The Alamo was an ancient Franciscan mission of the eighteenth century. It covered an area of about three acres, surrounded by walls three feet thick and eight feet high. Within the walls were a stone church and several other buildings. For two weeks it withstood Santa Anna’s assaults. A shower of bombs and cannon-balls fell incessantly within the walls. At last, after a brave defense by the little garrison, the fortress was captured, in the early morning of Sunday, March 6, 1836. After the surrender, Travis, Bowie and Crockett, with all their companions, were by Santa Anna’s especial command massacred in cold blood.
But this was not the worst; a few days afterwards a company of over four hundred Texans, under Colonel Fannin, besieged at Goliad, were induced to surrender, under Santa Anna’s solemn promises of protection. After the surrender they were divided into several companies, marched in different directions a short distance out of the town, and shot down like dogs by the Mexican soldiers. Not a man escaped.
While these horrible events were taking place, Houston was at Gonzales, with a force of less than four hundred men. Meetings were held in the different settlements to raise an army to resist the Mexican invasion; and a convention of the people issued a proclamation declaring Texas a free and independent republic. It was two weeks before General Houston received intelligence of the atrocious massacres at Bexar and Goliad, and of Santa Anna’s advance. The country was in a state of panic. Settlers were everywhere abandoning their homes, and fleeing in terror at the approach of the Mexican soldiers. Houston’s force of a few hundred men was the only defense of Texas; and even this was diminished by frequent desertion from the ranks. The cause of Texan freedom seemed utterly hopeless.
In order to gain time, while watching his opportunity for attack, Houston slowly retreated before the Mexican army. After waiting two weeks for reinforcements, he moved toward Buffalo Bayou, a deep, narrow stream connecting with the San Jacinto River, about twenty miles southeast of the present city of Houston. Here he expected to meet the Mexican army. The lines being formed, General Houston made one of his most impassioned and eloquent appeals to his troops firing every breast by giving as a watchword, “Remember the Alamo.”
Soon the Mexican bugles rang out over the prairie, announcing the advance guard of the enemy, almost eighteen hundred strong. The rank and file of the patriots was less than seven hundred and fifty men. Their disadvantages only served to increase the enthusiasm of the soldiers; and when their general said, “Men, there is the enemy; do you wish to fight?” the universal shout was, “We do!” “Well, then,” he said, “remember it is for liberty or death; remember the Alamo!”
At the moment of attack, a lieutenant came galloping up, his horse covered with foam, and shouted along the lines, “I’ve cut down Vince’s bridge.” Each army had used this bridge in coming to the battle-field, and General Houston had ordered its destruction, thus preventing all hope of escape to the vanquished.
Santa Anna’s forces were in perfect order, awaiting the attack, and reserved their fire until the patriots were within sixty paces of their works. Then they poured forth a volley, which went over the heads of the attackers, though a ball struck General Houston’s ankle, inflicting a very painful wound. Though suffering and bleeding. General Houston kept his saddle during the entire action. The patriots held their fire until it was given to the enemy almost in their very bosoms, and then, having no time to reload, made a general rush upon the foe, who were altogether unprepared for the furious charge. The patriots not having bayonets, clubbed their rifles. About half-past four the Mexican rout began, and closed only with the night. Seven of the patriots were killed and twenty-three were wounded; while the Mexicans had six hundred and thirty-two killed and wounded, and seven hundred and thirty, among whom was Santa Anna, made prisoners.
The victory of San Jacinto struck the fetters forever from the hands of Texas, and drove back the standard of Mexico beyond the Rio Grande, never to return except in predatory and transient incursions. General Houston became at once the leading man in Texas, almost universal applause following him. As soon as quiet and order were restored, he was made the first President of the new republic, under the Constitution adopted in November, 1835.
In 1837 the republic of Texas was acknowledged by the United States, and in 1840 by Great Britain, France and Belgium. The population was overwhelmingly of American origin, and these people had in no sense lost their love for their former country, a sentiment in favor of the annexation of the “Lone Star State” to the United States being from the first entertained. In 1837 a formal application for admission as a state of the American Union was made. This proposition found many advocates and many opposers in this country, it being strongly objected to by northern Congressmen and favored by those from the South. The controversy turned upon the question of the extension of the area of slavery, which was a matter of importance to the South, while others who supported it held large tracts of land in Texas which they hoped would increase in value under United States rule.
