No section of the old South contained so much anti-slavery sentiment as did the western parts of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, the northern part of Georgia and the eastern parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. This was due to causes entirely natural. The South Atlantic coast region is divided into two distinct kinds of country. Next to the ocean there is a strip of land, varying from fifty to one hundred miles in width, which is a fertile and well watered plain. West of this, and stretching to the mountains, is a hilly region, whose clay soil, though fertile in spots, is not naturally as productive as that lying on the river banks to the east. The eastern division was first settled. It fell almost from the first into the hands of wealthy planters, and soon held many slaves. The western portion, as well as the lands beyond the mountains, was occupied by settlers during the eighteenth century. These came chiefly from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New England. Many of them were Scotch-Irish, and not a few were Germans. Many were persons who had arrived in America a few years before, and who were still poor. Nearly all settled on small farms, which they expected to work with their own hands. Being remote from water communication, they were a long way from market, and consequently industry progressed slowly. They raised most of the articles they consumed, and what they bought they got by carting their wheat or driving their stock from fifty to a hundred miles to Richmond, Va., to Fayetteville, N. C., or to some other point at the head of navigation of the various rivers that traversed this section. Under such conditions the upland counties remained frugal, industrious, simple and democratic. Here slavery was introduced very slowly. From the conditions of industry, as well as from the habits of the people, slavery had at first little encouragement. Had not the eastern and southern edges of this section been opened to the cotton industry, and had not the raising of slaves for the far South become profitable, slavery very probably would have gained no foothold here.

All the conditions of small farms, simple habits and democratic ideals which have been ascribed to this general region were emphatically attributable to that part of it which lay in North Carolina. The western part of this State, until the railroads were built, about the middle of this century, was very distinct from the eastern part. A line drawn from the Roanoke river at Halifax, through the western parts of Edgecomb, Greene and Lenoir counties, across the center of Duplin and the western part of Pender, thence straight to the Cape Fear river, then continued to the neighborhood of Fayetteville, then across the western end of Harnett, the eastern sides of Wake and Franklin, and thence to the Roanoke river; such a line would enclose a territory which, save for as much of the valleys of the Roanoke, Tar, Neuse and Cape Fear as lay in it, was a level plain, covered with pine forest, and which was not very attractive to immigrants. This region was thinly settled, and until it was cleft by the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad it was not well developed. It remained a “pine barren,” and served to divide the east from the west. The counties west of this, except those along the Cape Fear and Roanoke rivers, contained few spots in which slavery had planted itself with any considerable rootage. In the West was, also, no great love of slavery. If a vigorous appeal could have been made against slavery in these counties, they could very likely, at any time before 1860, have been carried for freedom. It is noteworthy that all the anti-slavery leaders the State produced came from within, or near, this region.

Hinton Rowan Helper was born in Davie county, North Carolina, December 27, 1829. His paternal grandfather was born near Heidelberg, Germany, and came to North Carolina in 1752. His maternal grandfather, who was of English descent, was Cannon Brown, of Virginia. His father, Daniel Helper, married Sarah, the daughter of Cannon Brown, and the pair settled down on a small farm on Bear creek, a tributary of the South Yadkin river. Here there were born seven children, the last of whom is the subject of this sketch. Daniel Helper died in the fall of 1830, and the widow and her seven children, the eldest of whom was less than twelve, were left to support themselves as best they could. They had four slaves, a man and his wife and their two children, and from the labor of these the family managed to live. The training of young Hinton was such as many a backwoods boy gets: rough sports in the open air, hunting and fishing, all kinds of farm work in season, a little schooling in the neighborhood schools, and finally a term or two in a neighboring academy, which, in this case, happened to be in the village of Mocksville. With such an outfit he found himself at the threshold of manhood. His health was not very robust, but as he grew older he became stronger, and he is now an admirable specimen of well-preserved manhood.

When twenty years old he moved to the city of New York, which he made his home for some months. When he came of age, however, he started off to California, by way of Cape Horn, hoping to make his fortune in the gold regions. At Valparaiso, Chile, the ship stopped for provisions and masts, and this gave the young man his first direct acquaintance with South America, a country with which his later life has been somewhat closely associated. His stay in the gold region was short and unprofitable. In 1854, three years after he had set out, he returned to the farm and settled down to the life in which his boyhood had been spent. Such a life was too dull for him. His mind was active, and he had a store of observations made during his absence. Some minds seem to be set on ball bearings, they work so easily. Mr. Helper seems to have such a mind. His ready use of words and his incisive mental processes easily fitted him for writing. In the quiet of the farm life he wrote an account of his journey, which he called “The Land of Gold.” In 1855 the work was ready for the press. He made arrangements for publication with Mr. Charles Mortimer, of Baltimore, then the publisher of the Southern Quarterly Review, and a strong pro-slavery Virginian. In his travels Mr. Helper had found no slave labor. He had been struck with the superiority of free labor. This, he concluded, was particularly true of the cities; and he thought that slaves should be relegated to the country. The work of printing had progressed to some extent when the publisher discovered these sentiments. He refused to print them. The author, anxious for the safe delivery of his first-born, and having already paid $400 for work done on the book, was in despair. He hesitated as to what to do, and at length told the printer to do as he chose with the matter. Mortimer then cut out the objectionable passages and published the book.

