run out. I must tie the bag and save the country." And he swore, "By the Eternal, the Union must and shall be preserved!" He at once issued a proclamation declaring that nullification was treason, and that he would carry out the laws even with force, if necessary. He sent ships of war to Charleston, and guarded the custom-houses with soldiers; and by this prompt action probably saved the country from civil war.

The next year (1833) Congress passed a new tariff bill, which provided that the duties on foreign goods should be lowered gradually until 1842, after which year the duties on all goods brought into the United States were to be twenty per cent-that is, twenty cents on every dollar of value. This bill, which was brought forward by Henry Clay, of Kentucky, is called the Compromise Tariff of 1833. The Nullifiers claimed it as a triumph for their principles, and said that they had never intended any armed resistance to the United States, but had only threatened it in order to gain their ends. However this may have been, the great mass of the people, though many felt that South Carolina had some grievances, were opposed to her manner of asserting her rights, and upheld General Jackson, and several of the States passed resolutions condemning nullification. Still, there were many, especially in the Southern States, who believed that the people of South Carolina had right on their side, and this belief continued to influence their action until it finally ended in secession.

CHAPTER II.

SLAVERY.

SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION.-JOHN RANDOLPH'S OPINION.-BENJAMIN LUNDY.-WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. THE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.-THE ABOLITIONISTS.-CHANGE OF OPINION IN THE SOUTH.-TEXAS.-THE WHIG PARTY.-THE LIBERTY PARTY.-WAR WITH MEXICO.THE WILMOT PROVISO.-SLAVE STATES AND FREE STATES.-THE FREE-SOIL PARTY.-HENRY CLAY AND THE COMPROMISES OF 1850.-THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. -PERSONAL LIBERTY LAWS. THE KANSAS AND NEBRASKA BILL.-SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY.-KANSAS A BATTLE GROUND.-ASSAULT UPON SENATOR SUMNER. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.-THE DRED SCOTT CASE-FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITIONS.-JOHN BROWN'S RAID.-CAPTURE OF HARPER'S FERRY. -JOHN BROWN'S EXECUTION.-HIS SOUL IS MARCHING ON.

N the early days the feeling in regard to slavery was much the same in the North and in the South, it being looked upon by the best men in both parts as an evil which in time would be done away with. This was the opinion of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and other chief men of the South, as well as of Franklin, Hamilton, and Jay in the North. The question of emancipation, or the freeing of the slaves, had been discussed in several of the Southern States, and societies in favor of this had been formed at an early date in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. So strong was the feeling against it in Virginia that Mr. Randolph said if the slave did not soon run away from the master, the master would run away from the slave. Indeed, scarcely anybody in the Border States then defended slavery, and if it had not been for the unwise assaults made upon it by people in the Free States, it is probable that the most northerly Slave States would have soon freed their slaves. But in South Carolina and Georgia it was different. Slave labor was more profitable in those States, and their people had even refused to join the Union unless they could bring from Africa all the slaves they wanted; and we have seen in the last chapter how, by a bargain with the New England States, they had secured the slave trade until 1808.

It had generally been acknowledged from the beginning in the Free States that slavery was a question which the people of

each State had a right to settle for themselves, but a feeling had gradually grown up that slavery was not consistent with Christianity. When James Monroe was President (1821), a young Quaker named Benjamin Lundy began to publish in Ohio an anti-slavery periodical, which was for a time the only one of the kind in the United States. It did not attract much attention, and was even printed for a time in Tennessee, and afterward in Baltimore. In 1828 Lundy made the acquaintance of a printer named William Lloyd Garrison, who became his assistant editor. Garrison, not satisfied with Lundy's schemewhich was to free the blacks gradually-began in Boston, in 1831, a weekly paper named "The Liberator," in which he urged immediate emancipation. This paper, the last number of which was published in December, 1865, after slavery had been abolished, was so bold in its denunciation of slavery that Mr. Garrison was threatened with assassination, and several times narrowly escaped mob violence. But his paper gradually grew in influence and in circulation, and as it did so aroused more and more a bitter feeling between the Garrisonians, as his followers were called, and those who were opposed to his teachings.

