Those loveable abolitionists on....(Part 2)

Dixie Traveller

“Why is it now that the North hates slavery? For the reason that they are, to some extent, responsible for the institution because of the Union, and for the reason that by hating slavery they get office.…. Separate us from the North, and the North will be no attraction to the black man-no attraction to the slaves. It is not from a love for the black man that they receive him now; but it is from a hatred to slavery and from a hatred to the owners of slaves.”
- Judge Henry L. Benning of Georgia to the Virginia Secession Convention, February 18, 1861

“It (the party of the North) seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.”
-A Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi From the Federal Union


In judging the anti-slavery movement that was so prominent in the mid-19th Century and understanding the actions of Abolitionists and reactions of Southerners, context is appropriate.  In the 19th Century, no less than 11 countries worldwide abolished slavery, from the British West Indies to Cuba to Brazil. This emancipation generally followed a platform that included-
1)Compensation to the slave owner for their investment in slavery to minimize the economic damage from the loss of the institution
2) A gradual emancipation or “phasing out” of slavery as had been done in the Northern States prior to the War Between the States. Usually this stated that no one would be a slave born after a specific date. This would give the nation time to develop new means of labor and integrate the freedmen to be into the country’s society, although to what extent varied by country.
Even with compensated, peaceful and gradual emancipation, abolition did not guarantee success. When Britain abolished slavery in its territories, the once prosperous colonies of Barabados and Jamaica sharply declined in wealth and gave rise to a large, impoverished class.
Worse still was the only other country to abolish slavery by violence-Haiti. After genocide of the island whites at Santo Domingo, the new freedman’s nation was the sight of constant poverty, famine, coups and corrupt government unable to deal with frequent natural disasters such as hurricanes.

In our previous blog on the Abolitionist movement, we see that the first approach was not favored by New England Abolitionists-they demanded immediate, uncompensated emancipation- while the second approach, another “Santo Domingo” seems to have been a fetish of Yankee Abolitionists. In judging the following statements, it may be remembered that he Abolition spirit in New England was not borne out of Enlightenment Philosophy or philanthropy. It was borne out of fanaticism. The ideological and biological descendants of the Salem Witch Hunters, when Unitarianism began to undermine their religion, needed a new outlet for their fanatical, persecuting nature. They explored Know-Nothingism(reviving the ancient Puritan hatred of the Catholic) then busied themselves for a time with the drinker through prohibition “liquor laws”, before finally settling on the Southern slaveholder as the most lucrative political target.

Despite these minor flaws like continually advocating genocide and promoting Puritanism(defined as: that sinking, sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach when you suspect that someone-somewhere- may actually be enjoying themselves), it’s possible the New England Abolitionists of the mid-19th Century still had a a shred of human decency about them, right? After all, almost every waking moment of their lives was devoted to promoting the well-being of the noble African race, as is clearly evinced in their statements before, during and after the War for Southern Independence:

'I do not wish to have the slave emancipated because I love him,' the governor responded, 'but because I hate his master.'   
-Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase, later Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary  and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

“…free blacks would continue to be an inferior caste and simply die out"-
U.S. Senator John Dix, New Jersey, for whom Ft. Dix is named

“The abolitionist wishes to abolish slavery, but because he wishes to abolish the black man…. The dark man, the black man, declines… it will happen by and by that the black man will be destined for museums like the Dodo”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Henry Ward Beecher’s favourite money-maker was a mock slave auction that he staged over and over again. On every occasion the “slave” was a young, attractive female and almost white; there is no recorded instance of an “auction” of a male, child or ugly female “slave”.
 -Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, The Yankee Problem

“an inferior fellow…. a thing of ugliness, disease, and death... [and] a most hateable thing”-Hinton R. Helper

“The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent. Let us keep what remains for ourselves, and our children — for the emigrant that seeks our shores — for the poor man, that wealth shall oppress — for the free white laborer”
 -David Wilmot, Author of the Wilmot Proviso

“The African race, bond and free, and the aborigines, savage and civilised, being incapable of such assimilation and absorption, remain distinct, and, owing to their peculiar condition, constitute inferior masses, and may be regarded as accidental if not disturbing political forces.”
 – Senator William H. Seward of New York

