USA > Alabama > Memorial record of Alabama. A concise account of the state's political, military, professional and industrial progress, together with the personal memoirs of many of its people. Volume II pt 1 > Part 4
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democrats declared for Taylor, and Mr. Yancey, though he would not vote for Taylor, refused to support Cass.
Shortly after the national convention had adjourned, Mr. Yancey was attending court in Hayneville. His friends asked that he be allowed to address a meeting that was being held in the court house during the noon recess to ratify the nomination of Cass. The request was refused. There- upon it was announced that Mr. Yancey would speak outside of the court house, under an oak tree that stood hard by. Almost as soon as he began the ratification meeting broke up. Everybody came outside to hear Yancey.
The democratic candidate for the presidency was successful, but only by 241 votes majority. Under all the circumstances, it is a tribute to the steadfastness of the Alabama democracy, that Cass should have carried the state at all.
SECTIONALISM-SLAVERY AGITATION.
It was, perhaps, the inevitable misfortune of our Federal constitution that it did not. in some plain and unmistakable manner. settle the ques- tion whether a state had a right to secede from the Union it had volun- tarily entered. The bloodiest civil war in the history of the world would have been avoided if it had been clearly understood that in all questions and cases that might arise, the supreme court of the United States should decide between the states and the Federal government. This, however, the early leaders of the democracy, notably Jefferson and Jackson, were unwilling to admit. To submit to this was, in their opinion, to leave the rights of the states absolutely at the mercy of the Federal government. The first serious sectional dispute occurred when the New England peo- ple sent their delegates to the celebrated Hartford convention during the progress of the war of 1812. The New Englanders were sea-going and commercial. The embargo act and the war itself bore hard upon their interests, and their delegates went to Hartford to protest. and if possible devise measures of relief. This convention debated with closed doors. and while there has always been more or less dispute as to the purposes and intent of those who had assembled, it is now quite certain that there was in that noted assembly a decided disposition to obtain relief by re- sorting either to nullification or secession. But with the declaration of peace this cloud passed over.
The next sectional trouble. already mentioned. was the attempt at nullification by South Carolina in 1832. Population in the northern states had even then increased more rapidly than in the south; first, be- cause their people were engaged in manufacturing and commerce, and, secondly, because the immigrants who came to our shores found in them the climates to which they were accustomed. It is also a fact not to be overlooked, that agricultural regions, growing grain and provisions, in- vite and will maintain denser populations than similar areas devoted to the culture of cotton and tobacco. The south had thus become the mi-
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nority section. Its people felt. whether justly or not. that northern ma- jorities were robbing them by the imposition, for their own purposes, of onerous customs duties .. Hence the attempt by South Carolina to nullify the tariff law of 1828. This difficulty had been tided over by the com- promise measure introduced by Mr. Clay in 1832, and now, in 1850, an- other sectional crisis was upon the country. This was produced by the all absorbing question of domestic slavery. It is true that one compro- mise of this question, fathered by Mr. Clay, had already been made, as we have seen, by congress, when. in 1820, it admitted Maine without and Missouri with slavery, and enacted at the same time that slavery should be forever prohibited in the territories of the United States north of the line 36° 30'. This "compromise" was obtained by the refusal of north- ern members to admit Missouri with slavery, except upon condition of such prohibitory provision. Southern men replied. that free states. and slave states were all equal under the government they had voluntarily formed, and had equal rights in the territory to which this provision ap- plied. It had been purchased, they said. with the common treasure, and slave-holders had as much right as non-slave-holders to carry their prop- erty into it. Many of the southern statesmen saw then the results that might follow: that the time might come when congress would even claim jurisdiction over the question of slavery in the states, and that this dedi- cation of so many new states to freedom would in the future give the anti-slavery states a majority in both houses of congress. But the south submitted, and the compromise for a time brought peace and healing.
The mind of the general public was not greatly excited even by the heated debates in congress over the Missouri compromise. For many years afterward voters both north and south were able to consider the question of slavery upon its merits. No abolition societies had yet been formed for the purpose of taking away from slave owners, without com- pensation, the property they had inherited or acquired according to the laws of the land. Churches in one section of the country had not yet denounced their christian brethren of the same denomination in another. because they tolerated slavery or owned slaves. It was still possible, even in the slave-holding states of the south. to discuss and fairly consider slavery either in its economie or in its moral aspects. Mr. Jefferson was at that time living in retirement at his home. He had early avowed and never recanted his desire for gradual emancipation, yet he was the idol of democrats all over the union, and slave-holders from the south visited him at Monticello. animated on their journey with a spirit of reverence almost akin to that of Mahommedans on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Mr. Clay, the great leader of the whigs, had favored emancipation in Ken- tucky. In 1832 a bill for the abolition of slavery was postponed in the lower house of the Virginia legislature to wait a developement of public opinion only by a vote of 65 to 23. Not only in the border state of Vir- ginia did there then exist, as evidenced by this vote, a strong desire to
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abolishi slavery, but even in the young state of Alabama, where slave labor was immensely profitable in the felling.of forests and cultivation of cotton, the people are recorded as declaring in their legislative assembly, in 1827, that this institution which they had inherited was "an evil. " The legislatures of certain northern states had passed and transmitted to Alabama resolutions looking to the general emancipation of persons of color held in servitude in the United States. The general assembly of Alabama, by joint resolution passed, on the first day of January, 1827, disapproved of the contemplated scheme, but it took no offense at sug- gestions of its sister legislatures, as will appear from the temperate and respectful language of the report of its joint committee, which was trans- mitted in reply, and is here set out in full :
The select committee. etc .. respectfully submit the following report: They conceive that the subject is one in which the states. where the evil complained of exists. are alone interested: that the frequent interference of the non-slave-holding states. in a matter so purely internal and domes- tic, is alike impolitic and incompatible with the rights and interests of the slave-holding states; and that the dictates of policy forbid the too frequent agitation of a question. which, by the constitution of the United States and of the several slave-holding states, is beyond legislative con- trol. Your committee further suggests that if at any future day the evil complained of becomes too oppressive to be borne, it will be the peculiar privilege, as well as the duty. of the slave-holding states themselves to apply such expedients of relief, as their information may suggest and their interests and safty may require, and, in determining the proper time when this great work of policy and benevolence shall commence, they conceive that the states most interested in the results can alone be the proper judges.
The same legislature passed an act. approved January 13, 1827, inhib- iting the bringing of slaves into the state, either for sale or for hire. The purpose of this act was obvious. It is further to be noted that the -statutes of Alabama abounded then, and indeed so long as there was a slave upon her soil, with provisions intended to secure the humane treat- ment of slaves, and juries were ever ready to enforce against those who could be shown to have incurred them the strictest penalties of the law. Of course there were very many in Alabama and in all the southern states who, during the whole of this period. from what they could see of slavery and its results. believed it was a blessing, both to the whites and the slaves. This, no doubt, was the majority opinion. But when one looks back now at the phenomenal change of public sentiment as to the mor- ality and economic policy of slavery then in progress throughout the civil- ized world and contemplates the completeness of the revolution wrought everywhere by emancipation within the last half century, the inference . seems clear that, if Alabama had been simply let alone, if she had been freed from all outside interference and outside influences, she would for herself, as her legislature said, have determined upon a time when this great work of policy and benevolence should commence. This she deemed to be her "peculiar privilege." Her interests were throughout the whole
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period in question thoroughly identified with slavery. £ In 1830 her white population was 190.406, and her slaves were 117,549. Nevertheless the language in which her legislators replied to those who suggested emanci- pation was respectful, kindly and even sympathetic. But the people of Alabama were soon to be driven out of this mood by the intemperate utterances and misguided zeal of abolition agitators in the non-slave- holding states.
It is curious to trace the history of public sentiment on the slavery question and the marvelous changes it has undergone since 1776. Slavery had been put upon the colonies by the British government. in some instances against the earnest protest of the colonists. The traffic in slaves was profitable to Britsh merchants, and their government would listen to no argument against it. In the convention of 1787, however, the states were to decide for themselves whether the African slave trade should be discontinued. George Mason and Mr. Madison of Virginia, and many other southern delegates, favored instantaneous inhibition. But the trade was now profitable to New England ship owners who were engaged in it, and some of the delegates from that section were unwilling to prohibit the traffic. The inhuman methods of capturing the Africans and the horrors of the middle passage furnished arguments against the traffic much stronger than could be made against the continuance in bond- age of those who were already enslaved. but selfish motives overbalanced all these considerations. New Englanders interested in the profits of the slave trade united with such of the southerners in the convention as were willing still to buy the slaves for their farms, and after much debate over many propositions a compromise was agreed upon whereby the trade could be prohibited, after 1808. Delegates were much divided upon the various propositions that were made, but divisions were not upon sec- tional lines. Nor was any argument wrested from the Holy Scriptures relied upon in discussion. Indeed up to the beginning of the present cen- tury, christian people nearly everywhere sanctioned and christian churches tolerated slavery. If prior to that time there were any who believed that teachings of the bible were against slavery. they were certainly in a help- less minority. It is true the declaration of independence declared that "all men were born free and equal." but slavery then existed in all the thirteen colonies. These words. so often since quoted, were not intended to apply to persons of African descent. On the very day the declaration was signed. July 4. 1776, newspapers in Boston advertised slaves for sale. When 1800 had come, some of the more northern states of the union in which slavery had never been profitable. having first sold off most of their slaves to their southern neighbors, had abolished the institution. Still there was nowhere any general conviction that slavery was in it self immoral-much less that it was forbidden by the teachings of the Master. It is true that. in 1791. the French assembly had degree the immediate emancipation of all the slaves in the French West Indies: but there was
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nothing about this act, either in the motives that prompted it or in its . immediate or even remote consequences, to commend it to thoughtful christian people. It was accomplished by Robespierre, the bloody tyrant. and Brissot, the fanatical orator, leading a people who had dethroned the God of the Bible and set up instead the so called Goddess of Reason; and the bloody massacre of, and horrible ontrages, upon the whites that soon followed in San Domingo. the most horrible and appalling in all the annals of time, shocked humanity throughout the world. Following this awful cataclysm-the extermination of the whites in San Domingo -that beauti- ful and fertile island lapsed at once into a condition of idleness, sloth and semi-barbarism, from which, during the whole century that has now passed, it has made no recovery. Nevertheless, during the first four decades of this century there was silently growing up throughout the world a pronounced sentiment of hostility to slavery, based on both moral and economic grounds. In Great Britain. the foster parent of American slavery, this sentiment made rapid headway, and under the lead of Wil- berforce and Clarkson slavery was in 1838 abolished in the British West India islands.
Tides of thought, like the currents of the wind, sweep over the world and the change of public opinion in Europe betokened what was also go- ing on in America. Emancipation took place in many Central and South American states. In spite of the fact that in some of these countries the resulting consequences, social and economie, were deplorable in the ex- treme, the subject took deep hold of the United States, both north and south. The action of the Alabama and Virginia legislatures already noted sufficiently, attest how rapidly the idea of putting an end to human slavery was finding its way in the south. If it had been allowed to work itself out by natural development among the people who were to be most affected by it, if they had been permitted to consider the question for themselves, devising in their own way methods that would be least harm- ful to their economic interests and most conducive to their future social and political welfare. the thoughtful student of the present day cannot doubt that the enlightened and highly cultured leaders of thought in the southern states. who had already caught the spirit of the age, would have devised and adopted in their own time some method of gradual emancipa- tion. There were many obstacles in the way, and the steady drifting of slaves from the northern into the southern states. and the rapid natural in- crease of the negro population in these states continually added to the diffi- culties of the problem. If the slaves of the south had been subjected to the hardships and cruelties pictured in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and in other books from which the readers of the present day generally obtain their ideas of slavery in the southern states, the slave population could not and would not have multiplied as it did. Indeed, if the facts had been as pictured. this population must have decreased. and. in that way. the prob- lem would have been in a fair way to solve itself. It would then have
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. been quite as easy to when their slaves had become relatively few in number by natural decrease. for the southern states to abolish slavery as . it was for the northern states to declare universal freedom when they had rid themselves of most of their human chattels by sale and removal. Cruelty to slaves was not the rule. It was the very rare exception, de- nounced by severe legal penalties that were enforced by willing juries. Self-interest and the instincts of humanity combined to improve the con- ditions by which the slave was surrounded. There was an inter-depend- ence between him and his master that made the relation between them almost patriarchal. In every old slave-holding family was the old "mammy" on the retired list, when she would still have been on the active, if free. But she had nursed "master" or "mistress" when a baby, and now she was privileged to smoke her pipe in ease and peace while she scolded and petted the children. both white and black. The counter- parts of the "mammy" among domestic servants were on the plantation. While
The young folks rolled on the old cabin floor, All merry, all happy and gay,
the superannuated field hands, with never a thought of possible want on the morrow, looked after them and smoked and chatted the time away. It certainly is not the purpose of the writer to set up any lament over the abolition of slavery. He rejoices. as all intelligent southern men now do, that it is gone forever; yet it is a fact that no human institution was ever so much misrepresented and misunderstood as African slavery in the southern states of America. That the physical welfare of the southern slaves was carefully looked after, that they were not over- worked and were well fed. that they were faithfully cared for in sickness and in health. in childhood and in old age, stands now as proven to have been practically the invariable rule by the inexorable logic of official sta- tistics. The slave population of the United States at the decennial census of 1810 numbered 1.191,362. The number of slaves in 1860 was 3,953,760 -a net increase of 2.762.398, a gain of 231 per cent. in fifty years. The slave trade had been interdicted and made piracy prior to 1510. It is true that there were a few small cargoes of negroes landed and disposed of after that date, between 1850 and 1660, but the increase of slaves from this source was so very inconsiderable that it certainly was not equivalent to half the number who, during that period, were manumitted by their owners in the slave states. For example, the number of free persons of color in Alabama in 1820, when the first census of the state was taken, was 571. and they, in forty years, had increased to 2.690. a gain of 371 per cent., which came largely from local manumission. This net increase of 231 per cent. in the slave population of the United States during fifty years it is difficult to judge of by comparison with other populations of which we have statistics, because of migrations. Certainly we can make no comparison with the increase of our own white population, for the
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reason that so many millons of whites have come to us from the old world. It is difficult, and even impossible, to find elsewhere any people with whom we can make' comparison. But fortunately we have at hand figures that cannot deceive us. By comparing the free negro with the slave in the United States we may ascertain mathematically whether per- sons of color increased more rapidly when left to care for themselves or when under the protection of the master. The census of 1810 shows 186, 446 free persons of color, and in 1560 the net inerease was 301,644, or 161 per cent. increase in this class as against 231 in the slave population. If we now consider that 27.051 slaves were still held in bondage in 1810 in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, that such of these as were not sold south, being in the interim manumitted. went to swell the increase of the free colored popula- tion, as did all those manumitted in the south by their owners, and as did also all the slaves that were continually escaping across the border. we have a most remarkable showing. Certainly those figures demonstrate that the negro prospered physically as a slave more than he did as a freeman.
But there is still another aspect to this question. Let ,the reader who would judge fairly of this now historic institution study carefully for himself the present condition of the African in his native wilds. Then notice him as he is to-day in the southern portions of the United States, and the conclusion follows that slavery has elevated the negro morally and intellectually. Waving the question as to whether the institution was a curse to the white man, it has undoubtedly. in the providence of God, been a blessing to the black, for nowhere else do any such masses of persons of African descent occupy the plane the colored now stand upon in the southern states of this union.
In the days of anti-slavery agitation, fanatics, whose minds were filled with horrible pictures of the brutality of southern slave-holders daily paraded before their eyes by the anti-slavery press. imagined that the negroes in the south were everywhere ready, at a moment's warning. to rise and burn their masters' dwelling and slay men, women and children without merey, if weapons were only placed in their hands. Systematic efforts were made, time and again. to excite such insurrections in the south by the scattering of incendiary documents. Only two or three years before the south attempted by secession to separate itself from all such further efforts against its peace and security, John Brown invaded the state of Virignia. with a force absurdly inadequate either in arms or num- bers or equipment to accomplish any results. But the mind of this honest zealot in the cause of human liberty had been crazed by misrepre- sentations. He believed the southern negroes would all rally to his support. Bitter, indeed, must have been his disappointment. It is true that, in this instance, the negro did not have much opportunity to "rise," because Brown's forces were so soon overpowered. But only a few years after- ward millions of union soldiers marched through the south singing "John
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Brown's body lies a-moldering in the ground, as we go marching on." They proclaimed freedom to the slaves, they invited him to enlist and secure his own and the liberty of his race. Many thousand slaves did join the armies of the union, tempted as they were by high pay and bounties: yet the fact remains that the average negro of the southern states astounded the civilized world by the fidelity with which he clung to his master's family and . cared for his master's helpless wife and little ones, while the master was away in the field fighting against those very soldiers, who, impelled the exigencies of a war fought for the preserva- tion of the union, were now offering him his liberty. Many profound reasoners. in attempting to account for this fact, so wonderful to them, have found themselves at fault, simply because they knew nothing of the peculiar relations that had existed between these masters and these slaves. They did not know, and so they could not in their reasonings, take account, of the innumerable kindly words and generous offices and acts of protecting eare for generation after generation had been beget-
ting gratitude and friendship and affection between those who lived together as superior and inferior during the existence of this much maligned institution. The generation in the north, that so much misun- derstood African slavery at the south, was not the generation that had parted by sale with their own slaves and therefore knew something of what was meant by the relation of master and slave.
With a few prominent exceptions, the abolitionists had no knowledge, except from hearsay, of what they preached in their papers and their pulpits. They had seen no slaves save now and then a fugitive. Some- times the tales these fugitives told of their treatment were founded on fact, for there were now and then cruel masters. just as there are brutal husbands. but for the most part the stories of escaped slaves seeking sympathy were grossly exaggerated. The minds of the listeners were, however, so excited that nothing was too wild for belief. When aboli- tion societies were first formed in the north, the sober-thinking. conserva- tive masses of that section regarded them as mischievous in the extreme. These associations proposed as conservative people in the north then regarded it to disturb the peace and good order of society by interfering with the established rights of property. William Lloyd Garrison, who had started the Liberator in Boston, was insulted and maligned, and more than once subjected to violence in Massachusetts, for his incendiary teachings. Lovejoy, equally violent in the west, had his printing office burned and he himself was slain in his fight with the mob, But the agi- tation went on. Soon the pulpit took up the theme. Churches north denounced their brethren of the same denomination in the south as hypo- crites and pretenders. When 1-50 came. the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians north and south had divided into separate organizations .. Religious fervor on both sides of the line that separated the, free and slave states added incalculable fury to the flames of passion. Southern
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