As a result of the opposition, the question remained open for years, and was prominent in the presidential campaign of 1844, in which Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, was defeated, and James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate, was elected on the annexation platform. This settled the dispute. The people had expressed their will and the opposition yielded. Both Houses of Congress passed a bill in favor of admitting Texas as a state, and it was signed by President Tyler in the closing hours of his administration. The offer was unanimously accepted by the legislature of Texas on July 4, 1845, and it became a state of the American Union in December of that year.
In admitting Texas, Congress had opened the way to serious trouble. Though Mexico had taken no steps to recover its lost province, it had never acknowledged its independence, and stood over it somewhat like the dog in the manger, not prepared to take it, yet vigorously protesting against any other power doing so. Its protest against the action of the United States was soon followed by a more critical exigency, an active boundary dispute. Texas claimed the Rio Grande River as her western boundary. Mexico held that the Nueces River was the true boundary. Between these two streams lay a broad tract of land claimed by both nations, and which both soon sought to occupy. War arose in consequence of this ownership dispute.
In the summer of 1845 President Polk directed General Zachary Taylor to proceed to Corpus Christi, on the Nueces, and in the spring of 1846 he received orders to march to the Rio Grande. As soon as this movement was made, the Mexicans claimed that their territory had been invaded, ordered Taylor to retire, and on his refusal sent a body of troops across the river. Both countries were ripe for war, and both had taken steps to bring it on. A hostile meeting took place on April 24th, with some loss to both sides. On receiving word by telegraph of this skirmish, the President at once sent a message to Congress, saying: “Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, and shed American blood upon American soil. * * * War exists, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it.”
The efforts to avoid it had not been active. There was rather an effort to favor it. Abraham Lincoln, then a member of Congress, asked pointedly if special efforts had not been taken to provoke a war. But Congress responded favorably to the President’s appeal, declared that war existed “by the act of Mexico,” and called for fifty thousand volunteers.
The declaration of war was dated May 13, 1846. Several days before this, severe fights had taken place at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, on the disputed territory. The Mexicans were defeated, and retreated across the Rio Grande. They were quickly followed by Taylor, who took possession of the town of Matamoras. The plan of war laid out embraced an invasion of Mexico from four quarters. Taylor was to march southward from his position on the Rio Grande, General Winfield Scott to advance on the capital by the way of Vera Cruz, General Stephen W. Kearny to invade New Mexico, and California was to be attacked by a naval expedition, already despatched.
Taylor was quick to act after receiving reinforcements. He advanced on September 5th, and on the 9th reached Monterey, a strongly fortified interior town. The Mexicans looked upon this place as almost impregnable, it being surrounded by mountains and ravines, difficult to pass and easy of defense. Yet the Americans quickly penetrated to the walls, and were soon within the town, where a severe and bloody conflict took place. The stormers made their way over the house roofs and through excavations in the adobe walls, and in four days’ time were in possession of the town which the Mexicans had confidently counted upon stopping their march.
Some months passed before Taylor was in condition to advance again, his force being much depleted by reinforcements sent to General Scott. It was February, 1847, when he took the field once more, reaching a position south of Monterey known as Buena Vista, a narrow mountain pass, with hills on one side and a ravine on the other. This bold advance of an army not more than 5,000 strong seemed a splendid opportunity to Santa Anna, then commander-in-chief of the Mexican army, who marched on the small American force with 20,000 men. The battle that followed was the most interesting and hard fought one in the war. Santa Anna hoped to crush the Americans utterly, and would perhaps have done so but for the advantage of their position and the effective service of their artillery.
“You are surrounded by twenty thousand men, and cannot, in all human probability, avoid suffering rout and being cut to pieces with your troops.” Such were the alarming words with which the Mexican general accompanied a summons to General Taylor to surrender within an hour. Taylor’s answer was polite but brief. “In answer to your note of this date summoning me to surrender my forces at discretion, I beg leave to say that I decline acceeding to your request.”
