CHAPTER XI
FOREBODINGS OF THE CRISIS
The ten years from 1850 to 1860 were years of cumulative danger to the republic and to the principles of liberty and democracy upon which it was founded. For the Negro these years contained more of perils than of hopes. The great historical events growing out of the conflict between the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery parties appeared to have set the goal of emancipation ever farther out of the range of practical possibilities. The Fugitive Slave Law seemed for a time to put an end to all hopes for further rescues from bondage. The Dred Scott Decision made every Negro, free or slave, an outlaw. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill threatened to render slavery so thoroughly national that Abolition would be forever impossible. Finally, the John Brown raid intensified, for a time, the hatred toward the colored people and their friends in the North.
But the success of the pro-slavery party was more apparent than real. It had gained merely a tactical victory. All the deeper currents of the nation’s life were running counter to it. The raid excited the horror of the people. Even men active as Abolitionists denounced the acts of John Brown as both foolhardy and wicked. It seemed for a time that every one prominent in social and political life in the North was anxious publicly to disavow all share in what was described as a “reckless and fanatical” deed. But John Brown’s raid did not bring the people of the North and South any nearer together. On the contrary, it merely widened the breach between them. The North might disclaim this act, but the people of the opposite section were not satisfied with these disclaimers. It seemed to them that behind John Brown was a great conspiracy, and that the North, having determined to make a nullity of the Fugitive Slave Law, was preparing to follow it up with still more daring efforts to free the slaves at any cost.
Brown was hurried to the gallows, but not before an effort was made to implicate in his crime men who were prominent as Abolitionists. It has already been shown what steps were taken to capture Frederick Douglass. A Congressional committee was appointed for the purpose of thoroughly investigating the whole matter, but it accomplished nothing. It is scarcely necessary to say that the death of Brown produced an impression throughout the country quite as profound as that already created by his “raid.” The execution changed public sentiment at once. People now began to feel and to say that the cause, and not the man, had been on trial when he was found guilty. The sentence of death passed by the Virginia court transformed Brown in the eyes of a great many Northern people into a martyr and shed a halo over the cause for which he gave his life. Emerson compared the gallows of Virginia to the cross in Palestine. All through the North the people began to sing the song that continued to be a favorite throughout the Civil War:
“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, But his soul is marching on.”
The panic-stricken friends of freedom recovered their spirits and renewed their attacks with increased vigor. To quote from Frederick Douglass: “John Brown’s defeat was already assuming the form of victory, and his death was giving new life and power to the principles of justice and liberty. What he had lost by the sword, he had more than gained by the truth.”
The people of the South all through this controversy had shown themselves correct interpreters of public sentiment. They clearly saw that the execution of John Brown did not put an end to the cause of Abolition. This reckless act of invasion was merely typical of what was possible on a scale of vaster proportions. In spite of everything that had been achieved by law and by decisions of the Supreme Court, the trend of feeling in the North was steadily against slavery. In spite of the Fugitive Slave Law and an increasing vigilance on the part of masters and their agents, the Underground Railroad continued its business of carrying slave-property to free soil. Charles Sumner’s speech in the Senate added fresh interest to the cause of emancipation, and the continued popularity of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was ominous. All these disquieting circumstances boded some dreadful issue of the controversy. The drift of events is best exhibited in the effects of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, already referred to. When this bill became a law, as the consummation of the policy of Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the physical boundary between slavery and freedom, which many had supposed to be fixed as firmly as the Declaration of Independence, was swept away and all the vast empire of the west and northwest became disputed ground between the forces of free soil and slavery. This act gave effect to the new doctrines of state sovereignty. Whatever may have been its purpose, the result was to unite the forces of the North and South, pitting the two sections against each other in a struggle for supremacy in the new territory. In outward appearance this new doctrine was peaceful and sound, but it held dreadful possibilities. Expressed plainly, the Kansas-Nebraska Law said that whether these new states should be free or slave-states must be left to the people. It was for them to vote slavery “up” or “down.” In other words, if the majority of the people of these territories voted for slavery, it became, by their sovereign will, an institution fixed and irrevocable; if not, slavery was forever to be shut out, just as it was excluded from Massachusetts.
