The Abolitionists

We come now to consider the fourth force or factor with which Virginia had to reckon, namely, the Abolitionists. These constituted a body of earnest, tireless agitators—men and women who had devoted mind and heart to the work of destroying slavery. No consideration of the maintenance of law, the national peace, nor the preservation of the Union availed to moderate their zeal or circumscribe their efforts. Slavery was a sin against God—and to the King of kings they owed their first allegiance. To counsels of moderation, to suggestions of expediency, to appeals for law, they returned the oft reiterated answer—Delenda est Cathargo! The orderly processes of time—the force of public opinion exerted through law, rather than against law, were to them but the suggestions of cowardice and a means for prolonging the life of an institution, the measure of whose sin cried unto Heaven. Fight Slavery!—now and always—wherever found and by every weapon known to the wit of man, was the burden of their message. Keep it out of the territories? Yes! and for the contest depend not alone upon the laws of Congress; but send armed men to the prairies of Kansas and hold the land against the slaveholders and their slaves by fire and the sword. Opposed to a Fugitive Slave Statute? Yes!—contest its enactment by Congress and defeat its execution when it becomes a law. Let the free states nullify this Federal statute by state laws; let mobs rescue from Federal officials the fugitives in their custody; and then cover the land with the conspiracy of the "Underground Railroad" by means of which the slave might pass to the freedom which awaited him beyond the Canadian border.

But it was slavery in its citadel—the existence of the institution in the slave states—that aroused their fiercest antagonism and rallied their forces to a battle which should never end but with its complete destruction. From this body of militant agitators and reformers, the slaveholders of Virginia could expect no quarter, and the commonwealth no surcease from the agitations so destructive of her peace.

GARRISON AND PHILLIPS

William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were the foremost leaders of this great fellowship, and in no year of grace were their demands more insistent and their assaults more aggressive than in the troublous days immediately preceding the Civil War. Amid all appeals for the maintenance of law and the preservation of peace might be heard their voices like fire-bells at night, denouncing the Union and the constitution and demanding the immediate abolition of slavery. But by none of these things was Virginia moved to secession. As declared by Henderson, the English military critic, "The wildest threats of the 'Black Republicans,' their loudly expressed determination in defiance of the constitution, to abolish slavery, if necessary, by the bullet and the sabre, shook in no degree whatever her loyalty to the Union."^[306]

SECESSION NO PROTECTION

For none of Virginia's grievances nor those of her slaveholders against the Abolitionists was secession a cure. Within the Union and under the Ægis of the constitution was to be found her surest defense against all their assaults. By secession she would surrender her interest in the territories and all claim of right to introduce slaves therein. By secession she would forfeit all the benefits of the Fugitive Slave Law. By secession she would lose the strong arm of the National Government to defend her against assaults, whether by lawless bands or the legislative enactments of hostile states. Even with respect to servile insurrections her withdrawal from the Union would in no way abate the danger but only lessen her power to cope with the problem. John Brown and his band were captured by United States soldiers and the flag of the Union carried protection to the inmates of every lonely manor house and cabin throughout her borders, whether menaced by the slaves themselves or the emissaries of those who plotted against her peace. Of all these facts the Abolitionists had the profoundest appreciation. Hence for years they advocated disunion as a condition precedent to the attainment of their great end—the abolition of slavery.

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[306]

Stonewall Jackson, Henderson, Vol. I, p. 122.