The politicians thereupon proceeded to make this
perfectly wonderful invention. Not the strong arm of the mob, quoth
these wiseacres, but the strong arm of the law it shall be. And the
strong arm of the law they forthwith determined to make it.
Massachusetts was hearkening with a sort of fascination to the song of
the slave syren. And no wonder. For the song of the slave syren was
swelling and clashing the while with passionate and imperious energy.
South Carolina had led off in this kind of music. In December following
the Boston mob Governor McDuffie, pitched the key of the Southern
concert in his message to the legislature descriptive of anti-slavery
publications, and denunciatory of the anti-slavery agitation. The
Abolitionists were, to his mind, "enemies of the human race," and the
movement for immediate emancipation ought to be made a felony punishable
"by death without benefit of clergy." He boldly denied that slavery was
a political evil, and vaunted it instead as "_the corner stone of our
republican edifice_." The legislature upon the receipt of this
extraordinary message proceeded to demand of the free States the
suppression, by effective legislation, of anti-slavery societies and
their incendiary publications. The burden of this demand was directly
caught up by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia. But there
were some things which even a pro-slavery North could not do to oblige
the South.
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