and to make them abolitionists. Newspapers were founded, tracts, books, and almanacs were prepared, and freely illustrated with pictures of the horrors of slavery; and one college, Oberlin, admitted negro students and became the western center of the abolition sentiment. Meetings, societies, and publications all caused an astonishing uproar. In the South, practically nobody was allowed to advocate abolition; in the North the sensitive population. expressed its horror of the abolitionists by riots. In 1835 an antislavery meeting in Boston was broken up by a mob, which laid hold of Garrison, tied a rope about his body, dragged him through the streets, and tried to kill him. In 1837 another persistent agitator and editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered by a mob in Alton, Illinois, because he persisted in publishing an antislavery paper even in a free state. Colored schools were broken up, and in New York and Philadelphia colored settlements were attacked. Nobody was more hated and despised than the abolitionist. 297. Slav. The abolition societies adopted the practice of sending petitions asking Congress to prohibit slavery in the District of Columbia, and in 1835 William Slade of Vermont made the first abolition speech in Congress. This led to a series of ery before Congress so-called gag resolutions (1836-1844) by which the House (1835-1844) forbade any debate on antislavery petitions. The attempt to stop discussion aroused John Quincy Adams, who be lieved that his constituents and their representatives on the floors of Congress, had the right to argue in the public press on any subject. In 1837, and again in 1842, attempts were made to pass a vote of censure on him in the House; but Adams warned Congress that if they attempted to stop petitions by censuring the member who presented them, "they would have the people coming besieging, not beseeching." The first western abolitionist member of Congress, Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, appeared in 1838, and he made it the main purpose of his life to bring about slavery debates on all sorts of side questions, in spite of an attempt (1842) to close his lips by a vote of censure. BROADWAY, NEW YORK, IN 1830. (From a contemporary print.) Side by side with the political development of Jackson's administration went a great movement of humanitarian and 298. Sum- religious reform. People at last had grown sympathetic with the poor, the ignorant, the defective, the criminal, and the slave; they were trying all kinds of experiments; and they invented new sorts of societies and "causes." mary The most important of the humanitarian movements was that of the abolitionists; and it was fiercely sectional, because the northern states were just getting rid of the last vestiges of slavery, and the South was on the whole well contented to have slavery. Since the agitators were all north of Mason and Dixon's line, and the thing to be reformed was all south of it, the Southerners looked on abolition as a wicked method of making them trouble. The abolitionists took the ground that slavery was a national evil, so long as the federal government recognized it and protected it; and therefore that it was a concern of the northern people as well as of the southern. Then they discovered that the place to preach the evils of slavery was in Congress. There was no stopping them, without giving up the right of free discussion; but from the time the abolitionists were fairly at work, the North and the South were estranged. TOPICS (1) Why should not people be imprisoned for debt? (2) Why Suggestive topics should libraries be established out of public funds? (3) Influence of Brook Farm. (4) Washington Irving as a literary man. (5) James Fenimore Cooper as a literary man. (6) Edgar Allan Poe as a literary man. (7) Why did the poor whites vote with the great slaveholders? (8) Why did abolitionists cease agitation in the South about 1830? (9) Why did the attacks on the abolitionists swell their numbers? (10) John Quincy Adams's objections to slavery. (11) Public Search topics services of Dorothea Dix. (12) Origin of normal schools in America. (13) Education at West Point. (14) The lyceum system. (15) Split