History of American Abolitionism

The following pages originally appeared in the NEW YORK HERALD, of February 2d, 1861. By request, they have been reproduced in their present shape, with the view of preserving, in a form more compact than that of a newspaper, the valuable facts embraced.

Without an extensive range of research it is almost impossible to acquire the information which is thus compiled, and, at the present time, especially, it is believed that the publication of these facts will be desirable to the reading community.

F. G. DE F.

HISTORY OF AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM.

CHAPTER I.

The Spirit of the Age--Two Classes of Abolitionists--Their Objects--The Sources of their Inspiration--Influences upon Church and State--Proposed Invasions upon the Constitution--Effect upon the Slave States, &c., &c.

One of the commanding characteristics of the present age is the spirit of agitation, collision and discord which has broken forth in every department of social and political life. While it has been an era of magnificent enterprises and unrivalled prosperity, it has likewise been an era of convulsion, which has well nigh upturned the foundations of the government. Never was this truth more evident than at the present moment. A single topic occupies the public mind--Union or Disunion--and is one of pre-eminently absorbing interest to every citizen. Upon this issue the entire nation has been involved in a moral distemper, that threatens its utter and irrevocable dissolution. Union--the child of compact, the creature of social and political tolerance--stands face to face with Disunion, the natural off-spring of that anti-slavery sentiment, which has ever warred against the interests of the people and the elements of true government, and struggles for the maintenance of that sacred pledge by which the United States have heretofore been bound in a common brotherhood. Like the marvellous tent given by the fairy Banou to Prince Achmed, which, when folded up, became an ornament in the delicate hands of women, but, spread out, afforded encampment to mighty armies; so is this question of abolitionism, to which the present overwhelming trouble of our land is to be traced, in its capacity to encompass all things, and its ability to attach itself even to the amenities and refinements of life. It has entered into everything, great and small, high and low, political, theological, social and moral, and in one section has become the standard by which all excellence is to be judged. Under the guise of philanthropic reform, it has pursued its course with energy, boldness and unrelenting bitterness, until it has grown from "a cloud no bigger than a man's hand" into the dimensions of the tempest which is to-day lowering over the land charged with the elements of destruction. Commencing with a pretended love for the black race, it has arrived at a stage of restless, uncompromising fanaticism which will be satisfied with nothing short of the consummation of its wildest hopes. It has become the grand question of the day--of politics, of ethics, of expediency, of justice, of conscience, and of law, covering the whole field of human society and divine government.

In this view of the subject, and in view also of the surrounding unhappy circumstances of the country which have their origin in this agitation, we give below a history of abolition, from the period it commenced to exist as an active element in the affairs of the nation down to the present moment.

ABOLITIONISTS AND THEIR OBJECTS.