General Taylor, or “Rough and Ready” as he was affectionately called by his men, had long before—he was now sixty-three years old—won his spurs on the battlefield. He was short, round-shouldered, and stout. His forehead was high, his eyes keen, his mouth firm, with the lower lip protruding, his hair snow-white, and his expression betokened his essentially humane and unassuming character. No private could have lived in simpler fashion. When he could escape from his uniform he wore a linen roundabout, cotton trousers, and a straw hat, and, if it rained, an old brown overcoat. In battle he was absolutely fearless, and invariably rode a favourite white horse, altogether regardless of attracting the enemy’s attention. The old hero never wavered when he heard of the approach of the dreaded Santa Anna. He quietly went to work, and, having strongly garrisoned Saltillo, placed his men so as to seize all the advantages the position offered.
Imagine a narrow valley between two mountain ranges. On the west side of the road a series of gullies or ravines, on the east the sheer sides of precipitous mountains. Such was the Pass of Angostura, which, at one spot three miles from Buena Vista, could be held as easily as Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old; and here was placed Captain Washington’s battery of three guns, with two companies as a guard. Up the mountain to the eastward the rest of the American army was ranged, more especially on a plateau so high as to command all the ground east and west, and only approachable from the south or north by intricate windings formed by ledges of rock.
At nine o’clock on the morning of the 22d of February the advance pickets espied the Mexican van, and General Wool sent in hot haste to Taylor, who was at Saltillo. The Mexican army dragged its slow length along, its resplendent uniforms shining in the sun. With much the same feelings as Macbeth saw Birnam Wood approach, must many of the Americans have watched the coming of this forest of steel. Two hours after the pickets had announced the van, a Mexican officer came forward with a white flag. He bore the imperious message from the dictator the opening words of which have already been quoted.
The fight on that day was confined to an exchange of artillery shots, and at nightfall Taylor returned to Saltillo, seeing that the affair was over for the time. But during the night the Mexicans made a movement that put the small American force in serious peril. While the Americans bivouacked without fires in the bitter chill of the mountain height, some 1,500 Mexicans gained the summit under cover of the darkness, and when the mists of morning rose the Americans, to their surprise and chagrin, saw everywhere before them the battalions of the enemy.
Up the pass soon came heavy force, in the face of Captain Washington’s battery, while a rush, that seemed as if it must be irresistible, was made for the plateau. The fight here was desperate. The soldiers of neither army had had any experience in battle, and an Indiana regiment retreated at the command of its colonel, and could not be rallied again. This imperilled the safety of all who remained, many of them being killed, while only the active service of the artillery prevented the loss of the plateau, upon whose safe keeping depended the issue of the day. So fierce was the Mexican charge that every cannonier of the advanced battery fell beside his gun, and Captain O’Brien was obliged to fall back in haste losing his guns. He replaced them by two six pounders, borrowed from Captain Washington, who had repulsed the attack in the pass. Meanwhile, more American artillery on O’Brien’s left was driving the Mexicans back upon the cavalry opposed to the gallant captain. The Mexican lancers charged the Illinois soldiers—“the very earth did shake.” O’Brien’s BatteryIt was not until the lancers were within a few yards of O’Brien that he opened fire. This gave the Mexicans pause, but with cries of “God and Liberty!” on they came. Once more the deadly cannonade—another pause. O’Brien determined to stand his ground until the hoofs of the enemy’s horses were upon him, but the recruits with him, only few of whom had escaped from being shot down, had no stomach left for fighting. The intrepid captain again lost his pieces, but he had saved the day.
At this point the leisurely General Taylor, on his white horse, so easily recognisable, came from Saltillo to the field of battle. North of the chief plateau was another, where the Mississippi Rifles, under Colonel Davis—who, although early wounded, kept his horse all day—stood at bay, formed into a V-shape with the opening towards the enemy. Nothing loth, the Mexican lancers rushed on, and the riflemen did not fire until they were able to recognize the features of their foe and to take deliberate aim at their eyes. This coolness was too great to be combated.
For hours the active and deadly struggle went on. The Mexican lancers made an assault on Buena Vista, where were the American baggage and supply train, but were driven off after a sharp contest. At a later hour of the day the brunt of the fight was being borne by the Illinois regiment and the Second Kentucky Cavalry, who were in serious straits when Taylor sent to their relief a light battery under Captain Bragg. It was quickly in peril. The Mexicans captured the foremost guns and repulsed the infantry support.
