to countenance the
restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, who, alone, in this land of
freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means
for removing this inconsistency of character from the American people;
that you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race;
and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for
discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellowmen."
*

* William Goodell, "Slavery and Anti-Slavery," p. 99.

The memorialists were treated with profound respect. Cordial support and
encouragement came from representatives from Virginia and other slave
States. Opposition was expressed by members from South Carolina and
Georgia. These for the most part relied upon their constitutional
guaranties. But for these guaranties, said Smith, of South Carolina,
his State would not have entered the Union. In the extreme utterances in
opposition to the petition there is a suggestion of the revolution which
was to occur forty years later.

Active abolitionists who gave time and money to the promotion of the
cause were always few in numbers. Previous to 1830 abolition societies
resembled associations for the prevention of cruelty to animals--in
fact, in one instance at least this was made one of the professed
objects. These societies labored to induce men to act in harmony
with generally acknowledged obligations, and they had no occasion for
violence or persecution. Abolitionists were distinguished for their
benevolence and their unselfish devotion to the interests of the needy
and the unfortunate. It was only when the ruling classes resorted to mob
violence and began to defend slavery as a divinely ordained institution
that there was a radical change in the spirit of the controversy. The
irrepressible conflict between liberty and despotism which has persisted
in all ages became manifest when slave-masters substituted the Greek
doctrine of inequality and slavery for the previously accepted Christian
doctrine of equality and universal brotherhood.

CHAPTER II. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE CRUSADE

It was a mere accident that the line drawn by Mason and Dixon between
Pennsylvania and Maryland became known in later years as the dividing
line between slavery and freedom. The six States south of that line
ultimately neglected or refused to abolish slavery, while the seven
Northern States became free. Vermont became a State in 1791 and Kentuck