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No section of the old South contained so much anti-slavery sentiment as did the western parts of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, the northern part of Georgia and the eastern parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. This was due to causes entirely natural. The South Atlantic coast region is divided into two distinct kinds of country. Next to the ocean there is a strip of land, varying from fifty to one hundred miles in width, which is a fertile and well watered plain. West of this, and stretching to the mountains, is a hilly region, whose clay soil, though fertile in spots, is not naturally as productive as that lying on the river banks to the east. The eastern division was first settled. It fell almost from the first into the hands of wealthy planters, and soon held many slaves. The western portion, as well as the lands beyond the mountains, was occupied by settlers during the eighteenth century. These came chiefly from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New England. Many of them were Scotch-Irish, and not a few were Germans. Many were persons who had arrived in America a few years before, and who were still poor. Nearly all settled on small farms, which they expected to work with their own hands. Being remote from water communication, they were a long way from market, and consequently industry progressed slowly. They raised most of the articles they consumed, and what they bought they got by carting their wheat or driving their stock from fifty to a hundred miles to Richmond, Va., to Fayetteville, N. C., or to some other point at the head of

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navigation of the various rivers that traversed this section. Under such conditions the upland counties remained frugal, industrious, simple and democratic. Here slavery was introduced very slowly. From the conditions of industry, as well as from the habits of the people, slavery had at first little encouragement. Had not the eastern and southern edges of this section been opened to the cotton industry, and had not the raising of slaves for the far South become profitable, slavery very probably would have gained no foothold here.

All the conditions of small farms, simple habits and democratic ideals which have been ascribed to this general region were emphatically attributable to that part of it which lay in North Carolina. The western part of this State, until the railroads were built, about the middle of this century, was very distinct from the eastern part. A line drawn from the Roanoke river at Halifax, through the western parts of Edgecomb, Greene and Lenoir counties, across the center of Duplin and the western part of Pender, thence straight to the Cape Fear river, then continued to the neighborhood of Fayetteville, then across the western end of Harnett, the eastern sides of Wake and Franklin, and thence to the Roanoke river; such a line would enclose a territory which, save for as much of the valleys of the Roanoke, Tar, Neuse and Cape Fear as lay in it, was a level plain, covered with pine forest, and which was not very attractive to immigrants. This region was thinly settled, and until it was cleft by the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad it was not well developed. It remained a "pine barren," and served to divide the east from the west. The counties west of this, except those along the Cape Fear and Roanoke rivers, contained few spots in which slavery had planted itself with any considerable rootage. In the West was, also, no great love of slavery. If a vigorous appeal could have been made against slavery in these counties, they could very likely, at any time before 1860, have been carried for freedom. It is noteworthy that all the anti-slavery leaders the State produced came from within, or near, this region.

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Besides the economic and territorial differences between these two regions, one ought to mention a political difference. The counties of the east were small as compared with those of the west. The State Senate was, by the Constitution of 1776, composed of one Senator from each county. The House of Commons was composed of two Representatives from each county and one from each of six designated towns. In 1835 there were in the west twenty-six counties, while there were thirty that might be classed as eastern in spirit. The eastern counties were much smaller than those of the west. This gave the predominance of power to the smaller east. The importance of this is seen in the fact that the selection of the Governor and other executive officers of the State, the judges and the officers of the militia, was left to the Assembly. The west rebelled against this arrangement, and won its rights in the Constitutional Convention of 1835. It was then provided that Senators should be elected from districts formed on the basis of public taxation, and that the members of the House of Commons should be apportioned among the counties on the basis of federal population. The relief for the west is obvious. Of the counties that now had four Representatives, all were western, and of those that had three, nine were western and three eastern; while of those that had only one, twenty were in the east and five in the west, three of the latter being mountain counties, which to this day are very thinly settled. At the same convention the election of Governor was given to the people. Still the gain of the west was not all that it desired. It saw that representation in the House of Commons on the basis of federal population bore severely on it. It was with difficulty that the party leaders could keep this question out of the struggle for the abolition of property qualification for the election of Senators, which was fought through and won, in 1857, after a contest of nine years. Had not the issue of the war removed this inequality, it is safe to say that it would have become an issue between the two sections before many years had

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passed. Indeed, if we consider the righteousness of antislavery in the abstract, and the superior strength of the vigorous west, it cannot be doubted that, had the question been left to be determined in a peaceful struggle, the west would finally have removed the stain of slavery from the State.

