Obituaries III – Notable White Abolitionists

Below is a brief profile on the lives and deaths of some 41 prominent white men and women abolitionists, followed by an extensive review of the events between the 1607 advent of chattel slavery at Jamestown and the end of the institution in the 1865 13^th Amendment to the Constitution.

Part A. The Profile

Obituaries: Notable White Abolitionists

Part B. The Story of Abolition

Once slavery arrives at Jamestown in 1607 and metastasizes across all thirteen colonies, early opposition appears. It is initially led by Quakers, like Francis Pastorius with his 1688 anti-slavery petition in Pennsylvania, and sermons by preacher John Woolman. However, by the time of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, slavery has become essential to the agricultural economy of the South, and anti-black stereotypes are embedded in the minds of most Americans.

These are sanctioned in The Enumeration Clause passed at the Convention which says that Blacks are a different species from whites and are to be regarded as 3/5^th of a full human.

While Founding Fathers like Ben Franklin and Gouverneur Morris cite the Declaration’s call for “all men created equal” to abolish slavery, their successes are limited. They do pass the Northwest Ordinance banning it north and west of the Ohio River, along with an 1808 end date for the importation of slaves from abroad.

The Convention thus sets the stage for the North vs. South tensions over the institution that will fester up to the 1861 outbreak of the Civil War.

What does not, however, differentiate the two regions over this period is a shared conviction that Blacks are an inferior race that would seek revenge on all Whites if simply set free in the colonies. This belief will be reinforced by a series of well publicized slave uprisings beginning with the Gabriel conspiracy in 1800.

Even those early opponents of slavery on moral grounds conclude that Blacks will never fit into White society, and, if set free, must be returned to their homelands in Africa. This “solution” is proposed in the 1816 American Colonization Society and persists right up to the war. But only a few freedmen make it to the Liberia colony for a lack of funds to compensate owners for their “property in slaves.”

When the new government starts up in 1789 there are seven Free States and seven Slave States.

Controversy over slavery surfaces again in 1819 when Missouri, the first new state west of the Mississippi on Louisiana Purchase land, seeks admission to the Union. The South insists that Missouri join as a twelfth Slave State, while the North refuses to comply. Resolution comes in the 1820 Missouri Compromise which calls for the simultaneous addition of a twelfth Free State in Maine and passage of a future line of demarcation at 36’30” longitude. This line will ease the North-South tensions all the way up to 1850.

An organized movement to abolish slavery takes hold around the Second Great Awakening religious revival of the 1820’s. Led by evangelical preachers like Charles Grandison Finney, spontaneous converts dedicate their lives to reform missions from temperance to prison reform to freeing the slaves.

Again the Quakers are front and center, from Benjamin Lundy’s newspaper editorials, to Lucretia Mott’s plea for each man seeing his “inner light,” to Levi Coffin initiating the Underground Railway in 1828, to the father of Abolition in America, William Lloyd Garrison, whose 1830 Liberator announces: “I will not equivocate and I will be heard until slavery is abolished.”

In 1833, Garrison helps found the American Anti-Slavery Society which soon grows to over 1300 local chapters.

That same year, Prime Minister Earl Grey’s Parliament passes a bill to abolish slavery in Britain. The cost to compensate owners is steep, requiring a fund equal to almost 40% of the Exchequer’s annual revenue.

Meanwhile the demands of American abolitionists for immediate emancipation horrify the public, both South and North, and they respond with violent personal attacks. Garrison is threatened repeatedly and nearly lynched by a Boston mob in 1835. After which comes the 1837 murder of abolitionist newspaper Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, followed by not guilty verdicts for all eleven men who are tried in court.

This Lovejoy killing brings a new figure into the arena in the fierce Calvinist, John Brown, who rises in his Ohio church to announce his dedication to ending slavery.

Brown stands apart from other abolitionists by not only intending to free the slaves, but also believing they are capable of being assimilated into American society. This traces to his years of toiling alongside Blacks in upstate New York on work-life farming projects sponsored by philanthropist Gerrit Smith. So while other talk of freedom, Brown will talk of equality and brotherhood.

In 1841 another monumental figure joins the abolitionist cause. But this time it is a black man, Maryland runaway Frederick Douglas, who is “discovered” by Garrison and soon becomes the leading spokesman for his band of roving speakers relying on “moral suasion” lectures to convert their audiences.

