no negroes, but many of
them, and especially their political leaders, carried their adulation
almost to idolatry.
When Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot down like a dog, and William Lloyd
Garrison was dragged half naked and half lifeless through the streets
of Boston, and other outrages of like import were being perpetrated
all over the North, it was carefully given out that those deeds were
not the work of irresponsible rowdies, but of "gentlemen"--of
merchants, manufacturers, and members of the professions. They claimed
the credit for such achievements. There were reasons for such a state
of things--some very solid, because financial.
The North and the South were extensively interlaced by mutual
interests. With slave labor the Southern planters made cotton, and
with the proceeds of their cotton they bought Northern machinery and
merchandise. They sent their boys and girls to Northern schools. They
came North themselves when their pockets were full, and freely spent
their money at Northern hotels, Northern theatres, Northern
race-tracks, and other Northern places of entertainment.
Then there were other ties than those of business. The great political
parties had each a Southern wing. Religious denominations had their
Southern members. Every kind of trade and calling had its Southern
outlet.
But social connections were the strongest of all, and probably had
most to do in making Northern sentiment. Southern gentlemen were
popular in the North. They spent money lavishly. Their manners were
grandiose. They talked boastfully of the number of their "niggers,"
and told how they were accustomed to "wallop" them.
Then there were marriage ties between the sections. Many domestic
alliances strengthened the bond between slavery and the aristocracy of
the North.
In the circles in which these things were going on, it was the fashion
to denounce the Abolitionists. Women were the most bitter. The
slightest suspicion of sympathy with the "fanatics" was fatal to
social ambition. Mrs. Henry Chapman, the wife of a wealthy Boston
shipping merchant who gave orders that no slaves should be carried on
his vessels, was a brilliant woman and a leader in the highest sense
in that city. But when she consented to preside over a small
conference of Anti-Slavery women, society cut her dead, her former
associates refusing to recognize her on the street. The families of
Arthur and Lewis Tappan, the distinguished merchants of New York, were
no
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