ANTISLAVERY CONFLICT.
Therewere many noble confessors of the antislavery gospel, and many self-sacrificing sufferers in the cause, in various parts of our country, to whom I should be doing great injustice not to speak particularly of their services, if I were writing a complete history of our protracted conflict for impartial liberty. But I must confine myself, for the most part, to my personal recollections of prominent events and the individuals who were most conspicuous within my own limited view.
It is to be hoped that a complete history of this second American Revolution will, erelong, be written by Mr. Garrison, the man of all others best qualified to write it,—except that he will not give that prominence to himself in his narrative which he took in the beginning and occupied until emancipation was proclaimed for all in bondage throughout our borders. He has been the coryphæus of our antislavery band. He uttered the first note that thrilled the heart of the nation. He, more than any one, has corrected the national discord. And he has led the grand symphony in which so many millions of our countrymen at last have gladly, exultingly joined.
But so many have, at different periods and in various ways, contributed to the glorious result that it will not be possible even for Mr. Garrison to do ample justice to all his fellow-laborers. Indeed, many of them cannot be known to him, or to any one but the Omniscient. Asin every other war, the fate of many a battle was decided by the indomitable will and heroic self-sacrifice of some nameless private soldier, who happened to be at the point of imminent peril, so, no doubt, has a favorable turn sometimes been given to our great enterprise by the undaunted moral courage and persistent fidelity of one and another, who are unknown but to Him who seeth in secret.
In my last article I gave an account of the bitter persecution of Mr. Thompson. The fact that he was a foreigner was used with great effect to exasperate the mobocratic spirit against him; but the real gist of his offence was the same that every one was guilty of, who insisted upon the abolition of slavery.
At the annual meeting of the American Antislavery Society in May, 1835, I was sitting upon the platform of the Houston Street Presbyterian Church in New York, when I was surprised to see a gentleman enter and take his seat who, I knew, was a partner in one of the most prominent mercantile houses in the city. He had not been seated long before he beckoned me to meet him at the door. I did so. “Please walk out with me, sir,” said he; “I have something of great importance to communicate.” When we had reached the sidewalk he said, with considerable emotion and emphasis, “Mr. May, we are not such fools as not to know that slavery is a great evil, a great wrong. But it was consented to by the founders of our Republic. It was provided for in the Constitution of our Union. A great portion of the property of the Southerners is invested under its sanction; and the business of the North, as well as the South, has become adjusted to it. There are millions upon millions of dollars due from Southerners to the merchants and mechanics of this city alone, the payment of which would be jeopardized by any rupturebetween the North and the South. We cannot afford, sir, to let you and your associates succeed in your endeavor to overthrow slavery. It is not a matter of principle with us. It is a matter of business necessity. We cannot afford to let you succeed. And I have called you out to let you know, and to let your fellow-laborers know, that we do not mean to allow you to succeed. We mean, sir,” said he, with increased emphasis,—“we mean, sir, to put you Abolitionists down,—by fair means if we can, by foul means if we must.”
After a minute’s pause I replied: “Then, sir, the gain of gold must be better than that of godliness. Error must be mightier than truth; wrong stronger than right. The Devil must preside over the affairs of the universe, and not God. Now, sir, I believe neither of these propositions. If holding men in slavery be wrong, it will be abolished. We shall succeed, your pecuniary interests to the contrary notwithstanding.” He turned hastily away; but he has lived long enough to find that he was mistaken, and to rejoice in the abolition of slavery.
We were soon made to realize that the words of the New York merchant were not an unmeaning threat. He had not spoken for himself, or any number of the moving spirits of that commercial metropolis alone. He was warranted in saying what he did by the pretty general intention of the “gentlemen of property and standing” throughout the country to put a stop to the antislavery reform. The storm-clouds of persecution had gathered heavily upon our Southern horizon. Fiery flashes of wrath had often darted thence towards us. But we were slow to believe that our Northern sky would ever become so surcharged with hatred for those, who were only contending for “the inalienable rights of man,” as to break upon us in any serious harm. The summer and fall of1835 dispelled our misplaced confidence. We found, to our shame and dismay, that even New England had leagued with the slaveholding oligarchy to quench the spirit of impartial liberty, and uphold in our country the most cruel system of domestic servitude the world has ever known. The denunciations of the South were reverberated throughout the North. The public ear was filled with most wanton, cruel misrepresentations of our sentiments and purposes, and closed, as far as possible, against all our replies in contradiction, explanation, or defence. The political newspapers, with scarcely an exception, teemed with false accusations, the grossest abuse, and the most alarming predictions of the ultimate effects of our measures. The religious papers and periodicals were no better. The churches in Boston, not less than elsewhere, were closed against us. Not a ministerB—excepting Dr. Channing, and the one in Pine Street Church—would even venture to read a notice of an antislavery meeting. Dr. Henry Ware, Jr., was denounced and vilified for having done so from Dr. Channing’s pulpit. All the public halls, too, of any tolerable size, were one after the other refused us. Even Faneuil Hall, the so-called cradle of American liberty, was denied to our use, though asked for in a respectful petition signed by the names of a hundred and twenty-five gentlemen of Boston, whose characters were as irreproachable as any in the city. But a few weeks afterwards, on the 21st of August, at the request of fifteen hundred of the “gentlemen of property and standing,” that hall, in which had been cradled the independence of the United States, was turned into the Refuge of Slavery. There as large a multitude as could crowd within its spacious walls, with feelings of alarm for the safety of our country,and of indignation at the Abolitionists as disturbers of the peace, already excited by the grossest misrepresentations of our sentiments, purposes, and acts, industriously disseminated by newspapers and in reports of public speeches throughout the Southern States,—there, in Faneuil Hall, thousands of our fellow-citizens were infuriated yet more against us by harangues from no less distinguished civilians than the Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, Peleg Sprague, and Richard Fletcher. These gentlemen reiterated all the common unproved charges against us, and solemnly, eloquently, passionately argued and urged that the enslavement of millions of the people in our country was a matter with which we of the Northern States had no right to meddle. It was a concern, they insisted, of the Southern States alone, found there when these portions of our Republic were about to emerge from their colonial dependence upon Great Britain, and left there by the framers of the Constitution, which was meant to be the fundamental law of our glorious Union. They harped upon the guaranties given to the slaveholders, that they should be sustained and undisturbed inenforcingtheir claim ofpropertyin the persons and services of their laborers. And those gentlemen insisted that the endeavors of Abolitionists to convince their fellow-citizens of the heinous wickedness of holding human beings in slavery gave just offence to those who were guilty of the sin; violated the compact by which these United States were held together, and, if they were permitted to be prosecuted, would cause the dissolution of the Union.
Meetings of a similar character, in the same or a more violent spirit of denunciation, were held in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and most of the cities of the nation. What were the immediate effects of this general outcry against us I shall narrate as briefly as I may.
