Rev. Daniel Worth was a native of Guilford county, North Carolina, where, in early life, he had been a justice of the peace. Later he removed to Indiana, and at length became a member of the legislature in that State. Late in 1858 he returned to the neighborhood of his birthplace as a preacher in the Wesleyan Methodist Church. He preached the doctrine of his church, which was strongly anti-slavery, not without criticism, but, on account of the good feeling for his kinsmen, who were prominent people, without molestation. He planted a church at Sandy Ridge, near Jamestown, in Guilford. county, and his postoffice was New Salem. His church had but few members. He aroused the opposition of many Quakers, most of whom were for non-intervention in regard to slavery. Worth thought they should be more positive in their opposition.

In December, 1859, after the Harper's Ferry affair, Mr. Worth was arrested on the charge of circulating Helper's book, and of preaching in a way "to make slaves and free negroes dissatisfied with their condition." He was required to give bond of $5000 for his appearance at the Superior Court the following spring, and of $5000 more to keep the peace. The first bond he gave. The second he thought unjust, and would not give. He was accordingly confined in the Greensboro jail throughout the winter. While there the sheriff of Randolph county arrested him on the same charge, and bound him over to the spring court. Other sheriffs waited around the place for him, fearing that he might be released and escape. While he was in prison five other men were arrested in Guilford and several more in Randolph, charged with having distributed Helper's book. One of these was Jesse Wheeler and another was an old man named Samuel Turner. All of these seem to have been natives who were converted by Mr. Worth's appeals.

The Raleigh Standard bore witness to his success. It said that a few months before this occurrence only one copy of the New York Tribune came to Mr. Worth's post-office, and that came to Mr. Worth himself. Now twelve copies were received there. To this it added: "We think it probable that one hundred to two hundred copies of the Tribune are circulated in this State, together with numerous abolition pamphlets from Indiana and Ohio." Wheeler alone was said to have distributed more than fifty copies of "The Impending Crisis." On his trial before the magistrate that committed him, Mr. Worth read from the book in order to show that it was not incendiary, a proceeding which the Raleigh Standard seems to have considered especially provoking.

The arrest occasioned great excitement in the vicinity, and for a time crowds surrounded the jail. A great crowd was in the courtroom when the case finally came to trial. The case was taken up and finished in one sitting. It was midnight when it went to the jury. In his charge the judge is reported to have said that "to sustain the allegation of seeking to excite the slaves and free colored people to discontent, it was not necessary to prove that the book had been read by or recited to a free negro or slave, or that any such knew anything or any part of its contents. The jury returned at 4 A. M. with the verdict of "guilty." The jury, said the Fayetteville (N. C.) Presbyterian, was composed largely of non-slaveholders. The legal penalty was imprisonment for not less than one year and the pillory or the whipping-post, in the discretion of the judge. The court remitted the whipping on account of the age and calling of the prisoner, and sentenced him to one year's imprisonment. Many of the bystanders, said the New York Tribune, regretted the leniency of the court, and hoped that a more severe judge in another county might add the whipping. From this judgment the prisoner appealed to the Supreme Court of the State, and giving a bond of $3000, he was released. He at once repaired to New York city, where he made anti-slavery speeches and tried to raise money enough to repay the loss of his bondsmen. His bondsmen were his sympathizers, and the court records show that they were required to pay the forfeited bonds. On appeal, the judgment of the lower court was confirmed. It is likely that the authorities of Guilford were glad to be rid of him, so much attention was his case attracting in the North. He lived through the war that settled the question of slavery, and died within two years after its termination. After the publication of "The Impending Crisis," Mr. Helper did not feel that it would be safe for him to return to his home. He accordingly remained in New York in business. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him Consul to Buenos Ayres. He arrived at his post in the following spring. In 1863 he married Miss Mary Louisa Rodriguez, of Buenos Ayres. His official services at this place were satisfactory, but uneventful. In November, 1866, he resigned his position and sailed for America. He made his home in New York city, where, with some interruptions, he has since continued to reside.

