Ohio History Journal

DOUGLAS A. GAMBLE

 

Joshua Giddings

and the Ohio Abolitionists:

a Study in Radical Politics

 

 

Much recent scholarship on American abolitionism emphasizes its role

as part of a general antebellum reform movement.' Perceptive and valuable

though this work is, its broad focus necessarily blurs important distinctions

within and among different factions of abolitionism. In spite of recent

contrary opinion, there is still much to learn by studying the diversity of

abolitionism. Identifying the "social and cultural matrix" of reform and

learning "what abolitionists shared" are significant projects, and Ronald

Walters' recent book handles them well.² Still, even a clear understanding

of the context of abolitionism does not satisfy our obligation specifically to

understand its content. As Aileen S. Kraditor has argued, a full explana-

tion of the historical behavior of reformers, including the abolitionists,

demands that we refine our understanding of the "ways in which past

movements devised their strategies and tactics to meet specific circumstan-

ces."

Of necessity, historians who have tried to explain the content of

abolitionism have studied the movement's factions, but frequently they

have utilized categories of limited usefulness. For instance, dividing

abolitionists primarily according to their participation in electoral politics

obscures the fact that all abolitionists were political insofar as they worked

and hoped to change public policy about slavery; more importantly, the

"political" and "non-political" typology implies a clear division in goals and

motivation between Garrisonian "moral suasionists" and those men who

 

Douglas A. Gamble is Research Associate in the Department of History at the University of

Tennessee, Knoxville, and works for The Highlander Research and Education Center in New

Market, Tennessee. He thanks Merton Dillon, Janet Gamble, Gary Reichard, Andy Rotter.

and Joanne Meyerowitz for their help with this article.

 

I. See especially l ewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy' and the Government of God

in Ani.sla'verv Thought (Ithaca, 1973) and Ronald Walters, The Antislavery Appeal:

A /merican A holitioni.sn A/ler 1830 (Baltimore, 1976).

2. Walters argues that "there is little meaningful left to say" about antislavery diversity;

Walters. Anli.slaverv Appeal, 188.

3. Kraditor, "American Radical Historians on their Heritage," Past and Present, 56(Aug.

1972). 146.

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38                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

participated in electoral politics in more traditional fashion by voting and

competing for and holding public office.⁴ Such implications are misleading.

Recently several historians have emphasized the common assumption

among abolitionists that their entire movement was fundamentally politi-

cal and noted that moral suasionists and antislavery politicians often

cooperated with each other and shared important perceptions.⁵ James

Brewer Stewart in particular has described the functional relationships

between Garrisonians and the "arena of sectional politics" and urged

historians to take seriously the Garrisonians' development of the "worldly

political properties" characteristic of modern public pressure groups.6

This case study is in part a response to Stewart's challenge to understand

"this complicated matter" of antislavery political agitation by looking

simultaneously "to the world of ideas, to the circumstances of culture, and

the sequence of narrative politics."' It explores the institutional, cultural,

and ideological components of and restraints on the struggle against

slavery in the United States by analyzing the specific tactics and motiva-

tions of part of the antislavery movement in Ohio after 1840.

The focus on Ohio is based on several considerations. The abolitionists

there were numerous, well-organized, and vocal. and they represented

most points along the antislavery spectrum. More importantly, the close

working relationships between Congressman Joshua Reed Giddings and

the state's active Garrisonians, and between Giddings and other, more

moderate, antislavery politicians like Salmon P. Chase, afford an

instructive example of the abolitionist's various, but still functionally

political, efforts to end Negro servitude.

By focusing on Giddings' relationship with other Ohio abolitionists, this

paper examines part of the content of the abolition movement and explores

specifically how and why its participants devised their various political

strategies. In so doing, it argues that to understand the dynamics of

abolitionism, we must appreciate the Garrisonians' complex but generally

 

 

4. lane H. Pease and William }1. Pease, Bound With Them7 in Chains: A Biographical

History oftlhe Antis/avers l Movement (Westport. Conn.. 1972). 234-35: Frederick.I. Blue, The

Fl'ee .Silers: Third Party Politics, 1848-1854 (lrbana. 1973), 2: Dwight l.owell Dumond,

Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (New York. 1966). 298-304; James M.

McPhcrson. 7he .4holitionist Legacy: Fromn Reconstruction to the NAACP (Princeton.

1975).4-5.

5. Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Lex'is. Tappan and lte Evangelical War Against Slavery (New

York, 1971). 269-71: Walters, Anti.slaver .4/ppeal. 15-16; Perry, Radical Aholitionisml pp.

158-59; Merton I.. Dillon, The Aholitionists: The Growth /ofa )issenting Minoritl (DeKalb.

111.. 1974). 146-47.

6. Stewart. Holy Warriors: The Aholitionists and American Slavery (New York, 1976).

107. and "Politics and Belief in Abolitionism: Stanley Elkins' Concept ofAntiinstitutionalism

and Recent Interpretations of American Antislavery." South Atlantis Quarter/l. 75 (Winter

1976). 95-96.

7. Stewart, "Politics and Belief," 96.

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Joshua Giddings                                                         39

 

consistent relationship with electoral politics. To do otherwise is to leave

intact the erroneous notion that they were irrelevant visionaries.

Joshua Giddings played an important role in the abolitionist movement,

both in Ohio and throughout the North. Fundamentally a lawyer and a

politician, he nontheless was a bold and outspoken figure who abhorred

temporizing and compromises of principle. Thus operating from near the

middle of the antislavery spectrum, Giddings vigorously championed the

cause of the slave; in so doing, he became a conscious agent for the

radicalization of antislavery politics. Although he worked within tradition-

al political institutions and cooperated with his Congressional and political

colleagues, he also maintained a long and close relationship with the most

unyielding of the Garrisonians. Through their effect upon Giddings and his

effect upon his colleagues and constituency, the Garrisonians extended

their "moral suasion" directly into the very political institutions which they

personally avoided and condemned. This was as they intended, for as Lydia

Maria Child, an important Garrisonian. put it, "By adhering closely to

moral influences, we work through [political] parties, not with them. They

do our work; we do not theirs."⁸

Giddings shared much with both the politicians and the moral suasion-

ists.⁹ Like Salmon P. Chase and most politicians who opposed slavery or its

expansion, he believed that the United States Constitution was basically

antislavery and that it had been perverted since 1789 by the efforts of the

"slave power."'O This belief was natural for a lawyer and a politician, for

Giddings had spent all of his adult life involved in electoral politics and

judicial argument. He intended to work from within a political party

and Congress to persuade his colleagues, and their constituents, to combat

the slave power and retrieve the nation from its corrupting grasp." Like

other politicians, Giddings felt constrained by his desire to remain in office,

but since his district in Ohio's Western Reserve was staunchly antislavery,

and since he did not contend seriously for state or national office, these

 

 

8. l.iherator, Aug.. 5, 1842.

