as well as humanity to attempt the immediate removal of the free negroes; but that further action for the removal of the slaves should await a more definite development of public opinion."

Mr. Randolph's course was approved by his constituents, and at the next election he was returned by them as a member of the House of Delegates, on this very question. Unfortunately, at this moment the anti-slavery agitation in New England began to assume an alarming aspect for the peace and security of the Southern people. In consequence, they denounced it as a foreign and dangerous interference with rights which the Constitution had left exclusively under their own control. An immediate and powerful reaction against emancipation by State authority was the result, and this good cause, to which so many able and patriotic Southern men had been devoted, was sacrificed.

Mr. Randolph himself, a short time thereafter, expressed a confident belief to the author, that but for this interference, the General Assembly would, at no distant day, have passed a law for gradual emancipation. He added, so great had been the revulsion of public sentiment in Virginia, that no member of that body would now dare to propose such a measure.

The abolitionists became bolder and bolder as they advanced. They did not hesitate to pervert the Post Office Department of the Government to the advancement of their cause. Through its agency, at an early period, they scattered throughout the slaveholding States pamphlets, newspapers, and pictorial representations of an incendiary character, calculated to arouse the savage passions of the slaves to servile insurrection. So alarming had these efforts become to the domestic peace of the South, that General Jackson recommended they should be prohibited by law, under severe penalties. He said, in his annual message of 2d December, 1835: "I must also invite your attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by attempts to circulate, through the mails, inflammatory appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints, and in various sorts of publications, calculated to stimulate them to insurrection and to produce all the horrors of a servile war." And he also commended to the special attention of Congress "the propriety of passing such a

* 2 Statesman's Manual, 1018.

law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mails, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." *

A bill for this purpose was reported to the Senate, but after a long and animated debate, it was negatived, on the 8th of June, 1836, by a vote of 19 to 25. It is worthy of remark, that even at this early period not a single Senator from New England, whether political friend or opponent of General Jackson, voted in favor of the measure he had so emphatically recommended. All the Senators from that portion of the Union, under the lead of Messrs. Webster and Davis, of Massachusetts, denied to Congress the Constitutional power of passing any law to prevent the abolitionists from using our own mails to circulate incendiary documents throughout the slaveholding States, even though these were manifestly intended to promote servile insurrection and civil war within their limits. The power and duty of Congress to pass the bill were earnestly urged by Mr. Buchanan, then a Senator from Pennsylvania, in opposition to the objections of Mr. Webster.

This anti-slavery agitation in New England was prosecuted by other and different agencies. The pulpit, the press, State Legislatures, State and county conventions, anti-slavery societies, and abolition lectures were all employed for this purpose. Prominent among them were what were called, in the language of the day, abolition petitions.

Throughout the session of 1835-'6, and for several succeeding sessions, these petitions incessantly poured in to Congress. They prayed for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the forts, magazines, arsenals, and dockyards of the United States within the slaveholding States. They also protested against the admission of any new slaveholding State into the Union, and some of them went even so far as to petition for a dissolution of the Union itself.

These petitions were signed by hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. In them slavery was denounced as a national sin and a national disgrace. Every epithet was employed

* 2 Statesman's Manual, p. 1019.

+ Senate Journal, June 2, 1886, pp. 399, 400, and Con. Globe of June 8, 1836.

calculated to arouse the indignation of the Southern people. The time of Congress was wasted in violent debates on the subject of slavery. In these it would be difficult to determine which of the opposing parties was guilty of the greatest excess. Whilst the South threatened disunion unless the agitation should cease, the North treated such threats with derision and defiance. It became manifest to every reflecting man that two geographical parties, the one embracing the people north and the other those south of Mason and Dixon's line, were in rapid process of for. mation-an event so much dreaded by the Father of his Country.

