Let me again beg my readers to bear in mind, that I am not attempting to write a complete history of the antislavery conflict. Many individuals rendered essential services to the cause in different parts of our country whose names even may not be mentioned on any of my pages, for the reason that I had little or no personal acquaintance with them. My purpose is merely to give my recollections of the most important incidents in the progress of the great reform, and of the individuals whom I personally knew in connection with those incidents.
Although I did not enjoy a very intimate acquaintance with the distinguished gentleman whose name stands at the head of this article, my connection with him was such that it will be very proper, as well as very grateful to me, to give some account of him and of his inestimable services.
At the annual meetings of the American Antislavery Society in New York, and of the Massachusetts Society in Boston in May, 1835, our hearts were greatly encouraged and our hands strengthened by the presence and eloquence of the Hon. James G. Birney, then of Kentucky, lately of Alabama. We had repeatedly heard of him during the preceding twelve months, and of his labors and sacrifices in the cause of our enslaved countrymen. As I said in my report at the time, all were charmed with him. He was mild yet firm, cautious yet not afraid to speak the whole truth, candid but not compromising, careful not to exaggerate in aught, and equally careful not to conceal or extenuate. He imparted much valuable information and animated us to persevere in our work.
Mr. Birney was a native of Kentucky, the only son of a wealthy planter, who gave him some of the best opportunities that our country then afforded for acquiring a thorough classical, scientific, and professional education, to which were added the advantages of extensive foreign travel. When he had completed his preparations for the practice of the law he opened an office in Danville, his native place, and married a Miss McDowell, of Virginia. Thus he was allied by marriage as well as birth to a large circle of prominent slaveholders in two States. Soon after he removed to Huntsville, Alabama, where he rapidly rose to great distinction in his profession and in the estimation of his fellow-citizens. He was elected Solicitor-General of the State, and in 1828, when John Q. Adams was nominated for the Presidency, Mr. Birney was chosen by the Whig party one of the Alabama Electors. Moreover, he was an honored member of the Presbyterian church, and was zealous and active as an elder in that denomination. I make these statements to show that Mr. Birney occupied a very high position, both civil and ecclesiastical.
He had been accustomed to slavery from his birth. So he purchased a cotton plantation near Huntsville and directed the management of it. But his kind heart was ill at ease in view of the condition of the slaves. He could not regard them as brute animals, and felt that there must be a terrible wrong in treating them as if they were. He gladly entered into the project of the Colonization Society, hoping it would lead ultimately to the deliverance of the bondsmen. He became so interested in it that he turned from his legal practice, which had become very lucrative, that he might discharge the duties of General Superintendent of the Colonization Society in the States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. He travelled extensivelythroughout those States, was everywhere treated with respect, and had abundant opportunities for forming an opinion of the real effect of the Colonization scheme upon the institution of slavery. He saw that it was tending to perpetuate rather than to put an end to the great iniquity.
Towards the close of 1833 Mr. Birney removed back to his native place, that he might be near and minister to the comfort of his aged father. He returned carrying with him his new-formed opinions of Colonization. He found a few who had come to feel, with him, that something else and more should be done for the relief of the oppressed. In December of that year he joined them and formed the “Kentucky Gradual Emancipation Society.” But the principles of it did not long satisfy him.
Mr. Garrison’s “Thoughts on Colonization,” published more than a year before in Boston, had reached that neighborhood, and probably had come under the consideration of Mr. Birney. It contained a faithful searching review of the purposes, the spirit and tendency of Colonization. Soon after, the famous discussion arose in Lane Seminary, of which I have given some account on a previous page, and which resulted in an eruption that threw eighty “live coals” in as many directions over the country,—fervent young men, who went diligently about, kindling up the minds of the people on the question ofimmediateemancipation.
That remarkable young man, Theodore D. Weld, leader of the antislavery party in Lane Seminary, visited Mr. Birney, and found him ready for conversion, if not already a convert to the highest antislavery truth. Their interviews resulted in Mr. Birney’s entire conviction that the Colonization plan tended to uphold rather than to subvert slavery; and that immediate emancipation,without removal from their homes, was the right of every slave, and the duty of every slaveholder.
Without delay, he acted in accordance with this conviction. He addressed an admirable letter to Rev. Mr. Mills, Corresponding Secretary of the Kentucky Colonization Society, announcing that he must no longer be considered a member of that association, and stating, in a very lucid and impressive manner, his weighty reasons for disapproving of, and feeling impelled to oppose, an enterprise in which he had taken so much interest, and to which he had devoted so much time and labor. Better than this, he summoned all his slaves into his presence, acknowledged that he had been guilty of great wrong in holding them as his property, informed them that he had executed deeds of manumission for each and all of them, and that henceforth they were free men, free women, free children. He offered to retain in his service all who preferred to remain with him, and to pay them fair wages for their labor. None left him, and, as he himself told me, they afterwards toiled not only more cheerfully than before, but more effectively, and for a greater number of hours. In several instances he had been impelled to go to them in person, and insist upon their “hanging up the shovel and the hoe.” In the fall of 1834 he addressed a letter to the members of the Presbyterian Synod, in the vicinity of Danville, in which he pressed upon them the sinfulness of holding their fellow-beings as property, and showed them the true Scripture doctrine respecting slavery. He also visited the seat of government during the session of the Kentucky Legislature, and conversed with many members. He found that most of them regarded slavery as an evil which could not be perpetual, but most of them recoiled from the plan of immediate emancipation.
Convinced that this was the vital doctrine, he determinedto do all in his power to disseminate it among the people. For this purpose he purchased a printing-press and types, and engaged a man to print for him at Danville a paper to be calledThe Philanthropist. So soon as his intention became known, his neighbors roused themselves to prevent the execution of it. While he continued a slaveholder and in favor of Colonization, it was proper and safe enough for him to express freely his opinions. But when he became an immediate emancipationist, and liberated his slaves, he was regarded as a dangerous man. And now that he was preparing to disseminate his doctrines through the press, he was to be denounced and silenced.
On the 12th of July, 1835, the slaveholders of his neighborhood assembled in mass meeting, in the town of Danville, and after rousing themselves and each other to the right pitch of madness, they addressed a letter to Mr. Birney, vehemently remonstrating with him, and pledging themselves to prevent the publication of his paper, by the most violent means, if necessary. Mr. Birney respectfully but firmly refused to yield to their demand, assured them that he understood the rights of an American citizen, and that he should exercise and defend them. However, their threats, which did not intimidate him, so far excited the apprehensions of his printer that he utterly refused to undertake the publication.
When the report reached Alabama that Mr. Birney had become an immediate Abolitionist, had renounced the Colonization Society, and had liberated his slaves, most of those who had formerly known and honored him there united in expressing very emphatically their displeasure, and declaring their contempt for his new fanatical opinions. The Supreme Court of that State expunged his name from the roll of attorneys practising at its bar. And in the University of Alabama, of which he had beena most useful trustee, several literary societies, of which he had been an honorary member, hastened to pass resolutions expelling him from their bodies. These acts convinced him of their hatred, but not of his error.
Finding that he could not get his paper printed in Danville, he removed his press and types to Cincinnati, in order that he might publish hisPhilanthropistas near to his father’s home and his native State as possible, and under the ægis of Ohio, whose constitution explicitly guarantees to her citizens freedom of speech and of the press.