9. Giddings' modern biographer brieflly discusses the Congressman's relationship with

eastern Garrisonians and the Latter's attitude toward antislavery politicians, but he

does not treat Giddings' close association with the Garrisonians in Ohio; James Brewer

Stewart, Joshua R. Gitdings andl the Tactics f' Radical Politics (Cleveland. 1970), esp. 254-

56, and Stewart, "The Aims and Impact of Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1840-1860." Civil War

Hi.sorv, 15 (Sept. 1969). A good short discussion of Giddings is Pease and Pease, Bound With

Them, ch. I I; see esp. 273-75 on Giddings and the radicals.

10. For a discussion of this "moderate constitutional" antislavery position, see William M.

Wiecek, The Sources of Anti.slaverv Constitutionalism in A merica, 1760-1848 (thaca, 1977),

203-27: see esp. 209, n. 23 for Giddings and Chase. For the concept of the "slave power," see

larry Gara, "Slavery and the Slave Power: A Crucial Distinction," Civil War History, 15

(March 1969). 5-18.

I I. Pease and Pease, Bound With Them. 256 and George W. Julian, The Lif of'Joshua R.

Gilclings (Chicago, 1892), 41 1.

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40                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

practical considerations only occasionally handicapped his work. He was

as free as any politician to speak and vote his antislavery conscience, but

partly because he opposed not just slavery but slavery's ill effects upon

white society,¹² he skillfully maintained his credibility with northern

politicians who were much more conservative and timid than he.

Giddings also shared a great deal with the Garrisonians. Like them, he

was committed to the "moral suasion" of the public, of his political party

(Whig), and of Congress-committed, that is, to persuading others

through word and deed that they were in complicity with slavery as long as

the federal government in any way sanctioned the institution. He was

motivated by a strong sense of the sinfulness of slaveholding and of the

obligation of regenerate Christians to work against that and all sins. With

the Garrisonians, Giddings also came to believe that society could be

perfected by the work of the men and women living within it.

Other successful antislavery politicians agreed with some of these

perceptions, but none was as energetic or consistently successful as

Giddings in influencing party policy and public debate. What even more

clearly distinguished Giddings was that he shared his favorite daughter

with the Garrisonian group. Iura Maria Giddings was a committed

Garrisonian who had a radicalizing influence upon her father's reform

ideas. More importantly, Congressman Giddings' close association with

Maria's radical colleagues simultaneously allowed them to work with and

through him to influence a wider public and gave Giddings contact with

articulate radicals whom he respected and trusted.

Giddings and the Garrisonians initially disagreed about several impor-

tant matters. Believing that the Constitution was thoroughly pro-slavery,

the latter refused to support any political party which pledged to uphold

it.'1 Neither interested in their own electoral success nor bound by

professional reverence for the letter of the law, they refused to work for

abolition from within the political system. Their objective was his-to

convince people to abolish slavery-but they had no compelling reason to

cooperate with most individual politicians or with the institutions in which

they worked. In short, they did not think, as Giddings did, that politics

under the United States Constitution could ever be a moral enterprise.

On the other hand, Giddings believed that he could help transform

Congress and his party into agents of morality and abolition. He made

concessions which the Garrisonians abhorred in order to maintain what he

saw as his professional and moral credibility. In so doing, he linked radical

abolitionism to the political process and offered the Garrisonians an

 

 

12. Pease and Pease, Bound With Them. 250.

13. Wiecek, Sources, 22848; Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American

Abolitioniosm. Garrison and his Critic.s on Srategy and Tactics(New York. 1967). 196-202.

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Joshua Giddings                                              41

effective method to influence public policy from outside established chan- nels.14 The early 1840s were a transitional period both for the Ohio Garrison- ians and for Giddings. They were trying to distinguish themselves from the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society; he was solidifying his reputation as one of the most outspoken opponents of the "slave power" in the Congress. Giddings assured his notoriety when in March 1842 the House of Representatives formally censured him for violating its "gag rule" against discussing slavery. He immediately resigned his seat and stood for reelection, winning overwhelmingly. When he returned to Washington, Giddings was more committed than ever to open antislavery agitation within Congress.5 Eastern Garrisonians openly praised Giddings and advocated his reelec- tion.16 They appreciated his courage, but more importantly they shared his opposition to the Liberty party. Both hoped to convert people through moral argument, believing that the converted then would improve the institutions with which they were associated. Giddings thought the Liberty party too small to be effective, so he remained a Whig in hopes of having a greater impact. The eastern Garrisonians had other objections to the     14. Stewart, "Aims and Impact," 209. 15. Wiecek, Sources, 213-16; Stewart, Giddings, 70-78. 16. Liberator, May 6. 1842.

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42                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Libertymen, but they shared with Giddings the belief that a party with so

narrow a base could not influence public opinion. Several leading Ohio

Libertymen agreed; this was especially true of Salmon P. Chase and

Gamaliel Bailey, who were working to broaden the party's electoral appeal

by moderating its abolitionist image. ¹

Westerners who accepted William Lloyd Garrison's emphasis on moral

suasion and opposition to electoral politics were in 1842 deeply involved in

trying to halt the drift of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society toward open

Liberty party activity. Convinced that the task was hopeless, they withdrew

from the OAS in June and formed the Ohio American Anti-Slavery

Society (OAAS) as an affiliate of the Garrisonian American Anti-Slavery

Society.'" Thus free of the influence of the state's Liberty party abolition-

ists, the OAAS began to establish itself as an independent voice of moral

suasion. As such, it commended Giddings' defiance of the slave power and

his reelection in 1842,'⁹ and soon the OAAS and Giddings began to work

together in opposition to the Liberty party and on behalf of the goals

and beliefs they shared.

