Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/87

Rh themselves never became popular with the multitude. With many men, the intrusive admonition of conscience is peculiarly irritating. But the immediate effect of their work has frequently been much underrated. The abolitionists served to keep alive in the Northern mind that secret trouble of conscience about slavery which later, in a ripe political situation, was to break out as a great force. They accomplished another immediate result of the highest importance. By the alarm they excited in the South they caused slavery to disclose to public view, more openly than ever before, those tendencies which made it incompatible with the fundamental conditions of free government.

The means which an institution or an interest needs for its defense, when attacked by the criticism of public opinion, may be taken as a test of its consistency with a democratic organization of society. When such an institution or interest cannot stand before the tribunal of free discussion, the question will soon arise which of the two shall give way. This question the abolitionists caused to be put before the American people with regard to slavery. While Northern mobs assaulted abolition conventions, and Northern meetings passed resolutions assuring the slave-holders of the sympathy of the Northern people, Southern journals, speakers, and legislatures demanded that, although occasional mobbings and anti-abolition resolutions were well in their way, the anti-slavery agitation,