Anti-Slavery History

Rev. William GoodellWelcome to the 1852 book, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A History of the Great Struggle In Both Hemispheres; With A View of The Slavery Question In The United States, by Rev. William Goodell (1792-1878).
Prior to the 1861-1865 War, there were a number of abolitionists who opposed slavery. Nowadays, their reasons for doing so are generally unknown.
This series of websites under construction plans to educate by making the text of major abolitionist writings (1700-1860) accessible.
Examples of such writers include Samuel Sewall (1700), L. C. J. Mansfield (1772), S. G. Tucker (1795), Bishop Samuel Horsley (1806), Rev. John Rankin (1823), Salmon P. Chase (1837), Gerrit Smith (1839), George Mellen (1841), Alvan Stewart (1845), Lysander Spooner (1845), Benjamin Shaw (1846), Rev. William Patton (1846), Horace Mann (1849), Joel Tiffany (1849), Rev. John G. Fee (1851), Harriet B. Stowe (1853), Abraham Lincoln (1854), Edward C. Rogers (1855), Rev. George B. Cheever (1857), Frederick Douglass (March 1860), and Charles Sumner (June 1860).
Whether or not you agree with their legal and moral position, it is at least a good idea to know what their views were!
Goodell has an overview of the 'slavery is unconstitutional' analyses at pp 475-477.
Goodell discusses, in slavery context, many aspects of U.S. history, as impacted by slavery:
This site in the series reprints an 1852 book by Rev. William Goodell (1792-1878), pastor of a congregation at Honeoye, New York, and Liberty Party candidate for President.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A History of the
Great Struggle In Both Hemispheres;
With A View of The Slavery Question
In The United States
by
Rev. William Goodell
(New York: William Harned Pub, 1852)

CONTENTS

      CHAPTER
     OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS BOOKviii
I. Magnitude and necessity of the struggle   1
II. Origin of the modern Slave Trade and Slavery   4
III. Slavery and the Slave Trade in the British Colonies
in North America, now the United States
 10
IV. Early testimonies against Slavery and the Slave Trade 27
V. Action of religious bodies against the Slave Trade and Slavery,
commencing before the American Revolution, and the results
32
VI. Of Slavery and its abolition in England44
VII. Of efforts for abolishing the African Slave Trade53
VIII. Period of the American Revolution,
and the establishment of an independent Government
69
IX. Era of forming the Federal Constitution 81

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X. Of direct anti-Slavery efforts, including ecclesiastical action, from the
period of the Revolution to the close of the last century; and
the abolition of Slavery in the Northern States
91
XI. Decline of the spirit of Liberty, and growth of Slavery, since the
Revolution; their causes and early manifestations
118
XII. Position of the American Churches respecting Slavery, during the first
half of the Nineteenth Century.—I. Methodist Episcopal Church
143
XIII. Position of the American Churches, &c. (continued)
—II. The Presbyterian Church
151
XIV. Position of the American Churches, &c. (continued).—
III. Congregationalists
163
             
XV. Position of the American Churches, &c. (continued).—IV. Baptists183
XVI. Position of the American Churches, &c. (continued).
—V. The Protestant Episcopal Church
191
XVII. Position of the American Churches, &c. (continued).
—VI. Other Sects—General View
195
XVIII. Position of the American Churches, &c. (continued)—
VII. Voluntary Associations connected with Several Sects—Conclusion
202
XIX. Action of the Federal Government, to the close
of the first Presidential Administration
220
XX. Subsequent action of the Federal Government—Colored people
—Slave territory—New Slave States—Federal District
237
XXI. Further action of the Federal Government—
American Slave Trade—African Slave Trade
247

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XXII. Further action of the Federal Government—
Continued subserviency of the national diplomacy
to the demands of the Slaveholders
263
XXIII. Further action of the Federal Government—
Hayti—Florida—Seminole War
268
XXIV. Further action of the Federal Government—
Acquisition of Texas
272
XXV. Conspiracy for the conquest of Mexico, and the
disrupture of the Federal Union in 1806—Controlling
power of the Conspirators over the Federal Judiciary
280
XXVI. Further action of the Federal Government—The war with
Mexico—Acquisition of California, New Mexico, and Utah
287
XXVII. Further action of the Federal Government—
Result of the Conquest of California—
Its admission as a Free State—"The Compromise"
306
XVIII. Further action of the Federal Government—General
policy, and political economy, controlled by Slavery
319
XXIX. Colonization Society341
XXX. Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies353
XXXI. Distinctive features of American Slavery377
XXXII. The present Anti-Slavery Agitation in America—
Its causes, origin, and character
382
XXXIII. Opposition to Abolitionists—Its elements—
Its nature and methods
400
XXXIV. Attempts to silence the discussion by authority—
State Legislatures—Federal Executive—U. S. Mails—
"Gag" Rules in Congress—Right of petition
408

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XXXV. Opposition from leading Clergy and Ecclesiastical bodies425
XXXVI. Persecutions of Abolitionists434
XXXVII. Of the elements and occasions of division among Abolitionists447
XXXVIII. Divisions in 1839-40457
XXXIX. Organized political action—Liberty party—
Liberty League—Free Soil Party		468
XL. Anti-Slavery Church agitation—New
Anti-Slavery Churches and Missionary bodies
487
XLI. The Anti-Slavery Societies—
Their relation to political and Church action
509
XLII. The American Anti-Slavery Society—
Its further course on political action
517
XLIII. Second revolution in the position and policy of
the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1844
526
XLIV. Further difficulties in the American Anti-Slavery Society529
XLV. Political course of the American Anti-Slavery Society,
since its revolution of 1844
532
XLVI. Course of Mr. Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery
Society and its members, since the division of 1840,
in respect to Anti-Slavery Church action
541
XLVII. General estimate of the American Anti-Slavery
Society and its labors, since 1840
555

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XLVIII. Review of these divisions and their results. 559
XLIX. Different views of the Constitution and of the legality of Slavery563
L. The Slavery question in America—and the Crisis—What shall be done?583

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OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS BOOK.

THE chief design of this publication is to furnish, in one volume, an abstract, for convenient reference, of a great mass of historical information concerning slavery and the struggle against it (in this country and Great Britain), that is now to be found only by looking over several volumes, numerous pamphlets, and the newspapers and scattered documents of the last twenty years. This abstract, at the same time, was intended to have a bearing on the now-pending slave question in the United States, and to be so selected and arranged, as to facilitate a presentation of that question towards the close of the volume. It was designed to be as documentary in its character as the nature of an abstract would permit. Hence, it consists much in extracts, quotations, and abbreviated paragraphs, preserving as much as possible the significant portions, without giving the documents entire, which would have required volumes.

The writer was aware that the attempt to cover so much ground in one volume, was a hazardous one. It could not be a small volume; and most readers, as well as some critics, will instantly pronounce a work "too diffuse" that exceeds three or four hundred pages, without stopping to consider whether or no it presents the substance of several such volumes on distinct points of history. They would find no fault with one book of that size that should only tell the story of the abolition of the African slave trade, nor with another that should only relate the measures that led to the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, and the results of those labors; nor with another that should contain the story of Texas and the Mexican war. But if a writer should present the substance of all three of these histories, and five or six more in addition, of equal magnitude and importance, in a volume of six hundred pages, they would think him unpardonably diffuse; and the farther this condensing process was carried, in one volume, the more would he fall under censure for diffuseness.

The

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difficulty would not end here. The same readers, or others, on referring to the parts of the history that most interested them, would fail of obtaining all the minute information they expected, or would wonder at the omission of many things that they considered important. Whether, on the whole, the work will be found too much or too little condensed, is uncertain. If the latter, we may hereafter furnish a cheaper abridgment of it: if the former, the present edition may hereafter take the name of an abridgment to the more copious work that may be written, and for which there are ample materials at hand.

The writer has not wholly excluded from this volume all notice of the principles that underlie history, nor of the workings of moral cause and effect. Nor has he suppressed his own sentiments, through fear of giving offense. He hopes he has not been uncandid or discourteous to others.

No reasonable pains have been spared to secure accuracy in dates and facts; and yet it is quite impossible to be certain of freedom from errors. In some cases, the best authorities disagree. Apparent or real discrepancies and mistakes are incident to all histories. Biblical critics are not always agreed in respect to the true solution of apparent discrepancies in the inspired writers of history. In preparing this book, several instances have occurred in which good authorities have seemed to make irreconcilable statements, but which have, nevertheless, with much labor, been reconciled. Few of the books or pamphlets used by us have been free from real or apparent mistakes that have perplexed us. We hope we shall not be accounted careless of our facts, if some of them should be found inaccurate, or should be, by somebody, considered so. We trust the book is as free from mistakes as most other works of the kind. We are certain of having laboriously collected and carefully examined the statements presented, but, like others who compile histories, we cannot be held responsible for the mistakes of the best authorities extant.

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SLAVERY AND FREEDOM.

CHAPTER I.

MAGNITUDE AND NECESSITY OF THE STRUGGLE.

A World's Question—The Problem of the Present Age.

THE slave question in America is only one phase of the more comprehensive question of human freedom that now begins to agitate the civilized world, and that presents the grand problem of the present age.

Such a question must be met, must be discussed, must be decided, and decided correctly, before the nations of the earth can be enfranchised, and before this anomalous republic can either secure her own liberties, or find permanent repose.

In a nation whose declaration of self-evident and inalienable human rights has been hailed as the watchword for an universal struggle against despotic governments;—a nation whose support of human chattelhood has armed the world's despots with their most plausible pleas against republican institutions, it is in vain to expect that the discussion of such incongruities can be smothered, or the adjustment of them much longer postponed. In any age of the world, such expectations would be disappointed—in the present age, the indulgence of them can be little short of insanity—must be consummate folly. The question whether such a nation, at such a period of the world's progress, shall continue to tolerate human chattelhood, becomes, of necessity, a world's question. Universal human nature is knocking vehemently at our doors, and cannot be silenced. As well might we attempt to hush the thun-

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ders of our own Niagara, or annul the laws by which the elements are governed.

Is this the language of enthusiasm? Ask counsel of existing facts. When a few voices were raised on this subject nof many years since, the whole community, with few exceptions, north and south, demanded that the agitation should cease. But has it ceased? Or can it be made to cease? Most forward and even clamorous in the discussion, are those who, even now, have scarcely ceased to proscribe discussion! Our halls of legislation, that were to have been sealed against the discussion, nevertheless ring with it, to the exclusion of the most favorite topics! And those who were determined that the public mails should not transmit the agitating debate, are now gorging those mails to the full with their own eager debates! Not an important public measure can be proposed that is not found to involve, in some way, the much dreaded but ever present question. Can we not see the hand of an all-controlling Providence in all this? Can we not hear in it the voice of Nature and of Nature's God, demanding and ordaining a discussion of the slave question?

The history of Christian civilization is marked with successive eras of advancement, each one of which is distinguished by some particular phase or feature of human progress, and commonly involves the agitation of some great practical problem, the solution of which occupies the minds of thinking men until it is definitely settled. This is seldom effected without long and earnest discussions, sometimes protracted during one or two entire generations, and not completed until more enlarged views have displaced the prejudices and corrected the errors that preceded them. The responsibilities, as well as the dangers and the privileges of living in such an age of the world—stormy, perhaps, yet progressive—are not commonly appreciated as they should be. Not to have understood, correctly, the wants, and especially the grand problem of such an age, of the age one lives in, not to have taken the position, and to have exerted the influence demanded by the crisis, were equivalent to having wasted, or worse than wasted,

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one's probationary existence, so far as its bearing on general human progress is concerned; and this, too, at a time when one life is to be reckoned of more weight and significance than, perhaps, many lives, dreamed away in any of those dead calms in this world's history, in which little or nothing is done or devised for the elevation of the species.

Such an age of agitation and of corresponding responsibility is the present. The grand problem of the age is that of a more extended and better defined freedom, especially for the very lowest and most degraded portion of the species. Ours is an advanced period, in the struggle for human freedom. It is not to the contest of the barons against an unlimited autocrat that we are summoned—nor to the struggle of the middle classes against the barons; nor to the question of taxation without representation; nor to the question of religious liberty, for those who are regarded as human beings.

The demands of liberty strike deeper, now, and reach the ground tier of humanity, hid under the rubbish of centuries of degradation—classes who have scarcely been thought of, as human, and. to whom no Magna Charta of Runny Meade, no organization of a House of Commons, no Declaration of Independence, have brought even a tithe or a foretaste of their promised blessings. The houseless, the landless, the homeless—the operatives of Manchester and Birmingham, the tenantry of Ireland, the Russian serfs,— above all, the North American Slaves—what have Christian civilization and democratic liberty and equality in reserve for these? And what are the responsibilities of Christians, of philanthropists, of statesmen, and of republican citizens, in respect to them? These questions to be properly decided, must be studied, must be understood.

We single out, for present inquiry, the North American slave. Who is he? What is his condition? How came he there? Who is responsible for his continuance in his present condition? What has been done, and what remains to be done in respect to him?

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CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF THE MODERN SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY.

The Portuguese—The Spaniards—Charles V.—Ferdinand V.—The Hollanders, the Danes, the French, the English—Queen Elizabeth, John Hawkins, Louis XIII. of France—Act of George II.—Prohibition of Violence—Barbarity of the Traffic—Statistics—Imports into Jamaica.

"In the year 1442, while the Portuguese, under the encouragement of their celebrated Prince Henry, were exploring the coast of Africa, Anthony Gonzalez, who, two years before, had seized some Moors, near Cape Badajor, was, by that prince, ordered to carry his prisoners back to Africa. He landed them at Rio del Oro, and received from the Moors in exchange, ten blacks and a quantity of gold dust, with which he returned to Lisbon."—Edwards' History of the West Indies, Vol. II., p. 37.

"This new kind of commerce, appearing to be a profitable speculation, others, of the same nation, soon embarked in it."—Godwin's Lectures on Slavery, p. 184. (American Edition.)

THE Spaniards, on taking possession of the West India islands, compelled the native Charibs (or Caribs,) to work the mines of Hispaniola.

Ed. Note: See analysis of this situation by a historian in Seville, Spain, Consuelo Varela, La Caida de Cristobal Colon (The Fall of Christopher Columbus), cited by Graham Keeley, "Columbus exposed as iron-fisted tyrant who tortured his slaves" (The Independent, 21 July 2006). See also
  • Benjamin Keen, "The Legacy of Bartolomé de Las Casas," in Essays in the Intellectual History of Colonial Latin America (Westview, 1998)
  • Varela's Brevisima Relacion De La Destruicion De Las Indias, with Bartolome De Las Casas (January 1999).

    • In these and other exhausting labors, that feeble race became well nigh extinct,* and their place was supplied by importations of a hardier race from Africa. The infamy of having first projected this expedient has commonly rested on [Bartolomé de] Las Casas [1474-1566], a priest much hated among the colonists for his uncompromising opposition to the ill treatment of the Charibs, "whom he is represented as seeking to
    ____________
    *"Down to the dust the Charib people passed,
    Like autumn foliage withering in the blast;
    A whole race sunk beneath the oppressor's rod,
    And left a blank among the works of God."
                                                      Montgomery's West Indies.

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    relieve at the expense of the Africans.* With more probability, the crime has been charged on Chievres and the Flemish nobility, who obtained a monopoly of the traffic from [Emperor] Charles V., and sold it for 25,000 ducats to some Genoese merchants, who first commenced, in a regular form, the commerce in slaves that, with little intermission, has been continued ever since.

    "As early as 1503," according to [Thomas] Clarkson, "a few slaves were sent by the Portuguese to the Spanish colonies."

    In 1511, Ferdinand V. of Spain, is said to have permitted an importation of Negroes into the colonies. But while Cardinal Ximenes held the reins of government, and until the accession of Charles V. of Spain, he steadily refused to allow such a detestable commerce. Vide Godwin, p. 184.

    It was in 1517 that Charles V. (who was sovereign of Germany, and of the Netherlands) granted the exclusive patent before mentioned, to one or more of the Flemish nobility, to import four thousand Africans annually, for the supply of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Eico.
    "This great prince was not, in all probability, aware of the dreadful evils attending this horrible traffic, nor of the crying injustice of permitting it; for in 1542, when he made a code of laws for his Indian subjects, he liberated all the Negroes, and by a word put an end to their slavery. When, however, he resigned his crown and retired into a monastery, and his minister of mercy, Pedro de la Gasca, returned to Spain, the imperious tyrants of these new dominions returned to their former practices, and fastened the yoke on the suffering and unresisting Negroes."—Godwin, p. 185. See also Clarkson's History, pp. 28, 29.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Clarkson, Thomas [1760-1846], The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (New York: J.S. Taylor, 1836; and London: J.W. Parker, 1839).

    The slave trade was prosecuted by the Portuguese, the
    ____________
    *Robertson, in his History of America, takes up and somewhat exaggerates this statement, on the authority of Herrero, an enemy of Las Casas, whose charge was first published 35 years after the philanthropist's decease. The previous writers make no mention of Las Casas in such a connection, though avowedly his enemies. The writings of Las Casas abound in denunciations against slavery; and from the language of Herrera himself, it would not conclusively appear that Las Casas designed, to have the Africans imported by compulsion, or held as slaves.—Vide the Abbé Grégoire's Defence of Las CasasThe West Indies." See also Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, page 29; and preface to Clarkson's Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.

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    Spaniards, the Hollanders, the Danes, the French, the British, the Anglo-Americans, including the colonists of New England.

    BEGINNING OF THE SLAVE TRADE BY THE ENGLISH.
    "The first importation of Slaves from Africa by Englishmen was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562. This great princess seems, on the very commencement of the trade, to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a religious scruple concerning it, and, indeed, to have revolted at the very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most unjustifable means might be made use of, to procure the persons of the natives of Africa.

    And in what light she would have viewed any acts of this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact; that when Captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins [1532-1595] returned from his first voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent for him, and, as we learn from Hill's Naval History, expressed her concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that 'it would be detestable, and call down Heaven's vengeance upon the undertakers.' Captain Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect.

    But he did not keep his word [Details], for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the inhabitants, and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words:

    'Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of crimes, will sometime be the destruction of all who encourage it.'

    That the trade should have been suffered to continue under such a princess [Queen Elizabeth], and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described to have uttered, can only be attributed to the pains taken by those concerned to keep her ignorant of the truth."—Clarkson, p. 30.

    It may be proper to notice the view taken of this beginning of the slave trade and slavery in the British dominions by a writer decidedly averse to the abolition of the slave trade:

    "In regard to Hawkins, himself, he was, I admit, a murderer and a robber. His avowed purpose, in sailing to Guinea, was to take, by stratagem or force, and carry away the unsuspecting natives, in the view of selling them as slaves to the people of Hispaniola. In this pursuit, his object was present profit, and his employment and pastime devastation and murder."—Edwards' History of the West Indies, Vol. II., pp. 43-4.

    Ed. Note: See analysis of this situation by Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), pp 13-14.

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    This authentic account of the origin of British Colonial slavery is worthy of profound study, and, in connection with other facts that may be presented, suggests thoughts that may have a decisive bearing upon the now pending slave question in America, in more aspects than one.

    It is common to caste all the odium of slavery upon our fathers, and upon the governments that first permitted the slave trade. Could the dead rise up and plead their own cause, they might perhaps retort that they had no idea of lending their sanction to the system of American slavery, as now practiced. Queen Elizabeth permitted the Africans to be carried into the colonies with their own consent, but they were taken and are held by force. Louis XIII. of France was very uneasy, when about to sanction the importation of Africans into his colonies; until assured that they were to be educated in the Christian religion.* What would he say to the laws that forbid their Christian education? And what would he think of the statement that the colored people of America "must be colonized back to Africa" (a country they never saw), before they can be christianized?

    If one monarch who authorized the importation of Africans into his American Colonies directed the liberation of the victims when he learned by what means and for what purposes they were imported—if another consented to the importation only on condition that they should be educated in the Christian religion—and if another only permitted their importation with their own free consent, (involving, by fair implication, the condition of their voluntary and compensated labor,) the question may arise whether the importation originally authorized was indeed that African slave trade that actually took place, and which history describes. And this may suggest the question how far the usages of slavery, as they now exist, can be said to have been authorized or legalized by the permission of such importations as were contemplated by those monarchs. Mr. [Thomas] Clarkson, who seems to have devoted much attention to the details of this history, considers them of the
    ____________
    *Vide Clarkson.
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    utmost importance to a right understanding of the question respecting the legality of the slave trade as it existed while he was laboring for its suppression. He demands whether "the African slave trade ever would have been permitted to exist, but for the ignorance of those in authority concerning it." And he affirms that the "trade began in piracy, and was continued upon the principles of force." (Pg. 81.)

    The connivance, rather than the "ignorance of those in authority," appears to have sheltered this execrable traffic, after the times of Elizabeth. Even then it was rather tolerated than directly authorized. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find any act of the British Parliament by which the slave trade was explicitly legalized. The enactments seem to insinuate, or faintly imply, that the negroes imported are property, yet they studiously avoid to acknowledge them distinctly, or even by necessary implication, as such. In the act of 10 William III., chap. 26, entitled an "Act to settle the trade to Africa," the negroes are not called slaves. In the act of 23 George II, chap. 81 (1749-50), entitled "An Act for extending and improving the trade to Africa," it was provided (sect. 29) that "no commander or master of any ship trading to Africa shall by fraud, force, or violence, or by any other indirect practice whatsoever, take on board, or carry away from the coast of Africa, any negro or native of the said country, or commit, or suffer to be committed, any violence on the natives, to the prejudice of said trade."*

    The 28th section of the same act did indeed recognize the holding of "slaves" at the station of the Trading Company in Africa, yet it gave no authority to transport slaves to America or elsewhere. Undoubtedly the secret design was to stimulate the slave trade. But a sense of shame, and a consciousness of wrong-doing, prevented the Parliament from employing the terms which, upon a strict legal construction, could give to that feature of the African trade the shelter of valid law. [Vide Spooner, pp. 29-35.]
    ____________
    *Mr. Pitt's view of this statute, and of the legality of the slave trade, will be presented in the proper place.

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    Thus stealthily and almost imperceptibly was the idea of legalized human chattelhood introduced. Thus ambiguous and tortuous were the enactments under cover of which the slave traffic was prosecuted.

    A graphic and truthful description of that traffic [the slave trade] we present in the language of Hon. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts.*
    "One wants the plain, sinewy, Saxon tongue, to tell of deeds that should have shamed devils. Great Britain was the mother. Her American Colonies were the daughter. The mother lusted for gold. To get it, she made partnership with robbery and death. Shackles, chains, and weapons for human butchery, were her outfit in trade. She made Africa her hunting ground. She made its people her prey, and the unwilling colonies her market-place. She broke into the Ethiop's home, as a wolf into a sheep-fold at midnight. She set the continent aflame, that she might seize the affrighted inhabitants as they ran shrieking from their blazing hamlets. The aged and the infant she left to the vultures, but the strong men and the strong women she drove, scourged and bleeding, to the shore. Packed and stowed like merchandise between unventilated decks, so close that the tempest without could not ruffle the pestilential air within, the voyage was begun.

    "Once a day the hatches were opened, to receive food and disgorge the dead. Thousands and thousands of corpses which she plunged into the ocean from the decks of her slave ships, she counted only as the tare of her commerce. The blue monsters of the deep became familiar with her pathway; and, not more remorseless than she, they shared her plunder. At length the accursed vessel reached the foreign shore. And there, the monsters of the land, fiercer and feller than any that roam the watery plains, rewarded the robber by purchasing his spoils. For more than a century did the madness of this traffic rage.† During all those years the clock of eternity never counted out a minute that did not witness the cruel death by treachery or violence of some father or mother of Africa."

    "Mr. Edwards says that from 1700 to 1786, the number imported into Jamaica was 610,000. ' I say this,' he observes, 'on sufficient evidence, having in my possession lists of all the entries.' 'The total import into all the British Colonies from 1680 to 1786 may be put down at 2,130,000.' In 1771, which he considers the most flourishing period of the trade, there sailed from England to the coast of Africa, one hundred and ninety-two ships, provided for the importation of 47,146 negroes. 'And now,' he observes, (1793) 'the whole number annually exported from Africa by all the European powers, is 74,000, of which 38,000 are imported by the British."—Godwin, page 187.

    ____________
    *Speech in the House of Representatives of the U. S., June 30, 1848.

    †It has not ceased. It rages with violence still, as will be shown in another chapter.

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    CHAPTER III.

    SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
    IN NORTH AMERICA, NOW THE UNITED STATES.

    Slavers from New England—Slavery in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
    Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas—Condition of the Slaves—Testimony of
    Wesley and Whiteneld—Inquiry into the legal foundation of Colonial Slavery—
    Complaints of the Colonies against the King of Great Britain, for favoring the
    traffic—Paradoxes—Absence of English Statutes legalizing Slavery—
    Common Law—Lord Mansfield—Colonial Charters—Slavery introduced in
    absence of Colonial enactments—Date and circumstances of introduction of
    Slavery into Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia—Prohibition of Slavery
    in Georgia, (Gen.Ogelthorpe)—Dates of early enactments concerning
    Slavery in Virginia, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland—
    Loose and vague character of these enactments.

    SOON after the settlement of the British North American Colonies, Africans were imported into them, and sold and held as slaves. Of the extent of these importations we have met with no authenticated statistics. The whole number of slaves in these states, by the first census under the present Constitution, 1790, was 697,697.

    The colonies now known as the Southern or slave states, on the Atlantic coast, received the principal share of these importations. The middle and eastern colonies received comparatively few, and these chiefly for domestic servants in the cities, and in the families of professional gentlemen in the interior. As the soil was not adapted to slave culture, and was owned in small farms by a hardy race of agriculturists, inured to habits of labor, the process of cultivation by slaves never obtained, particularly in New England, except to a very limited extent. In New York, first settled by the Dutch, in New Jersey, aud perhaps in some portions of Pennsyl-

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    vania, the labor of slaves was introduced to a greater extent than further east. But in the importation of slaves for the southern colonies, the merchants of the New England seaports competed with those of New York and the South. They appear, indeed, to have outstripped them, and to have almost monopolized, at one time, the immense profits of that lucrative but detestable trade. Boston, Salem, and Newburyport, in Massachusetts, and Newport and Bristol in Rhode Island, amassed, in the persons of a few of their citizens, vast sums of this rapidly acquired and ill gotten wealth, which, in many instances, quite as rapidly and very remarkably, took to itself wings and flew away. In some cases, however, it remained, and formed the basis of the capital of some prominent mercantile houses, almost or quite down to the present time.

    Citizens, honored with high posts of office in the State and Federal Governments, have owed their rank in society, and their political elevation, to the wealth thus acquired, sometimes thus acquired by themselves, since the colonies became states, and while the traffic was tolerated as it was, till the year 1808. Among these was a late Senator in Congress, from Rhode Island, James D'Wolf, who, at the time, was reputed to be the owner of a large slave plantation in Cuba. Such incidents may convey some idea of the influence of the traffic in New England, even to the present day. The former seats of the traffic are still the centers of influences hostile to the agitation of the slave question.