The nearly simultaneous uprising of the proslavery hosts in 1835, and the almost universal outbreak of violence upon our antislavery heads in all parts of the country, from Louisiana to Maine, showed plainly enough that Mr. Garrison’s demand for the immediate emancipation of the enslaved had entered into the ear of the whole nation. All the people had heard it, or heard of it. It had received a heartfelt response from not a few of the purest and best men and women in the land. This was manifest at the Convention in Philadelphia, in December, 1833, where were delegates from ten of the States of our Union, all of whom seemed ready to do, to dare, and to suffer whatever the cause of the oppressed millions might require. It waked at once the lyre of our Whittier, which has never slumbered since, and inspired him to utter those thrilling strains which all but tyrants and their minions love to hear. It drew from Elizur Wright, Jr., Professor in Western Reserve College, Ohio, in 1833, a thorough searching pamphlet on “the sin of slavery.” It called out from Hon. Judge William Jay, of New York, that “Inquiry,” which brought so many to the conclusion that the Colonization plan tended, if it were notintended, to perpetuate slavery, and satisfied them that “the class of Americans called Africans” (to use the pregnant title of Mrs. Child’s impressive Appeal) had as much right to live in this country and enjoy liberty here as any other Americans. Mr. Garrison’s word gave rise to that memorable discussion in Lane Seminary, of which I have heretofore given some account, and which resulted in the departure, from that narrow enclosure, of eighty preachers of the doctrine of “immediate emancipation,” to repeat and urge theirdeep convictions upon the willing and the unwilling in almost every part of the land, which sent out Theodore D. Weld and Henry B. Stanton and James A. Thome, sons of thunder, whose voices reverberated throughout our Middle, Western, and Southern States. Mr. Garrison’s word came to the ears, and at once found its way to the hearts, of those admirable ladies in South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who erelong came to the North, and bore their emphatic, eloquent, thrilling testimony to the intrinsic, all-pervading sinfulness of that system of domestic servitude to which they had been accustomed from their birth. And, more than all, his word had reached that high-souled, brave, courteous civilian, philanthropist, and Christian in Alabama, Hon. James G. Birney, who, as I shall hereafter relate, having for several years devoted his time, his personal influence, and persuasive eloquence to the Colonization cause, when he came to see its essential injustice and proslavery tendency, earnestly renounced his error. He forthwith emancipated his slaves, paid them fairly for their services, did all he could for their improvement, and thenceforward consecrated himself, through much evil report and bitter persecution, to the dissemination of the sentiments and the accomplishment of the great object of the American Antislavery Society. Immediately after his conversion he wrote and published two letters addressed to the American Presbyterians, of whose body he had been a highly esteemed member. In those letters he set forth most clearly the sinfulness of slaveholding, and implored his brethren to turn from it, and rid themselves wholly of the awful guilt of holding, or allowing others to hold, human beings as their chattels personal, and treating them as domesticated brutes.
These and other instances might be adduced to show how far and widely the antislavery doctrines had beenmade known at the time of which I am writing. But, alas! there were a great many different and very disagreeable evidences thatthe truth, which alone could make our nationfree, had been heard, or heard of, everywhere.
It should be stated, however, that the excitement which had become so general and so furious against the Abolitionists throughout the slaveholding States was owing in no small measure to an individual with whom Mr. Garrison and his associates had had no connection. David Walker, a very intelligent colored man of Boston, having travelled pretty extensively over the United States, and informed himself thoroughly of the condition of the colored population, bond and free, had become so exasperated that he set himself to the work of rousing his fellow-sufferers to a due sense of “their degraded, wretched, abject condition,” and preparing them for a general and organized insurrection. In the course of the year 1828 Mr. Walker gathered about him, in Boston and elsewhere, audiences of colored men, into whom he strove to infuse his spirit of determined, self-sacrificing rebellion against their too-long endured and unparalleled oppression. Little was known of these meetings, excepting by those who had been specially called to them. But in September, 1829, he published his “Appeal to the colored citizens of the world, in particular and very expressly to those of the United States.”
It was a pamphlet of more than eighty octavo pages, ably written, very impassioned and well adapted to its purpose. The second and third editions of it were published in less than twelve months. And Mr. Walker devoted himself until his death, which happened soon after, to the distribution of copies of this Appeal to coloredmen who were able to read it in every State of the Union.
Just as I had written the above sentence, Dr. W. H. Irwin, of Louisiana, came in with an introduction to me. He is one of many Union men who have been stripped of their property and driven out of the State by President Johnson’s and Mayor Monroe’s partisans. Learning that he had been a resident many years in the Southern States, I inquired if he saw or heard of Walker’s Appeal in the time of it. He replied that he was living in Georgia in 1834, was acquainted with the Rev. Messrs. Worcester and Butler, missionaries to the Cherokees, and knew that they were maltreated and imprisoned in 1829 or 1830 for having one of Walker’s pamphlets, as well as for admitting some colored children into their Indian school.
So soon as this attempt to excite the slaves to insurrection came to the knowledge of Mr. Garrison, he earnestly deprecated it in his lectures, especially those addressed to colored people. And in his first number of theLiberatorhe repudiated the resort to violence, as wrong in principle and disastrous in policy. His opinions on this point were generally embraced by his followers, and explicitly declared by the American Antislavery Society in 1833.
But as we wished that our fellow-citizens South as well as North should be assured of our pacific principles, and as we hoped to abolish the institution of slavery by convincing slaveholders and their abettors of the exceeding wickedness of the system, we did send our reports, tracts, and papers to all white persons in the Southern States with whom we were any of us acquainted, and to distinguished individuals whom we knew by common fame, to ministers of religion, legislators, civilians, and editors.But in no case did we send our publications to slaves.Thiswe forbore to do, because we knew that few of them could read; because our arguments and appeals were not addressed to them; and especially because we thought it probable that, if our publications should be found in their possession, they would be subjected to some harsher treatment.
Notwithstanding our precaution, the Southern “gentlemen of property and standing” denounced us as incendiaries, enemies, accused us of intending to excite their bondmen to insurrection, and to dissolve the Union. They would not themselves give any heed to ourexposéof the sin and danger of slavery, nor would they suffer others so to do who seemed inclined to hear and consider. They assaulted, lynched, imprisoned any one in whose possession they found antislavery publications. They waylaid the mails, or broke into post-offices, and tore to pieces or burnt up all papers and pamphlets from the North that contained aught against their “peculiar institution,” and significantly admonished, if they did not summarily punish, those to whom such publications were addressed. Meetings were called in most, if not all, of the principal cities of the South, at which Abolitionists were denounced in unmeasured terms, and the friends of the Union, North and South, and East and West, were peremptorily summoned to suppress them. By the votes of such meetings, and still more by the acts of the Legislatures of several States, large rewards—$5,000, $10,000, $20,000—were offered for the abduction or assassination of Arthur Tappan, William Lloyd Garrison, Amos A. Phelps, and other prominent antislavery men. Moreover, letters of the most abusive character were sent to us individually, threatening us with all sorts of violence, arson, and murder.
