Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 2, 1860

Sent Ellie to the opera in charge of her brother Jem and sallied out for a debilitated stroll. Found a great Wide-Awake demonstration in progress; inspected them in Fourteenth Street. Seward was making a speech in “Palace Gardens,’’ and the crowd there was dense, the Gardens packed full and impenetrable. The show in the street was brilliant—rockets, Roman candles with many colored fire balls, Bengal lights, the Wide-Awakes with their lanterns and torches, and “I wish I was in Dixie.” I adjourned to Broadway in front of the New York Hotel to see the procession pass. The Southerners of the hotel groaned and hissed, and the Republican mob in and about the Lincoln and Hamlin headquarters across the street cheered and roared, and the din was deafening. But there was no breach of peace. . . .

Think I will vote the Republican ticket next Tuesday. One vote is insignificant, but I want to be able to remember that I voted right at this grave crisis. The North must assert its rights, now, and take the consequences.

Think of James J. Roosevelt, United States District Attorney, bringing up certain persons under indictment for piracy as slave-traders to be arraigned the other day, and talking to the Court about the plea the defendants should put in, and saying that “there had been a great change in public sentiment about the slave trade,” and that “of course the President would pardon the defendants if they were capitally convicted.”!!! Is Judge Roosevelt more deficient in common sense or in moral sense? If we accede to Southern exactions, we must re-open the slave trade with all its horrors, establish a Slave Code for the territories, and acquiesce in a decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Lemmon case that will entitle every Southerner to bring his slaves into New York and Massachusetts and keep them there. We must confess that our federal government exists chiefly for the sake of nigger-owners. I can’t do that. Rather let South Carolina and Georgia secede. We will coerce and punish the traitorous seceders if we can; but if we can’t, we are well rid of them.

If I looked remarkably like Kossuth or Mazzini, I could nevertheless travel through Austria with no danger beyond that of a few days' detention, at the end of which, my identity being proven, I should be dismissed with apologies and an indemnity. But I happen to be mistaken for John Jay at least once a week, and it would therefore be utter madness for me to visit that section of our free and happy republic that lies south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Before I had traveled half a day’s journey through that sunny and chivalric region, some gent who had visited New York would spot me as a damned abolitionist emissary. I should be haled forth from my railroad car and hanged on the nearest palmetto tree.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 56-7

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Reverend Ralph Randolph Gurley, December 8, 1838

[From the Herald of Freedom of Dec. 8, 1838.]

We must give the whole of this euphonic line, so harmonious to the colored ear. This silver-spoken expatriationist has appeared again, we understand, in our New England horizon, with his northern aspect on, having doffed his slaveholder phases, as he crossed his equinoctial—the Mason and Dixon line. He ranges from tropic to tropic along his crooked ecliptic—from New Orleans on the south, to — the old town hall in Concord (his northmost declination) on the north—shifting his disk, like the changing moon.

Hail to thee, in the “clear cold sky” of the North, thou star of evil promise to liberty! Welcome, caterer of slavery, to the regions of paid labor! Thou reverend advocate of a double origin of the human family, and denier that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men,” &c. Thou promoter of human banishment, and sunderer of the strong ties of native country, hail to thy dubious aspect—thy Janus facies! Come, stir, with thy magician's rod, among the hushed and abashed mobocracy of your native New England. Kindle afresh the slumbering fires of prejudice. Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of persecution! Mount the consecrated pulpit, under the ushering of the shepherds of the flock, who care for the sheep, and “pour” thence “your leprous distilment into” the common ear, till “public sentiment” shall “posset and curd” under your infusion, and the blotch and tetter of colonization shall “bark out over all” the surface of the body politic.

Thou angler for consent to exile! thou fisher for funds in the pockets of prejudice! thou recruiting sergeant for the ranks of banishment! Thou art earning the deep and indelible displeasure of thy colored brother. He must forgive thee unpardonable enmity, and “seventy times seven,” and God help him to charity unbounded—for he needs it in this emergency.