    The servitude of domestic slaves, in families, is known to be less intolerable than that of slaves on plantations. From this consideration, and from the limited extent of slavery in the northern and eastern colonies, it may be inferred that the slavery of that region was of a comparatively mild type. And yet we find sufficient evidence of its affinity, in many respects, with the present American slave system. Not even in Connecticut was there any recognition of the legality and validity of a slave's marriage.*   A master's inadvertent con-
    ____________
    * According to Judge Reeve, however, as quoted, by Stroud, the murder of a slave was held in Connecticut, to be the same as the murder of a freeman. The

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    sent to the marriage of his female slave to a free colored man, was held to be equivalent to her manumission, because
    ____________
    master could be sued by the slave for immoderate chastisement; the slave could hold property, in the character of a devisee or legatee, and the master could not take away such property, or might be sued for it on behalf of the slave by his next friend.—Reeve's Law of Baron and Femme, &c., 340-1; Stroud, p. 24.

    In Massachusetts, too, "if the master was guilty of a cruel or unreasonable castigation of the slave, he was liable to be punished for a breach of the peace, and, I believe, the slave was allowed to demand sureties of the peace against a violent and barbarous master."—Opinion of Chief Justice Parsons, case of Winchendon vs. Hatfield, Mass Rep., 127-8, cited by Stroud, p. 23.

    In Massachusetts colony, in 1641, the following law was enacted: "It is ordered by this court and the authority thereof, that there shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity among us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just war, (such) as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us, and such shall have the liberties and Christian usage which the law of GOD established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require."—See General Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts Bay, chap. 12, sect. 2; Stroud, p. 23.

    Whether this act prohibited, or whether it authorized such slavery as afterwards actually existed in the colony of Massachusetts, might not be very difficult to determine. It certainly prohibited such slavery as now exists at the South.

    There is little doubt that slavery was introduced into Boston, by one Maverick, previous to its settlement by George Winthrop and others, in 1630. There is no evidence that Maverick was a Puritan. The Boston colonists, generally, were not Puritans, and ought never to have been confounded with them by historians. The Puritans, with all their defects and errors on this and other subjects, "made a wide distinction between those who were stolen and seized by the violence of the slavers, and those who" (as they supposed) "had been made captives in a lawful war, or were reduced to servitude for their crimes by a judicial sentence."

    This sentiment became current in the New England colonies. "An express law was made, prohibiting the buying and selling of the former, while the latter were to have the same privileges as were allowed by the laws of Moses." "In November, 1646, the General Court of Massachusetts passed a law against man-stealing, making it a capital crime. They also ordered that two Africans, forcibly brought into the colony, should be sent home at the public expense.—[Felt's Annals of Salem.] The other colonies soon passed a law similar to that of Massachusetts. The Connecticut Code, prepared in 1650, has the following section: 'If any man stealeth man or mankinde, he shall be put to death.' The New Haven Code, printed in London in 1656, contains a similar article: 'If any person steale a man, or mankind, that person shall surely be put to death.' The Plymouth laws probably made manstealing a capital offence."—[See first Annual Report of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society, penned by the late John Farmer, Esq., and published in the the "Monthly Emancipator'' for August, 1835.]

    In all this we see the stealthy and deceptive introduction of chattel slavery. The early laws did not authorize, but prohibited such slavery as was actually introduced! The sin, the shame, and the curse would have been excluded, had it been clearly understood that slavery is malum in se.

    The action of the colony of RHODE ISLAND and PROVIDENCE Plantations, eleven years later than that in Massachusetts, was more direct and explicit. The following

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    a slave could not be married, and because a husband could claim the assistance of his wife.

    A still more discreditable illustration was previously furnished by a rural pastor in the same colony, the owner of a male and female slave. Having admitted them both to the communion of his church (Congregational) as members, and having himself officially pronounced them husband and wife, he afterwards separated them forever by the sale of the wife to a distant purchaser, in despite of the entreaties of both wife and husband. And no court of law, no church, no ecclesiastical body interposed, or even censured.

    In Massachusetts, another Congregational pastor, of high reputation, is said to have reared up a female slave in his family in a state of almost absolute heathenism, and never attempted to teach her the alphabet.

    When it is remembered that a large portion of the ministers of religion in New England were among the slave
    ____________
    document is said to be the first act of any government designed to prevent enslaving the negroes. It is copied from the records of the colony:

    " At a general court held at Warwick, the 13th of May, 1652.
    "Whereas, there ia a common course practised among Englishmen, to buy negroes to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventing of such practices among us, let it be ordered., That no black mankind or white being shall be forced, by covenant, bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assignees longer than ten years, or until they come to be twenty-four years of ago, if they be taken in under fourteen, from the time of their coming within the liberties of this colony; at the end or term of ten years to set them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them go free or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end they may be enslaved to othere for a longer time, he or they shall forfeit to the colony forty pounds."

    To the credit of the members that enacted this law, we subjoin their names from the record:
    "The general officers were, John Smith, president; Thomas OIney, general assistant, from Providence; Samuel Gorton, from Warwick; John Green, general recorder; Randal Holden, treasurer; Hugh Bewett, general sergeant.

    "The commissioners were from Providence—Robert Williams, Gregory Dexter, Richard Waterman, Thomas Harris, William Wickenden, and Hugh Bewett; from Warwick—Samuel Gorton, John "Wickes, John Smith, Randal Holden, John Green, jr., and Ezekiel Holliman."

    The prevalence of slavery and the briskness of the slave trade in Rhode Island, long after the enactment of this law (which does not appear to have ever been repealed), furnishes another illustration of the fact that slavery grew up in the colonies in violation of law.

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    holding class of the community during the colonial state of the country, and many of them still later, that this was within fifty or sixty years of the beginning of the anti-slavery agitation in 1832, and that many of the present ministers of New England are the sons and most of them the successors, of slave holding ministers, it cannot reasonably be doubted that that untoward circumstance has had a bearing upon the position of the present generation of ministers in New England, in respect to the agitation of the subject, and especially in respect to the doctrine of the inherent sinfulness of slave holding.

    A similar remark might be made, with perhaps greater force, in respect to New Jersey, and, to a greater or less extent, in respect to a great part of the middle states. The beginning of the present agitation, in fact, found slavery existing, to a considerable extent, in New Jersey, and the influence of that fact has been seen and felt, wherever the slave question has been discussed, in this country.*

    Slavery in the now Atlantic slave states received, substantially, its present complexion during the colonial period. The most important enactments on the subject bear date previous to the Declaration of Independence.

    John Wesley [1703-1791], who visited this country during this period, characterizes "American slavery" as "the vilest that ever saw the sun."

    Ed. Note: See also
  • John Wesley, Thoughts Upon Slavery, 3rd ed (London: R. Hawkes, 1774)
  • Prof. Warren Thomas Smith, John Wesley and Slavery (Nashville: Abingdon
    Press, 1986) (details Wesley's "systematic investigation of and
    condemnation of the slave trade . . . to end one form of human
    suffering"; reprints Wesley's book at pp 121-148).

    • George Whitefield, who travelled and preached extensively in the colonies, has drawn a vivid picture of the treatment of slaves at that period. This testimony, it should be remembered, is that of a devout man, whose type of piety is not exposed to the suspicion of tending to magnify, unduly, (as some are supposed to do) the physical privations and sufferings of slaves. Nor was he misled into any exaggeration by having imbibed the sentiment of the inherent and necessary criminality of slaveholding. Such a testimony is too important
    ____________
    *The Biblical defences of slaveholding, sent forth from the seat of the Theological Seminary at Princeton, took the lead of any thing of that description originating farther South.

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    to be omitted in this place. In a "Letter to the inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina," in 1739, he writes as follows:

    "As I lately passed through your provinces on my way hither, I was sensibly touched with a fellow-feeling for the miseries of the poor negroes. Whether it be lawful for Christians to buy slaves, and thereby encourage the nations from whom they are bought to be at perpetual war with each other, I shall not take upon me to determine.

    "Sure I am it is sinful, when they have bought them, to use them as bad as though they were brutes, nay worse; and whatever particular exceptions there may be (as I would charitably hope there are some), I fear the generality of you, who own negroes, are liable to such a charge; for your slaves, I believe, work as hard, if not harder, than the horses whereon you ride.

    "These, after they have done their work, are fed, and taken proper care of; but many negroes, when wearied with labor in your plantations, have been obliged to grind their corn, after their return home. Your dogs are caressed and fondled at your table, but your slaves, who are frequently styled dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege. They are scarce permitted to pick up the crumbs which fall from their masters table.

    "Not to mention what numbers have been given up to the inhuman usage of task-masters, who, by their unrelenting scourges, have plowed their backs, and made long furrows, and, at length, brought them even unto death.

    "When passing along, I have viewed your plantations cleared and cultivated, many spacious houses built, and the owners of them faring sumptuously every day, my blood has frequently almost run cold within me, to consider how many of your slaves had neither convenient food to eat, nor proper raiment to put on, notwithstanding most of the comforts you enjoy were solely owing to their indefatigable labors."

    In tracing the origin, progress, and history of American slavery, now claiming the high sanction and sacred guaranties of our Constitution and laws, and wielding both state and national governments for its support, it is important to note down with distinctness and precision all those facts of the history that may servo to throw any light upon the rise and growth of those high claims, and the methods that have been employed to swell them into their present magnitude, to give them their present hold upon the public mind, and upon the politics, the legislation, and the jurisprudence of the country.

    Equally interesting will it be to trace, if we can, the process by which the murderous and piratical depredations of John

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    Hawkins, upon the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, scarcely three centuries ago, have been made to give not only legal validity, but biblical authority and sanction to the imbruting of three millions of native-born Americans, of all hues, the descendants of all the nations of Europe, as well as of the African tribes.

    We pause, therefore, to inquire on what authority, divine or human, the North American colonies of Great Britain were inundated with a population of slaves? Was it the precedent of Gonzalez, the alleged recommendation of Las Casas, the importunate rapacity of Chievres, the permission of Ferdinand, the patent of Charles V., that gave legality to these proceedings? Was it the guarded and hesitant assent of Queen Elizabeth? Was it the treachery and perjury of Hawkins? Was it the ambiguity of the Act of Parliament "for extending and improving the trade to Africa," but forbidding "any violence to the natives," and imposing a petty fine upon any commander who, "by fraud, force, or violence, or any other indirect practice whatsoever," should "take on board or carry away from the coast of Africa, any Negro, or native of said country?"

    And what was done by the colonial authorities to authorize the traffic?
    "The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, presented to the throne the most humble and suppliant petitions, praying for the abolition of the trade. The colonial legislatures passed laws against it. But their petitions were spurned from the throne. Their laws were vetoed by their Governors."-Hon. Horace Mann. Speech in Congress, June 30, 1848.

    In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, by Mr. Jefferson, this charge against the King of Great Britain is thus stated:
    "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep a market where men

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    should be bought and sold, he has at length prostituted his negative for suppressing any legislative attempt to prohibit and restrain this execrable commerce."

    This paragraph was objected to by the delegation from Georgia, and it was accordingly expunged from the document.

    A bundle of incongruities here present themselves, attesting the monstrous and anomalous character of the usages in question. The British Government, that had never dared, in the face of British Common Law, to attempt legalizing, directly and unequivocally, the slave traffic, interposed, it would seem, to prevent the colonies from suppressing it. The colonies that, (as will be shown,) had transcended and even outraged their constitutional charters by their iniquitous slave code, are found petitioning and attempting to legislate against the slave trade! Slave-holding republicans stigmatizing a monarch as a tyrant because he had permitted them to be supplied with the subjects of their own tyranny! A revolutionary Congress compelled or consenting to strike out the most weighty item in the list of offences that characterized their repudiated king as a tyrant!

    Whatever solution may be made of such paradoxes, or whatever may be inferred from them, they furnish a slippery and intricate labyrinth for slave-holders in search of their sacred and vested rights, the legal sanctions and the constitutional guaranties of their peculiar immunities, the very foundations of which were laid in piracy and crime.

    Thus much in respect to the colonial slave trade, the foundation of colonial slavery. We inquire next respecting such facts of history, whatever they may be, as shall afford information concerning the authority, either divine or human, by which the colonists held slaves, and the colonial legislatures, (that attempted the suppression of the slave trade as criminal,) enacted their slave laws.

    We are entering, here, upon no process of argument. We are only recording indisputable facts, without which our historical sketches would be unfaithful and incomplete. We

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    know of nothing so sacred in the claims of slavery as could warrant the suppression, of important historical facts.

    One of those facts is, that there were no English statute laws, prior to the American Revolution, authorizing the holding of slaves, either in England or in the American colonies. None such, at least that we know of, have ever been alleged to exist.

    Another fact is, that the common law of England was incompatible with slavery, and neither recognized nor permitted its existence.

    Another fact is, that in the year 1772, [in Somerset v Stewart] the Court of King's Bench, Lord Mansfield presiding, affirmed, in respect to England, the legal facts above stated, and decided that there neither then was, nor ever had been, any legal slavery in England.

    Another fact is, that the colonial charters, authorizing the colonial Legislatures to enact laws, gave no license to slavery, and contained the general proviso, that the laws of the colonies should "not be repugnant or contrary, but as nearly as circumstances would allow, conformable to the laws, statutes, and rights of our kingdom of England."*

    Another fact is, that when slavery was first introduced into the Anglo-American colonies, and for some time afterwards, there were no colonial enactments that authorized the holding of slaves, or defined the relation and condition of slavery. The practice of slave-holding grew up and was tolerated without law, till at length it acquired power to control legislation and wield it in favor of slavery.

    Another fact is, that when enactments were passed upon the subject, they assumed the existence of slavery, without so defining who were or might be slaves, as to enable any slave-master at the present day to prove that his slaves are held in virtue of any of the colonial enactments.

    Another fact is, that the authority of the colonial "charters,
    ____________
    *The charters of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, as well as of Pennsylvania and the New England colonies, were essentially alike in this particular.—Spooner, p. 24.

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    during their continuance, and the general authority of the common law, prior to the Revolution, have been recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States."*

    These important historical facts should be borne in mind, pondered, and used, when there is occasion for them, by all who wish to oppose slavery, or to understand the relation of slave-holding to the laws and institutions of the country.

    The landing of the founders of New England, at Plymouth, was in 1620. The first settlement in Virginia, at Jamestown, was in 1607. The charter to Lord Baltimore, of Maryland, was granted in 1632. The charter to William Penn, of Pennsylvania, in 1681. North Carolina began to be settled about 1650. South Carolina, about 1670, and Georgia in 1733.

    Virginia was the first of the colonies that introduced slavery. Such an event was a natural consequence of the character and position of the first inhabitants.
    "Of the one hundred and five persons on the list of emigrants destined to remain, there were no men with families,—there were but twelve laborers, and very few mechanics. The rest were composed of gentlemen of fortune, and of persons of no occupation,—mostly of idle and dissolute habits—who had been tempted to join the expedition through curiosity or the hope of gain; a company but poorly calculated to plant an agricultural State in a wilderness."—[Marcius] Willson's Am. Hist. [(NY: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co, 1846)], p. 162.

    New emigrants arrived in 1609, "most of whom were profligate and disorderly persons, who had been sent off to escape a worse destiny at home.''—Ib. p. 166.

    "In the month of August, 1620, a Dutch man-of-war entered James River and landed twenty negroes for sale. This was the commencement of negro slavery in the colonies."—Ib. p. 169.

    At this time "there were very few women in the colony"—"Ninety women of reputable character" were soon after sent over, and the colonists purchased them fur wives, "the price of a wife rising from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco."—Ib. p. 170.

    Though these were not held as slaves, yet the state of society indicated by these historical incidents, illustrate the moral and social position of the colonists, at the time they com-
    ____________
    *[Town of Pawlet v Daniel Clark, et al], 9 Cranch's U. S. Reports, 332-3 [13 US 292, 332-333; 3 L Ed 735, 749-750 (10 March 1815)], as quoted in "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery," by Lysander Spooner, pp. 25-6.

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    menced the practice of slave-holding. And, so far as law was concerned, there was no more legal authority or sanction, at that time, in Virginia, for the holding of negroes in slavery, than there was for making slaves of the white women they purchased. And the incident of purchasing wives shows that the mere act of purchasing human beings (of which mention is made in the Scriptures,) does not, of necessity, involve the ideas of chattelhood, or of forced servitude: no, not even in Virginia!*
          About the year 1671, Sir John Yeamans was appointed governor of South Carolina. "From Barbadoes he brought a number of African slaves, and South Carolina was, from the first, essentially, a planting State, with slave labor."— Willson's Am. Hist. p. 256.

    The first settlement of Georgia was commenced under auspices decidedly hostile to slavery. Gen. James Oglethorpe, a member of the British Parliament, "conceived the idea of opening for the poor of his own country, and for the persecuted protestants of all nations, an asylum in America." Having obtained a grant from the king, he landed at Savannah with 120 emigrants, and commenced his settlement in 1733. The Trustees strictly prohibited slavery, and "de-
    ____________
    *Another fact, illustrative of the social and moral influences under which slavery grew up and. entrenched itself in Virginia, deserves notice.

    The following were the views of Sir William Berkeley, a royal Governor of Virginia, on the subject of popular education. In a letter descriptive of the state of that province, some years after the Restoration, he says:

    "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought heresy and disobedience and sects into the world, and printing divulges them, and commits libels against the government. God keep us from both !"

    This must have been since the year 1660, the era of the "Restoration" of Charles II., or nearly half a century after the lawless introduction of slavery into the colony. And it is among the archives of this dark period of Virginian brutality, sensualism, ignorance, lawlessness, despotism, servility, and semi-barbarism—in a community without wives, or with wives purchased like negroes with tobacco, without printing presses or free schools for more than half a century, and no prospect of them in future—here it is that our learned civilians and erudite theologians, in gowns and spectacles, are reverently searching for the credentials of the "peculiar institution," with its sacred legal rights and Bible guaranties! Worthy successors of Sir William Berkeley! Accomplished expounders of his law, and of his gospel!—"God keep us from both!"

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    clared it to be not only immoral, but contrary to the laws of England."—Willson's Am. Hist., p. 262.
          Unhappily—"Most of those who first came over were unaccustomed to habits of labor." (Ib. 262.) "The Colony did not prosper," and some of the colonists began to "complain that they were prohibited the use of slave-labor.

          "The regulations of the trustees began to be evaded, and the laws against slavery were not rigidly enforced. At first, slaves from South Carolina were hired for short periods; then, for a hundred years, or during life, and a sum equal to the value of the negro paid in advance; and finally, slavers for Africa sailed directly from Savannah; and Georgia, like Carolina, became a planting State, with slave-labor."—Willson's Am. Hist. p. 265.

          "In 1752, the trustees of Georgia, wearied with complaints against the system of government which they had established, and finding that the Colony languished under their care, resigned their charter to the king," &c.—Ib. p. 266.

    The historical evidence is here complete, that slavery and the slave trade were introduced into Georgia, not only without the sanction of either British or Colonial law, but in manifest and flagrant violation of both.

    Gen. Oglethorpe, defeated in his laudable efforts, returned to England, in 1743. He afterwards became the friend and co-adjutor of Granville Sharp [1735-1813], and wrote against slavery, and the impressment of seamen. Under date of Cranham, Hall, 13th October, 1776, he wrote to Mr. Sharp the following particulars respecting his former connection with the colony of Georgia:
          "My friends and I settled the Colony of Georgia, and by charter were established trustees, to make laws, &c. We determined not to suffer slavery there. But the slave merchants and their adherents occasioned us not only much trouble, but at last got the then government to favor them. We would not suffer slavery, (which is against the Gospel, as well as the fundamental law of England) to be authorized under our authority; we refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime. The government, finding the trustees resolved firmly not to concur with what they believed unjust, took away the charter by which no law could be passed without our consent."—Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, p. 25.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Stuart, Charles [1781-1865], A Memoir of Granville Sharp to Which is Added Sharp's "Law of Passive Obedience," and an Extract from His "Law of Retribution" (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836).

    The particulars which follow demand careful attention.

    In Virginia, "slavery was introduced in 1620, but no act

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    was passed even purporting to tell who might be slaves, until 1670"—and this act was afterwards found so defective in the description, as to need a new act for the purpose in 1748, one hundred and twenty-eight years after slavery had been introduced.—Spooner's Unconstitutionally of Slavery, pp. 38-9.
          "In North Carolina, no general law at all was passed, prior to the revolution, declaring who might be slaves." (See Iredell's Statutes, revised by Martin).—Spooner, p. 40.

          "In South Carolina the only statutes, prior to the revolution, that attempted to designate the slaves, was passed [ex post facto/bill-of-attainder style] in 1740—after slavery had a long time" (sixty-nine years) "existed." And even this statute, in reality defined nothing, for the whole purport of it was to declare that all negroes, Indians, mulattoes, and mestizoes, except those who were then free, should be slaves."—Spooner, p. 40.

    But no previous law had told who were then legally slaves, nor who were legally free!

    Ed. Note: Examples of court precedents overturning laws pursuant to the "void for vagueness doctrine" include: Kolender v Lawson, 461 US 352, 357 (1983); Papachristou v City of Jackson, 405 US 156; 92 S Ct 839; 31 L Ed 2d 110 (1972); Gooding v Wilson, 405 US 518; 92 S Ct 1103; 31 L Ed 2d 408 (1972); and Grayned v City of Rockford, 408 US 104, 108-109; 92 S Ct 2294; 33 L Ed 2d 222 (1972).
          "The same law, in nearly the same words, was passed in Georgia, in 1770," [ex post facto/bill-of-attainder style] more than a quarter of a century after the introduction of slavery, and after the commencement and brisk prosecution of the African slave trade."—Vide Spooner, pp. 40, 41—Willson's History, &c.

    The "earliest law" of Maryland, noticed by Judge Stroud, defining who might be held as slaves, was enacted in 1663, thirty-one years after the settlement of the colony. The language of the [Maryland] statute [unconstitutionally] assumes the previous fact of slaveholding, and alludes also to a still more remarkable fact.
          "Divers free-born English women, forgetful of their free condition, and to the disgrace of our nation, do intermarry with negro slaves; by which, also, divers suits may arise, touching the issue of such women, and great damage doth befall the master of such negroes," &c.

    To deter from such matches, the statute enacts as follows:
          "Whatsoever free-born woman shall intermarry with any slave, shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband, and that all the issue of such free born women, so married, shall be slaves, as their fathers were."—Stroud's Sketch of the Slave Laws, p 10.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: George M. Stroud (1795-1875), A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America (Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1827)

    This last provision was a departure from the prevalent maxim of the slave code, that the child follows the condition

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    of the mother. The temporary end, of the statute of 1663 having been answered, it was repealed in 1681, with a clause saving the rights under the act of 1663, so that the masters might continue to hold in slavery the descendants, if any, of the "free born English women" who might have married slaves, during the operation of the act of 1663, which was repealed "to prevent persons from purchasing white women as servants, and marrying them to their slaves, for the purpose of making slaves of them and their offspring."
    Yet ''the doctrine of 'partus sequitur' obtained in the province" (i.e. the children of slaves followed the condition of the father) "till the year 1699 or 1700, when a general revision of the laws took place, and the acts in which this doctrine was recognized were, with many others, repealed. An interval of about fifteen years appears to have elapsed, without any written law on this subject; but in 1715 (chap. 44, sec. 22) the following one was passed: "All negroes and slaves already imported, or hereafter to be imported into this province, and all children now born or hereafter to be born of such negroes and slaves, shall be slaves during their natural lives." Thus, (continues Stroud) was the maxim of the civil law, 'partus sequitur ventrem' introduced, and the condition of the mother, from that day to the present time, has continued to determine the fate of the child."—Stroud's Sketch, pp. 10, 11.

    Had the opposite maxim prevailed—had the child followed the condition of the father, there would have been comparatively few slaves in. Maryland, or in any of the southern states, at the present time.

    The dates of colonial enactments on the subject of slavery are important historical items, as already hinted, because they are necessary in order to establish the fact of legalized colonial slavery, and to fix the period of its commencement, in a given colony, (if any such legislation under the Colonial Charters already alluded to, can be supposed to have been valid.) And we have already noticed that the practice of slaveholding obtained in the principal slave colonies, for long periods, and, in one instance, up to the period of the American Revolution, without any action of the colonial authorities, attempting to tell who were slaves; viz. in Virginia, 50 years; in South Carolina, 69 years; in Georgia, more than 25 years;

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    in Maryland, (from its first settlement), 31 years, and in North Carolina there was no colonial definition at all!

    But the dates and the various provisions of the several colonial enactments, admitting them to have been constitutionally valid, become important historical facts in another point of view, not only as bearing upon the inquiry, Who were, legally, slaves, but also on the question, What was the slavery under which they were thus legally held, and When was it, that that slavery, as thus legislatively defined, became legalized?

    For, if it were clearly ascertained and established, that "SLAVERY," in general terms, had been legalised by valid and constitutional enactments of the colonial legislatures, in the first commencement of their authority, the question would still remain whether the slavery thus legalized was identical with the slavery defined many years afterwards, or whether it was altogether another thing though known by the same name.

    The South Carolina enactment of 1740, and the Georgia enactment of 1770, would tell us, distinctly enough, what was the slavery of those colonies at those periods: but they could not tell us whether the slavery legalized in those colonies (if, indeed, there were any) sixty-nine, and twenty-five years previous, was precisely the same thing. It might have been only the bond-service of Massachusetts, in 1641; defined by "the law of God established in Israel," and which, if followed out, would have secured "a jubilee throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof," long ago. In Georgia, as we have seen, the first slavery was the hiring of slaves for short periods, then for one hundred years—then buying, then importing them, and thus the whole system was changed.

    When we are told of the inherited, imprescriptible, time-sanctioned, and guarantied rights of the present American slaveholder, it becomes a matter of the deepest interest to learn, if we may, the origin, the date, the tenure, and the description of those rights, as originally defined. Between the right to import Africans into the colonies, with "their own free consent" in the times of Queen Elizabeth [1558-1603] or James I. [1603-1625],

    -24-
    and the right to hold the descendants of those Africans, and of all the nations of Europe, as chattels personal, in the present American States, there seems a perceptible chasm, and before the latter can be inferred from the former some attention inust needs be paid to the various arches of the bridge by which this chasm is conceived to have been spanned. A few missing links and bolts might endanger the safety of the transition. Into the requisite examination we cannot now enter. We only indicate the field of inquiry, and note down a few obvious facts.

    In consulting Stroud's Sketch of the Slave Laws, one is struck with the fact that most, if not all of the colonial enactments cited, bear date many years after the practice of slave-holding is known to have been introduced, and after the slaves must have become numerous. From this fact, and from the implications or statements in the preambles to those acts, it appears evident that the usages of slavery grew up first, and that the colonial legislation came in, to sanction and shelter them, afterwards, indicating the fact of a previously existing slavery without statute, and consequently ILLEGAL, since no one maintains that it could have originated in natural right, or in the principles of common law.

    Thus, in Virginia, where slavery, in fact, commenced in 1620, the first slave law cited by Stroud or by Spooner, is that of 1670, and most of the acts defining slavery are, perhaps, since 1700.

    Ed. Note: See also Virginia writer S. G. Tucker, Disser-tation on Slavery (1796), pp 47-66, especially p 64.

    —Of the slave laws of Maryland, (which was settled in 1632,) the first cited is that of 1663, and the remainder are from 1715 to 1751.—Of those of South Carolina, where slavery commenced in 1671, the first cited bears date 1695,—the remainder from 1711 to 1740, at which latter date the "peculiar institution" evidently received, (so far as the statute is concerned,) its full proportions and shape.

