History of American Abolitionism / Its four great epochs, embracing narratives of the ordinance of 1787, compromise of 1820, annexation of Texas, Mexican war, Wilmot proviso, negro insurrections, abolition riots, slave rescues, compromise of 1850, Kansas bill of 1854, John Brown insurrection, 1859, valuable statistics, &c., &c., &c., together with a history of the Southern Confederacy.

CHAPTER IV.

Probably no period in the history of the country has been more characterized by the spirit of reform and innovation than that embraced between the years 1825 and 1830. It then seemed as if all the social, moral and religious influences of the community had been gathered in a focus that was destined to annihilate the wickedness of man. Missionary enterprises, though in their youth, were full of vigor. Anniversaries were the occasion of an almost crazy excitement; religion assumed the shape of fanaticism; the churches were thrilled with the sudden idea that the millennium was at hand—the “evangelization of the world” never was blessed with fairer prospects—the “awakenings to grace” were on the most tremendous scale. Peace societies were formed—temperance societies flourished more than ever—Free Masonry was attacked, socially and politically—the Sabbath mail question became one of the absorbing topics of the day—theatres, lotteries, the treatment of the “poor Indian” by the general government—all came under the most rigorous religious review—the Colonization Society, established in 1816, enlarged its operations, and, in short, the spirit of reform became epidemic, and the period one of unprecedented moral and political inquiry.

It was a period, too, when in many of the States of the South, and especially those upon the Northern border, the subject was freely discussed of a gradual and healthy emancipation of the slaves, and various plans for this object were presented and entertained. The most valuable agencies were set at work—not by abolitionists, but by Southerners themselves, in whose hearts there had sprung up an embryo reformatory principle simultaneously with the landing upon their shores of the first slaves of their Northern brethren; which would have gone on increasing and fructifying had not the bitterest of denunciation been launched against them and driven the assaulted into an attitude of self-defence, whose defiant spirit now speaks out to the assailant in a bold justification of the institution attacked, as natural and necessary, and which it shall be their purpose to perpetuate forever.

As early as 1816 a manumission society was formed in Tennessee, whose object was the gradual emancipation of the slaves under a system of healthy and judicious State legislation. At a later day, Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky were the theatres of discussion on the same subject, and in all of them the question was agitated, socially and politically, with a freedom and liberty that indicated a general desire to effect the philanthropic object.

Various plans having the same end in view were likewise proposed, some of them evincing a remarkable ingenuity. One of these, in 1817, was to encourage, by all proper means, emancipation in the South; then to make arrangements with the non-slaveholding States to receive the freed negroes, and compel the latter, by law, if necessary, to reside in those States. By this means it was thought that a gradual change of “complexion” could be effected from natural causes, which would not take place unless the blacks were scattered, and that thus, from simple association and adventitious mixtures, the sable color would retire by degrees, and after a few generations a black person would be a rarity in the community.

Another plan proposed in 1819 was to remove the females to the Northern States, where they should be bound out in respectable families; those unmarried, of ten years and upwards, to be immediately free, and all the rest of the stock then existing to become so at ten years of age; the proceeds of the males sold to be appropriated by the party making the purchase to the removal and education of these females. In furtherance of this scheme, it was argued that while negro women would still bear children, though settled among white persons, they would not do so half so rapidly, and thus their posterity would in three or four generations lose the offensive color and have a tint not more disagreeable than the millions who are called white men in Southern Europe and the West Indies, and finally be lost in the common mass of humanity. While it is true that very few people, after fifty or sixty years, could under this rule boast of their fathers and mothers, the grand object would be attained, and the world be satisfied.

Another proposition, which emanated from a distinguished gentleman in one of the Southern States, and filling one of the highest offices in the government of the United States, was that a grade of color should be fixed in all the slaveholding States at which a person should be declared free and entitled to all the rights of a citizen, even if born of a slave. He contended that this act would separate all such persons from the negro race, and present a very considerable check to the progress of the black population, giving them at the same time new interests and feelings. The children thus emancipated, even if the parents should not be wholly fitted for it, would come into society with advantages nearly equal to those of the poorer classes of white people, and might work their way to independence as well, without any counteracting detriment to the public good.

