The slaveholders were alarmed by this new movement at the North. They thought that it aimed to incite slave insurrection. The governor of South Carolina made it the subject of a special message. The legislature of Georgia passed and the governor signed resolutions offering a reward of $5000 to anybody who would bring Mr. Garrison to that state to be tried for sedition. The mayor of Boston was urged by prominent men in the South to suppress the _Liberator_, although the paper was then so obscure at home that the mayor had never seen a copy of it, or even heard of its existence. The fact that there was any organized expression of anti-slavery thought anywhere was first made generally known at the North by the extreme irritation of the South; and when the temper of the latter became known, the vast majority of Northern people sided with their Southern brethren. They were opposed to anything which seemed likely to lead to slave insurrection or to a disruption of the Union. The abolitionist agitation seemed to be a provocation to both. Hence arose anger and mob violence against the abolitionists everywhere. This feeling took the shape of a common understanding not to countenance any discussion of the slavery question in any manner or anywhere. The execution of this tacit agreement fell for the most part into the hands of the disorderly element of society, but disapproval of the Garrisonian crusade was expressed by men of the highest character in the New England States, such as William Ellery Channing and Dr. Francis Wayland. The latter declined to receive the _Liberator_, when it was sent to him gratuitously.
What was going on in the South during the thirties and forties of the last century? There were varying shades of opinion and mixed motives and fluctuating political currents. In the first place cotton-growing had been made profitable by the invention of the cotton-gin. This machine for separating the seeds from the fibre of the cotton plant caused an industrial revolution in the world, and its moral consequences were no less sweeping. It changed the slaveholder's point of view of the whole slavery question. The previously prevailing idea that slavery was morally wrong, and an evil to both master and slave, gradually gave way to the belief that it was beneficial to both, that it was an agency of civilization and a means of bringing the blessings of Christianity to the benighted African. This change of sentiment in the South, which became very marked in the early thirties, has been ascribed to the bad language of the abolitionists of the North. People said that the prime cause of the trouble was that Garrison and his followers did not speak easy. They were too vociferous. They used language calculated to make Southerners angry and to stir up slave insurrection. But how could anybody draw the line between different tones of voice and different forms of expression? Thomas Jefferson was not a speak-easy. He said that one hour of slavery was fraught with more misery than ages of that which led us to take up arms against Great Britain. If Garrison ever said anything more calculated to incite slaves to insurrection than that, I cannot recall it. On the other hand, Elijah Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois, was a speak-easy. He did not use any violent language, but he was put to death by a mob for making preparations to publish a newspaper in which slavery should be discussed in a reasonable manner, if there was such a manner.