Sad to relate, the corrupting, demoralizing influence of slavery was not confined to those who were directlyenforcing the great wrong upon their fellow-beings. Those who had consented to such desecration of humanity were found to be almost as much contaminated as the slaveholders themselves. “The whole head of the nation was sick, and the whole heart was faint.” The “gentlemen of property and standing” at the North, yes, even in Massachusetts, espoused the cause of the slaveholders. The editors of most of the newspapers, religious as well as secular, and of some of the graver periodicals, nearly all of the popular orators, and very many of the ministers of religion, spoke and wrote against the doctrine of the Abolitionists. They extenuated the crime of denying to fellow-men the God-given, inalienable rights of humanity, apologized for those who had been born to an inheritance of slaves, and insisted that “slavery was an ordination of Providence, sanctioned by our sacred Scriptures, even the Christian Scriptures.” This last was the chief weapon with which the religionists throughout the Northern as well as Southern States combated the Abolitionists. Not a few sermons were preached in various parts of New England, as well as New York and other Middle States, in justification of slaveholding. The professors of Princeton Theological School published a pamphlet in defence of slavery, and Professor Stuart, of Andover, the great leader of New England orthodoxy, gave the abomination his sanction. The record of our Cambridge Divinity School is much more honorable. Dr. Henry Ware, Jr., evinced a deep interest in our enterprise, and incurred some censure for manifesting his interest. Dr. Follen identified himself with us at an early day, and, as I shall tell hereafter, was one of the sufferers in the cause; and Dr. Palfrey, though at the time of which I am writing rather privately, expressed an appreciation of our principles, which a few years afterwards impelled him to pecuniary sacrificeand a course of conduct in Congress which deservedly placed him high on the list of the antislavery worthies.CAll the large, influential ecclesiastical bodies in our country—the Presbyterian, the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Baptist—threw over the churches of their sects throughout the Southern States the shield of their consent to, if not their approval of, slaveholding; and, I grieve to add, the American Unitarian Association could not be induced to pronounce its condemnation of the tremendous sin, the sum of all iniquities.
Most religionists of every name, our own not excepted, insisted that slavery was a political institution, with which, as Christians, it would be inexpedient for us to meddle; and the politicians and merchants did all in their power to disseminate this view of the matter, and close the doors of the churches and the lips of the ministers against this “exciting subject.” I need not add they were too successful.
Most of the prominent statesmen, and all the political demagogues of both parties, took the ground that the great question as to the enslavement of the colored population of the South wassettledby the framers of the Constitution; that it was a matter to be left exclusively to the States in which slavery existed; that to meddle with it was to violate the provisions of the fundamental law of the land and loosen the bands of the Union. Therefore the Abolitionists were to be regarded as disturbers of the public peace, incendiaries, enemies of their country, traitors. And it was proclaimed by many in high authority, and shouted everywhere by the baser sort, “that the Abolitionists ought to be abolished,” by any means that should be found necessary. Thus outlawed, given up to the fury of the populace, we were subjected to abuses and outrages, of which I can give only a brief account.
We were slow to believe that our fellow-citizens of the New England States could be so besotted by the influence of the institution of slavery, that they wouldoutrage our personsin its defence. We had had proofs enough that “the gentlemen of property and standing,” “the wise and prudent,” with their dependants, had shut their ears against the truth, and turned away their eyes from the grievous wrongs we were imploring our country to redress. This treatment we had experienced, with increasing frequency, ever since the formation of the American Antislavery Society, in December, 1833. But we were unwilling to apprehend anything worse, certainly in Massachusetts. We trusted that our persons would be sacred, though we had learned that the liberty of speech and of the press was not.
Late in the fall of 1833 I delivered, in Boylston Hall, at the request of the New England Antislavery Society, a discourse “On the Principles and Purposes of the Abolitionists, and the Means by which they intended to subvert the Institution of Slavery.” The audience was large, and among my hearers I was delighted to see my good friend (afterwards Dr.) F. W. P. Greenwood, then one of the editors of theChristian Examiner. He remained after the meeting was over, and to my great joy said to me, “I have liked your discourse much. I wish everybody who is opposed to the antislavery reform could hear or read it. If you will prepare it as an article for theExaminer, I will publish it there.” Glad of this avenue to the minds and hearts of so many who I especially wished should understand and appreciate the work to which I had wholly committed myself, I set about converting my discourse into a review of our best antislavery publications, and making it, as a literary production, more worthy of a place in the chief periodical of our denomination. It was too late for the Januarynumber, 1834, so I aimed to have it in readiness for the March number. In due time I called at the office and inquired how soon my manuscript would be wanted. The publisher asked what was the subject of my article; and on learning that it was to be an explanation of the sentiments and purposes of the Abolitionists, he said, to my astonishment, with much emphasis, “We do not want it; it cannot be published.” “Why,” I said, “is not Mr. Greenwood one of the editors, and do not he and his colleague decide what shall be put into theExaminer?” “Generally they do,” he replied; “indeed, I never interfered before. But in this case I must and shall. TheExamineris my property. It would be seriously damaged if an article favoring Abolition should appear in it. I should lose most of my subscribers in the slave, and many in the free States. And I cannot afford to make such a sacrifice.” But I rejoined, “Mr. Greenwood has heard all the essential parts of the article. He approved of it, thought it would do good, and requested me to prepare it for publication.” Mr. B. replied, with more earnestness than before, “Mr. May, it shall not be published. If I should find it all printed on the pages of theExaminer, just ready to be issued, I would suppress the number and publish another, with some other article in the place of yours.”
I hastened to Mr. Greenwood for redress. With evident mortification and sorrow he confessed his inability to do me justice. Nevertheless, in the July number, 1834, there was allowed to be published, on the 397th page, a paragraph, written by one of the Boston ministers, “for the special instruction of such ardent, but mistaken philanthropists among us as think they are justified, from their abhorrence of slavery, and their zeal for universal emancipation, to interfere with the constitutions of civil governments, or the personal rights of individuals.”
Having permitted such an assault to be made upon us in their pages, I could not doubt that the editors of theExaminerwould suffer me to be heard in defence. I therefore prepared carefully a respectful “letter” to them, trusting it would appear in their next number. But, to my surprise and serious displeasure, it was excluded. The letter was accordingly published in theLiberator, which, here let me say to its distinctive honor, always allowed the foes as well as the friends of freedom and humanity a place in its columns. And the editors of theExaminer, unsolicited, did me the favor, in their November number, 1834, page 282, to refer to my letter, commending its “eloquence and its good spirit, although circumstances obliged them to decline publishing it, and advising their readers to procure it and read it, and the documents to which it refers.” This evinced the willingness of those gentlemen to deal fairly, but showed that they werein bondage.
Immediately after the first New England Antislavery Convention, which closed on the 29th of May, 1834, I devoted four or five weeks to lecturing on the Abolition of Slavery in most of the principal towns between Boston and Portland. In several places there were strong expressions of hostility to our undertaking. But nothing like personal violence was offered me. I stopped over Sunday, 8th of June, at Portsmouth, to supply brother A. P. Peabody’s pulpit, that he might preach in a neighboring town. I consented to do this, on the condition that I might deliver an antislavery lecture from his pulpit on Sunday evening. This he gladly agreed to, and took pains to publish my intention. But, greatly to my surprise, after the forenoon service, the Trustees of the church waited upon me, and informed me that, at the earnest demand of many prominent members, I should not be allowed to speak on slavery from their pulpit;that the meeting-house would not be opened that evening. My remonstrance with them was of no avail. So at the close of my afternoon services I said to the congregation: “You are all doubtless aware that I had arranged with your excellent pastor to deliver a lecture on American slavery from this desk this evening. But during the intermission your Trustees called and peremptorily forbade my doing so. Has our consenting with the oppressors of the poor indeed brought us to this? That I, who am striving to be a minister of Him “who came to break every yoke” am forbidden to plead with you who are reputed to be an eminently Christian church the cause of millions of our countrymen who are suffering the most abject bondage ever enforced upon human beings? I know not, I do not wish to know, who those prominent members of your church are that have presumed to close this pulpit, and deny to others the right to manifest their sympathy for the down-trodden, and to hear what may and should be done for their relief. The time shall come when those prominent ones will be brought down, and their children and children’s children will be ashamed to hear of their act.”
