The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States

by Leon Whipple (more about this book and author)

Chapter 3: The Abolitionists (1830-1860)

Subsection Links:

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE SOUTH
EXTENSION OF SOUTHERN LAWS TO THE NORTH
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
THE BEGINNING OF THE POST OFFICE CENSORSHIP
THE RIGHT OF PETITION TO CONGRESS
RIGHTS OF REPRESENTATIVES IN ASSEMBLY
FREEDOM OF TEACHING
ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS PRESSURE

THE Abolitionists were the radical bloc of the general and wide-spread opposition to slavery. They wanted immediate abolition by federal act; and between 1830 and 1860 they carried on a vigorous propaganda for it. This was the peaceful and legal effort of very respectable citizens to change what they held to be a great economic and social evil; yet they suffered every possible denial of their liberties in the attempt. Their liberty was invaded by law and by the failure of the law, by mob and individual lawlessness, even by violence upon their representatives in Congress.

Their insistence upon the moral right of a minority to agitate for even the most radical changes, by free speech and a free press, by petition, and with full liberty and protection, was scarcely less important than their struggle against slavery. The Abolitionists were attacked by a powerful group—claiming to be a majority of the people—under that ancient pretext that the “safety of the community” is so superior to any constitution that this “majority” can set aside legal processes in favor of force. Yet all this time the real majority of the American people, including many in the Slave States, wanted in a luke-warm way to abolish slavery somehow, sometime. The claim of danger to the state from the abolitionists was unfounded, for, John Brown excepted, the Abolitionists never used force. William Lloyd Garrison, though he burned the Constitution as a “compact with Hell,” was himself a non-resistant, and many of his supporters were Quakers. It is the irony of history that these Quakers, accused of “endangering the community,” suffered later because they would not take up

arms for the cause for which they otherwise had fought. The purpose of the Abolitionists was so far from dangerous to the State, and so essentially right that in thirty-five years from the time the agitation started the North was in arms to enforce their ideas and save the union! Rarely has the purpose of a persecuted minority so quickly been vindicated.

The facts are treated in two parts; what happened to Abolitionists in the South and what happened in the North. Intertwined are the efforts of the Southern States by political coercion to make the North aid in the persecution of Abolitionists.

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE SOUTH

In the South until 1828, agitation against slavery by Southerners or by outsiders was tolerated. Itinerant Benjamin Lundy went around forming anti-slavery societies until there were more of these in North Carolina than in any other state.¹ After that time conditions changed, for slaves had increased in economic value:

Even in the South slavery had not been formally established by statute in any State. It was a tolerated anomaly, an incongruity which had grown up since 1793, under the invention of the cotton-gin, and the vast development of cotton-culture into a gigantic moneyed interest, and then transformed into a political power. It was sectional and aristocratic.²

This change, and the irritation felt even by liberal Southerners at Northern demands for “immediate” abolition, soon closed the whole South against outside agitation, and outlawed the Southerner who dared advocate a change. Tolerance varied in the South, North Carolina remained liberal until late, but generally constitutional rights in opposition to slavery were abolished by law or violence. Nor did the rest of the Union try to enforce these guarantees until 1861. Rather the danger was that the South might enforce their code on the rest of the nation. James Bryce says:

The tie of obedience to the national government was palpably loosened over a large part of the country.³

Legal coercion and the crushing compulsion of Southern caste society presently stopped even the demand for the protection of civil rights for abolitionists. The significance of the period is not in the record of violated liberties, but in the silence.

Let the South define civil liberty in these years. Senator William C. Preston declared in the United States Senate:

Let an Abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina, if we can catch him, we will try him; and notwithstanding all the interference of all the governments on earth, including the Federal government, we will hang him.

A member from South Carolina declared in the House:

I warn the Abolitionists, ignorant, infatuated barbarians as they are, that if chance throw any one of them into our hands, he may expect a felon's death.⁴

MOB VIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH

The record of actual violence against Abolitionists in the South is hard to compile. The Liberator,—an extensive but biased source, printed this on December 19, 1856:

A record of the cases of lynch-law in the Southern States reveals the startling fact that within twenty years, over three hundred white persons have been murdered upon the accusation—in most cases unsupported by legal proofs—of carrying among the slave-holders, arguments addressed to their own intellects and consciences as to the morality and expediency of slavery.

Cutler in his accurate Lynch Law declares that no such record can be made out, and that many who did suffer mob violence were not peaceful abolitionists, but really slave-stealers,

gamblers, and Inciters to slave insurrection for their own ends. Charges of these other crimes were doubtless made against Abolitionists too, to justify the attacks on them for their opinions. But whether abolitionists or criminals, they were entitled to legal trials. Professor Hart in Abolition and Slavery, thinks the Liberator figure wildly partisan, and notes but three cases,—an error in the other direction.⁵ What did happen in the South from year to year is shown by the following facts:

In July, 1835 Amos Dresser, one of the former students of Lane Seminary, who was selling Bibles and a few other books in Tennessee was arrested as an Abolition agent. In his trunk were found three books by Abolitionists, put in by Dresser for private reading, and some old newspapers of the same character which he said he used to prevent his books rubbing together.

He was brought before a Committee of Vigilance consisting of sixty-two of the principal citizens, including seven elders of the Presbyterian Church. His private journal was examined. The Mayor gave up the attempt to read it aloud, observing that it “was evidently very hostile to slavery.” Private letters were then read aloud…. At eleven o'clock the young man was sent into an adjoining room to await judgment. It was with horror he heard from the principal city officer that the Committee were debating whether his punishment should be thirty lashes, or a hundred, or death by hanging. The Committee acknowledged through the whole proceeding that Dresser had broken no laws; but pleaded that if the law did not sufficiently protect slavery against the assaults of opinion, an association of gentlemen must make law for the occasion. He was found guilty of three things; of being a member of an Anti-Slavery Society in another state; of having books of an anti-slavery tendency in his possession, and of being believed to have circulated such in his travels. He was condemned to receive twenty lashes on his bare back in the market-place … and there by torch-light he was stripped and flogged with a

heavy cow-hide. Twenty-four hours were allowed for him to leave the city…. Entire strangers bathed his wounds … and furnished him with a disguise…. He left the place on foot, early in the morning. Neither clothes, books, nor papers were ever returned to him.⁶

Robinson, an English book-seller was whipped and driven out of Petersburg, Va., in 1832, for saying that “the blacks as men were entitled to their freedom, and ought to be emancipated.” John Lamb was tarred and feathered, badly burned and whipped for taking the “Liberator.”⁷

Marius R. Robinson went to Berlin, Mahoning County, to deliver several lectures … June 3, 1837 he was seized by a band of ruffians … dragged out of the house of the friend with whom he was staying, carried several miles away and subjected to the cruel indignity of a coat of tar and feathers … carried some miles further, and having been denuded of much of his clothing, left in an open field…. The bodily injuries received on that dreadful night affected his health ever afterwards, and even aggravated the pains of his dying hours.⁸

A young Irishman, a stone-cutter, at work on the State House of South Carolina, dropped a casual remark that “slavery caused a white laborer at the South to be looked upon as an inferior and degraded man….” He was at once seized, thrust into jail, taken out, and dragged through the streets, tarred and feathered, and then without other clothing than a pair of pants, put into a negro car for Charleston, whence, after a week's imprisonment, he was banished from the State….

In the Spring of 1860 Reverend Solomon McKinney went to Texas, a Democrat … he believed that the Bible sanctioned slavery. In Dallas County he preached on the relative duties of master and slave. A public meeting was held and he was warned not to preach there again. He started for the North, but he and his companion

were overtaken, carried back and imprisoned. They were soon taken from the jail by armed men, and whipped with raw-hides, receiving eighty lashes each, until their backs were “one mass of clotted blood and bruised and mangled flesh….”⁹

The Southern states early enacted laws to suppress free speech or assemblage concerning slavery. This was one reason they had so little mob violence—fear of the law checked any such discussion:

When some people met at Smithfield, Virginia, in 1827, to form an abolition society, the meeting was broken up by the magistrates, on the ground that as there was no law authorizing such a meeting, it must be contrary to law. The author of Americans as They Are, published in 1828, refers to the extreme irritability of the South on the question, and the actual danger of death if a lawyer defended a slave.¹⁰

Virginians were ousted from membership in churches for attacking slavery, and one clergyman was tried for inciting to insurrection by his sermons. By about 1828 freedom of speech against slavery was dead in the South.¹¹ The lack of a law was soon remedied, and statutes appeared in almost every Southern state penalizing advocacy of abolition.¹²

STATUTES DENYING FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Such an ordinance follows:

If a person by speaking or writing maintain that owners have no right of property in their slaves, he shall be confined in jail not more than one year and fined not exceeding $500.¹³

By the Virginia Code in the fifties, publications which tended to incite insurrections were punishable by death. Granting slavery, there was excuse for this in the ever-present fear of rebellion in the South. But as usual the alleged “tendency”

of words to excite acts was used to justify prosecutions for words which had no such tendency. The following case is an illustration:

Dr. Reuben Crandall, a teacher of botany of high character, was arrested in Washington, (D. C.) and thrown into jail on the charge of circulating incendiary publications with a view to excite an insurrection of slaves. The evidence was that some of his botanical specimens were wrapped in old copies of anti-slavery papers … and that he had lent an anti-slavery paper to a white citizen. The passages read in court were no more inflammatory than the writings of Jefferson and Patrick Henry. The Prosecuting Attorney made a desperate attempt to secure conviction, though without success. But Crandall's close confinement for eight months in a damp dungeon brought upon him a lingering consumption which terminated his life in 1838.¹⁴

Where these laws did not exist or could not be applied, deportations on various pretexts were tried. Here is the case of a lecturer deported as a vagrant under a local ordinance:

Licking County, Granville Township, ss.