But he had not got himself and family settled in Cincinnati, before he found that the inhabitants of that city were so swayed by Southern influence that it would be useless to attempt to issue a paper there, opposed to slavery and to the expatriation of the free colored people. He therefore removed twenty miles up the river to the town of New Richmond, where the dominant influence was in the hands of Quakers.The Philanthropistwas much better received by the public than he expected, and was so generally commended for the excellent spirit with which the subject of slavery was discussed, that he thought it best to remove his press back to Cincinnati. But he had hardly got it established there before “the gentlemen of property and standing” bestirred themselves and their minions to the determination that the incendiary paper “must be suppressed by all means, right or wrong, peaceably or forcibly.” Mr. Birney contended manfully, nobly, for the liberty of speech and of the press. He met his opponents in public and in private, refuted their arguments and exposed the fearful consequences of their conduct, if persisted in. But his facts, his logic, and his eloquence were of no avail. What had not been reasoned into them could not be reasoned out of them. His opponents were fixed in a foregoneconclusion that slavery was a matter with which the citizens of the free States were bound not to meddle, and were made more impetuous by that dislike of the colored people, which was intensified by the consciousness that they were living witnesses to the inconsistency, cruelty, and meanness of our nation. I wish I had room for a full account of Mr. Birney’s courageous and persistent defence of his antislavery opinions, and of his right to publish and disseminate them.
Suffice it to add that, on the evening of the 1st of August, 1836, Mr. Birney having gone to a distant town to deliver a lecture, large numbers of persons, among them some of themost respectablecitizens of Cincinnati, went to the office ofThe Philanthropist, demolished or threw into the streets everything they found there excepting the printing-press. That they dragged to the bank of the Ohio, half a mile distant, conveyed it in a boat to the middle of the river and threw it in.
In the fall of 1837 Mr. Birney removed to New York, and for two years or more rendered inestimable services as one of the Corresponding Secretaries of the American Antislavery Society.
While there, some time in 1839, his father died, leaving a large amount of property in lands, money, and slaves to him and his only sister, Mrs. Marshall. Mr. Birney requested that all the slaves, twenty-one in number, might be set off to him at their market value, as a part of his patrimony. This was done. He immediately wrote and executed a deed manumitting them all. Thus he sacrificed to his sense of right, his respect for humanity, that which he might legally have retained or disposed of as property, amounting to eighteen or twenty thousand dollars.I
This act, added to all else that he had done and saidin the cause of liberty, and the invaluable contributions from his pen, and the noble traits of character that were ever manifest in all his deeds and words, raised Mr. Birney to the highest point in the estimation of all Abolitionists. When, therefore, they had become weary of striving to induce one or the other of the political parties to recognize the rights of the colored population of the country; when they had found that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats would attempt anything for the relief of the millions of the oppressed, but what theiroppressorsapproved or consented to; when thus forced to the conclusion that a Third Party must needs be formed in order to compel politicians and statesmen to heed their demands for the relief of suffering outraged millions in our land, James G. Birney was unanimously selected to be their candidate for the presidency. He unquestionably possessed higher qualifications for that office than either of the candidates of the other parties. But, with shame be it said, he had too much faith in the glorious doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, and in the declared purpose of the Constitution of the United States to suit the depraved policy of the nation in 1840. In that year the Liberty party gave a very significant number of votes for Mr. Birney. And again in 1844 their votes for him amounted to 62,300. These votes, if given for Mr. Clay, as they would have been had he been true to “the inalienable rights of man,” would have secured his election by a majority of 23,119. This number was too large to be ignored. It showed that the Abolitionists held the balance of power between the Whigs and the Democrats. Their opinions and wishes thenceforward were more respected by politicians and their partisans. Various attempts were made to conciliate them, which, after several political abortions, gave birth to theRepublican party. This party, we hope and trust, will be guided orforced to pursue such measures as will not only abolish slavery, but raise the colored population of our country to the enjoyment of all the privileges and the exercise of all the prerogatives of American citizens.
Although this gentleman—so prominent for more than half a century among our American statesmen and scholars—was not a member of our Antislavery Society, he rendered us and our cause, in one respect, a most important service. And as I have some interesting recollections of him, a few pages devoted to them will be german to my plan.
In January, 1835, a petition was committed to Mr. Adams, signed by more than a hundred women of his congressional district, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. He presented it and moved its reference to a select committee. Instantly several Southern representatives sprang to their feet and vehemently opposed even the reception of it. They insisted that Congress ought not to receive such petitions, adapted as they were, if not intended, to create an excitement, and wound the feelings of members from the slaveholding States. Mr. Adams urged the reception of the petition with earnestness and eloquence, reminding his opponents that the feelings of his constituents, and of many of the people of the non-slaveholding States, were deeply wounded by being held in any way responsible for the continuance of such a system of oppression as they considered slavery. No right of the people, he said, could be more vital, or should be held as more sacred, than theright of petition,—the right to implore their rulers to relieve them of any unnecessary burden, or to correct what seemed to them a grievous wrong. He besoughtthe representatives of the American people to show their respect for the right of petition by receiving the paper he now presented. If there were any expressions in the language of this petition disrespectful or improper, let the signers of it be reproved. It might be easy, he added, to show that this prayer of his constituents ought not to be granted, but that was no reason for refusing to hear their request. To petition is a right guaranteed to every one by the Constitution, of our Republic,—yes, a right inherent in the constitution of man, and Congress is not authorized to deny it or to abridge it. Such was the effect of his speech that the petition was received. But it was immediately laid on the table.
Again in January, 1837, Mr. Adams offered a petition of the same tenor, signed by a hundred and fifty women. Forthwith several Southern members passionately objected to the reception of it. Mr. Adams planted himself as firmly as before in defence of theright of petition. He charged upon the opposers that they were violating most fearfully the federal Constitution, which they had sworn to support. He besought the House not to give its countenance, its sanction, to the violent assaults which had been made in our country within the last eighteen months upon the freedom of the press and the liberty of speech, by denying the still more fundamental right,—theright of petition; and this “to a class of citizens as virtuous and pure as the inhabitants of any section of the United States.”
A violent debate ensued, in which Mr. Adams maintained his part with so much fortitude, dignity, and force of argument that the petition was received by a large majority. I am sorry to add that it was soon after laid on the table by a majority almost as large. And a few days afterwards, on the 18th of January, 1837, the House of Representatives passed this infamous resolution:“That all petitions relating to slavery,without being printed or referred, shall be laid on the table, and no action shall be had thereon.” This resolution, intended to shut the door of legislative justice and mercy against millions of the most cruelly oppressed people on earth, was passed in the Congress of these United States by a vote of 139 ayes to 96 nays.
Petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia had been sent to Mr. Adams and to other members of Congress, from various parts of the country. For it was the feeling of Abolitionists everywhere that we were all, in some measure, directly responsible for the continuance of slavery in that District, over which Congress had then, and has now, exclusive jurisdiction. Seeing how such petitions were to be spurned, by the advice of the managers of the Antislavery Society, I addressed a letter to Mr. Adams, proposing that thereafter our petitions should be “for the removal of the national capital to some place north of Mason and Dixon’s line.” He replied that nothing would be gained by such a change. Petitions so worded, coming from Abolitionists, would be treated with the same contempt. And he thought it better to persist in demanding the abolition of slavery in the District, and contend for the right of petition on that issue.
