Missouri
Compromise to that of the Mexican War, this island was united under a
single republic, though it was afterwards divided into the two republics
of Hayti and San Domingo.

The "horrors of San Domingo" were never absent from the minds of those
in the United States who lived in communities composed chiefly of
slaves. What had happened on the island was accepted by Southern
planters as proof that the two races could live together in peace only
under the relation of master and slave, and that emancipation boded
the extermination of one race or the other. Abolitionists, however,
interpreted the facts differently: they emphasized the tyranny of the
white rulers as a primary cause of the massacres; they endowed some
of the negro leaders with the highest qualities of statesmanship and
self-sacrificing generosity; and Wendell Phillips, in an impassioned
address which he delivered in 1861, placed on the honor roll above the
chief worthies of history--including Cromwell and Washington Toussaint
L'Ouverture, the liberator of Hayti, whom France had betrayed and
murdered.

Abolitionists found support for their position in the contention that
other communities had abolished slavery without such accompanying
horrors as occurred in Hayti and without serious race conflict. Slavery
had run its course in Spanish America, and emancipation accompanied or
followed the formation of independent republics. In 1833 all slaves
in the British Empire were liberated, including those in the important
island of Jamaica. So it happened that, just at the time when Southern
leaders were making up their minds to defend their peculiar institution
at all hazards, they were beset on every side by the spirit of
emancipation. Abolitionists, on the other hand, were fully convinced
that the attainment of some form of emancipation in the United States
was certain, and that, either peaceably or through violence, the slaves
would ultimately be liberated.

CHAPTER III. EARLY CRUSADERS

At the time when the new cotton industry was enhancing the value of
slave labor, there arose from the ranks of the people those who freely
consecrated their all to the freeing of the slave. Among these, Benjamin
Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker, holds a significant place.

Though the Society of Friends fills a large place in the anti-slavery
movement, its contribution to the growth of the conception of equality
is even more significant. This impetus to the idea arises from