    —Of those of North Carolina, settled about 1650, the first cited is that of 1729, and the remainder bear date from 1741 to 1743, about which time the definition of slavery appears to have been settled, upon very nearly its present basis, in that Colony.

    —Of those of Georgia, where slavery commenced prior to 1743,

    -25-
    the first and only distinct reference is to the law of 1770, by which, very manifestly, the cardinal features of the slave law, in that Colony, were determined.—These eras in colonial slave legislation are too distinctly marked to be mistaken or forgotten by the student of American slave law; though, doubtless, there must have been some earlier acts, not noticed by Judge Stroud, and some of his references are to Digests and Manuals, In which the dates of legislation are not given.

    Slave legislation, since the American Revolution, has made some important strides. "Virginian slavery reposes on her revised code of 1819, and is what that makes it, without dreaming of any hazard to the venerable antiquity of her claims.

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    CHAPTER IV.

    EARLY TESTIMONIES AGAINST SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

    THE Dominicans in Spanish America, as related by Clarkson, "considered slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the gospel, and recommended the abolition of it." Being opposed by the Franciscans, "a controversy on the subject between them was carried to Pope Leo X. for his decision."

    Pope Leo X. [1513-1521] declared that "not only the Christian religion, but that nature herself cried out against slavery."

    Charles V. (as before stated) bore testimony against slavery, by abolishing it in his dominions, in the year 1543.

    Between A. D. 1670 and 1680, Godwyn, a clergyman of the Established Church, and Richard Baxter, the celebrated Non-conformist, bore strong testimony against these oppressions, the former, describing, with nervous eloquence, the brutality of slavery, as he had witnessed it in Barbadoes;—the latter protesting against the traffic, and denouncing those engaged in it as pirates and robbers. These writers were followed by Southern, Hutcheson, Foster, Atkins, Wallts, and others. [Vide Clarkson.]

    Bishop Warburton, in 1676, preached a sermon, denouncing, in strong language, those who "talk, as of herds of cattle, of property in rational creatures!"

    Dr. Porteus, Bishop of London, said that the slave trade was contrary to the religion we professed. He vindicated the Bible against the assertion that it sanctioned slavery—"Nay," (said he) "it classed men-stealers or slave traders among the murderers of fathers and mothers, and the most profane criminals on earth." [I Tim. 1:9-10].

    [Rev.] John Wesley [1703-1791], the founder of Methodism, who had witnessed the workings of slavery in our North American colonies and in the West Indies, declared "American slavery" to be "the vilest that ever saw the sun," and constituting "the sum [combination] of all villanies."

    [Ed. Note: Examples of slaver "villainies" include but are not limited to
    (1) abuses,
    (2) adultery,
    (3) atrocities,
    (4) axe-murder,
    (5) Bible-refusing,
    (6) branding,
    (7) burning-alive,
    (8) concubines for clergy,
    (9) commandment-breaking,
    (10) degradation,
    (11) doctrine-changing to aid slavery,
    (12) extortion,
    (13) eye-gouging,
    (14) genocide,
    (15) infinite train of iniquities,
    (16) kidnaping white women,
    (17) making infidels,
    (18) mass abuses,
    (19) parent of all sin,
    (20) racism,
    (21) racking and salting,
    (22) rape,
    (23) reign of terror,
    (24) robbery,
    (25) Seminole War,
    (26) skinning,
    (27) three-fourths of Christians "of the devil,"
    (28) torture,
    (29) torture-murder,
    (30) violence,
    (31) war of aggression against Mexico,
    (32) whip-to-death,
    (33) worse than the ancients,
    (34) worst in history,
    (35) worst sin.
    For a graphic description of slavery horrors, see Kyle Onstott, Mandingo (1957), the book, and Richard Fleischer, Mandingo (1975), the movie (reviewed in USA Weekend, p 20 (27-29 June 2008).
    "Bible-Belt" slavery: truly a “peculiar institution”—if too horrible to read about—too horrible to have happened.
    It was what would later be called the Nazi untermenschen view, that some people are untermenschen, subhuman, have no rights worth respecting. The untermenschen view was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case under smoker Roger Taney.
    Slavers were so debauched, depraved, as to deem abolitionist opposition to these abuses as "joking."
    Torturing continued in the South after the Civil War. See examples such as
  • details on the 1963 murders of three civil rights workers, and torture of one, by Reporter Jerry Mitchell, "Experts: Autopsy reveals beating Chaney wasn't just shot to death, pathologists insist" (Clarion-Ledger, 4 June 2000)
  • details on lynching-related tortures by Prof. David Pilgrim, "The Brute Caricature" (Ferris State Univ, Nov 2000).
  • A Linden, Texas, beating and torture case, cited by Andre Coe, "'Good ole boys': Weapons of Black destruction" (2003)
    This is the "Bible-Belt" in action, the natural consequence of pro-slavery preaching and teaching. Such clergy are of the devil.
    For further analysis, see p 131, infra.

    • Slave dealers, he [Wesley] denominated "man stealers; the worst of thieves, in comparison of whom high-way robbers [car-jackers]

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    and house-breakers are comparatively innocent." He adds, "And men-buyers are exactly on a level with men stealers." [Excerpt at Pillsbury; other excerpt at Fee].

    Jonathan Edwards, the younger, said: "To hold a man in a state of slavery, is to be, every day, guilty of robbing him of his liberty, or of man stealing "

    Bishop [Samuel] Horsley [1733-1806] said: "Slavery is injustice, which no consideration of policy can extenuate." [Ed. Note: More by Dr. Horsley.]

    Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-1784] said: "No man is by nature the property of another. The rights of nature must be some way forfeited before they can justly be taken away."

    Edmund Burke [1729-1797] said: "Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, and so ruinous to the feelings and cipacities of human nature, that it ought not to be suffered to exist."

    Archdeacon Paley said: "Slavery is a dominion and system of laws, the most merciless and tyrannical that were ever tolerated upon the face of the earth."

    [Charles de Secondat, baron de] Montesquieu [1689-1755] ironically said: "If we allow negroes to be men, it will begin to be believed that we, ourselves, are not Christians!"

    [Prof. William] Blackstone [1723-1780], the jurist, sums up an elaborate scrutiny of the subject thus: "If neither captivity nor contract can, by the plain law of nature and reason, reduce the parent to a state of slavery, much less can they reduce the offspring "

    William Pitt [1708-1778] declared it to be "injustice to permit slavery to remain for a single hour."

    Charles James Fox [1749-1806] said: "With regard to a regulation of slavery, my detestation of its existence induces me to know no such thing as a regulation of robbery, and a restriction of murder." "Personal freedom is a right of which he who deprives a fellow creature is criminal in so depriving him, and he who withholds is no less criminal in withholding "

    Bishop Butler said: "Despicable as they" (the negroes) "may appear in our eyes, they are the creatures of God, and of the race of mankind, for whom Christ died, and it is inexcusable to keep them in ignorance of the end for which they were made, and of the means whereby they may become partakers of the general redemption."

    Hannah More [1745-1833] said: "Slavery is vindicated in print (1788), and defended in the House of Peers! Poor human reason' When wilt thou come to years of discretion?"

    Dr. Samuel Hopkins [1721-1803] said: "Slavery is, in every instance, wrong, unrighteous, oppressive, a very great and crying sin, there being nothing of the kind equal to it on the face of the earth."

    The learned [Hugo] Grotius [1583-1645] said "Those are men stealers who abduct, keep, sell or buy slaves or free men. To steal a man is the highest [worst] kind of theft."

    Ed. Note: For more by Grotius (e.g., the "original grant" concept), see
  • Rev. James Rankin, Letters (1823), p 100
  • James Birney, Bulwarks (1840), p 29
  • Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn Hope (1847), p 8
  • Rev. John Fee, Non-Fellowship (1849), p 6
  • Rev. John Fee, Anti-Slavery Manual (1849), p 116
  • Sen. Charles Sumner, Barbarism (1860), p 132
  • Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Acts (1883), p 365.

    • -28-
    Dr. Benjamin Rush [1746-1813] said: "Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity." "It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father."

    Dr. Primatt said: "It has pleased God to cover some men with white skins and others with black, but as there is neither merit nor demerit incomplexion, the white man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right, by virtue of his color, to enslave and tyrannize over the black man."

    Dr. William Robertson [1721-1793] said: "No inequality, no superiority in power, no pretext of consent, can justify this ignominious depression of human nature."

    The Abbé [Henri] Grégoire [1750-1831] said: "The corruption of our times carries towards posterity all the elements of slavery and crime." "There is not a vice, not a species of wickedness, of which Europe is not guilty towards negroes, of which she has not shown them the example."

    The Abbé [Guillaume Thomas François] Raynal [1713-1796] said: "He who supports slavery is the enemy of the human race. He divides it into two societies of legal assassins, the oppressors and the oppressed." "I shall not be afraid to cite to the tribunal of reason and justice those governments which tolerate this cruelty, or which even are not ashamed to make it the basis of their power."

    Dr. Price, of London, said: "If you have a right to make another man a slave, he has a right to make you a slave."

    Joseph Addison [1672-1719] said: "What color of excuse can there be for the contempt with which we treat this part of our species" (the negroes), "that we should not put them upon the common footing of humanity?"—Vide Spectator.

    Dr. Adam Clarke [1762-1832], the learned commentator, said: "How can any nation pretend to fast, or worship God, or dare profess to believe in the existence of such a being, while they carry on what is called the slave trade, and traffic in the souls, blood, and bodies of men? O ye most flagitious of knaves, and worst of hypocrites? Cast off at once the mask of religion, and deepen not your endless perdition by professing the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, while you continue in this traffic.—Comment on Isa., 58:6.

    Macknight, the commentator, in exposition of 1 Tim 1:10, said: "Men stealers are inserted among the daring criminals against whom the law of God directed its awful curses These were persons who kidnapped men to sell them for slaves, and this practice seems inseparable from the other iniquities and oppressions of slavery, nor can a slave dealer easily keep free from this criminality, if indeed the receiver is as bad as the thief "

    Thomas Scott, the commentator, copied the preceding from Macknight, and in his practical observations on Rev. 18:13—"Souls of men"—said: "To number the persons of men with beasts, sheep, and horses, as the stock of a farm, or with bales of goods, as the cargo of a ship, is, no doubt, a most detestable and anti-Christian practice."

    -29-
    Abraham Booth (the Baptist theological writer) said: "I have not a stronger conviction of scarcely anything, than that slave holding (except when the slave has forfeited his liberty by crimes against society) is wicked and inconsistent with Christian character." "To me it is evident, that whoever would purchase an. innocent black man to make him a slave, would with equal readiness purchase a white one for the same purpose, could he do it with equal impunity, and no more disgrace."

    Mr. Booth preached a sermon (1792) entitled "Commerce in the Human Species, and the enslaving of innocent persons, inimical to the laws of Moses, and the Gospel of Christ." The text was from Exodus 21:16. "He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hands, he shall surely be put to death." [See also Deuteronomy 24:7].

    James Beattie [1735-1803] said: "Slavery is inconsistent with the dearest and most essential rights of man's nature; it is detrimental to virtue and industry; it hardens the heart to those tender sympathies which form the most lovely part of human character; it involves the innocent in hopeless misery, in order to procure wealth and pleasure for the authors of that misery; it seeks to degrade into brutes, beings whom the Lord of Heaven and Earth endowed with rational souls, and created for immortality; in short, it is utterly repugnant to every principle of reason, religion, humanity, and conscience It is impossible for a considerate and unprejudiced mind, to think of slavery without horror."

    George Fox [1624-1691], when in Barbadoes, in 1671, addressed himself thus, to those who attended his religious meetings: "Consider with yourselves, if you were in the same condition as the poor Africans are, who came strangers to you, and were sold to you as slaves; I say, if this should be the condition of you or yours, you would think it a hard measure; yea, and very great bondage and cruelty."

    John Locke [1632-1704] said: "Slavery is so vile, so miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hard to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it."—Essay on Government.

    Thomas Jefferson

    Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] said: "The whole commerce between master and slave, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotisms, on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other." "I tremble for my country, when I reflect, that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."—Notes on Virginia [1787]. [Excerpt]


    John Jay [1745-1829] said: "Till America comes into this measure" (abolition) "her prayers to Heaven will be impious. This is a strong expression, but it is just." "I believe that God governs the world, and I believe it to be a maxim in His, as in our courts, that those who ask for equity ought to do it."—Letter from Spain, 1780. [More].


    Dr. Benjamin Franklin [1706-1790] said: "Slavery is an atrocious debasement of human nature."

    -30-
    James Oglethorpe [1696-1785], the founder of Georgia, said: "This cruel custom of a private man's being supported in exercising more power over the man, whom he affirms to have bought as his slave, than the magistrate has over the master, is a solecism in politics."—Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, p 25.

    [Jean Jacques] Rousseau [1712-1778], said: "The terms slavery and right, contradict and exclude each other."

    Buffon said: "It is apparent that the unfortunate negroes are endowed with excellent hearts, and possess the seeds of every human virtue. I cannot write their history without lamenting their miserable condition." "Humanity revolts at those odious oppressions that result from avarice."

    Brissot said: "Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of divine law, and a degradation of human nature "

    Sir William Jones said: "I pass with haste, by the coast of Africa, whence my mind turns with indignation at the abominable traffic in the human species, from which a part of our countrymen dare to derive their inauspicious wealth."

    Our limits forbid us to extend, this list of witnesses, into which we have introduced but few of the names most prominently connected, in England and America, with specific enterprises for abolishing the slave trade and slavery. Nor have we quoted the more modern writers on the subject, nor many of the American statesmen during and since the Revolution, (some of them slave-holders,) whose testimony would have been appropriate. In another connection we may refer to some of them.

    Nor have we cited the long catalogue of eminent poets, all of whom, with bcarcely an exception, have deplored and condemned slavery.

    And yet, our chapter of testimonies is sufficient to show that the moral sense, the reason, the sympathy, the humanity, the philosophy, and the professed RELIGION of the civilized world, are against slavery, which is, of course, destined to fall.

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    CHAPTER V.

    ACTION OF RELIGIOUS BODIES AGAINST THE SLAVE TRADE
    AND SLAVERY, COMMENCING BEFORE THE
    AMERICAN REVOLUTION, AND ITS RESULTS.

    George Fox in Barbadoes—William Edmundson, A.D. 1675—Friends in England,
    A.D. 1727—l761—1763—l772—Friends in America—Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia,
    A.D. 1696—Gov. Penn, 1700—Quarterly Meetings of Chester, Haddonfield, &c.
    Yearly Meeting, 1754—1774—1776—Frienda in New England—Rhode Island
    Quarterly Meeting, A.D. 1716—1727—1770—Yearly Meeting of New York,
    1759—Purchase Quarterly Meeting, 1767. Yearly Meeting, 1771—1781—Yearly
    Meeting of Virginia, A.D. 1757—1766—1767—1768—1778—1787—Compensation
    provided for Emancipated Slaves—Stirring Agitations among Friends during
    this Reformation—William Burling, Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman,
    Anthony Benezet—Congregationalists in America—
    Dr. Samuel Hopkins—Church at Newport, 1769.

    FROM the records of early anti-slavery testimony, we turn to those of early anti-slavery action. As those testimonies were evidently founded, for the most part, in the principles of the Christian religion, and were urged on religious considerations, it was natural that the early efforts against slavery and the slave trade should partake of the same character, and be propounded in religious bodies.

    FRIENDS IN ENGLAND.

    George Fox, as already mentioned, remonstrated with the "Friends" in Barbadoes, concerning their treatment of the negroes. This was in 1671. He exhorted them to give their slaves religious instruction, and "bring them to know the Lord Christ." In his journal he says:
    "I desired, also, that they would cause their overseers to deal mildly and gently with their negroes, and not use cruelty towards them, as the manner

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    of some had been; and that, after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."*

    In a public discourse, he said:
    "Let me tell you, it will doubtless be very acceptable to the Lord, if so be that masters of families here, would deal so with their servants, and negroes, and blacks, whom they have bought with their money, as to let them go free, after they have served faithfully a considerable number of years, be it thirty, more or less, and when they go, and are made free, let them not go away empty handed."†

    William Edmundson, a fellow-laborer with Fox, bore a similar testimony. He complained of the herding of the slaves together like brute beasts, without any religious instruction, or a sufficiency of suitable sustenance.—Clarkson, p. 5.

    Both Fox and Edmundson were charged with exciting the slaves to revolt, and the latter was arraigned before the governor, in 1675, on that false allegation.—"Brief Statement," p. 6.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Society of Friends' Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends, Against Slavery and the Slave Trade (Philadelphia: J. and W. Kite, 1843).

    Thus early began the false charge of bloody designs, and no peacefulness of principles, no mildness of manner and language, and no moderation of measures—though even faulty in that direction, have ever exempted the earnest friends of emancipation from these charges.
    "I do not find any individual of this Society (i. e. in England) moving in this cause, for some time after the death of George Fox and William Edmundson. The first circumstance of moment which I discover, is a resolution of the whole society, on the subject, at their yearly meeting, held in London, in the year 1727. The resolution was in the following words":—

    "It is the sense of this meeting, that the importing of negroes from their native country and relations, by Friends, is not a commendable or allowed practice, and is therefore censured by this meeting."— Clarkson's History, p. 51.

    From this record it is evident that Friends, in England, at this time, were, to a greater or less extent, implicated in the African slave trade. And it is equally clear from what follows, that this very cautious and gentle admonition had not
    ____________
    *Clarkson's History, p. 50.

    †Brief Statement, &c., by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1843, page 6.

    -33-
    fully sufficed, in thirty-one years, to purge the Society from the guilt of that traffic. In 1758, the following resolution was adopted:
    "We fervently warn all in profession with us, that they carefully avoid being in any way concerned in reaping the unrighteous profits arising from the iniquitous practice of dealing in negro or other slaves, whereby, in the original purchase, one man selleth another, as he doeth the beasts that perish, without any better pretension to property in him, than that of superior force, in direct violation of the Gospel rule, which teacheth all to do as they would be done by, and to do good to all. We, therefore, can do no less than, with the greatest earnestness, impress it upon Friends, everywhere, that they endeavor to keep their hands clear of the unrighteous gain of oppression."

    Three years afterwards, 1761, the Society took a further step, as appears by the following:
    "This meeting, having reason to apprehend that diverse, under our name, are concerned in the unchristian traffic in negroes, doth recommend it earnestly to the care of Friends, everywhere, to discourage, as much as in them lies, a practice so repugnant to our Christian profession, and to deal with all such as shall persevere in a conduct so reproachful to Christianity; and disown them, if they do not desist therefrom."

    In 1763, this action was repeated, and the cords drawn still tighter, in the following:
    "We renew our exhortation that Friends, everywhere, be especially careful to keep their hands clear of giving encouragement, in any shape, to the slave-trade, being evidently destructive of the natural rights of mankind, who are all ransomed by one Savior, and visited by one divine light, in order to salvation, a traffic calculated to enrich and aggrandize some, upon the misery of others; in its nature, abhorrent to every just and tender sentiment, and contrary to the whole tenor of the Gospel."

    By the minute which was made on this occasion, I apprehend that no one belonging to the Society, could furnish even materials for such voyages."—Clarkson, p. 52.

    It is to be noticed that all this action was directed against the slave trade, or the importing of negroes. Nothing is said directly of slave holding, though slaves were then held in England, whether by Quakers we cannot tell, though Quakers in America held slaves at that time.

    In 1772, the Society in England approved the "salutary

    -34-
    endeavors" of Friends in America, to discourage the holding of slaves.

    FRIENDS IN AMERICA.

    The movement among Friends in America began earlier:
    "The Quakers in America, it must be owned, did most of them, originally, as other settlers there, with respect to the purchase of slaves."— Clarkson, p. 57.

    They, however, treated them with peculiar lenity, yet individuals among them soon became uneasy about holding slaves at all.
    In the year 1696, the yearly meeting of Philadelphia advised its members to " be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more negroes, and that those who have negroes be careful of them, bring them to meetings, have meetings with them in their families, and restrain them from loose and lewd living, as much as in them lies, and from rambling abroad, on First days, or other times."*—"Brief Statement," &c., p 8.

    The quarterly meetings of Chester, Haddonfield, Philadelphia, Bucks, Burlington, and Salem, subordinate to the yearly meeting, took measures from time to time, on the subject. The quarterly meeting of Chester extended into Virginia.—"Brief Statement" &c.

    In the yearly meeting, the subject was kept alive by renewed testimonies from time to time, and advance steps were taken, until, in 1754, the meeting recommended to "advise and deal with such as engage" in the traffic. They also expressed a desire to guard against "promoting the bondage of such an unhappy people." They "observe that their number is, of late, increased among us." They intimate the injustice of living upon their unrequited labor, and beseech those who have received slaves as an inheritance that they so train them
    ____________
    *William Penn, while Governor, in 1700, laid before the meeting his concern on the same subject, recommending religious meetings with the slaves. "His attempts to improve their condition by legal enactments were defeated m the House of Assembly."—Ib., p 9. A law imposing a duty of twenty pounds upon every slave imported, was a few years afterwards enacted, but disannulled by the British Crown.—Ib., p 11.

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    as to prepare them for freedom, if they should hereafter set them at liberty.—Clarkson's History, pp. 58, 59.*

    In 1774 another advance step was taken.
          "By a resolution of that year, all members concerned in importing, selling, purchasing, giving, or transferring negroes or other slaves, or otherwise acting in such a manner as to continue them in slavery beyond the term limited by law or custom (i.e., for white persons), were directed to be excluded from membership, or disowned."—Clarkson's History, p. 60.

          "In the year 1776, the same yearly meeting carried the matter still farther. It was then enacted, That the owners of slaves, who refused to execute proper instruments for giving them their freedom, were to be disowned likewise."—Ib.

    As the result of this action, it appears that the practice of slaveholding was generally discontinued within the bounds of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, not many years afterwards. The subordinate meetings took early measures for carrying out the views of the Yearly Meeting. The Philadelphia Monthly Meeting reported, in 1781, that "there was but one case," under care, and, in 1783, that "there were no slaves owned by its members."
          "As the minute of 1781 is the last on record" (of the Yearly Meeting) "on this subject, which speaks of slaves being still owned by our members, it is probable that before the succeeding Yearly Meeting, they had all been freed."—Brief Statement, p. 35.

    These measures were followed by efforts for the religious instruction of the emancipated negroes; and in some instances they were compensated for their past services.
    ____________
          *From the more full quotation of this document, in the Brief Statement of 1843, we learn that it also held the more stern language that follows:

          "And we entreat all to examine, whether the purchasing of a negro, either born here or imported, doth not contribute to a further importation, and consequently to the upholding all the evils above mentioned, and promoting man stealing—the only theft which, by the Mosaic law, was punished with death: 'He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.'—Ex. 21:16."—Brief Statement, see p. 18.

          So that the ecclesiastical testimony of the "Friends"—invidiously commended by some for its mildness, did not reach its object, till it had identified slaveholding with man stealing. This testimony is recorded as being "supposed to have been from the pen of Anthony Benezet."

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    The course of action by the New England Yearly Meeting and its subordinate meetings, was very similar and but little later in dates. The earliest action on record is a query by the Monthly Meeting of Dartmouth to the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, in 1716, asking

    "whether it be agreeable to Truth, for Friends to      
    purchase slaves, and keep them for a term of life?"

    The question was referred back to the different monthly meetings composing that quarterly meeting. The answers of several meetings were in the negative. The matter came up again before the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, in 1717, but no decisive minute was made on the subject.

    In 1727 the Yearly Meeting made a short minute censuring the practice "of importing negroes from their native country and relations." In 1760, the discipline was revised, and the language of the "printed epistle of the London Yearly Meeting of 1758, against dealing in negroes and other slaves," was incorporated into the discipline. In the same year the following inquiry was adopted:
          "Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported; and do they use those well, when they are possessed by inheritance or otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in the principles of religion?"

    In 1769 the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting proposed to the Yearly Meeting such an amendment of this query as should not imply that the holding of slaves was allowed. The Yearly Meeting deferrred action until 1770, when the query was so amended as to include the following.
          "And are all set at liberty that are of age, capacity and ability, suitable for freedom?"

    This action was carried forward until, in 1782, the Yearly Meeting says:
          "We know not but all the members of this members are clear of that iniquitous practice of holding or dealing with mankind as slaves."—Brief Statement, &c., pp. 44 to 47.

    It was not, however, until 1787, that the Yearly Meeting could report a satisfactory settlement for the past services of those who had been held in slavery. (Ib.)

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    The Yearly Meeting of New York, previous to 1759, had manifested its disapprobation of the slave trade.—The Purchase Quarterly Meeting, in 1767, suggested the inquiry, "whether it is consistent with a Christian spirit to keep those in slavery we have already in possession, by purchase, gift, or any other way?"

    In 1771, the Yearly Meeting concluded "that those Friends who have negroes shall not sell them for slaves, excepting in cases of executors," &c., who are, in that case, to advise with their respective monthly meetings.—Measures were taken, the same year, to encourage manumissions.

    In 1776, the Yearly Meeting took still higher ground, refusing to accept or employ the services in the church, or "receive the collections," of those who "continue these poor people in bondage."

    In 1784, a solitary case of slaveholding was reported—and in 1787 there were none at all.

    In 1781, the Yearly Meeting advised each monthly meeting to appoint suitable persons to inspect the cases of the recent emancipations, and afford such assistance and advice, both in respect to the temporal and spiritual good of the emancipated, as might be in their power, and "endeavor to find what, in justice, may be due them."

    At the succeeding Yearly Meeting, it was recommended that committees be appointed by the monthly meetings to "hand out to the said negroes" "the sum or sums which may appear to be due them."—"So faithfully and earnestly did Friends carry out these views of the Yearly Meeting, that in the year 1784 there appear to have been but three unsettled cases remaining.—"Brief Statement, &c., pp. 47 to 51.

    The Yearly Meeting of Virginia introduced a query "designed to forbid the trafficking in slaves," in 1757. In 1764, the Meeting advised additional attention to the religious instruction and clothing of slaves. In 1766, it was proposed to forbid its members to purchase any more negroes, and the subject was referred back to the quarterly meetings. In 1767, the Yearly Meeting could not unanimously conclude

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    upon issuing any injunctions either with regard to purchasing or setting them free, but earnestly desired each member to be careful and not encumber himself or posterity with any further purchases.—In 1768, this advice was made a rule of discipline.—In 1773, the Yearly Meeting earnestly recommended manumissions, and quoted the words of the prophet—"The people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery," &c.

    The measure was followed up till 1787, when it appeared that there were still some members who held slaves. It is stated that, after this, "the Yearly Meeting of Virginia gradually cleared itself of this grievous burthen:" but the precise date of its final extinction is not given.—"Brief Statement," &c., pp. 51 to 56.

    A very interesting feature of this reformation among the Friends, was the compensation provided for the emancipated slaves, in striking contrast with the absurd claim, sometimes set up, for compensation to the master.

