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SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE POWER: A Crucial Distinction Larry Gara In 1847 a Garrisonian abolitionist wrote: "We believe slavery to be a sin—always, everywhere, and only, sin—sin, in itself, ... All the incidental effects of the system flow spontaneously from this fountain head."1 Garrison, himself, when accused of using harsh language towards slaveholders , retorted: "The whole scope of the English language is inadequate to describe the horrors and impieties of Slavery, and the transcendent wickedness of those who sustain this bloody system."2 And in 1851, at their annual meeting in Salem, Ohio, western abolitionists resolved : "That we are not merely warring against the extension of new slave territory, . . . nor against any fugitive slave law constitutional or unconstitutional; nor for the writ of habeas corpus, or the right of trial by jury for recaptured slaves, but we are waging eternal war against the doctrine that man can ever under any possibility of circumstances, hold property in man."3 The Garrisonians thus viewed the struggle against slavery as a never ceasing moral crusade. Anyone who dealt with slaveholders or who compromised in any way with their institution—even to the point of voting under a slave-sanctioning Constitution—was committing mortal sin and extending aid and comfort to the sinners. Their concern about slavery included pity for the individual slave. At times it extended to the rights of free Negroes in the northern states, as when Garrisonians helped in the successful fight against racially segregated schools in Boston. Not all Americans who became involved in antislavery activity placed the same emphasis on the moral aspects of the question as did the Garrisonians and other moral suasionists. When the issue became political, the question of southern power played an increasingly significant role in northern thinking. One observer, writing to Charles Sumner in 1858, contrasted American and Brazilian slavery, by saying "the fact is, that, in this country, Slavery is really fostered as a source of 1 "What Abolitionists Believe," in the Salem, Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle, Sept. 24, 1847. Research for this article was made possible by a research grant from the Kettering Fund made available to the author by the Wilmington College Tenure and Personnel Policies Committee. a The Liberty Bell. By Friends of Freedom (Boston, 1848), p. 284. 3 Report of the Executive Committee of the Western Anti-Slavery Society, Aug. 25, 1851 in "Minute Book of the Western Anti-Slavery Society," Library of Congress . O CIVIL WAR HISTORY political power, & not as an economical or social desideratum."4 A friend commented to Congressman Horace Mann: "I have been astonished for many years to see how the Slave power (not one fiftieth part of the voters) manage to control the whole United States." He quoted Theodore Parker who said: "The North can manage Steam & Water Power but the South can manage Men," and wondered whether "their business as Slave raisers and Slave drivers fit them for this?"5 Speaking in 1849 in Massachusetts, Salmon P. Chase noted that the American aristocracy is held together and made a unit, not so much by its property in slaves, as by the political power which the Constitution has deposited in their hands as the representatives of slaves. They represent their slaves. They put into the Houses of Congress, and into the Electoral College of the United States, the political power which is the exponent of their slaves; and of course, they are bound together, just as any other aristocracy could be, by the strongest of possible ties. This power then came into existence, as a distinct, independent, aristocratic power in the government, naturally opposed to the temper and spirit of our institutions."6 Though Chase and the other political abolitionists also regarded slavery as morally wrong, the main thrust of their attack was against the slave power. They feared the effect of continued national rule by slaveholding interests on northern rights, on civil liberties, on desired economic measures and on the future of free white labor itself. They had the active support of many who were very little concerned about the morality of slavery, the plight of the individual slave or the rights of free Negroes, north or south. It was the power...
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