"
An immediate effect of the John Brown episode was a passionate
outburst from all the radical press of the South in defense of
slavery. The followers of Yancey made the most of their
opportunity. The men who voted at Vicksburg to reopen the slave
trade could find no words to measure their hatred of every one
who, at this moment of crisis, would not declare slavery a
blessing. Many of the men who opposed the slave traders also felt
that, in the face of possible slave insurrection, the peril of
their families was the one paramount consideration.
Nevertheless, it is easy for the special pleader to give a wrong
impression of the sentiment of the time. A grim desire for
self-preservation took possession of the South, as well as a
deadly fear of any person or any thing that tended directly or
indirectly to incite the blacks to insurrection. Northerners of
abolitionist sympathies were warned to leave the country, and in
some cases they were tarred and feathered.
Great anger was aroused by the detection of book-agents who were
distributing a furious polemic against slavery, "The Impending
Crisis of the South: How to Meet It", by Hinton Rowan Helper, a
Southerner of inferior social position belonging to the class
known as poor whites.
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