    Another circumstance worthy of note is the uniformity and celerity with which the reformation was effected, so soon as the ecclesiastical bodies adventured to characterize slaveholding, in the strong but truthful language of Scripture, as robbery and man-stealing; giving proof of the earnestness and sincerity of their testimony, by taking measures for withdrawing religious fellowship from slaveholders. It is stated that some were actually "disowned," for non-compliance.—"Brief Statement, &c., p. 46.

    Nor was this great change effected, in the Society of Friends without stirring agitations, exciting appeals, and long-continued and earnest debates and discussions. The cautiously guarded and modified records of the ecclesiastical bodies, especially the more early testimonies, expressing, perhaps, in the language of compromise, the hesitant and even reluctant assent of the predominating and conservative portion of the body, must not be taken as specimens of the tone and manner of the agitators by whom the subject was continually pressed upon the attention of the Society, until final action was

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    reached. A long succession of these untiring and zealous laborers were engaged in this great work.

    William Burling, of Long Island, was, perhaps, the first of these. He began his testimony early in life, and seldom if ever permitted a Yearly Meeting to assemble and separate without hearing his earnest remonstrance against their toleration of slavery.

    Ralph Sandiford, of Philadelphia, was another earnest agitator. He published his "Mystery of Iniquity, in a brief examination of the practice of the times," in the year 1729. The language is described as bold, stirring, energetic, and uncompromising. The very title-page is a sufficient indication of the fact.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Sandiford, Ralph [1693-1733], A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times: By the Foregoing and the Present Dispensation; Whereby is Manifested, How the Devil Works in the Mystery, Which None Can Understand and Get the Victory Over (Philadelphia: Franklin and Meredith,1729).

    Benjamin Lay published his Treatise on Slave-keeping in 1737. It was printed by Benjamin Franklin. The title of this book* shows that he opposed not merely the slave trade and slave buying, (which was all that the Yearly Meeting was prepared to do, six years afterwards,) but likewise the practice of slaveholding, and denounced it as a high crime. He is described by Clarkson as "a man of strong understanding, and of great integrity, but of warm and irritable feelings, and more particularly so when he was called forth on any occasion in which the oppressed Africans were concerned."†

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Lay, Benjamin [1677-1759], All Slave-keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage Apostates Pretending to Lay Claim to the Pure & Holy Christian Religion, of What Congregation So Ever, But Especially in Their Ministers, By Whose Eample the Filthy Leprosy and Apostacy is Spread Far and Near; It Is a Notorious Sin Which Many of the True Friends of Christ and His Pure Truth, called Quakers, Has Been for Many Years and Still Are Concern'd to Write and Bear Testimony Against as a Practice So Gross & Hurtful to Religion, and Destructive to Government Beyond What Words Can Set Forth, or Can Be Declared of by Men or Angels, and Yet Lived in by Ministers and Magistrates in America (Philadelphia: Ben Franklin, 1737).

    ____________
    *"All Slave-keepers, that keep the innocent in bondage, apostates."

    †Some specimens of his manner of agitating "the delicate question" may be interesting.

    "Calling-on a Friend in the city (Philadelphia), he was asked to sit down to breakfast. He first inquired, 'Dost thou keep slaves in thy house?' On being answered in the affirmative, he said, 'Then I will not partake with thee of the fruits of thy unrighteousness.'—After an ineffectual attempt to convince a farmer and his wife in Chester county of the iniquity of keeping slaves, he seized their only child, a little girl of three years of age, under pretence of carrying her away, and when the cries of the child and his singular expedient alarmed them, he said, 'You see and feel, now, a little of the distress which you occasion by the inhuman practice of slave-keeping."—First Annual Report, New Hampshire A. S. Society, by John Farmer, Esq.—Emancipator for August, 1835..

    At Friends' Monthly Meetings, if a slaveholder rose to speak, Benjamin Lay would rise and exclaim—"There's another negro master!"

    On one occasion he seated himself in a Friends' Meeting among slaveholders, with a bladder of bullock's blood secreted under his mantle, and at length broke the quiet

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    For forty-one years, and until his death, in 1759, he bore an uncompromising and zealous testimony against the sin of slavery.

    John Woolman travelled through the provinces as a preacher and anti-slavery agitator, from 1746 to 1767. He travelled much of the time on foot, conversing with the people, and discoursing to public assemblies.

    Anthony Benezet published a work against slavery in 1762, and another in 1767. He wrote also in the public journals, in the almanacs, and labored in every practicable and suitable manner to convince the people of the unlawfulness of slavery.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation of These and Other
    Anti-Slavery Books by Anthony Benezet [1713-1784]:
    A Short Account of That Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes (Philadelphia: W. Dunlap, 1762)
    A Caution to Great Britain and Her Colonies in a Short Representation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British Dominions (Philadelphia, 1767)
    Observations on the Inslaving, Importing, and Purchasing of Negroes With Some Advice Thereon, Extracted from the Epistle of the Yearly-Meeting of the People called Quakers, Held at London in the Year 1748 (Germantown, Pa.: Christopher Sower, 1760)
    A Mite Cast into the Treasury, or, Observations on Slave-keeping (Philadelphia, 1772)
    The Potent Enemies of America Laid Open: Being Some Account of the Baneful Effects Attending the Use of Distilled Spirituous Liquors, and the Slavery of the Negroes (Philadelphia: Joseph Crukshank, 1774)
    The Case of our Fellow-Creatures, the Oppressed Africans, Respectfully Recommended to the Serious Consideration of the Legislature of Great Britain (London: J. Phillips, 1783)
    Short Observations on Slavery: Introductory to Some Extracts from the Writing of the Abbé Raynal on That Important Subject (Philadelphia: Enoch Story, 1785)
    Views of American Slavery, Taken a Century Ago (Philadelphia: Association of Friends for the Diffusion of Religious and Useful Knowledge, 1858)
    "Let all the evangelical denominations but follow the simple example of the Quakers in this country, and slavery would soon come to an end."— Albert Barnes.

    If to this statement were added the condition that the members of all these religious denominations, including the Quakers, would support the cause of righteousness in their political as well as ecclesiastical relations, the result could not be a matter of doubtful speculation.

    CONGREGATIONALISTS IN NEW ENGLAND.

    The brightest as well as the earliest exhibition of Christian church discipline against slavery, however, was in the instance, not of an extended ecclesiastical organization or sect, but of an Independent or Congregational Church in New England. When Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the celebrated theologian, removed to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1769, he found himself pastor of a church involved deeply in slaveholding and the African slave trade. He was not long in applying to those
    ____________
    stillness of the worship by deliberately rising in full view of the whole audience, piercing the bladder, spilling the blood on the floor and seats, thus sprinkling some of it on the raiment of those near him, and exclaiming with all the solemn authority of an ancient prophet—"Thus shall the Lord spill the blood of those that traffic in the blood of their fellow-men!"—Some shrieked—some fainted, and the meeting broke up in confusion.

    "Modern" abolitionists have been censured as too denunciatory and violent. Not unfrequently they have been advised to take the good old Quaker abolitionists as models of mildness! Do the advisers understand what they are saying?

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    practices the stern and unbending ethics derived from his then somewhat peculiar and most uncompromising theology, according to which, slaveholding could be nothing less than malum in se, in every instance sinful, without any valid excuse, or apology: a sin, like all other sin, to be cured or purged in no way but by its present and unconditional abandonment, at whatever cost, the case admitting of no prudential stipulations, and no delay.

    Admitting into his theory no such idea as that of a gradual regeneration or repentance, he could, of course, listen to no proposition for a gradual abandonment of slaveholding. His measures, therefore, were prompt, his purpose inflexible, his object determinate.

    It was not to the abuses of the system, nor to particular cases of cruelty that he directed attention, further than to ascertain and exhibit the principle that lay at the bottom of the mischief. His remedy was radical, applying to the root, not to the branches. In the slave trade, with all its abominations and horrors, he saw only a particular manifestation or phase of slavery.

    With no extended ecclesiastical body to consult to assist, or to impede him, he addressed his appeals and arguments directly to the consciences and the intellects of his congregation,—the party immediately concerned, and on them, in view of the coming Judgment, he cast the tremendous responsibility of direct and unambiguous action:

    The church was soon induced, as a Congregational body, to take the following action:
          "Resolved, that the slave trade and the slavery of the Africans, as it has existed among us, is a gross violation of the righteousness and benevolence which are so much inculcated in the gospel, and therefore we will not tolerate it in this Church."

    The doctrines of modern abolitionists, of the inherent sinfulness of slaveholding, and of the duty of immediate and unconditional emancipation, were distinctly enunciated and consistently reduced to practice in this action of the Congregational church in Newport. This was long before the commencement of any systematic efforts for abolishing the African

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    slave trade, before the decision of the Somerset case, and before any body of "Friends" had taken a similar position in respect to slavery, or had discontinued the practice. Had all the Congregational ministers and churches in this country taken the stand of Samuel Hopkins, and the church at Newport, from that time to the present, there is no reason to think that the condition and prospects of the nation would have been, at this time, what they now are.

    How many, or which of the Congregational churches in New England, at that period, came up to the standard of the church at Newport, we are unable to say. It is understood that there were several.*

    And it is certain that the sentiment was very generally received, for a time, and that the result was the termination of slavery in New England. Of this, and of the concurrent action of the Methodist Conference, and Presbyterian General Assembly, we shall treat, in connection with the records of a later period. We must first dispose of some points in the earlier history.
    ____________
    *In a note to the second edition of Dr. Hopkins' Dialogue on Slavery, republished in 1785, it is said: "Since the first edition of this Dialogue, a number of churches in New England have purged themselves of this iniquity, and determined not to tolerate the holding of Africans in slavery."

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    CHAPTER VI.

    OF SLAVERY, AND ITS ABOLITION IN ENGLAND.

    Judicial Action—Granville Sharp—Early Introduction of Slavery into England;
    its supposed legality (1700)—Opinion of York and Talbot, in favor of its legality
    (1729)—Effects of this Opinion—Slave Traffic in England—Case of Jonathan
    Strong—Efforts of Sharp—His Investigation of British Law—Declares Slavery to
    be illegal—Publishes his argument—Treats Slavery as illegal, though the Courts
    and Public Sentiment were against him—Case of Thomas Lewis—
    Decision of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, sustaining the legality of Slavery—Sharp enters
    his Protest—Blackstone alters his Commentaries to defeat Sharp, and favor the
    Slaveholders—Case of James Somerset—The Argument—A Decision found
    against Slavery in the times of Queen Elizabeth—Lord Mansfield hesitates—An
    interval before the decision—Sharp anticipates the result, and memorializes
    Lord North against Slavery in the Colonies    —State of Public Sentiment against Slavery—
    Final decision of Lord Mansfield (1772), releasing Somerset, and declaring Slavery
    Illegal in England—Second Memorial of Sharp to Lord North, admonishing him
    of the duty of suppressing Slavery in the Colonies,
    agreeably to the decision of Lord Mansfield.

    As church action against slavery naturally follows and grows out of religious teachings and testimonies against the sin of slavery, so judicial and legislative action against the practice, naturally follows and grows out of both the preceding. The laws of a country are an index, to a great extent, of the prevalent religion of a country, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain, for any length of time, a code of laws that essentially conflict with the religion of the people.

    From the records of early religious testimony and action against slavery, we come to those of judicial action.

    The first laborer in this department of benevolent enterprise, in England, says Clarkson, was Granville Sharp [1735-1813], "distinguished from those who preceded him in this particular, that whereas they were only writers, he was both a writer and an

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    actor in the cause." His first effort in 1767, for the release of an individual slave, was followed, not long afterwards, by systematic endeavors to overthrow slavery itself in the British dominions, and particularly in England.

    The introduction of slavery into England, appears to have been upon the same foundation, (in respect to its legality,) as its introduction into the North American colonies. That is, it was done without the authority of any direct statute; and it was done in the presence and in palpable violation of English Common Law. If it could plead any legal warranty, it was that of the royal permission to transport Africans "with their own free consent," into the colonies, and the Act of Parliament " for extending and improving the trade to Africa," which prohibited "any violence to the natives."

    How early slaves were introduced into England, we cannot exactly determine. "Before the year 1700," says Clarkson, "planters, merchants, and others, resident in the West Indies, but coming to England, were accustomed to bring with them certain slaves, to act as servants with them during their stay." They frequently absconded, and were sometimes seized and sent back by force.

    A sentiment had come down from former ages that Christians could not enslave Christians, and that as soon as an Englishman's slave was baptized, he became free. In consequence of this sentiment, it became common for pious clergymen to baptize all the slaves they could, providing "god-fathers" for them, according to the usages of the Church of England. These god-fathers were in the habit of vindicating their high claim to the title, by espousing the cause of their god-children, and demanding their freedom. For a time, this held the slave-masters in check, as they were "afraid to carry off their slaves by force, and equally afraid to bring any of the cases before a public court."
    "In this dilemma, they applied, in 1729, to York and Talbot, the Attorney and Solicitor-General, for the time being, and obtained from them, the following strange opinion:—'We are of opinion that a slave, by coming from the West Indies into Great Britain or Ireland, either with or without his master, does not become free, and that his master's right and property in

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    him is not thereby determined or varied, and that baptism doth not bestow freedom upon him, or make any alteration in his temporal condition, in these kingdoms. We are also of opinion that the master may legally compel him to return again, to the plantations.'"

          "This cruel and illegal opinion was delivered in 1729. The planters, merchants, and others, gave it, of course, all the publicity in their power; and the consequences were as might easily have been apprehended. In a little time, slaves absconding, were advertised in the London papers, as runaways, and rewards offered for the apprehension of them; in the same brutal manner as we find them advertised in the land of slavery. They were advertised, also, in the same papers, to be sold at auction, sometimes by themselves, and at others, with horses, chaises, and harness. They were seized also by their masters, or by persons employed by them, in the very streets, and dragged from thence to the ships; and so unprotected, now, were these poor slaves, that persons, no wise concerned with them, began to institute a trade in their persons, making agreements with captains of ships, going to the West Indies, to put them on board at a certain price." This "shows, as all history does, that where there is a market for the persons of human beings, all kind of enormities will be practiced to obtain them."—Clarkson's History, &c., pp. 38—9.

    For forty-three years did this "illegal opinion" of York and Talbot prevail in Great Britain instead of law; nay, in opposition to the fundamental law of the realm. Such was the state of things when, in 1767, as before mentioned, Granville Sharp undertook the liberation of Jonathan Strong, claimed as a slave by David Lisle, a lawyer and slave-master of Barbadoes, then residing in London.
          "But the lawyers whom Sharp consulted, declared the laws were against him. Sir James Eyre, Recorder of the city, whom he retained as his counsel, adduced to him York and Talbot's opinion, and informed him that Lord Chief Justice Mansfield agreed with those gentlemen."—Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, p. 8.

          "Mischief framed by law, yet against law, thus took deep root in Britain." "At this time slavery had disgraced the British Colonies in America and in the West Indies, for two hundred years. The righteous law of the empire had been evaded or perverted, and opinion and precedent had been substituted for law."—Ibid, pp. 6-7.

    This, Granville Sharp understood, though he stood alone. He had not been educated a lawyer. But he understood, better than York and Talbot, (as the event proved,) and bet-

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    ter than Mansfield and Blackstone, the sacred and the changeless nature of LAW. A legal triumph was in reserve for him, the most sublime and august of any on the records of modern jurisprudence.

    But it was not won in the controversy concerning Jonathan Strong. Some informality in the proceedings led to his discharge by the Mayor. He was, however, instantly seized again by Captain Laird, (about to sail for the West Indies,) on, behalf of John Kerr, to whom Lisle had sold him. This seizure was made in the presence of the mayor and others, before whom also, Granville Sharp, with consummate generalship and promptitude, stepped up to Captain Laird, and, tapping him on the shoulder, exclaimed:
    "I charge you, in the name of the king, with an assault upon the person of Jonathan Strong, and all these are my witnesses!"
    Laird was intimidated, let go his grasp, and Sharp conveyed away the ransomed captive in triumph. This led to a suit against Sharp, the trial of which was deferred by the plaintiffs for two years, and then withdrawn, by them under charge of treble costs for the delay.

    During these two years, Mr. Sharp applied himself, diligently, to a further study of the law, by which his former position was fortified, and he was prepared for any future litigation on the subject. In the course of this investigation, he applied to the great Doctor (afterwards Judge) Blackstone, for his opinion. "He was not, however, satisfied with it," says Clarkson, "when he received it, nor could he obtain any satisfactory answer from several other lawyers, to whom he afterwards applied." Thrown, therefore, upon his own industry and resources, he worked out the problem alone.
          "The result of his research, was a tract, "On the injustice and dangerous tendency of tolerating slavery, or even of admitting the least claim to private property, in the persons of men, in England."—Stuart's Memoir, p. 8.

          "In this work"* (says Clarkson) "he refuted, in the clearest manner, the opinion of York and Talbot.

  • He produced against it the opinion of
    • ____________
          *Mr. Clarkson gives, as the title of the book, "A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery in England."

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      Lord Chief Justice Holt, who, many years before, had determined that every slave coming into England became free.

    • He attacked and refuted it, again, by a learned and laborious inquiry into all the principles of villeinage.

    • He refuted it, again, by showing it to be an axiom in the British Constitution, 'That every man in England, was free to sue for, and defend his rights, and that force cannot be used without a legal process,' leaving it with the judges to determine whether an African was a man.

    • He attacked also, the principle of Judge Blackstone, and showed where his error lay.
    This valuable book, containing these and all other kinds of arguments, on the subject, he distributed, but particularly among the lawyers, giving them an opportunity of refuting or acknowledging the doctrines it contained."—Clarkson's History, p. 43.

    Several cases were afterwards tried, in which the slaves were set at liberty; but "none of the cases had yet been pleaded upon the broad ground, 'Whether an African slave coming into England, became free.' This great question had been studiously avoided. It was still, therefore, 1eft in doubt." Mr. Sharp continually acted on the ground that there was no legal slavery in England, though the judges had not so decided. The suspense at length became painful to both parties, and there was a general anxiety to have the controversy decided.—Clarkson, p. 42, Stuart, p. 10.

    In the meantime, some of the cases were so decided as to afford great encouragement to the slave party. An African named Thomas Lewis, had escaped from his master, Mr. Stapylton, in London. He was recaptured, and put on board a vessel for the West Indies. The vessel had reached the Downs, and was already under way, when a habeas corpus was carried on board, and the man released, and sent on shore. A bill was found against Stapylton and his two assistants, and the case was tried before the Court of King's Bench, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield presiding, the 20th of February, 1771.

    The jury returned a verdict of guilty: "but so fraught was Mansfield's mind, still, with the false views of the day, that he refused to proceed to judgment, and the criminals escaped."—"Against this proceeding of the Judge, as an open contempt of the laws of England, Granville Sharp prepared a strong protest."—Stuart's Memoir, p. 10.

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    Another incident, and a very remarkable one, illustrates the methods resorted to, by gentlemen of the highest standing in the legal profession, at that time, in England, to sustain the slave interest, at the expense of those great fundamental maxims of Common Law, of which they were themselves the recognized expounders, and which they could enunciate, distinctly enough, except when overawed by "the mighty wealth and influence of the West India faction," before whom, king and nobles, courts of justice, parliaments and doctors of the law, bowed down in abject submission.

    "In the beginnings of his researches, Granville Sharp had found and noted the following passage in Blackstone's Commentaries, Book I., page 123, Edition 1st—'And this spirit of liberty is so deeply implanted in our Constitution, and rooted in our very soil, that a slave or a negro, the moment he lands in England, falls under the protection of the laws, and, with regard to all national rights, becomes eo instanti, a freeman.'

    "This passage being quoted in one of the trials, was triumphantly repelled by the opposite counsel, who produced the volume from which the quotation was made, and instead of the words as noted by Granville Sharp, read as follows: 'A negro, the moment he lands in England, falls under the protection of the laws, and so far becomes a free man, though the master's right to his service may possibly remain.'

    "Upon further investigation, it was found that, in the course of the trials, Dr. Blackstone himself had made this alteration in the subsequent editions."—Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, p. 19.

    Such was the condition of things, when, at length, a case came before the courts that presented a fair opportunity to test the great question of legal slavery in England. This opportunity was improved, and the issue was joined.
          James Somerset "had been brought to England in November, 1769, by his master, Charles Stewart, from Virginia, and in process of time had left him. Stewart had him suddenly seized, and carried on board the Ann and Mary, Captain Knowles, in order to be taken to Jamaica, and there sold for a slave."

          "On February 7, 1772, the cause was tried in the King's Bench, before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, aided by Justices Ashton, Welles and Ashhurst. The question at issue was—''Is every man in England entitled to the liberty of his person, unless forfeited by the laws of England?' This was affirmed by the advocates of Somerset; and Mr. Sergeant Davy, who

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    opened his cause, broadly declared, 'that no man at this day is, or can be, a slave in England."—Stuart's Memoir, p. 11.

    Ed. Note: A modern parallel of this, by nonsmoker advocates, is that pursuant to the common law "right to pure air," there can be no legal tobacco smoking.

    In the course of the argument a precedent was adduced in favor of freedom. "This was the case of Cartwright, who brought a slave from Russia, and would scourge him. For this he was questioned, and it was resolved, that England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in."—See Rushworth's Collections, p. 468. This was in the llth of Queen Elizabeth.—Ib. Lord Mansfield was evidently beginning to waver.
          "In order that time might be given for ascertaining the law fully on this head, the case was argued at three different sittings. First in January, secondly in February, and thirdly in May, 1772. And that no decision otherwise than what the law warranted, might be given, the opinion of the judges were taken on the pleadings."—Clarkson's Hist. p. 43.

          "Granville Sharp availed himself, with his usual zeal, of this interval, and, among the other measures by which he sought to obtain an equitable decision, he addressed a Letter to Lord North, dated Feb. 18th, 1772."—Stuart's Memoir, p. 12.

    In this Letter Mr. Sharp anticipates a decision of the courts against slavery, and says—"We must judge by law, not by precedent."—He further intimates the illegality of slavery in the American Colonies, in the following paragraph:
          "I might indeed allege that many of the plantation laws (like every other act that contains anything which is malum in se, evil in its own nature,) are already null and void in themselves; because they want every necessary foundation to render them valid, being absolutely contradictory to the laws of reason and equity, as well as the laws of God."—Ib. p. 13.

    By this time the eyes of the British public, from the members of the administration down to the mass of the intelligent inhabitants, were fixed upon Lord Mansfield and the Court of King's Bench, awaiting, with deep interest and anxious suspense, their decision. It was a healthful scrutiny, not unfelt by the Lord Chief Justice and his associates. New and enlarged views of the nature and character of LAW had been impressed upon the nation and upon the national judiciary, by the tireless labors and profound investigations of Granville Sharp [1735-1813]. And yet it required a desperate struggle to

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    break away from the meshes of precedent and opinion, and restore the ascendancy of impartial and equitable law.
          "Lord Mansfield delayed judgment, and twice threw out the suggestion 'that the master might put an end to the present litigation, by manumitting the slave.' But the base suggestion was, providentially, not attended to. The judgment was demanded; and the judgment was given on Monday, 22d of June, 1772. After much lawyer-like circumlocution, Lord Mansfield decided as follows:

          "Immemorial usage preserves the memory of positive law, long after all traces of the occasion, reason, authority, and time of its introduction are lost, and in a case so odious as the condition of slaves, must be taken strictly: (tracing the subject to natural principles, the claim of slavery can never be supported.) The power claimed by this return never was in use here. We cannot say the cause set forth in this return is allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom, and therefore the man must be discharged."—Stuart's Memoir, p. 17.

          "Mr. Sharp felt it his duty, immediately after this trial, to write" (again) "to Lord North, then principal minister of State, warning him, in the most earnest manner, to abolish, immediately, both the slave trade and the slavery of the human species, 11 ALL THE BRITISH DOMINIONS, as utterly irreconcilable with the principles of the BRITISH CONSTITUTION, and the established religion of the land."—Clarkson's Hist., p. 44.

    The measure here insisted on by Granville Sharp, was evidently required by the decision of the Somerset case, and had it been carried into effect, at that time, there would have been no slavery now in the United States.

    Mr. Clarkson awards much credit to the counsel employed on this trial, Davy, Glynn, Hargrave, Mansfield, and Alleyne, but chiefly to Granville Sharp, "who became the first great actor in it, who devoted his time, his talents, and his substance to this Christian undertaking, and by whose laborious researches the very pleaders themselves were instructed and benefited."—p. 44.
          "It ought to be remembered that, while Granville Sharp thus boldly remonstrated with the government of his country, he filled a government situation, and was dependent for his present subsistence, and his future prospects in life, upon the ministry of the day."—Stuart's Memoir, p. 15.

    Thus was the guilty fiction of legal slavery in England exploded, after having been acted upon as though it were a

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    truth, for at least three-fourths of a century, and confirmed by the highest official authority for forty-three years. Of the magnitude, the importance, and the legal consequences of this judicial decision, which forever settled the slave question in England, without legislative action or executive interference, we propose not to speak here. In another connection it may be adverted to again. Very possibly its study may assist in the detection and correction of similar mistakes in the judicial action of other countries, besides England. If York and Talbot, and Blackstone and Mansfield were mistaken, other learned judges may be. If, under the British monarchy, a private individual may peacefully revolutionize the jurisprudence of his country, it cannot be out of place, nor arrogant for the friends of liberty in republican America to study, to understand, to insist upon the principles of constitutional and common law, in their bearing upon the same great practical question, in their own country, as Granville Sharp did in his.

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    CHAPTER VII.

    OF EFFORTS FOR ABOLISHING THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.

    Relaxation of effort—American Revolution—Sharp espouses the cause of the
    Colonies—Thomas Clarkson's early life—Granville Sharp—Slave ship "Zong" (1781)
    —Trial of this case (1783)—Slave-traders sustained—Sharp's Report of the Trial
    —Committee instituted to act against the Slave Trade (1787)—Unfortunate
    Compromise—Policy of opposing the Slave Trade, but not Slavery—Solemn Protest
    of Granville Sharp—William Wilberforce—Public Agitation—Abstinence
    from Slave Products—Wilberforce denounced in the House of Lords—Influence
    of John Wesley—of the Quakers—the Baptists—Inquiry in King's Privy Council,
    1788; also in House of Commons, introduced by Wm. Pitt—Dates of various
    movements in Parliament till 1806—Slave Trade abolished in Parliament in 1807—
    Review of this struggle—Slavery declared illegal in 1772, yet the Slave Trade
    tolerated till 1807—The turning point—The legality of the Slave Trade—Pitt
    proved it illegal—Abolition of the Slave Trade abortive—Premature and misplaced
    gratulation and triumph. Mr. Clarkson's late retraction of his grand error (1845).
    Testimony to the impossibility of suppressing the traffic while Slavery continued
    (1845)—Continued profitableness of the Slave Trade—Increased horrors of the
    Middle Passage—Slave Trade actually increased instead of being suppressed.

    THE speedy and glorious success of the efforts of Granville Sharp [1735-1813] and a few others for uprooting slavery from the soil of Great Britain, should have encouraged Christian philanthropists, in both hemispheres, one would think, to cooperate in similar efforts to uproot slavery throughout the colonial possessions of Great Britain, over which the same great principles of the British Constitution, and of English Common Law, were recognized as holding paramount authority.

