aid, "the negroes descendants of Ham, and had not these
descendants been cursed by the Almighty, and given over to the control
of the children of Shem and Japhet,--not, indeed, to be trodden down
like beasts, but to be elevated and softened by them, and made useful in
the toils which white men could not endure?" Ultra-Calvinists united
with politicians in building up a public sentiment in favor of slavery
as the best possible condition for the ignorant, sensuous, and
superstitious races who, when put under the training and guardianship
of a civilized and Christian people, had escaped the harder lot which
their fathers endured in the deserts and the swamps of Africa.

The agitation at the North had been gradually but constantly increasing.
In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison started "The Liberator;" in 1832 the New
England Antislavery Society was founded in Boston; in 1833 New York had
a corresponding society, and Joshua Leavitt established "The
Emancipator." Books, tracts, and other publications began to be
circulated. By lectures, newspapers, meetings, and all manner of means
the propagandism was carried on. On the other hand, the most violent
opposition had been manifested throughout the North to these so-called
"fanatics." No language was too opprobrious to apply to them. The
churches and ministry were either dumb on the subject, or defended
slavery from the Scriptures. Mobs broke up antislavery meetings, and in
some cases proceeded even to the extreme of attack and murder,--as in
the case of Lovejoy of Illinois. The approach of the political campaign
of 1836, when Van Buren was running as the successor of Jackson,
involved the Democratic party as the ally of the South for political
purposes, and "Harmony and Union" were the offsets to the cry for
"Emancipation."

By 1835 the excitement was at its height, and especially along the line
of the moral and religious argumentation, where the proslavery men met
talk with talk. What could the Abolitionists do now with their Northern
societies to show that slavery was a wrong and a sin? Their weapons fell
harmless on the bucklers of warriors who supposed themselves fighting
under the protection of Almighty power in order to elevate and
Christianize a doomed race. Victory seemed to be snatched from victors,
and in the moral contest the Southern planters and their Northern
supporters swelled the air with triumphant shouts. They were impregnable
in their new defences, since they cla