Over time Douglas will be frustrated by a lack of progress, alongside two other Blacks – David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet – both of whom decry the suffering of those enslaved and call for armed rebellion should it continue. By 1847, he abandons Garrison, publishes his own abolitionist newspaper, and aligns with the new Liberty Party.

This Party is founded by Gerrit Smith and James Birney and becomes the New York wing of the abolitionist movement, convinced that the path to freedom requires political action not just lectures. While Birney is the first abolitionist to run for President, he garners only 2.3% of the popular vote.

In 1845 a schism over a proposed ban on ownership of slaves by clergymen finds both the Methodist and Baptist churches splitting into North vs. South chapters. Henry Clay recognizes its importance: “This sundering of the religious ties which have hitherto bound our people together, I consider the greatest source of danger to our country.”

The 1846-7 Mexican War then re-opens the fierce sectional divisions on slavery that were largely held in check since the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

The first sign of conflict lies in an 1846 amendment offered by Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot to an appropriations bill to fund the military. The “Wilmot Proviso” agrees to the spending, but “only if” slavery is prohibited in any Mexican land acquired by the war. When northern Democrats break party lines to pass the Proviso, the prospects for a slavery ban across the west becomes apparent to the South.

In 1848 one term Congressman Abraham Lincoln joins the controversy in his famous “spot speech.” He labels the war a land grab by southern politicians, initiated not by Mexico, but by U.S. invasion forces along the Rio Grande.

With the Wilmot Proviso still fueling sectional division, the war ends with no agreed upon geographical boundary line to sort out Free vs. Slave territories.

First to address this void is abolitionist Salmon Chase, who jumps in by founding his Free Soil Party in 1848. It announces the wish of Northerners to ban slavery in the new lands and preserve them entirely for “Free White Men and Free Labor.”

As such, it also represents the unlikely fusion of anti-black racists and anti-slavery men that will later morph into the Republican Party. Ex-President Martin Van Buren runs as the Free Soil candidate in 1848, gaining 10% of the vote.

Tensions in Washington reach a boiling point in 1849 when California seeks admittance as a Free State. The South views the state as essential to their long term model for economic growth based on opening new plantations to not only grow cotton, but also to buy “excess slaves,” bred in the east, for up to $1,000 a head.

The origin of this breeding program traces all the way back to Jefferson who writes in 1820, “I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.”

As of 1849, the auction value of these “excess slaves” reaches $1.2 Billion at a time when the entire U.S. GDP is $2.7 Billion! Were slavery banned in the new western lands, the South’s economic growth model would collapse.

With politicians like John C. Calhoun calling for secession over California, the Democratic Party leader, Stephen Douglas, passes a quid pro quo package known as the 1850 Compromise. California is admitted as a Free State; the status of slavery in the New Mexico and Utah Territories will be decided by “popular sovereignty” elections; and a harsh new Fugitive Slave Act is passed demanding that Northerners actively support the capture and return of run-aways.

Although neither side is satisfied by the Compromise, the South now faces a growing litany of barriers to extending slavery, among them:

• The increasing dominance of Northern seats in the House;
• The second Democrat loss of the presidency to the Whigs in 1848;
• John Quincy Adams’ resistance to the Gag Rule and calls for freedom;
• The arrival in Congress of outspoken abolitionists such as William Sumner,
• Thaddeus Stevens, Henry Seward and others; and
• A spreading perception that the culture in the South is un-American, a “slavocracy” ruled by privileged aristocrats rather than the common man.

Emerging from these threats are a band of Southern politicians led by Mississippi Governor John Quitman, Alabama Congressman William Yancey and South Carolina Senator Robert Rhett and known as the “Fire-Eaters” for their insistence on States’ Rights and immediate secession from the Union. In 1850 they make their case at a landmark convention held in Georgia. But moderates there, led by Howell Cobb, Robert Toombs and Alexander Stephens, reject their pleas, although warning that Congress must act to protect slavery.

In 1851 abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe launches another attack on the South in her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin which dramatizes the suffering of those enslaved and builds empathy among its millions of readers. She is joined by the “turncoat” South Carolina sisters, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, who embarrass the region by speaking out publicly against bondage.

