preliminary victory. Slavery, through their exertions,
had become impossible, both in the Territories and
in the free States of the North, the United States
Supreme Court and all the forces of the slave power
to the contrary notwithstanding. Then came to
the South a not unanticipated, and to many of her
leaders a not unwelcome political Waterloo, in the
election of Lincoln. This gave the argument for
secession that was wanted. The South had then
to yield—which she had no idea of doing—or
to go into rebellion. She went out of the Union
very much as she would have gone to a frolic.
She had no thought that serious fighting was to follow.
She did not believe, as one of the Southern leaders
expressed it, that the Northern people would go to
war for the sake of the “niggers.”
ANTI-SLAVERY PIONEERS
The early Abolitionists were denounced as fanatics,
or “fan-a-tics,” according to the pronunciation
of some of their detractors. They were treated
as if partially insane. The writer when a boy
attended the trial of a cause between two neighbors
in a court of low grade. It was what was called
a “cow case,” and involved property worth,
perhaps, as much as twenty dollars. One of the
witnesses on the stand was asked by a lawyer, who
wanted to embarrass or discredit him, if he were not
an Abolitionist. Objection came from the other
side on the ground that the inquiry was irrelevant;
but the learned justice-of-the-peace who presided
held that, as it related to the witness’s sanity,
and that would affect his credibility, the question
was admissible. It is not, perhaps, so very strange
that in those days, in view of the disreputableness
of those whose cause they espoused, and the apparently
utter hopelessness of anything ever coming out of it,
the supporters of Anti-Slaveryism should be suspected
of being “out of their heads.”
Although Don Quixote, who, according to the veracious
Cervantes, set out with his unaided strong right arm
to upset things, including wind-mills and obnoxious
dynasties, has long been looked upon as the world’s
best specimen of a “fanatic,” he would
ordinarily be set down as a very Solomon beside the
man who would undertake single-handed to overthrow
such an institution as American slavery used to be.
Such a man there was, however. He really entered
on the job of abolishing that institution, and without
a solitary assistant. Strange to say, he was
neither a giant nor a millionaire.
According to Horace Greeley, “Benjamin Lundy
deserves the high honor of ranking as the pioneer
of direct and distinctive Anti-Slaveryism in America.”
He was slight in frame and below the medium height,
and unassuming in manner. He had, it is said,
neither eloquence nor shining ability of any sort.
At nineteen years of age he went to Wheeling, Virginia,
to learn the trade of a saddler. He learned more
than that. Wheeling, as he tells us, was then
a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh.
Their coffles passed through the place frequently.
“My heart,” he continues, “was grieved
at the great abomination. I heard the wail of
the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the iron
entered into my soul.”