in the Methodist Church in 1844. (16) Movement for foreign missions. (17) Washingtonian societies. (18) Joseph Smith's character. (19) Life in a wealthy slaveholding household. (20) Bright side of slavery. (21) Dark side of slavery. (22) Scriptural argument in favor of slavery. (23) Argument that slavery was good for the negro. (24) Stories told by fugitive slaves. (25) Prosecution for teaching negroes to read. REFERENCES Hart, Slavery and Abolition. Geography Wilson, Division and Reunion, §§ 53-57, 60–66; Hart, Slavery Secondary and Abolition; Sparks, Expansion, 290-296, 376-418; Rhodes, authorities United States, I. 40-75, 303-383; Schouler, United States, III. 507-531, IV. 1-31, 199-229; McMaster, United States, IV. 522569, V. 82-108, 184-226, 284-372; Adams, United States, IX. 175187, 198-242; Larned, History for Ready Reference, IV. 2927, 2935, 2943, V. 3369, 3373, 3375; Page, Old South, 57-92, 143-185; Brown, Lower South, 16-49; Smith, Liberty and Free-soil Parties, HART'S AMER. HIST.-21 Sources Illustrative works Pictures 1-47; Wendell, Literary History of America, 157-435; Morse, J. Hart, Source 157, 169-184, - Book, §§ 94–101, — Contemporaries, III. §§ 151-Source Readers, III. §§ 12, 13, 26, 28, 105-115, IV. §§ 1-11; MacDonald, Select Documents, no. 69; American History Leaflets, no. 10; Old South Leaflets, nos. 78, 79, 81, 109; Caldwell, Survey, 148-156; Johnston, American Orations, II. 102– 122; Douglass, Life and Times; May, Antislavery Conflict; Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States; Quincy, Figures of the Past; Smedes, Southern Planter, 17-189. See N. Eng. Hist. Teachers' Ass'n, Syllabus, 348, Historical Sources, § 85. Longfellow, Poems on Slavery; Whittier, Antislavery Poems, 9-94,- Snow Bound; Lowell, Wendell Phillips, - W. L. Garrison, - On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington; Morgan Bates, Martin Brook (abolition); H. P. Belt, Mirage of Promise (abolition); Holmes, Elsie Venner (N.E.); Lucy Larcom, New England Girlhood; E. E. Hale, New England Boyhood; Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance; T. B. Aldrich, Story of a Bad Boy (N. E.); D. G. Mitchell, Doctor Johns (Conn.); Lily Dougall, Mormon Prophet; A. W. Tourgée, Button's Inn (Mormons); M. S. Tiernan, Suzette (Va.); A. B. Longstreet, Georgia Scenes; R. M. Johnston, Old Times in Middle Georgia; J. C. Harris, Uncle Remus; H. B. Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Edward Eggleston, Hoosier Schoolmaster, The Graysons (West); Joseph Kirkland, Zury. The McVeys (West). Sparks, Expansion; Wilson, American People, IV. CHAPTER XXIII. RENEWED EXPANSION (1841-1847) 299. The Whigs and THE abolition controversy did not yet disturb the course of party politics. In the campaign of 1840 the Democrats nominated Van Buren for a second term. The anti-Jackson men, who had now formally taken the name of the Whig party, nominated William Henry Harrison of Ohio for (1840-1842) President, and John Tyler of Virginia, a discontented Democrat, for Vice President. The Whigs expected to reestablish the national bank, appropriate money for internal improvements, and, if possible, revive a protective tariff. It was a boisterous campaign, full of great mass meetings. Somebody said that Harrison was fit only to sit in his log cabin and drink hard cider; the Whigs took up the slur; and log cabins on wheels, amply provided with barrels of hard cider, were used as a popular argument to voters. The Democrats were really beaten by the panic of 1837, for hard times still continued. Harrison was chosen by 234 electoral votes to 60 for Van Buren, on a popular majority of about 140,000; and the Whigs secured both houses of the next Congress. A month after his inauguration Harrison died, and John Tyler succeeded to the presidency. Though elected by the Whigs he did not accept their principles, and vetoed (August and September, 1841) two successive bills intended to restore the main features of the old United States Bank; whereupon every member of his Cabinet, except Webster, resigned. Tyler also came into collision with the party Whigs over the tariff. Though the Compromise of 1833 was to have taken full effect in 1842, they were determined to substitute |