    It is not improbable that the growing difficulties between the North American colonies and the mother country, ripening into a civil war, soon after the decision of the Somerset case, may have interrupted the correspondence just beginning to be opened

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    between the friends of liberty in the two countries. The British West India Islands, however, might have presented a field of operation for the abolitionists in England, though there may have been none in the islands to co-operate with them.

    From some cause, no such efforts were made. Granville Sharp, in 1774, published a tract in favor of the rights of the American colonies, of which he presented two hundred and fifty copies to Dr. Franklin, who dispatched them to America. "It was immediately and extensively republished in the colonies." The next year, 1775, on hearing of the commencement of hostilities, near Boston, he retired from the post he had held under the British administration, which was his only means of subsistence.—Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, pp. 21, 22.

    The entire period of the American Revolutionary War, terminating in 1783, appears to have been marked by an almost total suspension of active labors on the part of the friends of the negroes in England. And when, not long after, their labors were renewed, they took the form of opposition to the African slave trade, the horrible cruelties of which, at that time, having been, in some cases, exposed, excited the sympathies and the indignation of many who had never reflected profoundly upon the iniquity involved in the slave system itself.

    Thomas Clarkson

    Thomas Clarkson [1760-1846], the chief actor, for a long time, in this enterprise, then a young man, a student at Cambridge, had obtained a college prize for an Essay on the Slave Trade, which was printed in 1785, and attracted some attention. He frankly confessed afterwards, that his only motive, in the first place, was "that of other young men in the University, the wish of being distinguished, or of obtaining literary honor."

    But the facts he had collected, made so deep an impression upon him, that he soon "interested himself in it, from a motive of duty," and afterwards relinquished his prospects of promotion in the profession of a clergyman in the established church, for which he was preparing, in order to devote himself to the enterprise of abolishing the African slave trade.—Clarkson's History, pp. 79-86.

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    The attention of Granville Sharp, some time previous, had been intensely directed to the slave trade, by a most thrilling illustration of its atrocity. The slave ship Zong, Captain Collingwood, from Africa, freighted with slaves for Jamaica, in 1781, was visited with a dreadful mortality among the slaves. Under a false pretence of scarcity of water, the captain ordered a large number of the sick slaves thrown overboard, that the loss might fall on the insurers, (as merchandize thrown overboard for the safety of the vessel,) instead of falling on the owners, if they died from sickness. The question growing out of this transaction, and before the court, in 1783, was not concerning the murder of these men, but simply whether the owners or the insurers should lose the pecuniary amount of their value! The Solicitor-General, J. Lee, said:
          "This is a case of goods and chattels. It is really so; it is a case of throwing over goods, for, to this purpose, and for the purpose of insurance, they are goods and property; whether right or wrong, we have nothing to do with it."

    Lord Mansfield said:
          "The matter left to the jury is—"Was it from necessity? for they (the court) had no doubt (though it shocks one very much) that the case of slaves is the same as if horses had been thrown overboard. It is a very shocking case."

    The verdict of the jury, on the first trial, was for the captain and owners. A new trial was granted, and the insurers gained their cause. But no criminal prosecution could be had against the murderers! Any such accusation, legal gentlemen agreed, "would argue nothing less than madness!"—Clarkson's History, p. 45. Stuart's Memoirs, pp. 29-31.
          Granville Sharp "was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a short-hand writer, to take down the facts," "which he communicated to the public afterwards. He communicated them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as guardians of justice on the high seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as Minister of State. No notice, however, was taken, by any of these, of the information which had thus been sent to them."—Clarkson, p. 46.

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    In his address [writing] to the Duke of Portland, Mr. Sharp warned him of “the absolute necessity to abolish the slave trade, and West Indian slavery.”—Stuart, p. 31.

    It is easy to conceive that while the public sympathy was so strongly acted upon by such astounding developments concerning the slave trade, an effort for its abolition would be more likely to win at once a cheap general favor, than an effort for the abolition of slavery. But benevolent enterprises, founded on mere sympathy, are not likely to be as wisely directed, as consistently supported, or as really and permanently successful as those that are likewise [instead] seen, to be deeply imbedded and fortified in the fundamental principles of moral right. The history of the nominal abolition of the African slave trade is deeply interesting, as affording a striking exemplification of one class of these experiments.

    The committee instituted in Jane 1787, for “effecting the abolition of the slave trade,” was composed of twelve members, nine of whom were Quakers. Of the three others, one was Thomas Clarkson, and one was Granville Sharp, the latter of whom was appomted chairman. An earnest discussion took place in the committee, on the question whether they should direct their efforts against the slave trade alone, or against the slave trade and slavery. All the members, except Granville Sharp, were in favor of acting only against the slave trade.

    The arguments in favor of this course are stated in his history, at some length, by Mr. Clarkson. Two distinct evils, the slave trade and slavery, presented tbemselves, he says, to their attention, and both needing removal.

    “It soon appeared to the committee that to aim at the removal of both, would be to aim at too much, and that by doing this, we might lose all.” “The question then was, which of the two would they take as their object.” “By aiming at the slave trade, they were laying the axe at the very root.” Pp. 27, 28.

    This view is the more remarkable as being found in the same volume in which the same writer had said:

    “All history shows, from the time of Joseph, that where there is a market

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    for the persons of human beings, all kinds of enormities
    will be practiced to obtain them.” P. 39.

    It is still more mortifying to read Mr. Clarkson, at different points in the succeeding history, in the attitude of disclaiming on behalf of the committee, any intention of promoting emancipation. Thus, in his intercourse [correspondence] with Mirabeau, and the French National Assembly:

    “Emancipation is now stated to be the object of the friends of the negroes. This charge I repelled, by addressing myself to Monsieur Beauvet. I explained to him the views of the different societies which had taken up the cause of the Africans, and I desired [asked] him to show my letters to the planters [slavers].”—p. 241.

    Though it was held by the committee, including Mr. Clarkson, that “in aiming at the slave trade they were striking at the root,” yet, in his “Summary View of the Slave Trade, and of the probable consequences of its abolition,” Mr. Clarkson apparently labors to reconcile the abolition of the slave trade with the continuance and increase of slave-holding, a view which seems designed to conciliate the planters.

    “If the slaves were kindly treated in our colonies, they would increase. The abolition of the slave trade would necessarily secure such a treatment, and would produce many other advantages,” &c.—p. 96.

    The same view was afterwards taken by Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt, in their speeches in Parliament. Little did they imagine that the slave trade, though legally abolished, would survive and flourish after the actual abolition of slavery in the British colonies, bccause slavery would exist elsewhere.

    Even at the time of writing his History of the enterprise, Mr. Clarkson seems to have entertained a high opinion of the sagacity of the committee in making this decision.

    “Thus, at the very outset,” says he, “they took a ground which was forever tenable. Thus they were enabled to answer the objection which was afterwards so constantly and so industriously circulating against them, that they vere going to emancipate the slaves. And I have no doubt that this was a wise decision, contributing greatly to their success, for I am persuaded that if they had adopted the other object, they would not, for years, if ever, have succeeded in their attempt.”—Clarkson's History, p. 98.

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    What kind of “success” was realized [achieved], after twenty years of labor, and forty more of triumph and gratulation, will be seen in the sequel.

    Granville Sharp stood alone in the committee, in opposing their [narrow] decision in this matter [to only target the slave trade].

    “He solemnly and vehemently remonstrated with the Committee against the resolution which they had adopted. He declared that, 'as slavery was as much a crime against God as the slave trade, it became the committee to exert themselves equally against the continuance of both, and he did not hesitate to pronounce all present guilty before God, for shutting those who were then slaves out of the pale of their approaching labors.'

    “He delivered this protest with a loud voice, a powerful emphasis, and both hands lifted up towards heaven, as was usual with him when much moved. The Committee acknowledged the criminality of both to be the same, but they adhered to their resolution, fearing that if they attacked, at once, both slavery and the slave trade, they would succeed against neither.”—Stuart's Memoir of Sharp, p. 56.

    Ed. Note: Goodell shows that Sharp's protest was later verified as having been accurate, pp 65-66, infra.

    Having delivered this testimony, and conceiving, as he seems to have done, that the responsibility rested on him no longer, he consented to act with the committee, though with such singular modesty, (notwithstanding his Christian boldness) that “he would never assume the chair”—“while he sustained the responsibility and discharged the duty of the office.”*

    “I have attended above seven hundred Committees and Sub-Committees with him,” says Clarkson, “yet, though sometimes but few were present, he always seated himself at the end of the room; choosing rather to serve the glorious cause, in humility, through conscience, than in the character of a distinguished individual.”

    Among the early patrons of the enterprise of abolishing the slave trade, was William Wilberforce, member of Parliament, with whom Mr. Clarkson, Mr. Sharp, and several others, had been in the habit of holding consultations before the organization of the Committee, and preliminary to that measure.

    Ed. Note: For background on this process, see, e.g.,
  • Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
  • Kevin Belmonte's biography on Wilberforce
  • Steven M. Wise, Though The Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led To The End Of Human Slavery

    • Mr. Clarkson, at the request of the Committee, visited
    ____________________________________
    * Vide Stuart's Memoir, p. 56.
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    several different commercial cities in the kingdom [Britain], to obtain further information, before commencing the agitation of the subject [raising the issue] in Parliament. He likewise visited France, to secure the co-operation of the French National Assembly; but this mission was a failure. Correspondence was likewise held with friends of the cause in America, and their co-operation secured, to effect the abolition of the slave trade by our [U.S.] Government. The public mind was operated upon in various ways. A sentiment averse to the use of slave-grown products was cherished in the literature of the country. At one period, the school books, both of England and of the United States, abounded in expressions of this sentiment.

    “Three hundred thousand persons, at this period, refrained from [boycotted] sugar altogether, perceiving that by using it they were directly supporting the slave system they abhorred. Three hundred and ten petitions were presented from England, one hundred and eighty-seven from Scotland, and twenty from Wales.”—Stuart's Memoir, p. 51-2.

    Could this sentiment against the use of slave products have arisen to the dignity of a moral principle in the minds of these philanthropists, and had it been guided by a sufficient degree of reflection and intelligence, it might have suggested the necessity of an enterprise against SLAVERY—which furnishes slave products—as well as against the slave trade.

    As it was, the country was extensively agitated, and a violent opposition was roused, which was continued for twenty years, led on by some of the principal men of the nation, and sustained by the entire West India interest. In the cities the opposition was violent. At Liverpool, attempts were made to throw Mr. Clarkson into the dock. In the House of Lords, the abolitionists were stigmatized by the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV., “as fanatics and hypocrites, among whom he included Mr. Wilberforce, by name.”* Many years afterwards, he had the honor of giving the royal assent to a bill for abolishing, not the African slave trade, but slavery itself, in the West Indies!—A more protracted or a more vio-
    ____________________________________
    * Clarkson's History, p. 323.
    -59-
    lent contest could hardly have been witnessed, had the effort been made against slavery itself. While the ranks of the opposition, could have done nothing more, the friends of the negroes would have been doubly armed with the whole panoply of divine truth, and would have been spared those pitiful and indefensible disclaimers that so much crippled and embarrassed them, and their successors, at a later day.

    We must not forget to notice the important fact, that during the whole of this contest against the slave trade, as in the previous one of [by] Granville Sharp against slavery in England, the conscience and the humanity of the country were neither counteracted nor unsustained by the religion of the country. Churches and Ministers, so far from opposing human progress and liberty [as did the vile U.S. clergy], very extensively regarded it their proper business to urge them onward. The Society of Friends, having previously purged their own community, were ready to cast their influence on the right side [the anti-slavery side].

    But the Friends [Quakers] were not alone.

    The eloquent and celebrated letter of John Wesley, on his death-bed, (1791) to William Wilberforce, is to be regarded not merely as an expression of his own personal feelings in respect to the pending contest [struggle], but as a specimen of the religious sentiment [viewpoint] in the midst of which he was moving, and which it was the business of his life to commend and communicate to others, as belonging to the sanctification which fits men for heaven.

    In this [1791] letter [by John Wesley] the opponents of abolition are alluded to as the confederates [accessories] of “devils,” and American slavery is denominated “the vilest that ever saw the sun.” This was Methodism, when Methodism was vitalized by the Spirit of God, and clothed with Divine power.

    Ed. Note: William Lloyd Garrison used the same
    concept in referring to the "demonized" South.

    But Baptists in England were not behind Methodists, at this period, nor have they since been. It was during the progress of this same contest [struggle], and very nearly at the same date, that

    “one of the ablest writers and soundest divines who have ever adorned the Baptist denomination, good old Abraham Booth,”

    by his preaching and in his correspondence (1792) with brethren in America, bore a similar testimony. He, too,

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    along with Grotius, and Wesley, and Edwards, and Porteus, and Macknight, and Scott, and the American Presbyterian Church, (previous to 1818), understood that modern slaveholding falls under the condemnation of “man-stealing,” as prohibited by Moses [God], in Exodus 21:16, and condemned by Paul in 1 Tim. 1:10. The sermon of Eld. James Dove was still earlier, (1789,) and had direct and special reference to the same great struggle, in which no good men were neutral.

    Not only Baptist ministers but Baptist Churches and Baptist Associations in England, came up to the work, in good earnest. The [vile U.S. clergy] idea [pretense] that the enterprise was too secular or too political for the co-operation of churches and ecclesiastical bodies, seems not to have embarrassed them.*

    The King directed a privy council to consider the state of
    ____________
    * “The Elders and Messengers of the several Baptist Churches meeting at Falmouth, Chasewater, Plymouth Dock, Plymouth,” and (twelve other Churches) “having received letters also from Portsmouth, Sarum” (and twenty other churches—making 38 Churches in all), “being met in association at Plymouth, May 25-6, 1790, a letter received last year from Granville Sharp, Esq., was read, and a third benefaction of five guineas was voted to the treasurer of the truly noble Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, as a further testimony of our high approbation of their zealous efforts to remove so great an evil.”

    “Northampton and, other Churches in Association.
    “Oakham, June 14-15, 1791.

    “It was unanimously voted that five guineas be sent up to the treasurer of the Society for Procuring the Abolition of the Slave Trade,” &c. A part of the statement speaks of “the iniquitous, disgraceful practices of slave-dealing and slaveholders.”
    "Baptist Association, Wooten-under-edge,
    "June 14-15, 1791.

    “Voted, particularly, a fourth benefaction of five guineas to the Committee for Abolishing the Slave Trade.”

    Similar minutes are on record of the Northamptonshire Association.

    York and Lancashire Association.—“The ministers, met in association at Salendine, June 15-16, 1791, send Christian salutations to the several Churches with which they are connected” (here follow their names, eighteen in number), &c.

    Then follows a letter from the ministers to these Churches, urging upon them renewed and continued effort in the cause of abolition, adding:
    “Ye friends of humanity, heaven will reward and approve your conduct.”

    [See “Facts for Baptist Churches, by A. T. Foss and E. Mathews. Utica: Published by the American Baptist Free Mission Society,” 1850—a book of 408 pages, and containing a mass of documentary information, chiefly concerning Baptists in America.]
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    the African Slave Trade, in February, 1788. In May of the same year, the same subject of inquiry was introduced into the House of Commons, by Mr. Pitt, during the sickness of Mr. Wilberforce. The investigation was urged by Pitt, Wilberforce, Fox, and Burke, but delayed by opposition, until, in April, 1791, Mr. Wilberforce moved for leave to bring in a bill to prevent the further importation of slaves into the colonies. After a long debate, the motion was lost. He renewed his motion in 1792, when an amendment in favor of gradual abolition prevailed in the Commons, but was not acted upon in the House of Lords.

    “In 1793, Mr. Wilberforce renewed and lost his motion. In 1794, he renewed and carried it in the House of Commons, but the House of Lords rejected it. In 1795-6, the effort was renewed and negatived. In 1797, an address was carried to the king. In 1798-9, Mr. Wilberforce renewed his motion, and was defeated, but Dr. [Samuel] Horsley, Bishop of Rochester, in the House of Lords, nobly and effectually vindicated Scripture from the blasphemous imputation of tolerating slavery.”—Stuart's Memoir, p. 54.

    So the argument must needs be made against slavery, though the proposition was only to abolish the traffic [slave trade] from Africa!

    Ed. Note: Likewise is true in the present, on
  • reparations (argument must be made against slavery)
  • tobacco taxes and sales to minors (argument must be made against tobacco).
    These predecessors showed that issues must be faced directly, rather than by indirect and gradualist means.

    • And the Bible argument, from the lips of religious teachers, must needs precede legislative action.

    From 1799 till 1801, the agitation in Parliament was suspended; but, in the mean time, public sentiment appears to have undergone a favorable change, and in Parliament the cause was strengthened by the accession of the new representation from Ireland.

    “In 1804, the bill passed the Commons, but its discussion was deferred in the House of Lords.

    “In 1805, Wilberforce renewed his motion, but lost it. Mr. Pitt, who had thus far fostered the bill, soon after died.

    In 1806, a bill was introduced by Sir Arthur Piggott, to give effect to a previous proclamation of the King, restricting and crippling, in some particulars, the slave trade. This bill passed both houses, whereupon Mr. Fox moved

    “That the House, considering the slave trade to be contrary to the
    principles of justice, humanity and policy, will, with all practica-

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    ble expedition, take effectual measures for its abolition.”—“This was carried by a majority of 114 to 15 in the Commons, and 41 to 20 in the Lords. Mr. Fox died before the next session.”

    “In 1807, Lord Granville brought into the House of Lords a Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.” After mature discussion, during which counsel was heard against it, four days, the Bill was passed in the House of Lords, 100 to 36, and the House of Commons, 283 to 16. It received, almost immediately the Royal assent. This was March 16th, 1807. The Bill provided that no vessel should clear out from any British port for slaves after the 1st of May 1807, nor land any in the colonies after the 1st of March, 1808.—Stuart's Memoir, v 54. Clarkson's Hist. passim.

    Similar action was going on in the Governments of other nations, or soon followed. In the United States, a Statute of Congress, enacted in 1807, prohibited the importation of slaves, after January 1, 1808. In 1818, Congress declared the traffic [slave trade] to be piracy. In 1819, the President was authorized to provide for the removal of imported slaves beyond the limits of the United States.

    REVIEW OF THIS STRUGGLE.

    This memorable and protracted struggle is instructive, in many respects. Among other things, it shows how blindly public men may follow mere technicalities and precedents, and how difficult it is to overcome the prejudices associated with these, in the effort to restore the reign of impartial law.

    A similar struggle had resulted in the decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case, in 1772. The illegality of slave holding was then fully established, under the fundamental principles of the British Constitution and Common Law, which were not then first brought into existence, but had been the same, from the beginning of the slave trade. The decision had labeled "ILLEGALITY" upon the whole procedure, from beginning to end, upon the slave trade as
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    well as slavery, upon the past slave trade and slavery as well as present so far as the principle involved was concerned. To have admitted [alleged] that there had been, or then was, any legality in the slave trade, under that same British Constitution and Common Law, would have been, in effect, to have impugned the decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case, and to have set it aside as erroneous. No one thought of attempting this.

    And yet, strange to tell, the then present legality of the slave trade appears to have been taken for granted [assumed], on all hands, at the commencement of this long struggle for its Parliamentary suppression.

    It is curious to observe, that while in America, at the present time, slave holding is held to be legal and not disreputable, and yet the slave trade is branded as piracy; the corresponding prejudice in England took an opposite direction; insomuch that slave holding was considered a high crime, while around the slave trade was supposed [assumed] to cluster all the sacred sanctions and guaranties of obligatory and valid law!

    Ed. Note: Would-be violators do whatever they think they can get away with.
    We now see this with tobacco, selling to children, to minorities, smuggling, obstructing every aspect of attempted reform.

    It was not until this falsehood [alleging legality] was ferrited out of its hiding places, dragged into daylight, and dissected by Mr. Pitt, that the power of the slave trade, in the Parliament, was broken and the charm of its invincibility, as an interest fostered by the Government, was dissolved.

    To every thing that could be urged by the eloquence of Wilberforce, against the wickedness, the injustice, the inhumanity, the cruelty, the impolicy, and the blighting effects of the slave trade, the ready answer of the interested opposition was, the legality of the traffic, the sacred and inviolable guaranties, the legal inheritance, the patrimonial rights of the parties concerned, and especially of the West India planters, who were supposed to need further supplies of slaves.

    Ed. Note: In the modern era, we see similiar arguments for tobacco, the pushers invariably saying 'it's legal,' ignoring both the common law rights on pure air and putting out fires, and the law and precedents on murder.

    In answer to Mr. Dundas, who, for the fortieth time, perhaps, had been parrying off [stalling] Parliamentary proceedings, by urging pleas of this sort, Mr. Pitt, upon whose vision new light on the subject appears to have suddenly gleamed, rose up, astonished the House, and overwhelmed his antagonist by a bold denial of the legality of the slave trade, under any sup-
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    posed laws of the realm! He [Mr. Pitt] proceeded to dash in shivers [demolish] the flimsy pretext, in a manner that precluded all attempts at reply.

    “Any contract,” he said, “for the promotion of this trade must, in his opinion, have been VOID FROM THE BEGINNING, for if it was an outrage upon justice, and only another name for fraud, robbery, and murder, what pledge could devolve on the legislature to incur the obligation of becoming principals in the commission of such enormities, by sanctioning their continuance?

    “But he would appeal to the acts [words, text, laws] themselves. That of 33 George II., c. 31, was the one upon which the greatest stress was laid. How would the House be surprised to hear that these very outrages committed in the prosecution [carrying out] of this [slave] trade had been forbidden by that act!

    'No master of a ship trading to Africa,' says the act, 'shall, by fraud, force, or violence, or by any indirect practice whatever, take on board or carry away from that coast any Negro, or native of that country, or commit any violence upon the natives, to the prejudice of said trade; and every person so offending shall, for every such offence, furfeit one hundred pounds.'
    But the whole [slave] trade had been demonstrated to be a system of fraud and violence, and therefore the contract [law] was daily violated under which the Parliament allowed it to continue.”—Clarkson's History, p. 314.

    Thus was the notion of the legality of the slave trade exploded [refuted], (as that of the legality of slavery had previously been [by the Somerset decision]) and the mind of the British nation forever emancipated from that ensnaring and enslaving delusion. Thenceforward the real question was, how that lawless traffic could be suppressed and terminated.

    ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE ABORTIVE.

    One of the most instructive though mortifying lessons to be deduced from this history, as expounded in the light of its results, is the utter futility of ail attempts to suppress the slave trade, without breaking up [banning] the market, by the abolition of slavery itself. So slow have philanthropists [reformers] been to learn this plain lesson, that, during one entire human generation, the glorious abolition of the African slave trade was celebrated by public demonstrations, by orators, by poets, by historians, in almost universal inattention to the fact, that the slave

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    trade, though prohibited by law, was increasing, both in extent and in cruelty, amid all this misplaced [premature] gratulation and triumph.

    Disregarding chronological order, for a few moments, we must leap over a chasm of tbirty-five years, to witness the historical confirmation of Granville Sharp's solemn protest [p 58, supra] against the deplorable error of the Committee.

    Mr. Clarkson lived to see and to retract the errer. As President of the Anti-Slavery Society, in 1845, he addressed a letter to Lord Aberdeen, on the mode of suppressing the traffic, in which he solemnly affirmed [admitted], “that by the total abolition of slavery only, can the slave trade be annihilated."

    This view was “sustained by the high authority of Lord John Russell, who, when Colonial Minister, addressed a communication to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, in which he says,—“To repress the Foreign Slave Trade by a marine guard would scarcely be possible.'”

    This view was afterwards amply sustained by evidence before a Select Committee of Parliament, and embodied in two Reports presented to the House of Commons, showing not only the increase and the horrors of the Slave Traffic, but the utter inefficiency of an armed force for its suppression. A number of Commanders in the Royal Navy, employed in that service, gave explicit testimony to that import [effect], and that the horrors of the middle passage and the miseries of the slaves are greatly aggravated by the efforts to suppress the traffic.

    The reason, as stated by the witnesses, is obvious. The trade, after deducting losses by deaths on the passage, yields a profit of about 200 per cent. on the investment! The amount of re-captures, though very great, and indicating the vast extent and briskness of the traffic [slave trade], is only from four to ten per cent. of the estimated amount of shipments, and consequently interposes no serious check to [reduction of] the business. Yet the danger of capture induces the use of smaller vessels, in order to escape more easily the [Royal Navy] cruisers, and the consequent crowding of the slaves into a much smaller space.

    The picture of the middle passage, in former times, as drawn

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    by Mr. Mann, (already quoted [p 9, supra],) falls short of the reality, as existing at present. It was testified that

    “in Brazil the number of slaves imported are now beyond what they were before Great Britain first used her efforts to put down the trade.” Between 60,000 and 65,000 were computed to have been landed alive in Brazil, in the year 1847, after a loss of 35,000 by deaths, on the passage. In short, “the horrors of the slave trade appear to increase, just in proportion to the rigor used for its suppression.”

    The French and American [Navy] squadrons have, however, done little or nothing for the suppression.

    And, under cover of the American flag, which, by treaty, the British cruisers are prohibited from molesting, the slavers, of whatever nation frequently defeat the object of the British cruisers.

    The whole number of slaves computed to have been exported from Africa, westward, in 1788, was 100,000. The annual export from 1798 to 1805 was computed at 85,000. For the year 1847, it was computed at 88,000. This shows that the decrease of the slave trade since the first organized agitation on the subject has not kept equal pace with the extent to which slavery itself has been abolished, diminishing the field resorted to as a market.

    In other words, if slavery now existed, as it recently did, in the British West Indies, in Mexico, and all the South American countries, we should [would] witness a greater amount of slave exportations from Africa than in 1788. This is confirmed by the fact that in 1825, such was actually the case, the exportations for that year having been computed at 125,000, and from some causes, the average of exportations from 1835 to 1840, inclusive, were computed at 135,000.*

    Towards the close of this period, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Esq., Member of Parliament, wrote an account of the African slave trade, in which he says:

    “It has been proved, by documents which cannot be controverted, that for every village fired, and every drove of human beings marched, in former times, there are now double. For every cargo then at sea, two cargoes,
    ____________________________________
    * See Annual Reports of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, for 1847 and 1848; also, the (British) Anti-Slavery Reporter, for August 1, 1848, containing an abstract of the evidence before the Select Committee of Parliament.
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    or twice the number in one cargo, wedged together, in a mass of living corruption, are now borne on the wave of the Atlantic."—Bostons's Slave Trade, p. 159.

    But the efforts of philanthropists for the abolition of the African slave trade were not wholly in vain. They demonstrated the necessity of abolishing slavery itself. They branded with the infamy of piracy the African slave trade, and, by unavoidable implication, the same traffic everywhere else, thus striking at the very idea of human chattelhood throughout the world. If the process of teaching these truths has been a slow one, it has nevertheless been effective.
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    CHAPTER VIII.

    PERIOD OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, AND THE
    ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INDEPENDENT GOVERNMENT.

