The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences. Hilary A. Herbert
of the most exalted character. Among its presidents were, at times, President Monroe and ex-President Madison. Chief Justice Marshall was one of its presidents. Colonization, while relieving America, was also to give the negro an opportunity for self-government and self-development in his native country, aided at the outset by experienced white men, and Abraham Lincoln, when he was eulogizing the dead Henry Clay, one of the eloquent advocates of the scheme, seemed to be in love with the idea of restoring the poor African to that land from which he had been rudely snatched by the rapacious white man. The society, with much aid from philanthropists and some from the Federal Government, was making progress when, from 1831 to 1835, the Abolitionists halted it.[15] They got the ears of the negro and persuaded him not to go to Liberia. Its friends thought the enterprise would stimulate emancipation by furnishing a home for such negroes as their owners were willing to manumit; but the new friends of the negro told him it was a trick of the slave-holder, and intended to perpetuate slavery—it was banishment. And Dr. Hart now, in his "Abolition and Slavery," calls it a move for the "expatriation of the negro."
All together only a few thousand negroes went to Liberia. The enterprise lagged, and finally failed, partly because of opposition, but chiefly because the negroes were slothful and incapable of self-government. The word came back that they were not prospering. For a time, while white men were helping them in their government, the outlook for Liberia had more or less promise in it. When the whites, to give the negroes their opportunity for self-development withdrew their case was hopeless.[16]
In 1828, while emancipation was still being freely canvassed North and South, Benjamin Lundy, an Abolition editor in charge of The Genius of Emancipation, then being published at Baltimore, in a slave State, went to Boston to "stir up" the Northern people "to the work of abolishing slavery in the South." Dr. Channing, who has been previously quoted, wrote a letter to Daniel Webster on the 28th of May, 1828, in which, after reciting the purpose of Lundy, and saying that he was "aware how cautiously exertions are to be made for it in this part of the country," it being a local question, he said: "It seems to me that, before moving in this matter, we ought to say to them (our Southern brethren) distinctly, 'We consider slavery as your calamity, not your crime, and we will share with you the burden of putting an end to it. We will consent that the public lands shall be appropriated to this object; or that the general government shall be clothed with the power to apply a portion of revenue to it.'
"I throw out these suggestions merely to illustrate my views. We must first let the Southern States see that we are their friends in this affair; that we sympathize with them and, from principles of patriotism and philanthropy, are willing to share the toil and expense of abolishing slavery, or, I fear, our interference will avail nothing."[17] Mr. Webster never gave out this letter until February 15, 1851.[18]
In less than three years after that letter was written, Lundy's friend, William Lloyd Garrison, started in Boston a crusade against slavery in the South, on the ground that instead of being the "calamity," as Dr. Channing deemed it to be, it was the "crime" of the South. Had no such exasperating sectional cry as this ever been raised, the story told in this little book would have been very different from that which is to follow. Even Spain, the laggard of nations, since that day has abolished slavery in her colonies. Brazil long ago fell into line, and it is impossible for one not blinded by the sectional strife of the past, now to conceive that the Southern States of this Union, whose people in 1830 were among the foremost of the world in all the elements of Christian civilization, would not long, long ago, if left to themselves, have found some means by which to rid themselves of an institution condemned by the public sentiment of the world and even then deplored by the Southerners themselves.
The crime, if crime it was, of slavery in the South in 1830 was one for which the two sections of the Union were equally to blame. Abraham Lincoln said in his debate with Douglas at Peoria, Illinois, October 15, 1858: "When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely do not blame them for not doing what I would not know how to do myself."[19]
Prior to the rise of the Abolitionists in 1831, emancipationists in the South had been free to grapple with conditions as they found them. What they and what the people of the North had accomplished we may gather from the United States census reports. The tables following are taken from "Larned's History of Ready Reference," vol. V. The classifications are his. We have numbered three of his tables, for the sake of reference, and have added columns 4 and 5, calculated from Larned's figures, to show "excess of free blacks" and "increase of free blacks, South."
Let the reader assume as a fact, which will perhaps not be questioned, that "free blacks" in the census means freedmen and their increase, and these tables tell their own story, a story to which must be added the statement that slaves in the South had been freed only by voluntary sacrifices of owners.
It will be noted that in 1790 the total "blacks" in the North was 67,479, and, although emancipation in these States had begun some years before, the excess of "free blacks" in the South was over 5,000. Also that at every succeeding census, down to and including that of 1830, the "excess of free blacks" increased with considerable regularity until 1830, when that excess is 44,547.
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