It is easy to imagine the effect of this agitation upon the proud, sensitive, and excitable people of the South. One extreme naturally begets another. Among the latter there sprung up a party as fanatical in advocating slavery as were the abolitionists of the North in denouncing it. At the first, and for a long time, this party was small in numbers, and found it difficult to excite the masses to support its extreme views. These Southern fanatics, instead of admitting slavery to be an evil in itself, pronounced it to be a great good. Instead of admitting that it had been reluctantly recognized by the Constitution as an overruling political necessity, they extolled it as the surest support of freedom among the white race. If the fanatics of the North denounced slavery as evil and only evil, and that continually, the fanatics of the South upheld it as fraught with blessings to the slave as well as to his master. Far different was the estimation in which it was held by Southern patriots and statesmen both before and for many years after the adoption of the Constitution. These looked forward hopefully to the day when, with safety both to the white and black race, it might be abolished by the people of the slaveholding States themselves, who alone possessed the power.

The late President, as a Senator of the United States, from December, 1834, until March, 1845, lost no opportunity of warning his countrymen of the danger to the Union from a persistence in this anti-slavery agitation, and of beseeching them to suffer the people of the South to manage their domestic affairs in their own way. All they desired, to employ their oft-repeat

ed language, was "to be let alone." With a prophetic vision, at so early a period as the 9th March, 1836, he employed the following language in the Senate: "Sir," said Mr. B., "this question of domestic slavery is the weak point in our institutions. Tariffs may be raised almost to prohibition, and then they may be reduced so as to yield no adequate protection to the manufacturer; our Union is sufficiently strong to endure the shock. Fierce political storms may arise-the moral elements of the country may be convulsed by the struggles of ambitious men for the highest honors of the Government-the sunshine does not more certainly succeed the storm, than that all will again be peace. Touch this question of slavery seriously-let it once be made manifest to the people of the South that they cannot live with us, except in a state of continual apprehension and alarm for their wives and their children, for all that is near and dear to them upon the earth-and the Union is from that moment dissolved. It does not then become a question of expediency, but of self-preservation. It is a question brought home to the fireside, to the domestic circle of every white man in the Southern States. This day, this dark and gloomy day for the Republic, will, I most devoutly trust and believe, never arrive. Although, in Pennsylvania, we are all opposed to slavery in the abstract, yet we will never violate the Constitutional compact which we have made with our sister States. Their rights will be held sacred by us. Under the Constitution it is their own question,

and there let it remain." *

A new source of anti-slavery agitation was about this time opened against the execution of the old Fugitive Slave Law, passed in February, 1793.

This was greatly increased by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, at the January term, 1842, in the case of Prigg vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. † It is true, the opinion of the Court, delivered by Mr. Justice Story, explicitly affirmed the Constitutional right of the master to recover his fugitive slave in any State to which he had fled. It even went so far as to clothe the master himself "with full

* Gales and Seaton's Register of Debates, vol. xu., part 1, 1835-'6, p. 781. † 16 Peters, 539.

authority, in every State of the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, wherever he can do it without a breach of the peace or any illegal violence." After these strong affirmations it becomes necessary to state the reason why this decision became the occasion of increased anti-slavery agitation.

The act of 1793 * authorized and required State judges and magistrates, in common with judges of the United States, to carry its provisions into effect. At the date of its passage no doubt was entertained of the power of Congress to direct this duty to be performed by appropriate State authorities. From the small number of Federal judges in each State, and their distance from each other, the masters, in almost every instance, resorted to the magistrate of the "county, city, or town corporate,' where the slave had been arrested. Before him the necessary proof was made, and, upon being satisfied, he granted a certificate to the master, which was a sufficient warrant under the law "for removing the said fugitive from labor to the State or Territory from which he or she fled." These State magistrates were familiar to the people of the respective localities, and their duties were performed in a satisfactory manner, and with but little complaint or commotion. This continued to be the practice until the opinion of the Court in the case of Prigg was pronounced. In this it was decided that State magistrates were not bound to perform these duties; and the question whether they would do so or not, was left entirely to their own discretion.

It was thus rendered competent for State Legislatures to prohibit their own functionaries from aiding in the execution of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Then commenced a furious agitation against the execution of this so-called "sinful and inhuman" law. State magistrates were prevailed upon by the abolitionists to refuse their agency in carrying it into effect. The Legislatures of several States, in conformity with this decision, passed laws prohibiting these magistrates and other State officials from assisting in its execution. The use of the State jails was denied for the safe-keeping of the fugitives. Personal Liberty Bills were passed, inter

* 1 U. S. L. 802.