    Natural Tendencies of the Revolutionary Struggle—Its principle educed from
    previous Anti-Slavery Discussion—Originated in the States least influenced
    by Slavery—First Congress (1774)—Action in favor of "the abolition of Domestic
    Slavery    "—Resolutions against the Slave Trade—Previous action in Provincial and
    Local Conventions—In North Carolina and Virginia—"Articles of Association"
    against Slave Trade—Concurrent Action in Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, and
    Connecticut—Anti-Slavery Literature of 1776—Implied illegality of Slavery—
    Declaration of Independence—The unanimous act of the Thirteen United States
    —"The Union" formed then, and not by the Federal Constitution of 1789—John Q.
    Adams—This Declaration equivalent to a Constitution of Government—State
    Constitutions—Articles of Confederation (1778) mal^e no compromise with Slavery
    —Sentiments published by order of Congress (1779)—.Jefferson's Notes on
    Virginia—Peace of 1783—Address of Congress to the States—Sentiments
    of prominent Statesmen—Legislation in Virginia.

    THE state of the slave question in America, from about the time of the commencement of the Revolution in 1774, till the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789, requires to be correctly understood, in order to any trustworthy estimate of the bearing of our political institutions upon the present existence of slavery.


    [Map of U.S., 1783]

    It was by no accidental coincidence that the period of the Revolution was the period of a more general and deep seated opposition to slavery than had been before visible, or than has been witnessed since. The religious sentiment against slavery, as a violation of heaven established rights, a sentiment that had been rising for some time previous, and that was now beginning to reach the point of disfellowship with slave-holders, was a sentiment that naturally assimilated itself.
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    with the rising opposition to the British Govemment for its invasions of the same sacred rights; and that as naturally sought the same remedy; to wit, the separation of freedom from the embraces of despotic power. A spirit of liberty, humanity, and justice, in the church, may be regarded as the best foundation for the establishment of liberty, humanity, and justice in the State [society],* and a proper regard for the rights of others will ever [always] be found essential to a healthful jealousy and timely vindication of our own.

    It is equally evident that the rising opposition of the community in general to the despotic assumptions of the British Government, so far as it had anything in it like a manly regard to free principles for its basis, compelled that community to look at the more grievous wrongs of the slaves, and created an earnest sympathy in their favor. A decent regard to self-consistency, in that unsophisticated and earnest age, could scarcely fail to produce some such effects. The only just ground for regret or astonishment is that the spirit of freedom then seeming to be in the ascendant, did not secure and maintain a more complete and permanent triumph.

    It is instructive to notice how the spirit of republican liberty and independence, in the different colonies, was found most predominant and most efficient, precisely where there were
    ____________________________________
    *It may be doubted by some whether the religious sentiment and the testimony and action of religious bodies against slavery in thls country, had been sufficiently extensive to make any very deep impression either upon the public conscience, in general; or upon the minds of our prominent statesmen. But the power of such influences is greater than is commonly understood. True statesmen, and even shrewd politicians, always keep themselves informed in respect to the religious tendencies of a country. Especially was this true in the last century. There can be no doubt that such men as Jefferson and Madison, were familiarly acquainted with all that theologians in this country and Europe had written concerning slavery.

    The letter of Patrick Henry to Robert Pleasants (afterwards President of the Virginia Abolition Society), written Jan. 18, 1773, sufficiently shows that his mind had been deeply affected with [persuaded by] the [abolition] movements among the "Friends" [Quakers].

    “Believe me,” says he, “I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish alavery. It is a debt that we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law that warrants slavery. I exhort you to persevere in so worthy a resolution.” “I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil.”

    Ed. Note: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key (1853), p 36, reprinted more from that letter.

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    fewest slaves, and where the spirit of opposition to slavery was likewise most efficient and most predominant; while the regions most deeply involved in the sin of slaveholding and least accessible to the principles of emancipation, were precisely the same regions in which the apologists and partisans of British usurpation, were most numerous and influential—the regions in which the spirit of opposition to that usurpation was, to the smallest extent, and with the greatest difficulty roused.

    The South was overrun with tories [pro-monarchists], while New England was united in favor of independence, almost to a man. Particular localities at the North might be mentioned, where the prevalence of slaveholding and slave trading was connected with a corresponding sympathy with despotic government.

    Ed. Note: The South had been mostly settled by Tories, the traditional enemies of liberty.

    It may be added, that the names most prominent in the Revolutionary struggle were also among the names most prominent in opposition to slavery, and it is not known that a single advocate of the abolition of slavery was otherwise than a firm asserter of the rights of the Colonies.

    That the subsequent decline of the spirit of general liberty, and the corresponding decline of opposition to slavery, have steadily gone hand in hand, until the propagandists of interminable slavery have derided the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, and the people of the free States have listened with comparative apathy, are equally undeniable facts.

    A full and correct history of the American Revolution, and of the incipient and successive steps taken to unite the Colonies under a new government, cannot fail to identify the movement with opposition to slavery, and the purpose and anticipation of its overthrow. A few documentary facts, in illustration, must suffice here.

    The first general Congress of the Colonies assembled in Philadelphia, in September, 1774. Preparatory to that measure, the Convention of Virginia assembled in August of that year, to appoint delegates to the general Congress. An exposition of the rights of British America, by Mr. Jefferson,

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    was laid before this Convention, of which the following is an extract:
    "THE ABOLITION OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY is the greatest object of desire in these Colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves, it is necessary to exclude further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative, thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice."—Am. Archives, 4th series, Vol I, p. 696.

    The Virginia Convention, before separating, adopted the following resolution:
    Resolved, We will neither ourselves import nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person after the first day of November next [1774], either from AFRICA, the WEST INDIES, or ANY OTHER PLACE."—Ib. p 687.

    Similar resolutions, had been adopted by primary meetings of the people in county meetings throughout Virginia, during the month of July preceding the State Convention. At the meeting in Fairfax county, [George] WASHINGTON was chairman.

    North Carolina also held her Provincial Convention in August, of the same year. Nearly every county in the State was represented. There were sixty-nine delegates. The following resolution was adopted:
    "Resolved, That we will not import any slave or slaves, or purchase any slave or slaves imported or brought into the Province by others, from any part of the woild, after the first day of November next."—Ib., p 735.

    Similar resolutions had been previously adopted in primary meetings of the citizens m other Southern provinces, now States.

    It was after such demonstrations that the first General Congress assembled. Their first and main work was the formation of the "ASSOCIATION" which formed a bond of Union between the Colonies. This was nearly two years before the Declaration of Independence, so that "the Union" of the future States was effected before their Independence, a fact subversive of the common theory of the Constitution, which supposes inde-

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    pendent States first, and a compromise of the slave question, in order to the effecting of a Union, afterwards. The following extracts from the articles of Association will show the principles and the terms, so far as the slave question is concerned, upon which this first union was effected:
    "We do, for ourselves and the inhabitants of the several Colonies whom we represent, firmly agree and associate under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of our country, as follows:

    * * * * * * *

    2. "THAT WE WILL NEITHER IMPORT NOR PURCHASE ANY SLAVE imported after the first day of December next, after which time we will wholly discontinue the SLAVE TRADE, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures, to those who are concerned in it."

    * * * * * * *

    11. "That a committee be chosen in every county, city, and town, by those who are qualified to vote for Representatives in the Legislature, whose business it shall be attentively to observe the conduct of all persons touching this Association, and when it shall be made to appear, to the satisfaction of a majority of any such committee, that any person within the limits of their appointment has violated this Association, that such majority do forthwith cause the truth of the case to be published in the gazette, to the end that all such FOES to the rights of British America maybe publicly known, and universally contemned as the ENEMIES OF AMERICAN LIBERTY; and thenceforth we respectively will break off all dealings with him or her."

    * * * * * * *

    14. "And we do further agree and resolve that we will have no trade, commerce, dealings, or intercourse whatever, with any colony or province in North America, which shall not accede to, or which shall hereafter violate this Association, but will hold them as UNWORTHY OF THE RIGHTS OF FREEMEN, and as inimical to the liberties of this country."

    * * * * * * *

    "The foregoing Association, being determined upon by the Congress, was ordered to be subscribed by the several members thereof, and thereupon, we have hereunto set our respective names, accordingly.

    In Congress, Philadelphia, October 20, 1774

    PEYTON RANDOLPH,
    President,

    NEW HAMPSHIRE—John Sullivan, Nathaniel Folsom.

    MASSACHUSETTS BAY—Thomas Gushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine.

    RHODE ISLAND—Stephen Hopkins, Samuel Ward.

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    CONNECTICUT—Eliphalet Dyer, Roger Sheiman, Silas Deane.

    NEW YORK—Isaac Low, John Alsop, John Jay, James Duane, Philip Livingston, Wilham Floyd, Henry Wisner, Simon Bocrum.

    NEW JERSEY—James Kinsey, William Livingston, Stephen Crane, Richard Smith, John De Hart.

    PENNSYLVANIA—Joseph Galloway, John Dickmson, Charles Humphreys, Thomas Mifflin, Edward Biddle, John Morton, George Ross.

    THE LOWER COUNIIES, NEWCASTLE, &c.—Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean, George Read.

    MARYLAND—Matthew Tilghman, Thomas Johnson, jr., William Paca, Samuel Chase.

    VIRGINIA—Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, jr., Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton.

    NORTH CAROLINA—William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, Richard Caswell.

    SOUTH CAROLINA—Henry Middleton, Thomas Lynch, Christopher Gadsden, John Rutledge, Edward Rutledge—American Archives, 4th Series, p. 915.

    Such was the action of the first American Congress. These were items in the “Articles of Association.” How they were received in the Colonies will appear from the following:

    “We, therefore, the Representatives of the extensive District of Darien, in the colony of Georgia, having now assembled in Congress, by authority and free choice of the inhabitants of said District, now freed from their [British] fetters, do resolve:

    “5. To show the world that we are not influenced by any contracted or interested [non-impartial] motives, but a general philanthropy for ALL MANKIND, of whatver climate, language, or complexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in America, (however the uncultivated state of our countt), or other specious arguments may plead for it,) a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties, (as well as lives,) debasing part of our fellow-creatures below men, and corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest, and is laying the basis of that liberty we contend for, (and which we pray the Almighty to continue to the latest posterity,) upon a very wrong foundation. We, therefore, Resolve, at all times to use our utmost endeavors for the manumission of our slaves in this colony, upon the most safe and equitable footing for the master and themselves.”—JAN. 12th, 1775.—Ibid., p. 1136.

    The following action was taken by the Convention of Maryland, held in November, 1774, and re-adopted by a Convention more fully attended, in December:

    “Resolved, That every member of this meeting will, and every person in

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    the province should, strictly and inviolably observe and carry into
    execution the Association agreed on by the Continental Congress.”

    The declaration adopted by a general meeting of the freeholders in James City county, in Virginia, in November, 1774, is in these words:

    “The Association entered into by Congress being publicly read, the freeholders and other inhabitants of the county, that they might testify to the world their concurrence and hearty approbation of the measures adopted by that respectable body, very cordially acceded thereto, and did bind and oblige themselves, by the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love to their country, strictly and inviolably to observe and keep the same in every particular.”

    The proceedings of a town meeting at Danbury, Connecticut, Dec. 12th, 1774, contained the following:

    “It is with singular pleasure we notice the second article of the Association, in which it is agreed to import no more negro slaves, as we cannot but think it a palpable absurdity so loudly to complain of attempts to enslave us while we are actually enslaving others.”—Am. Archives, 4th series, Vol. I., p. 1038.

    These are but “specimens [samples] of the formal and solemn declarations of public bodies." “The Articles of Association were adopted by Colonial Conventions, County Meetings, and lesser assemblages throughout the country, and became the law of America—the fundamental Constitution, so to speak, of the first American Union.” “The Union thus constituted was, to be sure, imperfect, partial, incomplete, but it was still a Union, a union of the Colonies and of the people for the great [pro-freedom] objects [purpose] set forth in the articles. And let it be remembered, also, that prominent in the list of measures agreed on in these articles, was the discontinuance of the slave trade, with a view to the ultimate extinction of slavery itself.”*

    That this “sentiment [viewpoint] pervaded the masses of the people,” and that they understood themselves as laying the constitutional foundations of a permanent union and general government by these measures, may be seen by the following extracts from an eloquent paper, entitled “Observations addressed to the people of America,” printed at Philadelphia, in Nov., 1774:
    ____________________________________
    * Speech of Hon. S. P. Chase, of Ohio, U. S. Senate, March 26, 1850. To this speech, and to that of Hon. Lewis D. Campbell, of Ohio, in the House of Representatives of the U. S , Feb. 19, 1850, we are indebted for the quotations made from the American Archives.
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    "The least deviation from the resolves of Congress will be treason; such treason as few villains have ever had an opportunity of commuting. It will be treason against the present inhabitants of the colonies—against the millions of unborn generations who are to exist hereafter in America—against the only liberty and happiness which remain to mankind—against the last hopes of the wretched in every corner of the world; in a word, it will be treason against God. * * * WE ARE NOW LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN AMERICAN CONSTITUTION.

    "Let us, therefore, hold up everything we do to the eye of posterity. They will most probably measure their liberties and happiness by the most careless of our footsteps. Let no unhallowed hand touch the precious seed of liberty. Let us form the glorious tree in such a manner, and impregnate it with such principles of life, that it shall last forever. * * * I almost wish to live to hear the triumphs of the jubilee in the year 1874; to see the models, pictures, fragments of writings, that shall be displayed to revive the memory of the proceedings of the Congress of 1774. If any adventitious circumstance shall give precedency on that day, it shall be to inherit the blood, or even to possess the name, of a member of that glorious assembly."—Amer. Arch., 4 ser., vol. i, p. 976.

    The spirit of 1774 was not extinct or languishing in 1776, a year memorable not only for the Declaration of American Independence, but for the previous enunciation of the same self-evident truths, applied to the sin of slavery, in a more elaborate and thorough elucidation of the whole subject than had before appeared.*

    The argument of Dr. Hopkins against slavery is introduced by a notice of the action of Congress against the slave trade, and the statement that the traffic "has now but few advocates, and is generally exploded and condemned." The treatise contains the remarkable statement that "the slavery that now takes place," (in distinction from that of ancient times,) is "without the express sanction of civil government."†

    Ed. Note: This same point of view was expressed by
  • Gerrit Smith, Letter of Gerrit Smith to Hon. Henry Clay (New York:
    American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), p 19
  • George Mellen, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston: Saxton &
    Pierce, 1841), pp 431-432
  • Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (Boston:
    Bela Marsh, 1845), p 23
  • Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech (1854), p 221
  • Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 26-28
    June 1855), p 34.

    • This idea will now appear strange to most per-
    ____________
    *"A Dialogue concerning the Slavery of the Africans, showing it to be the duty and interest of the American States to emancipate all their African Slaves. Dedicated to the Honorable the Continental Congress." By Samuel Hopkins, D.D., of Newport, R. I.

    †The same idea seems involved in another portion of the treatise. "The several legislatures in these colonies," says the writer, "the magistrates and the body of the people, have doubtless been greatly guilty in approving and encouraging, or at least conniving at, this practice" (i.e., slaveholding). This is certainly remarkable language, especially from so accurate and discrimin-

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    sons. But the careful and reflecting reader of the history we have given in the preceding chapters, will have been led to inquire when and how the "express sanction," of "civil government" had been given to slavery in any form that could entitle it to the reputation of being legalized. The decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case, four years previous, may have been in the mind of Hopkins, and he is known to have been in correspondence with Granville Sharp, with whose views the reader is acquainted.

    What seems most remarkable is, that a treatise containing such a statement should not only have been extensively circulated without being questioned, but republished, and still more extensively circulated, nine years afterwards, by anti-slavery societies under the auspices of such statesmen as Franklin and Jay. If it be conceded that American slavery was "without the express sanction of civil government," that it was not, in a strict and proper sense, legalized, at the time when Hopkins wrote his treatise, a few months before the Declaration of Independence, it would be a curious question how it could have become legalized since. Assuredly, the far-famed Declaration of inalienable human rights cannot have given it any new validity!
    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." "We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America," &c. &c.

    We enter into no argument here concerning the legal effect of that immortal Declaration, upon the tenure of slave property. But it is important to note down distinctly the historical facts. It was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United (not disunited) States of America." The "Union" had already been formed, and has never since been dissolved.
    ____________
    ative a writer as Hopkins, if slavery were universally and unhesitatingly held to be legal. Legislatures and magistrates are not commonly spoken of as "conniving" (closing their eyes upon) practices which are admitted to be legal! Such language describes their culpable neglect to suppress and punish practices that are unlawful.

    -77-
    On this point, there can be no mistake.* It was not only a Declaration of the States by their delegates, but was separately ratified by all the States, afterwards, and has never been repudiated or repealed since. In connection with the previous Articles of Association, it was the only constitution of the United States, until the adoption of the "Articles of Confederation" in 1778; and with these, thenceforward, until the adoption of the present Federal Constitution, in 1789.

    It had power to legalize Acts of Congress and Treaties, as also to absolve citizens from their allegiance to the king of Great Britain.† Its repeal would have been an abandonment of Independence, and a return to the condition of colonies.

    Besides this, the original thirteen States, except Connecticut and Rhode Island, formed Constitutions bearing date, variously, from 1776 to 1783. "They generally recognized, in some form or other, the natural rights of men, as one of the fundamental principles of the government. Several of them asserted these rights in the most emphatic and authoritative manner." So that the fundamental principles and self-evident truths of the Declaration of 1776 became the constitutional law of the several States. Vide Spooner, p. 46.

    The Articles of Confederation, formed in 1778, contained no recognition of slavery, nor of distinctions of color. It was never pretended that, under these articles, the slaveholder whose slaves had escaped to another State, had any legal power to force him back.

    In 1779 the Continental Congress ordered a pamphlet to be published, entitled, "Observations on the American Revolution," of which the following is an extract:

    "The great principle (of government) is and ever will remain in force,
    ____________
    *The reader is referred to the unanswered and unanswerable argument of John Quincy Adams on this point, in his address at Newburyport, 4th of July, 1837.

    †John Hancock, President of Congress, in a letter to the Convention of New Jersey, then in session, and inclosing a copy of the Declaration of Independence, speaks of it as being "the ground and foundation of a future government." If the "ground and foundation" be removed, what becomes of the superstructure? But if this "ground and foundation" remains, what becomes of the validity of slave laws?

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    that men are, by nature, free; as accountable to Him that made them, they must be so; and so long as we have any idea of divine justice, we must associate that of human freedom. Whether men can part with their liberty is among the questions which have exercised the ablest writers; but it is conceded, on all hands, that the right to be free CAN NEVER BE ALIENATED; still less is it practicable for one generation to mortgage the privileges of another."

    A more forcible denial of the possibility of legalizing slavery could not easily have been penned.

    Thomas Jefferson

    About this time, or not long after, Mr. Jefferson wrote his celebrated Notes on. Virginia, in which his testimonies against slavery are so various and emphatic, that we hesitate what paragraph to select for quotation. The following serves to show what such men, at that time, expected and desired to see accomplished, and what was then, in Mr. Jefferson's opinion, the state of sentiment in the Southern States.

    "I think a change is already perceptible since the [1776] origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave is rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, THE WAY, I HOPE, PREPARING, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF HEAVEN, FOR A TOTAL EMANCIPATION."

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826], Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Prichard and Hall, 1788) [Excerpt].

    General [Horatio] Gates [1728-1806], the conqueror of [British General John] Burgoyne [1722-1792], emancipated, in 1780, his numerous slaves.

    From the beginning to the close of the war, one uniform language was held. Soon after the peace of 1783, Congress issued an address to the States, drawn up by Mr. Madison, a main object of which was to ask the provision of funds to discharge the public engagements. The plea is thus urged:
    "Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature. By the blessing of the Author of these rights on the means exerted for their defence, they have prevailed against all opposition, and form the basis of THIRTEEN INDEPENDENT STATES."

    The expression of similar sentiments did not then cease, nor were they confined to public acts.
    "Jefferson, Pendleton, Mason, Wythc, and Lee, while acting as a committee of the House of Delegates of Virginia, to revise the State Laws, prepared a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves, by law."

    In addition to these, "Grayson, St. George Tucker, Madison, Blair, Page, Parker, Edmund Randolph, Iredell, Spaight, Ramsey, McHenry, Samuel

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    Chase, and nearly all the illustrious names south of the Potomac, proclaimed it before the sun, that the days of slavery were beginning to be numbered."—Power of Congress over the "District of Columbia," by T. D. WELD [1838].

    But it is needless to multiply these references. So universal were these sentiments, that Mr. Leigh, in the Convention of Virginia, in 1832, took occasion to say:
    "I thought, till very lately, that it was known to every body that, during the Revolution, and for many years after, the abolition of slavery was a favorite topic with many of our ablest statesmen, who entertained with respect all the schemes which wisdom or ingenuity could surest for its accomplishment "

    Mr. Faulkner, in the same Convention, alluded to the same fact, as did also Gov. Barbour, of Virginia, in the United States' Senate, in 1820.

    These professions of the fathers of our republic were not totally unaccompanied with corresponding action.

    The articles of Association, including the solemn pledge to discontinue the slave trade, appear to have been generally respected and observed. That there were unprincipled men who evaded or transgressed them, as there were other traitors to the cause of liberty, there can be no doubt After the close of the war, this is known to have been the fact But the States took early measures for its suppression.
    "The first opportunity was taken, after the Declaration of Independence, to extinguish the detestable commerce so long forced upon the province (Virginia) In October, 1778, during the tumult and anxiety of the Revolution, the General Assembly passed a law, prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the further importation of slaves, and declaring that every slave imported thereafter, should be immediately set free " "The example of Virginia was followed, at different times, before the date of the Federal Constitution, by most of the other States."—Walsh's "Appeal"—Vide "Friend of Man," June 21, 1837 Copied from "Human Rights."

    "We are not aware that any State allowed the importation of slaves at the time," when the Constitution was adopted "The first State that renewed the traffic, so far as we know, was S. Carolina." in 1803 —"Human Rights"—"F of Man;" as above.

    Under what influences, and with what activity, the slave trade was resumed, from 1803 to 1808, will be shown in the proper place.

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    CHAPTER IX.

    ERA OF FORMING THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.

    Prevailing Sentiment—Washington—Luther Martyn—Wilhim Pinckney—Northwestern
    Territory—Ordinance of 1787—Madison—"Understandings"—Wilson—
    Heath—Johnson— Randolph—Patrick Henry—Iredell—"The Federalist," by Jay,
    Madison, and Hamilton—Ratifications—Rhode Island—New York—Virginia—
    North Carolina—Amendment—"Due process of law."

    FROM the close of the Revolutionary war in 1783, to the sitting of the Constitutional Convention, was a space of only four years. Thence, two more years bring us to the adoption, of the Constitution, in 1789. What was the prevailing sentiment of that period?

    George Washington

    In a letter to Robert Morris, dated Mount Vernon, April 12, 1786, George Washington said
    "I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it, (slavery,) but there is only one proper and effectual mode in which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority, and this, so far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting "—9 Sparks's Washington, 158.

    In a letter to John F. Mercer, September 9, 1786, he reiterated this sentiment:
    "I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law."—Ibid.

    And in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, he further said:
    "There are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, which neither Virginia nor Maryland have at present, but which nothing is more certain than they must have, and at a period not remote."

    By his last will and testament he made all his slaves free.

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    The testimonies of Franklin, Rush, and Jay, in strong opposition to slavery, have been cited in another connection.*

    We have now traced the history of the "peculiar institution" down to the time when the Federal Constitution was about to be formed. Exceedingly "peculiar" indeed, are the vouchers for its authenticity and legality down to that point in our national history. What occurred while the Federal Constitution was in process of forming, is the next historical fact to be inquired after. What was likely to have occurred, and even, indeed, what could have occurred, may well nigh be read in the mere light of the historical facts already noticed. Those facts, at least, should not be left out of the account, in any attempts at a historical exposition of the Constitution, if, indeed, the advocates of the "institution" adventure into the field of history at all, in defence of their claims.

    The simple history, and not the argument, must occupy, at present, our attention, and yet it is in the light of the pending controversy that we should ponder the facts. It is that contest that gives them their value, and they should be collected, arranged and studied with a view to the points to be illustrated and determined by them.

    Luther Martin, of Maryland, advocated the abolition of slavery, in the Federal Convention of 1787, and in his Report of the proceedings of that Convention to the Legislature of bis own State.

    William Pinckney, of Maryland, in the House of Delegates in that State, in 1789, urged, strongly, the abolition of slavery. We will give but a specimen of his language on that occasion.

    "Sir—Iniquitous and most dishonorable to Maryland, is that dreary system of partial bondage which her laws have hitherto supported with a solicitude worthy of a better object, and her citizens by their practice, countenanced. Founded in a disgraceful traffic, to which the parent country lent its fostering aid, from motives of interest, but which even she would have disdained to encourage, had England been the destined mart of such inhuman merchandize; its continuance is as shameful as its origin.''
    ____________
    *Chapter IV.
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    NORTHWESTERN TERRITORY—ORDINANCE OF 1787.

    While the Convention for drafting the Constitution of the United States was in session, in 1787, the Old Congress passed an ordinance abolishing slavery in the North-Western Territory, and precluding its future introduction there. The first Congress under the new Constitution ratified this ordinance, by a special act. It received the approval of Washington, who was then fresh from the discussions of the Convention for drafting the Federal Constitution. The measure originated with Jefferson, and its ratification in the new Congress received the vote of every member except Mr. Yates, of New York, the entire Southern delegation voting for its adoption. By this ordinance slavery was excluded from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

    The series of articles is preceded by this preamble:

    "And for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, their laws and constitutions, are erected; to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments, which forever hereafter shall be formed in said Territory; to provide also for the establishment of States, and permanent government therein, and for their admission to a share in the Fedcrul Councils at as early a period as may be consistent with the general interest:—Be it ordained and established," &c. &c.

    Then follow the articles. The sixth is as follows:

    "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided, always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service may be lawfully claimed, in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid."

    "The Constitution," it is claimed, "guaranties slavery." And "the compromises of the Constitution" are very generally conceded, even among those who disrelish and controvert the claim. We enter not now into matters of mere opinion. But the continuity and fidelity of the history we have attempted, compel us to attend to the facts.

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    Whatever those facts are, they are such as are interlinked, indissolubly, with the historical facts of the last previous chapter, and the preceding ones. History must be understood, if at all, in its connections.

    The Constitution is in the hands of the people. We need not copy here its provisions. No claimant of the Constitutional guaranties of slavery adventures to rest the claim on the mere words of that instrument. He well knows that neither the terms "slave" nor "slavery" are to be found there. He goes out of the instrument for its exposition, and reposes on supposed facts, in the shape of "understandings" then entertained.

    What were the "understandings" of that period? In the preceding chapter may be seen some of them. It is in place here to record more. We have seen what they were, up to the time of the framing and adopting of the Federal Constitution. What were they, then?

    In the Convention that drafted the Constitution—

    Mr. Madison declared, he "thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men."—3 Mad Pap., 1429.*

    "On motion of Mr. Randolph, the word 'SERVITUDE' was struck out, and 'SERVICE' unanimously inserted—the former being thought to express the condition of SLAVES, and the latter the obligation of FREE PERSONS."—Ib. 3, p. 1569.

    Such were the "understandings" of the Convention that drafted the Constitution. And with what "understanding" was it adopted by the people, in their State Conventions? Let us see.