Bragg appealed for fresh help. “I have no reinforcements to give you,” “Rough and Ready” is reported to have replied, “but Major Bliss and I will support you”; and the brave old man spurred his horse to the spot beside the cannon. Unheeding, the Mexican cavalry rode forward—the day was now theirs for a certainty, “God and Liberty!” their proud cry again rang out. Their horses galloped so near to Captain Bragg’s coign of vantage that their riders had no time in which to pull them up before the battery opened fire with canister. As the smoke cleared, the little group of Americans saw the terrible work they had done in the gaps in the enemy’s ranks, and heard it in the screams of men and horses in agony. They reloaded with grape. The Mexicans pressed on; their courage at the cannon’s mouth was truly marvelous. This second shower of lead did equal, if not greater, mischief. A third discharge completely routed the enemy, who, being human, fled in headlong haste over the wounded and the dead—no matter where. The American infantry pursued the flying foe, with foolish rashness, beyond safe limits. The Mexicans, all on an instant, turned about, the hounds became the hare, and had it not been for Washington’s cannon checking the Mexican cavalry, who had had enough grape and canister for one day, they would have been annihilated.
At six o’clock, after ten hours of fierce and uninterrupted fighting, the battle came to an end, both armies occupying the same positions as in the morning, though each had lost heavily during the day. General Taylor expected the battle to be renewed in the morning, but with daylight came the welcome news that the enemy had disappeared. The five thousand had held their own against four times their number, and the victory that was to make General Taylor President of the United States had been won.
Meanwhile General Scott, the hero of Chippewa and Lundy’s Lane in 1814, had sailed down the Gulf with a considerable force to the seaport city of Vera Cruz, which was taken after a brief bombardment. From here an overland march of two hundred miles was made to the Mexican capital. Scott reached the vicinity of the City of Mexico with a force 11,000 strong, and found its approaches strongly fortified and guarded by 30,000 men. Yet he pushed on almost unchecked. Victories were won at Contreras and Churubusco, the defences surrounding the city were taken, and on September 13th the most formidable of them all, the strong hill fortress of Chapultepec, was carried by storm, the American troops charging up a steep hill in face of a severe fire and driving the garrison in dismay from their guns.
This ended the war in that quarter. The next day the star and stripes waved over the famous “Halls of the Montezumas” and the city was ours. On February 2, 1848, a treaty of peace was signed at the village of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whose terms gave the United States an accession of territory that was destined to prove of extraordinary value.
New Mexico, a portion of this territory, had been invaded and occupied by General Kearny, who had taken Santa Fé after a thousand miles’ march overland. Before the fleet sent to California could reach there, Captain John C. Fremont, in charge of a surveying party in Oregon, had invaded that country. He did not know that war had been declared, his purpose being to protect the American settlers, whom the Mexicans threatened to expel. Fremont was one of the daring pioneers who made their way over the mountains and plains of the West in the days when Indian hostility and the difficulties raised by nature made this a very arduous and perilous enterprise. Several conflicts with the Mexicans, in which he was aided by the fleet, and later by General Kearny, who had crossed the wild interior from Santa Fé, gave Fremont control of that great country, which was destined almost to double the wealth of the United States. Whatever he thought of the ethics of the acquisition of Texas and the Mexican war, their economical advantages to the United States have been enormous, and the whole world has been enriched by the product of California’s golden sands and fertile fields.
When, over two hundred and eighty years ago (it is in doubt whether the correct date is 1619 or 1620) a few wretched negroes, some say fourteen, some say twenty, were bartered for provisions by the crew of a Dutch man-of-war, then lying off the Virginia coast, it would have seemed incredible that in 1900 the negro population of the Southern States alone should reach very nearly eight million souls. African negroes had, indeed, been sold into slavery among many nations for perhaps three thousand years; but in its earlier periods slavery was rather the outcome of war than the deliberate subject of trade, and white captives no less than black were ruthlessly thrown into servitude. It has been estimated that in historical times some forty million Africans have been enslaved. The Spaniards found the Indian an intractable slave, and for the arduous labors of colonization soon began to make use of negro slaves, importing them in great numbers and declaring that one negro was worth, as a human beast of burden, four Indians. Soon the English adventurers took up the traffic. It is to Sir John Hawkins, the ardent discoverer, that the English-speaking peoples owe their participation in the slave trade. He has put it on record, as the result of one of his famous voyages, that he found “that negroes were very good merchandise in Hispaniola and might easily be had on the coast of Guinea.” Increase in NumbersFor his early adventures of this kind he was roundly taken to task by Queen Elizabeth. But tradition says that he boldly faced her with the argument that the Africans were an inferior race, and ended by convincing the Virgin Queen that the slave trade was not merely a lucrative but a perfectly philanthropic undertaking. Certain it is that she acquiesced in future slave trading, while her successors Charles II. and James II. chartered four slave trading companies and received a share in their profits. It is noteworthy that both Great Britain and the United States recognized the horrors of the slave trade as regards the seizing and transportation from Africa of the unhappy negroes, long before they could bring themselves to deal with the problem of slavery as a domestic institution. Of those horrors nothing can be said in exaggeration.
