The Abolitionists / Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights, 1830-1864

ouse divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot permanently remain half slave and half free. I do

ms on the floor of Congress, when, with his accustomed pungency, he declared

way back in 1838-the same idea they expressed had a more

very shall cease in order that freedom may be preserved in any portion of our land. The antagonistic principles of liberty and slavery have been roused

, who was the first Abolitionist, or "Liberty party," candidate for

, is as manifest as any fact in our history. It is equally certain that they had firmly resolved to capture the entire commonwealth for their "institution," and had

o make the whole country, not only pro-slavery, but slaveholding. If, through any mischance, it failed in its calculation, the next step would be to tear down the house and from its ruins reconstruct so much of it as might be needed for its own occupancy. That it would be able in time to possess

ee pa

red to be stunned and helpless. All fight was knocked out of it. Its spirit was broken. While the South was not only compact and fully alive, but exultingly aggressive, the North was divided, fully one half of its population being about as pro-slavery as the slaveholders themselves, and the rest, with rare exceptions, being hopelessly apath

d his human chattels. The other was to flank and cover, approaching the main point of attack by way of the Territories. These, once in possession of the slaveholders, could be converted into enough slave

anadian border. In that direction it could not advance a step, while the South had practically an unlimited

the South was to annex Texas-a victory. The next was to make war on Mexico, and (a joke of the day) conquer

its supporters as "an extension of the area of freedom." The act was justified on the ground that we needed "land for the landless," which led Benjamin F. Wade of Ohi

y disastrous but fatal. The result in Kansas was really the turning-point in the great struggle. It broke the line of Southern victories. It neutralized the effect of the whole territorial movement up to that point. It completely spoiled the slaveholders' well-

ithin the lines of the Union, and they began to arrange for going out of it. They helped to elect a Republican President by dividing the

red Scott case, upon which they relied to give them the legal power to take and hold their slaves in all parts of the land. Up to the date of that decision, the current of judicial rulings had been that slavery, being a municipal institution, was local, while freedom was national. Hence, when a master took his slave into a free State, at that instant he became

principle involved, as laid down by the Court, was altogether too broad for that construction. In effect it put the proprietorship of human beings upon the same footing with other property rights, and claimed for it the same constitutional protection. The bolder men of the South, li

uaker Abolitionists' forty-thousand-dollar construction, was ablaze in Philadelphia; when Lovejoy, the Abolition martyr, was bleeding out his life in one of the streets of Alton, Illinois-when, in fact, the whole land was swayed by a frenzied hatred of the men and women who dared to question slavery's right to supremacy, the writer believes the movement would have been successful. Public op

ble discouragement, had at last won a great preliminary victory. Slavery, through their exertions, had become impossible, both in the Territories and in the free States of the North, the United States Supreme Court and all the forces of the slave power to the contrary notwithstanding. Then came to the South a not unanticipated, and to many of her leaders a not unwelcome political Waterloo, in the election of