    James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, had been a leading member of the Convention, and in the Ratification Convention of his State, when speaking of the clause relating to the power of Congress over the slave trade after twenty years, he said:

    "I consider this clause as laying the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country, and though the period is more distant than I could wish it, it will produce the same kind, gradual change as was produced in Pennsyl-

    ____________
    *In other words, Mr. Madison would not consent that the Constitution should recognize even the legality of slavery! This was a still more full, confident, and emphatic expression of the idea we have before quoted from Dr. Hopkins.

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    vania. * * * The new States which are to be formed will be under the control of Congress in this particular, and slavery will never be introduced among them."—2 Elliot's Debates, 452.

    In another place, speaking of this clause, he said:

    "It presents us with the pleasing prospect that the rights of mankind will be acknowledged and established throughout the Union. If there was no other feature in the Constitution but this one, it would diffuse a beauty over its whole countenance. Yet the labor of a few years, and Congress will have power to exterminate slavery from within our borders."—Ib. 2, p. 484.

    In the Ratification Convention of Massachusetts, Gen. Heath said:

    "The migration or importation, &c., is confined to the States now existing only, new States cannot claim it. Congress by their ordinance for creating new States some time since, declared, that the new States shall be republican, and that there shall be no slavery in them."—Ib. 2, p. 115.

    Nor were these views and anticipations confined to the free States. In the Ratification Convention of Virginia, Mr. Johnson said:

    "They tell us that they see a progressive danger of bringing about emancipation. The principle has begun since the Revolution. Let us do what we will, it will come round. Slavery has been the foundation of much of that impiety and dissipation which have been so much disseminated among our countrymen. If it were totally abolished, it would do much good."—Ib

    Gov. Randolph rebuked those who expressed apprehensions that its influence might be exerted on the side of freedom, by saying:

    "I hope that there are none here who, considering the subject in the calm light of philosophy, will advance an objection dishonorable to Virginia, that, at the moment they are securing the rights of their citizens, there is a spark of hope that those unfortunate men now held in BONDAGE may, by the operation of the General Government, be made FREE."—Ib. 3, p. 598.

    Patrick Henry, in the same Convention, argued "the power of Congress, under the United States' Constitution, to abolish slavery in the States," and added :

    "Another thing will contribute to bring this event about. Slavery is detested We feel its effects. We deplore it with all the pity of humanity."—Debates Va. Convention, p. 463.

    "In the debates of the North Carolina Convention, Mr. Iredell, afterwards a Judge of the United States Supreme Court, said—

    'When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an event which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every friend of human nature.'"—"Power of Congress," &c., pp 31-2.

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    Such are a few specimens of the expressed "understandings" with which the people adopted the Constitution.

    Another class of historical facts; of the utmost importance to a right understanding of the slave question in America, relates to the expositions and arguments addressed to the people of the United States to persuade them to adopt the Federal Constitution. It is well known that the people were sensitively jealous of their rights at that period, and fearful of the encroachments of despotic power. A strong party, of which Mr. Jefferson (a prominent and zealous propagandist of abolitionism) was understood to be the nucleus, and afterwards became the successful presidential candidate, opposed the adoption of the Federal Constitution, as prepared by the Convention, on the ground of its alleged defects in not providing sufficient securities for personal rights, and a more ample and explicit enunciation of the self-evident truths of the Declaration of 1776.

    This opposition [claiming that the proposed Constitution was not sufficiently pro-freedom] drew out the distinguished statesmen, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, in a joint and elaborate defence of the Constitution as drafted, comprising a series of papers known as "The Federalist," and since collected into a large volume. These papers were extensively circulated before the action of the States, and were largely instrumental in securing their desired object.—No. 39 of "The Federalist," by James Madison, contains the following:

    "The first question that offers itself is, whether the general form and aspect of the government be strictly republican. It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America, and with the fundamental principles of the Revolution, or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of MANKIND for SELF-GOVERNMENT. If the plan of the Convention, therefore, be found to depart from the republican character, its advocates must abandon it, as no longer defensible."

    Mr. Madison proceeds, at some length, to discuss the question, "What are the distinctive characters of the republican form"? After distinctly repudiating the aristocracies and oligarchies of Holland, Venice, Poland, and England, as not being republican, though sometimes "dignified," very impro-

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    perly, "with the appellation," Mr. Madison proceeds further to define a republican government as one whose officers are appointed by THE PEOPLE, &c.

    "It is essential to such a government," says he, "that it be derived from the great body of society, NOT from an inconsiderable portion, OR, a favored class of it."

    And this is the same Mr. Madison, who, in the Convention for drafting the Constitution which he was now recommending, had insisted that the instrument must not recognize the legality of slavery.

    The adoption of the Federal Constitution was thus successfully urged upon the people, by representing it as laying the foundation of the Government upon "the principles of the Revolution"—the principles of '76,—the principles promulgated so effectively by Mr. Jefferson, who had said—

    "The true foundation of republican government is the EQUAL RIGHTS OF EVERY CITIZEN, in his PERSON and PROPERTY, and in their MANAGEMENT," and who had explicitly designated the slaves as "citizens."*

    In No. 84 of "The Federalist" several pages are devoted to a consideration of what was evidently understood to be a vital point, in the minds of the people, who were so soon to decide on the adoption or rejection of the proposed Constitution.

    "The most considerable of the remaining objections," says the writer, "is, that the plan of the Convention contains no bill of rights.'

    The writer speaks of "the intemperate partisans of a bill of rights," and of their "zeal in this matter." This shows that many of the people were sensitive on this point, and that the friends of the proposed Constitution were afraid of its being rejected in consequence.

    And how did "The Federalist" successfully allay this jealousy, and persuade the people to adopt the proposed Constitution?
    ____________
    *With what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half of the citizens thus to trample upon the rights of the other, transforms those into despotsm, destroys the morals of the one part, and, the amor patriæ of the other."—Notes on Virginia.

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    It was done, first, by citing a number of specific provisions in the Constitution, equivalent, (as was claimed) to so many corresponding items in a bill of rights; and, second, by citing the PREAMBLE to the Constitution, setting forth its objects "to secure the blessings of liberty," &c. to "the people of the United States." This Preamble, as being a part of the Constitution, and its very basis, to which all the rest was conformed, was represented as being not only a bill of rights in the general, but "a better recognition of popular rights " than could otherwise have been framed, and less liable to be set aside, under a "plausible pretence," by men "disposed to usurp power."*

    The objectors had desired such a bill of rights as several of the States, particularly Massachusetts, had already adopted, and under which, before that time, the Courts of Massachusetts had decided slavery to be illegal. Yet "The Federalist" assured them that the Constitution was more than the equivalent of such bills of rights.

    It was under the pressure of expositions and arguments like these, from leading members of the Convention, that the people were persuaded to ratify the Constitution that had been elaborated with closed doors. They ratified it with "the understanding," so frequently expressed by and among them, that the Constitution was in favor of freedom. We know of no record in which the ratification of that instrument was urged, either at the North or at the South, on the ground that it was the guaranty of any form of despotism—or on the ground that the conflicting interests of liberty and slavery had been compromised. The whole current of the political literature of that period forbids the idea that any such appeals could have been adventured.

    But the people, though they ratified the Constitution, were
    ____________
    *The reader is doubtless familiar with the modern [pro-slavery] pleas, that the Preamble has no controlling power over the Constitution; that it does not furnish a criterion for Constitutional exposition; and that, in fact, it is no part of the Constitution! We may judge what would have been the fate of the proposed Constitution, if its friends had outstript its enemies in representing it thus!

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    not satisfied to do so without insisting upon important [bill-of-rights-type] amendments. The Conventions of Virginia, North Carolina and Rhode Island, proposed a provision as follows:

    "No FREEMAN ought to be taken, imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, privileges, or franchises, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner despoiled or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, BUT BY THE LAW OF THE LAND."—Elliot's Debates, 658.

    New York proposed a different provision:

    "No PERSON ought to be taken, imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled, or deprived of his privileges, franchises, life, liberty, or property, but by due process of law."—1 Ibid, 328.

    These various propositions came before Congress, and that body, at its first session, agreed upon several amendments to the Constitution, which were subsequently ratified by the States. That which related to personal liberty was expressed in these comprehensive words:

    "No person * * * * shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."—Cons., Amend., Art. 5.

    It is to be noted, as an important historical fact, that this remarkable provision is an amendment coming in after the original instrument had been ratified, thus over-riding and controlling, like all other amendments, whatever in the original instrument may have been supposed to be of a contrary bearing.

    The ratification of Rhode Island was longest withheld, and was most remarkable in its mode of expression. It was, in fact, conditional. It specified a long list of declarations of rights, and then said:

    "Under these impressions, and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged, and that the explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution, and in confidence that the amendments hereafter mentioned will receive an early and mature deliberation, and conformably to the 5th article of said Constitution, speedily become parts thereof: We the said delegates," &c., &c., "do assent to and ratify the said Constitution."

    Among these declarations of rights were some equivalent to those of the Declaration of Independence.

    Among the proposed amendments, above mentioned, was the following

    "As a traffic tending to establish or continue the slavery of any part of the human species, is disgraceful to the cause of religion and humanity, that

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    Congress as soon as may be, promote and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of slaves, of any description, into the United States."

    From this it is seen, that the State whose citizens were most deeply engaged in the lucrative importation of slaves, the only State, perhaps, that was growing rich by the continuance of the slave system consented to ratify the Federal Constitution only on condition that the traffic should be speedily prohibited. No other ratification of the Constitution was ever made by Rhode Island. She never consented to the twenty years' delay of that prohibition.

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    CHAPTER X.

    OF DIRECT ANTI-SLAVERY EFFORTS, INCLUDING ECCLESIASTICAL
    ACTION, FROM THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION TO
    THE CLOSE OF THE LAST CENTURY, AND THE ABOLITION
    OF SLAVERY IN THE NORTHERN STATES.

    Republication of Hopkins' Dialogue (1785)—Edwards' Sermon (1791)—Anti-Slavery
    Meeting at Woodbridge, N. J. (1783)—Abolition Societies in Pennsylvania, New
    York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware—
    Names of distinguished abolitionists—Memorial to Leg. of New York, by Jay,
    Hamilton, &c.—Petitions to Congress, by B. Franklin and others—Discussions in
    Congress—William and Mary College (Va.)—Action of Methodist E. Conference—
    Presb. General Assembly—Baptists—Action of the States—Virginia, Delaware,
    Rhode Island, Vermont—Massachusetts—Pennsylvania—New Hampshire,
    Connecticut—New York—New Jersey—Census of remaining slaves.

    SIGNIFICANT as are the facts recorded in the two preceding chapters, they would fail of producing their full and proper impression, unless connected with an account of other movements witnessed at the same time, and extending to a still later period of our history. It was not in the National Councils alone, the resolutions and acts of Congress, the corresponding proceedings of State and County Conventions, the action of State legislatures, and the declarations of prominent statesmen, that the rising of sentiment against slavery was apparent. Then, as at other times, under popular institutions, such manifestations were to be regarded as evidences of a still broader and deeper current of public opinion, that was producing them. Then, as now; here, as in Great Britain, the public bodies and functionaries nearest to the people, freshest from their bosom, most accessible to their inspection,

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    and most directly and vitally amenable to them ("Representatives" and "Commons," in distinction from "Lords" and "Senates"), were most deeply imbued with the principles of justice and freedom—a general fact of incalculable weight in the argument for thoroughly democratic institutions.

    And back of this general public sentiment against slavery, were the moral influences that had been operating in that direction—the religious testimonies and the ecclesiastical action before mentioned. The power of the press, and of voluntary association, irrespective of sect, followed soon afterward.

    The first edition of [Rev. Dr. Samuel] Hopkins' Dialogue was published at Norwich, Connecticut, early in 1776, as before stated.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans: Shewing it to be the Duty and Interest of the American Colonies to Emancipate All Their African Slaves. With an Address to the Owners of Such Slaves. Dedicated to the Honourable the Continental Congress. To Which is Prefixed, the Institution of the Society, in New York, For Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be, Liberated (Norwich: J.P. Spooner, 1776).

    Its circulation was extensive, and is known to have produced a powerful impression upon the minds of reflecting men, including some in high stations. A second edition was issued in New York in 1785, "by vote of the society for promoting the manumission of slaves "—of which John Jay [later Chief Justice 1789-1794] was President, and which had been formed January 25th of that same year.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans: Shewing it to be the Duty and Interest of the American States to Emancipate All Their African Slaves (New York: R. Hodge, 1785).

    Another publication, of great weight and influence, was the celebrated sermon of Dr. Jonathan Edwards, of New Haven, Conn., afterwards President of Union College, Schenectady; preached before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, &c., Sept. 15, 1791. It is a masterpiece of logical argument, and was extensively circulated by the manumission and abolition societies of that period, as it has been since by the more modern anti-slavery societies.

    Ed. Note: Full Citation: Jonathan Edwards (1745-1801), The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, and of the Slavery of the Africans: Illustrated in a Sermon Preached Before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom, and for the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage, at Their Annual Meeting in New Haven, September 15, 1791 (New Haven: T. and S. Green, 1791). See excerpt cited at p 111, infra.

    By these two publications, the argument against slavery was placed upon a deeper and broader theological and metaphysical basis, and was pushed to more startling and radical conclusions, than in any previous writings on the subject with which we are acquainted. And it may safely be said that no later writers have gone beyond them in affirming the inherent sinfulness and deep criminality of slaveholding, and the duty of immediate and unconditional emancipation. Particularly is this true of the sermon of Edwards. If others have insisted upon these points with more vehemence of declamation, or

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    with a more brilliant display of rhetoric, there is no one who has more deliberately and triumphantly demonstrated those truths by a process of cool iron-linked argument, placing it forever beyond the power of man to unsettle them, without dethroning the moral sense, rejecting the inductions of reason, and abjuring the Christian religion. It is not known that any writer or public speaker of any note, has ever attempted to grapple with that sermon, attempting to criticize, or to confute it.

    And yet this forbearance cannot be because the language employed is more smooth and mild than that of other writings that have been criticized as denunciatory. The preacher distinctly charges upon the slaveholder the crime of man-stealing, and the repetition of the crime every day he continues to hold a slave in bondage. He charges him also with "theft or robbery"—nay, with "a greater crime than fornication, theft, or robbery." He predicts that, "if we may judge the future by the past, within fifty years from this time it will be as shameful for a man to hold a negro slave, as to be guilty of common robbery or theft." In an appendix, Dr. Edwards answers objections against immediate emancipation, just as modern abolitionists answer them now.

    Such were the sentiments which the abolition societies of the last century, directed by the patriots of the American Revolution, the founders of the Union, the framers and the adopters of the Federal Constitution, were intent to circulate through the country. If some of them, as statesmen, did not fully carry out the idea of immediate emancipation taught in such writings, they circulated them among the people, nevertheless. These were the effective weapons of their warfare against slavery, so far as they succeeded at all.

    By these doctrines, mainly, the public conscience was reached, and the measures put in progress, which finally resulted in the abolition of slavery in some of the States. The doctrines are none the less true and trustworthy because the partial adoption of them produced but partial and tardy results. If the abolition of slavery in some of the States was so slow and gradual as to occupy a whole generation or more in the process, if in

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    some others it still lingers, or has been indefinitely postponed, while the system has strengthened itself, and the slave power has assumed the control of the nation and stealthily reversed its policy, the fault does not lie in the teachings of Hopkins and Edwards, but in the mistaken prudence of those who thought it more wise and safe to follow but partially in practice what was admitted to be right and true in the abstract. To this single fallacy, the failure of the Bevolutionary abolitionists, in their intended overthrow of American slavery, may be distinctly traced.

    “The ruse of gradualism,” identical with deferred repentance for sin, produced its accustomed and legitimate fruits. It deceived them, as it deceives the greater portion of mankind.

    We may honor their earnest endeavors, nevertheless, and rejoice in the success, however limited, with which their labors were crowned. It should be ours to emulate their love of freedom, and avoid their mistakes, the repetition of which would be less excusable in us.

    An important and highiy spirited anti-slavery meeting is said to have been held at Woodbridge, New Jersey, appropriately convened on the 4th of July, 1783, just seven years after the Declaration of inalienable rights that was now admitted to have been manfully and successfully sustained. Dr. Bloomfield, father of Governor Bloomfield of New Jersey, is said to have presided on that joyous occasion, which was celebrated by a public dinner, for which was provided a roasted ox—a circumstance that attests the general and cordial attendance of the citizens.

    Who could have predicted the era of pro-slavery mobs against abolition meetings then? Who would have looked for biblical defences of slaveholding, from the high places of Princeton? Who would have believed that churches and pulpits, generally, throughout the country, would ever be closed against the discussion of slavery, for fear of “disturbing the peace of our Zion?” Who would have believed that anti-slavery agitation [activism] would ever have been regarded with abhorreuce, as adverse to “the perpetuity of our glorious Union?” What value could the patriots of that

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    day have attached to any union that was not cemented on the basis of freedom, and designed for its guaranty?

    ABOLITION SOCIETIES.

    It may be difficult to enumerate all the manumission and abolition societies of this period, or to fix [identify], accurately, the precise dates of their organization. The particulars that follow embody what we have at command.

    Dr. Holmes, in his “American Annals,” says that the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania was formed in 1774, and was enlarged in 1787. Hildreth, in his “History of the United States,” says the Pennsylvania Society was the first. Edward Needles, in his “Historical Memoir of the Pennsylvania Society for the abolition of Slavery, the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage, and for improving the African race,” says the first associated action in Philadelphia was a meeting of a few individuals at the Sun tavern in Second-street, April 14, 1775,*     when a society was formed “for the relief of free negroes unlawfully held in bondage.” The society met four times in 1775, and adjourned to meet in 1776; but, on account of the war, no meeting occurred till February, 1784, after which its meetings were continued till March, 1787, when the Constitution was so revised as to include prominently “ the abolition of slavery” as in the above title. Of this Society, Dr. Benjamin Frankiin was chosen President.

    The New York “Society for promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and protecting such of tbem as have been or may be liberated,” was formed January 25, 1785, as before mentioned. Of this society, John Jay was the first President. On being appointed Chief-Justice of the United States, he resigned, and was succeeded by Gen. Alexander Hamilton, who held the office a few months, until, on, receiving an appointment in the Federal cabinet, he removed to Philadelphia, and soon after his place was filled by "Gen. Matthew Clarkson, the United States Marshal for New York, a very pious, good
    ____________________________________
    * One year later than the statement of Dr. Holmes.

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    man, and belonging to a different species from the general race of slave-catching marshals.”*

    May 5, 1786, the committee of the New York Society reported that a similar society was about to be established at Providence, Rhode Island. In 1788 the Pennsylvania Society addressed their corresponding members in Rhode Island, about vessels fitting out there in defiance of the laws against the slave trade. In 1791 the Rhode Island Society is alluded to as having memorialized [petitioned] Congress, in conjunction with the abolition societies of Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Virginia, and two societies on the eastern shore of Maryland.

    The Maryland Abolition Society was formed in 1789. The Connecticut Abolition Society in 1790; the Virginia Abolition Society in 1791. The New Jersey Society, “for promoting the Abolition of Slavery,” in 1792.

    The Maryland and Virginia Societies had auxiliaries in different parts of those States.

    There was also a society in Delaware. In 1794, ten societies met in convention in Philadelphia, and continued to meet annually, for a number of years afterwards.

    Of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, Benjamin Franklin was chosen President, and Benjamin Rush Secretary, both signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the first-named just returned from the convention that drafted the Federal Constitution. Among the officers of the Maryland Society was Samuel Chase, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, afterwards Judge of the United States' Supreme Court, and Luther Martin, a member of tho Constitutional Convention. Of the Connecticut Abolition Society, Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, was the first President, and Simeon Baldwin was Secretary.

    “Among other distinguished individuals who were efficient officers of these abolition societies, and delegates from their respective State societies, at the annual meetings of the American Convention for Promoting the
    ____________________________________
    * MSS. by Hon. Wm. Jay.
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    Abolition of Slavery, were Hon. Uriah Tracy, United States Senator from Connecticut; Hon. Zephaniah Swift, Chief Justice of the same; Hon. Cœsar A. Rodney, Attorney-General of the United States; Hon. James A. Bayard, United States Senator from Delaware; Gov. Bloomfield, of New Jersey; Hon. Wm. Rawle, the late venerable head of the Philadelphia bar; Dr. Casper Wistar, of Philadeiphia; Messrs. Foster and Tillinghast, of Rhode Island; Messrs. Ridgley, Buchanan, and Wilkinson, of Maryland; and Messrs. Pleasants, McLean, and Anthony, of Virginia.”—Power of Congress, &c., pp. 30, 31.

    These Abolition Societies and the officers and members of them were not idle. They agitated the subject, circulated publications, and petitioned legislative bodies.

    In 1786, John Jay drafted and signed a memorial to the Legislature of New York against slavery, and petitioning for its abolition, declaring that the men held as slaves by [unconstitutional] the laws of New York, were free by the law of God. Among the other petitioners were James Duane, Mayor of the City of New York, Robert R. Livingston, afterwards Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the United States and Chancellor of the State of New York, Alexander Hamilton, and many other eminent citizens of the State.*

    Nor were petitions addressed only to the legislatures of the States in which the petitioners resided. The doctrines of moral and political non-intervention with the delicate subject had not then been discovered. The dogma that Congress has nothing to do with slavery in the States does not appear to have obtained general currency at that period. These statements are believed to express simple historical facts, and applicable up to a point of time after the Federal Constitution had been drafted, discussed, and adopted, and the Federal Government under that Constitution organized and put in operation. A few particulars will suffice to justify these statements.

    Both the Virginia and Maryland Abolition Societies, at an early day, sent up memorials to Congress. We have not at hand the precise dates, nor is this important. The dates of the organization of these societies, particularly that of Vir-
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    * MSS. by Hon. Wm. Jay.
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    ginia, make it evident that their petitions were addressed to the new Federal Government. The Connecticut Abolition Society sent up a petition in 1791. The Society of Friends and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society had done so, still earlier, and their petitions came before the first Congress under the new Constitution, and were debated February 12th, 1790.*

    These petitions were addressed to Congress. What could the petitioners have supposed that Congress had to do with the subject?
  • The Foreign Slave Trade, at that time, appears to have been interdicted [banned] by most of the States, in conformity with the original compact of l774, and was not resumed, even by South Carolina, as has already been stated, until 1802. And among the “compromises of the Constitution,” since claimed [later pretended], a prominent one, and the best authenticated, is that which prevented Congress from from interdicting the foreign traffic [slave trade], until 1808.

  • The cession of the District of Columbia was not accepted by Congress until July 16, 1790, some time after the presentation of the Pennsylvania petition. The seat of the Federal Government, then, and for some years afterwards, was at Philadelphia.

  • By the ordinance of 1787, slavery had been prohibitcd in the North Western Territory, and no one anticipated the admission of any new slave states.
    • What, then, was there for Congress to do, according to the doctrine of non-intervention now entertained [invented]? What was it that the petitioners asked? Against what did they petition? And where did it exist?

    A copy of the Pennsylvania petition is before us, and portions of those from Connecticut and Virginia.

    The Connecticut petitioners, (Pres. Stiles, Simeon. Baldwin, &c.) say:

    “From a sober conviction of the UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF SLAVERY, your

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    * Mr. Weld's pamphlet and the Liberty Bell give the date 1789, but Washington was not inangurated until April 30th of that year, and the “first Congress” commennced its first session, April 7th. Besides, the petition of the Pennsylvania Society, signed hy Benjamin Franklin, as published in the Liberty Bell, bears date of Feb. 3, 1790, and the Journal of Congress mentions its presentation, Feb. 12, 1790.

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    petitioners have long beheld with grief our fellow-men doomed to perpetual bondage in a country which boasts her freedom. Your petitioners are fully of opinion that calm reflection will at last convince the world that THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF AMERICAN SLAVERY is unjust in its nature, impolitic in its principles, and in its consequences ruinous to the industry and enterprise of the citizens of THESE STATES.”

    The “Virginia Society for the Abolition of SLAVERY,” &c., in addressing the Congress of the United States, say:

    “Your memorialists, fully aware that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that SLAVERY is not only an odious degradation, but an outrageons violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the Gospel, which breathes 'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that a practice so inconsistent with true policy and the inalienable rights of men, should subsist in so enlightened an age, and among a people professing that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to freedom. ”

    “The memorial of the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the abolition of SLAVERY,” &c., addressed “to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States,” contains the following:

    “Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attending to the distresses arising from SLAVERY, believe it to be their indispensable duty to present this subject tn your notice. They have observed, with real satisfaction, that many important and salutary powers are vested in you, for 'promoting the welfarc and securing the blessings of LIBERTY to the PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES;'*     and as they conceive that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered, WITHOUT DISTINCTION OF COLOR, to all descriptions of people, so they indulge thcmselves in the pleasing expectation that nothing which can be doue fur the relief of the unhappy objects of their care, will be either omitted or delayed.

    “From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the portion, and is still the birth-right of all men, and influenced by the strong ties of humanity and the principles of their institution, your memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavors to LOOSEN THE BONDS OF SLAVERY, and promote a general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these impressions, they earnestly entreat your attention to the subject of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the RESTORATION TO LIBERTY of

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    * This language is evidently taken from the Preamble to the Federal Constitution. “We, the people of the United States, in order to promote the general welfare; and scecure the blessings of liberty,” &., &c.

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    those unhappy men, who, alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amid the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; THAT YOU WILL DEVISE MEANS FOR REMOVING THIS INCONSISTENCY OF CHARACTER FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, that you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race, and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men.
    BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, PRESIDENT.”*
    PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 3, 1790.
    [Federal Gazette, 1790.]

    DISCUSSIONS IN CONGRESS.

    How were these petitions understood in Congress? How were they received and treated? Were they understood to look in the direction of a general removal of slavery, as well as the slave trade? Were the petitioners denonnced as fanatics and madmen? Was the application repelled as treason against the Constitution and the Union?

    On the other hand, were there any who expressed a readiness “to espouse their cause”? The reader of the following extracts from the discussions, will judge.

    In the debate on the petition from Pennsylvania, Mr. Parker, of Virginia, said:

    “I hope, Mr. Speaker, the petition of these respectable people will be attended to, with all the readiness the importance of its object demands; and I cannot belp expressing the pleasure I feel in finding so considerable a part of the community attending to matters of such a momentous concern to the future prospenty and happiness of the people of Amenca. I think it my duty, as a citizen of the Union, TO ESPOUSE THEIR CAUSE.”

    Mr. Page, of Virginia (afterward Governor) “was in favor of the commitment. He hoped that the designs of the respectable memorialists [petitioners] would not be stopped at the threshold, in order to preclude a fair discussion of the prayer of the memorial. With respect to the alarm that was apprehended, he conjectured there was none; but there might be just cause, if the memorial was NOT taken into consideration. He placed himself in the case of the slave, and said that, on hearing that Congress had refused to listen to the decent suggestions of a respectable part of the community, he should infer that the general Government, FROM WHICH WAS EXPECTED GREAT

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    * This was probably the last important public act of Frankin, who died the same year.

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    GOOD WOULD RESULT TO EVERY CLASS OF CITIZENS,*     had shut their ears against the voice of humanity, and he should despair of any alleviation of the miseries he and his postenty had in prospect. If anything could induce him to rebel, it must be a stroke like this, impressing on his mind all the horrors of despair. But if he was told that application was made in his behalf, and that Congress were willing to hear what could be urged in favor of discouraging the practice of importing his fellow-wretches, he would trust in their justice and humanity, and wait the decision patiently.”