In Virginia, in 1821, it was suggested through the columns of the Richmond Enquirer, that an act should be passed declaring that all involuntary servitude should cease to exist in that State from and after the year 2000; thus, without reducing for one or two generations the value of slave property one cent, affording ample time and opportunity to dispose of or exchange that dead property for a more useful and profitable kind.

In 1825, Hon. Mr. King, of New York, introduced into the Senate of the United States the annexed resolution:—

“That as soon as the portion of the existing funded debt of the United States, for the payment of which the public land is pledged, shall have been paid off, thenceforth the whole of the public lands of the United States, with the net proceeds of all future sales thereof, shall constitute and form a fund which is hereby appropriated to aid the emancipation of such slaves and the removal of any free persons of color in any of the said States, as by the laws of the several States respectively may be allowed to be emancipated, or to be removed to any territory or country without the limits of the United States of America.”

This resolution, however, was not called up by the mover, or otherwise acted upon.

Still another plan was to raise money by contribution throughout the Union and elsewhere, and buy all the slaves at $250 each. The value of four million negroes at $500 each, their average market value, would be $2,000,000,000. It is unnecessary to say that none of these propositions were ever adopted in practice. In fact, while abolitionism has pretended to feel for the supposed sufferings of slaves, it has never felt much in its pockets to aid them.

At such a period—when the rampant spirit of reform was attacking every imaginary evil of the times—it is not a matter of wonder that northern abolitionists, yielding to their fanatical prejudices and to the British intrigue that was urging them onward, commenced that acrimonious agitation of the question which has since been its leading characteristic. The negro was pronounced “a man and a brother,” and that was the beginning and end of the argument. Tracts, speeches, pamphlets and essays were scattered, “without money and without price.” The pulpit vied with the press, and every imaginable form of argument was used to hold up slavery as the most horrible of all atrocities, and the “sum of all villanies.” Newspapers began to be an acknowledged element in the land, and, falling in the train of the young revolution, or rather growing out of it, wielded immense power among the masses. Among those then devoted to the subject of reform were the National Philanthropist, commenced in 1826; the Investigator, published at Providence, R. I., by William Goodell, in 1827; the Liberator, by William Lloyd Garrison, at Boston, in 1831, and the Emancipator, in New York.

The first abolition journal ever published in this city was the present Journal of Commerce, which was commenced September 1, 1827, by a company of stockholders, the principal of whom was the famous Arthur Tappan. The following extracts from its prospectus, issued March 24, 1827, will sufficiently indicate the puritanical character of its authors, and the general tone of the paper:—

Extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of Merchants and others at the
American Tract Society’s House, March 24, 1827:

In its issue of October 30, 1828, we find the following:—

Another of its editorials on November, 15, 1828:—

“We are all equally interested in demolishing the fabric (of slavery) and we may as well go to work peaceably and reduce it brick by brick as to make it a matter of warfare, and throw our enterprise and industry into the opposite scale.”

In the course of time changes were made in the ownership of the paper, but one of its original proprietors is still its senior editor.

About this period William Lloyd Garrison made his appearance upon the stage, and he has been probably one of the most intensely hated, as well as one of the most sternly, severely and vociferously enthusiastic men in the Union. He is a native of Massachusetts, and at a very early age was placed in a printing office in Newburyport by his mother. Shortly after he was twenty-one years of age he set up a paper which he called the Free Press, which was read chiefly by a class of very advanced readers at the North. After this he removed to Vermont, and edited the Journal of the Times. This was as early as 1828. In September, 1829, he removed to Baltimore for the purpose of editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation, in company with Benjamin Lundy. While performing these duties, a Newburyport merchant, named Francis Todd, fitted out a small vessel, and filled it in Baltimore with slaves for the New Orleans market. Mr. Garrison noticed this fact in his paper, and commented upon it in terms so severe that Mr. Todd directed a suit to be brought against him for libel. He was thereupon tried, convicted and thrown in jail for non-payment of the fine (one hundred dollars and costs.) After an incarceration of fifty days, he was released on the payment of his fine, by Mr. Arthur Tappan, of this city, who, and his brother Lewis, before and since that time, have been chiefly celebrated for their efforts in the cause of abolition. In 1831, he wrote a few paragraphs that bear out the idea we have advanced—that there was then more real philanthropy in the South than at the North. He says:—

“I issued proposals for the publication of the “Liberator” in Washington City, during my recent tour, for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people on the subject of slavery. Every place I visited gave fresh evidences of the fact that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free States, and particularly in New England, than at the South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn and apathy more frozen, than among the slaveowners themselves. I determined at every hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birthplace of liberty. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch. I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue lift from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.”