The result of this course was important. The young man, chagrined at what he deemed an outrage, determined that he would be heard. He returned to North Carolina and began an extensive study of the question of slavery. In a year he had formulated his views. In June, 1856, a few days after the nomination of Fremont for the Presidency, he started again for the North, taking with him the manuscript of “The Impending Crisis of the South.” In Baltimore he stopped long enough to aid in forming a Republican association, one of the first in the South, and destined soon to be broken up by a pro-slavery mob. He hardly expected to get a publisher for his work in this city; but he, nevertheless, tried to secure one. Failing completely, he went on to New York. Here he found more sympathy for his views, but only a little aid in putting them before the public. The work was offered to the Harpers, Scribner, Appleton and all the other regular publishers, but not one would take it. In his despair he offered the manuscript for nothing, but the offer was not accepted. They all declined, because to publish such strong anti-slavery views, or to have them brought out in connection with their firms, would drive away their Southern patronage. Mr. James Harper, an Abolitionist himself, and a man to whom Mr. Helper had brought a letter of introduction, said to the young author, with great frankness, that while he concurred with the book in its hostility to slavery, and found it worth bringing out, yet, after consulting with his business partners, it had been decided that publishing it would cause the firm to lose at least twenty per cent. of their annual trade. In view of such a fact, they did not dare to undertake the work.

These were no doubt wise business methods, but they disheartened the author. Between seven and eight months he spent going from one publisher to another. How much he suffered in the meantime will not be easily imagined. Convinced that he had a great principle at stake, he was determined to exhaust every energy to accomplish his task. This long period of waiting was endured with steadfastness. He was committed to the right of being heard on a question on which his opinions had once been suppressed. He felt that he was demanding vindication. At length, worn out with anxiety and disgusted at what he thought a lack of courage on the part of the publishers, he decided to accept an offer made by Mr. A. B. Burdick. That gentleman, who was a book agent rather than a book publisher, agreed to issue the book in his own name, Mr. Helper having previously secured him against loss. The venture proved a handsome success. Mr. Burdick made a fortune from the sales, but, unfortunately, lost it in stock speculation.

“The Impending Crisis of the South” was well calculated to attract attention in the North. The author was a Southerner, not of the slave-holding aristocracy, but of the class of small farmers. He approached the question from the economic side, while other anti-slavery writers had approached it from the side of the rights of the negro. The literary style was clear and cutting. The author wrote in behalf of the non-slaveholding whites of the South, for whom he claimed an opportunity to make a living. There was a grim directness in the following words, taken from the preface to the first edition: “The genius of the North has also most ably and eloquently discussed the subject in the form of novels. New England wives have written the most popular anti-slavery literature of the day. Against this, I have nothing to say; it is all well enough for women to give the fictions of slavery; men should give the facts.” In the same preface he referred to the fact that he was a Southerner, as proud as any of his birthplace, and added: “As the work, considered with reference to its author's nativity, is a novelty, * * * so I indulge the hope that its reception by my fellow-Southrons will be novel; that is to say, that they will receive it as it is offered, in a reasonable and friendly spirit, and that they will read it and reflect on it as an honest endeavor to treat a subject of vast import without rancor or prejudice, by one who naturally comes within the pale of their own sympathies.”

These were fair words; but Mr. Helper must have known well when he wrote them that his book would receive little favor in the South. If he hoped otherwise, he was soon undeceived. The appearance of the work in the summer of 1857 was the signal for a flood of denunciation from that quarter. It was at once declared to come within the provision of the laws against the circulation of incendiary literature. To own a copy was against good taste, and traitorous to the interest of the South. In 1859 John A. Gilmer was the Whig candidate for the governorship in North Carolina. His opponents charged him with owning a copy of “The Impending Crisis.” His friends replied by declaring that John W.Ellis, the Democratic candidate, had a copy. The Raleigh Standard, the leading Democratic paper of the State, indignantly denied the charge against Ellis. The truth of the matter, it said, was that in 1858, while Ellis was in New York, Mr. Helper, who had known him in North Carolina, called on him and later on sent a copy of the book. This Mr. Ellis threw out of the window. Sometime later Governor Ellis received another copy through the mails, and that he used for lighting his pipe.1

1 Raleigh, N. C. Standard, Aug. 10, 1859.

The enemies of Mr. Helper tried to break down his arguments by blackening his character. It was charged that he had taken fraudulently a sum of money from an employer in Salisbury, N. C., and that when accused of the crime he had admitted it, alleging that he was at the time only seventeen years old, and that another clerk had induced him to take the money. This charge was repeated by Senator Biggs, of North Carolina, in a congressional debate, in 1857.1

1 Raleigh, N. C. Standard, Dec. 7, 1859.

The reception of “The Impending Crisis” by the Northern public, while favorable, was not immediately flattering. Its great popularity was doubtless caused by the political interest that sprang out of it. This came about in this way: In 1857 a gentleman from Rhode Island, whose name is not given, acting in conjunction with Mr. John Bigelow, associate editor of the New York Evening Post, made arrangements to print 100,000 copies of a compendium of “The Impending Crisis.” The panic of that year coming on soon after, the project was dropped. In March, 1859, the scheme was revived in a different form. A number of gentlemen, among whom were Samuel E. Sewell, Cassius M. Clay, F. P. Blair, Jr., Charles W. Elliot, David Dudley Field and Charles A. Peabody, now issued a circular, calling for subscriptions to a fund of $15,000 in order to print, as a campaign document, 100,000 copies of such a compendium. The circular said, among other things: “No other volume now before the public, as we conceive, is, in all respects, so well calculated to induce in the minds of its readers a decided and persistent repugnance to slavery and a willingness to coöperate in the effort to restrain the shameless advances and hurtful influences of that pernicious institution.” The scheme was endorsed by the leading Republican members of Congress, among whom were Messrs. Colfax, Grow, Giddings, Dawes, Washburn and John Sherman, and by the most prominent Abolition leaders, among whom were Thurlow Weed, Wm. Cullen Bryant, B. S. Hedrick and Horace Greeley. The latter gentlemen declared: “Were every citizen in possession of the facts embodied in this book, we feel confident that slavery would soon pass away, while a Republican triumph in 1860 would be morally certain.” It is of interest to know that of the amount collected, North Carolinians subscribed $165. Among the subscribers were Professor Hedrick and Mr. Goodloe, whom the Raleigh Standard described as “two other recreant sons of this State.1

1 Raleigh Standard, Dec. 7, 1859.

The plans thus set forth were accomplished. One hundred thousand copies of the compendium were printed in 1860 and distributed throughout the doubtful States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois. In their estimate of the book the Abolitionists were right. Its style cut like a knife. It showed clearness, conviction, and a certain intensity which would likely make a more striking appeal to the voters than the more restrained statements of a more scholarly work. It was not free from the vivid rhetoric to be expected from a self-taught young man from the backwoods, and yet, for the purposes in view, this was no disadvantage.