In hopes of encouraging the OAAS, eastern Garrisonians sponsored a

lecture tour of Ohio and Indiana by several prominent eastern moral

suasionists in the fall of 1843. Giddings played host and directed their tour

of his district. The following year the American Anti-Slavery Society

adopted for its motto 'NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS,' and

publicly committed itself to the doctrine of disunion. The United States

government, the society resolved, was so corrupted by its complicity with

slavery and especially by the annexation of Texas, that

secession from [it] is the duty of every abolitionist, since no one can take office, or

throw a vote for another to hold office, under the United States Constitution,

without violating his antislavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the

slaveholder in his sins.u2

 

Giddings also was upset by the annexation of slaveholding Texas to the

Union, but since he could not easily renounce a constitution he thought was

antislavery, he did not embrace disunionism, at least not on the Garrison-

ians' terms.

Unlike most other politicians, however, Giddings took disunionism

seriously. In February 1844, he told the Congress that neither the federal

 

17. Pease and Pease. Bound Wlith Them, 256: Stewart, Gidclings, 87: K raditor. Means and

-nds, 158-68: Stanley (i. Harrold, Jr., "Forging an Antislavery Instrument: Gamaliel Bailey

and the Foundation of the Ohio Liberty Party." The Old Northwest. 2 (Dec. 1976). 371-87.

(Dec. 1976), 371-87.

18. Cincinnati Philanthropist, June 15. 1842.

19. Ihid., Nov. 12. 1842.

20. Sidney H. Gay to William lloyd Garrison. in Liherwaor. Sept. 8. 1843: .ihberator. May

24, 1844.

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Joshua Giddings                                                     43

 

government nor the northern people "will . . . be contaminated with

slavery to any extent. We will separate ourselves from it, and make plain

the line of demarcation between our people and that institution." He was

content to "leave [slavery] where the Constitution left it, confined strictly to

the States in which it it exists," thus paralleling the position held by the

Garrisonians' in the years after they embraced disunionism. Somewhat

contradictorily, he conceded that the Constitution sanctioned and protect-

ed slavery, while insisting that it was still antislavery in intent. In effect both

he and the Garrisonians hoped to isolate slavery in the South and increase

its vulnerability by withdrawing all federal support.²¹

Although they worked in different spheres, the Garrisonians and Gid-

dings recognized that they were allies, and they acted accordingly.

When the leaders of the OAAS in June 1845 brought to Ohio several

experienced eastern Garrisonians, including the notorious Abby Kelley

and Stephen Symonds Foster, Giddings opened his home to the disunion-

ists and appeared with them at their meetings. They asked him to write in

an autograph book kept by the OAAS, and his private entry, written on the

Fourth of July, reveals how much the Garrisonians and he shared:

Let no rejoicing be heard today. Let the doors be closed and our streets deserted.

Let the dirge of sorrow be our only music. For sixty-nine years as a nation have we

denied the self-evident truth that 'man is born free.' During that time we have stood

between God and our fellow men and robbed them of their God given rights to'Life,

Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.^'22

Pressure on Giddings to modify his antislavery position was intense, and

it came not just from conservatives in the Whig party and from Libertymen

angry that he was undermining their critique of the antislavery potential of

the Whigs. It came also from his Garrisonian allies, who urged him to

"come out" of Congress and thereby renounce it for its complicity with

slaveholders. Giddings responded openly to his conservative critics, refus-

ing to abandon positions he held simply because Garrisonians also held

them:

[The American Anti-Slavery Society] embraces some of the ablest jurists, the most

devoted patriots, and purest philanthropists of our nation, and I see no reason to

depart from any doctrine which I have long entertained and labored for years to

establish, merely for the reason that such men hold the same principles.

 

Specifically, he agreed with the Garrisonians' goal of separating the people

of the free states from the "guilt and disgrace of sustaining and upholding

slavery." Like the Garrisonians, Giddings also believed in the reforming

 

21. Joshua R. Giddings, S/e'(chc.s in Congres.s (Boston. 1853). 68-69. For the similar

implications ot (iarrisonian disunionism. sec Wiccek, Sources, 239.

22. "An Anti-Slavery Album of Contributions from Friends of Freedom," Western Anti-

Slavery Society Collection, Library of Congress.

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44                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

power of knowledge, asserting that the churches and political parties were

full of people merely still ignorant of their connection with slavery. Both he

and the moral suasionists believed that the promotion of"the truth" could

bring northern sentiment "to stand against slavery."

But unlike the Garrisonians, Giddings valued his political connections

with the South for their usefulness in promoting the abolitionist cause. The

basis for this position was his belief that the "true use" of the Constitution

would kill slavery by reversing the South's usurpation of national power.2'

Giddings refused to do the only additional thing the Garrisonians de-

manded of him   resign from Congress-for no other reason than that he

thought his power there was the best weapon he had in the struggle for the

goals he shared with his Garrisonian friends.

Some of the Garrisonian hostility toward the Liberty party resulted from

their belief that many libertymen had abandoned their early abolitionist

principles. Giddings. on the other hand. sharpened his positions on slavery

and abolition, and the Garrisonians in Ohio did not hesitate to nourish that

progress. An editorial in the Salem Anti-Slaveri Bugle, the Ohio Garri-

sonians' new weekly newspaper, praised Giddings' honesty and boldness

and applauded his contention that the annexation of Texas would dissolve

the Union and let the North form a new one free of slavery. At the same

time, however, the Bugle perceptively suggested that Giddings was

constrained by his institutional affiliation with a political party and a

church that sanctioned slaveholders, and it urged him to renounce his

connections and thereby "wash in the Jordan of Dissolution."²⁴ Within a

few months, Giddings' daughter wrote him of her affiliation with the Ohio

Garrisonians and admitted that she agreed with the most important

resolution which the OAAS had adopted at its anniversary meeting in

July:

The Federal Union, based on the United States Constitution, is "the great bulwark

of slavery," involving the North equally with the South in the guilt of slaveholding;

and that it is the duty of every true friend of humanity, to give it no sanction or

allegiance, but adopting the motto of 'no union with slaveholders,' to use every

effort to bring about a peaceful dissolution of the union .. ..