My worst preconception of their appearance and their ignorance did not fall as low as their actual stupidity.... They appear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh unendowed with anything of intelligence above the brutes.”
- Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts

 (Washington D.C.) “is a mean Godforsaken n---er-ridden place….food was cooked by n----rs until I can smell and taste the n---er”-
Senator Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio

I have vindictiveness enough to wish to keep in the South the burden which they themselves created”
– Congressman Jacob Brinkerhoff, Ohio
 
“By God, sir, men born and nursed of white women are not going to be ruled by men who were brought up on the milk of some damned Negro wench!-
Congressman David Wilmot, Pennsylvania, author of the Wilmot Proviso

“As a class the Blacks are indolent, improvident, servile, and licentious.”
- Horace Greeley, Abolitionist editor of the New York Tribune
 
“But the great mass, as they are seen at work, under overseers, in the fields, appear very dull, idiotic, and brute-like; and it requires an effort to appreciate that they are, very much more than the beasts they drive, our brethren—a part of ourselves. They are very ragged, and the women especially, who work in the field with the men, with no apparent distinction in their labor, disgustingly dirty. They seem to move very awkwardly, slowly, and undecidedly, and almost invariably stop their work while the train is passing.”
- Frederick Law Olmstead
 
“Let him starve and EXTERMINATE himself if he will, and so remove the Negro question”.
-Edward Atkinson, Boston Abolitionist
 
“The free colored people (of New England) were looked upon as an inferior caste to whom their liberty was a curse, and their lot worse than that of the slaves.”
 
-William Lloyd Garrison, Abolitionist editor of The Liberator
 
No free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbor them”
 
-Oregon Constitution of 1857, approved by voters by a vote of 8,640 to 1,081)
 
“No Negro or Mulatto shall come into or settle in the State after the adoption of this Constitution”
All contracts made with any negro or mulatto, coming into this State contrary to the provision of the foregoing section shall be void”
- “Topeka” Abolitionist Kansas Constitution of 1855
Approved by “Free-State” voters 1,287-453
 
-"Three-fourths of the Free State settlers were in favor of a free white State, and the heaviest voting against the free Negro was in Lawrence and Topeka”.
 
-Author and journalist Henry Villard, quoted by Julius E. Haldeman in John Brown-His Life and Martyrdom
 
In the State where I live, we do not like Negroes. We do not disguise our dislike.  As my friend from Indiana (Mr. Wright) said yesterday, “The whole people of the Northwestern States, are, for reasons, whether correct or not, opposed to having many Negroes among them, and that principle or prejudice has been engraved in the legislation of nearly all the Northwestern States.”
 
- Senator John Sherman of Ohio (brother of General William T. Sherman)
 
“I do not concur in any way, or to any degree in the plan proposed” [and that you will be deprived] “of the strength of hundreds of stout arms, which would be nerved with the desperation of men fighting for liberty….Contemplating, however, the possibility of such removal, permit me to say that the Northern States are of all places the worst possible to select for an asylum . . . I would take the liberty of suggesting some Union foothold in the South.”
 
- John J. Andrew, war Governor of Massachusetts, in response to General John Dix’s proposal to settle freed slaves in Massachusetts
(this did not stop Governor Andrew from requesting that the Government count freed South Carolina slaves toward Massachusetts' quota of troops for the war on the South)


Now that we Southerners have visited the noble North, seen her righteous band of freedom fighters and their attitudes toward not only their victims-our ancestors- but toward the lucky beneficiaries of their genocidal revolution-the black man-we have to ask ourselves:

Had tariffs, Constitutional, State's Rights and the entire big government agenda NOT been an issue at all in 1860-61(they were); had our ancestors exercised their Sovereign Right leave the Union of their Fathers solely to avoid being ruled by such darling and charming people as the Abolitionists we have visited in the past two blogs, can we really find any fault with them?

Bear with me, good reader, for we may visit them another time.....
 
 
“Suppose the people of the South would today voluntarily surrender $3 billion in slave property and send their slaves at their expense to the free states, would you accept them as freemen and citizens of your States? You dare not answer me that you would. You would fight us with all your energy and power for twenty years…”
- Congressman John H. Reagan of Texas