From this time it may be said that the anti-slavery cause took its place among the moral enterprises of the day. It assumed a definite shape, and commenced that system of warfare which has since been unremittingly waged against the South.

During this year—1830—Mr. Tappan, Rev. S. S. Jocelyn, and others, projected the establishment of a seminary of learning at New Haven for the benefit of colored students; but, opposition manifesting itself, it was abandoned.

The first regularly organized convention of colored men ever assembled in the United States for a similar purpose also held a meeting this year, and aided and abetted by the Tappans, Jocelyns and other agitators of the period, attempted to devise ways and means for bettering their condition and that of their race. They reasoned that all distinctive differences made among men on account of their origin was wicked, unrighteous and cruel, and solemnly protested against every unjust measure and policy in the country having for its object the proscription of the colored people, whether state, national, municipal, social, civil or religious. In fact, white men and black seem to have started in the race together, consorting like brothers and sisters together in their aims and projects to accomplish the same end.

About this time publications began to be scattered through the South, whose direct tendency was to stir up insurrection among the slaves. The Liberator found its way mysteriously into the hands of the negroes, and individuals, under the garb of religion, were discovered in private consultation with the slaves. Suddenly, in August, 1831, the whole Union was startled by the announcement of an outbreak among the slaves of Southampton County, Va; and now commences the history of a career of violence and bloodshed that has marked every footstep of the abolition movement.

THE NAT TURNER INSURRECTION.

The leader of this outbreak was a slave named Nat Turner, and from him its name has been derived. Impelled by the belief that he was divinely called to be the deliverer of his oppressed countrymen, he succeeded in fixing the impression upon the minds of two or three others, his fellow slaves. Turner could read and write, and these acquirements gave him an influence over his associates. He was possessed, however, of little information, and, is represented to have been cowardly, cruel, and as he afterwards confessed, “a little credulous.” It was a matter of notoriety that “secret agents of abolition had corrupted and betrayed him.” However that may be, Nat declared that “he was advised” only to read to the slaves, that “Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword!” Such a tree produced fitting fruits.

About midnight on the Sabbath of the 21st of August, 1831, Turner, with his confederates, burst into his master’s house, and murdered every one of the white inmates. They were armed with knives and axes, and, in order to strike terror into the whites, most shockingly mangled the bodies of their victims. Neither helpless infancy nor female loveliness were spared. They then, by threats of death, compelled all the slaves to join them who would not do it voluntarily, and, exciting themselves to fury by ardent spirits, they proceeded to the next plantation. The happy family were reposing in the sound and quiet slumbers which precede the break of day, as the shouts of the raving insurgents fell upon their ears. It was the work of a moment, and they were all weltering in their gore. Not a white individual was spared to carry the tidings. The blow which dashed the infant left its brains upon the hearth. The head of the youthful maiden was in one part of the room and her mangled body was in another. Here again the number of insurgents was increased by those who voluntarily joined them, and by others who did it through compulsion. Stimulating their passions still more by intoxication, and arming themselves with such guns as they could obtain, some on horseback and others on foot, they rushed along to the next plantation. The morning now began to dawn, and the shrieks of those who fell under the sword and the axe of the negro were heard at a distance, and thus the alarm was soon spread from plantation to plantation, carrying inconceivable terror to every heart. The whites supposed it was a plot deeply laid and widely spread, and that the day had come for indiscriminate massacre. One gentleman who heard the appalling tidings hurried to a neighboring plantation, and arrived there just in time to hear the dying shrieks of the family and triumphant shouts of the negroes. He hastened in terror to his own home, but the negroes were there before him, and his wife and daughter had already fallen victims to their fury. Thus the infuriated slaves went on from plantation to plantation, gathering strength at every step, and leaving not a living white behind. They passed the day, until late in the afternoon, in this work of carnage, and numberless were the victims of their rage.

The population in this country is not dense, and, rapidly as the alarm spread, it was impossible for some time to collect a sufficient number to make a defence. Every family was entirely at the mercy of its own slaves. It is impossible to conceive of more distressing circumstances of apprehension. It is said that most of the insurgent slaves belonged to kind and indulgent masters, and consequently no one felt secure.