The success of this circular was not calculated to soothe the feelings of the Southern Democrats, whose feelings were already at the highest pitch. Their newspapers took up the matter, publishing extracts to show that “The Impending Crisis” was incendiary. To the Southerners this was a deliberate purpose of the Republicans to arouse the entire North against the South. Shortly after the compendium scheme was assured there occurred John Brown's attacks on Harper's Ferry. The South was more convinced than ever of the harmfulness of the book which the Abolitionists were using to propagate their doctrines. While affairs were in this shape Congress met. The caucus nominee of the Republicans for the Speakership was John Sherman, who, with other Congressmen, had signed the above-mentioned circular. To his election the Southerners opposed their strongest efforts. As soon as Congress met a resolution was introduced which declared “That no person who has endorsed and recommended [Helper's] book, or the compendium from it, is fit to be Speaker of this House.” One of the fiercest debates in the history of that body now began. Southern members used the bitterest threats. Members on each side went armed, fearing a resort to force. The debate on the resolution was dropped long enough to take some ballots for Speaker, but without any election. Ignoring the usual holiday recess, the contestants went on until, on January 30, 1860, Sherman withdrew his name. Three days later Pennington, of New Jersey, was elected by the Republican and American votes.1

1 See the preface of the “Impending Crisis,” (1860).

The attracting of public attention to “The Impending Crisis” had a most exciting effect on its sale, which hitherto had not been extraordinary. The demand for it was now immense. Copies might be seen in stacks on every news stand and in every book store of the North. Some proslavery men tried to prevent its sale. The president of the Norristown Railroad Company ordered that it should not be sold in the railroad cars, the gentlemen's waiting-rooms, or the railway stations.2

2 See Garrison's Liberator, Jan. 20, 1860.

A more impartial view of the book from a scholar's standpoint would be the book reviews it received at the time it was published. The New Englander (Vol. 75, p. 635, 1857), in calling attention to the fact that the author wrote from the side of sociology, said: “On the subject in this department he has made the most complete and effective presentation within our knowledge. It is thorough, reliable, demonstrating, overwhelming. It consists of facts which cannot be denied or gainsaid; facts derived to a large extent by careful examination and comparison from the census, which cannot be suspected of anti-slavery bias, since it was compiled under the direction of an eminent statistician who is notorious for his pro-slavery principles and zeal.” The Westminster Review, having less interest in the conflict, and being more critical in point of style, said, with much justness: “The style of production is peculiarly American. Its language and ideas alike are often extravagant, and its allusions sometimes very personal. Statistics and other facts are well arranged and fully authenticated, but the conclusions of the author are not always correct, and occasionally exhibit a want of practical political knowledge.1

1 Vol. 75 (1861), p. 81.

The burden of Mr. Helper's story was the benefiting of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. These ought to be distinguished from the “poor whites.” The latter were a class, in themselves more or less shiftless, living around among the large plantations, without ambition and mostly in extreme poverty. They were largely wrecks, both industrial and moral, on the shores of society; although a child occasionally came out from among them whose efforts enabled him to reach a high place in society. The former class were the small farmers who worked their lands without slave labor. They were most numerous in the west, among the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. They were thrifty and sturdy, and when they removed to the Northwest, as many of them did to escape the effects of slavery, they proved valuable citizens. Emancipation of the slaves would have been a blessing to either of these classes. By it one class would have been raised slowly from degradation to respectability, the other from respectability to wealth. What either of these classes suffered from the slaveholders is seen in this extract from Helper: He says there were several kinds of pine near his boyhood home, “by the light of whose flamable knots, as radiated on the contents of some half-dozen old books, which, by hook or crook, had found their way into the neighborhood, we have been enabled to turn the long winter evenings to some advantage, and have thus partially escaped from the prison grounds of those loathsome dungeons of illiteracy in which it has been the constant policy of the oligarchy to keep the masses, the nonslaveholding whites and the negroes, forever confined.” 1

1 The Impending Crisis, p. 110.

To improve the condition of this class it was necessary to abolish slavery. He started out to learn “why the North has surpassed the South.” 2

2 Ibid., p. 74.

Sound as the argument was, there was much that was calculated to make Southern blood boil. It was a time of stern conviction. Each side had little of the spirit of toleration. Mr. Helper ought not to be blamed, perhaps, that he did not rise above the spirit of his surroundings. Certain it is, he was no master of saying unpleasant truths in a palatable way. At times he spoke bluntly, often bitterly. In one place he exclaims: “No man of genuine decency and refinement would have them [the negroes] as property on any terms.”1

