ven though he was not an abolitionist, was viewed as an inevitable move toward abolition by his opponents. Hinton Rowan Helper was one of the few outspoken southerners who was opposed to slavery. No one in the south would publish his indictment of slave owners entitled The Impending Crisis in the South, mainly because it portrayed the slavery situation as it was—the criminal imprisonment of human beings based on the color of their skin. As Helper wrote “We contend, moreover, that slaveholders are more criminal than common murderers. We know all slaveholders would not willfully imbue their hands in the blood of their fellow-men; but it is a fact, nevertheless, that all slaveholders are under
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