The intensity of public interest in and anxiety for the future status of these new states was shown in the instant rush into Kansas from New England of colonists favorable to the cause of free soil, and from the South of colonists favorable to the cause of slavery. Each side appreciated how momentous was the issue. The people of Missouri and other neighboring slave-states knew that it would be difficult, with a free state adjoining them to hold their bond-servants in security. The people of New England and other Northern states understood that the political supremacy of the free-states would be forever lost if the South were able to make slave-ground out of the western territory.
It was an exciting contest and soon proved a gory one. Men from both sections were expecting that the struggle would be attended with bloodshed and they went out armed and prepared for it. Kansas, “bleeding Kansas,” was a battle-ground. It is not necessary here to recount the sanguinary incidents between the cohorts of emancipation and slavery in this neutral territory. Suffice it to say that in the end the cause of free soil triumphed and the contest was merely preliminary to a vaster conflict of which it was a premonitory token.
Before and during these stormy events in Kansas, there was in progress an intellectual conflict which was destined to have a more serious ending. This was the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, both of Illinois. More clearly, perhaps than any other one event, this round of speeches formulated the issue which divided the American people politically on the question of slavery. It revealed to the nation a man who gave to them, for the first time, a frank and clear-cut definition of the issue to which it had been brought by the struggle. Lincoln said in effect: “The Union cannot long endure, half-slave and half-free. It must be all one or all the other, and the public mind can find no resting-place but in the ultimate extinction of slavery.”
Of course, this was but a reiteration of what had been repeatedly said by the Abolitionists during the past twenty-five years, but coming now at a time when there was an unconscious groping of the popular mind toward a definite issue for public action, these clear words seemed to be charged with meaning of tremendous importance. The people of the whole country listened to these Illinois debaters with an interest that seemed prescient of coming events. As the debate progressed, Mr. Lincoln seemed to rise visibly and steadily from the western provincial obscurity he had lived in up to this point, to a prominence in which he appeared for the time to overshadow every one else who had spoken on the great question. The immediate prize to be won in the debate was a seat in the United States Senate; but before its close, this sank into insignificance, and the presidency of the United States, the preservation of the Union, and the fate of slavery, had become the stakes of the contest.
The issues in the coming election already began to shape themselves along the lines enunciated by Mr. Lincoln and Senator Douglas. In due time new political alignments were completed as follows:
(1) The pro-slavery and Union Democrats of the North stood for state sovereignty, or the right of the people of a territory to admit or bar slavery as they saw fit. Senator Douglas was the unquestioned leader of this wing of the Democratic party.
(2) The pro-slavery people of the South stood for the bold declaration that the Constitution of its own force gave the right to carry slaves into any territory of the United States and to hold them there, with or without the consent of the people of the territory. John C. Breckinridge was the leader of the Southern wing of the Democracy.
(3) Abraham Lincoln was chosen to bear the standard of all the people who were opposed to both varieties of pro-slavery Democrats. His doctrine was that the Federal Government had the right to exclude slavery from the territories of the United States, and that this right and power ought to be exercised to keep slavery within the confines of the then existing slave-states.
It will be seen that emancipation was not an issue on the surface of these declarations of principles. The whole question appeared to be: Shall slavery have the power of expansion? If this power were denied, could there be any doubt as to what must ultimately follow? If the people feared the power of slavery to such an extent that they would or could keep it within a restricted territory, would not this principle, when successful, be the first step toward its extirpation? The South more clearly than the North understood that the triumph of Mr. Lincoln would settle nothing. Beneath these platform utterances was the unwritten issue: Slavery’s security of expansion, or its “ultimate extinction.” If the South won in the impending contest, not only would slavery be secured by the right of its extension into the undivided territory west of the Mississippi, but political supremacy might pass permanently from the free-states.
The position of Stephen A. Douglas and his followers was rather anomalous. As the Senator at one time expressed it, he cared not whether the question of extending slavery into the territories was “voted up or voted down”; with him the important thing seemed to be that the people of the new territory should have the opportunity to vote on the question and decide for themselves the character of their institutions.
Mr. Lincoln’s followers represented nearly everything left of the spirit that was glorified in the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution of 1776. Those who would preserve the soil of the West free; those who would not only restrict, but abolish slavery altogether; and those who would endow the Negro with all the proclaimed natural rights of man, supported Lincoln.