1 The Impending Crisis, p. 75.

Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, eldest son of John Leonard Hedrick and Elizabeth Sherwood Hedrick, was born in Davidson county, near Salisbury, N. C., February 13, 1827. The name indicates that the family was sprung from the German stock, which had a large share in settling this part of the State. John Leonard Hedrick was a farmer on a moderate scale. He was able to give his children the advantages of the neighborhood schools, and to give them enough property to serve for a start in life. The boy, Benjamin, attended the neighborhood schools, and fitted for college under Rev. Jesse Rankin, a Presbyterian minister of Salisbury. There is a story, told and reiterated in the heat of the controversy that afterwards arose, that his father offered him the choice of a college education or property enough to begin life on. For the boy there could be no hesitation in a case like this. He took the opportunity to get an education. In 1847 he entered the university of the State at Chapel Hill, and in 1851 he graduated with the highest distinction. His mind was of a scientific turn, and he made fine progress in chemistry and mathematics. At this time Hon. W. A. Graham, Secretary of the Navy, and a native North Carolinian, asked President Swain, of the university, to recommend a young man to be appointed as clerk in the office of the Nautical Almanac. President Swain recommended Mr. Hedrick, who immediately received the appointment. The duties of this office seem to have been at Cambridge, Mass., and by this means the young graduate was able to take advanced instruction in Harvard College. While there he studied chemistry under the great Agassiz. In 1852 he was married to Miss Mary Ellen Thompson, daughter of William Thompson, of Orange county, North Carolina. In 1854 he was recalled to his Alma Mater to take the Chair of Analytical and Agricultural Chemistry. This position he held until October, 1856, when he was expelled from the faculty for causes connected with his views on slavery.

It is not hard to trace the development of Professor Hedrick's views on slavery. His birth and his early surroundings had put him in sympathy with that large number of small farmers in the western part of the State, who, as we have already seen, were generally opposed to slavery. His boyhood home was near Lock's Bridge, on the Yadkin river, and on the road that led through that part of the State from Virginia to South Carolina. He declared that he had seen on this road as many as two thousand slaves in one day going to the south, and most of them in the hands of speculators. This seems to have made a deep impression on his sensitive nature. In later life he became convinced that it was a very harmful taking away of property which ought to be left in the State to develop it. The people around him had great cause to complain of slavery. They were mostly workers themselves, and felt all the hardships that free labor must suffer in competition with slave labor. Many of them, through this very reason, had been driven from the State. “Of my neighbors, friends and kindred,” said Professor Hedrick in his defence, “nearly one-half have left the State since I was old enough to remember. Many is the time I have stood by the loaded emigrant wagon and given the parting hand to those whose faces I was never to look upon again. They were going to seek homes in the free West, knowing, as they did, that free and slave labor could not both exist and prosper in the same community.” This statement he supported by showing that in 1850, according to De Bow's census, which ought to be good Southern authority, there were in Indiana alone 33,000 native North Carolinians, while in all the free West there were 58,000. This was enough to make an Abolitionist out of a less responsive nature than Professor Hedrick's. These facts had an early influence on him. His stay in the North only confirmed this conclusion. It was easy enough for a young man of the planter class, used to the luxury of his Southern home, to spend some time in the North without becoming convinced that in general social welfare the North was ahead of the South. It was far easier for a young man of the middle class, used to the hardships and limitations of the free labor of the South, to go to the North and come to an entirely opposite conclusion; and it was not a very remote mental process to conclude, further, that this difference was due to slavery. Young Hedrick was sprung from the middle class of farmers, and his mind naturally went through the process that has been indicated.

All accounts of Professor Hedrick agree that he was a man of singular gentleness of character. In a private letter to the writer, Mr. Hinton R. Helper, who knew Professor Hedrick well, says: “With all his virtues, and he was full of them, modesty, amounting almost to bashfulness, was one of his peculiar characteristics.” Such a man was not likely to create strife deliberately. Honest, gentle, intelligent, he was, it is but fair to think, more competent to know the right thing to do in the position in which he was placed than we whom a wide interval of time and interests has removed from him. Let us assume in what shall follow that he acted as properly as one might expect from a man of such a character.

In August, 1856, there was an election of State officers in North Carolina. Professor Hedrick went to the polls in the village of Chapel Hill, in which the university is located, and voted for the Democratic candidates. A bystander asked him if he intended to vote the same ticket in the national election in November following. It is likely that his views on slavery were known, and that this question was asked to make him commit himself in public. He replied that he did not know. He was then asked if he would vote the Whig ticket, and he answered in the negative. Finally he was asked if he would vote for Fremont. To this he answered very frankly that he would so vote if a Republican electoral ticket should be formed in the State. There was no attempt to conceal his intention, and it at once became known among both students and villagers. Mr. Helper, in the letter already quoted, says that time and again Professor Hedrick assured him that he never once sought to disseminate his views among the students or other persons around the place.

This was in August. No active opposition seems to have been made to these views by those closely associated with him who held them. In the North Carolina Standard, Raleigh, N. C., the leading Democratic newspaper of the State, there appeared on September 13, 1856, a short article under the title, “Fremont in the South,” the concluding paragraph of which declared: “If there be Fremont men among us, let them be silenced or required to leave. The expression of black Republican opinions in our midst is incompatible with our honor and safety as a people. If at all necessary, we shall refer to this matter again. Let our schools and seminaries of learning be scrutinized; and if black Republicans be found in them, let them be driven out. That man is neither a fit nor a safe instructor of our young men who even inclines to Fremont and black Republicanism.” The editor of the Standard, Mr. W. W. Holden, was a man of strong editorial ability. He is said to have boasted that in North Carolina affairs he could kill and make alive. It seems to have been in some such spirit as this that he now turned his guns on the Abolitionist in the university faculty. It was undoubtedly his deliberate purpose to drive Professor Hedrick from his position. Two weeks after the appearance of the article just quoted, the Standard contained a communication, signed “An Alumnus,” which brought up the subject in a more direct manner. The writer began by calling attention to the danger of sending Southern youths to Northern colleges, where they would be taught “black Republicanism,” and then shifted to the article in the issue of September 13, just mentioned. He goes on to say: “We have been reliably informed that a professor in our State university is an open and avowed supporter of Fremont, and declares his willingness, nay, his desire, to support a black Republican ticket, and a want of a Fremont electoral ticket in North Carolina is the only barrier to this Southern professor from carrying out his patriotic wishes. Is he a fit or safe instructor for our young men?” This professor, says Alumnus, ought to be dismissed from his position, and if the faculty and trustees have no power to dismiss him, the legislature at its approaching session ought to take up the matter. With feelings highly outraged, he asks: “Upon what ground can a Southern instructor, relying for his support upon Southern money, selected to impart healthy instruction to the sons of Southern slave-owners, and indebted for his situation to a Southern State, excuse his support of Fremont with a platform which eschews the fathers of his pupils and the State from whose university he received his station?”