One other factor of the struggle in the west ought to be mentioned. I refer to the Quakers. There were in Guilford, Randolph and adjoining counties a large number of this sect.(1) These were as ardent in the cause of abolition here, in the face of slaveholders, as their brethren had been in Pennsylvania. By the time the colonies were committed to the cause of independence the Friends were committed to the cause of abolition. In the face of harsh laws which made emancipation very difficult, they worked on, liberating their own slaves, and sometimes buying slaves of other people that they might liberate them. Those that they could induce to go they sent to the free States; those that would not go they transferred to the Society and held them in only nominal bondage. Thus by the middle of the century they had worked slavery out of their connection. They ever remained a nucleus for anti-slavery sentiment. They joined with their non- Quaker neighbors in the support of a Manumission Society. They accustomed the people around them to the ideas of anti-slavery, and that was a great advance for that day.

Thus the economic, social and political forces of the western counties made them less friendly to slavery than the eastern counties. Of all the region of the later Confederacy, that which lay in these counties was very probably the strongest in anti-slavery sentiment. It is not strange that out of the sturdy inhabitants of this section there should have come leaders who went so far as to condemn certain

(1. The Quakers in the Northeastern part of the State were strongly opposed to slavery and supported emancipation; but they did not become so notable for anti-slavery spirit as their western brethren. This was probably because they were in a strong pro-slavery region.)

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effects of slavery, and boldly to denounce the entire system as iniquitous and unprofitable. The most noted of these leaders were Hinton Rowan Helper, Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick and Daniel Reaves Goodloe. The first two lived within this region, and the third, although he was reared in a county which I have classed as eastern, belonged to the same class of people of small means as made up the mass of the people of the west. One other name ought to be added to these, as well for its prominence in anti- slavery efforts as because it admirably illustrates the conditions under which the contest against slavery must be waged. This person, Lunsford Lane, was a member of the enslaved race itself, and perhaps did his most effective abolition preaching in the way in which he rose above the condition of a slave, purchased his own freedom and that of his family at a cost of $3500, retaining at all times the esteem of the best people in the community in which he lived, and receiving the explosions of the wrath of the more violent element in the same community.

HINTON ROWAN HELPER.

Hinton Rowan Helper was born in Davie county, North Carolina, December 27, 1829. His paternal grandfather was born near Heidelberg, Germany, and came to North Carolina in 1752. His maternal grandfather, who was of English descent, was Cannon Brown, of Virginia. His father, Daniel Helper, married Sarah, the daughter of Cannon Brown, and the pair settled down on a small farm on Bear creek, a tributary of the South Yadkin river. Here there were born seven children, the last of whom is the subject of this sketch. Daniel Helper died in the fall of 1830, and the widow and her seven children, the eldest of whom was less than twelve, were left to support themselves as best they could. They had four slaves, a man and his wife and their two children, and from the labor of these the family managed to live. The training of young Hinton was such as many a backwoods boy gets: rough sports in

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the open air, hunting and fishing, all kinds of farm work in season, a little schooling in the neighborhood schools, and finally a term or two in a neighboring academy, which, in this case, happened to be in the village of Mocksville. With such an outfit he found himself at the threshold of manhood. His health was not very robust, but as he grew older he became stronger, and he is now an admirable specimen of well-preserved manhood.

When twenty years old he moved to the city of New York, which he made his home for some months. When he came of age, however, he started off to California, by way of Cape Horn, hoping to make his fortune in the gold regions. At Valparaiso, Chile, the ship stopped for provisions and masts, and this gave the young man his first direct acquaintance with South America, a country with which his later life has been somewhat closely associated. His stay in the gold region was short and unprofitable. In 1854, three years after he had set out, he returned to the farm and settled down to the life in which his boyhood had been spent. Such a life was too dull for him. His mind was active, and he had a store of observations made during his absence. Some minds seem to be set on ball bearings, they work so easily. Mr. Helper seems to have such a mind. His ready use of words and his incisive mental processes easily fitted him for writing. In the quiet of the farm life he wrote an account of his journey, which he called "The Land of Gold." In 1855 the work was ready for the press. He made arrangements for publication with Mr. Charles Mortimer, of Baltimore, then the publisher of the Southern Quarterly Review, and a strong pro-slavery Virginian. In his travels Mr. Helper had found no slave labor. He had been struck with the superiority of free labor. This, he concluded, was particularly true of the cities; and he thought that slaves should be relegated to the country. The work of printing had progressed to some extent when the publisher discovered these sentiments. He refused to print them. The author, anxious for the safe delivery of his first-born, and having already paid $400 for work done on the book, was in despair.

