PRO-SLAVERY PREJUDICE
The intensity—perhaps density would be
a better word in this connection—of the
prejudice that confronted the Abolitionists when they
entered on their work is not describable by any expressions
we have in our language. In the South it was
soon settled that no man could preach Anti-Slaveryism
and live. In the North the conditions were not
much better. Every man and woman—because
the muster-roll of the Abolition propagandists was
recruited from both sexes—carried on the
work at the hazard of his or her life. Sneers,
scowls, hootings, curses, and rough handling were
absolutely certain. One incident throws light
on the state of feeling at that time.
When Pennsylvania Hall, which the Abolitionists of
Philadelphia—largely Quakers—had
erected for a meeting place at a cost of forty thousand
dollars was fired by a mob, the fire department of
that city threw water on surrounding property, but
not one drop would it contribute to save the property
of the Abolitionists.
Why was it that this devotion to slavery and this
hostility to its opposers prevailed in the non-slaveholding
States? They had not always existed. Indeed,
there was a time, not so many years before, when slavery
was generally denounced; when men like Washington and
Jefferson and Henry, although themselves slave-owners,
led public opinion in its condemnation. Everybody
was anticipating the day of universal emancipation,
when suddenly—almost in the twinkling of
an eye—there was a change. If it had
been a weather-cock—as to a considerable
extent it was, and is—public opinion could
not have more quickly veered about.
Slavery became the popular idol in the North as well
as in the South. Opposition to it was not only
offensive, but dangerous. It was sacrilege.
So far as the South was concerned the revolution is
easily accounted for. Slavery became profitable.
A Yankee magician had touched it with a wand of gold,
and from being a languishing, struggling system, it
quickly developed into a money-maker.
Whitney, the Connecticut mechanical genius, by the
invention of the cotton-gin, made the production of
cotton a highly lucrative industry. The price
of negroes to work the cotton fields at once went up,
and yet the supply was inadequate. Northernly
slave States could not produce cotton, but they could
produce negroes. They shared in the golden harvest.
Such cities as Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Wheeling,
and Louisville became centers of a flourishing traffic
in human beings. They had great warehouses, commonly
spoken of as “nigger pens,” in which the
“hands” that were to make the cotton were
temporarily gathered, and long coffles—that
is, processions of men and women, each with a hand
attached to a common rope or chain—marched
through their streets with faces turned southward.