The institution of slavery, introduced as we have seen into Virginia, grew at first very slowly. Twenty-five years after the first slaves were landed the negro population of the colony was only three hundred. But the conditions of agriculture and of climate were such that, once slavery obtained a fair start, it spread with continually increasing rapidity. We find the Colonial Assembly passing one after another a series of laws defining the condition of the negro slave more and more clearly, and more and more pitilessly. Thus, a distinction was soon made between them and Indians held in servitude. It was enacted that “all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their lives; but what shall come by land shall serve, if boyes or girles, until thirty years of age; if men or women, twelve years and no longer.” And before the end of the century a long series of laws so encompassed the negro with limitations and prohibitions, that he almost ceased to have any criminal or civil rights and became a mere personal chattel.
In some of the northern colonies slavery seemed to take root as readily and to flourish as rapidly as in the South. It was only after a considerable time that social and commercial conditions arose which led to its gradual abandonment. In New York a mild type of negro slavery was introduced by the Dutch. The relation of master and slave seems in the period of the Dutch rule to have been free from great severity or cruelty. After the seizure of the government by the English, however, the institution was officially recognized and even encouraged. The slave trade grew in magnitude; and here again we find a series of oppressive laws forbidding meetings of negroes, laying down penalties for concealing slaves, and the like. When the Revolution broke out there were not less than fifteen thousand slaves in New York—a number greatly in excess of that held by any other northern colony.
Massachusetts, the home in later days of so many of the most eloquent abolition agitators, was from the very first, until after the war with Great Britain was well under way, a stronghold of slavery. The records of 1633 tell of the fright of Indians who saw a “Blackamoor” in a treetop, whom they took for the devil in person, but who turned out to be an escaped slave. A few years later the authorities of the colony officially recognized the institution. To quote Chief Justice Parsons, “Slavery was introduced into Massachusetts soon after its first settlement, and was tolerated until the ratification of the present constitution in 1780.” The curious may find in ancient Boston newspapers no lack of such advertisements as that, in 1728, of the sale of “two very likely negro girls,” and of “A likely negro woman of about nineteen years and a child about seven months of age, to be sold together or apart.” A Tory writer before the outbreak of the Revolution sneers at the Bostonians for their talk about freedom when they possessed two thousand negro slaves. Even Peter Faneuil, who built the famous “Cradle of Liberty,” was himself, at that very time, actively engaged in the slave trade. There is some truth in the once common taunt of the pro-slavery orators that the North imported slaves, the South only bought them.
As with New York and Massachusetts, so with the other colonies. Either slavery was introduced by greedy speculators from abroad or it spread easily from adjoining colonies. In 1776 the slave population of the thirteen colonies was almost exactly half a million, nine-tenths of whom were to be found in the southern states. In the War of the Revolution the question of arming the negroes raised bitter opposition. In the end a comparatively few were enrolled, and it is admitted that they served faithfully and with courage. Rhode Island even formed a regiment of blacks, and at the siege of Newport and afterwards at Point’s Bridge, New York, this body of soldiers fought not only without reproach but with positive heroism.
From the day when the Declaration of Independence asserted “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the peoples of the new, self-governing states could not but have seen that with them lay the responsibility. There is ample evidence that the fixing of the popular mind on liberty as an ideal bore results immediately in arousing anti-slavery sentiment. Such sentiment existed in the South as well as in the North. Even North Carolina in 1786 declared the slave trade of “evil consequences and highly impolitic.” All the northern states abolished slavery, beginning with Vermont in 1777, and ending with New Jersey in 1804. It should be added, however, that many of the northern slaves were not freed, but sold to the South. The agricultural and commercial conditions in the North were such as to make slave labor less and less profitable, while in the South the social order of things, agricultural conditions, and climate were gradually making it seemingly indispensable.