All this was plainly aimed at Professor Hedrick. He consulted his friends as to what he should do. He was advised to say nothing, since any defence he should make would not be believed. One of his colleagues made a visit to Hillsborough about that time, and came back with the information that the articles in the Standard had made a deep impression on the inhabitants of that town. Several of the trustees were said to be denouncing Professor Hedrick as an “Abolitionist,” which he was, and as “a stirrer up of the poor against the rich,” which he certainly was not. The accused remained silent no longer. He wrote a defence of his position, which was published in the Standard of October 4, 1856. Had he been playing a game with his enemies this would have been a bad play. It gave them an opportunity of bringing a definite charge against him. Had he kept silent, the burden of proof would have remained on them. Moreover, it gave them an opportunity of avoiding the real issue, and of proceeding against him for taking part as a professor in the university in partisan politics; although it must be confessed that it was in the slightest sense partisan to express a preference for a party that was not organized or likely to be organized in the State in which he must vote. On the other hand, Professor Hedrick had his rights. He was a self-directing and a self-accounting citizen, and it was perfectly right for him to express his opinion on a public question about which he was being abused in the public prints. Regardless of the question of expediency, his course was ingenuous and manly. In the light of present knowledge, the South knows that he spoke the truth, and one ought not to criticise a man for speaking the truth, especially if he be an instructor in an institution of learning, which ought at all times to be a leader of truth.

Professor Hedrick's statement was made in a spirit of fairness, and with far less temper than either the editor or “An Alumnus” had shown. Owning readily that he was the man aimed at in the Standard, he avowed with frankness that he preferred Fremont for President, and gave two reasons—(1) because he liked the man, and (2) because Fremont was on the right side of the slavery question. Discussing the latter reason, he branched out into an argument against slavery, perhaps the only anti-slavery argument ever admitted to the columns of the Standard. This feature made five-sixths of his article. He cited the views of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Madison and Randolph on slavery. The works of these statesmen were much read in the library of the university. He said that in the western part of the State popular sentiment was against slavery, and that a large number of people had gone from there to the West. He made the point that the continual taking away of slaves for the far South cut off a great deal of the labor of the State that ought to be left to develop it. He declared that he had nothing to do with the politics of the students, adding: “They would not have known my own predilections in the present contest had not one of the number asked me which candidate I preferred.” Of “An Alumnus” he said: “I shall not attempt to abridge his liberty in the least, but my own opinion I will have, whether he is willing to grant me that right of every freeman or not. I believe I have had quite as good an opportunity as he has to form an opinion on the question now to be settled. And when ‘Alumnus’ talks of ‘driving me out’ for sentiments once held by [Washington and Jefferson] I cannot help thinking that he is becoming rather fanatical.” He closed by saying: “I do not claim infallibility for my opinions. Wiser and better men than I have been mistaken. But holding, as I do, the doctrines once advocated by Washington and Jefferson, I think I should be met by arguments, and not by denunciation.”

Having tormented its victim until he had forced him into a position of public condemnation, the editor of the Standard now proceeded to destroy him in the most systematic manner. In an editorial in the same issue with Professor Hedrick's defence it was declared that it could not be expected of “ ‘An Alumnus’ or any other citizen of this State to argue with a black Republican.” The editor repeated that a man who “even inclines to Fremont and black Republicanism” is not fit to be an instructor in the university. He added: “This is a matter, however, for the trustees of the university. We take it for granted that Professor Hedrick will be promptly removed.”1

1 This editorial and Prof. Hedrick's defence were reprinted in the New York Tribune (semi-weekly), Oct. 17, 1856, and in the New York Herald (weekly), Oct. 18, 1856, and possibly elsewhere.

Before these two letters were written the university faculty had considered the case. The defence had appeared on Saturday, October 4. The paper must have reached Chapel Hill not sooner than Saturday afternoon. At noon on Monday following the faculty was called together by President Swain, all the members being present. In calling up the matter the president said: “In an institution sustained like this, by all denominations and parties, nothing should be permitted to be done calculated to disturb the harmonious intercourse of those who support and those who direct and govern it. And this is well known to have been the policy and practice during a long series of years.”1

1 North Carolina Standard, Oct. 15, 1856.

After a brief discussion the resolutions were adopted, Messrs. Mitchell, Phillips, Fetter, Hubbard, Wheat, Phipp, C. Phillips, Brown, Pool, Lucas, Battle and Wetmore voting in the affirmative. Mr. Harrisse voted in the negative, “simply on the ground that the faculty is neither charged with black Republicanism nor likely to be suspected of it.” He considered the whole affair as personal to Professor Hedrick. The students of the university expressed their sentiments by assembling on the campus as soon as the Standard containing the defence was received, and by burning the professor in effigy to the tolling of the bell.

On October 11, the executive committee of the board of trustees of the university met in Raleigh, Governor Bragg presiding, the sole purpose being, apparently, to dispose of this matter. From the minutes of the meeting I take the following:

These resolutions were passed unanimously.