 

The question of disunion dominated the relationship between Giddings

and the Garrisonians for the next three years. The Mexican War kept the

issue of Northern complicity with slavery very much alive, while each

faction of the antislavery movement wrestled with its collective conscience

over how to combat the dominance of the "slave power" over the machin-

 

23. Joshua R. (Giddings to editor. Ohio Rpubhlican & 1hig, in Liberator. Oct. 10. 1845.

24. Salem Anoi-Sla/ver Bugle. Oct. 17, 1845.

25. L.. Maria Giddings to Joshua R. Giddings, Feb. 5. 1846. George Julian-Joshua

(iddings Papers.  .ibrar  of Congress: ; . lti-Slaverl Bugle,, June 20. 1845.

• 8
 

Joshua Giddings                                                   45

 

cry of national government.'' Eastern Garrisonians generally withheld or

muted their criticism of Giddings' presence in Congress, although Garri-

son's liberalor did chide him for seemingly forgetting his own contention

that the annexation of Texas would remove Northerners' obligation to

honor the U nion. Ohio Garrisonians, however, operating after 1846 as the

Western Anti-Slavery Society, simultaneously hammered away at Gid-

dings in the Bugle and invited him to several of their important abolition

rallies. Meanwhile, Maria continued to explain disunionism to her

sympathetic but unconvinced father.²⁷

Congressman Giddings took his criticism from the disunionists more

easily than he did that from his conservative Congressional and party allies.

He was beginning to see that the Whigs were at least as unyielding in

opposition to abolitionism as they had been when many of them had voted

his censure, and he knew that Democrats were correct in accusing him of

conniving with the Garrisonians. He regretfully declined an invitation from

the WAS to attend its anniversary meeting in the summer of 1846, but he

assured them that he did not "regard the difference of opinion between us as

to the mode of affecting the great object which we all have in view, as in any

respect detracting from the interest I should feel in your meeting."²⁸

Although Giddings warmly embraced the Garrisonians, the Bugle accused

him of "submitting to the yoke of tyranny" by remaining in Congress and

recognizing the annexation of Texas. It even wished for his defeat for

reelection in 1846.29

The Bugle repeated this criticism six months later, and in August of 1847

registered a different complaint about Giddings' reverence for the govern-

ment. Part of the Garrisonians' evidence that the Constitution was pro-

slavery was that it gave the federal government power to suppress slave

rebellions. Giddings, challenged by the Garrisonians, argued that the

Constitution obligated the federal government to suppress violence against

all legally constituted governments in the United States. However, Gid-

dings argued, since that provision did not specifically require the suppres-

sion of slave revolts, it was not evidence of the pro-slavery nature of the

Constitution. He further contended, according to the Bugle, that it was the

"duty" of the United States Army "to shoot down any man who may be

found in arms against the Government." The Bugle rejected all of this by

arguing that Giddings himself would have to admit that, since rebelling

against slavery was domestic violence against the laws of Virginia, the

 

26. Dillon. Aholitionists. 160-65.

27. Liberator, n.d., in Anti-Slavery Bugle. Jan. 1, 1847; Anti-Slavery Bugle. July 10, 17.

and Sept, 18, 1846, and April 9, 1847; L. Maria Giddings to Joshua R. Giddings. Dec. 19,

1848. Julian-Giddings Papers.

28. Joshua Giddings to James Barnaby, June6, 1846, in Anti-Slavery Bugle, July 10, 1846.

29. Ihil., July 17 and Sept.. 18. 1846.

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46                                                 OHo1 HISTORY

 

Constitution required the national government to suppress slave insurrec-

tions, and that therefore the Constitution was pro-slavery. The Bugle also

reminded Giddings again of his contention that the annexation of Texas

freed him of the need to remain loyal to the Union and urged him to

renounce his loyalty to it. But that same month Giddings accepted an

invitation to attend the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Western Anti-Slavery

Society, and the Bugle reported happily that Giddings had defended his

positions well and had praised William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick

Douglass, with whom he shared the platform.³⁰

Meanwhile, Giddings' rebellion against the leadership of his party

reached a climax. He publicly opposed the Mexican War and voted against

Robert Winthrop. a Massachusetts "War Whig," for Speaker of the House

of Representatives. He also tried to get the Congress to consider abolishing

the slave trade in the District of Columbia. The Bugle was pleased,³' but

perhaps unknown to the WAS, Giddings was about to give up his

longstanding hope that the Whig party could be transformed to oppose the

expansion of slavery. The party's nomination in June 1848 of Mexican War

hero and Louisiana slaveholder Zachery Taylor was more than the

frustrated Giddings could sanction, and he quicklyjoined his old abolition-

ist enemies from the disintegrating Liberty party as they formed the

antislavery core of the new Free Soil group. Giddings still believed political

parties could stand for principle, but he no longer thought the Whigs could.

His abandonment of the Whigs must have been facilitated by the death

early in 1848 of his dearest friend and respected antislavery colleague John

Quincy Adams, for with Adams gone Giddings was essentially alone in

opposition to the party's leadership. And unlike the "one issue" Liberty

party, Free Soilism appeared to be based broadly enough to give it

potential for the electoral strength Giddings wanted his party to command.

Historians disagree about the extent to which the Free Soil party was

antislavery, but there is no doubt that Giddings' conversion from Whiggery

brought to the new party an established, experienced, and respected

advocate of the potential moral power of electoral politics. Because he had

forfeited leadership of the Free Soil movement in Ohio to Salmon Chase by

his tenacious faith in the Whigs, Giddings launched his first important

public advocacy of Free Soilism in Massachusetts. Late in June 1848, he

led the initial rallies there for the new party and discovered that his

leadership of the "Conscience Whigs" in Congress had made him quite

popular in Winthrop's home state. By fall, he was back in Ohio leading

Free Soil meetings not only in his district but also in Salem, headquarters

of the Western Anti-Slavery Society. The Bugle complained that voting

 

30. Ibid., April 9 and Aug., 6. 27, 1847.

31. Ibid., Jan. II1 Feb. 4. March 31, May 26, 1847.

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Joshua Giddings                                                    47

 