The situation was complicated as well as perilous. Heretofore, when the only question between the North and the South was slavery or the right to hold slaves, the people of the North were governed as much by their racial prejudices as the Southern people. Now, however, when other questions, incidental to slavery, as, for instance, the future political supremacy, were involved with the main issue, many men and women, who had heretofore been indifferent or silent, became actively concerned, and felt impelled to take a definite stand. There seems never to have been any possibility of the North and South going to war on account of Negro slavery. It was at this time clear from the whole history of the controversy that if the Negro were ever to be free, his freedom must come as a consequence and not as the cause of a conflict.
Probably no man in public life saw this more clearly than Frederick Douglass. He was just as much a part of the history in the process of making, all about him, as he was permitted to be. He had his say and was heard. He understood the trend of events and he was not swept away by merely transitory incidents. In all this controversy he sought constantly, in his speeches, and in his paper, _Douglass’s Monthly_, to lift into clear view the paramount issue. The following extract from one of his speeches indicates the clearness with which he saw, and the definiteness with which he was able to foreshadow the events of the next succeeding years:
“The only choice left to this nation is abolition or destruction. You must abolish slavery or abandon the Union. It is plain that there can never be any union between the North and South, while the South values slavery more than nationality. A union of interests is essential to a union of ideas and without this union of ideas, the outer form of union will be but as a rope of sand.”
During the Illinois debates, Frederick Douglass did all he could to enforce the arguments and extend the steadily growing influence of Mr. Lincoln. He made an extensive campaign in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. His audiences were large and interested, being eager to hear any man who could speak with the distinction, clearness, and frankness that characterized his public utterances. He had grown in esteem and the mob-spirit that tried to harass him in his earlier campaigns in the West had given way before his increasing influence and popularity. Once in Illinois he met Senator Douglas, who treated him with marked courtesy.
In 1854, Frederick Douglass delivered an address in Chicago which ranks as one of his greatest orations. Frederick May Holland, who has already been referred to as the author of a valuable biography of the Negro leader, has given to the public, for the first time, I believe, nearly all of this interesting speech. The reproduction of at least a part of it seems essential to this chapter:
“The Constitution knows no man by the color of his skin. The men who made it were too noble for any such limitation of humanity and human rights. The term ‘white’ is a modern term in the legislation of this country. It was never used in the better days of our republic, but has sprung up within the period of our national degeneracy.
“I am here simply as an American citizen, having a stake in the weal or woe of the nation in common with other citizens. I am not here as the agent of any sect or party. Parties are too politic and sects are too sectarian, to select one of my odious class and of my radical opinions, at this important time and place, to represent them. Nevertheless, I do not stand alone here. There are noble-minded men in Illinois who are neither ashamed of their cause nor their company. Some of them are here to-night, and I expect to meet them in every part of the state where I may travel.
“But, I pray, hold no man or party responsible for my words, for I am no man’s agent, and I am no party’s agent.... It is alleged that I came here in this state to insult Senator Douglas. Among gentlemen that is only an insult that is intended to be such, and I disavow all such intention. I am here precisely as I was in this state one year ago—with no other change in my relations to you, or the great question of human freedom, than time and circumstances have brought about. I shall deal with the same subject with the same spirit now as then, approving such men and such measures as look to the security of liberty in the land and with my whole heart condemning such men and measures as serve to subvert or endanger it. If Hon. S. A. Douglas, your beloved and highly gifted senator, has designedly or through mistaken notions of public policy, ranged himself on the side of oppressors, and the deadliest enemies of liberty, I know of no reason, either in this world or in any other world, which should prevent me or any one else, from thinking so or saying so.
“The people in whose cause I came here to-night are not among those whose right to regulate their own domestic concerns is so feelingly, and earnestly, and eloquently contended for in certain quarters. They have no Stephen A. Douglas, no General Cass, to contend at North Market Hall for their popular sovereignty. They have no national purse, no offices, no reputation with which to corrupt Congress, or to tempt men, mighty in eloquence and influence into their service. Oh, no! They have nothing to commend them, but their unadorned humanity. They are human—that’s all—only human. Nature owns them as human; but men own them as property, and only as property. Every right of human nature, as such, is denied them; they are dumb in their chains. To utter one groan or scream for freedom in the presence of the Southern advocate of popular sovereignty, is to bring down the frightful lash upon their quivering flesh. I know this suffering people; I am acquainted with their sorrows; I am one with them in experience; I have felt the lash of the slave-driver, and stand up here with all the bitter recollections of its horrors vividly upon me.
