The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-02-05
FANATICIsM AND FAILURE.

between the Abolitionist campaign pre-
yious to the Civil War and TO that |
which is being waged by the radical
Prohibitionists in these days. The Abb
olitionists were people acutely sensitive |
to the wrong of slavery but without |
any practicable plan of redressing it. |
They always went to extremes which |
brought no reward save the martyrdom
of their leaders and the prostration OF
their cause. The lawful compact with
slavery was properly called a cove
nant with death and league WITH
hell" but the Abolitionists could think
of no better way of getting rid OF 1t
than by adopting such methods as
those by which Mrs. Carrie Nation ana
other female cranks are trying to abol-
ish the saloon power in Kansas. Every
plan of reasonable compromise, and
even that of buying and freeing the
Islaves was rejected with scorn. NO
man could rise and point cut that the
Ownership of slaves was arrested right
and that some way must be found to
pay the slave-owners for the loss OF
their chatteis without being assailed
with violent epithets. Every one who
counseled reason and moderation was
called a creature of the Slave Power.
When the futiiity of John Browns
methods was shown on the gallows, tile
retort was a threat to extend those
methods until blood ran in every gutter
and fire broke from every house. One
! of the Abolition leaders (Horace Gree
iley) counseled the breaking UP of the
Union, setting the slave States off by
! themselves; he wanted the "erring sis
| tiers to go in peace" His paper, the
I'M. Id tl,o6 ,c 60 flo, In a
! whose stripes are bloody scars" and
VIM. Lloyd Garrison's journal, the
I Emancipation, was quite as fanatical.
The Abolitionists had no faith in Abra--
ham Lincoln; and when he declared
that he would save the Union if he had
to save slavery with it, Wendell Phil
lips stood before an audience of APP
plauding freaks and called him TIE
"SIave hound of Illinois," Yet when
the time had ripened in the heat of war
this illuminated martyr broke the
lmanacles of every slave and did it with
means to which the Abolitionists had
denied their confidence and by the
hands of men who had suffered most
from their dispraise.
That slavery was expunged from the
laws and life Of the nation is, there
fore, an achievement to which the Abo-
lition party, as such, can lay small
claim. The part taken by that body
was merely that of an irritant-Garri-
sonianism only did something to induce
the act of folly by which the Slave
Power tried to break up the Union and
for that crime was shattered on its own
doorstep. Had the South beer content
to let matters stay as they Were slav-
Iery might have held place until the
present time or until the prudence of
the owners, educated by public senti-
rnent, had prompted them to let the
Blacks earn their own freedom. AS
suredly Garrison's wild talk and Phil
lips eloquence, and Greeley's hysteria
and the jackdawing of the short
haired Kansas women, could have done
? nothing more than to keep up an ex-
: element which, after a time, would
have worn itself out, leaving tie North
! 'apathetic and the South undisturhed.
: The Prohibition fight against the sa-
7 loon power is already going into the na-
: tional decline which the Abolitionis'
crusade, but for Lincoln's war meas
f ures, must soon have experience |
e Never We're the cranks more violent
D than in the Presidential campaign Of
: last year; never was their defeat more
Overwhelming. From the day Mckinley
was .renominated. such hired slanderers
!, as Mrs. Cougar shrieked into the ears
of Disguised audiences the most infam-
Gus charges against the private ano
public character of the nations ChieI
Magistrate He was the "rum-seller OF
: the Philippines the bartender of the
tCanteen.' the murderer of our boys
a worse man in fact that the "Slave
hound of Illinois, had BEEN as clearly
guilty of homicide as Francis Murphy
: himself. The people heard and turned
away and when they cast their vote:
!, the Cougars and the Wooleys and thu
: rest of the crazy crew were buried 81
deep, politically, that the hand of res
direction could not fathom their No
vember grave
9 If the exhumed Mrs. Cougar actual.
!, thinks, as she says, that she coult
. shake" Honolulu with her rancorou
TRADES or achieve one thing for tota
abstinence to compare with the bril-
: liant triumphs of Francis Murphy, W.
:, beg her to proceed. Tt would not talk
: long for even her narrow understandin,
: to learn that Hawaii is not Kansas
that there are no bewhiskered fanatic
: lor unsexed female agitators running so
: ieiety or politics here; but that the Cit,
: and the Islands are governed with
calm intelligence which deals wisely an
. fairly with conditions as they are an,
: does not seek for the sake of an impossi
: Bile millennium, to do away with or con
, Idemn the moral or legal methods whicl
= are depriving sin and crime of some o
. their power to harm
s.