With this exception, and an unsuccessful attempt to disturb a meeting that I was addressing in Worcester, I met with no serious molestation in any of the towns of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Maine, where I lectured during the summer and autumn of 1834. The faces of many of the rich and fashionable were averted from me; but “the common people” seemed to hear me gladly. Politicians and would-be statesmen often encountered me in the stage-coaches and at the hotels where I stopped. Many of our conflicts were amusing rather than terrible. They always based themselves upon “the provisions of the Constitution,” about which it was soon made to appear, that they knew little ornothing. They took it for granted that the fathers of our Republic agreed that slavery should exist in any of the States where the white citizens chose to have it; and that the Constitution of our Union gave certain guarantees for the protection of their “peculiar institution” to the States in which it was maintained. Moreover, these political savans insisted that the Constitution provided that this matter should be left wholly to the slaveholders themselves; and that all condemnation of it as a wicked system, and the exposure of its evils and its horrors, was a violation of State comity, if not of therightsof our fellow-citizens of the South.
Perceiving how little most of such friends of the Union knew about the fundamental law of our Republic, and finding, on inquiry, that copies of the Constitution were in that day very scarce, I not unfrequently shut up my opponents almost as soon as they opened their mouths upon the subject. When they ventured to say, “The Constitution, sir, settled this question in the beginning,” I would inquire, “My friend, have you ever read the Constitution?” “Everybody knows, sir, that slavery—” “Have you, yourself, read that document to which you appeal?” “Why, sir, do you presume to deny that guarantees—” “My friend, I ask again, have you yourself ever read the Constitution of the United States? I do not care to go into an argument with you until I know whether you are acquainted with our great national charter.” In this way, time and again, I drew from my would-be opponents (sometimes justices of the peace), the acknowledgment that they had never themselves seen a copy of the Constitution, but supposed that what everybody, except the Abolitionists, said of its provisions must be true. Occurrences of this sort I reported to the managers of the Antislavery Society so frequently, that they caused a large edition of theUnited States Constitution to be printed, so that copies of it might be distributed with our tracts, wherever the agents and lecturers saw fit. This was one of thenaughtythings we did, so inimical to the peace and well-being of our country.
The discussions which I had with sundry individuals who were acquainted with the subject led me to study the Constitution with greater care and deeper interest than ever before. It seemed to me that we owed it to the memory of those venerated men whose names are conspicuous in the early history of our Republic—those men who so solemnly pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to the cause of freedom and the inalienable rights of man—to exonerate them, if we fairly could, from the awful responsibility that was laid upon them by those who insisted that theyguaranteedto the Southern States the unquestioned exercise of their assumed right to enforce theenslavementof one sixth part of the population of the land, many of whom had shared with them in all the hardships and perils of their struggles for independence. It seemed to me that every article of the Constitution usually quoted as intended to favor the assumptions of slaveholders admitted of an opposite interpretation, and that we were bound by every honorable and humane consideration to prefer that interpretation. The conclusions to which I was brought on this subject I gave some time afterwards in theAntislavery Magazinefor 1836. But the publication of the “Madison Papers,” in which was given the minutes, debates, etc., of the convention which framed the Constitution, I confess, disconcerted me somewhat. I could not so easily maintain my ground in the discussions which afterwards agitated so seriously the Abolitionists themselves,—some maintaining that the Constitution was, and was intended to be, proslavery; othersmaintaining that it was antislavery. It seemed to me that it might be whichever the people pleased to make it. I rejoice, therefore, with joy unspeakable that the question is at length practically settled, though by the issue of our late awful war.
The coming of George Thompson to our country in the fall of 1834, and his thrilling eloquence respecting our great national iniquity, awakened general attention to the subject, and caused more excitement about it than before. He came, as it were, a missionary from the philanthropists of Great Britain to show our people their transgression. The politicians tried to get up the public indignation against him as “a foreign emissary interfering with our political affairs.” The religionists resented his coming as an impertinence, thoughtheywere much engaged in sending missionaries to the heathen to reclaim them from sins no more heinous than ours. Nevertheless, the people flocked to hear him, and many were converted. The demand for antislavery lectures came from all parts of New England, and from many parts of the Middle and Western States. A great work was to be done. The fields were whitening to the harvest, but the laborers were few. I therefore accepted the renewed invitation of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society to become its General Agent and Corresponding Secretary, and removed to Boston early in the spring of 1835. Many of my nearest relatives and dearest friends received me kindly, but with sadness. They feared I should lose my standing in the ministry and become an outcast from the churches. For a while it seemed as if their apprehensions were not groundless. None of the Boston ministers, excepting Dr. Channing, welcomed me. Dr. Follen,Dr. Ware, Jr., and Dr. Palfrey were then resident in Cambridge; Mr. Pierpont was in Europe. James Freeman Clarke had not left Louisville, and Theodore Parker was a student in the Divinity School. I was indeed soon made to feel that I was not in good repute. Dr. Ware, who had charge of the Hollis Street pulpit in the absence of the pastor, invited me to supply it, if I found I could do so consistently with my new duties. I engaged for two Sundays. But at the close of the first, one of the chief officers of the church waited upon me, by direction of the principal members, and requested me not to enter their pulpit again, assuring me, if I should do so, that a dozen or more of the prominent men with their families would leave the house. Of course I yielded that, and I was not invited into any other pulpit in the city, excepting Dr. Channing’s, during the fifteen months that I resided there.
Soon after my removal to Boston I was informed that a young and very popular minister in a neighboring town had preached an antislavery sermon on the Fast Day then just past. I hurried to see him, and requested him to read to me the sermon. He did so. It was an admirableexposéof the wickedness of holding men in slavery, and of the duty incumbent upon all Christian and humane persons to do what they could to break such a yoke. It was the outpouring of an ingenuous, benevolent, generous heart, that deeply felt for the wrongs of the outraged millions in our country.
I begged a copy of the discourse for the press, assuring him it would be a most valuable contribution to the cause of the oppressed. He consented to let me have it, promising that, after retouching and fitting it for the press, he would send it to me. I returned to the Antislavery office and made arrangements to publish a large edition of that, which would then have been a remarkable sermon.
After waiting more than a week for the promised manuscript I called upon the author again. In answer to my inquiry why he had not fulfilled his promise he said: “I have concluded not to allow the discourse to be published. Some of the most prominent members of our church have earnestly advised me not to give it to the press.” “Why,” said I, “have they convinced you that slaveholding is not as sinful as you represented it to be, or that you have been misinformed as to the condition of our enslaved countrymen?” “O no,” he replied, “but then this is a very complicated, difficult matter between our Northern and Southern States, and I have been admonished to let it alone.” “Do you believe,” I inquired, “that those who so admonished you were prompted to give you such advice by their sense of justice to the enslaved, their compassion for those millions to whom all rights are denied, and whose conjugal, parental, filial, and fraternal affections are trampled under foot? Or were they influenced by pecuniary, or by party political considerations?” “It is not for me, sir, to say what their motives were,” he replied, in a tone that intimated displeasure. “They are among my best friends, and the most respectable members of my parish. I am bound to give heed to their counsel. I mean so to do. I shall not allow my sermon to be published. I shall not commit myself to the antislavery cause.” “Let me only say,” I added, “if you do not commit yourself to the cause of theoppressed, you will probably, erelong, be found on the side of theoppressor.” So we parted. And my prediction was fulfilled.