The South responds with its traditional defense, arguing that slavery is founded in the Bible, and is a “positive good” rather than a moral evil. Thus it frees up time for the most talented whites to advance society’s needs, while also providing the Africans with better care than northern factory workers, and their only chance for Christian salvation.

As the 1852 Presidential election approaches, Southerners seeking political control are left with the fact that a Democrat cannot win the required Electoral College majority of 149 votes without dominating the 120 that reside in the Slave States.

They leverage this twice over by nominating Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire and then Pennsylvania’s James Buchanan in 1856. Both men are quickly labeled “Doughfaces” – men born in the North but committed to backing southern demands to retain their re-election chances.

In his Inaugural Address, Pierce affirms that slavery is guaranteed in the Constitution and states that “fanatical excitement” by opponents must not be allowed to endanger the Union. With the exception of violence by Northerners against bounty hunters seeking run-aways, relative calm prevails until January 1854, when Senator Stephen Douglas, de facto head of the Democrats, puts forth his Kansas-Nebraska Act.

It reneges on the 1820 Missouri Compromise’s 36’30” boundary line and replaces it with “popular sovereignty” elections to determine Free State vs. Slave State designations. In doing so, Douglas ignites a firestorm of opposition, including grass roots movements that lead to the Republican Party and the return of Abraham Lincoln to national politics.

Once enacted the Kansas-Nebraska Act also initiates the race by both pro-slavery Southern forces and Norther abolitionists to populate Kansas and win the proposed “pop sov” elections.

But these elections dissolve into fiascoes. The first, held on May 21, 1856, finds Pro-Slavery bands from Missouri storming the polling places and stuffing the ballots for their candidates. When this pattern persists, Pierce ignores the evidence of fraud, fires his first two choices for Territorial Governors, and sends in federal troops to try to disband an emerging Free State party.

This turmoil in Kansas also spills over to violence in the halls of Congress in May, as abolitionist Charles Sumner is nearly caned to death in his Senate chair by South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks in response to his “Crime in Kansas” speech. Sumner survives, but will not return to his office for over three years. Brooks is initially expelled, then returns after his reelection.

The chaos in Kansas disqualifies Pierce from the 1856 re-nomination, and the prize instead goes to another “Doughface,” Pennsylvanian James Buchanan, a man with glowing credentials for the job, but then an abject failure.

Buchanan defeats the first Republican presidential candidate, John Fremont, with 112 of his 174 Electoral Votes coming from the “solid South.”

After behind the scenes tampering with the Supreme Court, Buchanan is elated to announce on his first day in office that all controversies over slavery have been resolved in the March 7, 1856 Dred Scott ruling.

Drafted by Chief Justice Roger Taney, it says that, as “property,” those enslaved have no standing to appear in courts; no civil rights other than what white men grant them; and no chance to ever become citizens. Furthermore, Scott must return to slavery since his prior residence in Free States does not automatically set him free. That can only be achieved by a declaration from his owner.

While two of the four Northern justices support the verdict, two write scathing dissents and one, Ben Curtis, ultimately resigns in protest. This provides opponents of the ruling, including Lincoln, to reject it as settled law.

In November 1857, Oregon becomes the first state to join the Union under a Constitution which bans all Blacks, enslaved or free, from residing in the state. The vote, 8,640 yays to 1,081 nays, again demonstrates the extent of racial prejudice that prevails even across the North.

Events in “Bloody Kansas” continue to play out across Buchanan’s term in office, including the sack of Lawrence and John Brown’s Potawatomie Massacre. Still the President persists in trying to bully Congress into admitting Kansas under the Pro-Slavery Lecompton Constitution. With each attempt his credibility dwindles, finally running out after a fair “pop sov” election on January 4, 1858 finds local settlers rejecting the measure by a margin of 10,266 to 162.

More uproar follows on Sunday, October 16, 1859 when John Brown strikes his final blow to end slavery by leading a 22 man raid into the Virginia town of Harper’s Ferry. His plan has been revealed to both Frederick Douglas, who warns Brown that it will fail, and to his “Secret Six” funding partners. including Gerrit Smith. It is carried off perfectly until local slaves, recruited to attack their plantation owners, show fear of Brown himself and refuse to take up the 6 foot long pikes he offers them.

