Fanatical Abolitionist Agitation Caused Secession

The American South had acquired a large African population first through England’s colonial labor system and New England slave traders, then from territorial expansion enabled by the machine of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney’s that fed raw cotton to New England and British textile mills. Recalling the murderous 1790’s slave uprising of Santo Domingo which massacred the white population, Southerners were rightly concerned about Northern Republicans and abolition fanatics who spurned peaceful solutions to slavery and preached incessant bloody race war in the South.

Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
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The War Between the States Sesquicentennial:


Fanatical Abolitionist Agitation Caused Secession

“The commercial Charleston Daily Courier for October 24 [1859] printed a large selection of [Northern] editorials [reacting to John Brown’s raid] for the benefit of its readers. The Hartford Times, Boston Courier, and New York Herald confirmed that the recent attempt to incite insurrection should indeed be charged to the teachings of Seward, Sumner, and their ilk, while the New Haven Morning Times hoped that abolitionists would learn the futility of disturbing the harmonious social relations of slavery.

The most significant editorial opinion of the lot came from Henry J. Raymond’s Republican New York Times. [Raymond] asserted that “the great mass of the people North,” whatever their party affiliation, “regard every such attempt to emancipate Southern slaves as that which had been crushed in Virginia with horror and execration.”

The business community of New York City with its close commercial ties to the South, as well as similar groups across the nation, suddenly came forward publicly to preach the same doctrine. With the New York Herald in the lead, spokesmen for the city’s businessmen condemned the fanatical attack, loudly proclaimed their dependence upon Southern markets, and declared their ardent support for the South and slavery.

The news from Harpers Ferry, and its still more dreadful implications had frightened [Charlestonian Francis] Pickens. Should the people of the North fail to rebuke the demagogues who fostered such schemes, Pickens warned…the cause of political moderation in the South would be crippled. If instead, the “Conservative men of the North do their duty promptly, it may be the means of confirming the confidence of the South in their integrity & ability.”

With other South Carolina Unionists, Pickens placed safety from insurrection and abolition far above love for the Union. He called for a constitutional convention to permanently guarantee that Northern border States would not again be used as “nurseries” for abolitionist plots.

Republicans were quick to deny culpability in the [John Brown] raid, and more, to spurn the label of abolitionists. On the floor of the house and Senate Thaddeus Stevens and Lyman Trumbull and others took issue with these charges. Trumbull declared that he had no idea why some Southern leaders were threatening secession if a Republican were elected [president] in 1860. His was not an abolitionist party, he asserted, “We have no intention of interfering with your domestic institutions.”

Fired by John Brown’s raid, Barnwell Rhett denounced [Northern] antislavery sentiment…Abolitionists had split the national churches, stolen slaves, barred the Southern people from the common western territories, and incited black insurrections. The Charleston leader was confident that John Brown had now shown all Southerners what awaited them should the Union come under the control of the Republican party.”

(Crisis of Fear, Secession in South Carolina, Stephen A. Channing, Simon & Schuster, 1970, pp. 84-88)
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Fanatical Abolitionist Agitation Caused Secession