But the excitement of the public had spread far and wide, and the tones of indignation were deeper and louder. An immense meeting was held in Faneuil Hall. Mr. Sewall presided, and made a full, clear statement of the case, exhibiting all its odious features. Mr. EdmundQuincy addressed the meeting with great force; and Mr. Phillips spoke most effectively. Public meetings on the subject were held in Lynn, Salem, New Bedford, Worcester, Abington, and in many other large towns. And petitions were prepared and extensively signed and sent to Congress, praying that we of the free States might be relieved from such outrages upon the feelings of the people, and such violations of common law, as could be perpetrated under the exposition of United States law, given by the court in the “Prigg case.” Petitions were also prepared and extensively signed to the Massachusetts Legislature, praying that the prisons and jails of the Commonwealth might not be used by slaveholders or their agents for the safe-keeping of their fugitive bondmen when retaken; and that all sheriffs, constables, police officers of every grade might be peremptorily forbidden, in any way, to assist in the capture or return of slaves.
The sheriff and the deputy sheriff of Suffolk County and the keeper of Leverett Street Jail were severely censured for the part they had taken in Mr. Gray’s service. And the sheriff was about to order the release of Latimer, when negotiations were entered into with Mr. Gray for the purchase of his victim’s emancipation. Fearing that he might lose all, he concluded to take a part, and sold him for four hundred dollars, although he had declared he would not let him go for three times that sum.
Wholly engrossed as I was by my duties in the Normal School, I could not help hearing of the great excitement, and sympathizing with those who were determined Massachusetts should not be made a hunting-ground for slaves. At length it was reported that there was to be “a Latimer meeting” at Waltham, five or six miles from Lexington. And lo! a few days afterwards there came letters from Rev. Samuel Ripley, then the prominent minister of Waltham, and from his son-in-law, the Rev.George F. Simmons, who a few years before had been compelled to resign his pastorate of the Unitarian Church of Mobile, and hastily leave the city, because he had dared to speak from his pulpit of the evils of slavery and the duties of those who held their fellow-beings in that condition.
Each of those gentlemen cordially invited me, urgently requested me, to attend the meeting in behalf of George Latimer that was to be held in their meeting-house, adding that it was appointed on the next Saturday evening, so as to accommodate the operatives in the factories, who were not required to work on that evening.
As I have already said, Saturday evening was myleisuretime. Always on closing school at noon of Saturday, I endeavored to lay aside my cares with my textbooks, and if possible think no more of school until Sunday evening, when I never failed to examine the lessons I intended to teach the next day. It seemed to me that nothing would refresh and recreate me so much as attending an antislavery meeting, and giving vent to my pent-up feelings. Then I was the more eager to go to Waltham, because Mr. Ripley was one of those who had been particularly severe and satirical in their remarks uponmyappointment to the charge of the Normal School. I really wished to see how he would look, and act, and speak, under the inspiration of his new-born zeal in the cause of freedom. So I informed my two devoted assistants, who needed recreation not less than myself, and who I knew were zealous Abolitionists, of my intention, and invited them to accompany me. Almost immediately I received the names of twenty of my pupils who wished to attend the meeting. Accordingly, I procured two double sleighs, and we started for Waltham, as I supposed in good season. But we did not reach the meeting-house until just as the exerciseswere to begin. We naturally walked in together without the slightest thought of making a parade. But on opening the door, we found all the pews filled excepting the conspicuous ones, on either side of the pulpit. To these, therefore, we went as quietly as possible, but not without attracting the notice of the audience, and calling out the remark from more than one, “There comes Mr. May with his Normal School!”
Before long I was invited by Rev. Mr. Ripley, who presided, to address the meeting. I did so for twenty minutes or more, and I have no doubt that my words and manner, my accents and emphases, showed plainly enough how deep was my abhorrence of slavery, and how sincerely I sympathized in the public alarm caused by the high-handed procedure of the claimant of Latimer and his abettors.
I returned to Lexington revived, invigorated, knowing that I had neglected no duty to the school, and utterly unconscious that I had violated any obligations, expressed or implied by my words, when I accepted the appointment. But a few days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. Mann, complaining of what I had done, informing me that I had given serious offence to several prominent gentlemen of Waltham, and had lost as a pupil a bright, fine girl who was intending to enter my school at the beginning of the next term. I replied stating the circumstances of the case just as I have done above,—that I had taken no time, withheld no attention, no thought, which was due to the school; adding that I did not believe any concealment of my sentiments, or other unreasonable concessions to the prejudices of the proslavery portion of the community, would conciliate them. But, as it seemed my understanding of my duties differed so much from his, I thought it best for me to retire from the position; and therefore I tendered him my resignation.This he would not communicate to the Board, and requested me to withdraw it. I did so. But scarcely a month had elapsed before it was announced in the newspapers that I was to deliver one in a course of antislavery lectures in Boston, without stating, as I had requested, that it would be givenduring my vacation. This brought a still more earnest remonstrance from Mr. Mann, showing how hard pressed he was on every side by the conflicting influences, in the midst of which he was striving so nobly to infuse into our common schools the right spirit, and to establish our system of public instruction upon the true principles of human development and culture. In this instance he was more easily satisfied that I had not departed from even the letter of our agreement, though I have no doubt he wished I would keep my antislavery zeal in abeyance through my vacations, as well as in term time.
I have given this recollection, that my readers may be more fully informed to what extent the so-called free States of our Union, not excepting Massachusetts, were permeated by the spirit of the slaveholders, or rather by the disposition to acquiesce in their most overbearing demands.
Let it not, however, for a moment be inferred, from what I have related, that Horace Mann was ever willing, for any consideration, to abandon the rights of the enslaved to the will of their oppressors, and suffer the dominion of slaveholders to be extended over the whole of our country. Far otherwise. A few years after the arrest of Latimer, Mr. Mann became a member of Congress; and there he uttered some of the boldest words for freedom and humanity ever heard in our Capitol. As he assured his constituents, in convention at Dedham on the 6th November, 1850, “with voice and vote, by expostulation and by remonstrance, by all means in hispower, to the full extent of his ability, he resisted the passage of all the laws” proposed in Mr. Clay’s Omnibus Bill, especially the one respecting fugitives from slavery. He emphatically declared that “he regarded the question of human freedom, with all the public and private consequences dependent upon it, both now and in all futurity, as first, foremost, chiefest among all the questions that have been before the government, or are likely to be before it.”
But in 1842 Mr. Mann could not foresee, nor be persuaded to apprehend, that the senators and representatives of the Southern States would become audacious enough in 1850 to demand that the people of the free States should do for them the work of slave-catchers and bloodhounds. And he was, at that time, so intent upon his great undertaking for the improvement of our common schools, that he thought it our duty to repress our interest in every other reform that was unpopular.
He who knew so well what is in man said: “The children of this world are wiser towards their generation than the children of light.” And certainly the slaveholders of our country and their partisans have been incomparably more vigilant in watching for whatever might affect the stability of their “peculiar institution,” and far more adroit in devising measures, and resolute in pressing them to the maintenance and extension ofSlavery, than their opponents have been in behalf ofLiberty.
