CHAPTER IX

THE JOHN BROWN RAID

THE declamation against disunion and the mutual pledges of fraternal love between North and South, which attended the banquet to the Seventh New York Regiment in Richmond, arose in great part from a knowledge of sectional feeling, threats of disunion, and of partisan recriminations between politicians, but too familiar to all who spoke. At the same time, an intense antagonism to slavery existed in sections of the North and West, accompanied by the determination to abolish it by any means in their power, lawful or unlawful.

Little effort has been made to record the fact, yet it is nevertheless true, that many Southern men were working earnestly and loyally towards the adoption of some plan of gradual emancipation which, while it would free the slave, would not destroy the labor system of the South or leave the slave-owner impoverished. The abolitionist did not believe this. He was uncharitable in his judgment of the humanity of the slave-owner; and his demand that a difficult problem, requiring time for its solution, should be disposed of at once and in his way—per fas aut nefas was strongly provoking. The attitude of the people of the North generally concerning escaped slaves seemed to the Southerners inconsistent, and tended to increase the friction between the sections. The people of the North professed great reverence for their constitutional obligations, and constantly disclaimed a purpose to

1860!

interfere with slavery where it existed. They insisted that they were only opposed to the spread of slavery into the free States or Territories, and would respect the rights of the slave-owner where slavery already existed. Yet, whenever a slave escaped, the Northern community in which he sought asylum was practically unanimous in thinking it a great outrage and hardship if he was pursued into their territory and taken back to his owner. It is often said that, before the war, only a small portion of the Northern people belonged to the abolition party. Whether that was true or not, it is certain that a vast majority of every Northern community was in sympathy with obstacles thrown in the way of recapturing escaped slaves. Everybody, North and South, was well aware that in many instances the slave was enticed from his home by abolition emissaries. Yet when he reached the North, thousands who would not have gone South to incite him to escape did all they could to make the work of the emissaries effectual.

In such a condition of affairs, the practical difference between the abolitionist and the sympathizer, to the man who lost his slave and could not recover it, was very nebulous. From certain descriptions of these times, one would think that all the threats and taunts were made, and all the provocations were given, by the Southerners. At this late day, such a contention is nonsense. No more defiant, vindictive, or aggressive speech was ever made than that of Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, in the United States Senate in 1859, on the "Barbarism of Slavery." He had a personal grievance, it is true; he had been brutally assaulted in that chamber years before, and his speech bore every mark of being the result of

"The patient watch and vigil long

Of him who treasures up a wrong."

It is not justifying the assault made upon Mr. Sumner by Preston S. Brooks to say that no man ever did more to provoke an attack upon himself than did Mr. Sumner. His speech in 1856 was able, studied in its malignity, and all the more provoking from its strength. Nor was Sumner the only man of that class. We may search through the congressional debates in vain for more coarse and insulting language than that used by Senator Ben Wade, of Ohio, upon the floor of the Senate. Every opportunity was taken by him to lead the debates in the Senate into sectional channels.

Acquisition of Cuba is more advocated in the North to-day than in the South. In 1860, the project was branded by the Republicans in the Senate as a slaveholder's scheme for securing additional representation. The proposition then made by Senator Slidell, to purchase Cuba for thirty million dollars, was flouted by Wade and his party as a mere ruse for providing " niggers for the niggerless." Jealousy, antagonism, and hatred between the sections. animated the representatives of both, and neither lost any opportunity to vituperate and recriminate.

While this was the condition of feeling among the politicians, it had not yet extended to the masses. For several years, the conflict had been in progress between the free-soilers and pro-slavery men in Kansas. The Virginians were conservative in their views about that struggle. They realized that the men engaged in it on both sides were a bloodthirsty and disreputable lot. Leading Virginians, supporters of Mr. Buchanan, warned him not to go too far in subserviency to the extreme proslavery men, or to force a pro-slavery constitution upon the State. Virginians, while they heard of the fanatical and bloody butcheries committed in Kansas by one "Old Brown," and men of his class, also heard of equally

horrid crimes committed by the pro-slavery men. held both in abhorrence, and indorsed neither.

They

It was not the Kansas trouble that occasioned them concern, or excited their apprehensions concerning the Union. It was the announcement by Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, in his debate with Douglas in 1858, that the Union was a house divided against itself, and that slavery and union could not coexist. It was declarations like those of Senator Seward, of New York, that " an irrepressible conflict" existed between the North and South. It was speeches of men like Charles Sumner, breathing deep malice against the South, and denouncing it in polished oratory. These and a hundred others like them from men of the North, less prominent but not less representative, made Virginians realize that the times. were perilous, and say to themselves: "If this temple of union is divided against itself and must fall, if slavery and union cannot coexist, if an irrepressible conflict is upon us, if Mr. Sumner expresses the state of Northern sentiment, it is manifest that the hour of disunion is here. The only thing remaining for us to do is to begin to consider which side of us the line of cleavage shall come, north or south.'

Virginians were no more angels or philanthropists than people to the north or to the south of them. They were moved by their affections, their interest, and their resentments, just as humanity is moved to-day. Their strongest social ties were with the Southern people. They had a great part of their wealth invested in slaves; and, while far in advance of the States to the south of them in the desire for some plan of gradual emancipation, they were not willing to have their property unceremoniously jostled out of their hands without compensation, to gratify Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Mr. Sumner, Mr. Wade, or the

constituencies which they represented. They thought the conditions of future association announced by these men a rather high and hasty price for the privilege. And, lastly, their very love of the Union inflamed them against men who, as they viewed it, were making union impossible, except on terms involving humiliating surrender to the abolitionist.

It is often said by writers that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, when they spoke of a divided house, the impossibility of the coexistence of union and slavery, and the "irrepressible conflict," were simply stating abstract propositions, and did not mean that they would counsel a physical assault upon slavery or the enactment of unconstitutional laws, and that their figures of speech referred only to the logic of the political situation. Their language may have been intended as statements of abstract principles; but, assuredly, what they said was susceptible of, and received, quite another construction. By their followers and opponents they were understood as declaring war on slavery, immediate and uncompromising.

As for Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wade, nobody pretended that they meant anything else. The Southerners may have been more demonstrative and noisy in their quarrels ; but they were not a whit more stubborn, aggressive, defiant, or irritating than the men of the North. The Southern man scoffed the pretense that the Northern man really desired union, when he refused to subordinate his demands concerning slavery to any other consideration. The Northern man denounced the Southern man as hating the Union, because he would not consent to remain in it, even if he believed that the North, while professing the purpose of respecting his right, at heart intended to deprive him of his slave property on the first opportunity. This political warfare was very intense in 1858-59. The