Nothing daunted by the high-handed measure of January 18th, Mr. Adams, on the 6th of the following month, announced to the Speaker that he held in his hand a petition which purported to come from a number of slaves, without, however, stating what it prayed for. Before presenting it, he wished to be informed by the Speaker whether such a paper would come under the order of the 18th ult. Without waiting for the decision, several slaveholders rose in quick succession and poured out their astonishment, their indignation, their wrath at theeffrontery of the man who could propose to offer such a petition,—a petition from slaves! One said it was so gross an insult to the House that the paper ought to be taken and burnt. Another insisted that the representative from Massachusetts deserved the severest censure, yes, that he ought to be immediately brought to the bar of the House and reproved by the Speaker. Others demanded that Mr. Adams should be forthwith expelled from his seat with those he had so grossly insulted.
Amidst this storm Mr. Adams remained as little moved as “the house that was founded upon a rock.” When it had spent its rage enough for a human voice to be heard, the brave “old man eloquent” rose and said: “Mr. Speaker, to prevent further consumption of the time of the House, I deem it my duty to request the members to modify their several resolutions so that they may be in accordance with the facts. I did not present the petition. I only informed the Speaker that I held in my hand a paper purporting to be a petition from slaves, and asked if such a petition would come under the general order of January 18th. I stated distinctly that I should not send the paper to the table until that question was decided. This is onefact, and one of the resolutions offered to the House should be amended to accord with it.
“Another gentleman alleged in his resolution that the paper I hold is a petition from slaves, praying for the abolition of slavery. Now, Mr. Speaker, that is not the fact. If the House should choose to hear this paper read they would learn that it is a petition the reverse of what the resolution states it to be. If, therefore, the gentleman from Alabama still shall choose to call me to the bar of the House, he will have to amend his resolution by stating in it that my crime has been attempting to introduce a petition from slaves, praying that slaverymaynotbe abolished,—precisely that which the gentleman desires.”
A variety of absurd and incoherent resolutions were proposed, and as many abusive speeches were made, after which the following were adopted: “Resolved, That this House cannot receive the said petition without disregarding its own dignity, the rights of a large class of citizens of the South and West, and the Constitution of the United States.” Yeas, 160. Nays, 35. “Resolved, That slaves do not possess the right of petition secured to the people of the United States by the Constitution.” Yeas, 162. Nays, 18.
None of the Northern representatives interposed to aid Mr. Adams in the conflict, excepting only Messrs. Lincoln and Cushing, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Evans, of Maine. These gentlemen defended his positions with distinguished ability. But the “old man eloquent” was a host in himself,—a match for all who rose up against him. Through the whole of the unparalleled excitement he behaved with exemplary equanimity and admirable self-possession. “His speech, in vindication of his cause,” said Mr. Garrison, “was the hewing of Agag in pieces by the hand of Samuel.” His exposure of the vice and licentiousness of slaveholding communities was unsparing. His sarcasms were as cutting as the surgeon’s knife. His rebukes were terrible. He contended that there was not a word, not an intimation in the Constitution, excluding petitions from slaves. “The right of petition,” said he, “God gave to the whole human race when he made themmen,—the right of prayer,—the right of those who need to ask a favor of those who can bestow it. It belongs to humanity; it does not depend upon the condition of the petitioners. It belongs to the wronged, the destitute, the wretched. Those who most need relief of any kind have the bestright to petition for it,enslaved men more than all others. Did the gentleman from South Carolina think he could frighten me by his threat of a grand jury? Let me tell himhe mistook his man; I am not to be frightened from the discharge of a duty by his indignation, nor by all the grand juries in the universe. Mr. Speaker, I never was more serious in any moment of my life. I never acted under a more solemn sense of duty. What I have done I should do again under the same circumstances if it were to be done to-morrow.”
For this dignified, persistent, heroic defence of the right of petition Mr. Adams deserved the gratitude of all the suffering, and those who desired their relief,—of the enslaved and those who were laboring for their redemption. But in the course of the debate he said, “It is well known to all the members of this house that, from the day I entered this hall to the present moment, I have invariably, here and elsewhere, declared my opinion to be adverse to the prayer of petitions which call for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. I have, however, uniformly insisted, and do insist, that such petitions ought to be respectfully received, duly considered, and our reasons given for refusing to grant them.”
Such a declaration from the champion of our petitions, it will readily be believed, disconcerted us Abolitionists not a little. Some denounced him. Many thought he certainly ought not to be returned to Congress again.
I was then one of his constituents, living about thirteen miles from his residence. I was as much disconcerted as any were by Mr. Adams’s opposition to the prayer of our petition, and could not rest without hearing from himself his reasons for that opposition. Accordingly, soon after his return to Quincy, in the summerof 1837, I called at his house. He received me graciously, and, on being told what was the object of my visit, he thanked me for coming to himself to learn what were the principles by which he endeavored to govern his conduct as a member of the National Legislature, and what the reasons for the opinion he held respecting the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia by an act of Congress. “You cannot doubt,” said he, “that I desire the abolition of slavery there, and everywhere, as much as you or any Abolitionist desires it. I am ready to do all that I think can be done legally to exterminate that great wrong, that alarming evil, that dark shame from our country. I shall ever withstand any plan for the extension of slavery in any direction an inch beyond the limits within which unhappily it existed at the formation of our Union. I have repeatedly declared myself at any time ready to go for the most stringent prohibition of our interstate slave-trade, putting it under the same ban with the foreign slave-trade.JBut, sir, the citizens of the District of Columbia are in an anomalous condition,—a condition not to be reconciled with one of the fundamental principles of our democratic institutions. They are governed by laws enacted by a Legislature in which they have no representative, and to the enactment of which they have given no consent. Whenever, therefore, I am called upon to act as a legislator for the District of Columbia, I feel myself to be all the more bound in honor to act as if I were a representative chosen by the people of that District, that is, to act in accordance with what I know tobe the will of my quasi constituents. Therefore, until I know that the people of that District generally desire the abolition of slavery, I cannot vote for it consistently with my idea of the duty of a representative.”
Of course I demurred at the sufficiency of this reason, and urged several objections to it. But I need not add a stern old statesman was not to be moved from his allegiance to a principle which he said had governed him through his long political life.
I left him dissatisfied and doubting whether I could help by my vote to re-elect him to Congress. I conferred much with some of the leading Abolitionists in his district. They were troubled in like manner. But we could think of no man who could be elected in his place that would go further in opposition to slavery than Mr. Adams had gone, or could utter such scathing condemnation of our American despotism. When, too, we reviewed the course he had pursued in Congress in defence of the right of petition, and considered his venerable age, his high official and personal character, his intimate acquaintance with every part of the history of our country, his unequalled adroitness in the conduct of a legislative debate, the insults and abuse he had endured in Congress, because of his words and acts bearing upon the subject of slavery, and his perfect fearlessness in the midst of the angry, violent, bullying slaveholders, we came to the conclusion that it would be most unjust, ungrateful, and unwise in Abolitionists to withhold their support from Mr. Adams. We determined rather to rally about him.
