between the masters and their servants in the South than that falsely imagined by the conspirators and by those in sympathy with them either before or after the fact." Professor John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, in his work, The Civil War and the Constitution, has portrayed the disastrous effects upon the sentiment in favor of emancipation in various parts of the South, occasioned by the virulence of these agitators and above all by the attempt of John Brown and his followers to precipitate servile insurrection. "If the whole thing," writes Professor Burgess, "both as to time, methods, and results, had been planned by his Satanic Majesty himself, it could not have succeeded better in setting the sound conservative movements of the age at naught, and in creating a state of feeling which offered the most capital opportunities for the triumph of political insincerity, radicalism and rascality over their opposites. No man who is acquainted with the change of feeling which occurred in the South between the 16th of October 1859 and the 16th day of November of the same year can regard the Harper's Ferry villainy as any other than one of the chiefest crimes of our history. It established and reestablished the control of the great radical slaveholders over the non-slaveholders, -the little slaveholders, and the more liberal of the large slaveholders, which had already begun to be loosened." Professor Burgess then proceeds to show the still more disastrous effects upon conservative sentiment in Virginia. and the South which resulted from the demonstrations at the North on the day of John Brown's execution. "Brown and his band," says Professor Burgess, "had 'Idem, p. 329. The Civil War and the Constitution, Burgess, Vol. I, p. 35. 182 VIEWS OF BURGESS murdered five men and wounded some eight or ten more in their criminal movement at Harper's Ferry. . . . Add to this the consideration that Brown certainly intended the wholesale massacre of the whites by the blacks in case that should be found necessary to effect his purposes and it was certainly natural that the tolling of the church bells, the holding of prayer-meetings for the soul of John Brown, the draping of houses, the half-masting of flags, &c., in many parts of the North should appear to the people of the South to be evidences of a wickedness which knew no bounds and which was bent upon the destruction of the South by any means necessary to accomplish the result. . . . Especially did terror and bitterness take possession of the hearts of the women of the South, who saw in slave insurrection not only destruction and death, but that which to feminine virtue is a thousand times worse than the most terrible death. "From the Harper's Ferry outrage onward the conviction grew among all classes that the white men of the South must stand together and must harmonize all internal differences in the presence of the mortal peril with which as a race they believed themselves threatened. Sound development in thought and feeling was arrested, the follies and hatreds born of fear and resentment now assumed the places born of common sense and common kindliness." But, despite conflicts within and assaults from without, it must not be concluded that the people of Virginia had entirely abandoned the right of free discussion in regard to slavery, nor forfeited their well-earned reputation for conservatism and self-poise. There were still, as we have seen, many of her foremost men, who were frank to deplore the existence of the institution and who had never surrendered the faith of their fathers, that the day of abolition would surely dawn. Neither did the outrage at Harper's 'The Civil War and the Constitution, Burgess, Vol. I, pp. 42-44. VIRGINIA'S POSITION IN ELECTION OF 1860 183 Ferry with all its sinister circumstances, nor the triumph of sectionalism in the National elections of 1860, drive the state from its position of sanity and conservatism. Virginia was one of three commonwealths in that momentous election to cast her electoral vote for the Union candidates, Bell and Everett, standing on the simple platform-the preservation of the Union, the supremacy of the constitution and the enforcement of the laws. The foregoing recitals will serve to present the almost insuperable difficulties with which emancipation in Virginia was invested during the period just antedating the Civil War. That her people took counsel of their fears, rather than their hopes, may be admitted. But for this attitude who shall arraign them? Abraham Lincoln, speaking at Peoria, Ill., October 16th, 1854, said: "When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia-their native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would 184 LINCOLN'S ESTIMATE OF THE DIFFICULTIES not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling whether well or ill founded cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South." "If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution!" Such was the frank avowal of Mr. Lincoln. Nearly a half century later, Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of the "Old Man Eloquent," and himself a veteran of the Union Army, wrote: "The existence of an uneradicable and insurmountable race difference is indisputable. The white man and the black man cannot flourish together, the latter being considerable in number, under the same system of government. . . . The negro squats at our hearthstone. We can neither assimilate nor expel him.” We need not yield completely to Mr. Lincoln's perplexity, nor to Mr. Adams's despair in acknowledging the gravity of the situation which confronted the people of Virginia and the almost insuperable difficulties which attended its right solution. 'Lincoln-Douglass Debates, p. 74. See also Abraham Lincoln, Letters, Speeches and State Papers, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 187. 'Century Magazine, March, 1906, p. 106. THE STATUS OF THE CONTROVERSY REGARDING IN considering the status of the controversy with respect to slavery just prior to the Civil War, and whether Virginia in seceding was actuated by a desire to extend or perpetuate the institution, it will assist to a clearer understanding if we present in detail the several phases over which conflicts had arisen, and the parties to the same. The right and obligation of the Federal Government to prevent, by legislation, slaveholders from emigrating into the territories with their slaves; the duty of the Federal Government to provide through its officials for the capture and return to their owners of fugitive slaves; and the existence or abolition of slavery in the Southern Statesthese constituted the three principal subjects of discussion and points of conflict. Coupled with this three-fold aspect of the problem, Virginia was confronted by four factors, more or less potential in their relation to the subject-the Federal Government, the Republican Party, certain of the Northern States, and the Abolitionists. With respect to the Federal Government, neither Virginia nor her slaveholders could lodge any complaint. The compromise measures of 1850 had accorded slaveholders the right to carry their slaves into the territories of Utah and New Mexico (which embraced the present |