SLAVERY PROPOGANDA

[Thea]

From Avery Craven's "The Coming of the Civil War" (quoting and capsulizing from his book, page 142-145....This book has been building to this as one of the reasons for the war.  There are three books in the trilogy and they are really fascinating reading.  The Coming of the Civil War by Avery Craven, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons 1942
 
I am entering in the year 1840.....)
 
As economic rivalry between North and South increased, the anti-slavery movement gained strength and began to emerge as the dominant reform effort of the period.  The motives underlying this development are partly revealed by a letter written by Joshua Leavitt to his friend Joshua Giddings in October, 1841.  Leavitt spoke of Giddings' belief that the best policy for action was to aim "at specific points....which you deem beneficial to free labor or rather to the North, as a bank, tariff, etc." and then declared that his own purpose was to make opposition to slavery the leading object (his emphasis) of public policy.

"We must have a leading object,"

he continued, (Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld.....Sarah Grimke', I, 880.) [quote]"in which we can all harmonize, and to which we shall agree to defer all other favorite objects.  It is vain to think of harmonizing the North in favor of restrictive policy or an artificial credit system...There is no object but slavery that can serve our turn....it is the greatest of evils and the prime cause of other evils..."[/quote]

With the new growth and new importance of the movement, the technique of its propoganda also reached new efficiency.  Never before or since has a cause been urged upon the American people with such consummate skill and such lasting effects.  Every agency possible in that day was brought into use; even now the predominating opinions of most of the American people regarding the ante-bellum South and its ways are the product of that campaign of education.
Indoctrination began with the child's A B C's which were learned from booklets containing verses like the following: (The Anti-slavery Alphabet

("In the morning sow thy seed"

), Philadelphia, 1847.)
 
A is an Abolitionist
A man who wants to free
The wretched slave, and give to all
An equal liberty.
 
B is a brother with a skin
Of somewhat darker hue,
But in our Heavenly Father's sight,
He is as dear as you.
 
C is the Cotton field, to which
This injured brother's driven,
When, as the white man's slave, he toils
From early morn till even.
 
D is the Driver, cold and stern,
Who follows, whip in hand,
To punish those who dare to rest,
Or disobey command.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 
I is the Infant, from the arms
Of its fond mother torn,
And at a public auction sold
With horses, cows, and corn.
. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . .
 
Q is the Quarter, where the slave
On coarsest food is fed
And where, with toil and sorrow worn
He seeks his wretched bed.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 
W is the Whipping post
To which the slave is bound,
While on his naked back, the lash
Makes many a bleeding wound.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
 
Z is a Zealous man, sincere,
Faithful, and just, and true;
An earnest pleader for the slave--
Will you not be so too?

For children, able to read, a wider variety of literature was evolved.  One volume in verse  urged [quote]"little children"[/quote] to

"plead with men, that they buy not slaves again"[/quote] and called attention to the fact that: (Booklet of Anti-Slavery Children's Poems in Huntingdon Library.)
 

They may hearken what you say,
Though from us they turn away.
 

Another verse suggested that:
 
Sometimes when from school you walk,
You can with your playmates talk,
Tell them of the slave child's fate,
Motherless and desolate.
And you can refuse to take
Candy, sweetmeat, pie or cake,
Saying

"No"-

unless 'tis free--
"The slave shall not work for me."[/size]
 
For adults the appeal was widened and no approach was neglected.  Hymn books offered abolition songs set to familiar tunes. 
 
The strains of

"Old Hundred"

voices invited

"ye Yeoman brave"

to rescue

"the bleeding slave,"

or, to the

"Missionary Hymn"

asked them to consider:
 [/size]

The frantic mother
Lamenting for her child,
Till falling lashes smother
Her cries of anguish wild!

Even almanacs carrying the usual information about weather and crops, filled their other pages with abolition  propoganda.  In one of these, readers found the story of Liburn Lewis, who, for a trifling offense, bound his slave, George, to a meat block and then, while all the other slaves looked on, proceeded slowly to chop him to pieces with a broad ax, and to cast the parts into a fire. (Henry H. Sims, "A Critical Analysis of Abolition Literature, 1830-1840," Journal of Southern History, VI,  368-382; Dwight L. Dumond, Anti-Slavery Origins of the Civil War in the United States; Arthur Young Lloyd, The Slavery Controversy.)
 
Local, state, and national societies were organized for more efficient action in petitioning, presenting public speakers, distributing tracts, and publishing anti-slavery periodicals. The American Anti-Slavery Society "in the year 1837-38, published 7,877 bound volumes, 47,256 tracts and pamplets, 4,100 circulars, and 10,490 prints.  Its quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine had an annual circulation of 9,000; the Slave Friend, for children, had 131,050; the monthly Human Rights,  189,400, and the weekly Emancipator, 217,000.  From 1854 to 1858 it spent $3281 on a series of tracts discussing every phase of slavery, under such suggestive titles as "Disunion, our Wisdom and our Duty," "Relations of Anti-Slavery to Religion," and "To Mothers in the Free States."  Its

"several corps of lecturers of the highest ability and worth...occupied the field"

every year in different states.  Its Annual Reports, with their stories of atrocities and their biased discussion of issues, constituted a veritable arsenal from which weapons of attack could be drawn.  Like other anti-slavery societies, it maintained an official organ, issued weekly, and held its regular conventions for the generation of greater force. (Ibid)

Thea

[Johan Steele]

Nearly as biased as the actions of the slaveocracy and those who would defend them.  Though, I think, more honest.

The slaveocracy flouted the law through the Wanderer and other incidents, banned books and murdered at a whim.  Any who opposed them took their life in their own hands.  If someone dared publish an opinion that didn't agree... see Elijah Lovejoy.

[BorderRuffian]

Virginia came within one vote of abolishing slavery in 1831.

Then came the abolitionists of the North.

Virginia never again voted on abolishing slavery until after the Civil War.

*

Then came the abolitionists of the North.

What might have been without them?-

Would Virginia have eventually abolished slavery?

Would other states such as NC, KY, TN, MD, DE, MO (with smaller slave populations than VA) have followed suit?

[Johan Steele]

Eventually, eventually it would have stopped.  I always hear that mantra, it only would have stopped when it was no longer profitable.  And it was never more profitable than in 1860.

As a note, Alcott, the founder of Bostons first Abolisionists wasn't interested in abolition until he worked as a salesman in Virginia and SC where he saw the "benevolance" of slavery first hand.  As you know, if you've done your research that is, the first abolitionist societies in the country were in the South and they predated the Revolution.

[ole]

Then came the abolitionists of the North.

Actually, Nat Turner had more to do with it than the abolitionists who were largely ignored before 1840.

History -- real history -- is not subject to invention.

ole

[Don Johnson]

Secession was about the politics of slavery,‭ ‬the War was about the Southern States right to form a new government and protection against aggression.‭ ‬This is why the war tore families apart as well as a country.‭ ‬The Military Occupation of the South caused many who were pro-Union at the start of the War to become hard shell‭
‭"‬Dixie-crates‭" ‬after.

[unionblue]

BorderRuffian,

You quote above:

"Virginia came within one vote of abolishing slavery in 1831.

Then came the abolisionists of the North."

I beg to differ.

The abolishionists had been there long before that.

You wonder how they would have voted without the abolishionist.  We'll never know, but I wonder if the concerns of Northern abolishionists had much sway in the Virginia legislature in 1831 or did wealthy slaveholders influence have much more concern and much more influence over that body?  Can you tell me about the debate on slavery in 1831 and why the measure failed?  Or is this just your own opinion on why the vote failed by one vote?  Any source or book on the topice would be appreciated.

As for Virginia's later vote or how the other Southern states would have voted on the issue of abolishing slavery, we have history to tell us what they did concerning that issue, do we not?

Don Johnson,

I would suggest that it wasn't so much pro-Union folks at the start of the war who changed their minds because of Military Occupation of the South, but those who resented the idea that former slaves had now become their equal and could participate in the chosing of their own rulers, work were they pleased and travel as they pleased, in other words, as equals to white men, these were the one who became hard shell "Dixie-crats" after the war.

IMO.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[Banks]

Two commenters have mentioned abolionists in the south. I would be interested in references. This is a new piece of info for me and I would like to check it further. Thanks in advance for your help.

[Banks]

Union Blue,

While I think Don Johnson's positions are generally incorrect, I find your statement about the reason for change equally hollow. To suggest that the military occupation (and for that matter reconstruction) didn't have a real and negative effect on the opinions of southerners after the ware is just silly.
Of course, there was resentment about and toward newly freed blacks. I'm sure these blacks were deeply resented by southerners. But the loss of political power and the day to day imposition of power by outsiders (whether newly elected black congressman or military rulers) certainly had a powerful and long lasting affect on southerners opinions and attitudes.
That's history, too!

Banks

[unionblue]

At one time,

There were more abolitionist societies in the South than there were in the North.

By the time slavery was being voted upon by the Virginia legislature, those organizations had waned to the point of absolute ineffectiveness and the slaveholders had done much to make it so.

Slaveholders had also made sure that their influence in the vote were heard with no problem.

As for the idea that Reconstruction turned many pro-Union Southerners to turn into something else, I would ask first how many US troops were on occupation duty in the South, and how many pro-Union Southerners were attacked or threatened by pro-Confederate/ex-Confederate forces.

You will come up with a very lop-sided figure if you do the research.

The resentment of former slaves being granted equal status with whites was the primary drive in the violence during Reconstruction.  If it were no so, why segragation and black codes in the South for the next 100 years?

Sincerely,
Unionblue