And first we thought it would be becoming in his constituents to give some public and emphatic expression of their high and grateful appreciation of his faithfulness and heroic courage, in advocating and maintaining the sacred right of petition. Accordingly, we conferredwith the prominent members of the Whig party in his district, who, after some hesitation, agreed to unite with us in calling a delegated convention to consider the alarming assaults that had been made in the Congress of the nation upon the right of petition, and the noble defence of that right by the venerable and illustrious representative of the twelfth Congressional District.
Such a convention was held in Quincy, on the 23d of August, 1837. Seventeen towns were represented by delegates, and a large number of other citizens were present.
Hon. Thomas Greenleaf, of Quincy, was chosen President. Hon. Cushing Otis, of South Scituate, and Hon. John B. Turner, of Scituate, Vice-Presidents. Hon. Gershom B. Weston, of Duxbury, and Orrin P. Bacon, Esq., of Dorchester, Secretaries. The forenoon was spent in listening to speeches upon the sacredness of the right of petition, the assaults made upon that right in the Congress of our nation, and the persistent, dauntless, noble defence of it by our representative. A series of appropriate resolutions was passed and a committee appointed to present a copy of them to Mr. Adams, and request him to favor the convention with his presence in the afternoon.
We reassembled soon after 2P. M., and were informed by the committee that Mr. Adams would be with us at three o’clock. There was no other business before the convention. Several topics were proposed by resolutions or motions that were ruled out of order, as not german to the purpose of the meeting. Members were getting impatient. I had begun to fear that some of our ardent ones would break over the agreement under which the convention had been called. Just at this crisis our excellent friend, Francis Jackson, of Boston, came into the hall. His face was radiant with his messageof glad tidings. He came straight towards me, and placed in my hand a paper covered with lines, in the clear, beautiful handwriting of that true philanthropist, John Pierpont, with which I was familiar. “A Word from a Petitioner.” Nothing could have been more timely, nothing more appropriate. I seized it, and commenced reading atonce:—
“What! our petitions spurned! The prayerOf thousands, tens of thousands, castUnheard beneath your Speaker’s chair!But youwillhear us first or last.The thousands that last year ye scornedAre millions now. Be warned! Be warned!”
“What! our petitions spurned! The prayerOf thousands, tens of thousands, castUnheard beneath your Speaker’s chair!But youwillhear us first or last.The thousands that last year ye scornedAre millions now. Be warned! Be warned!”
“What! our petitions spurned! The prayerOf thousands, tens of thousands, castUnheard beneath your Speaker’s chair!But youwillhear us first or last.The thousands that last year ye scornedAre millions now. Be warned! Be warned!”
The reading of this first stanza brought down the house in rapturous applause. It struck the key-note to which the feelings of all were attuned. Every stanza was received with some response of approval or delight. When the last line was read and I began to fold the paper, “Encore! Encore!!” resounded from every part of the hall. So I read the admirable poem again and better than the first time. And just as I was reading the last stanza, Mr. Adams entered the convention escorted by the committee. Now the applauses rose in deafening cheers. “Hurrah! Hurrah!! Hurrah!!! the hero comes!!!!” Three times three and then again. Mr. Adams tottered to his seat next the President, wellnigh overcome with emotion. And when the uproar ceased and he rose to speak he seemed for the moment no more “the old man eloquent.” He could not utter a word. He stood trembling before us. But the moment passed, and the orator was himself again. His first words were: “My friends, my neighbors, my constituents, though I tremble beforeyou, I hope, I trust you know that I have never trembled before the enemies of your liberties, your sacred rights.” Again was the assembly thrown into an uproar of applause, which did not dieaway until his self-possession had entirely revived. And then he addressed us for nearly an hour, giving a very graphic account of his conflict with the slaveholders in Congress, and making it evident, perhaps more evident to us than to himself, that some of them were determined to rule or else to ruin our Republic.
By order of the convention a memorial was sent to our fellow-citizens of each congressional district in the Commonwealth, commending to their just appreciation the conduct of Mr. Adams in defence of the right of petition, and praying them to send representatives who would be equally true, faithful, fearless in withstanding the enemies of freedom.
Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was a young Presbyterian minister, a native of Maine, who soon after his graduation from college settled in the city of St. Louis, first as a school-teacher, then as a preacher, and lastly as the editor of a religious paper. In all these offices he had commended himself to the respect and affectionate regards of a large circle of friends. He conducted his paper to very general acceptance, until he became an Abolitionist. An awful, a diabolical deed perpetrated in or near St. Louis, compelled him to look after the evil influences which could have prepared any individuals to be guilty of such an atrocity, and the community in which it was done to tolerate it.
Some time in the latter part of 1836, or the beginning of 1837, a slave was accused of a heinous crime (not worse, however, than many white men had been guilty of). He was tried by a Lynch Court, over which a man most appropriately named Judge Lawless presided. He was found guilty, sentencedto be burnedalive, and actually suffered that horrid death at the hands of American citizens, some of whom were called “most respectable.” Mr. Lovejoy faithfully denounced the horrible outrage as belonging to the Dark Ages and a community of savages, and thenceforward devoted a portion of his paper to the exposure of the sinfulness and demoralizing influence of slaveholding. This was not long endured. His printing-office was broken up, his press destroyed, and he was driven out of the State of Missouri. He removed about twenty miles up the Mississippi River to Alton, Illinois, and there commenced the publication of a similar paper, called theAlton Observer. But though in a nominally free State, he was not beyond the power of the slaveholders. The people of that town, obsequious to the will and tainted with the spirit of their Southern and Southwestern neighbors, soon followed the example of the Missourians, demolished his printing-office and threw his press into the river.
Mr. Lovejoy was a man whose determination to withstand oppression was a high moral principle rather than a resentful passion. He therefore set about, with calm resolution, to re-establish his office and his paper. In this he was encouraged and assisted by the sympathy and the contributions of some of the best people in Alton, St. Louis, and that region of country. But he had issued only one or two numbers of hisObserver, before the ruffians again fell upon his establishment and destroyed it.
This second violation of his rights, in a State professedly free, brought him and his patrons to feel that they were indeed “set for the defence” of the liberty of the press. They appealed in deeper tones of earnest remonstrance and solemn warning to their fellow-citizens, to their countrymen, to all who appreciated the value of our political institutions, to help them re-establish andmaintain their desecrated press. They called a convention of the people to consider the disgrace that had been brought upon their town and State, and to awaken a public sentiment that would overbear the minions of the slaveholding oligarchy, which was assuming to rule our nation. Dr. Edward Beecher, of Jacksonville, came to Alton and spoke with wisdom and power in defence of theAlton Observer, and its devoted editor.
Mr. Lovejoy gave notice that he felt it to be a momentous duty incumbent on him, there to vindicate the precious right which had been so ruthlessly outraged in his person and property. He gave notice that he had taken measures to procure another printing-press and materials for the publication of his paper. He hoped the violent men, who had twice broken up his office, would see their fearful mistake and molest him no more. He trusted the good people of Alton and the officials of their city would see to it that he should be protected, if the spirit of outrage should again appear in their midst.
