Political Recollections | Page 7

parties equally untrustworthy, and
by thus prolonging their rule to defeat all practical anti-slavery work. It
was the singular mistake of the non-voting Abolitionists at this time,
that, while they looked forward to political action as the ultimate result
of their moral agitation, they vehemently opposed the formation of an
anti-slavery political party, and either withheld their votes or divided
them between these pro-slavery chieftains, though giving by far the
larger proportion to the Whig candidate.
From this time forward anti-slavery progress was more marked. The
struggle over the right of petition in Congress continued, and was
characterized by a constantly increasing measure of fierceness on the
part of the South. This is vividly depicted in a passage from the diary of
Mr. Adams, in March, 1841, in which he declares that "The world, the
flesh, and all the devils in hell are arrayed against any man who now, in
this North American Union, shall dare to join the standard of Almighty
God to put down the African slave trade; and what can I, upon the

verge of my seventy-fourth birthday, with a shaking hand, a darkening
eye, a drowsy brain, and with all my faculties dropping from me one by
one as the teeth are dropping from my head, what can I do for the cause
of God and man, for the progress of human emancipation, for the
suppression of the African slave-trade? Yet my conscience presses me
on; let me but die upon the breach."
The celebrated trial of Mr. Adams the following year, for presenting a
petition from the citizens of Haverhill, requesting Congress to take
steps toward a peaceable dissolution of the Union, was a great national
event, and his triumph gave a new impulse to the cause of freedom. The
censure of Mr. Giddings which followed, for offering resolutions in the
House embodying the simplest truisms respecting the relations of the
General Government to slavery, and the elaborate State paper of Mr.
Webster, which provoked these resolutions, in which he attempted to
commit the Government to the protection of slavery on the high seas, in
accordance with the theories of Mr. Calhoun, still further kept alive the
anti-slavery agitation, and awakened the interest of Northern men. A
kindred aid, unwittingly rendered the anti-slavery cause, was the
infamous diplomacy of General Cass, our Ambassador to France in
1842, in connection with the Quintuple Treaty for the suppression of
the African slave trade. His monstrous effort to shield that trade under
the flag of the United States was characterized by Mr. Adams as "a
compound of Yankee cunning, of Italian perfidy, and of French
légéreté, cemented by shameless profligacy unparalleled in American
diplomacy." In October, 1842, Henry Clay himself became an
anti-slavery agitator through his famous "Mendenhall Speech" at
Richmond, Indiana. In response to a petition asking him to emancipate
his slaves, he told the people "that whatever the law secures as property
is property," and described his slaves as "being well fed and clad," and
as looking "sleek and hearty." "Go home, Mr. Mendenhall," said he,
"and mind your own business, and leave other people to take care of
theirs." Mr. Mendenhall was an anti-slavery Quaker; but Mr. Clay,
while rebuking him severely, took pains to compliment the society
itself on its practically pro-slavery attitude, and thus stung into
redoubled earnestness and zeal the men who had recently been driven
out of it on account of their "abolitionism." On the day following this

speech, which was the Sabbath, he was escorted to the yearly meeting
by Elijah Coffin, its clerk, seated in a very conspicuous place, honored
by every mark of the most obsequious deference, and thus made the
instrument of widening the breach already formed in the society, while
feeding the anti-slavery fires which he was so anxious to assuage.
The work of agitation was still further kept alive by conflicts between
the Northern and Southern States respecting the reclamation of
fugitives from crime. Virginia had demanded of New York the
surrender of three colored sailors who were charged with having aided
a slave to escape. Governor Seward refused to deliver them up, for the
reason that the Constitutional provision on the subject must be so
understood as that States would only be required to surrender fugitives
accused of an offense considered a crime in the State called upon to
make the surrender as well as in the State asking for it. Similar
controversies occurred between other States, in all of which the South
failed in her purpose. The anti-slavery spirit found further expression in
1843 in Massachusetts, whose Legislature resolved to move, through
the Representatives of the State in Congress, an Amendment to the
Constitution, basing representation on the free population only of the
States; which proposition gave rise to a most memorable debate in the