Hinton Rowan Helper was a white Southern critic of slavery who addressed his book to “To the non-slaveholding whites of the South generally, whether at home or abroad.” That his book was taken as a threat to the South and circulating it — or even possessing a copy — was a crime was a symptom of the madness of the day. In a saner world, the idea that society and the economy would benefit from abolishing slavery wouldn’t have been controversial. If even wondering whether the South would be better off without slavery could get a questioner imprisoned or killed, how close could emancipation really be?
Thanks, rustbucket cites Helper's book as an example of Republican perfidy supporting Fire Eaters' demands for secession.
But in fact it demonstrates the lengths Fire Eaters went to exaggerate Northern opposition to their "peculiar institution."
Of course, Northerners were opposed to slavery, had always been, that's why they gradually outlawed it in their own states.
And many Northerners saw no reason why gradual emancipations should not continue as before, starting in Border States like Delaware or Maryland.
But most Northerners fully understood that "abolition" was a fighting word to many Southerners, and so in the case of Helper's book, they took the anti-slavery words of a Southerner, sanitized them for sake of political correctness and used them to demonstrate that even in the South itself, abolition was not impossible.
But Fire Eaters took Helper's original words and hung them on Republicans who, being at heart cowards, went squealing off like stuck pigs.
Helper who? Never heard of him, they'd claim.
Regardless, Helper's book went into Fire Eaters' arsenal of weapons to launch against Union and support secession.
As indeed, pro-Confederate posters like rustbucket use it to this very day.