“There are special reasons why I should speak and speak freely. The right of speech is a very precious one. I understand that Mr. Douglas regards himself as the most abused man in the United States; and that the greatest outrage ever committed upon him was in the case in which your indignation raised your voices so high that he could not be heard. No personal violence, as I understand, was offered him. It seems to have been a trial of vocal powers between the individual and the multitude; and as might have been expected, the voice of one man was not equal in volume to the voices of five thousand. I do not mention this circumstance to approve it; I do not approve it. I am for free speech, as well as free men and free soil; but how ineffably insignificant is this wrong done in a single instance, compared to the stupendous iniquity perpetrated against more than three millions of the American people, who are struck dumb by the very men in whose cause Mr. Senator Douglas was here to plead! While I would not approve the silencing of Mr. Douglas, may we not hope that this slight abridgment of his rights, may lead him to respect in some degree the rights of other men, as good in the eye of Heaven as himself?
“Let us now consider the great question of the age, the only great national question which seriously agitates the public mind at this hour. It is called the vexed question, and excites alarm in every quarter of the country.
“The proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise, was a stunning one. It fell upon the nation like a bolt from a cloudless sky. The thing was too startling for belief. You believed in the South and you believed in the North; and you knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a breach of honor; and therefore, you said that the thing could not be done. Besides both parties had pledged themselves directly, positively, and solemnly against reopening in Congress the agitation on the subject of slavery; and the President himself had declared his intention to maintain the national quiet. Upon these assurances you rested and rested fatally. But you should have learned long ago that men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. It is folly to put faith in men who have broken faith with God. When a man has brought himself to enslave a child of God, to put fetters on his brother, he has qualified himself to disregard the most sacred of compacts; beneath the sky there is nothing more sacred than man, and nothing can be properly respected when manhood is despised and trampled upon.
“It is said that slavery is the creature of positive law, and that it can only exist where it is sustained by positive law—that neither in Kansas nor Nebraska is there any law establishing slavery, and that therefore, the moment a slave-holder carries his slaves into these territories, he is free and restored to the rights of human nature. This is the ground taken by General Cass. He contended for it in the North Market Hall, with much eloquence and skill. I thought, while I was hearing him on this point, that slave-holders would not be likely to thank him for the argument. It is not true that slavery cannot exist without being established by positive law. The instance cannot be shown where a law was ever made establishing slavery, where the relation of master and slave did not previously exist. The law is always an after-coming consideration. Wicked men first overpower and subdue their fellow-men to slavery, and then call in the law to sanction the deed. Even in the slave-states of America, slavery has never been established by law. It was not established under the colonial charters of the original states, nor the Constitution of the United States. It is now and has always been a system of lawless violence. On this proposition I hold myself ready and willing to meet any defender of the Nebraska bill. I would not hesitate to meet even the author of that bill himself.
“He says he wants no broad, black line across this continent. Such a line is odious, and begets unkind feelings between the citizens of a common country. Now, fellow citizens, why is the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, a broad black line? What is it that entitles it to be called a black line? It is the fashion to call whatever is odious in this country, black. You call the devil black, and he may be; but what is there in the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, which makes it blacker than the line which separates Illinois from Missouri or Michigan from Indiana? I can see nothing in the line itself which should make it black or odious. It is a line, that’s all. It is black, black and odious, not because it is a line, but because of the things it separates. If it keep asunder what God has joined together, or separate what God intended should be fused, then it may be called an odious line, a black line; but if, on the other hand, it marks only a distinction natural and eternal, a distinction fixed in the nature of things by the eternal God, then I say, withered be the arm and blasted be the hand that would blot it out.
