The book teemed with such sentences as
this, addressing slaveholders: "Do you aspire to become victims
of white non-slave-holding vengeance by day and of barbarous
massacres by the negroes at night?" It is scarcely strange,
therefore, that in 1859 no Southerner would hear a good word of
anyone caught distributing the book. And yet, in the midst of all
this vehement exaltation of slavery, the fight to prevent a
reopening of the slave trade went bravely on. Stephens, writing
to a friend who was correspondent for the "Southern Confederacy",
in Atlanta, warned him in April, 1860, "neither to advocate
disunion or the opening of the slave trade. The people here at
present I believe are as much opposed to it as they are at the
North; and I believe the Northern people could be induced to open
it sooner than the Southern people."
The winter of 1859-1860 witnessed a famous congressional battle
over the speakership. The new Congress which met in December
contained 109 Republicans, 101 Democrats, and 27 Know-Nothings.
The Republican candidate for speaker was John Sherman of Ohio.
As the first ballot showed that he could not command a majority,
a Democrat from Missouri introduced this resolution "Whereas
certain members of this House, now in nomination for speaker, did
endorse the book hereinafter mentioned, resolved, That the
doctrines and sentiments of a certain book, called 'The Impending
Crisis of the South: How to Meet It', are insurrectionary and
hostile to the peace and tranquillity of the country, and that no
member of this House, who has indorsed or recommended it, is fit
to be speaker of the House.
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