When the Constitutional debates began the trend of opinion seemed strongly against slavery. Many delegates thought that the evil would die out of itself. One thought the abolition of slavery already rapidly going on and soon to be completed. Another asserted that “slavery in time will not be a speck in our country.” Mr. Jefferson, on the other hand, in view of the retention of slavery, declared roundly that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just. And John Adams urged again and again that “every measure of prudence ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.” The obstinate states in the convention were South Carolina and Georgia. Their delegates declared that their states would absolutely refuse ratification to the Constitution unless slavery were recognized. The compromise sections finally agreed upon, avoided the use of the words slave and slavery, but clearly recognized the institution, and even gave the slave states the advantage of sending representatives to Congress on a basis of population determined by adding to the whole number of free persons “three-fifths of all other persons.” The other persons referred to were, it is almost needless to add, negro slaves.
The entire dealing with the question of slavery, at the framing of the Constitution, was a series of compromises. This is seen again in the failure definitely to forbid the slave trade from abroad. Some of the southern states had absolutely declined to listen to any proposition which would restrict their freedom of action in this matter, and they were yielded to so far that Congress was forbidden to make the traffic unlawful before the year 1808. As that time approached, President Jefferson urged Congress to withdraw the country from all “further participation in those violations of human rights which have so long been continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa.” Such an act was at once adopted, and by it heavy fines were imposed on all persons fitting out vessels for the slave trade and also upon all actually engaged in the trade, while vessels so employed became absolutely forfeited. Twelve years later another act was passed declaring the importation of slaves to be actual piracy. The latter law, however, was of little practical value, as it was not until 1861 that a conviction was obtained under it. Then, at last, when the whole slave question was about to be settled forever, a ship-master was convicted and hanged for piracy in New York for the crime of being engaged in the slave trade. In despite of all laws, however, the trade in slaves was continued secretly, and the profits were so enormous that the risks did not prevent continual attempts to smuggle slaves into the territory of the United States.
The first quarter of a century of our history, after the adoption of the Constitution, was marked by comparative quietude in regard to the future of slavery. In the North, as we have seen, the institution died a natural death, but there was no disposition evinced in the northern states to interfere with it in the South. The first great battle took place in 1820 over the so-called Missouri compromise. Now, for the first time, the country was divided, sectionally and in a strictly political way, upon issues which involved the future policy of the United States as to the extension or restriction of slave territory. State after state had been admitted into the Union, but there had been an alteration of slave and free states, so that the political balance was not disturbed. Thus Ohio was balanced by Louisiana, Indiana by Mississippi, Illinois by Alabama. Of the twenty-two states admitted before 1820, eleven were slave and eleven free states.
Immediately after the admission of Alabama, of course as a slave-holding state, Maine and Missouri applied for admission. The admission of Maine alone would have given a preponderance to the free states, and for this reason it was strongly contended by southern members that Missouri should be admitted as a slave state. But the sentiment of opposition to the extension of slavery was growing rapidly in the North, and many members from that section opposed this proposition. They had believed that the ordinance of 1787, adopted simultaneously with the Constitution, and which forbade slavery to be established in the territory northwest of the Ohio, had settled this question definitely; but this ordinance did not apply to territory west of the Mississippi, so that the question really remained open. A fierce debate was waged through two sessions of Congress, and in the end it was agreed to permit the introduction of slavery into Missouri, but to prohibit it forever in all future states lying north of the parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern boundary of Missouri. This was a compromise, satisfactory only because it seemed to dispose of the question of slavery in the territories once and forever. It was carried mainly by the great personal influence of Henry Clay. It did, indeed, dispose of slavery as a matter of national legislative discussion for thirty years.