While the specific words were not used, this was in reality a dismissal. The next issue of the Standard announced, “with much gratification,” the removal of Professor Hedrick. Referring to his probable course in the future, the paper further said: “If the Abolitionists should take him up the history of his conduct will follow him, and they will know, as he will feel, that they have received into their bosom a dangerous but congenial and ungrateful thing.” This was a bitter thrust at a defeated antagonist. It is worth noting, because it says not one syllable about the offence of writing a political letter. The Standard a week later took up the matter again, and laid down its general doctrine as follows: “We say now, after due consideration, but with no purpose to make any special application of the remark, that no man who is avowedly for John C. Fremont for President ought to be allowed to breathe the air or tread the soil of North Carolina.”

Daniel Reaves Goodloe was born in Louisburg, N. C., May 28, 1814. His ancestors came from Virginia to North Carolina. His father read medicine, but never practised it. He was a school teacher, although, from his early leaning toward medicine, he continued to be called “Dr. Goodloe.” Not far back in the family there was a fortunate combination of English, Welsh, Danish and Huguenot blood. Mr. Goodloe's mother was of a Welsh family named Jones. In neither origin nor association was he connected with the class of large slaveholders. In his youth he attended the “old field” schools of the place, where he acquired the merest rudiments of knowledge. Later on he entered the Louisburg Academy, which was supported by the prominent families of the neighborhood, and had the reputation of being among the best schools of its kind in the State. His progress here was not great, however. When he left the school he could boast of no learning beyond the English branches, except a “smattering of Latin.” Later in life he went to Tennessee, and there, at Mt. Pleasant, Maury county, studied mathematics, with good results, under a Harvard graduate named Blake. When still a boy he went to Oxford, N. C., and entered a printing establishment there, his purpose being to learn the printer's trade. This period of his life he recognizes as of great formative value in his mental development. Typesetting taught him, as he himself says, “to analyze sentences and to discard, in my mind, superfluous and inappropriate words. Perhaps the slow process of putting the types together was favorable to this result. At any rate, I have always regarded those years thus spent as not the least advantageous to me in the matter of mental training.”

After two years and one-half of apprenticeship, Mr. Goodloe, then just of age, tried a newspaper venture of his own. He began in Oxford, N. C., the publication of The Examiner. The venture was ill-timed, and soon ended in disaster. The editor, encumbered with debt and disgusted with newspapers, went, after some wanderings in Tennessee, back to Louisburg to read law. After a year's study he was licensed to practise in the county courts, and a year later, in January, 1842, secured permission to practise in all State courts. He settled in Louisburg and waited for cases. For nearly two years he waited, but with little success. He had no aptitude for public speaking, and did not succeed in acquiring the facility in argument which is necessary in the general practice of country courts. Mr. Priestly H. Mangum, a brother of Senator Mangum, and a lawyer of prominence, saw this deficiency in the young man, and advised him that it might be overcome by running for some political office. The necessity of defending publicly his position, thought Mr. Mangum, would develop fluency of speech. Franklin county, of which Louisburg is the county seat, was at that time overwhelmingly Whig. Mr. Goodloe was a Whig. His most intimate friends were leading Whigs, and they offered to put him in nomination. “But,” says Mr. Goodloe, “I had a thorn in the flesh, which restrained me. I had a profound conviction of the evils of slavery, moral and economical. The agitation had not then reached to fever heat, but it was rising, and it began to be seen that the interest of slavery underlay and touched every other question. I should have been called upon to define my views on the subject, which I could not have done without injury to the Whig cause, to my friends, and to myself.” The proferred nomination was accordingly declined. This was a very characteristic action of the man. One of the most prominent traits revealed in his career is his honesty.

After a year of idleness in Louisburg Mr. Goodloe went to Tennessee, hoping to find fortune more favorable there. This was not his first trip to that State. In 1836, just after the failure of The Examiner, he turned to the West. In 1836 he volunteered in Maury county, Tennessee, to go to fight the Indians. The forces were intended to fight the Creeks, in Alabama; but before the command to which he belonged could rendezvous at Fayetteville, Tenn., the Creeks had surrendered. The volunteers then agreed to go to Florida, against the Seminoles. They went, serving six months as mounted volunteers. They had several skirmishes with the Indians. They were at length mustered out of service at New Orleans. For this service Mr. Goodloe now receives a “service pension.” On his second trip to Tennessee he found that there was as little of an opening there for a man who was both a printer and a lawyer as he had formerly found for a man who was only a printer. He accordingly decided to go to Washington City. There he arrived, with no money and few friends, January 22, 1844. At length Senator Mangum came to his assistance and secured him employment as assistant editor of a daily paper called The Whig Standard, of which Mr. Nathan Sargeant, a journalist of repute, was the editor-in-chief. The Standard was not a financial success, and in a few weeks Mr. Sargeant withdrew, leaving the entire management to his newly-acquired assistant. During the hotly-waged campaign of 1844 Mr. Goodloe had control of the paper, but he was not able to fix it so deeply in the affections of his party that it would supply more than a campaign want. On the defeat of Mr. Clay it suspended. He then edited the Georgetown Advocate for a short while, and finally took a small school. He at length secured employment of a more permanent nature when he became assistant editor of the National Era, a prominent anti-slavery weekly, published in Washington, and edited by Dr. Gamaliel Bailey. This paper had been founded in 1847 in order to advocate the principles of the Liberty Party. It had, however, says Mr. Goodloe, always remained free from party domination. On account of the illness and subsequent death of Dr. Bailey, Mr. Goodloe became at length the editor-in-chief. He had now reached a position in which he was thoroughly identified with the anti-slavery clause. It is now time that we see how he came to hold such views.