To H.C. Mead, Constable,
Greeting.

Whereas, we, the undersigned overseers of the poor of Granville Township, have received information that there has lately come into said township a certain poor man named Robinson, who is not a legal resident thereof, and will be likely to become a township charge; you are therefore, hereby commanded forthwith to warn the said Robinson, with his family, to depart out of said township. And of this warrant make service and return. Given under our hands this first day of March, 1839.¹⁵

EXTENSION OF SOUTHERN LAWS TO THE NORTH

When the Northern states showed no great vigor in suppressing the leaders or presses of this “incendiary” movement, the South made repeated efforts to hale Abolitionist leaders

into its jurisdiction both by violence and by amazing uses of the extradition laws. They were not successful.¹⁶ For example:

There came to New York harbor from Charleston, S. C., a tender belonging to a United States revenue cutter, with eighteen men on board, intent on capturing Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Elizur Wright, and William Goodell. Mr. Wright one day overheard in Gilpin's newsroom the plans for the capture; yet he and Arthur Tappan walked leisurely home to Brooklyn that night.¹⁷

Governor Lumpkin, of Georgia, on December 26, 1831, had signed an act of the Legislature which promised a reward of $5,000 to the person who would bring Garrison there to be judged according to the laws of the State. That is to say, the State of Georgia offered a prize for the commission of a crime.¹⁸

The Louisiana Journal carried this amazing offer:

The following has been handed to us by the Committee of Vigilance of the Parish of East Feliciana, for publication:

FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

The above reward will be given on the delivery to the Committee of Vigilance … of the notorious abolitionist, ARTHUR TAPPAN, of NEW YORK.

Papers opposed to abolition throughout the United States are requested to give publicity to the above.

Jackson, La., Oct. 15, 1835.

In 1835, Governor Gayle of Alabama demanded of the Governor of New York that Ranson G. Williams, publishing agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society should be delivered up for trial under the laws of Alabama—a State in which he had never set foot—on an indictment by the Grand Jury of Tuscaloosa County. The words on which he was charged with being a “seditious person, greatly disaffected to the laws of the State … and intending

to produce insurrection among the slave population were given,—

‘God commands, and all nature cries out, that men should not be held as property. The system of making men property has plunged 2,500,000 of our fellow-countrymen into the deepest physical and moral degradation.’“¹⁹

The Governor of New York naturally refused to honor such a demand. Indeed most of these offers were threats for publicity purposes never expected to secure any victims. Yet one did.

John B. Mahin, a citizen of Ohio, on requisition of Governor Clark, of Kentucky, was delivered up by Governor Vance of Ohio as a fugitive from justice … to be tried on an indictment for assisting the escape of certain slaves. He had not been in Kentucky for 19 years! Yet he was arrested at his residence, September 17, 1838, hurried to Kentucky and shut up in jail, without allowing him time to procure a writ of habeas corpus, or summon evidence in his behalf. He was tried by the Circuit Court of Kentucky…. It was admitted by the attorney for the Commonwealth that the prisoner was a citizen of Ohio and not in Kentucky at the time of the alleged offense, yet he made an effort to procure conviction. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty.²⁰

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE NORTH

In the North the problem was twofold. First, how far the economic and political power of the South could coerce Northern people into stopping anti-slavery agitation. Second, how far race prejudice and economic antagonism against the Negro in the North would second the demands of the South. William Birney gives a very acute analysis of the forces at work to curtail liberty for anti-slavery agitation in the North:

The slave States were in possession of the patronage and power of the government.

The two parties were bound hand and foot to the slave power. “In 1836 it was no uncommon belief, even among the intelligent, that resistance to the demands of the slave-power was unlawful and akin to treason.”
Many church organizations embraced both free and slave territory … and all the conservative forces were arrayed against a discussion likely to result in schism. This was also true of the large secret orders.
The commercial and manufacturing classes were generally hostile to agitation. They wished to be let alone.
The prejudice against the negroes among the Northern people indisposed them to resist the slave power…. Emancipation might mean the negroes would migrate en masse to the North.
The prevalent aversion among moral and religious people to take any part in political action greatly increased the difficulty of organizing resistance to the slave-power.
In July, 1836, there were 24 States, and the only ones in which slavery did not exist practically, were Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Vermont.²¹

Whatever the cause, for a time neither states nor United States protected the liberties of Abolitionists.²² The cases cover perhaps ten years. Few lives were lost, though as usual loss of life and property took place at the lowest economic level, i.e., among Northern Negroes, who were generally left defenceless to the mob after the Abolitionists had escaped. No restrictive laws got on the statute-books. There was little governmental action save a Congressional by-law against receiving anti-slavery petitions, and the postal censorship. And the agitation over these probably helped the Abolitionists by disclosing the South's power over the government. The South's attempt to invade the North by requisition or a demand for proscriptive laws failed. James G. Birney, himself a victim of mobs, declared: “The majority of the people are sound on free discussion and a free press.”

Yet as was pointed out above, the Abolitionists suffered every possible violation of their liberties. We begin, as in the South, with mob violence against persons, institutions, and property.

THE MOBBING OF ABOLITIONISTS

The mobbing of Abolitionists for speaking or writing against slavery was a merry game all over the North from Maine to Missouri for a decade or more. It was one aspect of the “mob era.” These mobs were not so dangerous to life as they were to liberty, especially freedom of speech and of the press. William Birney thus shatters certain melodramatic traditions:

In the interest of historical truth, I wish to enter a protest against the customary conventional exaggeration of the Northern mobs… I must say they were, as a general thing not dangerous either to life or limb, or beyond the power of the police to suppress…. These minor forms of mobocratic annoyance were in a ratio probably less than one to a hundred anti-slavery meetings. More serious ones though largely talked of were very rare. “Tar and feathers” figured largely in newspaper articles and pro-slavery speeches, but of the thousands of anti-slavery lecturers only one was subjected to that indignity. The profuse rhetoric of certain Massachusetts writers about “abolition martyrs” might lead a careless reader to imagine that hecatombs of men were slaughtered on the altar of slavery; but I remember no abolitionist but Love-joy who lost his life. The mobs were misdemeanors at law and political crimes, being aimed at the freedom of the press and speech, but very few persons were hurt…. James G. Birney used to say that not a single abolitionist had been mobbed half as often as John Wesley—a comparison which he thought was honorable to the American people.²³

Birney also wrote in his Philanthropist in 1836:

It is remarkable that no mob has ever attacked the abolitionists except after special training by politicians

who had something to hope from the favor of the South. The people of whom mobs are composed … care not a rush for the abolition of slavery, and, if left to themselves, would as soon think of attacking the phrenologists as the abolitionists.

The mobs began as early as Benjamin Lundy's time in the 1820's. He was “repeatedly assaulted on the streets of Baltimore, and once brutally beaten by Austin Woolfolk, a slave-trader.” The most famous was the “Garrison Mob” in Boston.

“THE RESPECTABLE MOB OF GENTLEMEN OF PROPERTY AND
STANDING”

The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society advertised a meeting, whereupon this placard was circulated through the business portion of the city; Oct. 21, 1835.

THOMPSON

The Abolitionist!!

That infamous foreign scoundrel THOMPSON will hold forth this afternoon, at the Liberator Office…. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out! … A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark.