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He hesitated as to what to do, and at length told the printer to do as he chose with the matter. Mortimer then cut out the objectionable passages and published the book.

The result of this course was important. The young man, chagrined at what he deemed an outrage, determined that he would be heard. He returned to North Carolina and began an extensive study of the question of slavery. In a year he had formulated his views. In June, 1856, a few days after the nomination of Fremont for the Presidency, he started again for the North, taking with him the manuscript of "The Impending Crisis of the South." In Baltimore he stopped long enough to aid in forming a Republican association, one of the first in the South, and destined soon to be broken up by a pro-slavery mob. He hardly expected to get a publisher for his work in this city; but he, nevertheless, tried to secure one. Failing completely, he went on to New York. Here he found more sympathy for his views, but only a little aid in putting them before the public. The work was offered to the Harpers, Scribner, Appleton and all the other regular publishers, but not one would take it. In his despair he offered the manuscript for nothing, but the offer was not accepted. They all declined, because to publish such strong anti-slavery views, or to have them brought out in connection with their firms, would drive away their Southern patronage. Mr. James Harper, an Abolitionist himself, and a man to whom Mr. Helper had brought a letter of introduction, said to the young author, with great frankness, that while he concurred with the book in its hostility to slavery, and found it worth bringing out, yet, after consulting with his business partners, it had been decided that publishing it would cause the firm to lose at least twenty per cent. of their annual trade. In view of such a fact, they did not dare to undertake the work.

These were no doubt wise business methods, but they disheartened the author. Between seven and eight months he spent going from one publisher to another. How much he suffered in the meantime will not be easily imagined. Convinced that he had a great principle at stake, he was determined

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to exhaust every energy to accomplish his task. This long period of waiting was endured with steadfastness. He was committed to the right of being heard on a question on which his opinions had once been suppressed. He felt that he was demanding vindication. At length, worn out with anxiety and disgusted at what he thought a lack of courage on the part of the publishers, he decided to accept an offer made by Mr. A. B. Burdick. That gentleman, who was a book agent rather than a book publisher, agreed to issue the book in his own name, Mr. Helper having previously secured him against loss. The venture proved a handsome success. Mr. Burdick made a fortune from the sales, but, unfortunately, lost it in stock speculation.

"The Impending Crisis of the South" was well calculated to attract attention in the North. The author was a Southerner, not of the slave- holding aristocracy, but of the class of small farmers. He approached the question from the economic side, while other anti-slavery writers had approached it from the side of the rights of the negro. The literary style was clear and cutting. The author wrote in behalf of the non-slaveholding whites of the South, for whom he claimed an opportunity to make a living. There was a grim directness in the following words, taken from the preface to the first edition: "The genius of the North has also most ably and eloquently discussed the subject in the form of novels. New England wives have written the most popular anti-slavery literature of the day. Against this, I have nothing to say; it is all well enough for women to give the fictions of slavery; men should give the facts." In the same preface he referred to the fact that he was a Southerner, as proud as any of his birthplace, and added: "As the work, considered with reference to its author's nativity, is a novelty, * * * so I indulge the hope that its reception by my fellow-Southrons will be novel; that is to say, that they will receive it as it is offered, in a reasonable and friendly spirit, and that they will read it and reflect on it as an honest endeavor to treat a subject of vast import without

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rancor or prejudice, by one who naturally comes within the pale of their own sympathies."

These were fair words; but Mr. Helper must have known well when he wrote them that his book would receive little favor in the South. If he hoped otherwise, he was soon undeceived. The appearance of the work in the summer of 1857 was the signal for a flood of denunciation from that quarter. It was at once declared to come within the provision of the laws against the circulation of incendiary literature. To own a copy was against good taste, and traitorous to the interest of the South. In 1859 John A. Gilmer was the Whig candidate for the governorship in North Carolina. His opponents charged him with owning a copy of "The Impending Crisis." His friends replied by declaring that John W.Ellis, the Democratic candidate, had a copy. The Raleigh Standard, the leading Democratic paper of the State, indignantly denied the charge against Ellis. The truth of the matter, it said, was that in 1858, while Ellis was in New York, Mr. Helper, who had known him in North Carolina, called on him and later on sent a copy of the book. This Mr. Ellis threw out of the window. Sometime later Governor Ellis received another copy through the mails, and that he used for lighting his pipe.(1) Making bonfires of the book was a mild feature of its reception in many parts of the South. The Northern papers reported that a number of persons were hanged or otherwise killed for having copies in their possession. The truth of the latter statement it has been impossible to prove.