Slave labor has ever been found wasteful and exhaustive of the soil from which it has taken the crops. Therefore, it used to be a common saying, “the Southern planter needs all the lands that join his estate.”Ample as was the territory of that portion of the United States in which slavery was established, the “barons of the South” early looked beyond their borders for new acquisitions of land. Partly to gratify their cupidity, the immense tract of land between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the valley of the Columbia River, was purchased by our Federal Government in 1803. Sixteen years afterwards Florida was given them. And then they began to turn their desiring eyes upon the rich and fertile plains of Texas. They gained admission to these by an artifice worthy of men who were accustomed to set at naught all the rights of humanity. In 1819 a man named Austin, then living in Missouri, went to Spain, represented to the King that the Roman Catholics in the United States were subjected to grievous persecutions, and supplicated for them an asylum in Mexico. His pious Majesty, deeply moved by this appeal, made a very large and gratuitous grant of land of the finest quality to Austin and his associates on this one condition, that they should introduce within a limited time a certain number of Roman Catholic settlers “of good moral character.” This condition was complied with, and thus our Southern slaveholders gained a foothold in Texas. They were diligent to confirm and extend their possession by the sale of immense quantities of land to intended settlers and to land jobbers throughout the Southern States. Thus commenced what erelong became “one of the most stupendous systems of bribery and corruption ever devised by man.”
In 1821 Mexico became independent of the Spanish crown, and soon after confirmed the royal grant to the settlers in her province of Texas. In 1824 the Mexican Government adopted some measures preparatory to the manumission of slaves, and in 1829 decreed the complete and immediate emancipation of all in bonds throughout their borders.
The vigilant Southerners were of course alarmed. A nation of freemen adjoining them on the Southwest! A door thrown wide open for the easy escape of fugitives from their tyrannous grasp!! Something must be done to avert the threatened evil. Mr. Benton, of Missouri, in 1829, broached the scheme of the annexation of Texas, and the re-establishment of slavery there. He urged this as obviously necessary: first, in order to prevent the easy and continual escape of their slaves into an adjoining free country, the government of which had persistently refused to return the fugitives; second, to open a new field for slave labor, which was rapidly exhausting the soil of the old States, and a new market for the slaves of those States which, no longer capable of producing large crops, might still be sustained in population and political power by becoming the nurseries of slaves for the immense territory, to be obtained from Mexico by purchase or force; third, by adding to the number of slave States, to provide new securities for the continued ascendency of the slaveholders’ influence in the government of the nation.
This last reason was probably the most momentous in the estimation of Southern statesmen. For the Texas, which they aimed to annex to our country, they foresaw might from time to time be divided and subdivided into seven States as large as New York, or into forty-three States as large as Massachusetts. Thus might the majority of the United States Senate be kept always ready to support any measure favorable to the interests of the slaveholding aristocracy, which had assumed the government of our Republic. Mr. Calhoun openly declared that “the measure of annexation is calculated and designed to uphold the institution of slavery, extend its influence, and secure its permanent duration.”
The devoted, indefatigable, self-sacrificing, Benjamin Lundy, was living in Missouri at the time when Mr.Benton first proposed the Texas scheme, and at once gave him battle, so far as he was permitted to do it, in the newspapers of that State. Afterwards on removing to Maryland and establishing there his own paper,The Genius of Universal Emancipation, he did all in his power to alarm the country. He went to Texas and, at great personal hazard, traversed that country and gathered a large amount of most important information, revealing the spirit of the settlers there and the designs of the projectors and managers of the scheme.
He did not labor in vain. The leading National Republican papers in the free States seconded his efforts. Especially my good friend and classmate David Lee Child, Esq., as early as 1829, when editor ofThe Massachusetts Journal, emphatically denounced the dismemberment and robbery of Mexico for the protection and perpetuation of slavery in the United States. And he manfully contended against that nefarious, execrable plot until further opposition was made useless, as we shall see, by the perpetration of the great iniquity in 1845. In 1835 Mr. Child addressed a number of carefully prepared letters to Mr. Edward S. Abdy, a philanthropic English gentleman, hoping thereby to awaken the attention of British Abolitionists. In 1836 he wrote nine or ten able articles on the impending evil, that were published in a Philadelphia paper. The next year he went to France and England. In Paris he addressed an elaborate memoir to the “Société pour l’Abolition d’Esclavage,” and in London he published in theEclectic Reviewa full exposition of the interest which the British nation ought to take in utterly extinguishing the slave-trade, and preventing the re-establishment of slavery in Texas, and the aggrandizement of the unprincipled slaveholding power in that country, larger than the whole of France. No two persons did so much to prevent the annexationof Texas as did Benjamin Lundy and David L. Child. They undoubtedly furnished the Hon. John Q. Adams with much of the information and some of the weapons that he plied with so much vigor on the floor of Congress; but, alas! as the event proved, with so little effect to prevent the great transgression which the Southern statesmen led our nation to commit. At first the indignation of the people in many of the free States at the proposed extension of the domain of slaveholders, and the confirmation of their ascendency in the government of our nation, seemed to be general, deep, and fervent. In 1838 the legislatures of Massachusetts, Ohio, and Rhode Island, with great unanimity, passed resolutions, earnestly and solemnly protesting against the annexation of Texas to our Union, and declaring that no act done, or compact made for that purpose, by the government of the United States would be binding on the States or the people.
For a while it seemed as if the villany was averted; but it was started again in 1843, and from that time until its consummation the protests of the above-named States were renewed with frequent repetition and, if possible, in still more emphatic language. No party within their borders ventured to take the side of the slaveholders. Connecticut and New Jersey at that time joined in the protest. Massachusetts of course took the lead. Meetings of the people, to declare their opposition to the proposed outrage upon the Union, were held in many of the principal towns of the State. At length, when the resolutions providing for the annexation were pending in both Houses of Congress, a great convention of her citizens met in Faneuil Hall, to make known their displeasure in a still more impressive tone and manner. The call to the meeting was signed by prominent men of all parties. It invited the cities and towns of the Commonwealthto send as many delegates to the Convention as they could legally send representatives to the General Court. This took place in January, 1845, only three months before my removal to Syracuse. I was then living in Lexington. A town-meeting was held there to respond to the call to Faneuil Hall, by the choice of two delegates. To my great surprise I was chosen one of the two, and General Chandler, high sheriff of the county, was the other. But unutterable was my astonishment when, on coming into the Convention, I found William Lloyd Garrison seated among the members, sent thither with other delegates by the votes of a large majority of the Tenth Ward of the city of Boston, where he resided. This did, indeed, betoken a marvellous change in the sentiments and feelings of the community. He, who a few years before had been dragged through the streets with a halter, by a mob of “gentlemen of property and standing,” clamoring for his immediate execution, was there in the “Cradle of Liberty,” member of a Convention that comprised the men of Massachusetts who were accustomed to represent, on important occasions, the intelligence, the patriotism, and weight of character of the Commonwealth.