Two or three years afterwards it was reported that the same gentleman, having visited the Southern States and enjoyed the hospitality of the slaveholders, returned and preached a discourse very like “The South Side View of Slavery,” by Dr. Adams, of Essex Street.
On Fast Day, 1852, it so happened that I was visiting a parishioner of this brother minister. I accompanied him to church, and heard from that very able and eloquent preacher the most unjust and cruel sermon against the Abolitionists that I had ever listened to or read.
This incident and my reception in Boston prepared me in a measure for the warning given me by the New York merchant, as related on page127. Still, I could not think so badly of my fellow-citizens, my fellow-Christians of the North, the New England States, as I was afterwards compelled to do.
That the cancer of slavery had eaten still deeper than I was willing to believe was soon after made too apparent to me.
We had always counted upon the aid and co-operation of theQuakers. We considered them “birthright” Abolitionists. And many of Mr. Garrison’s earliest supporters, most untiring co-laborers, and generous contributors were members of “the Society of Friends,” or had been. Besides John G. Whittier and James and Lucretia Mott, Evan Lewis, Thomas Shipley, and others, of whom I have already spoken, in my account of the Philadelphia Convention, there were the venerable Moses Brown, and the indefatigable Arnold Buffum, and that remarkable man, Isaac T. Hopper, and the large-hearted, open-handed Andrew Robeson and William Rotch, and Isaac and Nathan Winslow, and Nathaniel Barney, and Joseph and Anne Southwick,Dand fifty more, whose praises I should delight to celebrate.
But we had received no expression of sympathy from any “Yearly” or “Monthly Meeting,” and we felt moved toseek a signfrom them. Accordingly, at the suggestionof some of the Friends who were actively engaged with us, I went to Newport, R. I., in June, 1835, at the time of the great New England Yearly Meeting, to see if I could obtain from them any intimation of friendliness. My wife accompanied me. When we arrived at the principal hotel in the place, where I was told we should find “the weighty” as well as a large number of the lighter members of the Society, we were at a loss to account for the fluster of the landlord and his helpers, and the tardiness with which we were informed that we could be accommodated. After we had got established, I learned from one who had urged my coming, that there had been quite a commotion in consequence of the report that the General Agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society was about to visit the “Yearly Meeting.” William ——, and William ——, and Oliver ——, and Isaac ——, and Thomas ——, wealthy cotton manufacturers and merchants, had bestirred themselves to prevent such “an intrusion,” as they were pleased to term it. They had secured the public halls of Newport against me during the continuance of the “Yearly Meeting,” and had been trying, on the morning of the day that I arrived, to induce the landlord to refuse me any accommodation in his house. And they would have succeeded, had not forty of his boarders informed him that if he did not receive me they would quit his premises. These forty, though of less account in the meeting, which, I learned, was governed by the aristocracy that occupied the high seats, were more weighty in the receipts of the hotel-keeper. He therefore compromised with the dignitaries by agreeing to serve their meals in a private parlor, so that their eyes might not be offended at the sight of the antislavery agent in the common dining hall.
I sought, through several of their very respectablemembers, permission to attend their “Meeting on Sufferings” and present to their consideration the principles and plans of the American Antislavery Society and its auxiliaries. This request was peremptorily denied. I then besought them to give their “testimony on slavery,” as they had sometimes done in times past. This they also refused.
An arrangement was then made by the members who were Abolitionists, many of whom boarded with me at “Whitfield’s,” that I should address as many as saw fit to meet me in the large reception-room of the hotel, in the evening of the second day of my visit. So soon as this was known, it was asked of me if I would consent to let the meeting be conducted somewhat in the manner of “the Society of Friends” so that any who should be moved to speak might have the liberty. I acquiesced most cheerfully, not doubting that I should be moved, and should be expected to address the meeting first and give the direction to it.
Fifty or sixty persons assembled at the hour appointed. Deeming it respectful to my Quaker brethren to sit in silence a few minutes after the meeting came to order, I did so, and in so doing lost my chance to be heard. A wily brother took advantage of my sense of propriety, rose before me and delivered a long discourse upon slavery, made up of the commonplaces and platitudes of the subject, about which all were agreed. He was followed instantly by another in the same vein, and when the evening was far spent and the auditors were beginning to withdraw, I was permitted to speak a few minutes upon the vital points in the questions between the immediate Abolitionists and the slaveholders on the one hand, and the Colonizationists on the other hand.
However, the next morning, in the presence of twenty or more, I had unexpectedly a long and pretty thoroughdiscussion with the distinguished John Griscom, so that my visit to Newport was not wholly lost.
I am sorry that truth compels me to add, that afterwards we had too many proofs that “the Society of Friends,” with all their antislavery professions, were not, as a religious sect, much more friendly than others to the immediate emancipation of the enslaved without expatriation. They were disposed to be Colonizationists rather than Abolitionists.
Rejected as we Abolitionists were generally by the religionists of every denomination, denounced by many of the clergy as dangerous, yes, impious persons, refused a hearing in almost all the churches, it was not strange that the statesmen and politicians had no mercy upon us.
The first most serious opposition from any minister I myself directly encountered was in the pleasant town of Taunton. I went thither on the 15th of April, 1835, and had a very successful meeting in the Town Hall, which was filled full with respectable persons of both sexes. So much interest in the subject was awakened that a large number on the spot signified their readiness to co-operate with those who were laboring to procure the abolition of American slavery. To my surprise, the most prominent minister in the town, a learned and liberal theologian, and a gentleman of unexceptionable private character, took the utmost pains to prevent the formation of an auxiliary antislavery society there. He declared that “the slaves were the property of their masters,” that “we of the North had no more right to disturb thisdomestic arrangementof our Southern brethren, and prevent the prosecution of their industrial operations, than the planters had to interfere with ourmanufactures and commerce.” He dealt out to the Abolitionists no small number of opprobrious epithets; charged us with being the cause of the New York mobs of October, 1834, and insisted that, if we “were permitted to prosecute our measures, it would inevitably dissolve the Union and cause a civil war.”
This was the substance of theverbalopposition that we met with everywhere throughout the Northern, Middle, and Western States; strengthened by the arguments of the civilians and statesmen, intended to show that the enslavement of the colored population of certain States was settled by thefoundersof our Republic, who made several compromises in relation to it, and gave sundry guarantees to the slaveholders which must be held sacred.
Many timid persons everywhere, by such assertions and appeals, were deterred from yielding to the convictions which the self-evident truths, urged by the Abolitionists, awakened. Still the cause of the oppressed made visible progress in all parts of the non-slaveholding States. Alarmed by this, the barons of the South, as Mr. Adams significantly styled them, stirred up their dependants and partisans to demand something more of their Northern brethren than denunciation and opprobrium against the Abolitionists. “They must be put down by law orwithout law, as the necessity of the case might require.” And the determination to dojust thiswas at length come to by “the gentlemen of property and standing” throughout the North, as the New York merchant, mentioned on the foregoing127th page informed me.