Free Soil sanctioned slavery where it existed, but the editor was pleased by

Giddings' renunciation of the Whigs. The Garrisonians and Giddings both

knew that he was becoming more committed to antislavery and that his

break with the Whigs was a step toward disassociating himself completely

from slavery.³²

The Bugle's response typified the Garrisonian position on the Free Soil

party. They condemned it, as they had the Liberty party, for its supposed

compromises with slavery and slaveholding, but they also claimed credit

for preparing the way for the growing antislavery movement the party

represented. And they were especially proud several years later when

Giddings led a movement to radicalize Free Soilism.³³

Giddings and the Garrisonians knew they were engaged in a common

enterprise the triumph of which depended on the widespread success of

"moral suasion" among the Northern people. Giddings excused the

disunionists as people who had tried but failed to "arrive at the real abstract

principle involved," and explained away Maria's acceptance of disunion-

ism by assuming she just had not fully examined the arguments for and

against it. The Bugle, in turn, continued to praise and publicize Giddings'

antislavery work in Congress, especially his vigorous opposition to the

Fugitive Slave Law passed as part of the Compromise of 1850.34

Indeed, the Fugitive Slave Law brought Giddings and the WAS closer

together, for it helped him see slavery as an issue of moral, not constitution-

al, law. One reason for joining the Free Soil party was that he hoped to

contribute to the antislavery conversion of the electorate through a

political party with moral power and credibility.³⁵ By the time he had

realized that the Whig party could not be such an institution, he also had

discovered that his constitutional arguments could not effectively challenge

the slave power. The Whig complicity in the passage of the Fugitive Slave

Law not only confirmed his fears about the party; it also indicated how

weak legal objections had become in the face of the South's political and

economic power. And as he was learning those painful lessons, he was

undergoing a steady conversion to the same doctrines of religious radical-

ism and perfectionism that motivated his daughter and her colleagues in

the WAS. It is not possible to prove that his conversion was largely the

result of his continual connections with the Garrisonians, but it certainly

seems likely.

32. Stewart, Girclings, pp. 154-57; Anti-Slaverv Bugle, Nov. 10, 1848: Pease and Pease,

Boundl With Them. 262.

33. Oliver Johnson. William Llovyd Garrison 0ad His Times (Boston. 1880). 306-09: Amni-

Slavery Bugle, Aug., 28, 1852.

34. Joshua R. Giddings to 1I. Maria Giddings. Dec.. 19, 1848. Julian-Giddings Papers:

Anli-Slaverv Bugle. Jan., 19 and March 9. 1849, and March 30, April 13,June6,andOct.. 12,

1850.

35. Pease and Pease, Bound Wiihl Them. 264-65; Stewart. Girlclings. 177.

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48                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

Giddings had other things on his mind as well. Foremost was his

leadership of the Free Soilers in Congress as they struggled against the men

who advocated the expansion of slavery into the territories seized from

Mexico. He also battled those men in his new party who were anxious to

fuse it with the Democrats. Fellow Ohioan Salmon P. Chase was his chief

opponent in this regard, and their disagreements are instructive: Giddings

seemed to agree with the Garrisonians that Chase personified the risks

involved in antislavery politics.³⁶ Chase and Giddings had agreed early in

the 1840s that slavery was exclusively a local institution which the federal

government was constitutionally powerless to abolish.³ Although Chase

was then a Libertyman and Giddings a Whig, both wanted to broaden their

respective parties to win electorial success in order to move the national

government toward a more active antislavery orientation. Thus Giddings

remained with the Whigs while Chase helped broaden the Liberty party so

that it logically became the germ of Free Soilism.

By mid-century, however, Chase and Giddings were moving along

different paths. In 1849 Chase proudly assured New York abolitionist

Gerrit Smith that his position on slavery remained "unchanged" since 1841,

and that the antislavery pieces he wrote then were in "exact agreement in

purport and expression with my most recently published views." Chase

was committed to abolishing slavery by confining it to the South. To do

so he sought to make use of the authority of the federal government, and he

wanted to put power into the hands of men. like himself, who would wield it

against slavery. Hence Chase saw no contradiction between his in-

tensely personal ambition and his antislavery politics and he focused his

rhetoric less on the sinfullness of slavery and of supporting it--less, that is,

on the moral wrong of the institution, than on political and constitutional

objections to it.³8 His goal remained during the 1850s essentially as it had

been in 1849 and in 1842: building and leading a successful antislavery

political party with which to change public policy.

Giiddings, on the other hand, began to alter his beliefs about his role in

the antislavery movement, and in so doing moved even closer to the

Garrisonians. He never abandoned his conviction that the Constitution

was an antislavery document, but during the 1850~s he became a perfection-

 

 

 

36. Stewart, Gililinixi. 200(.

37. Salmon P. Chase to Joshua R. Giddings. Feb. 15. [*?]. 1842 and Feb. 9, 1843. Julian-

Cliddings Papers.

38(. Wiccek. Sourtes. 21 S-19: Salmon P. Chase to Gerritt Smith, Uov., 13. 1S49. in Robert

B ruce Wa rd en, A n A ecoilrl ol'the Private~ l.ifeacndl Puhlic Serv~ices of Salm~on Porrtland Chusr~e

(C:incinnati, 1874). 32.5: Albert Bushncll Hart. Salmon Porr~llul Chase (Boston.                          1899). 72:

Hric thoner, Free So~il. liree~ Ixihur. F-~rree Men·: T`he Ide~olog~y o/,lle Repluhlicanl~ PaNv. He/OIlr

ther  Civil  Ww,·(l.ond on. 19'70),1.

• 12
 

Joshua Giddings                                               49

 

ist, a spiritualist, and a religious radical. Unlike Chase, he refused to

carefully distinguish political opposition to the extension of slavery and the

moral reform of all of Northern society. He continued to work closely with

Chase and other antislavery politicians in opposition to pro-slavery

legislation like the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but

after 1850 Giddings turned away from the limited constitutional campaign

against the expansion of slavery to emphasize the moral requirements of

God's "higher law." For example, he vigorously condemned the Fugitive

Slave Law in terms which emphasized that the law made Northern citizens,

and not just the Congress, responsible for supporting slavery. "There is no

lower depth of degradation to which Congress can consign the people of

the free states." he wrote to his constituents, and he hurled himself into a

lengthy series of speeches and meetings against the law.³⁹

The Western Anti-Slavery Society likewise seized upon the enormous

propaganda opportunity inherent in the enforcement of the new legislation

in the North. Oliver Johnson, Garrison's friend who had edited the Bugle

since 1848, predicted that antislavery agitation would "receive a mighty

impulse from this diabolical law and wax fiercer and fiercer until the great

body of the Northern people shall stand forth in deadly array against the

crowning villainy of the age."⁴"