The enemies of Mr. Helper tried to break down his arguments by blackening his character. It was charged that he had taken fraudulently a sum of money from an employer in Salisbury, N. C., and that when accused of the crime he had admitted it, alleging that he was at the time only seventeen years old, and that another clerk had induced him to take the money. This charge was repeated by Senator Biggs, of North Carolina, in a congressional debate, in

(1. Raleigh, N. C. Standard, Aug. 10, 1859.)

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1857.(1) Mr. Helper and his friends indignantly denied the charge, and produced a certificate from his former employer stating that it was false.(2) This accusation continued to be repeated by the Southerners.(3) The Standard believed the charge, and doubtless but echoed public sentiment in the State when, in 1859, it said that Helper was good enough for the Abolitionists; he stole money, while Greeley and Thurlow Weed wanted to steal slaves: there was no difference.

The reception of "The Impending Crisis" by the Northern public, while favorable, was not immediately flattering. Its great popularity was doubtless caused by the political interest that sprang out of it. This came about in this way: In 1857 a gentleman from Rhode Island, whose name is not given, acting in conjunction with Mr. John Bigelow, associate editor of the New York Evening Post, made arrangements to print 100,000 copies of a compendium of "The Impending Crisis." The panic of that year coming on soon after, the project was dropped. In March, 1859, the scheme was revived in a different form. A number of gentlemen, among whom were Samuel E. Sewell, Cassius M. Clay, F. P. Blair, Jr., Charles W. Elliot, David Dudley Field and Charles A. Peabody, now issued a circular, calling for subscriptions to a fund of $15,000 in order to print, as a campaign document, 100,000 copies of such a compendium. The circular said, among other things: "No other volume now before the public, as we conceive, is, in all respects, so well calculated to induce in the minds of its readers a decided and persistent repugnance to slavery and a willingness to coöperate in the effort to restrain the shameless advances and hurtful influences of that pernicious institution." The scheme was endorsed by the leading Republican members of Congress, among whom were Messrs. Colfax, Grow, Giddings,

(1. Raleigh, N. C. Standard, Dec. 7, 1859.)

(2. The New Englander, Vol. 15, p. 647.)

(3. See Samuel M. Wolf's "Helper's Impending Crisis Dissected" (1860), p. 75.)

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Dawes, Washburn and John Sherman, and by the most prominent Abolition leaders, among whom were Thurlow Weed, Wm. Cullen Bryant, B. S. Hedrick and Horace Greeley. The latter gentlemen declared: "Were every citizen in possession of the facts embodied in this book, we feel confident that slavery would soon pass away, while a Republican triumph in 1860 would be morally certain." It is of interest to know that of the amount collected, North Carolinians subscribed $165. Among the subscribers were Professor Hedrick and Mr. Goodloe, whom the Raleigh Standard described as "two other recreant sons of this State.(1)

The plans thus set forth were accomplished. One hundred thousand copies of the compendium were printed in 1860 and distributed throughout the doubtful States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois. In their estimate of the book the Abolitionists were right. Its style cut like a knife. It showed clearness, conviction, and a certain intensity which would likely make a more striking appeal to the voters than the more restrained statements of a more scholarly work. It was not free from the vivid rhetoric to be expected from a self-taught young man from the backwoods, and yet, for the purposes in view, this was no disadvantage.

The success of this circular was not calculated to soothe the feelings of the Southern Democrats, whose feelings were already at the highest pitch. Their newspapers took up the matter, publishing extracts to show that "The Impending Crisis" was incendiary. To the Southerners this was a deliberate purpose of the Republicans to arouse the entire North against the South. Shortly after the compendium scheme was assured there occurred John Brown's attacks on Harper's Ferry. The South was more convinced than ever of the harmfulness of the book which the Abolitionists were using to propagate their doctrines. While affairs were in this shape Congress met. The caucus nominee of

(1. Raleigh Standard, Dec. 7, 1859.)