About this time (1833) there was formed in Philadelphia an association called the American Anti-Slavery Society, with Arthur Tappan for its President. It declared that slavery was a sin which no human constitution could protect, and that there was a higher law (meaning the law of God) than the Constitution, which men ought to obey before any human laws. The Society set about stirring up agitation on the subject by printing books, pamphlets, and papers, and sending them to all parts of the country. Branches of the Society were formed in other States, and many petitions for the abolition of slavery were sent to Congress. But as Congress had no right to act in the matter, no attention was paid to these petitions, and so strong was the feeling against the Abolitionists, as they came to be called, that President Jackson recommended in a message to Congress that their pamphlets and papers should not be allowed to pass through the United States mails. In Northern cities their meetings were broken up, their printing-offices destroyed, and many of their prominent men were mobbed, and at Alton, Illinois, one person named Lovejoy was killed. But this persecution only made the Abolitionists more persistent,

1833-35.]

THE ABOLITIONISTS.

19

and they grew in strength and in numbers, and soon became a political power in the Northern States.

The Southern people began to look upon the acts of the Abolitionists as an unjustifiable interference with their rights. Slavery, they said, was an institution solely under the control of the States in which it existed, and with which the people of other States had no right to meddle. If it was wicked to hold slaves, they alone were responsible for the sin, and not the people of the Free States. But the Abolitionists replied that it was sinful to live under a government which permitted slavery, and that if slavery could not be abolished it was the duty of the Free States to separate from the guilty Slave States; and some of them even went so far as to petition Congress for a dissolution of the Union.

These acts of the Abolitionists brought about a great change in public opinion in the South in regard to slavery; the Border States gave up their ideas of gradual emancipation, and people began to praise slavery as a great good rather than an evil. Those who upheld this view gradually grew in strength, and before long there was a party in the South as strongly in favor of slavery as the Abolitionists of the North were against it. It was argued that slavery was a Bible institution, and that it was a blessing to both master and slave; that the people of the Southern States were the guardians of the slaves, who were a helpless race, unfit for taking care of themselves, and no greater calamity could befall the blacks than the loss of the protection which they enjoyed under the patriarchal system of slavery; that the Abolitionists were misguided fanatics, and the worst foes of the negroes, whose character fitted them for dependence and servitude rather than for freedom; and that slavery, instead of being abolished, ought to be extended so that other parts of the country might enjoy its benefits.

Many good people in the Northern States sympathized with the South in the defence of its domestic institutions, and opposed by all means in their power any agitation of the subject. Still there was a strong feeling that, although slavery should not be interfered with in the States where it already existed, its extension should be resisted by all rightful means. This feeling soon showed itself when the republic of Texas asked to be admitted into the Union.

In 1835 the people of Texas rose in rebellion against Mexico, to which it then belonged. Many of the inhabitants of Texas were people from the Southern States, who had been slave-holders at home; but as slavery had been abolished by Mexico in 1824, they had no right to keep slaves there. As soon, however, as they had won their independence from Mexico, they established slavery in Texas and asked to be annexed to the United States. The people of the Southern States were very anxious for the admission of Texas as a State, for its soil and climate were well fitted for slave labor. But the ablest men in the Northern States were opposed to its admission because it would give more political power to the South and would bring on a war with Mexico, and for a time they were successful in keeping Texas out of the Union.

The National Republicans had about this time taken the name of Whigs, and in the election of 1839 they succeeded in electing William Henry Harrison, of Ohio, for President over Martin Van Buren, who had then served one term as President; John Tyler, of Virginia, was at the same time elected VicePresident. In this election the Abolitionists appeared for the first time as a party, under the name of the Liberty Party; but they polled less than eight thousand votes (7,609) in all the States.

President Harrison died in a month after his inauguration, and Vice-President Tyler thus became President. Mr. Tyler had been elected as a Whig, but he was really a believer in a strict construction of the Constitution-that is, he thought that the central government had only such powers as were given it by the Constitution, and he soon broke with his party. The Southerners, by no means discouraged at their failure to get Texas into the Union, again urged its admission, and Mr. Tyler favored it in his message to Congress (1843). Great opposition was made to it by the Free State members, but the Southerners finally prevailed and Texas came into the Union as a slave State.

In the next election the Democrats were successful, and James K. Polk, of Tennessee, was elected President over Henry Clay, of Kentucky, the Whig candidate. In this election the Abolition Party polled 62,300 votes. The annexation of Texas brought on a war with Mexico, as had been foreseen, but our