Thompson, who was an Englishman, was not even in the city. William Lloyd Garrison, however, went to the office where he found the entrance crowded with rioters, and about thirty women meeting within. The Mayor came and told the ladies they must disperse for the sake of the peace, but they refused until they had transacted their business, when they left in a dignified manner, though insulted by the crowd. The Anti-Slavery sign-board was next demanded by the mob, and was thrown to them and danced into fragments. Garrison

locked himself in an office until the crowd broke in a panel and “glared at me like so many volves.” He narrates his experience thus:

Unwilling or unable to protect me by an appeal to the military, but desirous that I should receive no harm, the Mayor endeavored (having cleared the building of rioters) to find some way of exit for me…. I was instantly discovered by persons on watch. Wilson's Lane was densely filled with rioters, the most active of whom found me in the second story of the carpenter's shop … and coiling a rope around my body let me down to the crowd. I was dragged bare-headed … into State Street where my clothes were nearly all torn from my body, their intention being as I understood to give me a coat of tar and feathers…. The Mayor and his constabulary succeeded in rescuing me with difficulty, and I was taken up into his office…. As the night was approaching … it was deemed necessary alike for the preservation of the Post Office and of my life, to send me to the Jail … as the only place of safety in the city. But I must be committed legally, of course; and so to obtain a writ, Sheriff Parkman had to take a false oath, that I was a disturber of the peace!—though I believe he was actuated by a friendly and sympathizing spirit…. I remained in jail until next day when the Court came to me and formally discharged me as one who had done no evil….²⁴

THE NEW YORK MOBS

The organization meeting of the New York Anti-Slavery Society was broken up by a mob in 1833. The sexton locked the iron gates of Chatham Street Chapel where the meeting had gone when the alarmed trustees refused the use of another building. The members transacted their business and left before the mob arrived from Tammany Hall. The crowd seized a Negro, whom they nick-named “Brother Tappan,” and made him make a speech.²⁵ On July 4, 1834, also, the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was broken up by a violent mob:

Houses and stores were attacked. They broke open the door of Lewis Tappan's house and burned his furniture. The store of Arthur Tappan was threatened, but iron shutters and thirty armed clerks protected it. On the 8th, the alarm was raised and a fight ensued in Chatham Chapel. The congregation was expelled. The night of the 10th they assaulted Dr. Cox's church with stones, then proceeded to his house, but he sent away his furniture and removed his family. A barricade of carts was built across the street to impede the horsemen of the military. The 11th the church of Rev. Ludlow was almost completely sacked; later an immense riot occurred in the neighborhood of Five Points. St. Philip's Episcopal Church (colored) was nearly torn down, while several houses of negroes nearby were entirely demolished. All the military in the city were under arms. Similar outbreaks occurred at Norwich, Connecticut, and Newark, N. J.²⁶

For this series of riots, three participants were given one year of hard labor on Blackwell's Island, the heaviest penalty the Court could inflict; and six others, six months.²⁷

In Philadelphia, in August, 1834, a terrible riot lasted three nights. Forty-four houses of Negroes were attacked, and many destroyed. One Negro was killed, another drowned trying to swim the Schuylkill to escape his tormentors, and many seriously injured. When the colored people of Philadelphia attempted a celebration in commemoration of West Indian emancipation, August, 1842, a public hall and church were burned and private houses demolished. Fire companies refused to act. The hall, erected by the colored people for temperance and religious purposes only, was ordered to be demolished on a petition representing that there was well-grounded fear that it would be burned by a mob and was therefore a nuisance! Anti-slavery meetings were broken up in New Bedford and Pawtucket. Stephen S. Foster was mobbed in Portland, and with difficulty rescued.²⁸

When the New York State Anti-Slavery Society secured the use of the Court House at Utica, October 21, 1835, certain

“prominent and respectable gentlemen,” including one Samuel Beardsley, member of Congress from Oneida County, arranged to have a vociferous crowd occupy the room. The Convention went to a Presbyterian Church where a crowd rushed into the room and commanded the speaker to stop. The Convention listened to the leaders of the mob, a so-called “Committee of Twenty-Five,” headed by the first Judge of the County. Threats of violence were re-iterated, the Committee besought them to adjourn, which they did, since no business could be transacted, and moved to Peterboro amid insults and threats.²⁹ In the evening the office of the Standard and Democrat received a visit from the “people” who threw its type and other material into the street.³⁰ The mob laid faggots against the house, in which some women delegates were guests, to burn it, but saw the women at prayer and stopped.³¹

Levi Lincoln and Patrick Doyle attacked Orange Scott, a distinguished minister speaking in the Town Hall at Worcester, Mass., seized the notes of his anti-slavery lecture, tore them up and started to drag the speaker out. This attack was typical of many occurring repeatedly up to 1851. Isaiah Rynders affords the first example of the gunmen who tried to break up anti-slavery meetings. Rynders was a Tammany leader who had engineered the Astor Place riot between Forrest and Macready, and broken up an anti-Wilmot proviso meeting. His effort to break up a meeting at Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, was foiled by the wit of Garrison and his negro colleagues.³²

THE BURNING OF PENNSYLVANIA HALL

Perhaps the most startling event of this time was the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, which had been erected at a cost of $40,000 by members of all sects and no sects in order “that the citizens of Philadelphia should possess a room wherein the principles of Liberty and Equality in Civil Rights could be freely discussed, and the evils of slavery freely portrayed.” A majority of the holders of the twenty-dollar

shares were working-people. The building was dedicated to “Liberty and the rights of man” before a large audience, May 14, 1838. Within three days it had been burned down.

During the three days a slavery meeting, temperance talks, a literary club, and a free produce convention met in the hall … a forum for those barred from free speech elsewhere. The mob began its attack almost at once: throwing stones the first evening, prowling around and inspecting the gas-pipes the next day, and in the evening, by disorder both without and within the hall, almost breaking up a meeting being addressed by Garrison and Angelina Grimke Weld. The 17th, the Managers addressed a letter to the Mayor setting forth the facts, “and we call upon thee—as chief magistrate of the city, to protect us and our property in the exercise of our right peaceably to assemble and discuss any subject of general interest.” They enclosed placards, threatening the dispersion of the anti-slavery convention. The Mayor uttered this characteristic mayor's defence: “There are always two sides to a question—it is public opinion makes mobs!—and ninety-nine out of a hundred of those with whom I converse are against you.” In the evening he addressed the waiting mob, saying in part: “I am sorry to perceive these disturbances, but I most hope that nothing will be transacted contrary to order and peace…. This house has been given up to me (the keys). The managers had the right to hold their meeting; but as good citizens they have at my request, suspended their meeting.”

The mob then gave “three cheers for the Mayor” and soon after commenced their attack. They piled inflammable material in front of the forum, bent and broke the gas-jets, set fire to the gas, and in a few hours the building was consumed. They set fire to a new building intended for a “Shelter for Colored Orphans,” and the next day attacked a Negro church.³³

A Committee of the Council in a report on the Mayor laid the blame on the supporters of the meetings:

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This excitement was occasioned by the determination of the owners of the building … to persevere in openly promulgating … doctrines repulsive to the moral sense of a large majority of the community … heedless of the dangers, or reckless of the consequences to the peace and order of the city. Of their strict legal and constitutional right to do so there can be no question … neither can there be any doubt of the duty of the city authorities to extend protection to all. But how far it was prudent or judicious, or even morally right—how far it became peaceful and good citizens to persevere in measures generally admitted to have a tendency to endanger the public peace—are questions on which public opinion is to a certain extent divided.³⁴

The argument and action are identical, whether in Missouri against the Mormons, or in Philadelphia against the Abolitionists.

LEGAL ACTION BY NORTHERN STATES

There are few records of legal action in the North against Abolitionists. The inability of the law to protect was the chief complaint. But the following gives evidence that legal prosecutions occurred:

George Storrs, a Methodist preacher, addressing the anti-slavery society in Northfield, New Hampshire, December 14, 1835 … was dragged from his knees while at prayers by the deputy-sheriff, in virtue of a warrant issued by a justice … charging Mr. Storrs with being “an idle and disorderly person … a common railer and brawler, going about … disturbing the public peace.” On trial he was discharged. But on March 31, 1836, at Pittsfield, N. H., he was arrested again in the pulpit … tried the same day, and sentenced to three months hard labor in the House of Correction. He appealed from the sentence and we find no further account of the proceedings.³⁵

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FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

The Abolitionists, barred from the Southern states, had to use propaganda pamphlets and journals there and elsewhere. The first attack on their publications was that familiar device of the suppressor, a libel suit. It was against Garrison, who in 1829–1830 was helping Lundy edit The Universal Genius of Emancipation in Baltimore. Garrison was sued by Francis Todd, whom he denounced for taking a cargo of eighty slaves to New Orleans. He was fined fifty dollars and costs. Unable to pay, he served forty-nine days in jail,—the beginning of his fame! Whittier secured a promise of help for Garrison from Henry Clay, and the North Carolina Abolitionists sent a protest.³⁶ Jail is a great propagandist.

The next step was pseudo-legal action. The grand jury of Oneida County, New York, under the promptings of a law officer of the United States, presented abolition publications as nuisances. At Clinton, Mississippi, a town meeting on September 5, 1836 resolved against a paper proposed by James G. Birney, “that we would regard the establishment of an Abolition paper among us as a direct attempt to peril the lives and fortunes of the whole population, and that it will be the duty of every good citizen to break up by any means… any such nefarious design.”³⁷ At Milford, Delaware, it was determined to suppress “an incendiary Republican sheet” by violence, but the plan met with such stubborn resistance that it failed.³⁸ This amateur suppression soon gave way to the destruction of presses in the border cities, by organized mobs of Southern sympathizers, and culminated in the murder of Elijah Lovejoy.