But this interval was distinctively a period of popular agitation. Anti-slavery sentiment of a mild type had long existed. The Quakers had, since revolutionary times, held anti-slavery doctrines, had released their own servants from bondage, and had disfellowshipped members who refused to concur in the sacrifice. The very last public act of Benjamin Franklin was the framing of a memorial to Congress in which he deprecated the existence of slavery in a free country. In New York the Manumission society had been founded in 1785, with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, in turn, as its presidents. But this early writing and speaking were directed against slavery in a general way, and with no tone of aggression. Gradual emancipation and colonization were the only remedies suggested. It was with the founding of the Liberator by William Lloyd Garrison, in 1831, that the era of aggressive abolitionism began. Garrison and his society maintained that slavery was a sin against God and man; that immediate emancipation was a duty; that slave owners had no claim to compensation; that all laws upholding slavery were, before God, null and void. Garrison exclaimed: “I am in earnest. I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard.” His paper bore conspicuously the motto “No union with slaveholders.”
The Abolitionists were, in numbers, a feeble band; as a party they never acquired strength, nor were their tenets adopted strictly by any political party; but they served the purpose of arousing the conscience of the nation. They were abused, vilified, mobbed, all but killed. Garrison was dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck—through those very streets which, in 1854, had their shops closed and hung in black, with flags Union down and a huge coffin suspended in mid-air, on the day when the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, was marched through them on his way back to his master, under a guard of nearly two thousand men. Mr. Garrison’s society soon took the stand that the union of states with slavery retained was “an agreement with hell and a covenant with death,” and openly advocated secession of the non-slaveholding states. On this issue the Abolitionists split into two branches, and those who threw off Garrison’s lead maintained that there was power enough under the Constitution to do away with slavery. To the fierce invective and constant agitation of Garrison were, in time, added the splendid oratory of Wendell Phillips, the economic arguments of Horace Greeley, the wise statesmanship of Charles Sumner, the fervid writings of Channing and Emerson, and the noble poetry of Whittier. All these and others, in varied ways and from different points of view, joined in bringing the public opinion of the North to the view that the permanent existence of slavery was incompatible with that of a free republic.
In the South, meanwhile, the institution was intrenching itself more and more firmly. The invention of the cotton gin and the beginning of the reign of cotton as king made the great plantation system a seeming commercial necessity. From the deprecatory and half apologetic utterances of early southern statesmen, we come to Mr. Calhoun’s declaration that slavery “now preserves in quiet and security more than six and a half million human beings, and that it could not be destroyed without destroying the peace and prosperity of nearly half the states in the Union.” The Abolitionists were regarded in the South with the bitterest hatred. Attempts were even made to compel the northern states to silence the anti-slavery orators, to prohibit the circulation through the mail of anti-slavery speeches, and to refuse a hearing in Congress to anti-slavery petitions. The influence of the South was still dominant in the North. Though the feeling against slavery spread, there co-existed with it the belief that an open quarrel with the South meant commercial ruin; and the anti-slavery sentiment was also neutralized by the nobler feeling that the Union must be preserved at all hazards, and that there was no constitutional mode of interfering with the slave system. The annexation of Texas was a distinct gain to the slave power, and the Mexican war was undertaken, said John Quincy Adams, in order that “the slave-holding power in the government shall be secured and riveted.”
The actual condition of the negro over whom such a strife was being waged differed materially in different parts of the South, and, under masters of different character, in the same locality. It had its side of cruelty, oppression and atrocity; it had also its side of kindness on the part of master and of devotion on the part of slave. Its dark side has been made familiar to readers by such books as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Dickens’ “American Notes,” and Edmund Kirk’s “Among the Pines;” its brighter side has been charmingly depicted in the stories of Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, and Harry Edwards. On the great cotton plantations of Mississippi and Alabama the slave was often overtaxed and harshly treated; in the domestic life of Virginia, on the other hand, he was as a rule most kindly used, and often a relation of deep affection sprang up between him and his master.