Late in the afternoon, a small party of whites, well armed, collected at a plantation for defence. The slaves came on in large numbers, and, emboldened by success, they at first drove back the whites. The slaves pressed on, thirsting for blood, and shouting with triumphant fury as the whites slowly retreated, apparently destined to be butchered, with their wives and children. Just at this awful moment a reinforcement of troops arrived, which turned the tide of victory and dispersed the slaves.

Exhausted with the horrible labors of the day, the insurgents retired to the woods and marshes to pass the night.

Early the next morning they commenced their work again. But the first plantation they attacked—that of Dr. Blount—they were driven from by the slaves, who rallied around their master, and fearlessly hazarded their lives in his defence. By this time the whites were collected in sufficient force to bar their further progress. The fugitives were scattered over the country in small parties, but every point was defended, and wherever they appeared they were routed, shot, taken prisoners, and the insurrection quelled. The leader, Nat Turner, for a few weeks succeeded in concealing himself in a cave in Southampton county, near the theatre of his bloody exploits; but was finally taken, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law.

To describe the state of alarm to which this outbreak gave rise is impossible. Whole States were agitated; every plantation was the object of fear and suspicion; free negroes and slaves underwent the most rigid examination; armed bodies of men were held in constant readiness for any emergency which might arise; every slave who had participated in the insurrection was either shot or hung, and for months the entire South remained in a fever of excitement.

All this time the abolition journals of the North were singing their hallelujahs over the event. They circulated through the South then much more freely than at present, and the following extract was read from one of these by a gentleman to his terrified family, in the presence of the gentleman from whom the above particulars were derived:—

“The news from the South is glorious. General Nat is a benefactor of his race. The Southampton massacre is an auspicious era for the African. The blood of the men, women and children shed by the sword and the axe in the hand of the negro is a just return for the drops which have followed the master’s lash.”

Another extract, of similar rhetoric, from the record of that day, is from a speech by the “Reverend” Mr. Bayley, then of Sheffield, Mass.:—

“It is time that the ice was broken—time that the blacks considered they have the same right to regain their liberties, and even the present property of their owners, as the Hebrews had in despoiling the heathen round about them. The blacks should also know that it is their duty to destroy, if no other means offer conveniently, the monstrous incubuses and tyrants, yclept planters; and I, for one, would gladly lend a helping hand to lay them in one common grave! The country would be all the better for ridding the world of such a nest of vampyres.”

Whether the abolitionists of the present time have modified the ideas they promulgated then, we shall see hereafter from a few among the ten thousand specimens that might be adduced.

The effect of these tirades upon the South cannot be well conceived.

Public opinion, just then opening to a free discussion of the question, drew back and shut itself within its castle. The bonds of slavery were bound tighter, the rivets were more strongly fastened, and a reactionary movement commenced that has never yet terminated.

CHAPTER V.

In the year 1832, January 30, the New England or Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society went into operation, but with limited means. From this society have sprung the American Anti-Slavery Society and all its numerous auxiliaries. It was the first organized body that attacked slavery on the principle of its inherent sinfulness, and enforced the consequent duty of “immediate emancipation.” All the events of a historical character which have marked the annals of the last thirty years, may be traced directly to the agitation which this society first set on foot in this country. Men have been forced to throw aside their disguises and stand forth either as the open defenders of slavery or as propagators of the abolition movement. The two great antagonistic parties of the present day are the children of its vile creation. It has excited the very fury of antagonism; it has shaken the pulpit with excommunicating thunders; it has indulged in the most bitter invective, deluged the country with invented instances of Southern barbarity, denounced the Constitution as a “league with hell,” and scattered its venom in every household of the free States, until men, women and children have become imbued with its contaminating infection. Their discourses have all been tirades; their exordium, argument and peroration have turned on epithets, slanders, inuendoes; Southerners have been reviled as “tyrants,” “thieves,” “murderers,” “atrocious monsters,” “violators of the laws of nature, God and man,” while their homes have been designated as “the abodes of iniquity,” and their land “one vast brothel.”

More abolition papers sprang into existence. The New York Evangelist, then conducted by the Rev. Samuel Griswold, espoused the cause. Through the influence of the Tappans, millions of anti-slavery tracts were circulated monthly, and sent by mail to all portions of the country, and especially to clergymen. These publications were likewise scattered through the South, their direct tendency being to stir up the slaves to further insurrection. Recruits of all ages and professions came forward, and the cause numbered amongst its adherents many of the theologians and professional men of the period.