Mr. Garrison addressed the Convention, and was listened to with respectful attention. I need not say that he spoke in a manner worthy of the place and the occasion, and in perfect consistency with his avowed principles. The chief business done by the Convention was the issuing of an elaborate, carefully prepared Address to the people of the United States, setting forth the reasons why Texas should not be annexed to our Republic, and why we ought not to submit to such a violation of the Constitution of our Union, and such an outrage upon the territory and institutions of an adjoining nation. Mr. Garrison published the document in hisLiberatorof the next week and said, “The Address of the Convention was, as a whole, a most forcible and eloquent document, worthy to be read of all men, and to be preserved to the latest posterity. It was adopted unanimously, after a disclaimer by Samuel J. May and myself of that portion of it which seeks to vindicate the United States Constitution from the charge of guaranteeing protection to slavery.” I was irresistibly impelled to ask that that part of the otherwise admirable Address might be omitted, because it would obliterate the most momentous lesson taught in the history of our nation,—namely, that the reluctant, indirect, inferential consent given by the framers of our Republic to the continuance of slavery in the land—not any deliberate explicit guaranty—had countenanced and sustained the friends of that “System of Iniquity,” from generation to generation, in violating the inalienable rights of millions of our fellow-beings, and had brought upon us, who are opposed to that system, the evils of political discord, national disgrace, and the fear of national disruption and ruin.
I urged the Convention to acknowledge distinctly that, “under the commonly received interpretation of the Constitution, we have hitherto been giving our countenance and support to the slaveholders in their outrages upon humanity, the fundamental rights of man,—an iniquity of which we will no longer be guilty. We have been roused from our insensibility to the wrongs we have wickedly consented should be inflicted upon others—”the least of the brethren“—by the discovery of the evils we have thereby brought upon ourselves, and the ruin that awaits our nation if we do not stay the iniquity where it is, and commence at once the work “meet for the repentance” that alone can save us,—the extermination of slavery from our borders.” “Let this Convention declare, that we certainly will not consent to the extensionof slavery,—no, not an inch. And if they urge to its consummation the annexation of Texas, in the way they propose, they will, by so doing, trample the Constitution under foot, set at naught some of its most important provisions, grossly violate the compact of our United States, and therefore absolve us from all obligations to respect it or live under it any longer.”
Mr. Garrison urged that the Address should be further amended by adding that, if our protest and remonstrance shall be disregarded, and Texas be annexed, then shall the Committee of the Convention call another at the same place; that then and there Massachusetts shall declare the union of these States dissolved, and invite all the States, that may be disposed, to reunite with her as a Republic based truly upon the grand principles of the Declaration of Independence. Although his motion was not carried by the Convention, it was received with great favor by a large portion of the members and other auditors; and he sat down amidst the most hearty bursts of applause.
It seemed as if the opposition of Massachusetts and other States to annexation was too strong, and the reasons urged against it were too weighty, to be disregarded by the legislators, the guardians of the nation. The contest waxed and waned throughout the whole of the year 1845. A petition signed by fifty thousand persons was sent to Congress at its opening in December of that year. But several prominent Whig members of Congress from the Southern States were found, in the end, to care more for the perpetuation of slavery than for their party or their principles. And certain members from the free States (one even from Massachusetts) were plied by considerations and alarmed by threats, which the Southern statesmen knew so well how to wield, until they gave way, and suffered the nefarious, the abominable, unconstitutional,disastrous deed to be done,—Texas to be annexed.
Late in the year 1845, when some of the hitherto opposers were evidently about to yield, Mr. D. L. Child, as a final effort against the consummation of the great iniquity, prepared an admirable article for theNew York Tribune, under the title,—“Taking Naboth’s Vineyard.” But alas! “considerations” had affected Mr. Greeley’s mind also, and he refused to publish it. Mr. Child then hired him to publish the article in a supplement to his paper, and paid him sixty dollars for the service. But instead of treating it as a supplement is wont to be treated, instead of distributing it coextensively with the principal issue, my friend tells me that Mr. Greeley, having supplied the members of the two Houses of Congress each with a copy, sent the residue of the edition to him. So strangely have political considerations, particularly those suggested by slaveholding statesmen, influenced the politicians of the North.
Other besides political considerations were no doubt plied to affect the votes of the representatives of the free States. It was reported at the time that no less than forty of them had their pockets stuffed with Texas scrip, which would become very valuable if annexation should be effected.
In April, 1845, I came to reside in Syracuse. Having visited the place twice before, I was pretty well acquainted with the characters of the people with whom I should be associated, and the rapidly growing importance of the town, owing to its central position and its staple product. During each of my visits I had delivered antislaverylectures to good audiences, and found quite a number of individuals here who had accepted the doctrines of the Immediate Abolitionists. Mr. Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Mr. Douglass, and others, had lectured in Syracuse several times, and, though at first insulted and repulsed, they had convinced so many people of the justice of their demands for the enslaved, and of the disastrous influence of the “peculiar institution” of our Southern States, that the community had come to respect somewhat the right of any who pleased to hold antislavery meetings. The minister and many of the members of the Orthodox Congregational Church, as well as the Unitarian, were decided Abolitionists, and several members of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches openly favored the great reform.
On the first of the following August, at the invitation of a large number of the citizens, I delivered an address on British West India Emancipation from the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church, and it was published by the request of a large number of the auditors,—half of them members of one or another of the orthodox sects.
On the 10th of the next month a large meeting was held in the Congregational Church to uphold the freedom of the press, and to protest against the alarming assault that had been made upon that palladium of our liberties in Kentucky, by the violent suppression ofThe True American,—a paper established and edited by Hon. Cassius M. Clay, to urge upon his fellow-citizens the self-evident truths of our Declaration of Independence, and their application to the colored population of that State. Our meeting was officered by some of the most prominent and highly respected citizens of Syracuse. And after several excellent speeches, a series of very pertinent, explicit, emphatic antislavery resolutions wasunanimously adopted. Thus was my great regret at being removed so far from the New England Abolitionists assuaged by the sympathy and co-operation of many of my new neighbors and fellow-citizens.
On another account I had reason to rejoice in my removal to this place. Here I found myself within a few miles of the residence of Gerrit Smith, and very soon was brought into an intimate acquaintance with that pre-eminent philanthropist. Here I must indulge myself in telling some of the much that I have known of the benefactions of this magnificent giver.
If I have been correctly informed, Mr. Smith obtained by inheritance from his father and by purchase from his fellow-heirs (besides much other property)seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of landlying in various parts of New York and of several other States. Erelong he became deeply impressed by a sense of his responsibility to God for the right use of such an immense portion of the earth’s surface,—the common heritage of man. He could not believe that it had been given him merely for his own gratification or aggrandizement. He received it as a trust committed to him for the benefit of others. He felt as a steward, who would have to give an account of the estate intrusted to his care. He contrasted his condition with that of others,—he the possessor of an amount of land which no one man could occupy and improve,—millions of his fellow-men, inhabitants of the same country, without a rood that they could call their own and fix upon it the humblest home. He profoundly pitied the landless, and earnestly set himself to consider the best way in which to bestow portions of his estate upon those who needed them most.
The father of Mr. Smith, like most other gentlemen of his day in New York, was a slaveholder until many years after the Revolution. Gerrit was accustomed toslavery through his childhood, and until he was old enough to judge for himself of its essential and terrible iniquity. He has repeatedly assured me that, although the bondage of his father’s negroes was of the mildest type, he early saw that slaveholding was egregiously wrong, and sympathized deeply with the enslaved. He rejoiced when the law of the State, in 1827, prohibited utterly its continuance, and immediately felt that all that could be should be done to repair the injuries it had inflicted upon those who had been subjected to it. He longed for the entire, immediate abolition of the great iniquity throughout the land. He early joined the Colonization Society, believing that the tendency of the plan, as well as the intention of many of its Southern patrons, was to effect the subversion and overthrow of that gigantic system of wickedness. Notwithstanding the exposures of its duplicity made by Mr. Garrison and Judge William Jay, he retained his confidence in the Colonization Society, and contributed generously to its funds, until near the close of the year 1835. At that time, as I have stated heretofore, Mr. Smith became fully convinced that the Society was opposed to the emancipation of our enslaved countrymen, unless followed by their expatriation. Thereupon he paid three thousand dollars, the balance due on his subscription to its funds, and withdrew forever from the Colonization Society, to which he had contributed at leastten thousanddollars.