In pursuance of this determination, the great meeting in Faneuil Hall, called, as I have said already, by fifteen hundred of the respectable gentlemen of Boston, was held on the 21st of August, 1835. The grave misrepresentations,the plausible arguments, the inflammatory appeals made by the very distinguished civilians who addressed that meeting, invoked those demon spirits throughout New England that did deeds, of which I hope the instigators themselves became heartily ashamed.
How devilish those spirits were I was made to know a few evenings after that never-to-be-forgotten meeting. I went to the quiet town of Haverhill, by special invitation from John G. Whittier and a number more of the genuine friends of humanity. I had lectured there twice before without opposition, and went again not apprehending any disturbance. The meeting was held in the Freewill Baptist Church,—a large hall over a row of stores. The audience was numerous, occupying all the seats and evidently eager to hear. I had spoke about fifteen minutes, when the most hideous outcries, yells, from a crowd of men who had surrounded the house startled us, and then came heavy missiles against the doors and blinds of the windows. I persisted in speaking for a few minutes, hoping the blinds and doors were strong enough to stand the siege. But presently a heavy stone broke through one of the blinds, shattered a pane of glass and fell upon the head of a lady sitting near the centre of the hall. She uttered a shriek and fell bleeding into the arms of her sister. The panic-stricken audience roseen masse, and began a rush for the doors. Seeing the danger, I shouted in a voice louder than I ever uttered before or since, “Sit down, every one of you, sit down!The doors are not wide; the platform outside is narrow; the stairs down to the street are steep. If you go in a rush, you will jam one another, or be thrown down and break your limbs, if not your necks. If there is any one here whom the mob wish to injure, it is myself. I will stand here and wait until you are safely out of the house. But you must go in some order as I bid you.” To my great joythey obeyed. All sat down, and then rose, as I told them to, from the successive rows of pews, and went out without any accident.
When the house was nearly empty I took on my arm a brave young lady, who would not leave me to go through the mob alone, and went out. Fortunately none of the ill-disposed knew me. So we passed through the lane of madmen unharmed, hearing their imprecations and threats of violence to the —— Abolitionist when he should come out.
It was well we had delayed no longer to empty the hall, for at the corner of the street above we met a posse of men more savage than the rest, dragging a cannon, which they intended to explode against the building and at the same time tear away the stairs; so furious and bloodthirsty had “the baser sort” been made by the instigations of “the gentlemen of property and standing.”
In October it was thought advisable for me to go and lecture in several of the principal towns of Vermont. I did so, and everywhere I met with contumely and insult. I was mobbed five times. In Rutland and Montpelier my meetings were dispersed with violence. Of the last only shall I give any account, because I had been specially invited to Montpelier to address the Vermont State Antislavery Society. The Legislature was in session there at that time, and many of the members of that body were Abolitionists. We were, therefore, without much opposition, granted the use of the Representatives’ Hall for our first meeting, on the evening of October 20. A large number of persons—as many as the hall could conveniently hold—were present, including many members of the Legislature, and ladies not a few. There were some demonstrations of displeasure in the yard of the Capitol and a couple of eggs and a stone ortwo were thrown through the window before which I was standing. But their force was spent before they reached me, and therefore they were not suffered to interrupt my discourse. At the close, I was requested to tarry in Montpelier and address the public again the next evening from the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church, the largest audience-room in the village. This I gladly consented to do. But the next morning placards were seen all about the village, admonishing “the people generally, and ladies in particular, not to attend the antislavery meeting proposed to be held that evening in the Presbyterian church, as the person who is advertised to speak will certainly be prevented,by violence if necessary.” In the afternoon I received a letter signed by the President of the bank, the Postmaster, and five other “gentlemen of property and standing” in Montpelier, requesting me to leave town “without any further attempt to hold forth the absurd doctrine of antislavery, and save them the trouble of using any other measures to that effect.” But as I had accepted the invitation to deliver a second lecture, I determined to make the attempt so to do, these threats notwithstanding. Accordingly, just before the hour appointed, with a venerable Quaker lady on my arm, I proceeded to the meeting-house and took a seat in the pulpit. After a prayer had been offered by Rev. Mr. Hurlbut, I rose to speak. But I had hardly uttered a sentence when the ringleader of the riot, Timothy Hubbard, Esq., rose with a gang about him and commanded me to desist. I replied, “Is this the respect paid to theliberty of speechby the free people of Vermont? Let any one of your number step forward and give reasons, if he can, why his fellow-citizens, who wish, should not be permitted to hear the lecture I have been invited here to deliver. If I cannot show those reasons to be fallacious,false, I will yield to your demand. But for the sake of one of our essential rights, the liberty of speech, I shall proceed if I can.” While I was saying these words the rioters were still. But so soon as I commenced my lecture again, Mr. Hubbard and his fellows cried out, “Down with him!” “Throw him over!” “Choke him!” Hon. Chauncy L. Knapp, then, or afterwards, I believe, Secretary of State, remonstrated earnestly, implored his fellow-citizens not to continue disgracing themselves, the town, and the State. But his words were of no avail. The moment I attempted a third time to speak the rioters commenced a rush for the pulpit, loudly shouting their violent intentions. At this crisis Colonel Miller, well known as the companion of Dr. Howe in a generous endeavor to aid Greece in her struggle for independence in 1824,—Colonel Miller, renowned for his courage and prowess, sprang forward and planted himself in front of the leader, crying in a voice of thunder, “Mr. Hubbard, if you do not stop this outrage now, I will knock you down!” The rush for the pulpit was stayed; but such an alarm had spread through the house, that there was a hasty movement from all parts towards the doors, and my audience dispersed. Colonel Miller, Mr. Knapp, and several other gentlemen urged me to remain in town another day and attempt a meeting the next evening, assuring me that it should be protected against the ruffians. But it was Friday, and I had engaged to be in Burlington the next day, to preach for Brother Ingersoll the following Sunday, and deliver an antislavery lecture from his pulpit in the evening. So I was obliged to leave our good friends in the capital of Vermont mortified and vexed at what had occurred there.
But on my arrival at Burlington I received tidings from Boston of a far greater outrage that had been perpetrated at the same time, in the metropolis of NewEngland. On page127I made mention of the “well-dressed, gentlemanly” mob of October 21st, which broke up a regular meeting of the Female Antislavery Society. The fury of the populace had been incited to the utmost by articles in theCommercial Gazette, theCourier, theSentinel, and other newspapers, of which the following is a specimen: “It is in vain that we hold meetings in Faneuil Hall, and call into action the eloquence and patriotism of our most talented citizens; it is in vain that speeches are made and resolutions adopted, assuring our brethren of the South that we cherish rational and correct notions on the subject of slavery, if Thompson and Garrison, and their vile associates in this city, are to be permitted to hold their meetings in the broad face of day, and to continue their denunciations against the planters of the South. Theymust be put downif we would preserve our consistency. The evil is one of the greatest magnitude; andthe opinion prevails very generallythat if there is no law that will reach it, it must be reached in some other way.”
Though “the patriots” had been especially maddened by the report that “the infamous foreign scoundrel, Thompson,” “the British emissary, the paid incendiary, Thompson,” was to address the meeting, yet, when assured he was not and would not be there, they did not desist. “But Garrison is!” was the cry; “snake him out and finish him!” They tore down the sign of the Antislavery office and dashed it to pieces; compelled the excellent women to leave their hall, seized upon Mr. Garrison, tore off his clothes, dragged him through the streets, and would have hanged him, had it not been for the almost superhuman efforts of several gentlemen, assisted by some of the police and a vigorous hack-driver, who together succeeded in getting him to Leverett Street Jail, where he was committed for safe-keeping.