A successful antislavery meeting in April 1851 revealed the extent to

which Giddings and the Garrisonians by then clearly understood the nature

of their mutually supportive relationship. The Bugle's announcement of

the Salem, Ohio meeting urged its readers to come and hear "the Slave's

champion," while Oliver Johnson's letter welcoming Giddings confiden-

tially asserted ". . that some of us differ from you on Constitutional

questions, but that difference of opinion does not diminish our admiration

for your course in Congress."⁴' Giddings did not disappoint his several

hundred listeners and they adopted resolutions praising his work and

proclaimed that both moral suasion and the ballot could purify the corrupt

Congress. Moreover, they adopted as the "sense of the meeting" a stanza of

a song which former Bugle editor Benjamin Smith Jones had written for

the occasion:

Yet if our Southern neighbor

Shall follow here the track

Of fugitives from labor,

WE WILL NOT GIVE THEM BACK;

 

 

 

39. Pease and Pease, Bound With Them, 264; Anti-Slavery Bugle, Oct. 12, 1850.

40. Anti-Slavery Bugle, Sept. 28, 1850.

41. Oliver Johnson to Joshua R. Giddings, March 22, 1851, Joshua R. Giddings Papers,

Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

• 13
 

50                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

No laws of Congress ever

Shall blood hounds make of us,

For we shall barter never

Man's rights for slavery's curse.⁴'

 

Giddings' address to the gathering was a vigorous condemnation of

northern Whig and Democratic Congressmen for their part in passing the

Fugitive Slave law. His sentiments were similar to those elsewhere

expressed by Chase, but Giddings openly allied himself with Garrisonian

abolitionists whom more "realistic" men with state and national political

ambitions sought to avoid and condemn. Not only did he appear at their

meetings, he also relied upon them for advice in the publication and

distribution of his antislavery speeches.⁴³ Although Giddings and most

Garrisonians still disagreed about whether the union had ever been a moral

institution, by 1851 both he and they recognized the pressing need for

radicalism in thought and action.⁴⁴

Giddings' growing identification with abolitionists who looked to the

individual conscience for the perfection of people and their institutions

coincided with the Congressman's own religious conversion. He had

always been religious, and his opposition to slavery was in large part a

function of his conviction that slaveholding was a sin, but early in the 1 850s

Gidding abandoned orthodoxy in favor of the informal theology Garrison

and many of his co-workers had adopted a decade and a half earlier.

Shunning dogma, sectarianism, and formal theology, these Christians

stressed the social implications of the Golden Rule and the responsibility of

regenerate Christians to work to hasten God's plan for the perfection of

humanity. Disillusioned with the weak antislavery stand of most churches,

Giddings became especially enamored of some radical Quakers' indiffer-

ence to religious ritual and with their emphasis on "doing good.^"5

Giddings developed his own version of non-resistance-the idea that

people should not coerce others so that it allowed for the defense of human

rights. He wrote to his friend and future son-in-law George W. Julian that

"those who kill tyrants and negroe [sic] catchers do God's will, and man's

duty," and he claimed many western Quakers agreed with him. He also

became an active spiritualist and urged his Garrisonian daughter to take

seriously his belief that

 

 

 

42. Anti-Slavery Bugle. April 26, 1851.

43. Reinhard H. Luthin. "Salmon P. Chase's Political Career Before the Civil War."

Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29(March, 1943). 520-27; Abby Kelley Foster to Joshua

R. Giddings. May ['] 1851. Julian-Giddings Papers.

44. Pease and Pease. Bound With Them. ch. 9.

45. Stcwart. (iih/liings, pp. 210-1 : Gidditouranniddings aura nniddings. Ma 16, 1852. ulian-

(Giddings Papers: Giddings to Oliecr Johnson. August 2. 1851. Giddings Iapers.

• 14
 

Joshua Giddings                                                      51

 

The men and women who fear to enter upon the great work of progress do not

realize that the highest enjoyment of which the human mind is capable consists in

the expansion of our thoughts, our intellects, our moral being. In reaching forward

to the future, in looking into the spirit land [to?] bring heaven to us, . . . we rise as

far above the low grovelling superstitions of the past as heaven is above earth.46

 

Maria remained skeptical of her father's "spirit land," but she and her

abolitionist colleagues openly welcomed his renewed commitment to

radical antislavery work in the Congress. In turn Giddings sought an

opportunity to meet with Garrison in Boston and speak there to an

abolitionist audience. "Our prospects in Ohio are most flattering," he wrote

to Garrison, "and while you do not enter into our feelings fully, I know you

rejoice at every advance of the popular feeling in regard to freedom."⁴⁷

For the next several years, Giddings worked with considerable satisfac-

tion to advance the commitment of the Congress to freedom, consciously

leaving to the Garrisonians and other abolitionists outside the legislature

primary responsibility for bringing "to public attention the need for

reform" and for Christianizing the government. He assumed leadership of

the Congressmen who worked to strengthen the government's commitment

to antislavery measures and proudly shouldered what he felt was his

personal responsibility to radicalize the Republican party, regardless of the

difficulties it created for his personal political career.⁴i

Giddings maintained the same hopes for Republicanism that he had

harbored for the Whigs and the Free Soilers: that the Republican party

could make the federal government more antislavery. Thus he tolerated the

party's excessively moderate policies in the hope that he could change

them. H is responses to the sectional violence that flared in 1856 illustrates

well this political perspective. Giddings was a friend and antislavery

colleague of Senator Charles Sumner, but the address he offered in

response to Congressman Preston Brooks' vicious attack on the Massachu-

setts Senator kept a calm and reasoned tone despite his private rage.

Likewise he quickly squelched his son Grotius' plan to go to Kansas with a

rifle to help the free soilers there fight the pro-slavery immigrants. As

biographer James Stewart points out, Giddings still hoped for a United

States "governed by Christian charity and divine law," despite the violence

of the 850s that posed a serious challenge to these hopes.⁴⁹

 

46. Giddings to Julian. Feh. 21. March 2. 1852: Giddings to 1. Maria Giddings. Icb. 3.

1855. and Feb. 5. 8I54. (iddings-.lulian Papers.

47. A.ni-Sla\'cr\ Buiigl. March 26 and Dec. 10, 1853: Liherator, Aug. 2. 1852: Giddings to

Garrison. Sept. I. 1855. William  l.loyd Garrison Papers. Boston Public l.ibrar!. For the trip

itself, see Giddings to 1.. Maria Giddings. Nov. 7. 1855. Julian-Giddings Papers.

48. iiddings to Garrison, April 27. 1858, Garrison Papers; Giddings to .I. Maria Giddings.

D)ec. 15.  855. to (G orge.lulian. lune 24. 1856, toGamaliel Bailey, Nov. I I. 1855.all in.lulian-

Giddings Papers.

49. Stewart. (;illiin\:. 238-39.

• 15
 

52                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

That violence also infuriated the Garrisonians. but their response was

not constrained, as Giddings' was, by the belief that the Republican party

and the Congress were so necessary to abolitionism that they had to be

preserved at the cost of moral principle. The reaction of Abra.m Brooke,

president of the Western Anti-Slavery Society, was extreme, even for a

Garrisonian. but it was symptomatic of the freedom the moral suasionists

felt to reject compromises Giddings thought necessary to maintain his

influence. Of Sumner, Brooke wrote: "He is reaping the inevitable

consequences of his own acts, in the ill-mannered company he has

voluntarily sought." Brooke expressed similar contempt for the people of

Kansas who remained in good standing in the Republican party while

opposing the immigration of blacks into that territory." Giddings, of

course, had sought the same company as had Sumner, and both were

Republicans, but Marius Robinson, who had followed Oliver Johnson as

the editor of the Bugle, and Brooke spared Giddings a similar damnation.

Perhaps they understood that he was becoming radicalized by the same

rush of events that they abhorred.

I n December. 1856. for instance. Giddings listened with consternation as

his fellow Ohio Republican Congressman John Sherman linked him with

the Garrisonians as two kinds of antislavery men with which the Republi-

can party had little in common. Sherman was essentially correct, but

Giddings did not enjoy being read out of the party he thought he had helped

create. His response therefore was to try to change the attitude of the

Republicans, a task made increasingly difficult as the party sought to

broaden its base in preparation for the 1860 campaign."

When it became clear that his Republican colleagues were hostile to his

contention that their party stood clearly for a union dedicated to moral and

religious principle, Giddings turned to Salmon P. Chase with a proposal

for a national Republican convention to reaffirm his interpretation. But

Chase, anxious for the party's presidential nomination, would not

cooperate.² Unlike Giddings or the Garrisonians, Chase looked not to the

people but to the machinery of politics for the ultimate human source of

public policy. Thus rejected by a man who was himself too closely identified

with abolitionism to be nominated for President. Giddings temporarily lost

his optimism when he fell ill in 1857.

At home to rest and recover, he received new expressions of thanks for

his antislavery work. Among the most supportive was a letter from

Giddings' Garrisonian friend Henry C. Wright, who spoke for himself,

Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, and Oliver. ohnson: "of all politicians, you are

 

 

50. Brooke to Marius Robinson, June 24. 1856, in .A4,tii-Slvcr  Bugle., Jul\  5. 1856.

51. Stewart, Gildin7gs., 248.

52.  hiil., p. 250.

• 16
 

Joshua Giddings                                                 53

 

the most consecrated & respected in the hearts of those who have been tried

in the moral conflict with oppression."' The praise came to a man in the

midst of a final renunciation of religious orthodoxy, and it was then that

Giddings decided to stop resisting the Garrisonian pressure to embrace

perfectionism. No longer intending to remain in Congress, he was then

constrained from actually joining the Garrisonians only by his desire to

retain political credibility within his party. His health regained, Giddings

reentered the fray with renewed vigor.

If he retained doubts about his harsh analysis of the morality of the

government, they surely were removed by the Supreme Court's decision in

Dred Scoti v. San/fird. The decision effectively invalidated all abolitionist

efforts to use the power of the federal government to stop the spread of

slavery, and Giddings reacted quickly and vigorously by calling on

Northerners openly to defy the ruling. He focused his criticism especially

on Chief Justice Roger Taney's exclusion of all Negroes from the guaran-

tees of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and he

argued that the government was no longer a "Christian democracy" but in-

stead a "tyrannous [sic] oligarchy unsuited to the age."'"

Garrisonians had never been as generous as Giddings about the inten-

tions and works of the Founding Fathers, but they had been making his

new argument for years. The Bugle proudly printed four articles he wrote in

reaction to the Dred Scott decision at the same time they appeared in his

hometown paper,⁵⁵ so it is probable that Giddings sent the pieces to his

Garrisonian friends so they could convey his argument to their radical

readers. His goal became defiance of the government, not its conversion

from within, and as such Giddings had moved close to the Garrisonian

analysis of how to change public policy.

In August, Giddings invited Oliver Johnson to attend a "free" religious

meeting at his home. Johnson was a leader of the Progressive Friends, a

growing movement of Quakers who were dissatisfied with the institutional

and theological restraints on their reform activities; Giddings' invitation

again reveals his rejection of religious orthodoxy. Johnson could not

attend, but he felt free to suggest that Giddings hold the meeting in

conjunction with a National Disunion Convention which the Garrisonians

had scheduled for nearby Cleveland. Although Giddings still could not

accept disunionism, he had clearly abandoned his hope that slavery could

be ended peacefully. Many advocates of disunion hoped that separating the

federal government from the South would allow slave revolts to succeed;

 

 

53. Henry C. Wright to Giddings, Feb. 4. 1857, Giddings Papers.

54. Quoted in Stewart. Gidilings, 254.

55. Ashtabula Sentiic l, March 26, April 2, 9. 16, 1857; Anti-Slavery Bugle. March 28.

April 4, 18, 25. 1857.

• 17
 

54                                                         1110HIO STORY

 

Giddings wanted the Union maintained, but in 1857 he was advocating

publicly that Northerners send "powder and ball, delivered to the slaves to

be used as they may deem proper."5"

At the same time, he attempted to use the Ashtabula Sentinels publica-

tion of several letters to him from Garrisonian Parker Pillsbury again to

commit Republicanism to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.

Pillsbury was harshly critical of Republican moral timidity, and Giddings

responded by personally pledging the party to a commitment to racial

equality far beyond the party's actual position. Pillsbury hoped to use

Giddings to   put pressure on Republicanism      from   within, and   in

authorizing publication of Pillsbury's letters and his responses, Giddings

cooperated. At the same time he delivered what James Stewart aptly called

a "sermon" to the House urging that body to devote all its energies to

promoting human freedom.⁵

Garrisonians could not agree, even among themselves, about the anti-

slavery potential of the Republican party, but they did agree that Giddings

had become their best ally in the crusade to keep that party from

abandoning its antislavery heritage. Again the Bugle declared its apprecia-

tion for Giddings' role in the politics of the antislavery movement, while the

Congressman was coming to his friends' insistence that political parties

themselves exerted a potentially corrupting influence upon the men who

participated in them.⁵:

Even though Giddings was finally denied renomination in large part

because of his radicalism, he continued a campaign to force the Republican

party to honor what he felt to be its original commitment to freedom.

Giddings pursued two strategies during the campaign of 1858: one was to

cooperate with Gerrit Smith in writing and publishing an exchange of

letters emphasizing the party's antislavery origins; the other was to

publicly chastize the party's growing conservative wing.⁵⁹

In retirement Giddings continued his work of propaganda on the lyceum

lecture circuit. One of his speeches advocated obeying only the "Higher

Law of God." and in delivering it from town to town Giddings carried to

 

 

56. Oliver Johnson to (jiddings. Aug.. 8. 1857. Ciddings Papers: Ashtabula Se.5ninel. Sept.

3. 1857. quoted in Stewart. (jiditingx, 255.

57. Stewart, Gildiniisv. 256-58.

58. Douglas A. Ciamblc, "Garrisonian Abolitionists in the West: Some Suggestions for

Study." Civil wlatr lirotrl 23 (March 1977). 66-67: Stewart. Gi(l/ing, 259: .4nti-Sk.ler,

Bugle, March 20, 1858, in Giddings' Scrapbook, Giddings Papers: Giddings to his constitu-

ents, n.d.. in Anti-Slaveri BRulc'. June 26. 1858. For Garrison's appreciation of Giddings, see

Wm. l.lod Garrison to Giddings. April 4. 1858, in Ohio Archaeologictal and Hi\twi(al

Puhliclioli.,, 28 (1919), 40-41.

59. Stewart, Giilti/li,.\, pp 260-61. For the reaction of the Executive Committee of the

WAS to the Republicans' retusal to renominate Giddings, see Anri-Slaverl Bugle, Oct. 23

1858.

• 18
 

Joshua Gilddings                                                 55

 

the people the same crusade he had mounted in Congress. He also tried to

maintain his political influence while advocating a moral revolution. After

he had publicly rebuked his fellow Ohioan Thomas Corwin for urging

people to obey the Fugitive Slave Law, Giddings wrote to Oliver Johnson:

Poor Tom Corwin. I pity him. He . . . wants us to obey the fugitive sla\ve

lawt. . . . Obey the mandate of despols. That is all they ask. No man will do it who

possesses the spirit of l.iberty and a courage to speak his own thoughts. I want to

give him another letter, but cannot without letting down that influence which 1

ought to maintain.^6"

 

Giddings sought to maintain influence on Republicanism by maintain-

ing communication with party leaders more conservative than himself, but

he also urged the Garrisonians to continue their efforts to mobilize public

pressure upon the political apparatus from without. In the same letter to

Johnson in which he condemned Corwin, whom he feared might be the

Republican presidential nominee, he urged the New York abolitionists to

petition Congress "to repeal all laws which involve the people of the free

states in the guilt & the disgrace of sustaining slavery." Offering practical

advice on the timing of the petitions, he insisted that they emphasize that

". . . it has become evident that if efforts of the federal government to

involve us in the iniquity of the 'peculiar institution' be continued the

Union cannot he maintained."⁶'

Giddings' opposition to Garrisonian disunionism was all but ended

for he no longer believed that the South would voluntarily or peacefully

abandon slavery or that Northerners in good conscience could continue to

support slavery or prevent the slaves from seizing their freedom. He was

willing to sacrifice the Union for freedom, and at the Republican Conven-

tion in 1860 he was also willing to abandon his party for a matter of

principle. When the convention adopted a platform which made no

mention of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and then rejected

his motion that it do so by affirming that governments existed to guarantee

people's inalienable rights, Giddings stalked dramatically from the meet-

ing. The convention thereupon reconsidered and accepted his amendment,

and Giddings returned to the floor and, symbolically, to the party.⁶²

Giddings' role at the convention was good theater and good politics.

Only he could have shamed the convention into reaffirming the

Republicans' shaky commitment to the inalienable rights of men; years of

serving as a bridge between radical abolitionists and politicians had given

him considerable moral influence, which he knew how to weild when

 

60. Giddings to Johnson. Nov. 6. 1859. .lulian-Giddings Papers.

61. See also Giddings to Garrison. April 27, 1858. Garrison Papers, and Giddings to J.

Miller McKim. Oct. 29, 1859..I. Miller McKim  Papers. Cornell University.

62. Stewart, Gi(itling.s, 272.

• 19
 

56                                                          01110 HISTORY

 

necessary. Giddings not only helped keep the antislavery issue a sensitive

one within the electoral system, he also contributed to the similar efforts of

the Garrisonians to influence public policy from without. The point is not

so much that Giddings or the Garrisonians "succeeded," although in many

ways they did, but that the antislavery movement was a complicated and

complex process which consciously utilized various strategies and tactics to

combat widespread northern indifference to slavery.^6'

This study alone cannot explain the dynamics of antislavery politics, but

it does reaffirm the accuracy of James Brewer Stewart's observation that

the Garrisonians. for all their antipolitical rhetoric, "realized that realistic

political activity can mean more than just the building of party structure

and collection of votes."⁶⁴ Giddings knew that too, and he used the Gar-

risonians' radical demands to help him define and elevate the principles

over which the politicians argued. As Lydia Child had claimed, the

Garrisonians skillfully worked through politicians and political parties to

inject moral concerns into public debates over the use of public power.

With Joshua Giddings as their ally, they sought to force the public to

consider and adopt policies which it would not have taken seriously

without their agitation. This strategy was an important and necessary part

of the antislavery movement, for it prevented the defenders of slavery from

successfully denying their most radical and persistent opposition a chance

to influence respectable public discussion.^s5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

63. An important evaluation of abolitionist influence is Merton L. Dillon." he Abolition-

ists as a Dissenting Minority." in Alfred Young, ed., Dissent: Explorations in the Histori' t!

American Radicalism (DeKalb, 1968), 85-108.

64. Stewart, "Aims and Impact." 209: see also his "Politics and Belief," 94-97.

65. A perceptive and important discussion of the role of radicals in defining the political

agenda is Kraditor, Means and Ends. 28.

• 20