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the Republicans for the Speakership was John Sherman, who, with other Congressmen, had signed the above-mentioned circular. To his election the Southerners opposed their strongest efforts. As soon as Congress met a resolution was introduced which declared "That no person who has endorsed and recommended [Helper's] book, or the compendium from it, is fit to be Speaker of this House." One of the fiercest debates in the history of that body now began. Southern members used the bitterest threats. Members on each side went armed, fearing a resort to force. The debate on the resolution was dropped long enough to take some ballots for Speaker, but without any election. Ignoring the usual holiday recess, the contestants went on until, on January 30, 1860, Sherman withdrew his name. Three days later Pennington, of New Jersey, was elected by the Republican and American votes.(1)

The attracting of public attention to "The Impending Crisis" had a most exciting effect on its sale, which hitherto had not been extraordinary. The demand for it was now immense. Copies might be seen in stacks on every news stand and in every book store of the North. Some proslavery men tried to prevent its sale. The president of the Norristown Railroad Company ordered that it should not be sold in the railroad cars, the gentlemen's waiting-rooms, or the railway stations.(2) Such efforts were in vain. By the autumn of 1860, 142,000 copies, including the compendium, had been sold. It is doubtful if any other American book not fiction, except, perhaps, Mr. Harvey's "Coin's Financial School," has reached so great a circulation in so short a time. Had the war not begun in 1861, which destroyed the occupation of more Abolitionists than one, the circulation would have gone much higher.

A more impartial view of the book from a scholar's standpoint would be the book reviews it received at the time it

(1. See the preface of the "Impending Crisis," (1860).)

(2. See Garrison's Liberator, Jan. 20, 1860.)

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was published. The New Englander (Vol. 75, p. 635, 1857), in calling attention to the fact that the author wrote from the side of sociology, said: "On the subject in this department he has made the most complete and effective presentation within our knowledge. It is thorough, reliable, demonstrating, overwhelming. It consists of facts which cannot be denied or gainsaid; facts derived to a large extent by careful examination and comparison from the census, which cannot be suspected of anti-slavery bias, since it was compiled under the direction of an eminent statistician who is notorious for his pro-slavery principles and zeal." The Westminster Review, having less interest in the conflict, and being more critical in point of style, said, with much justness: "The style of production is peculiarly American. Its language and ideas alike are often extravagant, and its allusions sometimes very personal. Statistics and other facts are well arranged and fully authenticated, but the conclusions of the author are not always correct, and occasionally exhibit a want of practical political knowledge.(1)

The burden of Mr. Helper's story was the benefiting of the non- slaveholding whites of the South. These ought to be distinguished from the "poor whites." The latter were a class, in themselves more or less shiftless, living around among the large plantations, without ambition and mostly in extreme poverty. They were largely wrecks, both industrial and moral, on the shores of society; although a child occasionally came out from among them whose efforts enabled him to reach a high place in society. The former class were the small farmers who worked their lands without slave labor. They were most numerous in the west, among the Scotch- Irish and the Germans. They were thrifty and sturdy, and when they removed to the Northwest, as many of them did to escape the effects of slavery, they proved valuable citizens. Emancipation of the slaves would have been a blessing to either of these classes. By it one class would have been raised slowly from degradation

(1. Vol. 75 (1861), p. 81.)

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to respectability, the other from respectability to wealth. What either of these classes suffered from the slaveholders is seen in this extract from Helper: He says there were several kinds of pine near his boyhood home, "by the light of whose flamable knots, as radiated on the contents of some half-dozen old books, which, by hook or crook, had found their way into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the long winter evenings to some advantage, and have thus partially escaped from the prison grounds of those loathsome dungeons of illiteracy in which it has been the constant policy of the oligarchy to keep the masses, the nonslaveholding whites and the negroes, forever confined."(1)

To improve the condition of this class it was necessary to abolish slavery. He started out to learn "why the North has surpassed the South." (2) He boldly attacked the notion that the South excelled the North in agriculture. From the census of Professor De Bow himself, who was a strong Southerner, he showed that in bushel-measure products the North was far ahead of the South, and that the hay crop alone of the North was worth more than all the cotton, tobacco, rice, hay, hemp and cane-sugar raised in the South. This comparison was also made in regard to farm animals, total wealth, gross expenditure and various other items from the census columns. These arguments, inasmuch as they attempt to prove the superiority of free labor over slave labor, were well taken. The North and the South had begun the period of national existence about equal in resources and opportunity. That the latter section had fallen so far behind must be due to slavery. In summing up this feature of the question he uttered the following characteristic sentence: "It makes us poor; poverty make us ignorant; ignorance makes us wretched; wretchedness makes us wicked, and wickedness leads us to the devil."

