  The Abolitionists and Disunion (Concluded) These citations from the deliverances of the great leaders of the Abolitionists will give some idea of the motives and methods which pervaded that fellowship. With tireless insistence they went forward with their labors for the abolition of slavery and the dissolution of the Union, the latter being deemed a condition precedent to the complete accomplishment of the former. Only the action of South Carolina, which brought the nation face to face with a practical attempt at disunion, served to suspend the efforts of the Abolitionists to effect a like result. This momentous step on the part of South Carolina was received with exultant satisfaction—William Lloyd Garrison declaring, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last 'the covenant with Death' is annulled, and the 'agreement with Hell' broken, at least by the action of South Carolina, and ere long by all the slaveholding states, for their doom is one." THE UNION THWARTS EFFORTS OF ABOLITIONISTS Such was the condition of affairs with respect to the controversy over slavery in Virginia in the fateful winter James G. Blaine wrote: "But for the constant presence of National power and its constant exercise under the provisions of the constitution, the South would have no protection against anti-slavery assaults of the civilized world. Abolitionists from the very beginning of their energetic crusade against slavery had seen the constitution standing in their way, and with the unsparing severity of their logic had denounced it as 'a league with Hell and a covenant with Death.'" VIEWS OF PROMINENT VIRGINIANS The people of Virginia in like manner appreciated the situation. "What madness," wrote Madison, "in the South to look for greater safety in disunion! It would be worse than jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. It would be jumping into the fire from fear of the frying pan, i.e., Northern meddling with slavery." Governor McDowell, referring to slavery and disunion, said: "If gentlemen do not see or feel the evil of slavery whilst the Federal Union lasts, they will see and feel it when it is gone; they will see and suffer it then in a magnitude Referring to the protection afforded slavery by the Federal Constitution, he said: "Withdraw but the protecting energies of that instrument and be the associations into which we shall be thrown what they may—whether directed by judgment or caprice—our distinct character as a slaveholding people will still be left—we shall still hold a separate and adversary interest but hold it under circumstances of aggravated evil, as the existence of it will disqualify us for defense in the very degree in which it will expose us to foreign hostility and wrong." Robert E. Lee, referring to the same subject, wrote, "The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the North, as you say. I feel the aggression and am willing to take every proper step for redress.... But I can anticipate no greater calamity than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything, but honor, for its preservation." George W. Summers, speaking in the Virginia Convention of 1861, said: "What has Virginia to gain by secession and separate action? Nothing on the territorial question but lose everything. On the fugitive slave question, she could make no treaties with the North or with England. In relation to the institution of slavery, which I consider morally, socially and politically right, she will lose the John S. Carlile, speaking in the same convention, said: "I have been a slaveholder from the time I've been able to buy a slave. I have been a slaveholder not by inheritance but by purchase; and I believe that slavery is a social, political and religious blessing.... How long, if you were to dissolve this Union—if you were to separate the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding states, would African slavery have a foothold in this portion of the land? I venture the assertion that it would not exist in Virginia five years after the separation; and nowhere in the Southern States twenty years after. How could it maintain itself, with the whole civilized world, backed by what they call their international law, arrayed for its ultimate extinction with this North, which is now bound to stand by us and to protect slavery, opposed to us?... And now, Mr. President! in the name of our illustrious dead, in the name of all the living, in the name of millions yet unborn, I protest against this wicked effort to destroy the fairest and freest government on the earth." CIVIL WAR WOULD AID EMANCIPATION It was under the reign of law and with the forces of the Union as its allies that the institution of slavery could meet with success, all assaults coming from beyond the states where it existed. Amid the clash of arms and with the Federal Government no longer protecting their rights, slaveholders were most open to successful attack and slavery most likely to receive its mortal blow. Wendell Phillips expressed the idea when he declared: "The storm which rocked the vessel of state almost to foundering snapped forever the chain of the French slave. SECESSION NOT LOGICAL DEFENSE It would seem most unreasonable and illogical to suppose that the people of Virginia turned to secession and civil war from a selfish desire to safeguard slavery from the attacks of the Abolitionists. Such a course augmented rather than lessened the dangers which beset the institution. If, however, worn out with the assaults upon their constitutional rights and wounded in their pride by the fierce arraignments of their character and civilization, they turned to separation as a means of preserving their self-respect and as showing a determination to live no longer in political association with their enemies, then their action becomes intelligible—whatever may be the judgment as to the just proportion between the wrongs complained of and the remedy proposed.
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