The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences

irit of hostility to slavery as it existed in the South, and especially to the admission of new slave States into the Union.

ar with Mexico would follow, etc.; but chiefly, Texas was a slave State, which was, in the South, a strong reason for annexation. There were, however, many sound and unanswerable

still more moderate than some, might now be classed as an Abolitionist. August 1, 1837,

xation of Texas, to say to the slave-holding States, "We regard this act as the dissol

ciamento already made by Garr

as, and the motives that animated them in the fierce battles they fought later for

effort on the part of the South, dictated by a desire to remain in the Union, and not to accept the issu

he annexation of Texas, by tre

hose other Abolitionists who were now declaring for "no union with slave-holders," they would at once have seceded and joined Texas; but the South

on Clay was defeated by the Abolitionists. Because Clay was not unreservedly against annexation the Abolitionists drew from the Whigs in N

e of interfering with slavery where it was none of their business; and both parties had meted out to this new and, as they deemed it, pestilent sect, unstinted condemnation. But at last the voters of this despised cult had turned a presidential election and were making inroads in both partie

where, in 1835, Abolitionism had been so roundly condemned; and now Wendell Phillips, pointing to one of two fugitive slaves, who then sat triumphantly on the platform, said

ssaulting the fugitive slave law. The following, from James Russell Lowell's "Biglow Papers," No. 1, June, 1840, is a specimen of the literature that was stirring up hostilit

cute to se

everlast

the Devil

'em weld th

st es clear

ne and one

kes black sla

e w'ite sla

rds against insurrection. Thus, in 1835, an indictment was found in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, against one Williams, who had never been in Alabama, for circulating there an alleged incendiary document, and Governor Gayle made requisition on Governor Marcy, of New York, for

the South against the Abolitionists had precisely the same effect on the Northern mind as the violence against them in the North had from 1835 to 1838, but there was this difference: the refugee from the distant South, whether he were an escaped slave or a fleeing Abolitionist, could color and exaggerate the wrongs he had suffered and so parade himself as a m

, this time again in New York State. Anti-slavery Democrats bolted th

Cass, the Democratic candidate-"a Northern man with Southern principles." The phrase soon be

arraying one section of the Union against the other. Later, a telling piece

in and

e people a

snake that m

North, or

extending the line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific, thereby making of the new territory two States. The South had been much embittered by the opposition to the admission of Texas. Texas was, nearly all of it, below the Missouri Compromise line, and the South

ible position into which they had driven the conservatives-the "gag law"-that they continued, up to the crisis of 1850, with unflagging zeal to hurry in monster petitions, one after another. The debates provoked by the presentation of these petitions, and the more and more heated discussions in Congress of slavery in the States, which was properly a local and not a national question, now attracted still wider public attention. The Abolitionists had almost succeeded in arrayin

en were quite as aggressive as those from the North, and they were accused of being imperious in manner, when

00 annually, abducted or voluntarily escaping, were secretly escorted into or through the free States to Canada. To show how all this was then regarded by thos

citizens. To law-abiding folk what could be more delightful than the sensation of aiding an oppressed slave

, and readers of the above paragraph will probably think that Dr. Hart in his

leven Northern States voting for, and sustaining, the legislators who passed and kept upon the statute books laws which were intended to enable Southern slaves to escape from their masters. The enactment and the support of these laws was an attack upon the constitutional rights of slave-holders; and Southern

logic a gr

skilled i

istinguish

South and So

by the Abolitionists, we have this opinion of a distinguished English traveller and o

of opinion in every country, I think, contradicts. Such ultra men are as necessary as the more moderate and reasonable advocates of any growing opinion; and, as an impartial person, who never happened to fall

llege, speaking of the anti-slavery

egree the result of an agitation for its abolition which had been act

1850. Lovers of the Union, North and South, watched its proceedings with the deepest anxiety. The South was much excited. The continual torrent of abuse to which it was subjected, the refusal to allow slavery in States to be created from terri

ive slave law, and that the territories of New Mexico and Arizona should be org

e of 1850 was agreed on. To satisfy the North, California, as a whole, came in as a free State, and the slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia. To sat

r made one of the greatest speeches of his life on the Compromise measures. Rising above the sectional prejudices of the hour, he spoke for the Constitution and the Union. The manner in which he and his reputation were

nd never proven, but because he was consistent. He stood squarely upon his record, and the venom of the assaults that were afterward made upon him was just in proportion to the love a

the Compromise. Daniel Webster was everywhere known as the champion of the Union. Henry Clay was known as the "Old Man Elo

ise that would, if possible, put an end to sectional strife. Compromise means concession, and a compromise of political differences, made by statesmen, may involve s