Sound as the argument was, there was much that was calculated to make Southern blood boil. It was a time of stern

(1. The Impending Crisis, p. 110.)

(2. Ibid., p. 74.)

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conviction. Each side had little of the spirit of toleration. Mr. Helper ought not to be blamed, perhaps, that he did not rise above the spirit of his surroundings. Certain it is, he was no master of saying unpleasant truths in a palatable way. At times he spoke bluntly, often bitterly. In one place he exclaims: "No man of genuine decency and refinement would have them [the negroes] as property on any terms."(1) Speaking of the increase that would be realized in the value of lands if slavery were abolished, he said, addressing the slaveholders: "Now, sirs, this last sum is considerably more than twice as great as the estimated value of all your negroes, and those of you, if any there be, who are yet heirs to sane minds and generous hearts, must, it seems to us, admit that the bright prospects which freedom presents for a wonderful increase in the value of real estate, ours as well as yours, to say nothing of the thousand other kindred considerations, ought to be quite sufficient to induce all the Southern States in their sovereign capacities to abolish slavery at the earliest practicable period."(2) In the same spirit he finds in the South "three odious classes of mankind; the slaves themselves, who are cowards; the slaveholders, who are tyrants; the non-slaveholding slavehirers, who are lickspittles."(3) He arraigned severely "the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials" for their conduct in Washington, where, "on frequent occasions, choking with rage at seeing their wretched sophistries scattered to the winds by the logical reasoning of the champions of freedom, they have overstepped the bounds of common decency, vacated the chair of honorable controversy, and, in the most brutal and cowardly manner assailed their unarmed opponents with bludgeons, bowie- knives and pistols. Compared with some of their barbarisms at home, however, their frenzied onslaughts at the National Capital have been but the simplest breach of civil deportment, and it is only for the purpose of avoiding personalities that we refrain from divulging a few instances of the unparalleled

(1. The Impending Crisis, p. 75.)

(2. Ibid., p. 107.)

(3. Ibid., p. 118.)

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atrocities they have perpetrated in the legislative halls south of the Potomac. * * * A few years of entire freedom from the cares and perplexities of public life would, we have no doubt, greatly improve both their manners and their morals; and we suggest that it is a Christian duty, which devolves on the non-slaveholders of the South, to disrobe them of the mantles of office, which they have so worn with disgrace to themselves, injustice to their constituents, and ruin to their country."(1)

The last sentence brings up the non-slaveholders, whose wrongs he breathed out as fire. He said to the slaveholders "Do you aspire to become the victims of white non-slave holding vengeance by day, and of the barbarous massacre of the negroes by night? Would you be instrumental in bringing upon yourselves, your wives and your children, a fate too horrible to contemplate? Shall history cease to cite as an instance of unexampled cruelty the massacre of St. Bartholomew, because the world--the South--shall have furnished a more direful scene of atrocity and carnage? Sirs, we would not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads; but we have endured long, we have endured much; slaves only of the most despicable class would endure more. * * * Out of your effects you have long since overpaid youselves for your negroes, and now, sirs, you must emancipate them--speedily emancipate them or we will emancipate them for you!"(2) This extract smacks of insurrection. In another place this is found: "In reason and in conscience, it must be admitted, the slaves might claim for themselves a reasonable allowance of the proceeds of their labor. If they were to demand an equal share of all the property, real and personal, which has been accumulated or produced through their effort, heaven, we believe, would recognize them as honest claimants."(3) These sentiments seemingly grew out of a commendable sympathy for the slaves, and they had a certain justification in facts, yet it is impossible

(1. The Impending Crisis, pp. 131-2.)

(2. Ibid., p. 106.)

(3. Ibid., p. 142.)

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not to see that preaching them to the slaves would have tended to arouse the negroes to insurrection. It is but just to add that such extreme statements occur rarely, and charity should prompt us to think that when they do occur they are but temporary feelings which sober action would repudiate.

But it was the effect that the book might have on the non-slaveholding whites, more than its effect on the negroes, that the slave-owners feared. Well might they have feared on this score. In 1850 the white population of the slave States was 6,184,477. About 1,200,000 of these must have been voters. Mr. Helper calculated on the basis of De Bow's census that not more than 200,000 slaveholders were voters.(1) Accordingly, the non- slaveholding voters must have had a vast majority of the votes. What must have been the result if these votes could have been united against the slave power? He appealed to the non-slaveholders. He told them that they had all the burdens of government and none of the benefits of legislation; they had furnished the fighting force of the armies of the South, yet they had never received from the legislators even "the limited privileges of common schools," while the slaveholders had gone to the North for their teachers and their skilled mechanics, and when asked to do so had contemptuously refused to redress the wrongs of the non-slaveholders. Today this may suggest the demagogue, but there is a deal of truth in it. The remedy must be political. He said: "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box." His programme embraced seven principles; "1. Thorough organization and independent political action on the part of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. 2. Ineligibility of pro-slavery slaveholders; never another vote to anyone who advocates the retention and perpetuation of human slavery. 3. No coöperation with pro-slavery politicians; no fellowship with them in religion;

(1. The Impending Crisis, p. 117.)

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no affiliation with them in society. 4. No patronage of proslavery merchants, no guestship in slave-waiting hotels; no fees to pro-slavery lawyers; no employment of pro-slavery physicians; no audience to pro- slavery parsons. 5. No hiring of slaves by non-slaveholders. 6. Abrupt discontinuance of subscriptions to pro-slavery newspapers. 7. The greatest possible encouragement to free white labor."(1)

To put these measures into force he proposed the calling of a convention of non-slaveholders from every State in the Union. This should devise the means of fighting slavery, and should publish a platform of principles and invite the support of the non-slaveholders of the South and Southwest. The tendency of this scheme toward Republican politics is evident. Of course the Democrats opposed it. Exceptions can only be taken to the methods by which they opposed it. It is not difficult to imagine the fate of a half-dozen Republican speakers, who, acting on Mr. Helper's suggestion, might have gone to North Carolina to organize the non- slaveholding whites. An illustration of what would have befallen them we have in the experience of Rev. Daniel Worth. Were it not that slavery and the fortunes of many good but mistaken people went down so disastrously in the avalanche of war, words could not be found too strong to denounce the false spirit that made it impossible to preach in a fair manner a doctrine of simple political principles and to appeal in a constitutional way to the best intelligence of those who were recognized as legal voters. More unfortunate than reprehensible was it that the spirit of intolerance had so taken possession of some of the leading people of the State as is shown by the incident which will now be related.

Rev. Daniel Worth was a native of Guilford county, North Carolina, where, in early life, he had been a justice of the peace. Later he removed to Indiana, and at length became a member of the legislature in that State. Late in 1858 he returned to the neighborhood of his birthplace as a

(1. The Impending Crisis, pp. 123-4.)

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preacher in the Wesleyan Methodist Church. He preached the doctrine of his church, which was strongly anti-slavery, not without criticism, but, on account of the good feeling for his kinsmen, who were prominent people, without molestation. He planted a church at Sandy Ridge, near James-town, in Guilford county, and his postoffice was New Salem. His church had but few members. He aroused the opposition of many Quakers, most of whom were for non-intervention in regard to slavery. Worth thought they should be more positive in their opposition.

In December, 1859, after the Harper's Ferry affair, Mr. Worth was arrested on the charge of circulating Helper's book, and of preaching in a way "to make slaves and free negroes dissatisfied with their condition." He was required to give bond of $5000 for his appearance at the Superior Court the following spring, and of $5000 more to keep the peace. The first bond he gave. The second he thought unjust, and would not give. He was accordingly confined in the Greensboro jail throughout the winter. While there the sheriff of Randolph county arrested him on the same charge, and bound him over to the spring court. Other sheriffs waited around the place for him, fearing that he might be released and escape. While he was in prison five other men were arrested in Guilford and several more in Randolph, charged with having distributed Helper's book. One of these was Jesse Wheeler and another was an old man named Samuel Turner. All of these seem to have been natives who were converted by Mr. Worth's appeals. The Raleigh Standard bore witness to his success. It said that a few months before this occurrence only one copy of the New York Tribune came to Mr. Worth's postoffice, and that came to Mr. Worth himself. Now twelve copies were received there. To this it added: "We think it probable that one hundred to two hundred copies of the Tribune are circulated in this State, together with numerous abolition pamphlets from Indiana and Ohio." Wheeler alone was said to have distributed more than fifty

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copies of "The Impending Crisis." On his trial before the magistrate that committed him, Mr. Worth read from the book in order to show that it was not incendiary, a proceeding which the Raleigh Standard seems to have considered especially provoking.

The arrest occasioned great excitement in the vicinity, and for a time crowds surrounded the jail. A great crowd was in the courtroom when the case finally came to trial. The case was taken up and finished in one sitting. It was midnight when it went to the jury. In his charge the judge is reported to have said that "to sustain the allegation of seeking to excite the slaves and free colored people to discontent, it was not necessary to prove that the book had been read by or recited to a free negro or slave, or that any such knew anything or any part of its contents."(1) The jury returned at 4 A. M. with the verdict of "guilty." The jury, said the Fayetteville (N. C.) Presbyterian, was composed largely of non-slaveholders.(2) The legal penalty was imprisonment for not less than one year and the pillory or the whipping-post, in the discretion of the judge. The court remitted the whipping on account of the age and calling of the prisoner, and sentenced him to one year's imprisonment. Many of the bystanders, said the New York Tribune, regretted the leniency of the court, and hoped that a more severe judge in another county might add the whipping. From this judgment the prisoner appealed to the Supreme Court of the State, and giving a bond of $3000, he was released. He at once repaired to New York city, where he made anti-slavery speeches and tried to raise money enough to repay the loss of his bondsmen. His bondsmen were his sympathizers, and the court records show that they were required to pay the forfeited bonds. On appeal, the judgment of the lower court was confirmed. It is likely that the authorities of Guilford were glad to be rid of him, so much attention was his case attracting in the North. He

(1. See N C. Standard, Jan. 4, 1860. Dec. 14 and 21, 1859.)

(2. Copied in The Liberator, June 15, 1860.)

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lived through the war that settled the question of slavery, and died within two years after its termination.(1)

After the publication of "The Impending Crisis," Mr. Helper did not feel that it would be safe for him to return to his home. He accordingly remained in New York in business. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him Consul to Buenos Ayres. He arrived at his post in the following spring. In 1863 he married Miss Mary Louisa Rodriguez, of Buenos Ayres. His official services at this place were satisfactory, but uneventful. In November, 1866, he resigned his position and sailed for America. He made his home in New York city, where, with some interruptions, he has since continued to reside.

It was about the time of his return from South America that he severed his connection with the old leaders of the anti-slavery cause. When he took up the study of slavery he took it up merely as it affected the whites. He never was an advocate of the equal rights of the negro. On the contrary, he has always had too violent aversion for them. To this day he will have nothing to do in a business way with any hotel or other enterprise that employs negroes. He regards the negro as an inferior race, without possibility of satisfactory progress, and would hail with delight the day when not one of the race should be in the country. These views are not wanting in "The Impending Crisis;" but in 1857 they were overshadowed, both in his own and in the popular mind, by the question of the evil effects of slavery on the whites. With the question of slavery gone, his mind turned to the negro. He saw how much the presence of the negro had retarded Southern progress, and he conceived a positive dislike for the whole race. While in Buenos Ayres a friend requested him to furnish American papers of protection to a negro, but he stoutly declined, on the ground that the "United States of America are already burdened with four million too many" of negroes.

(1. See Helper's "Nojoque", p. 199.)

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When he returned to North America the Republicans were coming to deal with the negro problem. Their attitude did not meet with his approval. His pen, always facile, at once went to work; and by the middle of the next year he published "Nojoque, a Question for a Continent." Mr. Helper's best friends must regret that he should have written this book. It is a severe, and, at times, an unreasonably violent, attack on the negro. It assailed, in the strongest way, what it stigmatized as the "Black Congress," and proposed an alliance between white Republicans and loyal Democrats, which, having secured control of the government, should offer the negroes aid to get out of the country by a specified time. Those that did not go should be sent away by main force or "be quickly fossilized in bulk beneath the subsoil of America." The plan was, in short, to expel as many as could be persuaded to go, and to massacre the others. As a part of the history of the time, the book deserves no consideration. It is only in connection with its author, who did before this a great part in a most important work, that it need be mentioned at all. It is charitable to say that recent events had so accustomed Mr. Helper to death that he was inconsiderate of the value of human rights and human life. As to his estimate of the negro, it is enough, in view of the development of opinion on the subject both North and South, to say that he underestimated the blacks. Two other books in the same spirit followed closely on "Nojoque." These were "Negroes in Negroland," and "Noonday Exigencies."

One result of these later books was to sever completely his relations with the old leaders of the Abolitionists. His failure to accept the theory of the equality of man had always prevented them from receiving him with warmth. They now dropped him altogether, and Henry Wilson, in 1875, when he wrote the "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America," failed to give him credit for the great influence of "The Impending Crisis." The cause seems to have been the views of the negro problem expressed in these post-bellum publications.