In August, 1831, there occurred in Northampton county, Virginia, the well-known Nat Turner Rebellion. The whole slaveholding South was highly alarmed. In Virginia the occurrence divided public opinion. Many people thought it proved one of the dangers of slavery and advocated the enactment of such laws as would look toward the gradual extinction of slavery. This proposition was most warmly supported in the western counties of Virginia. In January of the succeeding winter the legislature took up the matter and had a long debate on the question of gradual emancipation. The speeches made on this occasion were both exhaustive and able. Slavery was handled with a great deal more freedom than it met with again in the South until it felt the rough force of Grant's army at Appomattox. The ablest men in the State took part in it, and they were mostly on the side of emancipation. Among this number was one worthy of special mention, viz., Mr. Charles J. Faulkner, now of West Virginia. He was then a young man, and spoke ably and convincingly for freedom. The two leading newspapers of Richmond, the Enquirer and the Whig, organs, respectively, of the Democratic and Whig parties, were both for emancipation. Mr. Goodloe was then a journeyman printer in Oxford, N. C. These two papers came regularly to the office as exchanges. They were seized and devoured by the boy. In this way the arguments of the anti-slavery side were deeply impressed on his mind. In fact, the statesmen of Virginia who were opposed to emancipation did not attempt to defend slavery. They merely maintained that emancipation was impracticable. The planters of the eastern part of the State, where slavery was strongest, had a more effective measure than argument to use against the proposition. They saw that the life of slavery was threatened. They affected to believe that the debates would stir up the slaves to further resistance. They called indignation meetings, in which it was declared that the legislative debates were incendiary. The clamor they raised frightened some of the more timid members of the legislature, with the result that further discussion of the matter was dropped, not, however, before the friends of freedom had in one of the ballots come within one vote of winning the fight. “From that time,” writes Mr. Goodloe, “dates the intense hostility in all the South to the idea of emancipation in any form, whether immediate or gradual. From that time the legislation of the Southern States took on a harshness never before practised. Negroes were forbidden to learn to read, and to teach them to read was punishable by fine and imprisonment. The statutes of every Southern State bear evidence to this effect.”

The Virginia debates were read with interest by many North Carolinians. Some of the State newspapers took the side of emancipation. This was notably true of the Greens-borough Patriot, then edited by William Swaim. Here was a man of strong talents and much ability in writing. He wrote a pamphlet about this time, which was an attack on slavery. Mr. Goodloe says that it would have done credit to any writer. It was reprinted by William Goodell, of New York, but a search in many places has failed to bring it to light.

While at Louisburg, a lawyer without clients, Mr. Goodloe's mind continued to dwell on the moral and economic evils of slavery. It seemed to him an impossiblity that an institution manifestly founded on an injustice to a whole race could be economically wise or generally salutary. Says he: “The objections to slavery pointed out by Northern writers, that free labor was more efficient, and that a free man would do more work than a slave, failed to satisfy me. I was aware that nothing hindered Southern capitalists and Southern planters from employing free labor. But they gave the preference to slave labor as a matter of convenience and of profit. Slaves, where the institution was tolerated, were preferred to any other form of property. Lands in all the South had little market value. They rarely increased in value after the country became settled and occupied. Personal property other than slaves had no salable value, but there was always a market for slaves, either at home in the old States, or in the Southwest.” Still it was impossible not to see that the slave States were far behind the free States in general development. Mr. Goodloe thought much over this disparity in the industrial, educational, literary and social progress of the two sections. After much reflection he settled the question to his satisfaction. One day in 1841, while driving from Louisburg to the neighboring town of Franklinton, the conclusion came to him “that capital invested in slaves is unproductive, that it only serves to appropriate the wages of the laborer.” This he proceeded to illustrate as follows: Two farmers live on opposite sides of the Ohio river, the one in Ohio, the other in Kentucky. Each has 100 acres of equally fertile land, and an equal capital in tools and stock. But the Kentuckian must own ten slaves to work his land at an investment cost of $10,000. The two have equal amounts of money invested in land, and they raise equal amounts of produce. Now, when it comes to calculating the net returns of the year, the Kentuckian will have to make more money clear in order to receive an income on the capital invested in slaves. Hence it takes more capital to conduct farming operations in Kentucky than in Ohio. “It is true,” adds Mr. Goodloe, “that the Kentuckian receives a larger proportion of the crop than the Ohio man; but he receives it as the wages of the ten slaves, who receive nothing. But Kentucky, the community in which the slaveholder resides, is enriched to no greater extent than Ohio, where the farmer must divide profits with the laborer.” The same would be true of slaves worked in a factory. “It may be said that he may hire the slaves. No matter; they still are slaves involving an unnecessary investment of capital. The State in which the factory is situated is the loser of actual capital, whether the employer of the slaves, as hired men, loses or not. The South, when the Civil War came on, held near 4,000,000 of slaves, which they valued at an average of nearly $750 each, and the aggregate value was nearly $3,000,000,000. This abstraction of so vast a sum from active use furnishes another explanation of the dearth of commerce, manufactures and all the conveniences of life from the South. The abolition of slavery destroyed no property. It only changed or transferred titles.”

In regard to individual wealth, this view was wrong. If a slave-owner receives wages for slave labor that is a return for slave capital, and to that extent the capital is not unproductive to him. At the same time the value of his slave has another element of gain in the offspring of the slave. In regard to social wealth, Mr. Goodloe's view seems mainly correct, if it be considered from the Northern standpoint. The North said that the slave was a person, a member of society. Consequently his own property was decreased as much as his master's was increased, and the wealth of the community was not affected. The South said, however, that the slave was not a person, not a member of society, but a thing. His property was not decreased by his not owning himself, because he was nothing. His master's property in him was, accordingly, a loss to the property of no member of society. On the contrary, it was a gain to one who was certainly a member of society, and for that reason a gain to society itself. Happily, we are all now agreed that the slave was a person in the eyes of all humane feelings, and that his rights were defeated by his enslavement. The theory, then, that capital invested in slaves is unproductive as social wealth is a good theory. The further view that emancipation destroyed no property needs, however, some modification. Temporarily, emancipation did destroy property. Value depends upon usefulness. One of the conditions of usefulness is efficiency. When one recalls the disorganized condition of labor in the South just after the war, he will see that although the labor forces were outwardly undiminished, they were still not so efficient as they had been, because they lacked sufficient direction. This effect has been temporary. How long it has continued, or will continue, depends upon the negro's acquisition of the habit of working without compulsion, a process in which, it ought to be said, his progress seems satisfactory. An opposing force to this fall in the productiveness of negro labor has been an increased productiveness of white labor under conditions of freedom. What is the exact resultant of all these forces it would be interesting to discover. On the whole, it seems in favor of the new régime.

