HISTORY

OF

AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM;

Its Four Great Epochs,

EMBRACING NARRATIVES OF THE

TOGETHER WITH A

HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK HERALD.)

BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON & Co.
1861.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one,
By F. G. de FONTAINE,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

CHAS. CRASKE,
Stereotyper.

BARTON & SON,
Printers,
111 Fulton Street, N. Y.

INTRODUCTION.

The following pages originally appeared in the New York Herald, of February 2d, 1861. By request, they have been reproduced in their present shape, with the view of preserving, in a form more compact than that of a newspaper, the valuable facts embraced.

Without an extensive range of research it is almost impossible to acquire the information which is thus compiled, and, at the present time, especially, it is believed that the publication of these facts will be desirable to the reading community.

F. G. de F.

HISTORY OF AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM.

CHAPTER I.

One of the commanding characteristics of the present age is the spirit of agitation, collision and discord which has broken forth in every department of social and political life. While it has been an era of magnificent enterprises and unrivalled prosperity, it has likewise been an era of convulsion, which has well nigh upturned the foundations of the government. Never was this truth more evident than at the present moment. A single topic occupies the public mind—Union or Disunion—and is one of pre-eminently absorbing interest to every citizen. Upon this issue the entire nation has been involved in a moral distemper, that threatens its utter and irrevocable dissolution. Union—the child of compact, the creature of social and political tolerance—stands face to face with Disunion, the natural off-spring of that anti-slavery sentiment, which has ever warred against the interests of the people and the elements of true government, and struggles for the maintenance of that sacred pledge by which the United States have heretofore been bound in a common brotherhood. Like the marvellous tent given by the fairy Banou to Prince Achmed, which, when folded up, became an ornament in the delicate hands of women, but, spread out, afforded encampment to mighty armies; so is this question of abolitionism, to which the present overwhelming trouble of our land is to be traced, in its capacity to encompass all things, and its ability to attach itself even to the amenities and refinements of life. It has entered into everything, great and small, high and low, political, theological, social and moral, and in one section has become the standard by which all excellence is to be judged. Under the guise of philanthropic reform, it has pursued its course with energy, boldness and unrelenting bitterness, until it has grown from “a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand” into the dimensions of the tempest which is to-day lowering over the land charged with the elements of destruction. Commencing with a pretended love for the black race, it has arrived at a stage of restless, uncompromising fanaticism which will be satisfied with nothing short of the consummation of its wildest hopes. It has become the grand question of the day—of politics, of ethics, of expediency, of justice, of conscience, and of law, covering the whole field of human society and divine government.

In this view of the subject, and in view also of the surrounding unhappy circumstances of the country which have their origin in this agitation, we give below a history of abolition, from the period it commenced to exist as an active element in the affairs of the nation down to the present moment.

ABOLITIONISTS AND THEIR OBJECTS.

There are two classes of persons opposed to the continued existence of slavery in the United States. The first are those who are actuated by sentiments of philanthropy and humanity, but are at the same time no less opposed to any disturbance of the peace or tranquility of the Union, or to any infringement of the powers of the States composing the confederacy. Among these may be classed the society of “Friends,” one of whose established principles is an abhorrence of war in all its forms, and the cultivation of peace and good will amongst mankind. As far back as 1670, the ancient records of their society refer to the peaceful and exemplary efforts of the sect to prevent the holding of slaves by any of their number; and a quaint incident is related of an eccentric “Friend,” who, at one of their monthly meetings, “seated himself among the audience with a bladder of bullock’s blood secreted under his mantle, and at length broke the quiet stillness of the worship by rising in full view of the congregation, piercing the bladder, spilling the blood upon the floor and seats, and exclaiming with all the solemnity of an inspired prophet, ‘Thus shall the Lord spill the blood of those that traffic in the blood of their fellow men.’”

The second class are the real ultra abolitionists—the “reformers” who, in the language of Henry Clay, are “resolved to persevere at all hazards, and without regard to any consequences, however calamitous they may be. With them the rights of property are nothing; the deficiency of the powers of the general government is nothing; the acknowledged and incontestible powers of the State are nothing; civil war, a dissolution of the Union, and the overthrow of a government in which are concentrated the fondest hopes of the civilized world, are nothing. They are for the immediate abolition of slavery, the prohibition of the removal of slaves from State to State,