at the extra session, 



