The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences

s were independent of one another, and were held together juxtaposed, rather than united, only through their allegiance to

Yorktown. In 1787 the thirteen States, each claiming to be still sovereign, came together in convention at Philadelphia and formed the present Constitution, looking to "a more perfect union." The Constitution that created this new government has been rightly said to be "the mo

finally upon the extent of the powers granted to it. If any such right had been clearly given, it is certain that many of the States would not have entered into the Union. As it was, the Constitution was only adopted by eleven of the S

tion, because they were jealous of, and did not

, that this might give trouble in the future. Their hope was that, as the advantages of the Union became, in process of time, mo

ould be exercised by the Federal Government except such as were very clearly granted in the Constitution. These soon became a party and called themselves Republicans. Some thirty years

new president, John Adams, also a Federalist, came in with a congress in harmony with him, the Republicans made bitter war upon them. France, then at war with England, was even waging what has been denominated a "quasi war" u

a fatal blow at the plotters against the public peace, and to crush the Republ

power to order out of the country, at his own will, and without "trial by jury" or other "

f the government of the United States "which was directed by proper authority," as well as als

ion laws, and at the presidential election in 1800 the Federalists received their death-blow. The party as an organi

ther became the celebrated Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798-9.[2] The alien and sedition laws were denounced in these resolutions for the exercise of powers not delegated to the general government. Adverting to the sedition law, it was declared that no power over the freedom of religion

Kentucky resoluti

wers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no effect: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: That the government created by

nts. The authors of these celebrated resolutions were, both of them, devoted friends of the Union they had helpe

the Constitution. A crisis in the life of the new government had now come. Congress had usurped powers not given; it had exercised p

ample time for full consideration, before the then coming presidential election, a full, clear, and comprehensive exposition of the Constitution precisely as they, and as the people, then understood it. This they did in the resolutions of 1798 and 1799, and the ve

the country under control of the Republicans was happy and prosperous for three decades. Then the party in power began to split into National Republicans and Democratic Republi

n people condemned all violations of the Constitution up to the time when, in 1831, our story of the Abolitionists is to begin.

and Virginia resolutions would survive every trial that was to come, remained to b

of a committee room by Rufus King, senator from New York, and Oliver Ellsworth, a senator from Massachusetts, both Federalists, with a proposition for a dissolution of the Union by mutual consent, the line of division to be somewhere from the Potomac to the Hudson. This was o

auses to those who entertained it, that the acquisition of Louisiana to the Union transcended the constitutional powers of the government of the United States; that it created, in fact, a new confederacy to which the States, united by the former compact, w

not assume seri

President Jefferson (in February, 1809) that further attempts to enforce it in the New England States would be likel

land. These threats were in no wise connected with slavery; agitators had not then made slavery a national issue; the idea

templated empire.... It is impossible that such a power could be granted. It was not for these men that our fathers fought. It was not for them this Constitution was adopted. You have no authority to throw the rights and liberties and property of this people into hotchpot with the wild men on the Missouri, or with the mixed, though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask in the

ts legislature endorsed the po

er of secession unless the non-intercourse act, which also bore hard on New England, should be

was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton, on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason, on the other, who regarded the new system as anyt

slavery in her sister States of the South, and in 1844 the Massachusetts legislature resolved that "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood by them, is sincerely anxio

ommonwealth of Massachusetts began to arm

growth. It grew, as our country grew in prestige and power. The splendid triumphs of our ships at sea, in the War of 1812, and our victory at New Orleans over British regulars, added to it; the masterful decisions of our great Chief Justice John Marshall, pointing out how beneficently our Federal Constitution was adapted to the preservation not only of local self-government but of the liberties of the citizen as well; peace with, and the respect of, foreign nations; free trade between the

l prepared for their reception. No speech delivered in this country ever created so profound an impression. It was the foundation of a new school of political thought. It concluded with this eloquent peroration: "When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gracious ensign of the republic, now known and honor

words. By 1861 they had been imprinted on the minds and had sunk in

d fourteen years after Webster's speech, but the Garrisonians had then been agitating the slavery que

ture of Union sentiment at the North that had pract

on was rebellion. Immigrants to America, practically all settling in Northern States, were during the thirty years, 1831-1860, 4,910,590; and these must, with their natural increase, have numbered at least six millions in 1860. In other words, far mor

followers of Jefferson. From the earliest days much of the wealth and intelligence of the country, North and South, had opposed the Democracy, first as Federalists and later as Whigs. In the South the Whigs have been described as "a fine upstanding old pa

in 1830: "The North was now beginning to insist upon a national government; the South wa

on the modern theory of an indestructible Union; the other upon

ears later, to America. Both were devotees of liberty, both men of brilliant intellect and high culture. Meagher settled in the North, Mitchel in the South. This was about 1855. Each from his new stand-point studied the history an

s side was "eternally right, and the other side eternally wro

ecession has been settled, and will never again