THE PRESS RIOTS AT CINCINNATI

James G. Birney, a Southerner who had sold his slaves and gone into exile, was candidate for president on the anti-slavery ticket. He established in Cincinnati a newspaper, The Philanthropist, in spite of threats. His experiences are significant as showing how good citizens foment “respectable mobs”

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to further their economic interests. At midnight on July 12, 1836, a mob attacked the shop of Pugh, Birney's printer, tore up next week's paper, dismantled the press and carried parts of it away. The city night-watch offered no interference. The next night this placard was posted:

ABOLITIONISTS BEWARE

The Citizens of Cincinnati, embracing every class, interested in the prosperity of the city, satisfied that the business of the place is receiving a vital stab from the wicked and misguided operations of the Abolitionists, are resolved to arrest their course…. The plan is matured to eradicate this evil which every citizen feels is undermining his business and property.

The business undermined was the very profitable commercial intercourse between the merchants of Cincinnati and the Southern States. At the solicitation of the Abolitionists a reward of $100 was offered for the persons who broke up Pugh's press. The mayor's proclamation contained the usual plea for the Abolitionists to abstain from … “such measures as may have a tendency to inflame the public mind.” But they would have abstained in vain, for on July 21, a card in the Cincinnati Gazette requested a meeting of citizens on Saturday evening at 6 o'clock … to decide whether they would permit the publication of The Philanthropist. The alleged purpose of this meeting was to pass resolutions in order to forestall violence by the other citizens! Although the Abolitionists claimed that the time and place of this meeting—in the mechanics' section of the town—were liable to provoke violence, Birney, with great courage, appeared and stated his intention to go ahead. The meeting resolved in part:

That we entertain the most profound respect for the memories of the venerated patriots of more than sixty years since who in the harbor of Boston, without the sanction of the law, but in the plenitude of the justness of their cause, took responsibility of re-shipping the tea

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cargo … and that we in imitation of the noble and fearless example … declare that whenever we shall find an existing evil, aiming at the destruction and disunion of our happy government, and only prompted by those untiring engines of human ambition, hope of gain and love of notoriety, but shielded from legal enactment according to the usual practice of our laws so as to leave us but one channel through which we can rid our fair land from its withering influence, that in seizing that one point our exertions shall be firm, united and decided.

A committee of twelve prominent citizens was appointed, including Jacob Burnet, a supreme court judge and former United States senator; William Burke, minister and postmaster; Nicholas Longworth, most extensive property-holder of the city; and Oliver M. Spencer, a minister of the Methodist Church. Certain sly folks hinted that this Committee was named by political opponents of its members, who hoped they would get into trouble over the matter. But the Committee labored hard to secure a pledge from the Anti-Slavery Society that they would stop The Philanthropist. They failed and adjourned, with this final statement:

They owe it to themselves and those whom they represent to express their utmost abhorrence of everything like violence; and earnestly implore their fellow-citizens to abstain therefrom.

This was dated July 29. Then The Cincinnati Gazette records:

Saturday night, July 30, very soon after dark a concourse of citizens … broke open the printing-office of the “Philanthropist,” scattered the type into the streets, tore down the presses, and completely dismantled the office…. The residence of Mr. Birney, the editor, was visited…. No person was at home but a youth, upon whose explanation the house was left undisturbed. The Exchange was then visited and refreshment taken. An attack was then made on the residence of some blacks in Church Alley; two guns were fired upon the assailants and

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they recoiled … a second attack was made, and their contents destroyed. It was addressed by the Mayor, who had been a silent spectator of the destruction of the printing-house. He told them they might as well now disperse.³⁹

THE MARTYRDOM OF ELIJAH LOVEJOY
(November 7, 1837)

“That an American citizen in a state whose Constitution repudiates all slavery, should die a martyr in defence of the freedom of the press, is a phenomenon in the history of this Union. Martyrdom was said by Dr. Johnson to be the only test of sincerity in religious belief. It is also the ordeal through which all great improvements in the condition of men are doomed to pass…. Here is the most effective portraiture of the first American martyr to the freedom of the press, and the freedom of the slave.”

Thus wrote John Quincy Adams, ex-President, about Elijah Lovejoy. Lovejoy in 1835 was the editor of a religious paper, The St. Louis Observer where he had been printing articles regarding slavery with the eyes of justice and Christianity. In October, two white men were taken by a mob of sixty influential white citizens and given 150 lashes for suspected abduction of Negroes. Lovejoy's condemnation of lynch-law, in spite of the efforts of his publishers to keep silent, aroused bitter discussion ending as usual in a meeting with resolutions condemning Lovejoy. His reply, To My Fellow Citizens, (November 5, 1835), is a little known but brilliant defense of freedom of conscience and of the press. It shows he suffered not so much for opposing slavery as for asserting the right to oppose it. Shortly afterward a mulatto, McIntosh, was burned by a mob for murdering a deputy. Judge Lawless justified mob violence in the trial of the lynchers. He said:

If, on the other hand, the destruction of the murderer of Hammond was the act, as I have said, of the many—of the multitude, in the ordinary sense of these words—not

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the act of numerable and ascertainable malefactors: but of congregated thousands, seized upon and impelled by that mysterious, metaphysical, and almost electric frenzy which, in all ages and nations, has hurried on the infuriated multitudes to deeds of death and destruction—then, I say, act not at all in the matter; the case then transcends your jurisdiction…. It is beyond the reach of human law.⁴⁰

This venture into mob psychology by a judge on the bench to exonerate influential murderers is the unique possession of the American people. Lovejoy promptly attacked the “electric frenzy.”

“We covet not the loss of property nor the honours of martyrdom; but better far that editor, printer and publishers, should be chained to the same tree as McIntosh and share his fate, than that the doctrines promulgated by Judge Lawless from the bench should prevail in this community. For they are subversive of all law, and at once open the door for the perpetration, by a congregated mob, calling themselves the people, of every species of violence, and that too with perfect impunity….

Convinced that Illinois offered greater freedom of opinion than slave-holding Missouri, Lovejoy moved The Observer to Alton, Ill., in July, 1836. His press was promptly destroyed as it lay on the Mississippi river bank. He secured another and persisted for a year, until August 21, 1837, when he was assaulted but escaped. His press was destroyed a second time. The third press was broken and thrown into the river September 21. About October 1, while on a visit to his invalid wife in Missouri, a mob assaulted him in his bed-chamber, and he was saved only by the desperate resistance of his wife and her mother. The mob returned, but when his wife fell into hysteria, Lovejoy escaped to relieve her. On November 3, a meeting of the citizens of Alton under the leadership of the attorney-general of Illinois, resolved to get rid of Lovejoy who “was hurting the town.” They passed resolutions demanding

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that he leave, and included the usual encouragement to mob violence which brought the tragedy four days later:

Resolved, That a strong confidence is entertained that our citizens will abstain from all undue excitements, discountenance every act of violence to person or property, and cherish a sacred regard for the great principles contained in our Bill of Rights….

Resolved, That while there appears to be no disposition to prevent the liberty of free discussion, through the medium of the press or otherwise; it is deemed a matter indispensable to the peace and harmony of this community that the labours and influence of the late editor of “The Observer” be no longer identified with any newspaper enterprise in this city.

The persons who drew these resolutions naively gave lip service to the Bill of Rights while virtually ordering a man to leave the community because of his opinions. It is interesting testimony to the time honored unreality of phrases when a contrary purpose is really in mind. Lovejoy had already written—

I hope to discuss the overwhelmingly important subject of slavery with the freedom of a republican and the meekness of a Christian….

He now answered the threat in these splendid, pathetic words:

I have been beset night and day at Alton. And now if I go elsewhere, violence may overtake me in my retreat, and I have no more claim to the protection of any other community than I have upon this; and I have concluded, after consultation with my friends, and earnestly seeking counsel of God, to remain at Alton, and here to insist on protection in the exercise of my rights. If the civil authorities refuse to protect me, I must look to God, and if I die, I have determined to make my grave in Alton.

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Lovejoy seems never to have thought at all that he might be safe if he kept silent. Here is one of those rare Americans, who, like Mary Dyer, the Quaker, and Albert Parsons, the Anarchist, returned to death for conscience's sake. The fourth press arrived on November 6 and was stored in a warehouse under the protection of a group of citizens, supporters of Lovejoy, who had organized into a company of militia. The next day at about ten o'clock at night, a mob, many of them drunk, attacked the warehouse to burn it.⁴¹ They had been driven off when—

Our brother and Mr. Weller stepped to the door, and seeing no one, stood looking around just without the threshold, our brother being a little more exposed. Several of the mob had concealed themselves behind a pile of lumber. One of them had a two-barrelled gun and fired. Our brother received five balls, three in the breasts. He turned quickly around … ran hastily up a flight of stairs, and fell, exclaiming, “Oh, God, I am shot, I am shot,” and expired in a few moments.⁴²

To show the even-handed nature of justice, the defenders of the warehouse were indicted as well as eleven leaders of the mob, the latter “for riotously and routously attempting to destroy a printing press,” and the former for “riotously and routously resisting this attempt.” They were all acquitted.

