Seven months after the Lincoln-Stone protest, Springfield residents publicly condemned abolitionism. While the Presbyterian synod was meeting there, citizens banded together to disrupt the proposed delivery of an antislavery sermon. Mob violence was averted, but some townspeople met on October 23 and adopted the following resolutions: “as citizens of a free State and a peaceable community, we deprecate any attempt to sow discord among us, or to create an excitement as to abolition which can be productive of no good result … the doctrine of immediate emancipation in this country, (although promulgated by those who profess to be christians,) is at variance with christianity, and its tendency is to breed contention, broils and mobs, and the leaders of those calling themselves abolitionists are designing, ambitious men, and dangerous members of society, and should be shunned by all good citizens.” Simeon Francis’s newspaper rejoiced “that public opinion in the frontier states is likely to check at once the perfidy of these fanatical men [i.e., the abolitionists].” Westerners “could not be induced to visit upon the South such an accumulation of horrors as is embraced in the meaning of those two words—‘universal emancipation.’ ”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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