This discovery that even these professed friends of our colored people, with whom he had been co-operating, were planning to get them out of the country, and proposed to make theirremovalthe condition of their release from slavery, roused Mr. Smith to new efforts and still more generous contributions of money for their relief. He not only joined the American and the New York AntislaverySocieties, and gave very largely to the funds of each,—in all not less thanfifty thousanddollars,—but, he set about endeavoring to get as many free colored men as possible settled upon lands and in homes of their own. Before the middle of 1847 he had given an average of forty acres apiece to three thousand colored men, in all one hundred and twenty thousand acres. He did me the honor to appoint me one of the almoners of this bounty, so I am not left merely to conjecture how much time and caution were put in requisition to insure as far as practicable the judicious bestowment of these parcels of land. The only conditions prescribed by the donor were, that the receivers of his acres should be known to be landless, strictly temperate and honest men.
Mr. Smith exerted himself in various ways to secure the blessings ofeducationto those of the proscribed race who were at liberty to receive them. He established and for a number of years maintained a school in Peterboro’, to which colored people came from far and near. He was an early and very liberal patron of Oneida Institute, the doors of which were ever open, without any respect to complexion or race. He gave to that school several thousand dollars, and upwards of three thousand acres in Vermont, besides land contracts upon which considerable sums were still due.
Mr. Smith did much more for Oberlin College, because of its hospitality to colored pupils and those of both sexes as well as all complexions. He gave to it outright between five and six thousand dollars, and twenty thousand acres of land in Virginia, from the sales of which the college must have derived more than fifty thousand dollars.
Moreover, the unsuccessful attempt to establish and maintain New York Central College at McGrawville, where colored and white young men and women werewell instructed together for a few years, cost Mr. Smith four or five thousand dollars.
But I cannot leave my readers to infer from my silence that his benefactions were confined wholly or mainly to colored persons. His gifts to other needy ones, and to institutions for their benefit, were more numerous and larger than he himself has been careful to record. Many of them have come to my knowledge, and I will so far depart from the main object of my book as to mention two.
In 1850 Mr. Smith called upon me and other friends to assist him in selecting five hundred poor white men, strictly temperate and honest, to each of whom he would give forty acres. And having learnt that some of his colored beneficiaries had been unable to raise means enough to remove with their families to the lands he had given them, he added ten dollars apiece to the portions that he gave to the white men.
Not satisfied with these bestowments, yearning over the poverty of the many who had little or nothing in a world where he had so much, and having given fifty dollars to each of a hundred and forty poor, worthy women, whose wants had been brought to his consideration, he again requested me and others to find out in our neighborhoods five hundred worthy widowed or single poor white women, to whom such a donation would be especially helpful, that he might have the pleasure of bestowing upon them also fifty dollars apiece. I need not say that these unasked, unexpected gifts carried great relief and joy wherever they were sent.
But such labors of love, although so grateful to his benevolent heart, werelabors. Then Mr. Smith’s sympathy with his suffering fellow-beings, whom he could not immediately relieve, and his lively interest and hearty co-operation in all moral and social reforms, wereunavoidably wearing. As might have been expected, his health was impaired and at length gave away. In the latter part of 1858 he had a serious attack of typhoid fever, which was followed by months of mental prostration. And after his recovery he was obliged for a long while to be sparing of himself, especially avoiding exciting scenes and subjects.
This incident in the life of my noble friend came upon him when he was planning a magnificent enterprise for the public good. His enlightened benevolence prompted him to devise an institution for the highest education of youths of both sexes, and all complexions and races. It was to be a university based upon the most advanced principles of intellectual and moral culture. He disclosed his intention to his intimate friend and legal adviser, the late Hon. Timothy Jenkins, of Oneida, and to myself, informing us that he meant to appropriate five hundred thousand dollars to its accomplishment. At his request I made known his purpose to the late Hon. Horace Mann, whom we regarded as the best adapted to develop the plan and preside over the execution of it, and who we thought would like to take charge of an educational institution that might from the beginning be ordered so much in accordance with his own enlarged ideas; but he promptly declined the invitation, being, as he said, too far committed to Antioch College.
Mr. Mann’s refusal deferred the undertaking, and no other one, who could be had, appearing to Mr. Smith to be just the person to whose conduct he should be willing to commit the university, it was postponed until his alarming sickness and protracted debility, and the threatening aspect of our national affairs, led him to dismiss the project altogether. So he distributed among his nephews and nieces the larger part of the money he had intended to expend as I have stated above.
Shortly after, our awful civil war broke out. Of this he could not be a silent or inactive spectator. He freely gave his money, his influence, himself, to the cause of his country in every way that a private citizen of infirm health could. He not only gave many thousand dollars to promote the enlistment of white soldiers in his town and county, but he offered to equip a whole regiment ofcoloredmen, if the governor of the State would put one in commission. But, alas! the chief magistrate of New York was not another John A. Andrew.
Mr. Smith contributed largely to the funds of the Sanitary Commission, and not a little to the Christian Commission; and he kindly cared for many families at home that had been called to part with fathers, husbands, or sons, on whom they were dependent.
So soon as the grand project of establishing schools for the freedmen was started, Mr. Smith entered into it with his wonted zeal and generosity. I have heard often of his donations larger or smaller, and have not a doubt that he has contributed as much as any other person in our country.
I need not say that it has indeed been a great benefit, as well as joy, to me to have been brought to know so intimately, and to co-operate so much as I have done, for more than twenty years, with such a philanthropist as Gerrit Smith.
Not alone by his bountiful gifts of land and money has he mightily helped the cause of our cruelly oppressed and despised countrymen. He has spoken often, and written abundantly in their behalf,—always faithfully, sometimes with exceeding power. I am sure there is not an individual in Central New York, I doubt if there be one in our whole country, unless he has been an agent or appointed lecturer of some Antislavery Society, who has attended so many antislavery meetings, has made somany antislavery speeches, and written and published so many antislavery letters, as has our honored and beloved brother of Peterboro’, always excepting, of course, those devotees, Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips. I shall have occasion hereafter to tell of one or more of his timely and most effective speeches.
Mr. Smith has entertained and freely expressed some opinions that have been peculiar to himself, and has done some things that have appeared eccentric; but I believe that he has never consciously done or said anything unfriendly to an oppressed or despised fellow-being, white or black.