But the death of this, the single martyr among Abolitionists in the North, brought a nation-wide protest. Citizens of Boston petitioned for the use of Faneuil Hall for a public meeting. This petition was refused by the Aldermen on the ground that it would not express the public opinion of the city, and would create disgraceful confusion in the Hall. Again protestants led by Dr. William Ellery Channing protested, demanded, and secured the Hall, where on this occasion young Wendell Phillips made his first brilliant address.⁴³

LATER ATTACKS ON THE PRESS

Charles T. Torrey was excluded from a seat among the reporters at a Slaveholders' Convention at Annapolis, in

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1842; afterwards forbidden to take notes in the gallery and finally arrested and thrown into prison. A few days later, on judicial examination, he was released on giving bail in $500, “to keep the peace till April.”⁴⁴

Cassius N. Clay issued, June 3, 1845, the first number of “The True American,” a paper to urge the overthrow of slavery in Kentucky…. August 14th a committee waited upon him in his sick-bed, requiring him to suspend his paper. He wrote “I deny their power and I defy their action,” and issued an appeal to the people of Kentucky…. On the 18th, a meeting, unmoved by his appeal, proceeded to the consummation of the purpose … by choosing a committee of sixty, which proceeded to the office of the offending journal, boxed up its press, and sent it out of the State … “as a nuisance of the most formidable character.”⁴⁵

Dr. J.E. Snodgrass, editor of the Baltimore “Saturday Visitor,” aroused such opposition in 1846 that certain members of the Maryland legislature attempted to suppress his paper and imprison him.

In 1859, the Reverend Daniel Worth, formerly member of the Indiana legislature was arrested for circulating Helper'sImpending Crisis. He was indicted and committed to jail to wait his trial in the Spring. His bonds, placed at an unreasonable amount, he could not obtain, and he was consigned to a cell “wholly unsuitable for a person to live in”…. He was convicted for circulating the book, and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment—a sentence deemed light by many because … he might have been publicly whipped … according to law.⁴⁶

THE BEGINNING OF THE POST OFFICE CENSORSHIP

The most novel and in its consequences the most significant event in the Abolitionist persecution was the first attempt to use the United States post office as a censor of ideas. This began in South Carolina at Charleston where a Committee of

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twenty-one citizens had made an “arrangement” with the local postmaster to stop delivering or forwarding the publications of the anti-slavery cause. The Charleston Courier said:

The high character and standing of the gentlemen who compose this committee, and the perfect confidence imposed in the entire co-operation of the Postmaster … should quiet the apprehensions of our citizens, and induce every individual to give their countenance and support to the constituted authority.

It is not clear here whether “constituted authority” is the United States government or the Committee of Twenty-One, but it was clear after the postmaster had disregarded his agreement with the Committee:

The recent abuse of the United States mail to the purpose of disseminating the vile and criminal incendiarism of northern fanatics, led to an attack on the Post Office which, although perhaps not to be justified, had much to excuse it…. A number of persons assembled about the Exchange without any noise or disturbance, but with coolness and deliberation, made a forcible entry into the Post Office … carried off the packages containing the incendiary matter…. According to full notice published, the pamphlets … were burned the next evening at 8 p.m. opposite the main guard-house, 3,000 persons being present …⁴⁷

The burning was participated in by members of both political parties, and the postmaster was present and helped. To him, on August 4, Postmaster-General Amos Kendall wrote:

I am satisfied that the Postmaster-General has no legal authority to exclude newspapers from the mails nor prohibit their carriage or delivery on account of their character or tendency, real or supposed. But I am not prepared to direct you to forward or deliver the papers…. We owe an obligation to the laws, but a higher one

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to the communities in which we live; and if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them. Entertaining these views I cannot sanction and will not condemn the step you have taken.⁴⁸

He wrote to Samuel L. Gouverneur, Postmaster of New York City:

It was right to propose to the Anti-Slavery Society voluntarily to desist from attempting to send their publications into the Southern States; and their refusal to do so is but another evidence of the fatuity of the counsel by which they are directed … the postmaster-general has no legal authority to exclude from the mails any species of newspapers…. Such a power … would be fearfully dangerous, and has been properly withheld. But … if I were situated as you are, I would do as you have done…. You and other postmasters who have assumed the responsibility … will I have no doubt, stand justified before your country and all mankind…. Lawless power is to be resisted; but power which is exerted in palpable self-defense is not lawless….⁴⁹

The Southern bias of President Jackson and the power of the South in Congress and elsewhere was strong enough to make the President include this recommendation in his annual message, December 2, 1835:

PRESIDENT JACKSON SUGGESTS THE POSTAL CENSORSHIP

I must also invite your attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves … calculated to stimulate them to all the horrors of servile war…. It is proper for Congress to take such measures as will prevent the Post Office Department, which was designed to foster an amicable intercourse and correspondence between all the members of the confederacy, from being used as an instrument of an opposite character … I would therefore … respectfully suggest the propriety of passing such a

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law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to incite the slaves to insurrection.⁵⁰

A Select Committee was appointed December 21 on motion of Senator Calhoun (who was made chairman) to consider the President's recommendation. A bill was reported with a full and adroit discussion by Calhoun.⁵¹ June 3, 1836, this bill came to its third reading by the vote of Vice-President Van Buren to break a tie, 18 to 18. The principal clause finally read:

That it shall not be lawful for any deputy postmaster in any State, Territory, or District of the United States, knowingly to deliver to any person whatever, any pamphlet, handbill, or other printed paper, or pictorial representation, touching the subject of slavery where, by the the laws of the said State … their circulation is prohibited; and any deputy postmaster who shall be guilty thereof shall forthwith be removed from office.

In the debate on freedom of the press the leaders delivered these words:

Henry Clay: This bill is unconstitutional, I believe, and if not so, it contains a principle of the most dangerous and alarming character.

Daniel Webster: Congress may under this example be called upon to pass laws to suppress the circulation of political, religious, or other publications which produced excitement in the States.⁵²

The bill was defeated April 12, 1836.

On the other hand, in this same year, to make certain that Abolitionist mail would be delivered, Congress passed a law prohibiting postmasters under severe penalty from “unlawfully detaining in their offices, any letter, package, pamphlet, or newspaper with intent to prevent the arrival and delivery

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of the same.” (Act of July 2, 1836, 5 Stat. L. section 32, 87.)

This federal law was not obeyed. Southern postmasters followed the state laws against distributing anti-slavery literature. The laws of Virginia justified postmasters in excluding incendiary publications, and empowered any justice of the peace to “burn publicly” such condemned matter and to commit to jail anyone knowingly subscribing for and receiving it. Such laws were pronounced constitutional, not only by the Attorney-General of Virginia, but even by Caleb Cushing, Attorney-General of the United States under President Pierce. Judge Holt, Postmaster-General under President Buchanan, declared that his opinion had been “cheerfully acquiesced in by this department, and is now recognized as one of the guides of the administration.”⁵³ Right up to the Civil War, the act of July 2, 1836 was void in Southern States. Their laws nullified freedom of the press under the First Amendment. For example:

Post Office, Lynchburg, Va.
December 2, 1859

Mr. Horace Greeley:

Sir:—I inform you that I shall not, in future, deliver from this office the copies of the “Tribune” which come here, because I believe them to be of that incendiary character which are forbidden circulation by the laws of the land, and a proper regard for the safety of society. You will, therefore, discontinue them.

Respectfully,
R. H. Glass, Postmaster⁵⁴

Horace Greeley's reply is a fair statement of the whole issue:

Sir:—I take leave to assure you I shall do nothing of the sort. The subscribers of the “Tribune” in Lynchburg have paid for their papers; we have taken their money, and shall fairly and fully earn it…. If they direct us

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to send their papers to some other post office we shall obey the request; otherwise we shall send them as originally ordered. If you or your masters choose to steal and destroy them, that is your affair-at all events, not ours; and if there is no law in Virginia to punish larceny, so much the worse for her and our plundered subscribers. If the Federal Administration whereof you are the tool, after monopolizing the business of mail-carrying, sees fit to become the accomplice and patron of mail-robbery, I suppose the outrage must be borne until more honest and less servile rulers can be put into high places at Washington, or till the people recover their natural rights to carry each other's printed matter and letters, asking no odds of the government. Go ahead in your own base way. I shall stand steadfast for human liberty and the protection of all natural rights.

Yours stiffly,
Horace Greeley.