Many of the good people of the place gathered about him with assurances of help, if needed. A Mr. Gilman, by all acknowledged to be one of the very best men in the community, readily consented to receive the press into his store for safe-keeping, and many other gentlemen agreed to come there to defend it, if any attempt to take it away should be made.
As the day drew near on which the press was to arrive, alarming threats were heard about the city, and evidences of preparation for another deed of violence were too plain to be mistaken. Mr. Gilman called upon the Mayor for protection,—to appoint a special police for the occasion, or to have an armed force in readiness, if the emergency should require their interposition. That official informed him that he had no military at his service, and did not feel authorized to appoint a specialpolice. Then Mr. Gilman craved to know if the Mayor would authorize him to collect an armed force to protect his property if it should be assaulted. The Mayor gave him to understand that he would be justified in so doing.
The boat arrived in the night of the 6th of November, and the press was safely deposited in Messrs. Godfrey & Gilman’s store. The next evening a mob assembled with the declared purpose of destroying the press or the building that contained it, in which were goods valued at more than $100,000. Mr. Gilman went out and calmly remonstrated with the mob. He assured them that it was his determination, as it was his right, to defend his own property and that of another, which had been committed to him for safe-keeping, and that he was prepared so to do; that there were a considerable number of loaded muskets in his store and resolute men there to use them. He had no wish to harm any one, and besought them to refrain from their threatened assault, which would certainly be repulsed. They heeded him not, but reiterated their cries for the onset. It was agreed between himself, Mr. Lovejoy, and their helpers that they would forbear until there could be no longer any doubt of the fell purpose of the assailants. The suspense was brief. Stones and other heavy missiles were thrown against the building and through the windows. These were quickly followed by bullets. At this several of the besieged party fired upon the mob, killing one man and wounding another. After a temporary retreat, the madmen returned bringing materials with which to fire the store. A ladder was raised and a torch applied to the roof. Mr. Lovejoy came out and aimed his musket at the incendiary. So soon as he was recognized he was fired upon and fell, his bosom pierced by five bullets.
Mr. Garrison and most of the oldest Abolitionists regrettedthat Mr. Lovejoy and his friends had resorted to deadly weapons. If he was to fall in our righteous cause we wished that he had chosen to fall an unresisting martyr. From the beginning we had determined not to harm our foes. And though we had been insulted, buffeted, starved, imprisoned, our houses sacked, our property destroyed, our buildings burnt, not the life of one of our number had hitherto been lost. But we doubted not that our devoted brother had been governed by his highest sense of right. He had acted in accordance with the accepted morality of the Christian world, and in the spirit of our Revolutionary fathers. A sensation of horror at the murder of that amiable and excellent young man thrilled the hearts of all the people that were not steeped in the insensibility to the rights of humanity which slaveholding produces. The 7th of November, 1837, was fixed in the calendar as one of the days never to be forgotten in our country, nor remembered but with shame.
The American Antislavery Society, the Massachusetts, and other kindred societies took especial and very appropriate notice of the dreadful outrage, and renewed their solemn pledges to labor all the more assiduously, for the utter extermination of that system of iniquity in the land, which could be upheld only at the expense of our freedom of speech and the liberty of the press.
Rev. Dr. Channing and many more of the prominent citizens of Boston were moved to call a public meeting in their “Old Cradle of Liberty,” without distinction of sect or party, there to express the alarm and horror which were felt at the outrage on civil liberty, and the murder of a Christian minister, for attempting to maintain his constitutional and inalienable rights. Accordingly, the Doctor and a hundred other gentlemen made an application to the Mayor and Aldermen of the city for permissionto occupy Faneuil Hall for that purpose. Their application was rejected asfollows:—
“City of Boston. In Board of Aldermen, November 29, 1837: On the petition of William E. Channing and others, for the use of Faneuil Hall on the evening of Monday, the 4th of December,“Resolved, That in the opinion of this Board, it is inexpedient to grant the prayer of said petition, for the reason that resolutions and votes passed by a public meeting in Faneuil Hall are often considered, in other places, as the expression of public opinion in this city; but it is believed by the Board that the resolutions which would be likely to be sanctioned by the signers of this petition on this occasion ought not to be regarded as the public voice of this city.”
“City of Boston. In Board of Aldermen, November 29, 1837: On the petition of William E. Channing and others, for the use of Faneuil Hall on the evening of Monday, the 4th of December,
“Resolved, That in the opinion of this Board, it is inexpedient to grant the prayer of said petition, for the reason that resolutions and votes passed by a public meeting in Faneuil Hall are often considered, in other places, as the expression of public opinion in this city; but it is believed by the Board that the resolutions which would be likely to be sanctioned by the signers of this petition on this occasion ought not to be regarded as the public voice of this city.”
This extraordinary conduct of the city authorities kindled a fire of indignation throughout the city and the Commonwealth, that sent forth burning words of surprise and censure. Dr. Channing addressed an eloquent and impressive “letter to the citizens of Boston,” that produced the intended effect. It was widely circulated, and everywhere read with deep emotion. A public meeting was called by gentlemen who were not Abolitionists, to be held in the old Supreme Court Room, “to take into consideration the reasons assigned by the Mayor and Aldermen for withholding the use of Faneuil Hall, and to act in the premises as may be deemed expedient.” A large concourse of citizens assembled. George Bond, Esq., was chosen chairman, and B. F. Hallett, Secretary. Dr. Channing’s letter was read, and then a series of resolutions, “drawn up with consummate ability and strikingly adapted to the occasion,” were offered by Mr. Hallett, and after an animated discussion were unanimously adopted. A committee of two from each ward was appointed to renew the application (precisely in the words of the former one) for theuse of Faneuil Hall, and to obtain signatures to the same. This request was not to be denied. The Mayor and Aldermen yielded to the pressure.
On the 8th of December the doors of Faneuil Hall were thrown open, and as many people as could find a place pressed in. Hon. Jonathan Phillips was called to the chair, and made some excellent introductory remarks. Dr. Channing then made an eloquent and impressive address, after which B. F. Hallett, Esq., read the resolutions which Dr. Channing had drawn up. These were seconded by George S. Hillard, Esq., in a very able speech. Then arose James T. Austin, the Attorney-General, and made a speech in the highest degree inflammatory and mobocratic. He declared that “Lovejoy died as the fool dieth.” He justified the riotous procedure of the Altonians, and compared them to “the patriotic Tea-Party of the Revolution.” What he said of the slaves was really atrocious. Hear him!
“We have a menagerie in our city with lions, tigers, hyenas, an elephant, a jackass or two, and monkeys in plenty. Suppose, now, some new cosmopolite, some man of philanthropic feelings, not only towards men but animals, who believes that all are entitled to freedom as an inalienable right, should engage in the humane task of giving liberty to these wild beasts of the forest, some of whom are nobler than their keepers, or, having discovered some new mode to reach their understandings, should try to induce themto break their cages and be free? The people of Missouri had as much reason to be afraid of theirslavesas we should have to be afraid of the wild beasts of the menagerie. They had the same dread of Lovejoy that we should have of this supposed instigator, if we really believed the bars would be broken and the caravan let loose to prowl about our streets.”
