hite trash,' from the second degree of slavery, and of three
millions of miserable kidnapped negroes from the first degree, cannot be
accomplished too soon." The process is simple and easy; emancipation
will be followed by such an instant rise in all values and in general
prosperity that the slave-owners themselves will be recouped. Let each
of these, he says, give to each slave his freedom and $60 in money; half
that sum will transport him to Liberia, whither all should go. He
foresees the tempest which his book will arouse. "What are you going to
do about it? Something dreadful as a matter of course? Perhaps you will
dissolve the Union. Do it, if you dare! Our motto, and we would have you
understand it, is the abolition of slavery and the perpetuation of the
American Union. If by any means you do succeed in your treasonable
attempt to take the South out of the Union to-day, we will bring her
back to-morrow,--if she goes away with you, she will return without
you." In his closing paragraph he predicts the election to the
Presidency in 1860 of some anti-slavery Southerner, of the type of
Cassius M. Clay, or James G. Birney, and in 1864, of a Northerner like
Seward or Sumner. And he thus concludes: "Furthermore, if in these or in
any other similar cases the oligarchy do not quietly submit to the will
of a constitutional majority of the people, as expressed at the
ballot-box, the first battle between freedom and slavery will be fought
at home--and may God defend the right!"

The book raised a tempest of denunciation. The more it was denounced the
more it was read. It was easily "the best-selling book" of the time. The
concrete reply of the party criticised was first to drive Helper out of
North Carolina. Next his book was condemned in a resolution proposed at
the opening of Congress in 1859-60, and aimed especially at John
Sherman, of Ohio, the Republican candidate for speaker, who had signed a
qualified recommendation of the book. After a long contest the
Republicans dropped Sherman for Pennington, of New Jersey, whom they
elected. _The Impending Crisis_ was a portent and an impulse of the
coming catastrophe.

CHAPTER XVIII

JOHN BROWN

About this time there was a revival of activity in the slave trade
between Africa and Cuba. The American Government had always acted
half-heartedly in its co-operation with the British Government for the
suppression of this traffic. Now it happened that some British cruisers