“Nothing could be further from the truth, then, to say that popular sovereignty is accorded to the people who may settle the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The three great cardinal powers of government are the executive, legislative and judicial. Are these powers sacred to the people of Kansas and Nebraska? You know they are not. That bill places the people of that territory, as completely under the powers of the Federal government as Canada is under British rule. By this Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Federal government has the substance of all governing power, while the people have the shadow. The judicial power of the territories is not from the people of the territories, who are so bathed in the sunlight of popular sovereignty by stump eloquence, but from the Federal government. The executive power of the territories derives its existence, not from the overflowing fountain of popular sovereignty, but from the Federal government. The secretaries of the territories are not appointed by the sovereign people of the territories, but are appointed independent of popular sovereignty.
“But is there nothing in this bill that justifies the supposition that it contains the principle of popular sovereignty? No, not one word. Even the territorial councils, elected, not by the people of the territory, but only by certain descriptions of people, are subject to a double veto power, vested, first in the governor, whom they did not elect, and second in the President of the United States. The only shadow of popular sovereignty is the power given to the people of the territories by this bill to have, hold, buy, and sell human beings. The sovereign right to make slaves of their fellow-men, if they choose, is the only sovereignty that the bill secures.
“But it may be said that Congress has the right to allow the people of the territories to hold slaves. The answer is, that Congress is made up of men, and possesses only the rights of men; and unless it can be shown that some men have a right to hold their fellow-men as property, Congress has no such right. There is not a man within the sound of my voice, who has not as good a right to enslave a brother man, as Congress has. This will not be denied, even by slave-holders.
“Error may be new, or it may be old, since it is founded in a misapprehension of what truth is. It has its beginnings; and its endings. But not so truth. Truth is eternal. Like the great God, from whose throne it emanates, it is from everlasting to everlasting, and can never pass away. Such a truth is man’s right to freedom. He was born with it. It was his before he comprehended it. The title deed to it was written by the Almighty on His heart; and the record of it is in the bosom of the Eternal; and never can Stephen A. Douglas efface it, unless he can tear from the great heart of God this truth; and this mighty government of ours will never be at peace with God, unless it shall practically and universally embrace this great truth as the fountain of all its institutions, and the rule of its entire administration....
“Now, gentlemen—I have done. I have no fear for the ultimate triumph of free principles in this country. The signs of the times are propitious. Victories have been won by slavery; but they have never been won against the onward march of anti-slavery principles. The progress of these principles has been constant, steady, strong and certain. Every victory won by slavery has had the effect to fling our principles more widely and favorably among the people. The annexation of Texas, the Florida war, the war with Mexico, the Compromise Measures, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, have all signally vindicated the wisdom of the great God, who has promised to override the wickedness of men for His own glory—to confound the wisdom of the crafty and bring to naught the counsels of the ungodly.”
The nomination, in 1860, of Mr. Lincoln by the Republican party, of Stephen A. Douglas by the Northern Democracy, and of John C. Breckinridge by the Southern Democracy, brought on that memorable campaign which preceded the final collision between the North and the South.
“Into the fight,” says Frederick Douglass, “I threw myself, with a firm faith and more ardent hope than ever before, and what I could do by pen and voice was done with a will. The most memorable feature of the canvass, was that it was prosecuted under the shadow of a threat.”
The followers of Breckinridge had boldly announced that if they were defeated, they would not submit to the rule of Abraham Lincoln, but would proceed to take the slave-states out of the Union. This threat of secession was not a new one, but, coming, as it did, after the failure to make Kansas a slave-state, it created something like a panic in the North. It served for the moment to divert public opinion from political issues to the very grave possibility of national disruption.
In spite of this openly declared purpose on the part of the Southern Democracy, the Republican party, made up in part of Whigs, the old “Liberty” and “Free Soil” parties, and a large number of the Abolitionists, elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.
It was a signal victory, but it brought with it little comfort, more anxiety, and many grave responsibilities. The people of the North were desirous of peace, and so were the people of the South; but to agree on terms was difficult. While the North, in the presence of a great triumph was worried and anxious, the South openly and resolutely began to prepare for secession and war. When, in the early part of the presidential canvass, the South notified the nation what it would do in case of defeat, the threat was generally accepted as mere bluster. No sooner was the result of the election known than there began to accumulate evidence which indicated that this threat was backed by a very positive determination to carry it out. The states south of the Ohio prepared to leave the Union in orderly procession, as if secession were a familiar and undisputed custom. The administration, under President Buchanan, saw the process of national dismemberment go on and merely declared that it could find no power in the Constitution to coerce a state. In the presence of this unchallenged dissolution of the Union, the North fairly quaked with fear. An opinion which favored almost any kind of compromise that would save the country from the horrors of civil war gained wide influence. While the South was confident of its strength to maintain itself in its present course, it did finally and with apparent reluctance, indicate a few of the conditions on which it would agree to remain in the Union. Among these were the following:
Each Northern state, through its legislature or in convention assembled, should repeal all laws which tended to impair the constitutional rights of the South.