Though this was the most disgusting passage in Mr.Austin’s speech, nearly all of it was offensive to every true American heart, and some parts were really impious. He likened the Alton and St. Louis rioters to the men who inspired and led our Revolution. He infused so much of his riotous spirit into a portion of his audience that at the close of his speech they attempted to break up the meeting in an uproar. Happily for the reputation of Boston, there were present a preponderance of the moraléliteof the city. So soon as the disorder had subsided, a young man, then unknown to most of his fellow-citizens, took the platform, and soon arrested and then riveted the attention of the vast assembly to a reply to the Attorney-General that was “sublime, irresistible, annihilating.” I wish there were room in these columns for the whole of it. I can give you but a brief passage.
“Mr. Chairman, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which placed the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer of the dead. [Great applause and counter-applause.] Sir, the gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared not to gainsay the principles of the resolutions before this meeting. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up!”
I need only tell my readers that this was thedébutof our Wendell Phillips, who has since become the leading orator of our nation, and the dauntless champion of our enslaved, down-trodden countrymen. He was then just established in the practice of law in Boston, with the most brilliant prospect of success in his profession. Noyoung man would have risen so soon as he, or to so great a height as an advocate at the bar and a speaker in the forum, if he had pursued his course as a lawyer and a politician. But, blessed be the God of the oppressed, the cry of the millions, to whom in our Republic every right of humanity was denied, entered into his bosom. He espoused their cause with no hope of fee or reward, but that best of all compensations, the consciousness of having relieved suffering, and maintained great moral and political principles, and throughout the thirty-two years that have since passed away, he has consecrated his brilliant powers to the service of the enslaved with an assiduity and effect of which our whole nation has been the admiring witness.
Another young man, to whom we owe scarcely less than to Mr. Phillips, was brought into our ranks and impelled to take upon himself the odium of an Abolitionist by the awful catastrophe at Alton,—a young man bearing a name illustrious in the history of our country, and still highly honored in our State and nation. I allude to Edmund Quincy, a son of Hon. Josiah Quincy, who, having filled almost every other office in the gift of the people, was then President of Harvard College, and grandson of Josiah Quincy, Jr., one of the leading spirits of the American Revolution.
From the beginning of our antislavery efforts Mr. Edmund Quincy had been deeply interested in our undertaking. But, like very many others, he distrusted the wisdom of some of our measures, and especially the terrible severity of Mr. Garrison’s condemnation of slaveholders.
The outrages perpetrated upon Mr. Lovejoy and the liberty of the press at St. Louis and Alton dispelled all doubt of the unparalleled iniquity of holding human beings in the condition of domesticated brutes, and ofthe sinfulness of all who consent thereto. He has since been one of the towers of our strength; has presided, often with signal ability, at our meetings in the most troublous times, and occasionally spoken with force and marked effect. But he has rendered us especial services by his able pen. His contributions toThe Antislavery StandardandThe Liberatorhave been numerous and invaluable. His style has been as vigorous and penetrating as that of Junius, and his satire sometimes as keen. Thus have the attempts of slaveholders and their minions to crush the spirit of liberty served rather to bring to her standard the ablest defenders.
The title of this article announces a great event in the progress of our antislavery conflict, and opens a subject the adequate treatment of which would fill a volume much larger than I intend to impose upon the public.
From the beginning of Mr. Garrison’s enterprise excellent women were among his most earnest, devoted, unshrinking fellow-laborers. Their moral instincts made them quicker to discern the right than most men were, and their lack of political discipline left them to the guidance of their convictions and humane feelings. Would that I could name all the women who rendered us valuable services when we most needed help. In our early meetings, at our lectures, public discussions, &c., a large portion of our auditors were females, whose sympathy cheered and animated us. Among our first and fastest friends in Boston were Mrs. L. M. Child, Mrs. M. W. Chapman, and her sisters, the Misses Weston, and her husband’s sisters, Miss Mary and Miss Ann G. Chapman, and their cousin, Miss Anna Green, now Mrs. WendellPhillips,—then, as now, in feeble health, but strong in faith and unfaltering in purpose. There, too, were Mrs. E. L. Follen and her sister, Miss Susan Cabot, Miss Mary S. Parker, Mrs. Anna Southwick, Mrs. Mary May, Mrs. Philbrick, Miss Henrietta Sargent, and others. In Philadelphia we found wholly with us, Lucretia Mott, Esther Moore, Lydia White, Sarah Pugh, Mrs. Purvis, the Misses Forten, and Mary Grew. In New York, too, there were many with whom I did not become personally acquainted. And indeed wherever in our country the doctrine of “immediate, unconditional emancipation” (first taught by a womanK) was proclaimed there were found good women ready to embrace and help to propagate it. Often were they our self-appointed committees of ways and means, and by fairs and other pleasant devices raised much money to sustain our lecturers and periodicals. The contributions from their pens were frequent and invaluable. I have already spoken of Mrs. Child’s “Appeal,” and of her many other excellent antislavery writings. I ought also to acknowledge our indebtedness to her as the editor, for several years, ofThe Antislavery Standard, which, without compromising its fidelity or efficiency, she made very attractive by its literary qualities and its entertaining and instructive miscellany.
Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, who wielded gracefully a trenchant pen, plied it busily in our cause with great effect. Her successive numbers of “Right and Wrong in Boston” were too incisive not to touch the feelings of the good people of that metropolis, which claimed to be the birthplace of American independence, but had ceased to be jealous for “the inalienable rights of man.” Year after year her “Liberty Bell” rung out the clearest notes of personal, civil, and spiritual liberty, and shecompiled our Antislavery Hymn Book,—“The Songs of the Free,”—effusions of her own and her sisters’ warm hearts, and of their kindred spirits in this country and England.
But though the excellent women whom I have named, and many more like them, constantly attended our meetings, and oftensuggestedthe best things that were said and done at them, they could not be persuaded to utter their thoughts aloud. They were bound to silence by the almost universal sentiment and custom which forbade “women to speak in meeting.”
In 1836 two ladies of a distinguished family in South Carolina—Sarah and Angelina E. Grimké—came to New York, under a deep sense of obligation to do what they could in the service of that class of persons with whose utter enslavement they had been familiar from childhood. They were members of the “Society of Friends,” and were moved by the Holy Spirit, as the event proved, to come on this mission of love. They made themselves acquainted with the Abolitionists, our principles, measures, and spirit. These commended themselves so entirely to their consciences and benevolent feelings that they advocated them with great earnestness, and enforced their truth by numerous facts drawn from their own past experience and observation.
In the fall of 1836 Miss A. E. Grimké published an “Appeal to the Women of the South,” on the subject of slavery. This evinced such a thorough acquaintance with the American system of oppression, and so deep a conviction of its fearful sinfulness, that Professor Elizur Wright, then Corresponding Secretary of the American Antislavery Society, urged her and her sister Sarah to come to the city of New York and address ladies in their sewing-circles, and in parlors, to which they might be invited to meet antislavery ladies and their friends.No man was better able than Professor Wright to appreciate the value of the contributions which these South Carolina ladies were prepared to make to the cause of impartial liberty and outraged humanity. As early as 1833, while Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Western Reserve College, he published an elaborate and powerful pamphlet on “The Sin of Slave-holding,” which we accounted one of our most important tracts. Commended by him and by others who had read her “Appeal,” Miss Grimké and her sister attracted the antislavery women of New York in such numbers that soon no parlor or drawing-room was large enough to accommodate those who were eager to hear them. The Rev. Dr. Dunbar, therefore, offered them the use of the vestry or lecture-room of his church for their meetings, and they were held there several times. Such, however, was the interest created by their addresses, that the vestry was too small for their audiences. Accordingly, the Rev. Henry G. Ludlow opened his church to them and their hearers, of whom a continually increasing number were gentlemen.
