1841-02-05-Liberator-Politico-Abolition
Politico-Abolition
The Liberator, v11 n6, 5 February 1841, p. 22
It appears by the Emancipator, the official organ of the politico-abolitionists of the country, that the election returns being all received, the whole number of votes, polled throughout the nation for their highest candidate, is 6,831—and 'it is barely possi ble that the sacred number of 7000' may be reached by accurate return. These 6,831 votes were cast in 12 States, in all of which slavery has ceased to be lawful, long before the politico-abolitionists began their clamor. In the city of New-York, where they boasted of 3000 votes before the election, they could raise only an average of 150, their highest vote being 170! and this too in this theatre of all their great national and political projects, where they have had presses, and other 'great moral engines,' to help them. In this entire State, where they professed before the election to have 17,000, by which empty boast they frightened certain politi cians from their propriety, they haye only mustered 2,808 votes! Facts like the above, have brought out the famous Garrison, of the Liberator, in the following style:
- 'If this third party movement (politico-abolition) was ridiculous before, it is rendered still more so since the election. In the whole nation, it may have mustered in its support some six or eight thousand votes, (6,831,) out of two millions three hundred thou sand! And what is yet more ludicrous, the Emancipator and some other papers affect to regard this result as most auspicious! The Abolitionist modestly speaks of Mr. Birney as the future President of the United States! Well, folly will have its day. By this modest title, Mr. Birney has not only been heralded throughout this country, but, with wonderful self-complacency, allowed himself to be thus introduced to the British public, upon anti-slavery platforms.'
The foregoing extract from the Liberator serves to show that the Garrison party among the abolitionists do not fellowship with politico-abolitionists, and as his followers arc no-voting, as well as no-govern ment in their notions, the 191 scattering votes of Massachusetts may be estimated as the strength of the ' women's rights party, ' and as composing the moral power of Garrisonism, who thus threw away their votes, although a few others probably refused to vote at all. The Emancipator, however, goes on the presumption that 6,831 is the whole number of good men and true in the abolition ranks, for though it claims a multitude of the Harrison and Van Buren voters as abolitionists, yet it regards them as voting against their consciences, and calls them all 'dreamy, speculative, transcendental, inoperative abolitionists,' who will vote for slavery, while call ing themselves abolitionists; and as such disowns their fellowship.
Now we agree with the editor of said paper, and believe that the late election has brought out the whole strength of the politico-abolition there is in the country. And we marvel, in view of the facts developed in the late campaign, that he should prate about electing in 1844 either the President, or any other officer of the general government. If the Mormons had been duped to run their prophet Joe Smith for President at the late election, no man in his senses can doubt that he would have obtained more votes than James G. Birney has throughout the country. And the thought of electing the latter in 1844 is not a whit more ludicrous than the former; indeed in the city of New-York, the Mormon voters are more numerous than the abolition voters, as shown by the experiment of the latter in the recent election. And since 1839, it is plain that the abolitionists have decreased one-half, their vote hav ing been reduced from 336 to 170, in the city, while the Mormons have been increasing. It is certain then, if New-York is a fair sample of the whole, that the probabilities of a Mormon President in 1844, are much greater than of Mr. Birney's election at that or any future time.
Politicians North as well as South may see by the statistics of the late election here cited, that no party can have any thing to hope or to fear from the politico-abolitionists, and henceforth they should dis regard their clamor, as unworthy to be estimated in any sober calculation of politicians. Their presses are all famishing, no one of them being able to get along without betraying pauperism in its appeals for money, and many of them even at head quarters have ceased to be, after bankrupt fortunes have overtaken all concerned. The American Anti-Slavery Society is virtually defunct, and though two self-styled national societies, cordially hating each other, have burst forth from the ashes of the former Society, yet neither has any thing but a nominal existence. Even the semblance of favor, once boasted of, from the ecclesiastical officiaries of the different Christian denominations, has been withdrawn, and now the party is regarded as a faction by all the churches in their collective capacity, tolerated only in the exercise of Christian forbearance with the weak and the misguided. So that the late election has not killed politico-abolition, for this was done before, by the folly of its leaders;— it has only written its epitaph.
- FIAT JUSTITIA.