THE NEW YORK CITY ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.—1833.

On the 2d of October, 1833, a New York City Anti-Slavery Society was organized, though not without some demonstrations of opposition. In fact, a large majority of the most respectable citizens were opposed to the enterprise, and they accordingly determined, if possible, to crush the dangerous project in the bud. The meeting was advertised to be held in Clinton Hall, but during the course of the day the public feeling was excited by the posting through the city of a large placard, of which the following is a copy:—

Southerners, however, had nothing to do with the meeting. At an early hour people began to assemble in crowds in front of Clinton Hall, but the trustees, or some others, had closed the premises. The throng, however, still increased, and it soon became evident from the execrations mutually indulged in by the people, that the authors of the projected meeting were acting with discreet valor in staying away. William Lloyd Garrison, who had then just returned from England, where he had been engaged in fomenting excitement against this country, traducing its people and institutions, and who was expected to take part in the proceedings of the meeting, was an especial object of popular abhorrence and disgust, and it is said that many grave and respectable citizens would have gladly assented to his decoration in a coat of tar and feathers. Notwithstanding the notification of “No meeting,” Clinton Hall was opened and crowded to suffocation. Speeches were delivered by a number of citizens, and a series of resolutions, prepared by Mr. F. A. Tallmadge, were adopted, deprecating any interference in the question of slavery, and expressing a determination to resist every attempt on the part of the abolitionists to effect their object.

It appears, however, that the purposes for which the meeting was originally called were indirectly attained. Finding it much easier to raise a popular whirlwind than to ride securely upon it, they prudently and privately changed their place of meeting to Chatham street chapel. Here the New York City Anti-Slavery Society was duly organized, having for its object the “total and immediate abolition of slavery in the United States.” Its first officers were:—

The proceedings of the night appear to have terminated in a broad farce, for after the breaking up of the citizens’ meeting, the crowd proceeded to Chatham street Chapel to see what was going on there. They found the doors open and the lights burning, but the meeting had suddenly dispersed. The dignified philosophers, unable to “stand fire,” had retreated “bag and baggage,” through the back windows. To have the frolic out, a black man was put upon the stage, a series of humorous resolutions were passed, good-natured speeches on the burlesque order were made, and, instead of the angry frowns with which the evening was commenced, the whole affair terminated amid the broad grins of a numerous multitude. Precisely one week after the above occurrence, another meeting of the citizens was held, over which the Mayor of the city presided. Among the orators was Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen, then United States Senator from New Jersey, afterwards a candidate for Vice-President of the United States on the ticket with Henry Clay, and he directly charged the abolitionists with “seeking to dissolve the Union;” declared that nine-tenths of the horrors of slavery were imaginary, and that “the crusade of abolition was merely the poetry of philanthropy.” Chancellor Walworth was likewise in attendance, and denounced their efforts as unconstitutional, and the individuals instigating them as “reckless incendiaries.”

THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.—1833.

On the 4th, 5th and 6th of December, 1833, a National Anti-Slavery Convention was held in the city of Philadelphia, when, pursuant to previous notice, sixty delegates from ten States assembled, viz:—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Beriah Green, President of Oneida Institute, was chosen President, and Lewis Tappan and John G. Whittier, Secretaries. The resolutions were prepared in committee by William Lloyd Garrison. This convention organized the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which Arthur Tappan was chosen President; Elizur Wright, Jr., Secretary of Domestic Correspondence; William L. Garrison, Secretary of the Foreign Correspondence; A. L. Cox, Recording Secretary, and William Green, Jr., Treasurer. The Executive Committee was located in New York city, the seat of the society’s operations, which were now prosecuted with vigor. The Emancipator became the organ of the society. Tracts, pamphlets and books were published and circulated; a large number of agents were employed in different guises to promote the work throughout the country, North and South; State, county and local anti-slavery societies were organized throughout the free States; funds were collected; the New England Anti-Slavery Society became the Massachusetts State Society, and the whole machinery of agitation was put in thorough working order.