With this state of public feeling North and South, it was with increased bitterness and developed sectionalism that the subject of slavery in new states was again debated in the Congress of 1850. The Liberty party, which held that slavery might be abolished under the Constitution, had been merged in the Free Soil party, whose cardinal principle was, “To secure free soil to a free people,” and, while not interfering with slavery in existing states, to insist on its exclusion from territory so far free. The proposed admission of California was not affected by the Missouri Compromise. Its status as a future free or slave state was the turning point of the famous debates in the Senate of 1850, in which Webster, Calhoun, Douglas and Seward won fame—debates which have never been equaled in our history for eloquence and acerbity. It was in the course of these debates that Mr. Seward, while denying that the Constitution recognized property in man, struck out his famous dictum, “There is a higher law than the Constitution.” The end reached was a compromise which allowed California to settle for itself the question of slavery, forbade the slave trade in the District of Columbia, but enacted a strict fugitive slave law. To the Abolitionists this fugitive slave law, sustained in its most extreme measures by the courts in the famous—or as they called it, infamous—Dred Scott case, was as fuel to fire. They defied it in every possible way. The “Underground Railway” was the outcome of this defiance. By it a chain of secret stations was established, from one to the other of which the slave was guided at night until at last he reached the Canada border. The most used of these routes in the East was from Baltimore to New York, thence north through New England; that most employed in the West was from Cincinnati to Detroit. It has been estimated that not fewer than thirty thousand slaves were thus assisted to freedom.
Soon the struggle was changed to another part of the western territory, which was now growing so rapidly as to demand the formation of new states. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill introduced by Douglas was in effect the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, in that it left the question as to whether slavery should be carried into the new territories to the decision of the settlers themselves. As a consequence immigration was directed by both the anti-slavery and the pro-slavery parties to Kansas, each determined on obtaining a majority enabling it to control the proposed State Constitution. Then began a series of acts of violence which almost amounted to civil war. “Bleeding Kansas” became a phrase in almost every one’s mouth. Border ruffians swaggered at the polls and attempted to drive out the assisted emigrants sent to Kansas by the Abolition societies. The result of the election of the Legislature on its face made Kansas a slave state, but a great part of the people refused to accept this result; and a convention was held at Topeka which resolved that Kansas should be free even if the laws formed by the Legislature should have to be “resisted to a bloody issue.”
Prominent among the armed supporters of free state ideas in Kansas was Captain John Brown, a man whose watchword was at all times action. “Talk,” he said, “is a national institution; but it does no good for the slave.” He believed that slavery could only be coped with by armed force. His theory was that the way to make free men of slaves was for the slaves themselves to resist any attempt to coerce them by their masters. He was undoubtedly a fanatic in that he did not stop to measure probabilities or to take account of the written law. His attempt at Harper’s Ferry was without reasonable hope, and as the intended beginning of a great military movement was a ridiculous fiasco. To attempt to make war upon the United States with twenty men was utter madness, and if the hoped for rising of the slaves had taken place might have yielded horrible results. The execution of John Brown, that followed, was the logical consequence of his hopeless effort.
But there was that about the man which none could call ridiculous. Rash and unreasoning as his action seemed, he was still, even by his enemies, recognized as a man of unswerving conscience, of high ideals, of deep belief in the brotherhood of mankind. His offense against law and peace was cheerfully paid fur by his death and that of others near and dear to him. Almost no one at that day could be found to applaud his plot, but the incident had an effect on the minds of the people altogether out of proportion to its intrinsic character. More and more as time went on he became recognized as a martyr in the cause of human liberty.
Events of vast importance to the future of the negro in America now hurried fast upon each other’s footsteps: the final settlement of the Kansas dispute by its becoming a free state; the formation and rapid growth of the Republican party; the division of the Democratic party into northern and southern factions; the election of Abraham Lincoln; the secession of South Carolina, and, finally, the greatest civil war the world has known. Though that war would never have been waged were it not for the negro, and though his fate was inevitably involved in its result, it must be remembered that it was not undertaken on his account. Before the struggle began Mr. Lincoln said: “If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to destroy or to save slavery.” And the northern press emphasized over and over again the fact that this was “a white man’s war.” But the logic of events is inexorable. It seems amazing now that Union generals should have been puzzled as to the question whether they ought in duty to return runaway slaves to their masters. General Butler settled the controversy by one happy phrase when he called the fugitives “contraband of war.” Soon it was deemed right to use these contrabands, to employ the new-coined word, as the South was using the negroes still in bondage, to aid in the non-fighting work of the army—on fortification, team-driving, cooking, and so on. From this it was but a step, though a step not taken without much perturbation, to employ them as soldiers. At Vicksburg, at Fort Pillow, and in many another battle, the negro showed beyond dispute that he could fight for his liberty. No fiercer or braver charge was made in the war than that upon the parapet of Fort Wagner by Colonel Shaw’s gallant colored regiment, the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth.