:: America's Caesar ::

CHAPTER FOUR:
The "Higher Law" of Abolitionism

The British Nest of Anti-Slavery Agitation
As discussed in a previous chapter, the second war with Great Britain nearly drove the New England States to secede from the Union and ally themselves again with the English government. However, since the war ended in 1815 with the Union between North and South still intact, a new "series of acts and long continued policy, tending to irritate the southern, and conciliate the northern people" was begun to drive the two sections apart and bring about a conflict "produced by the hatred and prejudices of one party, but against the consent of the other party." According to J.A. Roebuck of Sheffield, England, it was necessary "for the safety of Europe" that "the arrogant, the overbearing, and great Republic of America" be "split in two."⁽¹⁾ It is apparent that the contrived tension over the institution of slavery was the very rock upon which the Union was intended to be split. In fact, during an interview with Aaron Legget, a prominent New York merchant and Abolitionist, Deputy General Wilson of the British army admitted that the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies was done, not with the welfare of the Negroes in mind, but to spark an Abolitionist movement in the Northeastern States and thereby precipitate the long-sought dissolution of the Union:

[T]he abolition of slavery in the British colonies would naturally create an enthusiastic anti-slavery sentiment in England and America, and that in America this would, in process of time, excite a hostility between the free States and the slave States, which would end in the dissolution of the American Union, and the consequent failure of the grand experiment of democratic government; and the ruin of democracy in America would be the perpetuation of aristocracy in England.⁽²⁾

John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who served as Vice President under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and later in the Senate, saw Great Britain's agitation on the slavery issue as grounded firmly in the motive to remove the United States as an economic rival. In a letter to William R. King dated 12 August 1844, he wrote, "The question is, by what means can Great Britain regain and keep a superiority in tropical cultivation, commerce, and influence?... Her main reliance is... to cripple or destroy the productions of her successful rivals. There is but one way by which it can be done, and that is, by abolishing African slavery throughout this continent." This would "give her a monopoly in the production of the great tropical staples, and the command of the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of the world, with an established naval ascendancy and political preponderance."⁽³⁾ Clement Laird Vallandigham expressed similar views at a Democratic meeting held in Dayton, Ohio on 29 October 1855. In response to the election of the anti-slavery candidate Salmon P. Chase and the defeat of the Democratic party in that State, Vallandigham traced the origins and growing strength of American Abolitionism to the "insolent intermeddling of the British government and British emissaries":

Three hundred years ago, [England] began to traffic in negro slaves. Queen Elizabeth was a sharer in its gains. A hundred and fifty years later, at the peace of Utrecht, England undertook, by compact with Spain, to import into the West Indies, within the space of thirty years, one hundred and forty-four thousand negroes, demanding, and with exactest care securing, a monopoly of the traffic. Queen Anne reserved one-quarter of the stock of the slave-trading company to herself, and one half to her subjects; to the king of Spain, the other quarter being conceded. Even so late as 1750, Parliament busied itself in devising plans to make the slave-trade still more effectual, while in 1775, the very year of the Revolution, a noble earl wrote to a colonial agent these memorable words: "We can not allow the Colonies to check or discourage, in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation." Between that date, and the period of first importation, England had stolen from the coast of Africa, and imported into the new world, or buried in the sea on the passage thither, not less than three and a quarter millions of negroes — more, by half a million, than the entire population of the Colonies. In April, 1776, the American Congress resolved against the importation of any more slaves. But England continued the traffic, with all its accumulated horrors, till 1808; for so deeply had it struck its roots into the commercial interests of that country, that not all the efforts of an organized and powerful society, not the influence of her ministers, not the eloquence of all her most renowned orators, availed to strike it down for more than forty years after this, its earliest interdiction in any country, by a rebel congress. But the loss of her American Colonies, and the prohibition of the slave-trade, had left small interest to Great Britain in negro slavery. Her philanthropy found room now to develop and expand in all its wonderful proportions. And accordingly, in 1834, England... robbed, by act of Parliament, one hundred millions of dollars from the wronged and beggared peasantry of Ireland, from the enslaved and oppressed millions of India, from the starving, overwrought, mendicant carcasses of the white slaves of her own soil, to pay to her impoverished colonists, plundered without voice and without vote in her legislature, the stipulated price of human rights; and with these, the wages of iniquity, in the outraged name of God and humanity, mocked the handful of her black bondsmen in the West Indies with the false and deluding shadow of liberty....
...England became now the great apostle of African liberty. Ignoring, sir, or putting under, at the point of the bayonet, the political rights of millions of her own white subjects, she yet prepared to convict the world of the sinfulness of negro slavery. Exeter Hall sent out its emissaries, full of zeal, and greedy for martyrdom. The British government took up the crusade — not from the motives of religion or philanthropy. Let no man be deceived.... [T]he American experiment of free government had not failed. America had grown great — had grown populous and powerful. Her proud example, towering up every day higher, and illuminating every land, was penetrating the hearts of the people, and threatening to shake the thrones of every monarchy in Europe. Force against such a nation would be the wildest of follies. But to be odious is to be weak, and internal dissension had wasted Greece, and opened even Thermopylae to the Barbarian of Macedon....
The machinery which had effected emancipation in the British West India Islands, of use no longer in England, was transferred to America. Aided by British gold, encouraged by British sympathy, the agitation began here, in 1835; and so complete was it in all its appointments, so thorough the organization and discipline, so perfect the electric current, that, within six months, the whole Union was convulsed. Affiliated societies were established in every northern State, and in almost every county; lecturers were paid, and sent forth into every city and village; a powerful and well supported press, fed from the treasuries, and working up the cast-off rags of the British societies, poured forth a multitude of incendiary prints and publications, which were distributed by mail throughout the Union, but chiefly in the southern States, and among the slaves.⁽⁴⁾

In a letter to Governor Langdon of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson had warned that "the Toryism with which we struggled in 1777, differed but in name from the Federalism of 1799, with which we struggled also; and the Anglocism of 1808, against which we are now struggling, is but the same thing in another form. It is longing for a king, and an English king rather than any other."⁽⁵⁾ The resolutions passed by the Ohio Democratic Convention of 8 January 1840 brought the history of the Federalist faction up to date: "Resolved, That political Abolitionism is but ancient Federalism, under a new guise, and that the political action of anti-slavery societies is only a device for the overthrow of Democracy [the Democratic party]."⁽⁶⁾ These agitators were relatively few in number — their two thousand organizations in 1840 claimed a membership of only 200,000 out of a Northern population of about twenty million, or about two percent of the population⁽⁷⁾ — and they were greatly despised throughout the country. They "met in obscure apartments, and attracted scarcely any public attention; or, if brought to notice by accident, were the objects of only popular ridicule and contempt."⁽⁸⁾ For example, William Lloyd Garrison, the anarchist publisher of the small weekly Abolitionist newspaper in Boston styled The Liberator⁽⁹⁾ who refused to "think, or speak, or write with moderation,"⁽¹⁰⁾ and who made frequent trips to London to consult with leading English Abolitionists, was seized by a mob on 1 October 1835, beaten severely, and then dragged through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck after delivering an inflammatory speech on Negro equality. On 9 March 1836, when he attempted to address a committee in the House of Representatives on the subject of slavery, Garrison was denounced as a "traitor and an outlaw" and denied the floor.⁽¹¹⁾ It should be noted that this denial was rendered on just grounds, for upon rising, he had uttered these words: "They tell us, sir, that if we proceed in our course we shall dissolve the Union. But what is the Union to me? I am a citizen of the world."⁽¹²⁾ Furthermore, the motto emblazoned across each issue of his periodical read, "No Union With Slaveholders," and his favorite shibboleth was, "The Constitution — a covenant with death, an agreement with hell."⁽¹³⁾ Elijah Lovejoy, another Abolitionist who published out of Alton, Illinois, had his presses destroyed four times before he was finally murdered by angry citizens in 1837. The reader who is tempted to sympathize with the rough treatment endured by these men would do well to withhold his judgment in the matter until he has become acquainted with the true character and goal of Abolitionism in the course of the present chapter.
As Joseph Moore noted, "The abolition movement was vigorously prosecuted by means of newspapers, pamphlets, books, lectures, etc., and was continued without cessation."⁽¹⁴⁾ According to its financial report of 1837, the New York office of the American Anti-Slavery Society alone published and distributed well over half a million pieces of literature annually, including 7,877 books, 47,250 tracts and pamphlets, and 537,626 copies of the Anti-Slavery, Slaves' Friend, Human Rights, and Emancipator periodicals.⁽¹⁵⁾ Filled with stories of the alleged horrors of slavery and of daring escapes from bondage, many of these publications were ostensibly written for young White readers in the North. However, that they actually targeted a different audience entirely is proven by the fact that they were often found tucked away in parcels of clothing and in the toes of shoes destined for distribution among the Southern slaves.⁽¹⁶⁾ When a sackful of this material was discovered and destroyed at Charleston, South Carolina by an angry mob, and postmasters across the South began to follow suit, Postmaster General Amos Kendall was forced to bring the matter before Congress for a solution:

A new question has arisen in the administration of this Department. A number of individuals have established an association in the Northern and Eastern States and raised a large sum of money, for the purpose of effecting the immediate abolition of Slavery in the Southern States. One of the means reported has been the printing of a large mass of newspapers, pamphlets, tracts, and almanacs, containing exaggerated, and in some instances, false accounts of the treatment of slaves, illustrated with cuts calculated to operate on the passions of the colored men, and produce discontent, assassination, and servile war. These they attempted to disseminate throughout the slaveholding States, by the agency of the public mails....
The Constitution makes it the duty of the United States "to protect each of the States against invasion; and, on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive, (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence." There is no quarter whence domestic violence is so much to be apprehended, in some of the States, as from the servile population, operated upon by mistaken or designing men. It is to obviate danger from this quarter, that many of the State laws, in relation to the circulation of incendiary papers, have been enacted. Without claiming for the General Government the power to pass laws prohibiting discussions of any sort, as a means of protecting States from domestic violence, it may safely be assumed, that the United States have no right, through their officers or departments, knowingly to be instrumental in producing within the several States, the very mischief which the Constitution commands them to repress. It would be an extraordinary construction of the powers of the general Government, to maintain that they are bound to afford the agency of their mails and post offices, to counteract the laws of the States, in the circulation of papers calculated to produce domestic violence; when it would, at the same time, be one of their most important constitutional duties to protect the States against the natural, if not necessary consequences produced by that very agency.
The position assumed by this Department, is believed to have produced the effect of withholding its agency, generally, in giving circulation to the obnoxious papers in the Southern States. Whether it be necessary more effectually to prevent, by legislative enactments, the use of the mails, as a means of evading or violating the constitutional laws of the States in reference to this portion of their reserved rights, is a question which, it appears to the undersigned, may be submitted to Congress, upon a statement of the facts, and their own knowledge of the public necessities.⁽¹⁷⁾

The sudden and astounding volume of this propaganda which flooded the country and found its way into every State in the South, coupled with the unpopularity of Abolitionism in the North, led many to the conclusion that the perpetrators must have been receiving funds from a source outside of the United States. As George Lunt pointed out, "Those who reflected upon the subject naturally looked over the water, where means were abundant and interests were engaged, to account for the supply of funds."⁽¹⁸⁾ That Abolitionism did not reflect the sentiments of the majority of the American people and that its rise in this country must have therefore been attributed, at least in part, to the influence and patronage of "emissaries from foreign parts," was suggested by President Andrew Jackson in his 7 December 1835 address to the Twenty-Fourth Congress:

I must also invite your attention to the painful excitements in the South by the attempts to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of slaves, in prints and in various sorts of publications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection, and to produce all the horrors of civil war.... It is fortunate for the country that the good sense, the generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of the people of the non-slaveholding States to the Union and their fellow-citizens of the same blood in the South, have given so strong and impressive a tone to the sentiments entertained against the proceedings of the misguided persons who have engaged in these unconstitutional and wicked attempts, and especially against the emissaries from foreign parts, who have dared to interfere in this matter, as to authorize the hope that these attempts will no longer be persisted in.... I would, therefore, call the special attention of Congress to the subject, and respectfully suggest the propriety of passing such a law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.⁽¹⁹⁾

Not only did the Abolitionists incur the wrath of their fellow countrymen and rebuke from the President of the United States, their agitation was also reprobated by many Northern political leaders, including some who themselves had no personal affinity for slavery. William L. Marcy, the Governor of New York from 1833 to 1839, made the following appeal to the State Legislature:

A few individuals in the Middle and Eastern States, acting on mistaken notions of moral and religious duty, or some less justifiable principle, and disregarding the obligations which they owe to the respective governments, have embarked in an enterprise for abolishing domestic slavery in the Southern and Southwestern States. Their proceedings have caused much mischief in those States, and have not been entirely harmless in our own. They have acquired too much importance by the evils which have already resulted from them, and by the magnitude and number of those which are likely to follow, if they are further persisted in, to justify me in passing them without notice. These proceedings have not only found no favor with the vast majority of our constituents, but they have been generally reprobated. The public indignation which they have awakened has broken over the restraints of law, and led to dangerous tumults and commotions, which, I regret to say, were not, in all instances, repressed without the interposition of military power. If we consider the excitement which already exists among our fellow-citizens on this subject, and their increasing repugnance to the abolition cause, we have great reason to fear that further efforts to sustain it will be attended, even in our own State, with still more dangerous disturbances of the public peace.
In our commercial metropolis, the abolitionists have established one of their principal magazines, from which they have sent their missiles of annoyance into the slaveholding States. The impression produced in those States, that this proceeding was encouraged by a portion of the business men of New York, or at least not sufficiently discouraged by them, threatened injurious consequences to our commerce. A proposition was made for an extensive voluntary association in the South, to suspend business intercourse with our citizens. A regard for the character of our State, for the public interest, for the preservation of peace among our citizens, as well as a due respect for the obligations created by our political institutions, call upon us to do what may be done, consistently with the great principles of civil liberty, to put an end to the evils which the abolitionists are bringing upon us and the whole country. With whatever disfavor we may view the institution of domestic slavery, we ought not to overlook the very formidable difficulties of abolishing it, or give countenance to any scheme for accomplishing this object, in violation of the solemn guarantees we are under, not to interfere with the institution as it exists in the States....
Slavery was not finally abolished here until 1827. We were left to come to this result in our own time and manner, without any molestation or interference from any other State. I am very sure that any intermeddling with us in this matter by the citizens of other States would not have accelerated our measures, and might have proved mischievous. Such services, if they had been tendered, would have been rejected as useless, and regarded as an invasion of our rights....
If the abolitionists design to enlist our passions in this cause, such a course would be worse than useless, unless it had reference to some subsequent action. If it is expected in this manner to influence the action of Congress, then they are aiming at a usurpation of power. Legislation by Congress would be a violation of the Constitution, by which that body exists, and to support which every member of it is bound by the solemn sanction of an oath. The powers of Congress cannot be enlarged so as to bring the subject of slavery within its cognizance, without the consent of the slaveholding States.... If their operations here are to inflame the fanatical zeal of emissaries, and instigate them to go on missions to the slaveholding States, there to distribute abolition publications and to promulgate abolition doctrines, their success in this enterprise is foretold by the fate of the deluded men who have preached them. The moment they pass the borders of those States, and begin their labors, they violate the laws of the jurisdiction they have invaded, and incur the penalty of death, or other ignominious punishment. I can conceive no other object that the abolitionists can have in view, so far as they propose to operate here, but to embark the people of this State, under the sanction of the civil authority, or with its connivance, in a crusade against the slaveholding States, for the purpose of forcing abolition upon them by violence and bloodshed. If such a mad project as this could be contemplated for a single moment, as a possible thing, every one must see that the first step toward its accomplishment would be the end of our Confederacy and the beginning of civil war. So far, then, as respects the people of this State, or any action that can emanate from them, I can discover no good that has resulted, or that can be reasonably expected to result from the proceedings of the abolitionists; but the train of evils that must necessarily attend their onward movement is in number and magnitude most appalling.⁽²⁰⁾

Edward Everett, Governor of Massachusetts from 1836 to 1840, likewise addressed his State's Legislature as follows:

The country has been greatly agitated during the past year in relation to slavery, and acts of illegal violence and outrage have grown out of the excitement kindled on this subject in different parts of the Union, which cannot be too strongly deplored, or too severely condemned. In this State, and several of our sister States, slavery has long been held in public estimation as an evil of the first magnitude. It was fully abolished in this Commonwealth in the year 1783, by decisions of the courts of justice, and by the interpretation placed on the declaration of equality in the bill of rights. But it existed in several of the States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and in a greater ratio to the free population of the country than at the present time. It was, however, deemed a point of the highest public policy by the non-slaveholding States, notwithstanding the existence of slavery in their sister States, to enter with them into the present Union on the basis of the constitutional compact. That no Union could have been formed on any other basis, is a fact of historical notoriety; and is asserted in terms by General Hamilton, in the reported debates of the New York Convention for adopting the Constitution. This compact expressly recognizes the existence of slavery, and concedes to the States where it prevails the most important rights and privileges connected with it. Every thing that tends to disturb the relations created by this compact is at war with its spirit; and whatever, by direct and necessary operation, is calculated to excite an insurrection among the slaves, has been held, by highly respectable legal authority, an offense against the peace of this Commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law. Although opinions may differ on this point, it would seem the safer course, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, to imitate the example of our fathers — the Adamses, the Hancocks, and other eminent patriots of the Revolution, who, although fresh from the battles of liberty, and approaching the question as essentially an open one, deemed it nevertheless expedient to enter into a union with our brothers of the slaveholding States, on the principles of forbearance and toleration on this subject. As the genius of our institutions and the character of our people are entirely repugnant to laws impairing the liberty of speech and of the press, even for the sake of repressing its abuses, the patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invoked to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave, and which, if not abandoned, there is great reason to fear will prove the rock on which the Union will split. Such a disastrous consummation, in addition to all its remediless political evils for every State in the Union, could scarcely fail, sooner or later, to bring on a war of extermination in the slaveholding States. On the contrary, a conciliatory forbearance with regard to this subject in the non-slaveholding States, would strengthen the hands of a numerous class of citizens of the South, who desire the removal of the evil; whose voice has often been heard for its abolition in legislative assemblies, but who are struck down and silenced by the agitation of the question abroad; and it would leave the whole painful subject where the Constitution leaves it, with the States where it exists, and in the hands of an all-wise Providence, who, in His own good time, is able to cause it to disappear, like the slavery of the ancient world, under the gradual operation of the gentle spirit of Christianity.⁽²¹⁾

On the floor of the United States Senate, John M. Niles of Connecticut said:

Abolitionism consists of two kinds: abolitionism of the old school, and abolitionism of the new school. The former amounts to nothing more than a rational wish and desire for the emancipation of all persons held in bondage, and a disposition to advance that object by the diffusion of knowledge and the progress of society. Of this kind of Abolitionists were Franklin and Jefferson; and there are many such at the North, and I presume at the South....
Very different from these are the abolitionists of the new school. What are their principles? I judge of them from their own publications, which I have examined. They propose an immediate abolition of slavery, and against the will of those interested in it. They, therefore, propose to abolish slavery by violence. And this they design to effect in communities where they do not reside, and have no interests or sympathies with the inhabitants. Whatever may be their intentions, no rational person can have a doubt that the scheme has a tendency to insurrection, massacre, and a servile war.
They regard slavery as a theological question. They say it is a sin and a moral evil in the sight of God and man, and ought to be eradicated from the earth; and that it cannot be wrong to remove an evil. They aver that they have nothing to do with the consequences.
Can men be sane who avow principles like these, who are pursuing an object having the most important bearing on the vital interests of society, which expose it to all the horrors of insurrection, massacre, and servile war, and yet declare that they have nothing to do with the consequences of their own acts? To call such men fanatics is too mild a term. I have no concern with their motives, but like all other moral agents, they must be held responsible for the natural and obvious consequences of their own acts. This principle, true in morals, is no less so in politics. Is it to be wondered at that a scheme, based on a total recklessness of consequences, should have excited the almost universal indignation of an intelligent and moral people? [emphasis in original].⁽²²⁾

Niles then presented the following resolutions which had the approval of the Governor of Connecticut:

Resolved, That in view of these obvious principles, it is a violation of the spirit of the Constitution for citizens of one State to enter into combinations (to give more energy to their efforts) for the avowed object of effecting a change in the institutions, laws, or social relations of the people of other States, who, as regards all such matters, are as independent communities as they would have been had they not entered into the Confederacy.
Resolved, That the conduct of the Abolition societies, in publishing and distributing in the slave-holding States in violation of their laws, newspapers, and pamphlets, the natural and obvious tendency of which is to excite insubordination and insurrection among the slaves, and expose the country to all the horrors of a servile war, is highly censurable, and cannot fail of meeting the reprobation of every friend of his country.⁽²³⁾

In a similar address before the Senate the following month, Thomas Ewing of Ohio, who, while voicing his opposition to slavery as "a great evil in any community," nevertheless denounced "those mad and reckless fanatics who attempt, by various devices, to excite insurrection among the slaves, and bring on all the horrors of a servile war."⁽²⁴⁾ Even the eminent Whig Henry Clay saw the dangers of Abolitionism to the peace of the country and warned with amazing accuracy of the national woes to come:

Abolitionism should no longer be regarded as an imaginary danger. The Abolitionists, let me suppose, succeeded in their present aim of uniting the inhabitants of the free States as one man against the inhabitants of the slave States. Union upon one side will beget union on the other, and this process of reciprocal consolidation will be attended with all the violent prejudices, embittered passions and implacable animosities, which ever degraded or deformed human nature.... One section will stand in menacing and hostile array against the other. The collisions of opinion will be quickly followed by the clash of arms. I will not attempt to describe scenes which now happily lie concealed from our view. Abolitionists themselves would shrink back in dismay and horror at the contemplation of desolated fields, conflagrated cities, murdered inhabitants, and the overthrow of the fairest fabric of human government that ever rose to animate the hopes of civilized man.⁽²⁵⁾

Abolitionist Agitation Inflames Sectional Strife
Whether one chooses to view the institution of slavery, as it existed at one time in every American State, and as it continued to exist in the Southern and Border States up to the close of the war, as inherently righteous or wicked, or a mixture of both, is really irrelevant to the present discussion. That the Constitution both recognized and protected property in slaves was openly acknowledged by all, with the exception of a handful of misinformed fanatics and incompetent legal dabblers.⁽²⁶⁾ For example, Benjamin F. Butler, a Massachusetts attorney who later served as a Major-General in the Northern army during the War Between the States and as the military-governor of Virginia during Reconstruction, enumerated the clauses in the Constitution which covered the institution with the protective shield of the Union, and noted:

Without these recognitions of the institution of slavery, as established by the laws of the various States, the Constitution could not have been adopted. These provisions convinced me as a lawyer that the right of the people of any State to hold slaves, where the institution was established by law, was clearly a Constitutional right, and that nothing could be done by any State to interfere with that right in any other State without a violation of the Constitution; and, of course, anything done to take away that class of property by State or nation, from the owner, was in violation of the Constitution.⁽²⁷⁾

Every office-holder in the country, whether State or federal, was thus duty-bound to uphold and defend the Constitution in its entirety upon the commencement of his duties. He could not disregard or fail to execute any provision of that document without violating his oath of office and perjuring himself, nor could he attempt to use his office to change any provision thereof without incurring the just opprobrium of usurper.
From the standpoint of honorable statesmanship, a lawful method had been provided by the framers in Article Five for alteration in the Government's charter should it be found defective at any point. In his farewell address, George Washington had explicitly warned his fellow countrymen not to depart from this lawful amendment process, and to stand ever vigilant against usurpations of the powers of government by factious and self-serving parties:

If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.

The Abolitionists of New England had at their disposal a free press through which to engage in a calm and reasoned debate with their slave-holding brethren on the merits or demerits of the "peculiar institution." Instead, they abused this vehicle and used Harriet Beecher Stowe believed her book was dictated to her by God.

Harriet Beecher Stowe believed her book was dictated to her by God.

it to stir up the indignation and suspicion of the Southern people, thereby removing the debate from its lawful and intellectual moorings, and setting it adrift in the turbulent sea of lawlessness and fanaticism. Few in the North had ever witnessed slavery first-hand,⁽²⁸⁾ and many merely concluded on its barbarity from Theodore Dwight Weld's 1839 book American Slavery As It Is,⁽²⁹⁾ which was itself based entirely on random newspaper clippings culled from Southern newspapers over a six month period.⁽³⁰⁾ Harriet Beecher Stowe's fictional novel Uncle Tom's Cabin,⁽³¹⁾ which was acclaimed in advertisements throughout the North as "the Greatest Book of the Age" and is still required reading in many public schools today, relied heavily on American Slavery As It Is⁽³²⁾ to spin a "florid romance"⁽³³⁾ of a Kentucky slave who is separated from his family and sold to and finally murdered by an abusive master. Despite her heavy dependence on the "research" of Theodore Weld, Mrs. Stowe was nevertheless convinced that the text of her own book had been dictated to her by God Himself.
Perhaps the crowning achievement of the Abolitionists' literary assault upon the peace of the Southern States, and that of the country as a whole, was Hinton Helper's 1857 book entitled, The Impending Crisis of the South. The following is but a sample of the defamatory and antagonistic nature of this book which will show why it was banned in many parts of the South:

It is against slavery on the whole, and against slaveholders as a body, that we wage an exterminating war. Those persons who, under the infamous slave-laws of the South — laws which have been correctly spoken of as a "disgrace to civilization," and which must be annulled simultaneously with the abolition of slavery — have had the vile institution entailed on them contrary to their wills, are virtually on our side; we may, therefore, very properly strike them off from the black list of three hundred and forty-seven thousand slaveholders, who, as a body, have shocked the civilized world with their barbarous conduct, and from whose conceited and presumptuous ranks are selected the officers who do all the legislation, town, county, state and national, for (against) five millions of poor outraged whites, and three millions of enslaved negroes.
Non-slaveholders of the South! farmers, mechanics and workingmen, we take this occasion to assure you that the slaveholders, the arrogant demagogues whom you have elected to offices of honor and profit, have hoodwinked you, trifled with you, and used you as mere tools for the consummation of their wicked designs. They have purposely kept you in ignorance, and have, by moulding your passions and prejudices to suit themselves, induced you to act in direct opposition to your dearest rights and interests. By a system of the grossest subterfuge and misrepresentation, and in order to avert, for a season, the vengeance that will most assuredly overtake them ere long, they have taught you to hate the abolitionists, who are your best and only true friends. Now, as one of your own number, we appeal to you to join us in our patriotic endeavors to rescue the generous soil of the South from the usurped and desolating control of these political vampires. Once and forever, at least so far as this country is concerned, the infernal question of slavery must be disposed of; a speedy and perfect abolishment of the whole institution is the true policy of the South — and this is the policy which we propose to pursue. Will you aid us, will you assist us, will you be freemen, or will you be slaves? These are questions of vital importance; weigh them well in your minds; come to a prudent and firm decision, and hold yourselves in readiness to act in accordance therewith. You must either be for us or against us — anti-slavery or pro-slavery; it is impossible for you to occupy a neutral ground; it is as certain as fate itself, that if you do not voluntarily oppose the usurpations and outrages of the slavocrats, they will force you into involuntary compliance with their infamous measures. Consider well the aggressive, fraudulent and despotic power which they have exercised in the affairs of Kansas; and remember that, if, by adhering to erroneous principles of neutrality or non-resistance, you allow them to force the curse of slavery on that vast and fertile field, the broad area of all the surrounding States and Territories — the whole nation, in fact — will soon fall a prey to their diabolical intrigues and machinations. Thus, if you are not vigilant, will they take advantage of your neutrality, and make you and others the victims of their inhuman despotism....
As a striking illustration of the selfish and debasing influences which slavery exercises over the hearts and minds of slaveholders themselves, we will here state the fact that, when we, the non-slaveholders, remonstrate against the continuance of such a manifest wrong and inhumanity — a system of usurpation and outrage so obviously detrimental to our interests — they fly into a terrible passion, exclaiming, among all sorts of horrible threats, which are not unfrequently executed, "It's none of your business!" — meaning to say thereby that their slaves do not annoy us, that slavery affects no one except the masters and their chattels personal, and that we should give ourselves no concern about it, whatever! To every man of common sense and honesty of purpose the preposterousness of this assumption is so evident, that any studied attempt to refute it would be a positive insult. Would it be none of our business, if they were to bring the small-pox into the neighborhood, and, with premeditated design, let "foul contagion spread?" Or, if they were to throw a pound of strychnine into a public spring, would that be none of our business? Were they to turn a pack of mad dogs loose on the community, would we be performing the part of good citizens by closing ourselves within doors for the space of nine days, saying nothing to anybody? Small-pox is a nuisance; strychnine is a nuisance; mad dogs are a nuisance; slavery is a nuisance; slaveholders are a nuisance, and so are slave-breeders; it is our business, nay, it is our imperative duty, to abate nuisances; we propose, therefore, with the exception of strychnine, which is the least of all these nuisances, to exterminate this catalogue from beginning to end....
We contend that slaveholders are more criminal than common murderers.... Against this army for the defense and propagation of slavery, we think it will be an easy matter — independent of the negroes, who, in nine cases out of ten, would be delighted with an opportunity to cut their masters' throats, and without accepting of a single recruit from either of the free States, England, France or Germany — to muster one at least three times as large, and far more respectable for its utter extinction. We hope, however, and believe, that the matter in dispute may be adjusted without arraying these armies against each other in hostile attitude. We desire peace, not war — justice, not blood. Give us fair-play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box, not on the battle-ground — by force of reason, not by force of arms. But we are wedded to one purpose from which no earthly power can ever divorce us. We are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards — in defiance of all the opposition, of whatever nature, which it is possible for the slavocrats to bring against us. Of this they may take due notice, and govern themselves accordingly....
Henceforth, Sirs, we are demandants, not suppliants. We demand our rights, nothing more, nothing less. It is for you to decide whether we are to have justice peaceably or by violence, for whatever consequences may follow, we are determined to have it one way or the other. Do you aspire to become the victims of white non-slaveholding vengeance by day, and of barbarous massacre by the negroes at night? Would you be instrumental in bringing upon yourselves, your wives, and your children, a fate too horrible to contemplate? Shall history cease to cite, as an instance of unexampled cruelty, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, because the world — the South — shall have furnished a more direful scene of atrocity and carnage? Sirs, we would not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads; but we have endured long, we have endured much; slaves only of the most despicable class would endure more. An enumeration or classification of all the abuses, insults, wrongs, injuries, usurpations, and oppressions, to which you have subjected us, would fill a larger volume than this; it is our purpose, therefore, to speak only of those that affect us most deeply. Out of our effects you have long since overpaid yourselves for your negroes; and now, Sirs, you must emancipate them — speedily emancipate them, or we will emancipate them for you! Every non-slaveholder in the South is, or ought to be, and will be, against you. You yourselves ought to join us at once in our laudable crusade against "the mother of harlots" [emphasis in original].⁽³⁴⁾

The Republicans in Congress, who, in the election of 1858, had nearly doubled in number from the previous election, not only endorsed a later abridged edition of this book, but also paid for the free circulation of one hundred thousand copies throughout the Northern States.⁽³⁵⁾ Of course, Helper's views were not unique, but had become standard Republican doctrine. For example, Joshua Giddings of Ohio had openly advocated servile insurection in the House of Representatives three years before the publication of The Impending Crisis:

...I see the destiny of this nation wielded by that "higher law".... Sir, it is that higher law that is rolling on the North... which is manifested in ten thousand public meetings throughout the land of the free... which is manifested in the pulpit and on the stump... which must and will shape the destiny of this nation: before that we must bow for it is the voice of God uttered through his people. Sir, we are a people who pray before we fight, and when we have said our prayers and put on our armor, then our enemies had better stand aside than meet us....
When the contest shall come; when the thunder shall roll and the lightning flash; when the slaves shall rise in the South; when, in imitation of the Cuban bondmen, the southern slaves of the South shall feel they are men; when they feel the stirring emotion of immortality, and recognize the stirring truth that they are men, and entitled to the rights which God has bestowed upon them; when the slaves shall feel that, and when masters shall turn pale and tremble when their dwellings shall smoke, and dismay sit on each countenance, then, sir, I do not say "we will laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh," but I do say, when that time shall come, the lovers of our race will stand forth, and exert the legitimate powers of this Government for freedom. We shall then have constitutional power to act for the good of our country, and do justice to the slave. Then shall we strike off the shackles from the limbs of the slaves. That will be a period when this Government will have the power to act between slavery and freedom.... And let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that that time hastens. It is rolling forward.... I hail it as I do the approaching dawn of that political and moral millennium which I am well assured will come upon the world.⁽³⁶⁾

William O. Duvall had these words to say when he was invited to address a Republican convention in New York: "I sincerely hope that a civil war may soon burst upon the country. I want to see American Slavery abolished in my day — it is a legacy I have no wish to leave my children.... and when the time arrives for the streets and cities of this "land of the free and home of the brave" to run with blood to the horses' bridles, if the writer of this be living, there will be one heart to rejoice at the retributive justice of heaven."⁽³⁷⁾ At an Abolitionist meeting in Natick, Massachusetts, this resolution was passed: "Whereas, Resistance to tyrants is obedience to GOD; Resolved, That it is the right and duty of slaves to resist their masters, and the right and duty of the people of the North to incite them to resistance, and to aid them in it!" [emphasis in original]⁽³⁸⁾ In a similar vein, Theodore Parker, an influential Abolitionist of Boston, contributed the following postulates to the New York Tribune:

1st. A man held against his will, as a slave, has a natural right to kill any one who seeks to prevent his enjoyment of liberty.
2d. It may be a natural duty of a slave to develop this natural right in a practical manner, and actually kill those who seek to prevent his enjoyment of liberty.
3d. The freeman has a natural right to help the slaves to recover their liberty, and in that enterprise to do for them all which they have a right to do for themselves.
4th. It may be a natural charity for the freeman to help the slaves to the enjoyment of their liberty, and as a means to that end, to aid them in killing all such as oppose their natural freedom.
5th. The performance of this duty is to be controlled by the freeman's power to help [emphasis in original].⁽³⁹⁾

William H. Seward, who would later receive appointment as Secretary of State in Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet, declared The Impending Crisis to be "a work of great merit; rich, yet accurate in statistical information, and logical in analogies," and predicted that "it will exert a great influence on the public mind, in favor of truth and justice."⁽⁴⁰⁾ In his famous speech, delivered at Rochester, New York on 25 October 1858, Seward announced, "It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.... I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward."⁽⁴¹⁾ Referring to this revolution in another speech in the Senate, he threatened the Southern people with these words: "Free labor has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its power, its destiny, and is organizing itself to assume the government of the Republic. It will meet you everywhere, in the Territories and out of them, wherever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in California and in Kansas. It will invade you soon in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas.... The invasion will be not merely harmless, but beneficial if you yield seasonably to its just and moderate demands...."⁽⁴²⁾ In other words, this leading Northern spokesman was giving Southerners a choice between submission without complaint to a flagrant violation of the Constitution and humiliating subordination to a revolutionary faction or standing firmly on their constitutional rights as sovereign States and facing armed invasion and promised genocide. Nothing less than the personal honor of the Southern people was the sacrifice demanded of them by their Northern confederates in exchange for peace.

John Brown, the Abolitionists' Angel of Death

The grim figure of the political assassin has haunted the lives and deranged the plans of governments throughout history. Although often described as a person of uncertain mental balance, the assassin in real life has, more often, been a person of at least ordinary intelligence who believes that the trend of events can only be changed by the death of an important figure.... Political assassins desire not simply to murder, but also to attract attention — to incite and terrify as many people as possible.
In the late 1850s a new type of political assassin appeared in the United States. He did not murder the mighty — but the obscure. He did not pursue officials, or leaders, or persons in the public eye; he murdered at random — among the innocent. Yet his purposes were the same as those of his classic predecessors: to force the nation into a new political pattern by creating terror.⁽⁴³⁾

With the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, and the serial sniper attacks in and around Washington, D.C. in late 2002, modern John Brown, the cold-blooded murderer who was idolized by the Abolitionists.

John Brown, the cold-blooded murderer who was idolized by the Abolitionists.

Americans have become well-acquainted with the stark reality of religious terrorism. However, this kind of terrorism is nothing new to American soil, and one such killer in particular, though the equal of any Muslim extremist in his fanaticism and savagery, is nevertheless lauded by many ignorant souls today as a hero and a champion of human rights. In May of 1856, the infamous John Brown, with the financial backing of six notable Republican leaders — Theodore Parker, Samuel Gridley Howe, George Luther Stearns, Franklin B. Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson⁽⁴⁴⁾ — embarked on a killing spree, beginning in the Kansas Territory⁽⁴⁵⁾ and terminating in his capture at Harper's Ferry, Virginia and his subsequent execution for treason against the State at Charles Town on 2 December 1859. The purpose of Brown's campaign was to serve as "a Free State warning to the pro-slavery forces that it was to be a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye... so far as one wing of the Free State party was concerned."⁽⁴⁶⁾ Brown, who believed that it was "better that a whole generation should pass off the earth, men, women, and children — by a violent death"⁽⁴⁷⁾ than that slavery should continue to exist, hoped to provoke the massive slave uprising throughout the South threatened, not only in the Helper book, but by numerous political and religious leaders in the North, whereby hundreds of thousands would be sacrificed upon the altar of Abolitionism.⁽⁴⁸⁾ According to Stephen Douglas, Brown's crime was the "logical, inevitable result of the doctrines... of the Republican party."⁽⁴⁹⁾ Brown biographer, Richard J. Hinton wrote:

All over the North, especially in the more active centres of Republican political activity, John Brown found friendly sympathizers, a good deal of verbal encouragement, and a small degree of pecuniary assistance. Yet no one who came in close contact with him could doubt that he held firmly to a grim purpose, and that at some day, not far distant, he would probably be heard from by way of a direct attack on slavery.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Brown was eulogized after his death by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and other leading Abolitionists as "the saint" whose execution made "the gallows as glorious as the cross,"⁽⁵¹⁾ "an angel of light,"⁽⁵²⁾ "the John the Baptist of the new dispensation of freedom,"⁽⁵³⁾ and the "Lord High Admiral of the Almighty with his commission to sink every pirate he meets on God's ocean of the nineteenth century."⁽⁵⁴⁾ It was also confidently asserted that "the Almighty would welcome him home in Heaven," and "John Brown has gone to Heaven."⁽⁵⁵⁾ E.D. Wheelock, a Unitarian minister in Dover, New Hampshire, preached these words from his pulpit in anticipation of the execution of Brown:

One such man makes total depravity impossible, and proves that American greatness died not with Washington! The gallows from which he ascends into Heaven, will be in our politics, what the cross is in our religion — the sign and symbol of supreme self-devotedness — and from his sacrificial blood, the temporal salvation of four millions of our people shall yet spring! On the second day of December he is to be strangled in a Southern prison, for obeying the Sermon on the Mount. But, to be hanged in Virginia, is like being crucified in Jerusalem — it is the last tribute which he pays to Virtue! [emphasis in original]⁽⁵⁶⁾

Wendell Phillips declared, "[John Brown] refused to regard anything as government, or any statute as law, except those which conformed to his own sense of justice and right...." and for that "virtue," Phillips admonished his listeners to be "reverently grateful for the privilege of living in a world rendered noble by the daring of heroes, the suffering of martyrs — among whom let none doubt that history will accord an honorable niche to old John Brown."⁽⁵⁷⁾ The New York Tribune of 2 December 1859 likewise exuded religious adoration for the dead terrorist:

While the responsive heart of the North has been substantially sympathizing with the one [John Brown] whom they admire and venerate, and love, the great soul itself has passed away into eternal heavens. During the eighteen centuries which have passed, no such character has appeared anywhere. The galleries of the resounding ages echo with no footfall mightier than the martyr of to-day. He has gone. Efforts to save him were fruitless. Prayers were unavailing. He stood before his murderers defiantly, asking no mercy.
Bewildered not and daunted not, the shifting scenes of his life's drama, at the last, brought to him neither regrets nor forebodings. Having finished the work which God had given him to do, this apostle of a new dispensation, in imitation of the Divine, received with fortitude his baptism of blood! And this beholding, the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of the throne of God, this last of Christian martyrs stepped proudly and calmly upon the scaffold, and thence upward into the embrace of angels, and into the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, whose names are written in heaven.⁽⁵⁸⁾

In 1860, The Public Life of Captain John Brown was authored by Brown confidant James Redpath and published in Boston by the Unitarian firm of Thayer and Eldridge. John Brown as he was led to the gallows.

John Brown as he was led to the gallows.

In the advertisement for the book, the Abolitionist publishers praised Redpath, "whose previous life had been so identified in feeling and character with the career of the sainted hero," and the author openly declared that he "endorsed John Brown" and "his scheme of emancipation." Chapter One of this book, entitled "December 2, 1859" — a reference to the day of Brown's execution — contained the following text: "To-day John Brown was hanged by a semi-barbarous Commonwealth, as a traitor, murderer, and robber, and fifteen despotic States are rejoicing at his death; while, in the free North, every noble heart is sighing at his fate, or admiring his devotion... or cursing the executioners of their warrior-saint."⁽⁵⁹⁾ Redpath then proceeded to tell his readers to expect yet another insurrection which would complete the work left unfinished by Brown.
The well-known painting of John Brown pausing in his walk to the gallows to kiss a Black infant held forth by an adoring slave woman, was typical of the worship that was bestowed upon this convicted felon in the North. The lyrics "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave" were written to the tune of an old Methodist hymn and were frequently heard sung by Northern troops as they later perpetuated Brown's mission of destruction and murder in the South. Eventually, Julia Ward Howe, wife of Abolitionist and Brown supporter Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, wrote what is now known as the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to this tune — a song which speaks of the building of an altar to the god of war, whose "fiery gospel" is "writ in burnished rows of steel," and of the messianic role of the Northern Army in "crush[ing] the serpent" — the Southern Confederacy — and "trampling out the vintage [blood] where the grapes of wrath [Southern Whites] are stored."⁽⁶⁰⁾
In a strange twist of irony, the man so idolized by the Republican party and the Northern troops, had killed numerous innocent citizens in a then-Union State and had attacked United States property, killing a United States marine, while the man in command of the troops sent to Harper's Ferry to suppress the rebellion, was none other than the future Confederate General, Robert Edward Lee.

The Radicals Seek a Dissolution of the Union
The secession movement of 1860-1861, though actually carried out by the Southern States, was, in fact, the result of the efforts of a Northern faction which had screamed for a dissolution of the Union as early as 1796, during the War of 1812, again at the annexation of Texas in 1845,⁽⁶¹⁾ and which finally organized itself as the inappropriately named Republican party in 1854, calling for a bloody separation of the New England States from the South. In a letter written on 20 December 1860 — the same day that South Carolina William Lloyd Garrison, the Republican newspaper editor who hated slavery, the Constitution, and the Union.

William Lloyd Garrison, the Republican newspaper editor who hated slavery, the Constitution, and the Union.

declared her independence from the United States of America — Stephen Douglas noted, "Many of the Republican leaders desire a dissolution of the Union, and urge war as a means of accomplishing disunion."⁽⁶²⁾ The supporting evidence for this assertion is shockingly abundant. At a Republican convention held in 1856 in Boston, Massachusetts, the following resolution was passed: "Resolved... That this movement [Abolitionism] does not merely seek disunion, but the more perfect union of free States by the expulsion of the slave States from the Confederation, in which they have ever been an element of discourd, danger, and disgrace."⁽⁶³⁾ Yet another Republican convention, held that same year in Monroe, Wisconsin, passed this resolution: "Resolved, That it is the duty of the North, in case we fail in electing a President and Congress that will restore freedom [Abolitionism] to Kansas, to revolutionize the Government."⁽⁶⁴⁾ When Lincoln issued his presidential proclamation of 30 March 1863, which appointed a day of prayer and fasting for "the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country, to its former condition of unity and peace," the editors of the Boston Commonwealth responded, "Our own opinion is, that if God had resolved not to pardon us at all, he would prove it by allowing the restoration of that old 'unity of peace.' That unity was crime; that peace worse than war! May the tongue be withered, ere it is answered, that prays for a restoration of that old state of things, from which God in His mercy seems willing to rescue us — than which His fiercest wrath could find no more terrible doom, for a blind nation, led by blind rulers!"⁽⁶⁵⁾ The True American, another Republican periodical, sneered, "This twaddle about the Union and its preservation is too silly and sickening for any good effect."⁽⁶⁶⁾ In 1854, Horace Greeley published in the New York Tribune this insurrectionary poem entitled "The American Flag":

All hail the flaunting lie!
The stars look pale and dim;
The stripes are bloody sores —
A lie the vaunting hymn!

It shields a pirate's deck!
It binds a man in chains!
It yokes the captive's neck,
And wipes the bloody stains!

Tear down the flaunting lie;
Half-mast the starry flag;
Insult no sunny sky
With hate's polluted rag!

Destroy it, ye who can;
Deep sink it in the waves:
It bears a fellow man,
To groan with fellow slaves!

Furl, furl the boasted lie!
Till Freedom lives again,
To rule once more in truth,
Among untrammeled men!

Roll up the starry sheen,
Conceal its bloody stains,
For in its folds are seen
The stamp of rustling chains! [emphasis in original]⁽⁶⁷⁾

It is obvious that the Republican party had begun to wage a political war against the flag of the United States long before Southerners ever opened fire on Fort Sumter. The public statements of individual Republican Abolitionists were no less clear in their desire to see the Union destroyed. For example, Frederick Douglass, the former slave and fanatical Abolitionist, openly declared, "From this time forth I consecrate the labor of my life to the dissolution of the Union, and I care not whether the bolt that rends it shall come from heaven or from hell!"⁽⁶⁸⁾ William Lloyd Garrison declared, "I have said, and I say again, that in proportion to the growth of disunionism, will be the growth of Republicanism...."⁽⁶⁹⁾ and:

The Union is a lie. The American Union is sham — an imposture — a covenant with death — an agreement with hell and it is our business to call for a dissolution.... I will continue to experiment no longer — it is all madness. Let the Slave-Holding Union go, and Slavery will go down with the Union to the dust. If the Church is against disunion, and not on the side of the Slave, then I pronounce it as of the devil. I say, let us cease striking hands with thieves and adulterers, and give to the winds the rallying cry, "No Union with Slave-Holders, socially or religiously, and up with the flag of disunion."⁽⁷⁰⁾

He further stated, "There is but one honest, straightforward course to pursue if we would see the slave power overthrown — the Union must be dissolved."⁽⁷¹⁾
Wendell Phillips' sentiments were the same:

No man has a right to be surprised at this state of things [the brewing hostilities between North and South]. It is just what we abolitionists and disunionists have attempted to bring about. There is merit in the Republican party. It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country. It does not know its own face, but calls itself national; but it is not national — it is sectional. The Republican party is a party of the North pledged against the South....
I have labored nineteen years to take fifteen States out of the Union; and if I have spent any nineteen years to the satisfaction of my Puritan conscience, it was those nineteen years [emphasis in original].⁽⁷²⁾

Even during the war itself, at a time when Northern Democrats such as Clement Vallandigham were suffering arbitrary arrest and imprisonment for their "treasonous" sentiments,⁽⁷³⁾ the Republicans did not attempt to conceal their dream of the Union's downfall. In a letter to the Boston Liberator, Phillips wrote, "The disunion we sought was one which should be begun by the North on principle.... The North had a right of revolution — the right to break the Union."⁽⁷⁴⁾ In April of 1862, Parker Pillsbury declared publicly, "I do not wish to see this government prolonged another day in the present form. I have been for twenty years attempting to overthrow the present dynasty. The Constitution never was so much an engine of cruelty and crime as at the present hour. I am not rejoiced at the tidings of victory to the northern arms; I would far rather see defeat."⁽⁷⁵⁾ The following resolution was adopted on 16 May 1862 by the Anti-Slavery Society of Essex County, Massachusetts: "Resolved, That the war as hitherto prosecuted, is but a wanton waste of property, a dreadful sacrifice of life, and worse than all, of conscience and of character, to preserve and perpetuate a Union and Constitution which should never have existed, and which, by all the laws of justice and humanity, should in their present form, be at once and forever overthrown."⁽⁷⁶⁾
From the beginning, it had been the motto of those who organized the Republican party that "secession from the Government is a religious and political duty."⁽⁷⁷⁾ It was not long before dissolution of the Union and the subsequent war against the South which they envisioned began to be couched in terms of a cosmic struggle between Frederick Douglass, the fanatical Abolitionist who consecrated his life to the dissolution of the Union.

Frederick Douglass, the fanatical Abolitionist who consecrated his life to the dissolution of the Union.

light and darkness, and it was customary for Abolitionists to refer to themselves as "Ambassadors of the Creator to establish His Higher Law."⁽⁷⁸⁾ In his book, The Higher Law, William Hosmer wrote, "Men have no right to make a constitution which sanctions slavery, and it is the imperative duty of all good men to break it, when made.... The fact that a law is constitutional amounts to nothing, unless it is also pure; it must harmonize with the law of God, or be set at naught by all upright men."⁽⁷⁹⁾ The previously quoted Helper book boldly declared, "Not to be an abolitionist is to be a willful and diabolical instrument of the devil."⁽⁸⁰⁾ At a Republican meeting in New York on 15 May 1857, Unitarian minister Andrew T. Forbes said, "There never has been an hour when this blasphemous and infamous Union should have been made, and now the hour has to be prayed for when it shall be dashed to pieces forever! I hate the Union!"⁽⁸¹⁾ Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the New England Unitarian minister who conspired with John Brown in 1857 and who would later exchange his clerical robes for a commission as Colonel of a Black regiment, had voiced his desire to see the country plunged into bloody conflict, stating that he wanted to "involve every State in the war that is to be."⁽⁸²⁾
Historian Witt Bowden correctly described the fanatical mindset of the Abolitionists with these words:

The origin of the spirit of coercion was not at Fort Sumter. Its origin was in the bitter zeal of righteous men. These men commonly belonged to a well-known type. With them, everything is idealized as good or bad. Their happiness, their sense of their own significance, is in identifying the good with their own ideas and convictions, and in destroying whatever fails to conform thereto. To them, slavery was bad in some unique and Satannic sense.... They were denied the spiritual exaltation of earlier men of their type in burning witches and heretics. But men of this type in every generation must have some means of self-expression, and that generation found a furious pleasure in assailing distant slave-holders. In their delusion of unselfish devotion to the good, men of the type persist in serving at all costs their own sense of identity with the good, their own sense of superiority and significance. It never occurs to them that the method of destroying what they assume to be bad may have more badness in it than the thing destroyed. Nor do they readily realize that the attainment of desirable ends may be retarded rather than promoted by stigmatizing opponents with evil motives and by antagonizing them with threats of coercion.⁽⁸³⁾

This "avenging force of puritanism in politics,"⁽⁸⁴⁾ used as a cover for rampant lawlessness, was appalling to the people of the South, whose section of the country was dominated by the influences of orthodox Christianity. However, it was very appealing to the ever-growing number of Unitarian Abolitionists in the Northeast, who had only to be given the political opportunity to openly manifest the rebellion against a biblical worldview and social system which had already captivated their own unregenerate hearts.⁽⁸⁵⁾ The revolutionary doctrines espoused by the Republican party are the context outside of which the events of 1860 onward cannot be properly understood. War was not begun against the South, nor was it ever carried on thereafter, with the mere emancipation of the Southern slaves in view; emancipation of the slaves was only eventually used as a means to achieve the desired end of winning the war. The "party of Lincoln" was clearly bent on a separation of the States from its very formation in 1854 and only abandoned this agenda in favor of "preserving the Union" when its members perceived the wealth and power to be harvested from the destruction and subjugation of a militarily inferior South.
We close this chapter with the following observations of Jefferson Davis, delivered to the people of New York City on 19 October 1858:

You have among you politicians of a philosophic turn, who preach a high morality; a system of which they are the discoverers.... They say, it is true the Constitution dictates this, the Bible inculcates that; but there is a higher law than those, and they call upon you to obey that higher law of which they are the inspired givers. Men who are traitors to the compact of their fathers — men who have perjured the oaths they have themselves taken... these are the moral law-givers who proclaim a higher law than the Bible, the Constitution, and the laws of the land.... These higher law preachers should be tarred and feathered, and whipped by those they have thus instigated.... The man who... preaches treason to the Constitution and the dictates of all human society, is a fit object for a Lynch law that would be higher than any he could urge.⁽⁸⁶⁾

Endnotes

1. J.A. Roebuck, quoted by the London Times, 10 June 1865; cited in Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 87.

2. Testimony of Sidney E. Morse, Esq. of New York regarding a conversation between himself and Aaron Legget on the subject of the motives behind British abolition of slavery in the West Indies; quoted by Horton, History of the Great Civil War, page 39; also cited by Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 80.

3. John C. Calhoun, letter to William R. King, 12 August 1844; in Robert L. Meriwether (editor), The Papers of John C. Calhoun (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1959), Volume XIX, pages 574-576.

4. Clement Laird Vallandigham, speech delivered Dayton, Ohio, 29 October 1855; in Vallandigham, Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War (Columbus, Ohio: J. Walter & Co., 1863), pages 19, 20-21.

5. Jefferson, letter to Governor Langdon; quoted by Horton, History of the Great Civil War, page 41.

6. Resolutions of the Ohio Democratic Convention, 8 January 1840; quoted by Vallandigham, Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War, page 23.

7. Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (Chicago, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1996), page 21.

8. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 70.

9. Circulation of The Liberator never exceeded 3,000 (William C. Davis, Brother Against Brother: The War Begins (Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1983), page 62.

10. William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, 1 January 1831, page 1.

11. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 109.

12. Garrison, statement made in the House of Representatives on 9 March 1836; quoted by Lunt, ibid., page 108.

13. Abraham Lincoln was reportedly a subscriber to The Liberator during his tenure as President, and yet Garrison was never arrested as an enemy to the Union nor even reprimanded for his treasonous sentiments.

14. John West Moore, The American Congress: A History of National Legislation and Political Events, 1774-1895 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1895), page 336.

15. Ewing, Northern Rebellion, pages 261-262.

16. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 97. Not coincidentally, this was when laws began to appear on the statute books of some Southern States forbidding slaves to be taught to read.

17. Amos Kendall, Report on the Delivery of Abolition Materials in the Southern States (1835), House Documents (Twenty-Fourth Congress, First Session), Appendix, page 9.

18. Lunt, Origin of the Late War, page 92.

19. Andrew Jackson, 7 December 1835 address to Congress; in James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1897), Volume III, page 175.

20. William L. Marcy, speech delivered to the New York Legislature in January, 1836; quoted by Lunt, Origin of the Late War, pages 99-100.

21. Edward Everett, address to the Massachusetts State Legislature in January, 1836; quoted by Lunt, ibid., pages 101-102.

22. John M. Niles, speech delivered in the Senate on 15 February 1836; in Congressional Globe (Twenty-Fourth Congress, First Session), pages 115-124.

23. Niles, ibid., page 125.

24. Thomas Ewing, speech delivered in the Senate on 8 March 1836; in ibid., page 220.

25. Henry Clay, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 48.

26. Lysander Spooner, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Bela Marsh, Publisher, 1846). In this attempted legal brief, Spooner, an obscure and ill-trained lawyer from Boston, attempted to prove that the Declaration of Independence abolished slavery in the original thirteen States, that the "persons held to labor" under the Constitution were not slaves, but indentured servants or apprentices, and that the framers by their refusal to use the word "slave" in the document evidenced that they did not intend the federal Government to protect that species of property. It was Spooner's hope to have slavery abolished by judicial action, and in this goal, he was strongly opposed by other prominent Abolitionists, such as Wendell Phillips, who saw it rather as a subject requiring political agitation for new legislation, or, should such agitation fail to produce the desired result, the dissolution of the Union.
Spooner's work on slavery was just another in a string of failed literary endeavors, and might never have been completed at all had he not solicited and obtained the financial aid of Gerrit Smith, a wealthy upstate New York Abolitionist to whom the reader will be introduced shortly. Once published, the pamphlet attracted the praise of only the most fanatical within the anti-slavery movement, of which William Lloyd Garrison was the most notable, but was largely ignored when it was not being soundly refuted. In his response to The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, Wendell Phillips criticized Spooner for advocating "practical no-governmentism" and for encouraging "every one to do what is right in his own eyes" (Review of Lysander Spooner's Essay on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery [Boston: Andrews and Prentiss, 1847], page 10). Indeed, Spooner insisted in his pamphlet that "the whole object of legislation is to overturn natural law, and substitute for it the arbitrary will of power; to destroy men's rights" (page 142), and he criticized the notions that "first, that government must be sustained whether it administers justice or injustice; and, second, that its commands must be called law, whether they really are law or not" (page 144). Spooner's entire career as a writer consisted of one denunciation of governmental authority after another. The unsoundness of his thinking was aptly demonstrated by his appeal to the Constitution in order to attack slavery in his 1846 pamphlet and his later attack on the Constitution itself as having "no authority or obligation at all" in his pamphlet entitled, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (Boston: Self-Published, 1870).
It should be noted that Spooner was also openly anti-religion, and specifically anti-Christian, in his sentiments, basing his attacks upon slavery entirely upon humanistic rationalism and egalitarianism. On this point, he was much more consistent than most other Abolitionists, who chose to retain a veneer of religious rhetoric in their agitation against the institution. Spooner's claim that the phrase "We the People" in the preamble to the Constitution identified the ordaining power behind the "nation" as all those who were born and living within the United States, regardless of race, color, or gender, was later used as the foundation of the so-called "Fourteenth Amendment" of 1868 and eventually the women's suffrage movement. His arguments in favor of the sovereignty of the individual and the supremacy of his "natural rights" over all forms of legislative restraint were also very similar, if not identical, to the anarchistic ideals advanced by many today in the so-called "Patriot" movement.

27. Benjamin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler (Boston: A.M. Thayer and Company, 1892), Volume I, page 129.

28. Boston Abolitionist Nehemiah Adams was one of the few exceptions. His three-month sojourn among the slaveholders in South Carolina in 1854 resulted in the writing of his book, Southside View of Slavery, in which he, though remaining anti-slavery in principle, concluded that, far from being his oppressor, the ante-bellum South was the only true benefactor the Negro ever had. He also warned his Northern brethren that a continued assault upon the South's "peculiar institution" would lead to a destruction of the Union and the ultimate ruin of the Black population in America. Needless to say, Adams' book was vigorously attacked by the Abolitionists of that day, and is completely ignored today by modern American historians.

29. Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839).

30. Otto Scott, The Secret Six (Murphys, California: Uncommon Books, 1979), page 133. A parallel illustration of the dishonesty of this sort of "research" would be if a Southern author had likewise collected random newspaper clippings relating to crimes committed in Northern cities and thereafter released a book entitled, The American Yankee As He Is. The majority of good people in the North would have been justly indignant at such a slanderous publication.

31. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (Boston: John P. Jewitt and Company, 1853).

32. According to James Randall, "Mrs. Stowe had the pamphlet in her work basket by day, and under her pillow by night" (The Civil War and Reconstruction [Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1937], page 169).

33. Confederate veteran John Cussons described Stowe's novel with these words:
...[I]t must be borne in mind that the masses reason through their feelings, judging a cause by their opinion of its supporters, and that that opinion is absorbed from prevailing sanctions.... [C]ountless millions of our women and children still weep and moan and pray over the morbid monstrosities of Uncle Tom's Cabin. They still find in that peculiar compound of fanaticism and cant nothing but a generous outburst against Southern cruelty and wrong; nothing but an inspired cry for the deliverance of the oppressed. They never dream that the moving story over which they agonize is but a florid romance, sanctioned to their use on account of what is called its "divine morality." They cannot conceive of it as a mere commercial venture — a novel of the lurid sort, devised to inflame the passions and make the flesh creep — the joint product of a trio of habitual sensation-mongers — an emotional authoress, a drunken apostle of temperance, and a libidinous priest (United States "History" As the Yankee Makes and Takes It [Glen Allen, Virginia: Cussons, May and Company, 1900], pages 85-86).
34. Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How To Meet It (New York: A.B. Burdick, Publishers, 1857), pages 129, 147. Helper first attempted to publish this book in Baltimore, but the State of Maryland prohibited the publication of any work that might "excite discontent amongst the people of color of this state." Thus, the New York publishing firm of A.B. Burdick was chosen. Stephen D. Carpenter claimed that Helper, a native North Carolinian who had relocated to New York, was not the true author of this book, but that it was actually written by a Northern Abolitionist (Carpenter, Logic of History, page 62). James Dabney McCabe, on the other hand, believed that Helper was a man of little conviction and would advocate any subject in print that would turn a profit (McCabe, Fanaticism and Its Results [Baltimore, Maryland: James Robinson, 1860], page 22).
Helper was certainly no friend of the Black man, as he demonstrated in his 1868 book entitled, Negroes in Negroland (New York: Carleton, 1868). In this latter work, he described the Black man as "an inferior fellow," his skin color as "a thing of ugliness, disease, and death... [and] a most hateable thing," and asserted that White men were the "predestined supplanters of the Black races." Helper was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as United States Consul to Buenos Aires in November of 1861, but found himself shunned by both North and South after the war for his "wild ravings" and finally committed suicide in 1909.

35. Horton, History of the Great Civil War, page 59.

36. Joshua Giddings, in ibid., (Thirty-Third Congress, First Session), page 648.

37. William O. Duvall, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 94; McCabe, Fanaticism and Its Results, page 14.

38. Abolitionist resolution (Natick, Massachusetts), quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 66.

39. Theodore Parker, quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 67.

40. William H. Seward, letter of endorsement, 28 June 1857; quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 63; McCabe, Fanaticism and Its Results, page 18.

41. Seward, speech delivered at Rochester, New York on 25 October 1858; in George Baker (editor), The Works of William Seward (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884), Volume IV, pages 289-302.

42. Seward, speech delivered in the Senate on 3 March 1858; in Congressional Globe (Thirty-Fifth Congress, First Session), page 553.

43. Scott, Secret Six, page 3.

44. Scott, ibid. In his book, The Civil War and the Constitution, John W. Burgess stated that "a committee of Massachusetts citizens furnished two hundred of the famous Sharp's rifled carbines" ([New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901], Volume I, page 40). This committee was the Secret Six, made up of the men already mentioned.

45. Otto Scott gave the following details of the horrific commencement of Brown's activities near Pottawatomie Creek in the Kansas Territory:
The night was hot and humid; the river was not far away. The Doyle family was asleep as the men approached their cabin. Two bulldogs rushed out, barking. Two of the men stopped and slashed one to death with their sabers. The other dog fled, howling, and the family awoke.
The men knocked heavily on the door and James Doyle swung out of bed. "What is it?" he called.
"What way to the Wilkinson place?" a man's voice answered.
Doyle opened the door, saying he would tell them, and was almost knocked off his feet when several men rushed in, shouting, "We're the Northern Army! Surrender!"
Mahala Doyle clutched her youngest, a girl, and began to stammer. "Hush, Mother, hush," said James Doyle. His three boys moved beside him: William, twenty-two, Drury, twenty, and John, fourteen. The men pushed Doyle, and then the two eldest sons, out the door. Mahala Doyle began to weep, but when they reached for the fourteen-year-old she sprang out of bed and clutched him. "Not him; Oh, God, not him."
The old man [Brown] in the light jacket, leather tie, and farmer's straw hat, his face as thin and stern as an ax, pushed the boy back and the men left, slamming the door.
Mahala Doyle clutched John and listened, her eyes wide.
The men stopped their prisoners about two hundred yards from the Doyle cabin. The leader placed his revolver against Doyle's forehead and pulled the trigger, as cooly as a man shooting a lame horse.
That set them off. One, in a frenzy, stabbed Doyle's corpse with his saber. William Doyle was stabbed in the face, slashed over the head, and shot in the side. Drury broke and ran in the darkness, was pursued, and overtaken near a ravine. He put his arms up to ward off their blows, but the men, bearded, burly, and in a near frenzy, hacked at him with their sabers. His fingers and then his arms were cut off; his head was cut open, and he was stabbed in the chest. They continued to hack after he fell — and after he was dead. He had frightened them; he might have escaped (The Secret Six, page 6).
46. Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800-1859 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Nolan and Company, 1929), pages 171-172.

47. John Brown, in F.B. Sanborn (editor), The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888), page 122.

48. Again, Otto Scott's comments are insightful: "It is only after several generations that it can be seen, with terrible clarity, that Old Brown — by linking murder to his distorted version of religion, and by selecting victims who were innocent of any crime — had reintroduced the old, evil and pagan principle of human sacrifice" (Secret Six, page 62).

49. Stephen Douglas, Congressional Globe (Thirty-Sixth Congress, First Session), page 553.

50. Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men (New York: Funk and Wagnall's Company, 1894), page 123.

51. Ralph Waldo Emerson, speech at Tremont Temple, Boston; quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 69.

52. Henry David Thoreau, "A Plea For John Brown," in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1894), Volume X, page 234.

53. Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Chamber of Commerce resolution dated 2 December 1859, authored by Edward D. Holton, J.H. Paine, George Tracy, Clarence Shepherd, and B. Domschke; quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 67.

54. Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston: Walker, Wise and Company, 1864), page 272.

55. S.A. Ashe, A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861-65 (Raleigh, North Carolina: self-published, 1938), page 18.

56. E.D. Wheelock, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 65; McCabe, Fanaticism and Its Results, page 22.

57. Wendell Phillips, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 68.

58. New York Tribune, 2 December 1859; quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 69.

59. James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), page 13.

60. It is a shame that this reprehensible song, which has nothing at all to do with the true Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ or with Christian charity, is published today in a great number of church hymnals, and is sung with great enthusiasm even by many Southerners who are ignorant of the true meaning of the lyrics and their infernal roots in the violent, lawless religion of John Brown and the Unitarian Abolitionists. The latter so hated union with the South under the Constitution that, according to Anson Burlingame, Lincoln's Minister to China, they needed "an anti-slavery constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God" (quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 94).

61. Former President, John Quincy Adams, who was at the helm of the opposition to the annexation of Texas, declared:
We... feel bound to call your attention... to the project... intended soon to be consummated — the annexation of Texas to this union.... [B]y this admission of a new slave territory and slave states, the undue ascendancy of the slaveholding power in the government shall be secured and rivetted beyond all redemption.... We hesitate not to say that annexation... would be identical with dissolution. It would be a violation of our national compact... so deep and fundamental... as, in our opinion, not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it (speech delivered on 3 March 1843; in Frederick W. Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972], page 210; emphasis in original).
Adams' point was that a deliberate attempt to disrupt the balance of power between North and South was of such a serious nature that dissolution of the Union was the appropriate remedy for the aggrieved section — precisely the same argument upon which Southern secession was predicated in 1860-1861.

62. Stephen A. Douglas, letter dated 20 December 1860; quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 49.

63. Republican resolution delivered at Boston, Massachusetts (1856); quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 55.

64. Republican resolution, Monroe, Wisconsin; quoted by Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods, page 141.

65. Boston Commonwealth, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 117.

66. The True American, quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 56.

67. New York Tribune, 1854; quoted by Carpenter, ibid., pages 58-59.

68. Frederick Douglass, quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 93.

69. William Lloyd Garrison, quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 56.

70. Garrison, speech delivered at New York City on 1 August 1855; quoted by McCabe, Fanaticism and Its Results, page 15.

71. Garrison, quoted by Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1870 (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1894), Volume III, page 414.

72. Wendell Phillips, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, pages 56, 57.

73. See Clement Vallandigham's 10 July 1861 response to Lincoln's address to Congress in special session on 4 July 1861, in Vallandigham, Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War, pages 93-109.

74. Phillips, quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, pages 60, 61.

75. Parker Pillsbury, quoted by Carpenter, ibid., page 57.

76. Anti-Slavery Society of Essex County, Massachusetts, quoted by Carpenter, ibid.

77. Proto-Republican pamphlet distributed circa 1852; quoted by Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods, page 141.

78. Seward, quoted by Ashe, Invasion of the Southern States, page 19.

79. William Hosmer, The Higher Law in its Relation to Civil Government With Particular Reference to Slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act (Auburn, New York: Derby and Miller, 1852), page 176.

80. Helper, Impending Crisis, page 368.

81. Andrew T. Forbes, quoted by Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods, page 139.

82. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, quoted by James C. Malin, John Brown and the Legend (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: American Philosophical Society, 1942), pages 698-699.

83. Witt Bowden, The Industrial History of the United States (New York: Adelphi Company, 1930), page 252.

84. Randall, Civil War and Reconstruction, page 146.

85. Southern Presbyterian minister James Henley Thornwell described the sectional conflict accurately when he wrote, "The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake." It is not a well-known fact that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the rabidly anti-Christian co-founders of Communism, were both ardent supporters of the Northern revolution (Saul Kussiel (editor), Karl Marx on the American Civil War [New York: McGraw Hill Company, 1972]).

86. Jefferson Davis, in Dunbar Rowland (editor), Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches (Jackson, Mississippi: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), Volume III, pages 337-338.

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