Among the earliest principles adopted by the abolition societies was the following:—

So perfect was this system of operations, that in 1836 the society numbered two hundred and fifty auxiliaries in thirteen States. In eighteen months afterwards it had increased to one thousand and six. In one week alone, $6,000 were raised in Boston and $20,000 in the city of New York. To such an extent was the abolition furor carried at this time, that many prominent individuals had their dinner service, plates, cups, saucers, &c., embellished with figures of slaves in chains, and other emblems of the same character.

Similar prints, or pictorial illustrations of the natural equality before God of all men, without distinction of color, and setting forth the happy fruits of a universal acknowledgment of this truth by the exhibition of a white woman in no equivocal relations to a black man, were circulated in the South. The infection also broke out on Northern pocket handkerchiefs made for Southern children, candy wrappers, fans and anti-slavery seals, all being made to represent the prevailing idea. The reaction shortly took place. Laws were passed forbidding the reception or circulation of these incendiary articles in the Southern States. Mobs broke into the post-offices and burned all abolition prints that could be found, and rewards were offered for the detection and punishment of any person found tampering with the slave population. Nor was this reaction confined to the Southern section of the country; it was largely developed in the North. Churches soon began to be the theatres of discussions on the subject, and a conservative spirit sprang into life among all the principal religious sects. Merchants began to suffer in their business; manufacturers found their wares of no avail for the Southern market; and, in short, a strong spirit of opposition to the revolutionary doctrines of the abolitionists was manifested throughout the Northern States.

THE FIRST ABOLITION RIOT IN NEW YORK.—1834.

This excited feeling soon culminated in an outbreak. On the 8th of July, 1834, the New York Sacred Music Society attempted to assemble, as was their wont, in Chatham street Chapel, for the purpose of practising sacred harmony. They found the place, however, filled with an audience of whites and blacks who had gathered to listen to an abolition address, and who obstinately refused to remove. But this was not all. The anger of the negroes was aroused in consequence of the request to remove, and they attacked several of the gentlemen with loaded canes and other implements, knocking some down and severely injuring others. The alarm was raised, crowds assembled, a fight ensued in the church, the congregation were expelled, and the building was closed. As Mr. Lewis Tappan was returning to his house, the mob, supposing him to have been instrumental in producing the disorder, followed him home and threw stones at his house.

On the 9th, three more riots occurred. The crowd proceeded to the Bowery Theatre, took possession of the house, and put an end to “Metamora,” without waiting the tragic conclusion to which it was destined by the author. A great number then proceeded to the house of Lewis Tappan, in Rose street, broke open the door, smashed the windows and threw the furniture into the street. A bonfire was lighted, and beds and bedding made the flames. Fuel was added to the excitement by publications in the Emancipator, over the signature of Elizur Wright, Jr., in which intimations were thrown out covertly, inviting to a forcible resistance to the laws which authorize the recapture of runaway slaves. Placards were posted through the streets in great numbers, and the demon of disorder appeared to have taken possession of the city.

On the night of the 10th, the crowd again assembled and made their way to Dr. Cox’s church, then on the corner of Laight and Varick streets, which they assaulted with stones, breaking the windows and doing a variety of mischief. They then proceeded to Dr. Cox’s house, No. 3 Charlton street, but, anticipating an attack, he had packed up and sent away his furniture, and removed with his family into the country on the previous afternoon. The mob commenced the work of destruction by breaking in the two lower windows; but they had scarcely effected an entrance before they were driven from the premises by the police officers and a detachment of horse. They were thenceforward kept at bay, but as far east as Thompson street, the streets were filled with an excited multitude, armed with paving stones, which they smote together, crying “All together.” A fence was torn down and converted into clubs, and a barricade of carts was built across the street to impede the horsemen. After a while order was gradually restored and the tumult subsided for the night.

On the 11th, it broke out again, when an attack was made on the store of Arthur Tappan, in Pearl street. The rioters were driven away, however, by the police, without further damage than the smashing of a few windows. A second attack was likewise made on Dr. Cox’s church, and also on the church of Rev. Mr. Ludlow, in Spring street. The latter was almost completely sacked, nearly the entire interior being torn up and carried into the street to erect barricades against the horse and infantry which had assembled at various rendezvous at an early hour, in compliance with the proclamation of the Mayor. The excitement continued to increase. The bells were rung, and the Seventh (then the Twenty-seventh) regiment, under Col. Stevens, charged upon the rioters, driving them from their position and clearing Spring street. The crowd next proceeded to the residence of Rev. Mr. Ludlow, whose family had retired, and after breaking the windows and doors, left the ground. Later in the night an immense riot occurred in the neighborhood of the Five Points. St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church (colored), in Centre street, was nearly torn down, while several houses occupied by negroes in the vicinity were entirely demolished. Several days elapsed before quiet was effectually restored. All the military of the city during this time were under arms.