The most serious obstacle to the progress of the antislavery cause was the conduct of the clergy and churches in our country. Perhaps it would be more proper to say the churches and the clergy, for it was only too obvious that, in the wrong course which they took, the shepherds were driven by the sheep. The influential members of the churches,—“the gentlemen of property and standing,”—still more the politicians, who “of course understood better than ministers the Constitution of the United States, and the guaranties that were given to slaveholders by the framers of our Union,”—these gentlemen, too important to be alienated, were permitted to direct the action of the churches, and the preaching of their pastors on this “delicate question,” “this exciting topic.” Consequently the histories of the several religious denominations in our country (with very small exceptions) evince, from the time of our Revolution, a continual decline of respect for the rights of colored persons, and of disapproval of their enslavement. In the early days of our Republic—until after 1808—all the religioussects in the land, I believe, gave more or less emphatic testimonies against enslaving fellow-men, especially against the African slave-trade. But after that accursed traffic was nominally abolished, the zeal of its opponents subsided (not very slowly) to acquiescence in the condition of those who had long been enslaved and their descendants. “They are used to it”; “they seem happy enough”; “unconscious of their degradation”; it was said. Then “the labor of slaves is indispensable to their owners, especially on the rich, virgin soils of the Southern States.” “It is sad,” said the semi-apologists, “but so it is. The condition of laboring people everywhere is hard, and we are by no means sure that the condition of the slaves is worse, if so bad as, that of many laborers elsewhere who are nominally free.” “Many masters,” it was added, “are very kind to their slaves; feed them and clothe them well, and never overwork them, unless it is absolutely necessary.” But the consciences of the doubting were quieted more than all by the plea that “in one respect certainly the condition of the enslaved Africans has been immensely improved by their transportation to our country. Here they are introduced to the knowledge of ‘the way of salvation’; here many of them become Christians. As Joseph through his bondage in Egypt was led to the highest position in that empire, next only to the king, so these poor, benighted heathen, by being brought in slavery to our land, may be led to become children of the King of kings, so wonderful are the ways of Divine Providence.” By these and similar palliations and apologies, the people of almost every religious sect at the South, and their Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian or Episcopalian brethren at the North, were led to overlook theessentialevil, the tremendous wrong of slavery, and to hope and trust that God would, in due time, by his inscrutable method, bring some inestimable good out of this great evil.
Accordingly, we find, on turning to the doings of the great ecclesiastical bodies of our country, that they have descended from their very distinct protests against the enslavement of men, in 1780, 1789, 1794, &c., to palliations of the “sum of all villanies,” as Wesley called it,—and apologies for it, and justifications of it, and explicit, biblical defences of it, until at length—after Mr. Garrison and his co-laborers arose, demanding for the slaves their inalienable right to liberty—the churches and ministers of all denominations (excepting the Freewill Baptists and Scotch Covenanters) gathered about the “Peculiar Institution” for itsprotection; and vehemently denounced as incendiaries, disunionists, infidels, all those who insisted upon its abolition.Q
This, I repeat, was the most serious obstacle to the progress of our antislavery reform. In 1830, and for several years afterwards, the influence of the clergy and the churches was paramount in our Northern, if not in the Southern communities; certainly it was second only to the love of money. The people generally, then, were wont to take for granted that what the ministers and church-members approved must be morally right, and what they so vehemently denounced must be morally wrong. Accordingly, the most violent conflicts we had, and the most outrageous mobs we encountered, were led on or instigated by persons professing to be religious.
If the clergy and churches have less influence over the people now than they had forty years ago, it must be in a great measure because the people find that they were wofully deceived by them as to the character of slavery, and misled to oppose its abolition, until the slaveholders, encouraged by their Northern abettors, dared to attempt the dissolution of our Union, and so brought on our latecivil war, in which hundreds of thousands of the people were killed, and an immense debt imposed upon this and succeeding generations.
In justice, however, to the professing Christians of our country, it should be recorded that very much the larger portions of our antislavery host were recruited from the churches of all denominations, though some persons who made no pretensions to a religious character rendered us signal services. It ought also to be stated that more of the antislavery lecturers, agents, and devoted laborers had been of theministerialprofession than of any other of the callings of men, in proportion to the numbers of each. Still, it cannot be denied that the most formidable opposition we had to contend against was that which was made by the ministers and churches and ecclesiastical authorities. When the true history of the antislavery conflict shall be fully written, and the sayings and doings of preachers, theological professors, editors of religious periodicals, and of Presbyteries, Associations, Conferences, and General Assemblies, shall be spread before the people in the light of our enlarged liberty, no one will fail to see that, practically, the worst enemies of truth, righteousness, and humanity were of those who professed to be the friends and followers of Christ. Hadtheybeen generally faithful and fearless in behalf of the oppressed, no other opponents would have dared to withstand the just demand for their immediate emancipation.
Mr. Garrison, who was and is by nature and education an unfeignedly religious man, felt that he ought to look first to the clergy and the professing Christians for sympathy, and should confidently expect their co-operation. Indeed, he knew that if they would heartily espouse the cause of our enslaved countrymen, he might, without unfaithfulness to them, retire to some printing-office, and get his living as he had been trained to do. His disappointment and astonishment were unspeakable when he found how blind and deaf and dumb the preachers of the Gospel were in view of the unparalleled iniquity of our nation, and the inestimable wrongs that were allowed to be inflicted upon millions of the people. It was as painful to him and his associates as it was necessary, to expose to the people the infidelity of their religious teachers and guides; to show them that, not only had the statesmen and politicians of our country become fearfully corrupted by consenting with slaveholders, but also the bishops, priests, ministers of religion. All, with few exceptions, had lost faith in the true and the right, and in the God of truth and righteousness. They were afraid to obey the Divine Law, and bowed rather to the commandments of men. They respected a compromise more than a principle, and trusted to what seemed politic rather than to that which was self-evidently right. “The wholeheadof our nation was sick, and the wholeheartwas faint. From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there seemed to be no soundness in it.” “Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom; we should have been like unto Gomorrah.”
It must have been observed by my readers that, in speaking above of the sympathy and co-operation of the Northern ministers and churches with their slaveholding brethren in the Southern States, I did not name Universalists and Unitarians among the guilty sects. This was because I reserved them for a separate, and the Unitarians for a more particular notice. Of the course pursuedby the Universalists I have known but little. There are very few churches of their denomination in any of the slaveholding States; in most of them, I believe, not one. They claimed the Rev. Theodore Clapp, of New Orleans, a preacher of distinguished ability, and in some respects a very estimable gentleman, but who was one of the most unblushing advocates of slavery in the country. In a sermon preached at New Orleans, April 15, 1838, he said: “The venerable patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others were all slaveholders. In all probability each possessed a greater number of bondmen and bondwomen than any planter now living in Louisiana or Mississippi.” “The same God who gave Abraham sunshine, air, rain, earth, flocks, herds, silver, and goldblessed him with a donative of slaves. Here we see God dealing in slaves, giving them to his favorite child,—a man of superlative worth, and as a reward for his eminent goodness.” These extracts are not an exaggerated specimen of the whole discourse. A few years afterwards, it was rumored that Mr. Clapp had essentially modified his opinions as above expressed. This rumor brought out an explanation inThe New Orleans Picayune(probably from himself), to the effect that, “Christian philanthropy does not require the immediate emancipation of slaves.” “Whilst one lives in a slave State, he is bound by Christianity to submit to its laws touching slavery.” “Christianity does not propose to release the obligations of slaves to their masters.” I am not informed that his Universalist brethren at the North ever passed any censure upon him for such misrepresentations of our Heavenly Father, and of the duty of men to their oppressed fellow-beings.
In commencing the discreditable account I must give of the proslavery conduct of the Unitarian denomination, I may as well record the fact, of which the mention of Rev. Theodore Clapp reminds me. Notwithstanding the utterance of such sentiments as I have just now quoted, none of which had been retracted or apologized for, a few years afterwards Mr. Clapp was specially invited by a committee of Boston Unitarians to attend their religious anniversaries; and his letter in reply was read in their principal meeting, where, perhaps, a thousand persons were present, including a large number of ministers and prominent laymen, without any remonstrance or rebuke to those who had invited him.