In December, 1859, a postmaster in Hardy County, at Linney's Creek, Virginia, having suppressed the “Religious Telescope” of Dayton, O…. Mr. Vallandigham addressed a letter to the Post Office Department…. The Virginia postmaster was immediately commanded to obey the law, and the “Telescope” had no more trouble.⁵⁵

At the first appearance of this censorship issue, the Southern states had tried to get Northern states to pass laws against the freedom of the press. The winter of 1835–1836 brought from many legislatures resolutions like these:

By the General Assembly of North Carolina:Resolved, that our sister States are respectively requested to enact penal laws prohibiting within their respective limits all such publications as may have a tendency to make our slaves discontented.

By Alabama:—That we call upon our sister States and respectfully request them to enact such penal laws as will finally put an end to the malignant deeds of the Abolitionists.

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The efforts made in free-state legislatures then in session to pass laws against a free press all failed. Massachusetts passed resolutions against such measures. The law proposed in New York shows how extreme were the demands of the slave holders:

All writings or pictures, made, printed, or published within this State, with a design or intent, or the manifest tendency whereof shall be to excite to, or cause insurrection … or civil commotion, or breach of the peace among the slaves in any part of America … or to create on the part of the slaves an abandonment of the service, or a violation of the duty which the master has a legal right to claim, shall be deemed a misdemeanor; all persons who shall make, print, publish, or circulate, or shall subscribe or contribute money or other means to enable any other to make, print, et cetera, shall be deemed guilty of the offense, and shall be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both, in the discretion of the court.

The failure of all these laws shows about how the lines were drawn. The end they aimed at was soon achieved by subverting the United States mails.⁵⁶

THE RIGHT OF PETITION TO CONGRESS

The issue as to what should be done by Congress with petitions against slavery has raised the only Federal question affecting the right of petition. It first arose in the second session of the First Congress, in March, 1790, on two petitions praying for the abolition of slavery—one from the Quakers, and one from the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, signed by Benjamin Franklin as president. These petitions were received and referred to a special committee. In the debate James Madison urged his colleagues not to take any action “that would get the people interested.” The report of the special committee for receiving the petitions was adopted.⁵⁷ But the people had already become interested.

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Later Congress refused to pay any attention to certain petitions. One from Warner Mifflin, a Quaker, returned to its author, was described by a Southern member as “mere rant without any specific prayer.” The erasure of the matter from the Journal, however, was not agreed to.⁵⁸

The petitions continued year after year, for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, for a constitutional amendment against it, and for other forms of abolition. At last the Abolitionist agitation forced Congress to other action than a mere reception of the petitions. On January 7, 1836, Senator Calhoun moved to refuse to consider any more petitions on slavery. No definite action was taken. But in the House of Representatives the determination to avoid the embarrassment of anti-slavery petitions finally led on May 26, 1836, to the adoption by vote of 117 to 68 of the following resolution proposed by the select committee on abolition, of which Henry L. Pinckney of South Carolina was chairman.

And, whereas, it is extremely important and desirable that the agitation of this subject should be finally arrested, for the purpose of restoring tranquillity to the public mind, your committee recommend….

That all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers, relating in any way, or to any extent whatever, to the subject of slavery, or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid upon the table and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon.⁵⁹

When the name of John Quincy Adams, once President, was called on the vote, he rose and said:

I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, the rule of this House, and the rights of my constituents.

But this gag-rule was repeated in 1837, also in 1838, and in 1840 it was made Rule 21 of the standing rules of the House.

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This practical denial of the right of petition helped center public attention on the slavery problem. The Massachusetts legislature on April 12, 1837, passed resolutions by a large majority declaring that “such disposition of petitions was a virtual denial of the right itself” and

That the resolution above named is an assumption of power and authority, at variance with the spirit and intent of the Constitution of the United States, and injurious to the cause of freedom and free institutions; that it does violence to the inherent, absolute, and inalienable rights of man; and that it tends essentially to impair those fundamental principles of natural justice and natural law, which are antecedent to any written constitutions of government….⁶⁰

RIGHTS OF REPRESENTATIVES IN ASSEMBLY

While the right to protection of a representative in a legislative assembly is not affirmed in the Constitution, it is akin to the right of petition. Instead of sending written appeals the people send a personal agent to labor for their cause. He must enjoy protection from prosecutions for his words in debate, and from personal assault. The basis for the protection from prosecution for utterances in the legislature has been laid down as follows (1808):

The freedom of deliberation, speech, and debate assured by the Constitution (of Massachusetts) to each branch of the legislature is part of the privilege of the individual members rather than of the house as an organized body; and being derived from the will of the people, the members are entitled to this privilege even against the will of the house….

The Constitutional provision securing such freedom should be construed liberally, so its full design may be answered; thus extending it to every act resulting from the nature of the member's office, and done in the execution of it, and exempting him from a liability for everything

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said and done by him as a representative, whether according to the rules of the House or not….

Coffin versus Coffin, 4 Massachusetts Reports, 1.

This is a somewhat larger view of the privileges of the representative than that held today.

SENATOR SUMNER ASSAULTED IN THE SENATE

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered before the Senate on May 19 and 20, 1856, in a set speech, The Crime Against Kansas, a terrible arraignment of the Southern representatives. Then—

Preston S. Brooks, a representative from South Carolina, either volunteered or was selected as agent for the infliction of punishment. After the adjournment of the Senate, May 22, Mr. Sumner remained at his desk…. Brooks, whom he did not know, approached him and said: “I have read your speech twice over. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler who is a relative of mine.” … He commenced a series of blows with a bludgeon on the Senator's head, by which the latter was smitten down, bleeding and insensible on the floor of the chamber…. It was four years before he was pronounced convalescent.

On the House investigation committee's recommendation, it was voted to expel Brooks, 125 to 95 … a two-thirds vote being necessary, a vote of censure was adopted by a large majority. Brooks addressed the House…. “I went to work very deliberately, as charged,” was his text. He announced his resignation and walked out. For the assault, the paltry fine of $300 was imposed by a Washington judge, without one word of disapprobation for the conduct of the culprit…. Brooks' constituents raised for him double the amount of the fine…. He was immediately re-elected without opposition, by 7,900 votes, on the single issue of whether he had done right or wrong…. The students and officers of the University of Virginia also voted him a cane.⁶¹

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Northern indignation led Edward Everett to speak of “this act of lawless violence of which I know no parallel in the history of constitutional government”; and the Rhode Island Assembly passed a resolution that “this assault … shows a deliberate attempt to stifle freedom of speech in the national councils.”⁶²

FREEDOM OF TEACHING

Interference with freedom of Abolitionist teachers was shown in several localities in the North. For instance, the plan for a Negro college in New Haven, Connecticut, was abandoned after a public meeting on September 10, 1831, with Mayor Dennis Kimberley in the chair. They listened to indignant speeches by distinguished citizens, and resolved 70 to 4 that: “The founding of colleges for the educating of colored people is an unwarrantable and dangerous interference with the internal concerns of other States … that the establishment of such a college in New Haven will be incompatible with the prosperity, if not the existence, of the present institutions of learning … and that the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council will resist the establishment … by every lawful means.”⁶³ The lawful means were not specified.

At Canaan, New Hampshire, a month was given to the preceptor and colored pupils of Noyes Academy in which to quit the town, on condition of forcible expulsion and under threats of death if resistance were made. Before the ultimatum expired, a legal town-meeting appointed a Superintending Committee to remove the Academy, which was done by about 300 citizens of that and neighboring towns with nearly a hundred yoke of oxen. They simply hauled the building away. They then adopted an interesting resolution reading in part: “The Abolitionists must be checked and restrained within constitutional limits, or American liberty will find a speedy grave.”⁶⁴

Prudence Crandall, a young Quaker woman, had received fifteen or twenty colored girls in her school at Canterbury,

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Connecticut, in 1832, in spite of threatening resolutions adopted at a public meeting in a Congregational Church.

The store-keepers refused to sell her anything…. She and her pupils were insulted on the streets. The doors of her house were besmeared and her well filled with the most odious filth. The pupils were excluded from the privileges of public worship by the officers of the Congregational Church. An attempt was made to drive them away by the revival of an obsolete vagrant law, which provided that after warning by the selectmen, any person, not an inhabitant of the State, who did not depart from the town, should pay a dollar and sixty-seven cents a week, and on failure to pay this license, or leave in ten days, should be whipped on the naked back, not exceeding ten stripes. A warrant … was actually served on Eliza Ann Hammond, but not prosecuted….⁶⁵

An influential citizen, Andrew T. Judson, later a judge of the United States district court, found the “school for nigger girls so near him insupportable.” So he with others secured this proscriptive law from the Legislature, May 24, 1833:

Section 1…. That no person shall set up or establish in this State any school, academy, or literary institution for the instruction or education of colored persons who are not inhabitants of this State; nor instruct or teach in any school … nor harbor or board, for the purpose of being taught … any colored person who is not an inhabitant of the State, without the consent in writing, first obtained, of a majority of the civil authority, and also of the selectmen of the town….