Elliot[T] Cresson, too, a satellite of the Secretary, is up here, on a winter campaign. Why does not Elliot cast the shadow of his broad brim on the snows of Canada, this winter, in the service of the Patriots, and help them become a free republic, and so break up that nest of self-emancipated niggers? For if this province of Canada were only a free, democratic state, it would not afford a refuge to those insolent fugitives, but they would have to be “given up on claim of those to whom” their souls and bodies, their time and eternity, “might be due.” Bethink thee, Friend! Elliot, thou mightest strike a capital stroke for thy master (who can enlarge his brim till it is as broad as William Penn's, to suit his turn) in the extinction of this tyrant monarchy, this refuge of runaway democrats. Thou mightest solicit the fugitives, with good prospect of colonizing them. If thou shouldest succeed in abolishing monarchy in said province, and open a way for the restoration of the lost property to be found there, thou mightest then solicit it for consent to great advantage. Thou mightest offer the candidates, either a sudden, and, as it were, a reluctant return to the patriarchs from whom they strayed, (with fetter on heel and hand-cuff on wrist,) or the glorious alternative of voluntary emigration, “with their own consent,” to the steepled paradise of Liberia. And would they not be free to go or stay? Yea, verily. Thee would say to them, "Friend, I do thee no injustice. Go to Liberia; but go freely. I abate not a tithe of thy free, thy voluntary, thy spontaneous choice. Go if thee choose. If not, stay and return south with me, whence, in an evil hour, thou came out.” Peradventure some of them would "consent," For They Have Been South. Yes, reader, they have been south.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 54-6 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of December 8, 1838.

Francis Amasa Walker to William Schouler, Adjutant General of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, May 31, 1861

. . . I believe I should make a reasonably good lieutenant; at any rate, I should like to try it, south of Mason and Dixon's Line.

SOURCE: James Phinney Munroe, A Life of Francis Amasa Walker, p. 32

Edwin Lawrence Godkin: October 26, 1859

The affair has excited profound sensation, and, let me add, profound consternation at the South. The secrecy with which the plot was brought to maturity, the large quantity of arms and ammunition which Brown had collected, the facility with which he surprised the village and seized the armory, the desperate tenacity with which he held it, the resolution displayed by all his followers from first to last, and more than all, Brown's dauntless bearing since his capture, the lofty tone of moral superiority which he assumes over his captors, have made a profound impression on the Southern people. They have long been in the habit of accusing the abolitionists of tampering with the negroes and instigating them to flight or revolt, but it was always supposed to be in an underhand, sneaking way. The popular notion of an abolitionist made him above all things a coward. But here is at least a small taste of servile war, avowedly begun by this detested crew, and what manner of men do they find them to be? Why, 15 of them suffice to raise the whole State of Virginia into wild affright, to call out all its militia, to bring Federal troops from the capital, to seize on an armory, and defend it for two days, and when it was at last stormed by an overwhelming force, 13 of these poltroons are found to have died at their posts, rifle in hand; two only came out alive, these desperately wounded and glorying in their crime. It is no wonder if the South feels that an abyss has opened at their feet.

They first resorted to physical force as a means of extending slavery in Kansas, counting confidently on Northern pusillanimity. But the fighting had not gone on very long before the crust of peaceful habits wore off the Yankees, and the old whining, praying, unconquerable Puritan burst out. The South, as we know, finding they had raised a legion of devils, quitted the field and called for peace; but, when Yankees once begin to fight, it grows on them, and they were not now disposed to cry quits so easily. So the war has been carried into the enemy's territory. The damage done is, to be sure, very trifling. Only half a dozen negroes joined Brown's enterprise, but it is acknowledged that this is mainly to be ascribed to his having chosen a bad scene of action. In that part of Virginia the negroes are few in number, and a large number of them house servants, and the farms comparatively small. Had he thrown himself into the cotton States, amongst the great plantations, where a thousand blacks often toil for a single owner, — tantalized by hard work, exposure, and the overseer's lash, — and offered them arms and bid them follow him, no man dares to say he would have been crushed without untold horrors. The panic his mad effort has spread proves in what horrible insecurity men dwell south of Mason and Dixon's line, what a flaming sword hangs suspended over the whole slave region, and how deeply the white population feels its danger.

I do not defend, and no one can defend, Brown's conduct. His attempt, had it even half succeeded, could only have bred massacre and desolation. If the Southerners had themselves failed to restore order, — and my firm belief is that if a general negro insurrection ever does take place they will fail, — the North would be compelled, if only for humanity's sake, to step in and quell the revolt. If the condition of the blacks is ever to be really improved, it must be peacefully, and gradually. But in spite of all this, no one can see a gray-headed man, who has lost five sons in the cause of freedom, step in, with the last survivor of his family by his side, between the slave and his master, and with his 13 other companions bid defiance to a whole State in the name of the Lord of Hosts, without more or less admiration. There is something grand in the old fellow's madness, and those here at the North who most condemn him, acknowledge him to be well worthy, if not of a better, of a more hopeful cause, and of a happier fate than that which now awaits him.

SOURCE: Rollo Ogden, Editor, Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Volume 1, p. 190-2