The disgraceful story was too well told at the time ever to be forgotten, especially by Mr. Garrison himself, and more especially by Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, in a little volume entitled “Right and Wrong in Boston.”
To show my readers still further how general the determination had become throughout the Northern States to put down the antislavery agitation by foul means, I will here only allude to the significant fact that on the same day, October 21, 1835, a mob, led on or countenanced by gentlemen of respectability, broke up an antislavery meeting in Utica, N. Y., and drove out of the city such men as Gerrit Smith, Alvan Stuart, and Beriah Green. Hereafter I will give a full account of the infamous proceeding, and of some of its consequences.
There is a most interesting sequel to my brief narrative of the great outrage upon liberty in the metropolis of New England, which cannot be so pertinently told in any other connection.
After the first attempt of the Female Antislavery Society to hold their annual meeting on the 14th of October, in Congress Hall, was thwarted by the fears of the owner and lessee, Mr. Francis Jackson offered the use of his dwelling-house in Hollis Street for that purpose. But the ladies were unwilling to believe that they should be molested in their own small hall, No. 46 Washington Street, and thought it more becoming to meet there than to retreat to the protection of a private house. So the meeting was appointed to be held there on the 21st. The result, so disgraceful to the reputation of Boston, has just been given.
On the evening of that sad day, while the rioters were yet patrolling the city, exulting over their shamefuldeeds, and threatening the persons and property of the Abolitionists, Francis Jackson, called upon Miss Mary Parker, the truly devout and brave President of the Boston Female Antislavery Society, and renewed the offer of his dwelling in the following letter ofinvitation:—
“To the Ladies of the Boston Female Antislavery Society.“Having with deep regret and mortification observed the manner in which your Society has been treated by a portion of the community, especially by some of our public journals, and approving as I do most cordially the objects of your association, I offer you the use of my dwelling-house in Hollis Street for the purpose of holding your annual meeting, or for any other meeting.“Such accommodations as I have are at your service, and I assure you it would afford me great pleasure to extend this slight testimony of my regard for a Society whose objects are second to none other in the city.“With great respect,“Francis Jackson.”
“To the Ladies of the Boston Female Antislavery Society.
“Having with deep regret and mortification observed the manner in which your Society has been treated by a portion of the community, especially by some of our public journals, and approving as I do most cordially the objects of your association, I offer you the use of my dwelling-house in Hollis Street for the purpose of holding your annual meeting, or for any other meeting.
“Such accommodations as I have are at your service, and I assure you it would afford me great pleasure to extend this slight testimony of my regard for a Society whose objects are second to none other in the city.
“With great respect,“Francis Jackson.”
This heroic act thrilled with joy the hearts of the “faithful,” and inspired them with new courage. For two or three years Mr. Jackson had evinced a deep interest in the antislavery cause, but we did not suspect that he had so much Roman virtue.
His invitation was gratefully accepted, and due notices were published in the usual form that the meeting would be held at his house on the 19th of November. Renewed efforts were made by our opposers to create another excitement. The air was filled with threats. But the editors of the newspapers did not come up to the work as before. Fewer prominent gentlemen encouraged “the baser sort,” and therefore the mob did not come out in its strength. About a hundred and thirty ladies and four gentlemen gathered at the timeappointed in Mr. Jackson’s house, and were not molested on the way thither or while there, excepting by a few insulting epithets and an occasional ribald shout.
It was an intensely interesting meeting, conducted in the usual manner with the utmost propriety;Eand an air of unfeigned solemnity was thrown over it by the consciousness of the dense cloud of malignant hatred that was hanging over us, and which might again burst upon us in some cruel outrage.
Among the ladies present were the celebrated Miss Harriet Martineau, of England, and her very intelligent travelling companion, Miss Jeffrey. At the right moment, when the regular business of the meeting had been transacted, Ellis Gray Loring, from the beginning a leading Abolitionist,—and one whose lead it was always well to follow, for he was a very wise, a single-hearted, and most conscientious man,—Mr. Loring handed me a slip of paper for Miss Martineau, on which was written an earnest request that she would then favor the meeting with some expression of her sympathy in the objects of the association. She immediately rose and said, with cordial earnestness: “I had supposed that my presence here would be understood as showing my sympathy with you. But as I am requested to speak, I will say what I have said through the whole South, in every family where I have been, that I consider slavery inconsistent with the law of God, and incompatible with the course of his providence. I should certainly say no less at the North than at the South concerning this utter abomination, and now I declare that in your principles I fully agree.”
Hitherto Miss Martineau had received from theéliteof Boston very marked attentions. She had been treated with great respect, as one so distinguished for herliterary works and philanthropic labors deserved to be. But from the day of that meeting, and because of the words she uttered there, she was slighted, rejected, and in various ways made to understand that she had given great offence to “the best society in that metropolis.”
Two days afterwards the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society directed me, their Corresponding Secretary, by a unanimous vote, to express to Mr. Jackson the very high sense which they entertained of his generosity and noble independence in proffering, as he had done unsolicited, the use and protection of his dwelling-house to the Boston Female Antislavery Society, when they had just been expelled by lawless violence from a public hall.
My letter, written immediately in pursuance of this vote, drew from Mr. Jackson the following reply, which, considering the place where and the time when it was written, as well as its intrinsic excellence, deserves to be preserved among the most precious deposits in the Temple of Impartial Liberty, whenever such a structure shall be reared upon earth.
“Boston, November 25, 1835.“Dear Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your highly esteemed letter of the 21st inst., written in behalf of the Managers of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and expressing in very flattering terms their approbation of my conduct in granting to the ladies of the Antislavery Society the use of my dwelling-house for their Annual Meeting.“That meeting was a most interesting and impressive one. It will ever be treasured by me, among the most pleasing recollections of my life, that it was my good fortune to extend to those respectable ladies the protection of my roof after they had been reviled, insulted, and driven from their own hall by a mob.“But in tendering them the use of my house, sir, I not onlyhad in view their accommodation, but also, according to my humble measure, to recover and perpetuate the right of free discussion, which has been shamefully trampled on. A great principle has been assailed,—one which lies at the very foundation of our republican institutions.“If a large majority of this community choose to turn a deaf ear to the wrongs which are inflicted upon millions of their countrymen in other portions of the land,—if they are content to turn away from the sight of oppression, and ‘to pass by on the other side,’ so it must be.“But when they undertake in any way to annul or impair my right to speak, write, and publish my thoughts upon any subject, more especially upon enormities which are the common concern of every lover of his country and his kind, so it must not be,—so it shall not be, if I can prevent it. Upon this great right let us hold on at all hazards. And should we, in its exercise, be driven from public halls to private dwellings, one house at least shall be consecrated to its preservation. And if in defence of this sacred privilege, which man did not give me, and shall not (if I can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls shall be levelled to the earth, let them fall! If it must be so, let them fall! They cannot crumble in a better cause. They will appear of very little value to me after their owner shall have been whipped into silence.“Mobs and gag-laws, and the other contrivances by which fraud or force would stifle inquiry, will not long work well in this community. They betray the essential rottenness of the cause they are meant to strengthen. These outrages are doing their work with the reflecting.“Happily, one point seems to be gaining universal assent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion. Hence the efforts of the friends and apologists of slavery to break down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in the preservation of this right. The contest is therefore substantially between liberty and slavery.“As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty breathe without it. Losing this, we shall not befreemen indeed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we are now seeking to emancipate.“With the highest respect,“Your friend,“Francis Jackson.“Rev. S. J. May, Cor. Sec. Mass. A. S. S.”