It should pass laws for the easy and prompt execution of the Fugitive Slave Law.
Laws should be passed imposing penalties on all malefactors, who should hereafter encourage the escape of fugitive slaves.
Laws should be passed declaring and protecting the rights of slave-holders to travel and sojourn in Northern states, accompanied by their slaves.
Every state should instruct its representatives and senators in Congress to repeal the law prohibiting the sale of slaves in the District of Columbia, and pass laws sufficient for the full protection of slave property in the territories of the Union.
These conditions, offered by the South, could not be heartily approved by the people who had just won such a decided victory on an issue involving these very conditions. Yet there was a decided wave of popular feeling in favor of peace upon any terms. Men of positive convictions and eminent in all walks of life—William H. Seward, H. B. Anthony, and Joshua R. Giddings—were now ready to purchase it at almost any price. The enthusiasm for emancipation and free soil that had so stirred the North during the presidential campaign, began to wane, and so serious a reaction set in that, for a time, it seemed likely to make barren the Republican victory. Not only so, but the mob-spirit of the ’30’s was reawakened, and Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and their supporters were assaulted on the streets of Boston. The people of the North refused to tolerate further agitation against slavery, and were desirous, in every possible way, to appease the anger of the other section. Committees were appointed to confer with representatives of the South for the purpose of obtaining a better understanding of their grievances.
Thus, while the North seemed anxious to recede from almost every position it had won in the recent election, the South was too confident of its strength and of the justice of its cause to give much encouragement to the messengers of peace from the other side. The situation just described is an interesting illustration of the characteristic difference between the people of the North and the South on every question in which the Negro was involved. The North was very reluctant to make slavery an issue; the South was always willing to be challenged on that issue. In the North, the Negro was a problem; in the South, he was property. It is always easier to deal with property than to deal with a problem. For example: In the Kansas and Nebraska controversy, the South wanted territory for slave-property, and the North wanted it as an outlet for New England emigrants. If the only question involved had been to save the black man from further enslavement, the South would very possibly have won. In other words, interest in the Negro as a human being, deserving a chance to live and grow, was not the only and perhaps not the immediate motive behind the men who fought for free soil. Slavery was fundamental and therefore, from the point of view of party politics, a dangerous issue. There were men in the North and also in the South who for conscience’ sake would like to have seen the Negro emancipated, but the nation was not yet ready for it. It involved consequences so vast and so far-reaching that the mass of the people hesitated and were afraid. In the state of the country at that time, the political parties of the North were anxious to make it appear to the South that they had little or no concern about the Negro, either as a freeman or a slave. Their great anxiety was to save the Union. Mr. Lincoln was politically wise enough to state that his administration was in no way committed to emancipation or to anything else that looked to a change in the condition of the Negro people. He would save the Union with or without slavery. He would very likely have found himself lacking in national confidence or support, had he failed to make this declaration.
When the South decided to go out of the Union, it furnished the President with the one thing needed and that was a platform on which he could unite the people of the North. When his policy was distinctly the preservation of the government, Free Soil Democrats, Abolitionists, and all believers in an undivided country, came at his call. All sentiment in favor of emancipation served only to swell the passionate appeal to the national feeling to save the Union. The Negro’s only hope was that, in this threatened conflict to preserve intact the federation of the states, his emancipation might become an inevitable necessity.
Frederick Douglass expressed this hope in the following language: “I confess to a feeling allied to satisfaction at the prospect of a conflict between the North and South. Standing outside of the pale of American humanity, denied citizenship, unable to call this land of my birth my country, and adjudged by the Supreme Court to have no rights which a white man was bound to respect, and longing for the end of bondage for my people, I was ready for any political upheaval that would bring about an end to the existing condition of things.”
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