Early in 1837 the Massachusetts Antislavery Society invited these ladies to come to Boston to address meetings of those of their own sex. But it was impossible to keep them thus exclusive, and soon, wherever they were advertised to speak, there a large concourse of men as well as women was sure to be assembled. This was an added offence, which our opposers were not slow to mark, nor to condemn in any small measure. It showed plainly enough that “the Abolitionists were ready to set at naught the order and decorum of the Christian church.”
My readers may smile when I confess to them that at first I was myself not a little disturbed in my sense of propriety. But I took the matter into serious consideration.I looked the facts fully in the face. Here were millions of our countrymen held in the most abject, cruel bondage. More than half of them were females, whose condition in some respects was more horrible than that of the males. The people of the North had consented to this gigantic wrong with those of the South, and those who had risen up to oppose it were denounced as enemies of their country, were persecuted, their property and their persons violated. The pulpit for the most part was dumb, the press was everywhere, with small exceptions, wielded in the service of the oppressors, the political parties were vying with each other in obsequiousness to the slaveholding oligarchy, and the petitions of the slaves and their advocates were contemptuously and angrily spurned from the legislature of the Republic. Surely, the condition of our country was wretched and most perilous. I remembered that in the greatest emergencies of nations women had again and again come forth from the retirement to which they were consigned, or in which they preferred to dwell, and had spoken the word or done the deed which the crises demanded. Surely, the friends of humanity, of the right and the true, never needed help more than we needed it. And here had come two well-informed persons of exalted character from the midst of slavedom to testify to the correctness of our allegations against slavery, and tell of more of its horrors than we knew. And shall they not be heard because they are women? I saw, I felt it was a miserable prejudice that would forbid woman to speak or to act in behalf of the suffering, the outraged, just as her heart may prompt and as God has given her power. So I sat me down and penned as earnest a letter as I could write to the Misses Grimké, inviting them to come to my house, then in South Scituate, to stay with us as long as their engagements wouldpermit, to speak to the people from my pulpit, from the pulpit of my excellent cousin, Rev. E. Q. Sewall, Scituate, and from as many other pulpits in the county of Plymouth as might be opened to them.
They came to us the last week of October, 1837, and tarried eight days. It was a week of highest, purest enjoyment to me and my precious wife, and most profitable to the community.
On Sunday evening Angelina addressed a full house from my pulpit for two hours in strains of wise remark and eloquent appeal, which settled the question of the propriety of her “speaking in meeting.”
The next afternoon she spoke to a large audience in Mr. Sewall’s meeting-house in Scituate, for an hour and a half, evidently to their great acceptance. The following Wednesday I took the sisters to Duxbury, where, in the Methodist Church that evening, Angelina held six hundred hearers in fixed attention for two hours, and received from them frequent audible (as well as visible) expressions of assent and sympathy.
On Friday afternoon I went with them to the Baptist meeting-house in Hanover, where a crowd was already assembled to hear them. Sarah Grimké, the state of whose voice had prevented her speaking on either of the former occasions, gave a most impressive discourse of more than an hour’s length on the dangers of slavery, revealing to us some things which only those who had lived in the prison-house could have learnt. Angelina followed in a speech of nearly an hour, in which she made the duty and safety of immediate emancipation appear so plainly that the wayfaring man though a fool must have seen the truth. If there was a person there who went away unaffected, he would not have been moved though an angel instead of Angelina had spoken to him. I said then, I have often said since, that I neverhave heard from any other lips, male or female, such eloquence as that of her closing appeal. Several gentlemen who had come from Hingham, not disposed nor expecting to be pleased, rushed up to me when the audience began to depart, and after berating me roundly for “going about the neighborhood with these women setting public sentiment at naught and violating the decorum of the church,” said “there can be no doubt that they have a right to speak in public, and they ought to be heard; do bring them to Hingham as soon as may be. Our meeting-house shall be at their service.” Accordingly, the next day I took them thither, and they spoke there with great effect on Sunday evening, November 5th, from the pulpit of the Unitarian Church, then occupied by Rev. Charles Brooks.
The experience of that week dispelled my Pauline prejudice. I needed no other warrant for the course the Misses Grimké were pursuing than the evidence they gave of their power to speak so as to instruct and deeply impress those who listened to them. I could not believe that God gave them such talents as they evinced to be buried in a napkin. I could not think they would be justified in withholding what was so obviously given them to say on the great iniquity of our country, because they were women. And ever since that day I have been steadfast in the opinion that the daughters of men ought to be just as thoroughly and highly educated as the sons, that their physical, mental, and moral powers should be as fully developed, and that they should be allowed and encouraged to engage in any employment, enter into any profession, for which they have properly qualified themselves, and that women ought to be paid the same compensation as men for services of any kind equally well performed. This radical opinion is spreading rapidly in this country and in England, and it willultimately prevail, just as surely as that God is impartial and that “in Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female.” And yet it has been, and is, as strenuously opposed and as harshly denounced as was our demand of the immediate emancipation of the enslaved. Men and women, press and pulpit, statesmen and clergymen, legislative and ecclesiastical bodies have raised the cry of alarm, and pronounced the advocates of the equal rights of women dangerous persons, disorganizers, infidels.
The first combined assault was made upon “The Rights of Women” by the Pastoral Association of Massachusetts in the fall of 1837 or the spring of 1838, in their spiritual bull against the antislavery labors of the Misses Grimké, which it utterly condemned as unchristian and demoralizing. This, of course, made it the duty, as it was pleasure, of the New England Abolitionists to stand by those excellent women, who had rendered such inestimable services to the cause of the enslaved, the down-trodden, the despised millions of our countrymen. Therefore, at the next New England Antislavery Convention, held in Boston, May, 1838, attended by delegates from eleven States, it was “Voted, That all persons present, or who may be present, at subsequent meetings, whether men or women, who agree with us in sentiment on the subject of slavery, be invited to become members and participate in the proceedings of the Convention.”
This gave rise to a long and very animated discussion, but was passed by a very large majority. Immediately eight Orthodox clergymen requested to have their names erased from the roll of that Convention, and seven others, including some of our faithful fellow-laborers, presented a protest against the vote, which, by their request, was entered upon the records, and published with the doings of the Convention.