Miss Crandall was arraigned, bound over for trial, and thrust … into a cell just vacated by a murderer. The legal contest was ended by a technical error so no decision on the merits was ever secured.⁶⁶ The school was finally broken up by violence. Miss Crandall's house was set on

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fire in the night, but was saved because some rotten wood would not burn. Later the house was attacked at midnight by a mob armed with heavy clubs and iron bars. For these outrages there was no redress.⁶⁷ Miss Crandall finally left the town.

A like thing happened in the South.

Rev. John G. Fee, of Kentucky, with others, established a negro colony, and these people, negroes, of Berea made it a marked neighborhood … but no fidelity as citizens, no caution, no unobtrusiveness could hide their success…. A Committee of Sixty-five representing, it was said, “the wealth and respectability of the country,” was intrusted with the cruel task of breaking up their homes and banishing them…. It was admitted they had broken no law … but, it was alleged, their principles were opposed to the public peace. They appealed in vain to the governor for protection, but were advised by that official “for the sake of the peace” to leave the State. This they did without resistance … the school-house was closed, the steam-mill dismantled, and again order reigned.⁶⁸

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Academic freedom in many institutions in the North did not include the right to advocate the immediate abolition of slavery. At Western Reserve College, Hudson, Ohio, Rev. Charles B. Storrs, and Professors Beriah Green and Elizur Wright aroused so much excitement by their views on abolition that the alarmed trustees thought the college would be ruined. The three men had to resign.⁶⁹

James G. Birney, among his other trials for conscience, was rejected as professor of Ancient Languages in Center College, Kentucky. “Everything else was acceptable save my abolition views.”⁷⁰

During the intense excitement of the campaign of 1856, Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick was accused of inclination toward the hated “Black Republican” party. For political reasons the newspapers and alumni of the University of North

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Carolina, in which Hedrick was a professor of astronomy, took up the charge. Hedrick answered the challenge with a Defence, in which he said: “To make the matter short, I say I am in favor of the election of Fremont to the presidency.”

The Board of Trustees requested the President to use his influence to make Hedrick resign, and the rest of the Faculty whitewashed themselves in a resolution, declaring that “the course of Professor Hedrick … is not warranted by our usages; and the political opinions expressed are not those entertained by any other member of this body.” His frankness at least was not the usage in most academic bodies. He was burned in effigy by the students and threatened with violence. The pressure upon the Trustees grew so great that on October 18, the Executive Committee (in spite of some question as to its power) dismissed Hedrick from the University and declared his professorship vacant. This was confirmed by the Trustees, January 5, 1857.⁷¹

Students suffered no less than teachers. In the North the power of the faculty and trustees was often exerted to prevent anti-slavery agitation. Students of Southern sympathies broke up abolition meetings at Yale and other schools. At Miami University an anti-slavery society was directed by the faculty to cease meeting. Illinois and Kenyon Colleges adopted similar gag-rules. But the students did not always submit. Fifty students of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, asked dismissal from that institution because they were refused permission to form an anti-slavery society. A famous revolt for liberty took place among the maturer students at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, founded a few years before under the presidency of Dr. Lyman Beecher to train ministers for the Mississippi Valley. Some eighty students between 21 and 35 years old formed a Colonization Society and debated slavery on eighteen evenings (February to April, 1834). Next came an Anti-Slavery Society, whose members did helpful service among the Negroes of Cincinnati. The resulting controversy, thought to endanger the Seminary and

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the interests of the Presbyterian Church, led during the next summer to the adoption of severe rules by the Trustees. They are good specimens of academic hair-splitting:

The students shall not hold general meetings among themselves, other than those of a religious or devotional character, nor deliver public addresses … at the Seminary or elsewhere, in term time; nor make public addresses or communications to the students when assembled at their meals, or on other ordinary occasions…. The Committee are further of the opinion that no associations or societies among the students ought to be allowed … except such as have for their immediate object, improvement in the prescribed course of studies.

The Faculty interpretation of the rules followed:

But while associations for free enquiry and voluntary public action, will within these limits be approved and encouraged, associations for public action, too absorbing for health, and the most favorable prosecution of study, and bearing upon a divided and excited community, and touching subjects of great national difficulty, and high political interest, and conducted in a manner to offend needlessly, public sentiment, and to commit this Seminary and its influences … we cannot permit.

The Anti-Slavery Society was commanded to disband and the Colonization Society, too. Nearly all the theological students and a number in the literary department requested and secured their dismissals.⁷²

ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS PRESSURE

Social coercion is probably the most powerful force to secure conformity; it needs neither laws nor violence. Though not a violation of civil liberty, it fills in the picture to note how it worked against Abolitionists.

In Boston the directors of the Athenaeum Library excluded Mrs. Child because she was an Abolitionist. Harriet Martineau

123

was publicly ostracized.⁷³ Arthur Tappan's business difficulties in New York were many. The insurance companies refused to insure his property and the banks would not discount his paper. Threatening letters, pieces of rope as a threat of the gallows, and even a slave's ear were sent him from the South.⁷⁴ A meeting of merchants was called at Charleston, S. C., to unite on a determination not to purchase any more goods of Tappan, who had been supplying the South Carolina merchants with silks.⁷⁵ The economic aspect was clearly summed up by a partner in a prominent mercantile house:

There are millions and millions of dollars due to the merchants of this city alone, from the South, the payment of which would be jeopardized by any rupture between the North and the South. It is not a matter of principle with us. It is a matter of business necessity.⁷⁶

THE PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

The Kansas Border Wars (1855–1859) present enough violations of civil liberty for a volume, but they are not detailed here for they may well be viewed as the first chapter of the Civil War. There were dual governments, disregard for law, and armed violence. The neighboring state, Missouri, sent its vagabond armies (unofficial, of course) into Kansas to drive out the “nigger-loving abolitionists” who had been sent in to colonize for a “free State.” Meanwhile the colonization societies back in New England shipped in their Sharps rifles. Political conditions in the rest of the nation kept the Federal government from intervening to re-establish a constitutional regime. So what matter if William Phillips was tarred and feathered. If The Parkville Luminary was quenched in the Missouri? If duly elected legislators were driven out into the plains? It was the overture to war, and to that war we must now turn.⁷⁷

As the North was won to the anti-slavery cause from

124

humane or economic motives, the Abolitionists gained their liberties. Power had shifted to their side. So after about 1845 we find no very serious interferences with their propaganda in the North. Yet even as late as 1862 a riot occurred at a meeting in New York where Wendell Phillips denounced the Administration's failure to free the slaves.⁷⁸ In the South as the cleavage became sharper there was less liberty than ever. Here from 1835 to 1885 constitutional liberty had no normal status since for two decades after the war it was submerged in the chaos of Reconstruction.

To sum up,—the events of the “mob era” and especially the attacks on Abolitionists blunted any sense of duty or need to protect the minority. The idea of the “respectable” mob was perfected and took an effective form. It was discovered that the Post Office could be used as a censor of ideas. The tyranny of the majority was carried further by the conception of controlling public opinion against a minority, and control of education by discipline of teachers and students was its significant expression. Most of the modern machinery for curtailing liberty was in full use after this period just before the Civil War.

125

NOTES

1 Alice D. Adams, The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery.

2 William Birney, Life of James G. Birney, p. 228.

3 American Commonwealth, I, 393.

4 Harriet Martineau, The Martyr Age in the United States, p. 11.

5 See Cutler, op. cit., pp. 92–102 for account of hanging of twenty-six men for alleged gambling in Mississippi; Liberator, I, 180, and IV, 153, 168.

6 Harriet Martineau, The Martyr Age of the United States, p. 17. See the Liberator, V, 156, for Dresser's statement, and a full list of the trial committee. Oliver Johnson, Garrison and His Times, XI, XII, XIII, 180–220.

7 Cutler, Lynch Law, p. 102.

8 Oliver Johnson, Garrison and His Times.

9 Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, II, 667.

10 Adams, Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery, p. 112.

11 Adams, op. cit., pp. 23, 60; Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 434.

12 E. Von Holst, Constitutional History, III, 121, discusses the State laws on matter exciting the slaves.

13 Virginia Code (1849), chap. cxc., 8, section 22.

14 Oliver Johnson, Garrison and His Times, p. 217.

15 Johnson, op. cit., p. 179.

16 Compare with the later successful use of extradition to bring labor leaders from one State to another for trial for their opinions. See chap. vii below.

17 Bowen, Arthur Tappan, p. 13.

18 E. Von Holst, Constitutional History, III, 110.

19 Von Holst, Constitutional History, III, 114.

20 William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 440.

21 Life of James G. Birney, pp. 222–227. The substitution of “money-power” for “slave-power” makes the above description precisely fit certain modern conditions.

