ANTI-SLAVERY DAYS.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF ANTI-SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.

"If we have whispered truth,

Whisper no longer;

Speak as the trumpet does,

Sterner and stronger."

-WHITTIER.

I propose in this work to give a brief sketch of the greatest moral conflict of modern times. We shall see how an immense institution, fortified by law, solidly bound together by pecuniary interests, upheld by political combinations, sustained by custom, fashion, prejudice, and the fear of change, was attacked by a few men whose only weapon was a per petual appeal to the human reason, the human conscience, and the human heart. We shall see in what way this attack was resisted; how the institution gathered more and more power; gained the alliance of the two great political parties: annexed vast territories and opened them to slavery; took

possession of Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court of the United States, and by a series of Acts. of Congress seemed to have entrenched itself against all assaults, and become stronger than ever before We shall see how, while this political power was passing into the hands of slaveholders, the moral power of the country was steadily accumulating in those of their opponents, until at last the war of tongue and pen changed into the greatest military struggle of modern times We shall hear the first Southern gun fired at Fort Sumter, and see the people of the North uniting as one man to put down the rebellion; vast armies springing as if born out of the earth; great navies organized to blockade the long coast line of the South; and shall glance at some events in the terrible war of four years, from the bombardment of Sumter, April 12th, 1861, to the surrender of Lee, April 9th, 1865. We shall see how slavery went down in that dreadful conflict, never to rise again-how, in a single generation, and in the lifetime of the chief agitator himself, this vast revolution was accomplished. Never in human history has there been such an example of the power of conscience in gaining a victory over worldly interest; and it ought to be an encouragement forever, for all who contend for lowly right against triumphant wrong, for unpopular truth against fashion, prejudice and power.

It is nearly eighteen years since these events came

to an end. The passions of men have cooled, a new South has sprung from the ruins of the old, another generation has come upon the stage. The North and South are truly one; the American Union, this single root of bitterness having been taken away, is vastly more powerful, and more united, than ever. We can now speak I trust, without prejudice or severity of those who differed from us or from whom we differed. Though we may still think they were wrong, we can see how their conduct may have seemed to them right, or, at least, how it was natural for them to think so, under their circumstances.

The seeds of freedom and of slavery were planted in this country in the same year. In 1620 the May Flower brought the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth; in 1620 a Dutch ship entered James River in Virginia with twenty African slaves. One of these ships brought free institutions to our shores; the other brought slavery. From that time until the beginning of the American Revolution the whole power of England supported and encouraged the African slave trade. Under that encouragement more than 300,000 African slaves were imported into thirteen British colonies. Alarmed by the rapid increase of slaves the planters of Virginia, in 1726, levied a tax on their importation, and South Carolina did the same in 1760. The legislature of Pennsylvania in 1712 had passed a similar act. Massachusetts endeavored to abolish the

slave trade in 1771 and 1774 by act of legislature. All of these colonial acts were vetoed by the authority of the British crown. The prosperity of England was thought to be involved in maintaining the slave trade; and the mother country steadily refused all attempts of the colonists to prohibit it. Thus the evil gradually extended itself, and became rooted in the habits of the people, and especially in the Southern States. Love of power, love of money, and love of ease, all were enlisted on its side. And when by discovery of the cotton-gin, Eli Whitney,* made slavery a source of great wealth, it became dangerous to speak against it in the cotton-growing states.

There were however, always those who saw and proclaimed the sin and evil of holding a man as a slave. By the laws of slavery, in this country, a man was turned into a thing; he had no rights; he could be bought and sold like a horse or an ox; he could be torn from his wife and children, or they could be taken from him whenever the owner pleased. In the hands of a cruel master, he could be beaten to death, or burned alive, and no power could prevent it. He might have so little negro blood as to pass for a white man, but as long as his mother was a slave, he was a slave too. Young girls, even those almost white. might be sold at their master's will to any one who wished to buy them; and they had no safety, no pro*Aided in this invention by the widow of Gen. Greene.

tection. The possession of absolute power

often seems

to make fiends of men, and that most fiendish of all sins, cruelty, grew and flourished in those whose power over their slaves was unrestrained by conscience or religion.

It seemed impossible that any thoughtful person could believe such an institution as this to be right. It took from the slave all his rights at one blow-it left him nothing. Christianity said, "Do to others as you would have them do to you," and " Love your neighbor as yourself." The declaration of Independence, the organic law of our Union, standing above the Constitution itself, begins-" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were made equal, and are created by their Creator with inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." How reconcile slavery with these great laws of God and man? Very early, therefore, there was opposition made to slavery--an opposition founded on moral, religious, social, and political reasons, The apostle John Eliot, in 1675, presented a memorial against the slavery of Indians and others to the Colonial Legislature of Massachusetts. Judge Samuel Sewall, of Boston, in 1700, printed a pamphlet against negro slavery.

The body of Quakers early agitated the question. Many eminent Friends gave their testimony against slavery. John Woolman, praised by Charles Lamb.