But before I proceed further with the disagreeable narrative, let me state, to the honor of the sect, that though a very small one in comparison with those called Orthodox (having at this day not more than three hundred and sixty ministers, and in 1853 only two hundred and seven), we Unitarians have given to the antislavery cause more preachers, writers, lecturers, agents, poets, than any other denomination in proportion to our numbers, if not more without that comparison. Of those Unitarian ministers no longer on earth, we hold in most grateful remembrance Dr. N. Worcester, Dr. Follen, Dr. Channing, Dr. S. Willard, Theodore Parker, John Pierpont, Dr. H. Ware, Jr., and A. H. Conant. Others, though less outspoken, were always explicitly on the side of the oppressed,—Dr. Lowell, Dr. C. Francis, Dr. E. B. Hall, G. F. Simmons, E. Q. Sewall, B. Whitman, N. A. Staples, S. Judd, B. Frost. Of those who are still in the body, we gratefully claim as fellow-laborers in the antislavery cause Drs. J. G. Palfrey, W. H. Furness, J.F. Clarke, T. T. Stone, J. Allen, G. W. Briggs, R. P. Stebbins, O. Stearns, and Rev. Messrs. S. May, Jr., C. Stetson, W. H. Channing, M. D. Conway, O. B. Frothingham, J. Parkman, Jr., J. T. Sargent, N. Hall, A. A. Livermore, J. L. Russell, J. H. Heywood, T. W. Higginson, R. W. Emerson, S. Longfellow, S. Johnson, F. Frothingham, W. H. Knapp, R. F. Wallcut, R. Collyer, E. B. Willson, W. P. Tilden, W. H. Fish, C. G. Ames, John Weiss, R. C. Waterston, T. J. Mumford, C. C. Shackford, F. W. Holland, E. Buckingham, C. C. Sewall, F. Tiffany, R. R. Shippen. All these are or were Unitarian preachers, and did service in the conflict. Many of them suffered obloquy, persecution, loss, because of their fidelity to the principles of impartial liberty. I may have forgotten some whose names should stand in this honored list. I have mentioned all whose services I remember to have witnessed or to have heard of. How small a portion of the whole number of our ministers during the last forty years!
The Unitarians as a body dealt with the question of slavery in any but an impartial, courageous, and Christian way. Continually in their public meetings the question was staved off and driven out, because of technical, formal, verbal difficulties which were of no real importance, and ought not to have caused a moment’s hesitation. Avowing among their distinctive doctrines, “Thefatherly characterof God as reflected in his Son Jesus Christ,” and “The brotherhood of man with man everywhere,” we had a right to expect from Unitarians a steadfast and unqualified protest against so unjust, tyrannical, and cruel a system as that of American slavery. And considering their position as a body, not entangled with any proslavery alliances, not hampered by any ecclesiastical organization, it does seem to me that they werepre-eminently guiltyin reference to theenslavement of the millions in our land with its attendant wrongs, cruelties, horrors. They, of all other sects, ought to have spoken boldly, as one man, forGod our Father, forJesus the all-loving Saviour and Elder Brother, and forHumanity, especially where it was outragedin the least of the brethren. But they did not. They refused to speak as a body, and censured, condemned, execrated their members who did speak faithfully for the down-trodden, and who co-operated with him whom a merciful Providence sent as the prophet of the reform, which alone could have saved our country from our late awful civil war. Let no honor be withheld from the individuals who were so prominent and noble exceptions to the general policy of the denomination,—the ministers whom I have named above, together with those faithful laymen, Samuel E. Sewall, Francis Jackson, David L. Child, Ellis Gray Loring, Edmund Quincy, A. Bronson Alcott, Dr. H. I. Bowditch, William I. Bowditch, with others; and those excellent women, Mrs. L. M. Child, Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, Mrs. Follen, Miss Cabot, Mrs. Mary May, Misses Weston, Misses Chapman, Miss Sargent, and more who should be named; let no honor be withheld from these and such as they were. But let the sad truth be plainly told, as a solemn warning to all coming generations, that even the Unitarians, as a body, were corrupted and morally paralyzed by our national consenting with slaveholders, even the Unitarians to whose avowed faith in the paternity of God, the brotherhood of all mankind, and the divinity of human nature, the enslavement of men should have been especially abhorrent. On a subsequent page I shall have occasion to tell of their most glaring dereliction of duty to the enslaved, and those who were ready to help them out of bondage. Meanwhile I must state some facts in support of my allegationsagainst the sect to which I belong and with which I shall labor for the dissemination of ourmost precious faithso long as life and strength remain.
In 1843 the subject of the slavery of millions in our land was brought before the American Unitarian Association by Rev. John Parkman, Jr. But it was not discussed. It was put aside as a matter about which there were serious differences of opinion among the members, and with which that body, therefore, had better not meddle.
Early in 1844 an address on the subject was sent from British Unitarians to their brethren in America. It was an able, affectionate, respectful appeal to us, signed by one hundred and eighty-five ministers. A meeting of the Unitarian clergy was held in Boston to consider and reply to it. But it seemed to be regarded by many, and was spoken of by some, as animpertinence. “Our British brethren,” it was said, “are interfering in a matter which is beset with peculiar difficulties in this country, about which they know little or nothing.” And my cousin, Rev. Samuel May, Jr., of Leicester, who had visited England the year before, was severely censured for having encouraged our brethren there thus to meddle. Here let me say, few have labored so diligently, faithfully, disinterestedly, as Mr. May has in the cause of the slaves. And no one of our denomination has taken so much pains to prevent the Unitarians from committing themselves to the wrong side, or failing to do their duty on the right side, of every question relating to slavery. For this fidelity he has received anything but the thanks of most of the brethren. Here and elsewhere I am bound to tell what I know of him, for owing to the similarity of our names, and the sameness of our connections with the Antislavery Societies, many ofhisgood words and deeds have been attributed tomeby those who do not know both of us.
At the Autumnal Unitarian Conference held at Worcester, Mass., October, 1842, he offered a series of resolutions, setting forth the great extent, the appalling evils, and fearful wickedness of slavery, and endeavored to bring the Conference to resolve: “That, as ministers and disciples of Jesus Christ, we feel bound to declare our solemn opinion, that the institution of slavery is radically and inherently opposite to his religion; that it ought to be immediately abandoned by all who profess to be Christians; and that we do affectionately admonish and entreat all who hold ‘the like precious faith’ with us, to free themselves at once from the guilt of sustaining this evil thing.” There was manifested a great unwillingness to express any opinion upon the subject, and the Conference adjourned without taking action upon it.
When in England, in the summer of 1843, Mr. May attended a large meeting of Unitarians. Having been invited to address them, and to speak particularly upon the subject of slavery in America, and of the attitude of our denomination towards the great iniquity, he did speak at considerable length. But he gave a very truthful and candid statement of the case as it then was. He set before his British hearers the influences which tended to mislead even the most kindly disposed in this country, and the obstacles and difficulties that beset the way of those who were most resolute in the cause of the enslaved. He acknowledged gratefully, generously, the important services which Dr. Follen, Dr. Channing, and other Unitarian ministers and laymen had rendered. But he was obliged, as a man of truth, to confess that our denomination as a whole had been recreant to their duty. And he encouraged our English brethren to address a letter of fraternal counsel and entreaty to us, not doubting that such a communication would be gratefully received by the American Unitarians as comingfrom those who had had to contend against a similar system of iniquity, and had helped their national government to abolish it. But I have already stated how utterly disappointed he was in the result.
