56

VIEWS OF DOUGLAS

not to set free, but to bind the faster the slave population of the South."

Stephen A. Douglas, speaking at Bloomington, Illinois, July 16, 1859, said:

"There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished and that is by leaving the state according to the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own way. That was the principle upon which this Republic was founded. ... Under its operations slavery disappeared from... six of the twelve original slaveholding states; and this gradual system of emancipation went on quietly, peacefully and steadily so long as we in the free states minded our own business and left our neighbors alone. But the moment the abolition societies were organized throughout the North, preaching a violent crusade against slavery in the Southern States, this combination necessarily caused a counter-combination in the South, and a sectional line was drawn which was a barrier to any further emancipation. Bear in mind that emancipation has not taken place in any one state since the Free-soil Party was organized as a political party in this country. . . . The moment the North proclaimed itself the determined master of the South, that moment the South combined to resist the attack, and thus sectional parties were formed and gradual emancipation ceased in all the Northern slaveholding states."

In this speech, Mr. Douglas not only points out the methods by which slavery had been abolished in six of the twelve original slaveholding states, but he bears testimony, like his great contemporaries, to the reactionary influence resulting from the attitude of the Northern Abolitionists.

This estimate of Senator Douglas was reaffirmed in the frank declaration of Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, who, speaking in the Peace Conference, at Washington, February, Webster's Great Speeches, Whipple, p. 619.

'Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Columbus, 1860. p. 31.

VIEWS OF LUNT AND CURTIS

57

1861, declared: "The North has taken the business of abolition into its own hands and from the day she did so we hear no more of abolition in Virginia. This was but the natural effect of the cause."1

If it be urged that the views of Channing, Lincoln, Webster, Douglas and Ewing were unfair in their estimate of the reactionary influence of the Abolitionists, because of the temper of the times in which they lived, it may be well to quote the conclusions of publicists not so situated. Mr. George Lunt, of Boston, writing in December, 1865, says:

"After the years of 1820-21, during which that great struggle which resulted in what is called the Missouri Compromise was most active and came to its conclusion, the States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee were earnestly engaged in practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists upon their voluntary action."2

Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, of Boston, writing in 1883, after describing the discussions in the General Assembly of Virginia in 1831-32, and stating that Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the leader of the movement for the abolition of slavery, was re-elected in 1833 from Albemarle, one of the largest slaveholding counties in the state, because of his position, declares:

"But in the meantime came suddenly the intelligence of what was doing at the North. It came in an alarming aspect for the peace and security for the whole South; since it could not be possible that strangers should combine together to assail the slaveholder as a sinner and to demand his instant admission of guilt, without arousing fears of 'Proceedings of Peace Convention, Crittenden, p. 142, 'The Origin of the Late War, Lunt, 1865, p. 33,

58

VIEWS OF ROOSEVELT AND SMITH

the most dangerous consequences for the safety of Southern homes, as well as intense indignation against such an unwarrantable interference. From that time forth emancipation whether immediate or gradual could not be considered in Virginia or anywhere else in the South.'

971

As representative of a later generation and voicing sentiments of one more removed from the period of controversy, the views of Theodore Roosevelt are of value. Writing in 1898, he says:

"In 1833 the abolition societies of the North came into prominence; they had been started a couple of years previously. Black slavery was such a grossly anachronistic and un-American form of evil that it is difficult to discuss. calmly the efforts to abolish it and to remember that many of these efforts were calculated to do and actually did more harm than good. . . . The cause of the Abolitionists has had such a halo shed around it by the course of events, which they themselves in reality did very little to shape, that it has been usual to speak of them with absurdly exaggerated praise. Their courage and, for the most part, their sincerity, cannot be too highly spoken of, but their share in abolishing slavery was far less than has commonly been represented; any single, nonabolitionist politician, like Lincoln or Seward, did more than all the professional Abolitionists combined really to bring about its destruction."

Writing still later, Mr. William Henry Smith, of Ohio, in his book, A Political History of Slavery, alluding to the work of the Abolitionists, says:

"What befell is what has always been the experience, which must needs be ever the experience of society when men 'encounter with such bitter tongues,' when full play

'Life of James Buchanan, Curtis, 1883, p. 278.
'Thomas H. Benton, Roosevelt, p. 141.

EMANCIPATION AND COLONIZATION

59

is given to passion, prejudice and all uncharitableness.

After fifteen years of this commotion, the testimony of the judicious was 'that the tendency to general emancipation in the Border States had been checked, and that the Abolitionists had done more to rivet the chains of the slave and to fasten the curse of slavery upon the country than all the pro-slavery men in the world had done or could do in half a century.'

Despite, however, the growing embarrassments of the situation, there remained with the people of Virginia the conviction that in the dispersion or colonization beyond her borders, of a substantial part of her negro population, lay the surest road to ultimate emancipation and relief from the racial problems incident to slavery. The practice, therefore, of emancipation by deeds and wills continued, and individually and by concerted action, the various schemes for colonization were fostered and encouraged. The Legislature at its session, 1833, passed a bill appropriating $18,000.00 per annum, for a period of five years to assist in transporting and subsisting "free persons of color who may desire to migrate from Virginia to Liberia."

This appropriation, as we shall see, was followed by others of larger amounts to further colonization; and, in no state of the Union, with the possible exception of Maryland, did the cause receive greater assistance, in money and sympathy, than in Virginia.

1A Political History of Slavery, William Henry Smith, 1903, Vol. I, pp. 40-41.

'Virginian History of African Colonization, Slaughter, p. 67.

X

NEGRO COLONIZATION-STATE AND NATIONAL

THE idea of colonization seems to have originated with Mr. Jefferson, who, in 1777, submitted a plan to a committee of the General Assembly of Virginia.

In 1787, Dr. William Thornton published an address to the free negroes of the whole country offering to lead them in person back to Africa.

In December, 1800, the General Assembly passed a resolution requesting the Governor to communicate with the President of the United States with the view of purchasing lands beyond the limits of Virginia for colonization purposes. A considerable correspondence ensued between Mr. Monroe, the Governor, and Mr. Jefferson, the President.

Nothing practical, however, resulted from these negotiations, though on the 27th of December, 1804, Mr. Jefferson wrote Governor Page: "I beg you to be assured that, having the object of the House of Delegates sincerely at heart, I will keep it under my constant attention, and omit no occasion which may occur of giving it effect."1

In January, 1805, the Legislature passed another resolution requesting Virginia's representatives in Congress to use every effort to secure a portion of the territory of Louisiana for the colonization "of such people of color as have been or shall be emancipated in Virginia."

The difficulties with France and England at this time prevented further prosecution of the subject, but, after 'Virginian History of African Colonization, Slaughter, pp. 1-6.