22 Von Holst given an interesting reason for the persecutions. “The radical character of abolitionism was in the most flagrant contradiction with the Anglo-Saxon spirit of conservatism. This spirit instinctively recoiled from a creed which rejected on principle any attempt toward the adoption of a middle course…. It felt itself all the more severely wounded when the prophets and judges had to a certain extent divested themselves of their nationality.” Constitutional History, III, 104.

23 Birney, op. cit., pp. 250–251.

24 Proceedings of the Anniversary Meeting (Boston, 1855), Account of the Mob by Garrison. Theodore Lyman, 3rd, Papers Relating to the Garrison Mob (Cambridge, 1870), presents the Mayor's defense, pp. 14–24. Wendell Phillips said that Mayor Lyman, in private conference, had urged the Abolitionists to discontinue their meeting, while professing his earnest determination to protect them at any cost. They consented to do nothing to excite the public, but would hold meetings enough to assert their right to meet. Francis Jackson later offered his home to the ladies, for a meeting-place, in a stirring letter: “One house at least shall be consecrated to the preservation of the right to speak. And if, in defense of this sacred privilege which man did not give me, and shall not (if I can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls shall be levelled to the earth—let them fall, if they must. They cannot crumble in a better cause. They will appear of very little value to me after their owner shall have been whipped into silence.”

25 C. W. Bowen, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, p. 6; Johnson, Life of Garrison.

26 Bowen, op. cit., p. 10.

27 F. G. Fontaine, History of American Abolitionism.

28 Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, pp. 279, 557.

29 Samuel J. May, Recollections, p. 163.

30 Von Holst, Constitutional History, III, 103; Niles' Register, XLIX, 146–149.

31 Anthony and Harper, History of Woman's Suffrage, I, 285.

32 J. J. Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison, p. 199. Wendell Phillips was later invited to speak in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, with the pastor on the platform to vindicate free speech, and the city authorities protecting the meeting. See Johnson, Garrison and His Times, p. 381.

33 The History of Pennsylvania Hall by the Managers of the Pennsylvania Association.

34 History of Pennsylvania Hall.

35 William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 436.

36 Johnson, Garrison and His Times, pp. 32–38.

37 Birney, Life of James G. Birney; see The Liberator for other cases.

38 Wilson, Rise and Fall, II, 670.

39 James G. Birney, Narrative of the Late Riotous Proceedings Against the Liberty of the Press.

40 Cutler, op. cit., p. 109; Niles' Register, June 4, 1836, L, 234; Liberator, May 14, 1836, VI, 79, 83.

41 A monument has been dedicated to the “martyred” Lovejoy on the site of occurrence.

42 The above facts are mostly condensed from the Memoir of the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, by Joseph and Owen Lovejoy, with Introduction by John Quincy Adams.

43 Henry Tanner, Martyrdom of Lovejoy, p. 168; Edward Beecher, Riots at Alton.

44 William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, p. 442; J. C. Lovejoy, Memoir of the Martyr Torrey.

45 Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, p. 632.

46 Ibid., p. 633.

47 The Charleston Courier, July 31, 1835.

48 Birney, Life of James G. Birney, p. 189.

49 Niles' Register, Sept. 5, 1835.

50 Gales, Register of Debates, XII, 704, 753.

51 John C. Calhoun, Works, V, 191 ff.; Senate Documents, 118, 24th Congress, second session.

52 Register of Debates, XII, part 2, 1,374, 1,675.

53 Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, II, 670; McPherson, History of the Rebellion, p. 191.

54 Edward McPherson, History of the Rebellion, p. 192.

55 C. L. Vallandigham, Speeches, p. 225, note.

56 Von Holst, Constitutional History, II, 116, 121–130; Niles' Register, XLVIII, 448; Birney, op. cit., p. 192, note.

57 Annals of Congress, Vol. I; Elliot, Debates, IV, 407, ff. Hildreth, IV, 177, 386.

58 Hildreth, History, IV, 386; Benton, Abridgment of Debates, and Thirty Years' View, I, chap. cxxxv, and II, 22, 33, 36, 37; Sharpless, Quakers in the Revolution, p. 237; Lalor, Encyclopedia, III, 167–173.

59 Register of Debates, XII, 28. For further details of the gag-rule see Ibid., XIII, 269, 271; Von Holst, Constitutional History, II, 235, 251, 272 et passim; Benton, Debates in Congress, I, 201, 207; XII, 705; XIII, 24, 266, 566, 702; XIV, 289; Niles' Register, LXI, 350. On petition, see Joseph Story, Commentaries, II, section 1894. Congressional Globe, 27th Congress, second session, February 5, 1842, pp. 208, 215, and Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power. For the House Rules see Asher W. Hinds, Precedents and Rules of the House of Representatives.

60 Massachusetts Assembly, 1837, Senate Document 84; Von Holst, op. cit., II. 284.

61 Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, II, 478–495.

62 H. V. Ames (editor), State Documents on Federal Relations, VI, 54.

63 Oliver Johnson, Garrison and His Times, p. 123.

64 The Patriot, Concord, New Hampshire.

65 Samuel J. May, Recollections.

66 The Liberator (Boston), September 27 and October 11, 1834, gives the arguments on the constitutionality of the “black law.”

67 Johnson, op. cit.

68 Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, II, 667.

69 Johnson, Garrison, p. 142.

70 Birney, Life of James G. Birney, p. 145.

71 James Sprunt Historical Publications, X, Number 1, 1910, Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick.

72 Fifty-one of them published a Defence—an admirable statement of the right of student bodies to freedom of research and discussion. It is in the Liberator, I, 178, Boston, January 10, 1835.

73 E. Crosby, Garrison, Non-Resistant, p. 21.

74 C. W. Bowen, Arthur Tappan, p. 13.

75 The Liberator, August 15, 1835, p. 3.

76 May, Recollections, p. 127.

77 The student may find much data in: Phillips, The Conquest of Kansas; Charles Robinson, The Kansas Conflict; E. L. Thayer, The Kansas Crusade; L. D. Bailey, Border Ruffians in Kansas; L. W. Spring, Kansas, Prelude to War for the Union; House Reports, 647, 36th Congress, 1st Session, The Corode Investigation; W. E. Conelley, Quantrill and the Border Wars; W. P. Tomlinson, Kansas in 1858.

78 New York Times, January 25, March 25, July 10, and August 6, 9, 12, 14, 1862. Phillips declared he would never take the oath of allegiance while the Constitution permitted slavery.

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Editions and Rights

The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States

by Leon Whipple (more about this book and author)

Chapter 3: The Abolitionists (1830-1860)

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE SOUTH

MOB VIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH

STATUTES DENYING FREEDOM OF SPEECH

EXTENSION OF SOUTHERN LAWS TO THE NORTH

FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE NORTH

THE MOBBING OF ABOLITIONISTS

“THE RESPECTABLE MOB OF GENTLEMEN OF PROPERTY AND
STANDING”

THOMPSON

THE NEW YORK MOBS

THE BURNING OF PENNSYLVANIA HALL

LEGAL ACTION BY NORTHERN STATES

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

THE PRESS RIOTS AT CINCINNATI

LATER ATTACKS ON THE PRESS

THE BEGINNING OF THE POST OFFICE CENSORSHIP

PRESIDENT JACKSON SUGGESTS THE POSTAL CENSORSHIP

THE RIGHT OF PETITION TO CONGRESS

RIGHTS OF REPRESENTATIVES IN ASSEMBLY

SENATOR SUMNER ASSAULTED IN THE SENATE

FREEDOM OF TEACHING

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS PRESSURE

THE PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

NOTES

Chapter Links

Join the Discussion

Buy a Printed Copy of this Book

Other Recommended Books

Editions and Rights

The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States

by Leon Whipple (more about this book and author)

Chapter 3: The Abolitionists (1830-1860)

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE SOUTH

MOB VIOLENCE IN THE SOUTH

STATUTES DENYING FREEDOM OF SPEECH

EXTENSION OF SOUTHERN LAWS TO THE NORTH

FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

ABOLITIONISTS IN THE NORTH

THE MOBBING OF ABOLITIONISTS

“THE RESPECTABLE MOB OF GENTLEMEN OF PROPERTY AND STANDING”

THOMPSON

THE NEW YORK MOBS

THE BURNING OF PENNSYLVANIA HALL

LEGAL ACTION BY NORTHERN STATES

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

THE PRESS RIOTS AT CINCINNATI

LATER ATTACKS ON THE PRESS

THE BEGINNING OF THE POST OFFICE CENSORSHIP

PRESIDENT JACKSON SUGGESTS THE POSTAL CENSORSHIP

THE RIGHT OF PETITION TO CONGRESS

RIGHTS OF REPRESENTATIVES IN ASSEMBLY

SENATOR SUMNER ASSAULTED IN THE SENATE

FREEDOM OF TEACHING

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS PRESSURE

THE PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR

NOTES

“THE RESPECTABLE MOB OF GENTLEMEN OF PROPERTY AND
STANDING”