Soon after his return from England, at the annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association in May, 1844, he again brought up the subject, and earnestly endeavored, with others, to induce that body to vote that slaveholding was anti-republican, inhuman, and unchristian. It led to a protracted discussion of two days or more, which resulted in nothing else than a vote of censure passed upon the Unitarian Church in Savannah, Georgia, because they refused to receive the services of the Rev. Mr. Motte, sent to them by the Executive Committee of the Association, having heard that he had protested in a sermon against the wrongs inflicted upon the colored people both at the North and South.
Henry H. Fuller, of Boston, strenuously opposed the introduction of the subject of slavery to the consideration of the Association in any way. “We of the North have nothing to do with it. It is a system of labor established in some of our sister States by their highest legislative authority. It was consented to by the framers of our National Constitution, and guaranties given for its protection,” &c., &c. After much more of the same sort, he gave way for Mr. May to offer the following resolutions, instead of those by which he had called up thedebate:—
1. “Resolved, That the American Unitarian Association, desirous that the pecuniary or other aid rendered by them from time to time to individuals and societies in the slaveholding sections of our country should not be misunderstood or misconstrued, do hereby declare their conviction that the institution of slavery, as existing in this country, is contrary to the will of God, to the Gospel of Christ (especially to the viewswhichweentertain of it), to the rights of man, and to every principle of justice and humanity; and in a spirit not of dictation, but of friendly remonstrance and entreaty, would call upon those whom they may address, as believers in one God and Father of all, to bear a faithful testimony against slavery.2. “Resolved, That the Executive Committee be, and they hereby are, requested to transmit a copy of the preceding resolution to each of our auxiliary Associations, and to such societies in the slaveholding sections of the country as may from time to time receive pecuniary aid from this Association.”
1. “Resolved, That the American Unitarian Association, desirous that the pecuniary or other aid rendered by them from time to time to individuals and societies in the slaveholding sections of our country should not be misunderstood or misconstrued, do hereby declare their conviction that the institution of slavery, as existing in this country, is contrary to the will of God, to the Gospel of Christ (especially to the viewswhichweentertain of it), to the rights of man, and to every principle of justice and humanity; and in a spirit not of dictation, but of friendly remonstrance and entreaty, would call upon those whom they may address, as believers in one God and Father of all, to bear a faithful testimony against slavery.
2. “Resolved, That the Executive Committee be, and they hereby are, requested to transmit a copy of the preceding resolution to each of our auxiliary Associations, and to such societies in the slaveholding sections of the country as may from time to time receive pecuniary aid from this Association.”
Dr. J. H. Morison objected to any action by the meeting. “1st. Because we shall thereby lose our influence at the South. 2d. Because we shall convert the Association into an Abolition Society. 3d. Because it would be a dastardly proceeding, at our distance from the scene of danger, to utter sentiments hostile to slavery, with which the Southern Unitarian societies might be identified.”
Dr. E. S. Gannett said that the Association never contemplated any action on slavery. It was contrary to the objects of its formation. It would also be an invasion of the rights of conscience,—being the setting up of a creed with reference to this subject. Moreover, he said, it would be injurious to the slaves. Ten years ago their bondage was much lighter than at present. And then it would be to identify ourselves with the Abolitionists of the free States, whom he most unsparingly and vehemently condemned, and said there was little comparative need for us to go South to rebuke an evil, when we had such a “hellish spirit alive and active here in our very midst, even in New England.”
Hon. S. C. Phillips, of Salem, was not in favor of such action as the resolutions proposed, but still thought we should take some action, and very properly in connection with this case of the Savannah church we should present,as we fairly might, our views on the whole subject of slavery. He said there had been great error in our so long silence on the subject. Our leading policy had been to avoid it, and much injury, and the prevention of much good, had been the consequence. “The time has come,” said he, “when no man can be silent everywhere, and at all times, on this subject without guilt.”
Mr. Phillips offered a series of resolutions instead of Mr. May’s.
Rev. Mr. Lunt, of Quincy, opposed any action, and spoke with great severity of the Abolitionists, whom he charged with being bent on the dissolution of our Union and also the subversion of Christianity.
My cousin vindicated the Abolitionists from Mr. Lunt’s charges, reminding him and the audience of the ground which Dr. Channing and other true friends of our country had taken respecting disunion, in case of the annexation of Texas. Mr. May showed that the Abolitionists had opposed only a false and corrupt church, not the Church of Christ, and still less Christianity itself, in which they gloried as the basis and impelling principle of their movement.
The resolutions were ably supported by the mover, Mr. Phillips, and four other laymen, and by eleven ministers, and finally passed by a majority of forty to fifteen, and were in part asfollows:—
After a preamble, setting forth the offensive conduct of the Savannahchurch,—
“Resolved, That, viewing the institution of slavery in the light of Christianity, we cannot fail to perceive that it conflicts with the natural rights of human beings as the equal children of a common Father, and that it subverts the fundamental principle of human brotherhood.“Resolved, In the necessary effects of slavery upon the personal and social condition, and upon the moral andreligious character of all affected by it, we perceive an accumulation of evils over which Christianity must weep, against which Christianity should remonstrate, and for the removal of which Christianity appeals to the hearts and consciences of all disciples of Jesus to do what they can by their prayers, by the indulgence and expression of their sympathy, and by the unremitting and undisguised exertion of whatever moral and religious influence they may possess.”
“Resolved, That, viewing the institution of slavery in the light of Christianity, we cannot fail to perceive that it conflicts with the natural rights of human beings as the equal children of a common Father, and that it subverts the fundamental principle of human brotherhood.
“Resolved, In the necessary effects of slavery upon the personal and social condition, and upon the moral andreligious character of all affected by it, we perceive an accumulation of evils over which Christianity must weep, against which Christianity should remonstrate, and for the removal of which Christianity appeals to the hearts and consciences of all disciples of Jesus to do what they can by their prayers, by the indulgence and expression of their sympathy, and by the unremitting and undisguised exertion of whatever moral and religious influence they may possess.”
Then follows a resolution that it should not be considered, in any part of our country, a disqualification of any minister or missionary for the performance of the appropriate duties of his office, that he is known to have expressed antislavery sentiments, and approving the course of the Executive Committee in withdrawing their assistance from the church in Savannah because of their rejection of Rev. Mr. Motte.
The discussions at that meeting were seasoned with many vehement denunciations of the Abolitionists, uttered by several prominent Unitarian ministers. William L. Garrison was denounced as one “instigated by a diabolical spirit.” “The Abolitionists,” it was said, “were aiming to subvert Christianity, to extirpate it from the earth.” Dr. Francis Parkman, of Boston, loudly declared that “no letter or resolution condemning slavery should ever go forth from the American Unitarian Association while he was a member of it.” And he highly commended a New England captain, of whom we had then recently heard, because “he put his ship about and carried back to the master a slave whom he had found secreted on board the vessel.” Dr. Parkman openly and personally denounced those who introduced the subject, as “born to plague the Association.” And he, together with Dr. G. Putnam, and other prominent ministers, spoke of Dr. Channing’s earnestness in the antislavery cause as a great weakness.