It was about the time of his return from South America that he severed his connection with the old leaders of the anti-slavery cause. When he took up the study of slavery he took it up merely as it affected the whites. He never was an advocate of the equal rights of the negro. On the contrary, he has always had too violent aversion for them. To this day he will have nothing to do in a business way with any hotel or other enterprise that employs negroes. He regards the negro as an inferior race, without possibility of satisfactory progress, and would hail with delight the day when not one of the race should be in the country. These views are not wanting in "The Impending Crisis;" but in 1857 they were overshadowed, both in his own and in the popular mind, by the question of the evil effects of slavery on the whites. With the question of slavery gone, his mind turned to the negro. He saw how much the presence of the negro had retarded Southern progress, and he conceived a positive dislike for the whole race. While in Buenos Ayres a friend requested him to furnish American papers of protection to a negro, but he stoutly declined, on the ground that the "United States of America are already burdened with four million too many" of negroes.

When he returned to North America the Republicans were coming to deal with the negro problem. Their attitude did not meet with his approval. His pen, always facile, at once went to work; and by the middle of the next year he published "Nojoque, a Question for a Continent." Mr. Helper's best friends must regret that he should have written this book. It is a severe, and, at times, an unreasonably violent, attack on the negro. It assailed, in the strongest way, what it stigmatized as the "Black Congress," and proposed an alliance between white Republicans and loyal Democrats, which, having secured control of the government, should offer the negroes aid to get out of the country by a specified time. Those that did not go should be sent away by main force or "be quickly fossilized in .bulk beneath the subsoil of America." The plan was, in short, to expel as many as could be persuaded to go, and to massacre the others. As a part of the history of the time, the book deserves no consideration. It is only in connection with its author, who did before this a great part in a most important work, that it need be mentioned at all. It is charitable to say that recent events had so accustomed Mr. Helper to death that he was inconsiderate of the value of human rights and human life. As to his estimate of the negro, it is enough, in view of the development of opinion on the subject both North and South, to say that he underestimated the blacks. Two other books in the same spirit followed closely on "Nojoque." These were "Negroes in Negro-land," and "Noonday Exigencies."

One result of these later books was to sever completely his relations with the old leaders of the Abolitionists. His failure to accept the theory of the equality of man had always prevented them from receiving him with warmth. They now dropped him altogether, and Henry Wilson, in 1875, when he wrote the "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America," failed to give him credit for the great influence of "The Impending Crisis." The cause seems to have been the views of the negro problem expressed in these post-bellum publications.

Mr. Helper's later years have been given to the promotion of the Intercontinental Railroad, a scheme by which it is proposed to build a railway from some point in the upper Mississippi basin, through Mexico and Central America, across the highlands on the east of the Andes and across the plains to Buenos Ayres. Later developments would extend this road until it should at last reach the Hudson Bay on the north, and the Straits of Magellan on the south. He removed to St. Louis, Mo., that he might better push this scheme. With characteristic ardor he offered large prizes for the five best essays on the advantage of his scheme, and then published these essays at his own cost. In various ways he has spent on this project $48,000 out of his own pocket. The recent Pan-American Congress took up the matter and secured appropriations by the various nations for the support of an Intercontinental Railway Commission, which has offices in Washington city. Three corps of engineers have been sent to survey the routes. Their work is accomplished, and the reports will soon be published. In the meantime certain roads have been built independently of one another, which may easily be used as sections of the proposed larger system. The evident advantage of such a road makes it certain that as the countries through which it will pass become more thickly settled it will necessarily be built. Mr. Helper's scheme, and the most commendable persistence he has shown in his thirty years of sacrifice and effort in its behalf, has drawn the eyes of business men toward the opportunity, and in the day when it shall be made a real fact the pluck of its promoter will be appreciated by the public. At present Mr. Helper remains a hale and active man of sixty-seven, kind to those who call on him, and ever hopeful for the project which he has on his hands.
(Source:Anti-slavery Leaders of North Carolina, By John Spencer Bassett, Ph.D., J.H.U, Publisher: The John Hopkins Press , Baltimore, June 1898 - Transcribed and Submitted by: Michelle Kennedy Byrd)