Mr. Goodloe's views were embodied in a pamphlet, and when he went to Washington he laid it before Mr. John Quincy Adams at his house, nearly opposite the Ebbitt Hotel. Mr. Adams examined it carefully and praised it highly. He asked the author if he proposed to publish it. The answer was that he was unable to do so. Mr. Adams then suggested a newspaper publication, and said that there was a young man named Greeley, who was publishing an anti-slavery Whig newspaper in New York, but that he, Mr. Adams, was not acquainted with him. On consideration he advised that the article be sent to Mr. Charles King, a son of Rufus King, then publishing the New York American. This course was followed, and the article appeared in the American at the end of March, 1844. Two years later the author printed 500 copies of the article in pamphlet form. Later in life, while reading Mill's Political Economy, he was struck with the statement that mortgages are no part of natural wealth. Reasoning by analogy, he thought Mill must have his idea of slavery; but further investigation showed that the arguments used in reference to mortgages had not been applied, as might have been done, in reference to slavery. Mr. Goodloe then sent his pamphlet to the distinguished economist and received a letter in reply, in which Mr. Mill said that Mr. Goodloe was clearly right, and that he would embody the idea advanced in the pamphlet in his next edition of the Political Economy, but he did not publish another edition.

The National Era in its earliest days drew its patronage from the whole country, wherever there was anti-slavery sentiment. It was one of the few papers that were advocating that cause. With Mr. Lincoln's election a large number of papers appeared as supporters of anti-slavery principles. Against these papers the Era could not compete. Local Abolitionists turned to support their home enterprises, and the older journal, after having fought the battle through to victory, died as a result of the success of the cause it had advocated. Left out of employment by this collapse, Mr. Goodloe became Washington correspondent of the New York Times, then strongly Republican. On April 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed Senator Wilson's bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. A sum of money not exceeding $1,000,000 was appropriated to pay for the liberated slaves, and it was provided that the average price should not be more than $300 each. To carry out this law a committee consisting of Messrs. D. R. Goodloe, chairman; Horatio King and J. M. Broadhead, were appointed to value the slaves and to order payment for the same. The committee sat for nearly nine months, took evidence, heard arguments, examined the slaves themselves with the aid of Mr. B. M. Campbell, an expert slave dealer from Baltimore, and awarded such sums under the law as they thought just. In this way 3000 slaves were liberated, at a cost to the government of $900,000, in round numbers.1

1 See Ingle: The Negro in the District of Columbia, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 11th Series, pp. 105-8. Some further details have been supplied from Mr. Goodloe's own statement.

Few people, perhaps, who know Dr. Caruthers as an historian realize that he wrote a book on slavery. He was, as most of those who know of him will understand, pastor of Presbyterian churches around Greensboro, N. C., for over forty years. He was a man of conviction and was known to be opposed to slavery; but he made no display of his views. Finally, one Sunday morning in July, 1861, at his church at Alamance, he prayed that the young men of his congregation who were in the army “might be blessed of the Lord and returned in safety though engaged in a bad cause.” The next day the officials of the church informed him that they needed him no longer. It was probably after this that he wrote his work on “American Slavery and the Immediate Duty of Slaveholders.” This book was not published, and until recently few knew of its existence. In February, 1898, it was discovered by Dr. Dred Peacock and placed in the Ethel Carr Peacock Library at Greensboro Female College.

Two prefaces were written; one when the manuscript was prepared, and one in 1865, when the author made some changes in it. In the second preface he says:

Although slavery had then been abolished, it was decided to publish, because the people were thought to be in a better mood to understand and to do justice to anti-slavery arguments, and because “we have the authority of the Bible for holding up the calamitous events to the wicked actors in them as warnings.” In the first preface is this statement: “There are some hard things in it [the book], and if there were not it could do no good; for an evil of such an extent, enormity, and long standing cannot be demolished or removed by a little smooth talk. The whole truth must be told. . . . . The language is not abusive, and was certainly not intended to be so; for neither my disposition nor my principles allow me to employ harsh and vituperative language.”

It is a fit thing that this series of sketches should close with the story of the career of a member of the enslaved race itself. This story will illustrate many sides of the slavery question in the South. Here is the blight of slavery on white and black, the exceptionable negro, who, by admirable perseverance and endurance, struggles on to freedom, the mass of thoughtless and unambitious negroes in the background, the touch of human sympathy on the part of the better class of whites, and the maddened roar of the ignorant and infuriated larger class. How truly was this a picture of slavery and its surroundings.

Lunsford Lane1

1 This sketch is based on the “Memoir of Lunsford Lane,” by Rev. Wm. G. Hawkins (Boston, 1863). The narrative is not free from the extravagances of a zealous Abolitionist. In places conversations have been reproduced with a freedom worthy of the Greek historians, and at times the author has allowed his imagination to portray surroundings which are characteristically Southern, but which in this case did not exist. As for the main facts of the narrative, I have no reason to reject them. Information about the case is hard to obtain in Raleigh, but from an old resident I obtained a corroboration of the account of t