In Land of Gold, Helper actually defended slavery. But less than two years later, in The Impending Crisis (1857), he called for its abolition—in the same form that Abraham Lincoln and a slew of purportedly “liberal” politicians preferred: emancipation and colonization. Freed slaves would have to be expelled from the United States. The rise of the Free Soil Party in 1848, and the Republican Party in 1854, did not imply that an antislavery position was devoid of anxiety over pedigree, unnatural mixtures, and degenerate breeds.