“Boston, November 25, 1835.
“Dear Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your highly esteemed letter of the 21st inst., written in behalf of the Managers of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and expressing in very flattering terms their approbation of my conduct in granting to the ladies of the Antislavery Society the use of my dwelling-house for their Annual Meeting.
“That meeting was a most interesting and impressive one. It will ever be treasured by me, among the most pleasing recollections of my life, that it was my good fortune to extend to those respectable ladies the protection of my roof after they had been reviled, insulted, and driven from their own hall by a mob.
“But in tendering them the use of my house, sir, I not onlyhad in view their accommodation, but also, according to my humble measure, to recover and perpetuate the right of free discussion, which has been shamefully trampled on. A great principle has been assailed,—one which lies at the very foundation of our republican institutions.
“If a large majority of this community choose to turn a deaf ear to the wrongs which are inflicted upon millions of their countrymen in other portions of the land,—if they are content to turn away from the sight of oppression, and ‘to pass by on the other side,’ so it must be.
“But when they undertake in any way to annul or impair my right to speak, write, and publish my thoughts upon any subject, more especially upon enormities which are the common concern of every lover of his country and his kind, so it must not be,—so it shall not be, if I can prevent it. Upon this great right let us hold on at all hazards. And should we, in its exercise, be driven from public halls to private dwellings, one house at least shall be consecrated to its preservation. And if in defence of this sacred privilege, which man did not give me, and shall not (if I can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls shall be levelled to the earth, let them fall! If it must be so, let them fall! They cannot crumble in a better cause. They will appear of very little value to me after their owner shall have been whipped into silence.
“Mobs and gag-laws, and the other contrivances by which fraud or force would stifle inquiry, will not long work well in this community. They betray the essential rottenness of the cause they are meant to strengthen. These outrages are doing their work with the reflecting.
“Happily, one point seems to be gaining universal assent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion. Hence the efforts of the friends and apologists of slavery to break down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in the preservation of this right. The contest is therefore substantially between liberty and slavery.
“As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty breathe without it. Losing this, we shall not befreemen indeed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we are now seeking to emancipate.
“With the highest respect,“Your friend,“Francis Jackson.
“Rev. S. J. May, Cor. Sec. Mass. A. S. S.”
Well said Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, who was usually the first to give the most pertinent expression to the best thought of every occasion,—well said Mrs. Chapman, “Ten such men would have saved our city and country from the indelible disgrace which has been inflicted upon them by the outrageous proceedings of the 21st and 24th of October. Mr. Jackson has by this act done all thatoneman can do to redeem the character of Boston.” And were there not nine other men in the metropolis of New England, where dwelt descendants of Samuel Adams and Josiah Quincy, and relatives of Joseph Warren and James Otis and John Hancock, and other men of Revolutionary fame; were there not nine other men there to spring to the rescue of the ark of civil liberty? Alas! they did not appear. The abettors of slavery were in the ascendant. “The gentlemen of property and standing” thought it good policy, both politically and pecuniarily considered, to trample the Declaration of Independence under foot. And the people generally seemed willing to perpetrate wrongs far greater than Great Britain ever inflicted on their fathers.
The resort to mobocratic violence in so many parts of the Middle, Northern, and Eastern States showed how general had become the determination of the “gentlemen of property and standing” (as the leaders everywhere claimed or were reported to be) to put down theAbolitionists byfoul means, having found it impossible to do so byfairdiscussion. This had been peremptorily demanded of them by their Southern masters; and they had evidently come to the conclusion that no other means would be effectual to stay the progress of universal, impartial liberty. No one fact showed us how almost universally this plan of operations was adopted, so plainly as the fact that, at the very same time, October 21, 1835, antislavery meetings were broken up and violently dispersed in Boston, Mass., Utica, N. Y., and Montpelier, Vt.
Societies for the abolition of slavery had been formed in the city of New York, and in many towns and several counties of the State. And it had come to be obvious that their efficiency would be greatly increased if they should be united in a State organization. Accordingly, invitations were sent everywhere to all known associations, and to individuals where there were no associations, calling them to meet on the 21st of October in Utica, then the most central and convenient place, for the purpose of forming a New York State Antislavery Society.
So soon as it became public that such a Convention was to be held in their city, certain very “prominent and respectable gentlemen” set about to avert “the calamity and disgrace.” It was denounced in the newspapers, and deprecated by loud talkers in the streets. Soon the excitement became general. When it was known that permission had been given for the Convention to occupy the Court-room, “the whole population was thrown into an uproar.” A large meeting of the people was held on Saturday evening, October 17th, and adopted measures to preoccupy the room where the Convention were called to assemble; and in every way, by any means, prevent the proceedings of such a body of “fanatics,” “incendiaries,” “madmen.” Hon. Samuel Beardsley, member of Congress from Oneida County, declaredthat “the disgrace of having an Abolition Convention held in the city is a deeper one than that of twenty mobs; and that it would be better to have Utica razed to its foundations, or to have it destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah, than to have the Convention meet here.”F
Nevertheless, delegates from all parts of the State and individuals interested in the great cause, at the appointed time, came into Utica in great numbers,—six or eight hundred strong. On arriving at the Court house, they found the room pre-occupied by a crowd of their vociferous opponents, and therefore quietly repaired to the Second Presbyterian meeting house.
As soon as practicable the Convention was organized by the choice of Hon. Judge Brewster, of Genesee County, Chairman, and Rev. Oliver Wetmore, of Utica, Secretary. The Hon. Alvan Stewart, a most excellent man and distinguished lawyer, as Chairman of the Committee of the Utica Antislavery Society, which had first proposed the calling of the Convention, rose, and after a few pertinent and impressive remarks, moved the formation of a New York State Antislavery Society, and read a draft of a Constitution. While he was reading a noisy crowd thundered at the doors for admission. One of the Aldermen of the city, in attempting to keep them back, had his coat torn to pieces. As soon as the reading of the draft was finished, it was unanimously adopted as the Constitution, and theState Antislavery Society was formed.
Mr. Lewis Tappan then proceeded to read a declaration of sentiments and purposes, that had been carefully prepared. But he had not half finished the document, when a large concourse of persons rushed into the houseand commanded him to stop. He, however, persisted in the discharge of his duty with increased earnestness to the end, when the declaration was adopted unanimously by a rising vote.
The Convention then gave audience to the leaders of the mob, who declared themselves to be a Committee of twenty-five, sent thither by a meeting of the citizens of Utica, held that morning in the Court-house. Hon. Chester Hayden, first Judge of the County, was Chairman of this Committee. He presented a series of condemnatory resolutions, which had just been adopted at the Court-house. They were respectfully listened to by the Convention, and then the mob gave loud utterance to their denunciations and threats. The Judge remonstrated with the rioters, saying: “We have been respectfully listened to by the Convention, I hopemy friendswill permit the answer of the Convention to be heard in peace.” Mr. Tappan then moved that a committee of ten be appointed to report what answer should be made to the citizens.