Later in the same year, 1845, at a meeting of Unitarian ministers in Boston, “A Protest against American Slavery,” prepared I suppose by Rev. Caleb Stetson, John T. Sargent, and Samuel May, Jr., was adopted and sent out to be circulated for signatures. It received the names of one hundred and seventy-three ministers, of whom one hundred and fifty-three were of New England. It was publicly stated at the time that about eighty, comprising many of the most influential ministers of the denomination, refused to sign the Protest. Among the recusants were the Rev. Drs. Gannett, Dewey, Young, Parkman, Lothrop, G. Putnam, Lamson, N. Frothingham, S. Barrett, E. Peabody, G. E. Ellis, Bartol, Morison, and Lunt.
Of those who did sign the Protest, I am sorry to add not a large proportion can with truth be said to have been faithful to the solemn pledge they therein gave, as follows: “We on our part do hereby pledge ourselves, before God and our brethren, never to be weary in laboring in the cause of human rights and freedom, until slavery shall be abolished and every slave set free.”
Once or twice afterwards Mr. May pressed the subject upon the Unitarian Association, but with little better results. Subsequent events, however, have shown, too plainly to be denied or doubted, that it would have been more creditable to themselves, and far better for our country, if “the older and wiser” men of our denomination had listened to his counsels and followed his noble example. Alas, our land is filled with testimonies written in blood, that if the ministers of religion had only been fearless and faithful in declaring the impartial love of the Heavenly Father for the children of men of all complexions, and their equal, inalienable rights, which would assuredly be vindicated by Divine justice, our late civil war would have been averted!
In 1847 Mr. May was appointedGeneral Agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and continued in that responsible and laborious office until after the abolition of slavery in 1865. He was instant in season and out of season, and in co-operation with his devoted assistant, Rev. R. F. Wallcut, rendered services the amount and value of which cannot easily be estimated.
The awful iniquity of our nation culminated in the enactment of theFugitive Slave Law, which, as Edmund Quincy said at the time, stood, as it now stands, “a piece of diabolical ingenuity, for the accomplishment of a devilish purpose,without a rivalamong all the tyrannical enactments or edicts of servile parliaments or despotic monarchs.” It was the essential article of a political conglomerate, prepared by the Arch Compromiser, Henry Clay, which was called the Omnibus Bill; some parts of which, he vainly thought, would conciliate the Northern States to the reception of the whole. It provided for the admission of California into our Union, with an antislavery Constitution; for the organization of two other Territories without the prohibition of slavery; the extension of the southwestern boundary of Texas to the Rio Grande; the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, with the guaranty of slavery to its inhabitants until they should see fit to abolish it; and the perpetuity of the interstate slave-trade; but infinitely worse than any of these objectionable parts were the stringent measures it proposed for the recovery of fugitives from slavery. Stripped of the verbiage of legal enactments, the provisions of this abominable law were asfollows:—
1. The claimant of any person who had escaped, or should escape from slavery in any State or Territory, might apply to any Court of Record or Judge thereof, describe the fugitive and make satisfactory proof that he or she owed service or labor to said claimant. Thereupon the Court, or in vacation the Judge, was required to cause a record to be made of the description of the alleged fugitive, and of the proof of his or her enslavement, and give an attested copy of that record to the claimant; which copy was required to be received by any court, judge, or commissioner in any other State or Territory of the Union, as full and conclusive evidence that the person claimed, and so described, was a fugitive from slavery and owed service to the claimant, and therefore should be delivered up.Any marshal or deputy who should refuse to arrest such a fugitive was to be finedone thousand dollars. And if, after having arrested him or her, the fugitive should in any way escape from his custody, the marshal or deputy should be held liable to pay to the claimant the value of the runaway.And any person who should in any way prevent the claimant or his agent or assistants from getting possession of the fugitive, by hiding him or helping him to escape, or by open opposition to his would-be captor,—such offender was to be finedone thousand dollarsfor violating thisrighteouslaw; and be liable to pay anotherthousand dollarsto the claimant of the fugitive.
1. The claimant of any person who had escaped, or should escape from slavery in any State or Territory, might apply to any Court of Record or Judge thereof, describe the fugitive and make satisfactory proof that he or she owed service or labor to said claimant. Thereupon the Court, or in vacation the Judge, was required to cause a record to be made of the description of the alleged fugitive, and of the proof of his or her enslavement, and give an attested copy of that record to the claimant; which copy was required to be received by any court, judge, or commissioner in any other State or Territory of the Union, as full and conclusive evidence that the person claimed, and so described, was a fugitive from slavery and owed service to the claimant, and therefore should be delivered up.
Any marshal or deputy who should refuse to arrest such a fugitive was to be finedone thousand dollars. And if, after having arrested him or her, the fugitive should in any way escape from his custody, the marshal or deputy should be held liable to pay to the claimant the value of the runaway.
And any person who should in any way prevent the claimant or his agent or assistants from getting possession of the fugitive, by hiding him or helping him to escape, or by open opposition to his would-be captor,—such offender was to be finedone thousand dollarsfor violating thisrighteouslaw; and be liable to pay anotherthousand dollarsto the claimant of the fugitive.
In order that every facility should be afforded toour slaveholding brethrento retake their fleeing property, many commissioners were ordered to be appointed in all suitable places (in addition to the courts and judges) whose especial duty it should be to attend to cases that might arise under the Fugitive Slave Law. And each commissioner or judge, who found the accused guilty of having fled from bondage, was to receive a fee of ten dollars. But if the proof adduced by the claimant did not satisfy him that the accused was a fugitive from his service, then the judge or commissioner was to receive onlyfive dollars. Thus bribery was by this law superadded to every other device to enable the American slaveholder to recover his escaped slave, and return him or her to a still more cruel bondage.
Nor was this all that was atrociously wicked in the enactment. It provided further that, while the claimant or his agent might give testimony or make affidavit to the enslavement of the arrested one, “in no trial or hearing under the Act was the testimony of the alleged fugitive to be admitted in evidence” that he was not the one that his claimant called him, or that he had been emancipated by the will of a former owner, or by the purchase of his liberty.
If there be among the laws of any other nation, in any other part and in any other age of the world, an enactment, a decree, a ukase, so profoundly wicked, so ingeniously cruel, as this law which the Congress of the United States passed in 1850,—the very middle of the nineteenth century,—I beg to be informed of it, for I confess at the close of this recital I feel as if, in my shame and misery, I should be relieved for a moment by bad company.
At first it may seem strange that Mr. Clay should have supposed the people of the Northern States would conform to the requirements of such a law; would consent that their States should be made the hunting-grounds, and themselves the bloodhounds of Southern oppressors in pursuit of their fleeing slaves. And yet was he not justified in this low opinion of us by the conduct of many of those who were elected to be representatives of the opinions and wishes of the majority of our communities? The execrable bill could not have become a law, without the concurrence of Northern members in both Houses of Congress; for, in both, the larger number were from the non-slaveholding States. Yet it wasenacted by the votes of twenty-seven of the Senators against only twelve; and by one hundred and nine of the Representatives opposed by seventy-five. And many of these recreants to the fundamental principles of justice and humanity had led Mr. Clay, and the Southern politicians generally, to expect such votes as they gave by the sentiments they uttered in the preceding debates.