Similar outbreaks also occurred at Norwich, Conn., Newark, N. J., and other places, where the negroes, under the effect of abolition teachings, grown bold and impudent, were compelled to leave town. In Norwich the mob entered a church during the delivery of an abolition sermon, took the parson from the pulpit, walked him into the open air to the tune of the “Rogue’s March,” drummed him out of the town, and threatened if he ever made his appearance in the place again they would give him “a coat of tar and feathers.”

Similar scenes were enacted in Philadelphia, where a large hall was burned, and other public and private buildings in which the negroes and abolitionists were in the habit of meeting, were either injured or demolished.

NEGRO CONSPIRACY IN MISSISSIPPI.

On the 28th of June, 1835, it was discovered that the negroes of Livingston, in Madison county, Miss., under the lead of a band of white men, contemplated a general rising. A committee of safety was instantly organized, and two of the white ringleaders were arrested, tried, and, after a confession, forthwith hanged. By this confession, it appeared that the plan was conceived by the notorious John A. Murrel, a well known Mississippi pirate at that time, and that it embraced the destruction of the entire population and liberation of the slaves in the South generally. For two years the disaffection had thus been spreading, and, with few exceptions, adherents existed on every plantation in the county. Arms and ammunition had been secreted for the purpose, and everything made ready for a general outbreak. The confession involved numerous white men and black, many of whom were arrested and suffered for their diabolical designs. Among these was one Ruel Blake, of Connecticut. The summary proceedings adopted, however, had the desired effect, and in a few months tranquillity was restored to the unsettled and excited district.

AN ERA OF EXCITEMENT.

The year 1835 was one of the most exciting eras of agitation in the early history of anti-slavery. The events of the preceding few months had aroused the entire country to a realizing sense of the dangerous tendency of the abolitionists and the rapid progress of their cause. In Congress the subject had again begun to be agitated, through petitions presented by various individuals and bodies in the free States, praying the interference of the government in the abolition of slavery, and in society at large a more decided sentiment was evidently being formed pro and con. than had previously been manifested.

In the South, incendiary publications were circulated to such an alarming extent, that the press and people of that section rose en masse to put down the growing evil. Following the insurrection to which allusion has been made above, at a public meeting held in the town of Mississippi, it was unanimously resolved that any “individual who dared to circulate incendiary tracts or publications, likely to excite the slaves to rebellion, was justly worthy, in the sight of God and man, of immediate death.” And at a similar meeting in Williamsburgh, Va., no less a personage than General John Tyler, afterwards President of the United States, endorsed a resolution to the effect that the circulation of these incendiary documents was an act of treasonable character, and that when offenders were detected in the fact, condign punishment ought and would be inflicted upon them without resort to any other tribunal. In this state of alarm, the gallows and stake soon found victims, and within a period of a few months, no less than a dozen individuals, white and black, who were found among the slaves, inciting them to insurrection, received the just award of their crime. Efforts were also made at this time by several Southern communities to get some of the prominent abolitionists in their power, so that an example might be made of those who were too cowardly to appear in the field of this species of missionary labor themselves. Among others, a reward of five thousand dollars was offered by the Legislature of Georgia for the apprehension of either of ten persons named in a resolution, citizens of New York and Massachusetts, and “one George Thompson, a subject of Great Britain.” An offer of ten thousand dollars was likewise made for the arrest of Rev. A. A. Phelps, a clergyman of New York, and fifty thousand dollars was offered to any one who would deliver into their hands the famous Arthur Tappan or Le Roy Sunderland, a well known Methodist minister.

Even the clergymen added their voice to the general cry of indignation that rose from the Southern heart; and when, in July, 1835, a few days after the forcing of the Post-office, and the destruction of the abolition publications there found, by a crowd in Charleston, S. C., a public meeting was held for completing measures of protection, the clergy of all denominations attended in a body to lend their sanction to the proceedings. About this time one of the Methodist preachers of South Carolina addressed the following novel letter to Rev. Le Roy Sunderland, editor of Zion’s Watchman of New York:—