compromises, although statesmanship does. One of

and enjoyment, every virtue and every pruden

he Union." If George III and Lord North had heeded Burke, and if the British government and people, from that day forth, had followed the wise counsels given in that speech by their greatest statesman, all the English-speaking peoples of the world, now numbering over 170,000,000, might have been to-day under one government, that government commanding the peace of the world. And if all

mpromise line extended. Mr. Webster had often voted for the Wilmot proviso, as all knew. In his speech for the Compromise, by which the South was urged to and did give up its contentions as to the admission of California, and its contentions as to the slave trade in the District of Columbia, Webster argued that the North might forego the proviso as to New Mexico and Arizona for the reason that the proviso was, as to these t

haps true that without him Abraham Lincoln and the armies of the Union in 1861-65 would have been impossible. The sole and, as he then stated and as time pr

my opinion the body politic cannot be preserved unless this agitation, this distraction,

ad voted for the Wilmot proviso. They knew, too, that he had long been ambitious to be President, and, carried away by their enthusiasm, they hoped that Webster would swim along with the tide that was sweeping over the majority section of t

e passing,

he wh

ed up and

back i

blo's Garden in 1839: "Slavery, as it exists in the States, is beyond the reach of Congress. It is a concern of the States themselves. They have never submitted it to Congress, and Congress has no rightful power over it. I shall concur therefore in no act, no measure,

w was a plain "interference" wit

my object is peace. My object is reconciliation. My purpose is not to make up a case for the North or a case for the South. My object is not to continue usel

h about these, he said: "In that respect the South, in my judgment, is right and the North is wrong. Every member of every Northern legislature is bound by oath, like every other officer in the country, to support the Constitution of the United States; and the article of the Con

hich I have very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. I think their operations for the last twenty years

is the substance of

ublican States of the Union. The law of nations disavows such compacts; the law of nature, written on the hearts and consciences of freemen, repudiates them."[45] The people of the North, instead of following Webster, chose to follow Seward, the apostle of a law higher than the Constitution

f the Union depended upon the faithful execution of the fugitive slave law or the cessation of anti-slavery agitation. "What," said Theodore Parker, "cast of

f the Abolitionists prevailed, and it turned out that Daniel Webster, great as he was, had undertaken a task that was too much even for him. His enemies struck out boldly at once: and years afterward, when the anti-slavery movement that Webster's appeals could not arrest had culminated in secession, and when the Union h

n be said or done which will alter the fact that the people of this country, who maintained and saved the Union, have pas

on Webster after his speech. They are selected f

said Sumner, 'has placed himself in the dark list of apostates.' When Whittier named him Ichabo

e land once

for hi

ith deeper

nored

en pay the rever

s dea

ard with a

e his s

the expressions of horror that rose from New England, Webster felt keenly, but the absolu

purpose and effect, we have

itive slave law, or for any other one thing, but to arrest the whole anti-slavery movement, and in tha

hen h

ted to stay the incoming tide at Marshfield with a rampart o

whole anti-slavery movement by holding

submerging "the Sage of Marshfield," who had stood for the Constitution. Seward's reputation, in the

"irrepressible," as Seward well knew; and this was simply and solely because the anti-slavery crusade could not be suppressed. Clay and Webster, now both dead and gone, had tr

South had a perfect right to claim the extradition of fugitive slaves. The legal argument to support that right was excellent." This would seem to justify the speech in that regard. "But," Mr. Lodge adds, "the Northern people could not feel that

ans, was a higher law than the Constitution; and Webst

lished in 1892: "Until the closing years of our century a dispassionate judgment could not be made of Webster; but we see now that in the wa

tly as he was advocating it in 1830, is just. How pathetic that the historian was impelled also to record the fact, in the same sentence, that for nearl

ke of slavery was strong, but his love of the Union was stronger, and the more powerful motive outweighed the other, for he believed that the crusade against slavery

was stripped of its branches; for a time it stood, a rugged trunk, robbed of its glory by a cyclone; but its roots were deep down in the rich earth

peech which, McMaster takes pains to inform us, historians have written down as his "7th of March

r. Webster's moral attitude was concerned, although he was not prepared for the bitter hostility that his speech provoked in many quarters, he must nevertheless have known it was quite as likely to in

ter a conclusive argument on that branch of his subject, he says: "Webster's consistency stand

orth his services as statesman and expounder of the Constitution, and not de

countrymen. In the glory of Webster w

for "the Constitution and the Union" stood in their way. They, therefore, wrote the great statesman "down and out," as they conceived. But Webster and that speech still stand as beacon lights in the history of that crusade. The attack came from the North. The South, standing for its constitutional rights in the Union, was the conservative party. Southern leaders, it is true, were, during the contr

oke out more emphatically. McMaster quotes several expressions from his speeches and letters replying to these assaults, and says: "His hatred of Abolitionists and Free-soilers grew stronger and stronger. To him these men were a 'band of sectionalists, narrow of mind, wanting i