At that same great gathering a committee of three persons was appointed to prepare and transmit a memorial to each and all of the ecclesiastical associations in New England, of every sect, beseeching them to testify against the further continuance in our country of slavery, and take such measures as they might deem best to induce the members of their several denominations who were guilty of the dreadful iniquity to consider and turn away from it. One of that committee was a much respected woman, as well qualified as either of her associates to discharge the duties assigned them. An excellent memorial was prepared and presented in accordance with the vote. But it was very coldly received by some, and rudely treated by others of the ecclesiastical bodies to which it was sent. On the presentation of it to the Rhode Island Congregational Consociation, a scene of great excitement ensued. The memorial was treated with all possible indignity. Most of the brethren who had been earnest for the reception of it, and for such action as it requested, when they were informed that one of the committee by whom the memorial was prepared was a woman, united in a vote “to turn the illegitimate product from the house, and obliterate from the records all traces of its entrance.” No deliberative assembly ever behaved in a more indecorous manner. And those who were most active in trampling upon that respectful petition in behalf of bleeding humanity were the professed ministers of Him who came to preach deliverance to the captive. “O tempora! O mores!!”
Abolitionists from the first were persons of both sexes and all complexions, of every class in society, of everyreligious denomination, of each of the three learned professions, of both political parties, and of all the various trades and occupations in which men and women engage. Although it is too true that most ministers, especially in the cities, were slow to espouse the cause of the oppressed, yet it is due to them to say that, taking the country through, there were, in proportion to their numbers, more of that profession than of either of the others who embraced the doctrine of “immediate emancipation,” advocated it publicly, wrote columns, pamphlets, and volumes in its defence, and suffered no little obloquy and persecution for so doing. And they were, as I have said, of every Protestant sect. Whenever a complete history of our antislavery conflict shall be written, grateful and admiring mention will be made of the valuable services and generous sacrifices of many ministers whose names may not appear in my slight sketches.
These various individuals were evidently moved by one spirit, drawn together by the conviction that there was a great, a fearful iniquity involved in the enslavement of millions of the inhabitants of our land, that if the God-given rights of humanity were (as the founders of our Republic declared them to be) inalienable, then those men, who were holding human beings as their chattels, were setting the will and authority of the Almighty at defiance, and would bring themselves to ruin. Moreover, there was a deep conviction awakened in the hearts of those who openly espoused the cause of the bondmen, that the people of the North were verily guilty in consenting to their enslavement; and, as the States and the churches refused to interfere for their deliverance, it was left for individuals and voluntary associations to do what might be done, so to correct public opinion and awaken the public conscience that slavery could not be tolerated in the land.
Further than this there was little agreement among the early Abolitionists. But this proved to be a mighty solvent. And for years the wonderful, the beautiful, the Christian sight was seen,—Trinitarians and Unitarians, Methodists and Universalists, Baptists and Quakers, laboring together in the cause of suffering fellow-beings, with so much earnestness that they had set aside, for the while, their theological and ritualistic peculiarities, and seemed to rejoice in their release from those narrow enclosures. Coming out of our hall on the second evening of our Convention in Philadelphia, in December, 1833, a young Orthodox minister took my arm with an affectionate pressure, and said, “Brother May, I never thought that I could feel towards a Unitarian as I feel towards you.” My reply was: “Dear M., if professing Christians were only real Christians, engaged in the work of the Lord, they could not find the time nor the heart to quarrel about creeds and rites.” Wherever I went, preaching the gospel of impartial liberty, I was as cordially received by Orthodox as by Unitarian Abolitionists, until I came to have a much more brotherly feeling towards an antislavery Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist than I did towards a Unitarian who was proslavery, or indifferent to the wrongs of the bondmen. And this feeling was obviously reciprocated. I was repeatedly invited to preach in the pulpits of Orthodox ministers, and to commune with Orthodox churches. Once I attended a church in company with Miss Ann G. Chapman, one of the most single-minded and true-hearted of women. The invitation to the Lord’s table was given in such words as virtually excluded us. Of course we arose and departed. But so soon as the service was over both the minister and deacon (beloved antislavery brethren) came to my lodgings to assure me that the exclusion was not intended, and that whenever Miss Chapman andmyself might again be at their church on a similar occasion, they hoped that we would commune there.
I give these facts, and could give many more like them, to show the anti-sectarian tendency of the antislavery reform. This was perceived by many of “the wise and prudent” leaders of the sects, and was evidently watched by them with a jealous eye. As the number of Abolitionists increased, and our influence in the churches came to be felt more and more, many of those leaders joined antislavery societies, partly, no doubt, because they had been brought to see the truth of our doctrines and the importance of the work we were laboring to accomplish, but also in part, if not chiefly (as I was afterwards forced to suspect), because they wished to maintain the ascendency over their sects, and to prevent the obliteration of the lines which separated them from such as they were pleased to consider unsound in faith.
We were greatly encouraged and gladdened by the accessions we received in 1835 and 1836. Many ministers of the evangelical sects joined us, not a few of them Doctors of Divinity. And the obligations of Christians to the bondmen in our land, and the discipline that should be brought to bear on those professing Christians who were holding them in slavery, became the subjects of earnest debate in several of the large ecclesiastical bodies. But we found these new-comers were much disposed to object to the liberty that was allowed on our platform. Generally the president or chairman of our meetings would call upon some one to invoke the divine blessing upon our undertaking. Sometimes, in deference to our Quaker brethren, we would sit in silence until the Spirit moved some one to offer prayer. Then again, persons who were not members of any religious denomination, nay, even some who were suspected ofbeing, if not known to be, unbelievers, infidels, were permitted to co-operate with us, to contribute to our funds, to take part in our deliberations, and to be put upon our committees. This was a scandal in the estimation of those of the “straitest sect.” Our only reply was, that as so many, who made the highest professions of Christian faith, turned a deaf ear to the cries of the millions who were suffering the greatest wrongs, we were grateful for the assistance of such as made no professions. Not those who cried Lord, Lord, but those who were eager to do the will of the impartial Father, were the persons we valued most.
But nothing gave so much offence as the admission of women to speak in our meetings, to act on our committees, and to co-operate with us in any way they saw fit. In my last I gave some account of the rupture it caused in our New England Antislavery Convention in 1838. This was foreshadowed the year previous. Some time in the summer of 1837 the General Association of Massachusetts issued a “Pastoral Letter to the churches under their care,” intended to avert the alarming evils which were coming upon them from the over-heated zeal of the Abolitionists. First, the extraordinary document mourns over the loss of deference to the pastoral office, which is enjoined in Scripture, and which is essential to the best influence of the ministry. At this day, when all but Roman Catholics and High Church Episcopalians are wondering at, if not amused by, the dealing of Bishop Potter with Mr. Tyng, it may surprise my readers to be told that thirty years ago the Orthodox Congregational ministers of Massachusetts set up the same claim of authority in their several parishes, that the diocesan of New York and New Jersey demands for his clergymen. “One way,” they said in their Pastoral Letter, “one way in which the respect due to the pastoral office has been insome cases violated, is in encouraging lecturers or preachers on certain topics of reform to present their subjects within the parochial limits of settled pastors,without their consent.” “Your minister is ordained of God to be your teacher, and is commanded to feed that flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made him overseer. If there are certain topics upon which he does not preach with the frequency, or in the manner that would pleaseyou, it is a violation ofsacred and importantRIGHTS to encourage a stranger to present them.” “Deference andsubordinationare essential to the happiness of society, andpeculiarly soin the relation of a people to their pastor.” Happily for those who may come after us, we Abolitionists have done much to emancipate the people from such spiritual bondage, and secure to them the privilege of seeking after knowledge wherever it may be found, and yielding themselves to good influences, let them come through whatever channel they may.