After hunkering down for a final stand in the US Arsenal and the local firehouse, Brown’s men are overwhelmed by the Virginia militia under Robert E. Lee. Ten raiders are killed in action and another seven are later hanged. Brown himself is tried and then executed on December 2, 1859.

Brown’s raid is the South’s worst nightmare: a northern white abolitionist attempting to recruit a slave army to slaughter plantation owners. Worse yet comes a campaign by Boston Transcendentalists comparing Brown on the Gallows to Christ on the Cross.

For the Fire-Eater secessionists, however, Harper’s Ferry is another positive turning point in their campaign to abandon the Union.

As the 1860 election approaches, Stephen Douglas turns against Buchanan causing a schism in the Democrat Party that ensures an upcoming defeat.

When the Republican meet in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln has already gained national fame for his Illinois debates with Senator Stephen Douglas and his Cooper Union speech arguing that the Founders fully expected slavery to wither away over time. After defeating abolitionist Henry Seward for the Republican nomination, Honest Abe wins the presidency on November 6 with 59% of the Electoral votes — albeit with only 39% of the popular votes, all in the North.

On December 3, 1860, Buchanan delivers his final State of the Union speech, fatuously praising his own performance in office while blaming the “intemperate interference” of northern abolitionists for the temporary crises around him.

The victorious Republicans now hope to avoid Disunion, arguing that their ban on slavery applies only in the west while allowing it to remain back east. .

The South, however, regards the platform as an existential threat to its current and future wealth. No plantations in the west will mean no demand for “excess slaves” bred in the east, and losses of over a Billion dollars in auction revenue.

Even prior moderates now give up, including Georgia’s Howell Cobb who resigns his post as Buchanan’s Treasury Secretary on December 8, 1860. Other southern congressmen and senators follow suit, resigning their seats to return home and leaving the capitol in Northern hands.

The bubble bursts on December 17, when the South Carolina legislature unanimously passes a resolution to leave the Union. Three weeks later, the first shots of the impending war are fired on the merchant ship Star of the West as it tries to bring supplies into Charleston Harbor to Union forces at Ft. Sumter.

By January 11, 1861 three more states — Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — vote to secede, and they are joined as of February 1 by Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

On February 4, a month before Lincoln is even inaugurated, delegates from the seven states meet in Montgomery and officially form the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as its first President.

The Republicans, however, consider this a bluff, and Lincoln appeals to the “mystic chords of memory” to woo them back into the fold in his March 4 acceptance speech. Meanwhile, various congressional committees scramble after another compromise, the closest being John J. Crittenden’s call for extending the 36’30” demarcation line to the Pacific.

But war is now inevitable and it comes on April 12 with the bombardment at Ft. Sumter. After that, four more states – Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee – bring the Confederacy up to eleven in total.

Lincoln responds by calling the conflict an internal Insurrection and not a war between two separate nations. He refuses to let the South go freely knowing it will then violate the ban on western slavery. Finally, he maintains throughout that his objective is not to abolish slavery, but to restore the Union.

After four years of warfare with over 750,000 deaths, the bloodshed effectively ends at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

But what will happen next to those formerly enslaved? The fate of over 4 million of them now rest in the hands of Abraham Lincoln.

Prior to arriving in Washington, his experiences in pro-slavery Springfield, Illinois convince him that Blacks will never be accepted into White society, and that colonization remains the only answer. His views, however, change once he settles into Washington and has first-hand contact with a wide range of freed blacks — from his daily household staff to enlisted soldiers, local clergymen whom he invites into the White House, and finally, above all else, to three face to face visits with Frederick Douglas.

He concludes that his daring January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation will not be enough of a guarantee of freedom, and that the South may find ways over time to restore at least de facto slavery. Hence he dedicates himself to a 13^th Amendment to the Constitution declaring that:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Opposition in Congress is intense, and even members of his Cabinet fear that the amendment will imply that the war was fought to abolish slavery rather than restore the Union. But Lincoln stands firm, using all of his political acumen to secure every vote, and the amendment is approved on January 31, 1865. The margin is 68%, two points above the required 2/3rds majority.

The abolitionists have won; those enslaved have won; American values have won.

And ten weeks later Father Abraham lies assassinated, a final martyr at the time to the cause.