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  AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM,
  FROM 1787 TO 1861.

  A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORICAL FACTS,
  EMBRACING LEGISLATION IN CONGRESS
  AND AGITATION WITHOUT.

  (ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK HERALD.)

  BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.

  NEW YORK:
  D. APPLETON & CO.
  1861.

  PRICE, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS.




  HISTORY OF AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM;

  Its Four Great Epochs,

  EMBRACING NARRATIVES OF THE

  ORDINANCE OF 1787,
  COMPROMISE OF 1820,
  ANNEXATION OF TEXAS,
  MEXICAN WAR,
  WILMOT PROVISO,
  <DW64> INSURRECTIONS,
  ABOLITION RIOTS,
  SLAVE RESCUES,
  COMPROMISE OF 1850,
  KANSAS BILL OF 1854,
  JOHN BROWN INSURRECTION, 1859,
  VALUABLE STATISTICS,
  &c., &c., &c.


  TOGETHER WITH A
  HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.


  (ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK HERALD.)


  BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.


  _NEW YORK_:
  D. APPLETON & Co.
  1861.




  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year
  one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one,

  BY F. G. DE FONTAINE,

  in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,
  for the Southern District of New York.


  CHAS. CRASKE,
  STEREOTYPER.


  BARTON & SON,
  PRINTERS,
  111 Fulton Street, N. Y.




INTRODUCTION.


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