    Mr. Scott, of Pennsylvania: “I cannot, for my part, conceive how any person CAN BE SAID TO ACQUIRE PROPERTY IN ANOTHER;† but—enough of those who reduce men to the state of transferable goods, or use them like beasts of burden, who deliver them up as the patrimony or property of another man.‡   Let us argue on principles countenanced by reason and becoming humanity. I do not know how far I might go if I was one of the Judges of the United States, and those people were to come before me, and claim their emancipation [as in Somerset v Stewart]; but I am sure I would go as far as I could [to enforce common and constitutional law].”§

    Mr. Burke, of South Carolina, said: “He saw the disposition of the House, and he feared it would be referred to a committee, maugre [in spite of] all their opposition.”

    Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, said: “that on entering into this government, they (South Carolina and Georgia) apprehended that the other States, not knowing the necessity of the citizens of the Southern States, would, from motives of humanity and benevolence, be led to vote for a GENERAL EMANCIPATION; and, had they not seen that the Constitution provided against the effect of such a disposition, I may be bold to say they never would have adopted it.”

    “In the debate, at the same session, May 13th, on the petition of the Society of Friends respecting the slave trade, Mr. Parker, of Virginia, said: 'He hoped Congress would do all that lay in their power to restore to human nature its inherent privileges, and, if possible, wipe out the stigma that America labored under. The inconsistency in our principles, with wbich we are justly charged, should be done away, that we may show, by our actions, the pure beneficence of the doctrine we held out to the world in our Declaration of Independence.'”

    “Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, said: 'IT WAS THE FASHION OF THE DAY TO FAVOR THE LIBERTY OF THE SLAVES. * * * What is to be done for compensation? Will Virginia set all her negroes free? Will they give

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    * Here, again, we find the negro slaves expressly designated as citizens.

    † Another blow at the idea of the legality of slavery.

    ‡ How does this harmonize with the [falsely alleged] Constitutional obligation of delivering up fugitive slaves?

    § A pregnant hint of the speaker's impression of the duties of the Federal Courts [to enforce common and constitutional law].
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    up the money they have cost them, and to whom? When this practice comes to be tried, then the sound of liberty will lose those charms which make it grateful to the ravished ear.'"

    "Mr. Madison, of Virginia: 'The dictates of humanity, the principles of the people, the national safety and happiness, and prudent policy, require it of us. The Constitution has particularly called our attention to it. * * * I conceive the Constitution in this particular was formed in order that the Government, whilst it was restrained from laying a total prohibition, might be able to give some testimony of the sense of America, with respect to the African trade. * * * It is to be hoped, that by expressing a national disapprobation of the trade, we may destroy it, and save our country from reproaches, and our posterity from the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with slaves.

    "I do not wish to say anything harsh to the hearing of gentlemen who entertain different sentiments from me, or different sentiments from those I represent. But if there is any one point in which it is clearly the POLICY OF THIS NATION, so far as we constitutionally can, to vary the practice obtaining under some of the State Governments, it is this. But it is certain that a majority of the States are opposed to the practice."—Cong. Reg., v. i., pp. 308-12; Weld's Power of Cong., &c., pp. 30-32.

    There may be some difficulty in apprehending, clearly, the import of some of the expressions used in this debate. This may be owing to our making a broad distinction, now, which seems scarcely to have been recognized at all, then, between the slave trade and slavery. It seems to have been taken for granted that the prohibition of the former would involve, virtually, the extinction of the latter. Georgia had desired a respite of twenty years, which, by the Constitution, had been granted. Thus far the hands of Congress were tied. Thus, at least, it was understood by the speakers. This was the compromise claimed. This exposition of the position of the speakers, if it be correct, enables us to understand the drift of their arguments. What then do we find?

    First, we have the presentation of petitions, some of them said to be in respect to the slave trade, others of them (including that of Dr. Franklin) as evidently bearing upon "SLAVERY" itself, desiring for the slaves their "restoration to liberty," and that Congress would "devise means," in some way, for "removing this inconsistency from the American

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    character. The two descriptions of petitions appear to have had the same object, and to have been received and considered accordingly.

    Next, we have two gentlemen from Virginia decidedly "espousing the cause" of the petitioners, followed up by a representative of Pennsylvania, on the same side.

    Then, we have a specimen of the opposition, from South Carolina and Georgia; and finally, an effort, by Mr. Madison, to reconcile the difference between the parties, though strongly leaning to the side of the petitioners, and declaring that he represented, for his constituents, those sentiments.

    The main object of the slave party, seems to have been to stave off present action. The House, and the Country, they saw and acknowledged, were disposed to be against them—disposed to liberate " the slaves." They pleaded the constitutional compromise, that is, the postponement till 1808. Yet they raised the question of compensation, as much as to intimate that if the country was ready to meet their demands in this respect, they might waive their constitutional objections. And this was then the extent of South Carolinian, and Georgian opposition!

    "Humanity and Benevolence," they admitted, was on the side of the petitioners, and of those who might "vote for a general emancipation." Not a word of the dnngers of turning the slaves loose. Not a single threat of dissolving the Union. Not a lisp of the sacred guaranties of the Constitution, of the obligation to protect and extend slavery!

    From the advocates of liberty, in the House, then, we hear no concessions of the compromises of the Constitution. Those, they left in the hands of their opponents, and in the hands of the illustrious pacificator between the two parties. And even his (Mr. Madison's) speech, would be accounted a radical abolition harangue, were it uttered in Congress now. It is instructive to ponder these contrasts. We need to be disabused of our vague impressions and educational prejudices, if we would understand the relation of slavery to our political institutions, as at first established.

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    Little incidents, often, more than imposing official documents, and public records, reveal public character and assist us to understand the spirit and temper of a particular age or people. "In 1791, the university of William and Mary, in Virginia, conferred upon Granville Sharp, of England, the Degree of Doctor of Laws."*

    Who was Granville Sharp [1735-1813]? And by what discoveries in the sublime science of jurisprudence had Granville Sharp, a clerk in the ordinance department of Great Britain, commended himself to a Virginian University, for so distinguishing an honor? The reader of the preceding chapters understands. Granville Sharp had discovered and announced the utter and absolute illegality of slavery under the ægis of the British Constitution, and under the jurisdiction of English Common Law. With this discovery he had enlightened the British mind, had reversed the legal decisions and opinions of York and Talbot—of Blackstone and Mansfield.

    Without a seat in the Court of King's Bench, nay, without the credentials that could entitle him, by the usages of Court, to stand up in its presence and plead a cause, Granville Sharp, by the simple force of his lofty intellect and indomitable and righteous purpose, had laid his hand on that Court of King's Bench, and compelled it to do (unwillingly enough) his bidding, in the decree that "slaves cannot breathe in England." More than tills—Granville Sharp, perceiving that this decree was binding on the colonies of Britain, as well as on the mother country, had solemnly admonished the British prime minister of his high responsibilities in this respect, and with all the majesty of a holy prophet had charged him, on the peril of his soul, to lose no time in suppressing slavery in America. This was the high merit of Granville Sharp.

    For this, he wore, meekly, the clustering homage of the wise and good, of two hemispheres. The University of William and Mary, in Virginia, eagerly honored herself by honoring Granville Sharp. What a change has since taken place! Had Granville Sharp lived to visit the Univer-
    ____________
    *Power of Congress, &c., p. 36.
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    sity of William and Mary, in 1835, his temerity would probably have cost him his life. He would have subjected himself to the liability of being ignominiously and unceremoniously hanged up, without judge or jury, or condemned to death under the laws of the State.*

    Were the public sentiment of Virginia, and of the whole country, now, what they were in 1791, those English philanthropists who are now denounced as impertinent intermeddlers, would be fair candidates for the highest honors of the University of William and Mary, in Virginia.

    Can it be credible that a change of sentiment like this can have come over Virginia, and over the nation, without bringing along with it new maxims of state policy, new principles of jurisprudence, new views of the relation of slavery to our Constitution and laws?—and with these—of necessity—new usages of Constitutional exposition,—new conceptions of the relations described by it, and of the obligations and rights growing out of those relations? May it be assumed, without scrutiny, that the usages and expositions with which we, in this age, have become familiarized, are trustworthy?
    ____________
    *No exaggeration in this. The very writings of Granville Sharp could not have been safely circulated in Virginia in 1835, if indeed they can be at present. On charge of having circulated anti-slavery writing, Dr. Reuben Crandall was arrested and tried for his life, in the District of Columbia, and on prosecution of the late Francis S. Key, Esq., one of the most popular citizens of the District. The "incendiary publications," for the publishing of which the late R. G. Williams, of New York, was indicted, and demanded to be given up to the authorities of Alabama, by the Executive of that State, included the writings of Granville Sharp, and nothing beside them that could have been more offensive than they must have been. Nothing more strongly condemnatory of slavery and of slaveholders could have been found in the papers pillaged, from the U.S. mail at Charleston, and burnt.

    By the laws of Virginia, the publishing or circulating of publications having a tendency to excite slaves or free people of color to insurrection or resistance, is punished with thirty-nine lashes; the second with death." Amos Dresser, though without the forms of a legal trial, suffered a public whipping in Tennessee. Whatever may have appeared on the antiquated statute books of Virginia, in 1791, the simple incident we have recorded affords evidence of the change of public sentiment we have described—a change the more marked, in proportion aa the sentiment of 1791 was in opposition to her own statutes.

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    ECCLESIASTICAL BODIES—METHODISTS.

    The position and language of ecclesiastical bodies at that era, furnish another significant feature of our history.

    In the year 1780, the sentiments [official views] of the Methodist societies in this country were thus expressed in the minutes of the Conference for that year:

    “The Conference acknowledges that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man,*   and nature, hurtful to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion, and doing what we would not that others should do unto us, and they pass their disapprobation upon all our friends who keep slaves, and they advise their freedom.”—A. S. Manual, by Sunderland, p. 58.

    In 1785, the following language was held by the M. E. Church:

    “We do hold in the deepest abhorrence the practice of slavery, and shall not cease to seek its destruction, by all wise and prudent means.”

    The following is extracted from Sunderland's Anti-Slavery Manual, published in 1837:

    From Lee's History of the Methodists, p. 101, we learn that the M. E. Church was organized with a number of express rules on the subject which stipulated THAT SLAVERY SHOULD NOT BE CONTINUED IN THE CHURCH. One of them was as follows:

    “Every member in our Society shall legally execute and record an instrument [for the purpose of setting every slave in his possession free] within the space of two years.”

    Another was as follows:

    “Every person concerned who will not comply with these rules, shall have liberty quietly to withdraw from our Society within twelve months following the notice being given him as aforesaid:—otherwise, the assistant shall exclude him from the Society.”

    Another rule declared that

    “Those who bought or sold slaves, or gave them away, unless on purpose to free them, should be expelled immediately.”
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    * “Contrary to the laws of man.” Here we find another admission of the illegality of slavery, corresponding with the doctrines of Granville Sharp, the decision of Lord Mansfield in the Somerset case, the expressions of Dr. Hopkins, the declaration of James Madison, and the speech in Congress of Mr. Scott, of Pennsylvania. Were all these ignorant enthusiasts? Or has slavery become legalized since?

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    “And forty years ago” (i. e. in 1797), the discipline [doctrines] of this church contained the following directions on the subject:

    “The preachers and other members of our Society are requested to consider the subject of negro slavery, with deep attention, and that they impart to the General Conference, through the medium of the Yearly Conferences, or otherwise, any important thoughts on the subject, that the Conference may have FULL LIGHT, in order to take further steps towards eradicating this enormous evil from that part of the Church of God with which they are connected. The Annual Conferences are directed to draw up addresses [petitions] for the gradual emancipation of the slaves, to the legislatures of those States in which no general laws have been passed for that purpose. These addresses [petitions] shall urge, in the most respectful but pointed manner, the necessity of a law for the gradual emancipation of slaves. Proper committees shall be appointed by the Annual Conferences, out of the most respectable of our friends, for conducting the business; and presiding elders, elders, deacons, and travelling preachers, shall procure as many proper signatures as possible to the addresses [petitions], and give all the assistance in their power, IN EVERY RESPECT, to aid the committees, and to forward the blessed undertaking. Let this be continued from year to year, till the desired end [goal] be accomplished.”—A. S. Manual, pp. 58-9.

    These directions were not a dead letter. Persons still living can remember the circulating of anti-slavery petitions, and the distributing of Wesley's “Tract on Slavery,” by the Methodist travelling preachers, as a part of their official business. So late as the year 1803, the Hymn Books of the M. E. Church, published by Ezekiel Cooper for the M. E. Book Concern, at Philadelphia, contained advertisements of the “Tract on Slavery.” Here then was the entire Methodist Episcopal connection [denomination] organized into a society for anti-slavery agitation [activism], its Annual Conferences inviting free discussion and seeking for more light, its preachers and church officers circulating anti-slavery publications and petitions to legislative bodies. The contrast with [deterioration in] later times we cannot stop here to present.

    PRESBYTERIANS.

    The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church adopted, in 1791, a note to the one hundred and forty-second question in the larger Catechism, in, the Confession of Faith, in the words following:

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    “I Tim. 1:10. 'The law is made for MAN-STEALERS.' This crime, among the Jews [Hebrews], exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment, Exodus 21:16, and the apostle here classes them with sinners of the first [worst] rank. The word he uses, in its original import [meaing], comprehends [includes] all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or retaining them in it. Hominum fures, qui servos, vel libros abducunt, retinent vendunt, vel emunt. Stealers of men are those who bring off slaves or freemen, and KEEP, SELL, or BUY THEM. To steal a freeman, says Grotius, is the highest [worst] kind of theft. In other instances we only steal human property, but when we steal or retain men [people] in slavery, we seize those who, in common with ourselves, are constituted by the original grant, lords of the earth. Gen. 1:28. Vide Poli Synopsin in loc.”

    BAPTISTS.

    “At a meeting of the General Committee of the Baptists of Virginia, in 1788, the followmg point came up.—Semple's Hist. of Baptists in Virginia.

    “Whether a petition should be offered to the General Assembly, praying [aking] that the yoke of slavery may be made more tolerable. Referred to the next session."

    “1789. At this session the propriety of hereditary slavery was also taken up, and after some time employed in the consideration of the subject, the following resolution was offered bv Eld. John Leland, and adopted:

    “Resolved, That slavery is a violent deprivation of the rights of nature, and inconsistent with republican government, and therefore (we) recommend it to our brethren to make use of every measure to extirpate this horrid evil from the land; and pray Almighty God that our honorable legislature may have it in their power to proclaim the great jubilee, consistent with the principles of good policy.”—“Facts for Baptist Churches,” p. 365.

    Action in Vermont.—The minutes of the Shaftsbury Association, in 1792, contain an expression against the slave trade, and in favor of universal liberty.—Ib.

    “According to Benedict (History of the Baptists, first edition), there was, in 1805, an Association of Baptists in Northern Kentucky, who separated themselves from slaveholding Baptists,” &c. “Eld. David Barrow, once a Virginia slaveholder, became, after emancipating his slaves, one of their principal men. He wrote a pamphlet on slavery, entitled 'Involuntary, unmerited, perpetual, absolute, hereditary slavery, examined on the principles of nature, reason, justice, policy, and Scripture.'—Other prominent advocates of these principles were, Elders Dodge, Carman, Sutton, Holmes, Tarrant, Grigg, and Smith.”—Ib. p. 366.

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    LEGISLATIVE AND JUDICIAL ACTION.

    Legislative and judicial action against slavery in several of the States, was the natural result of the moral and religious influences described in this and the preceding chapters, and on the whole the effects may be considered commensurate with the causes operating for the production of them.

    If it be said that the gradual and prospective emancipation provided for by the legislatures of several States did not correspond with tbe doctrines of the inherent sinfulness of slavery and of the duty of immediate and unconditional abolition, insisted on by Hopkins and Edwards, and exemplified by some of the Congregational churches, it must be remembered that these testimonies were not fully received and adopted by some of the eminent statesmen at the head of the anti-slavery societies by whom these writings had been circulated. Ideas of supposed necessity, expediency, or convenience, were permitted to modify and control the direct and fall application of principles admitted to be true and right in the abstract.

    Those testimonies, moreover, had been counteracted and neutralized by the gradual and tardy action, with few exceptions, of ecclesiastical bodies, including even the Society of Friends. It was hardly to be expected that the work of purification in the State would be more speedy and thorough than in the Ghurch.

    A paragraph from an Appendix, by Dr. Hopkins, to the second edition of his Dialogue on Slavery, printed at New York, under sanction of the Manumission Society, in 1785, embraces, in a few words, an account of the progress that had been made since the publication of the first edition, early in 1776.

    “Since the publication of this Dialogue, many things have been done and steps taken towards a reformation of this evil. In the States of Massachusetts and New Hampshire the slavery of the blacks is wholly abolished. And it is one of the fundamental articles in the Constitution of the proposed State of Vermont, that no slavery shall be tolerated there. The States of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and the lower counties of the

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    Delaware, have provided for the gradual abolition of slavery, and have ordered that all the blacks who shall be hereafter born in these States, shall be free at a certain age, and that no more slaves shall he introduced among them. And the State of Virginia has repealed a law, which was formerly in force there, against the freeing of the blacks, and now allows the masters of slaves to free them when they please.

    “Thus, ALL THE STATES BUT FIVE,* have manifested a disposition to promote the freedom of the Africans.† And numbers of slaves have been liberated by their masters, under a conviction of the unrighteousness of holding them in slavery. This is a great advance in the desired reformation, and has given ground to hope that slavery will be wholly abolished in all the United States of America."

    To this it might have been added, that "in the Convention that formed the Constitution of Kentucky, in 1780, the effort to prohibit slavery was nearly successful." "But for the great influence of two large slaveholders—Messrs. Breckinridge and Nicholson"—the measure, it is believed, would have been carried.—"Power of Congress," &c. p. 34.

    Virginia, in 1786, enacted that every slave imported into the Commonwealth should be free.

    It is to be lamented that Virginia should have since re-enacted her laws against emancipation, and in many ways sought to strengthen the slave system. In Delaware, too, there must have been some retrograde steps, though the number of slaves has greatly diminished since 1785.

    In 1777, the people of Vermont met in Convention and proclaimed Vermont an independent State. The first article of their bill of rights excluded slavery. Though not admitted into the Confederacy (owing to some claims of New York) till 1789, Vermont has the honor of having first provided for the abolition of slavery. Seventeen slaves are indeed set
    ____________
    *The statement should have been six, viz. New York, Maryland, New Jersey, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. Vermont, a new State, having been reckoned, there were fourteen States then in the Union, instead of the original thirteen, in the mind of the writer.

    †Virginia and Delaware, it seems, were then counted upon as being on the side of freedom, while New York and. New Jersey were reckoned on the other side. Another fact to be adjusted to the current theory of constitutional guaranties, which would present to us New York and New Jersey refusing to come into the Union, unless Virginia and Delaware would enter into the "compact'' to hunt fugitive slaves, &c.!

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    down to Vermont in the census of 1790. The revised Constitution of 1793 retains the prohibition of slavery.
    "In Massachusetts, it was judicially declared, soon after the Revolution, that slavery was virtually abolished by the Constitution, and that the issue of a female slave, though born prior to the Constitution, was horn free."—Kent's Commentary, p. 252. [Ed. Note: James Kent's Commentary on the American Law, Vol II, 5th ed (1844)]

    "In Massachusetts, all the negroes in the Commonwealth were, hy their new Constitution, liberated in a day, and none of the ill consequences objected [alleged by pro-slavers], followed, either to the Commonwealth or to individuals."—Appendix, hy Dr. Edwards, to his Sermon against Slavery, Sept. 15, 1791. [Ed. Note: See full citation, p 92, supra.]

    In giving the opinion of the Court in the case of the Commonwealth versus Thomas Aves [35 Mass (18 Pick) 193], in 1836, Chief Justice Shaw said:—
    "How, or by what act particularly, slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, whether by the adoption of the opinion in Somerset's case, as a declaration and modication of the Common Law, or by the Declaration of Independence, or by the [State] Constitution of 1780, it is not now very easy to determine, and it is a matter rather of curiosity than utility, it being agreed on all hands that, if not abolished before, it was so by the declaration of rights. * * *

    "Without pursuing this inquiry further, it is sufficient for the purpose of the case before us, that by the Constitution, adopted in 1780, slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, upon the ground that it is contrary to natural right and the plain principles of justice. The terms of the first article of the Declaration of Rights are clear and explicit. 'All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights, which are the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property.'—It would be difficult to select words more precisely adapted to the abolition of slavery."—[18] Pickering's Reports pp. 209-10.

    The suggestion of Chief Justice Shaw, that slavery may have been abolished in Massachusetts by the National Declaration of Independence, may be startling to some readers, but the similarity, not to say identity of that declaration with the article in the Massachusetts Constitution, and the coincidence of both with the well known powers of the Common Law, as applied and exemplified ''in Somerset's case,'' may induce the inquiry whether or how either one of the three "acts" specified by Judge Shaw could have had power to abolish slavery, unless either of the others possessed likewise the same power?

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    The answer to this query seems suggested by the intimation of Judge Shaw, that "it is matter rather of curiosity than utility" to fix upon a selection of the implements or "acts" of freedom.*

    The first Federal Census, 1790, contains no enumeration of slaves in Massachusetts.

    In Pennsylvania a law was passed the first of March, 1780, declaring all persons born in the State after that day, to be free at the age of twenty-eight years. Penalty seventy-five pounds for carrying a slave beyond the limits of the State.†

    The first section of this act, of the nature of a preamble, recapitulates the condition into which the colonies were expected to be reduced by the tyranny of Great Britain, the grateful sense due for so great a providential deliverance, and the corresponding obligation and privilege of extending the blessings of freedom to others. The second section brings directly into view the condition of the negro slaves, and the demands of justice on their behalf, and then proceeds to the enactment above described.

    There were those, it would seem, who were not satisfied
    ____________
    *Since writing the above, the following item reaches us through a new work [Ed Note: See Excerpt] of Mr. Spooner—"A Defence for Fugitive Slaves [(Boston: B. Marsh Pub, 1850)]." We deem it altogether too important to be omitted here:

    "As early as 1770, and two years previous to the decision of Somerset's case, so famous in England, the right of a master to hold a slave had been denied by the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and upon the same grounds, substantially, as those upon which Lord Mansfield discharged Somerset, when his case came before him. The case here alluded to was James vs. Lechmere, brought by the plaintiff, a negro, against his master, to recover his freedom."—[Emory] Washburn's Judicial History of Massachusetts [(Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1840)], p. 202.

    That slaves should have been held in Massachusetts after this decision, that a new judicial decision should have been needed after the Revolution, and that Chief Justice Shaw, in 1833, should have been at a loss to fix, with precision, the earliest date and the grounds of the previous decisions, are very remarkable circumstances, all tending to illustrate the facility with which the practice of slaveholding has been continued, contrary to law, and the inattention of learned jurists to the facts as well as the law, on the subject.

    The case mentioned by Washburn confirms very strongly the impression that slavery was as illegal in the Colonies, before the Revolution, as it is known and admitted to have been in England.

    † Genius of Temperance, Sept. 19, 1833, copied from Emancipator.

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    with this partial and tardy justice. "Petitions in favor of the oppressed Africans'' were again presented to the Legislature in 1798, and a committee made a favorable report, March 8. They intimated that if the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the paternal character and overruling providence of a common Creator, were to be recognized, "the petitioners but speak the divine will, in requesting that this evil be done away from the land."*

    Of the specific points of this petition, and of the legislative action had on it, we are not informed. The United States census for Pennsylvania, in 1790, exhibits 3,737 slaves, and in 1840, sixty-four.

    It deserves notice that the efforts of that period had reference to the removal of slavery "from the land," and not merely from particular portions of it.

    In New Hampshire, slavery was said to have been abolished, by constitutional declarations of rights, similar to those of Massachusetts, adopted in 1783, and taking effect in June, 1784. And yet, singularly enough, the census of 1790 shows 158 slaves in New Hampshire, and even that of 1840 gives one! By what tenure, and under what circumstances or pretexts slaves are held in New Hampshire, we are not informed. State Constitutions, it seems, as well as National Declarations, may be violated in practice, but the legality of such practices presents another question—the same that was agitated by Granville Sharp in Great Britain.

    Rhode Island, the very seat of the African Slave Trade, was the seat also of early efforts in fiver of freedom. The exact date, or the precise form of the earliest legislative movements are not before us, but a note of Dr. Hopkins to his Dialogue, in 1776, mentions a proposed act, prohibiting the importation of negroes into this colony, and asserting the rights of freedom of all those hereafter born or manumitted within the same." He gives the preamble to this proposed act in the following words:
    ____________
    *Statutes of Pennsylvania, vide National Era, Ang. 22, 1850.

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    “Whereas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which those of personal freedom must be considered as the greatest; and, as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves should be willing to extend personal liberty to others, therefore, be it enacted,” &c.

    “Is it possible,” exclaims Hopkins, “that any one should not feel the irresistible force of this reason?” In a note to the second edition, in 1785, he adds:

    “Since the above was published [in 1776], the General Assembly of that State have made a law, that all the blacks born in it after March, 1784, are made free. And the masters who have slaves under forty years old, are authorized to free them, without being bound to support them if afterwards they [refused reparations] should be unable to support themselves.”

    The census of 1790 reports 952 slaves in Rhode Island, and in 1840, FIVE.

    In Connecticut, a law providing for the gradual abolition of slavery was enacted in 1784. In 1790, the number of slaves in that State was 2,759; in 1840, there were only SEVENTEEN.

    In New York, “in 1799, an act of gradual emancipation was passed, declaring all children born thereafter to be free, males when coming to the age of twenty-eight, and females at twenty-five.” A fine of two hundred and fifty dollars was the penalty, and the freedom of the slave was the result of an attempt to sell him out of the State. Although masters were allowed to travel with their slaves, yet under severe fines they were obliged to return them; or, under oath, to make proof that unavoidable accident prevented the returning.

    “In 1817 another act was passed, declaring all slaves to be free in 1827, and on July 4th of that year the act took effect, and every slave, nearly ten thousand, was manumitted without compensation to their owners [but also without reparations for themselves].”*

    And yet, from some cause, the census for 1840 reports four slaves in the State of New York. In 1790 there were 21,324, being nearly three-fourths as many as there were in Georgia
    ____________________________________
    * H. W. Beecher, New York Tribune, June 1, 1850.

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    at that time, nearly twice as many as there were then in Kentucky, and more than six times as many as there were in Tennessee! The proportion, when the Federal Constitution was adopted a year or two previous, could not have greatly varied, throwing New York, at that time, and for several years afterwards, somewhat conspicuously, into the ranks of the Slave States. Even down to 1800 there were 20,343 slaves, the number having decreased but 881 in ten years.

    Ed. Note: New York courts ruled that “there is no legal slavery” in People v Lemmon, 5 Sand SCR 681; 7 N Y Super 681 (12 Nov 1852) aff'd 26 Barb 270, 287-289 (Dec 1857) aff'd 20 NY 562 (March 1860).

    New Jersey took measures, in 1804, for the prospective abolition of slavery, but the process must have been a tardy one. In 1790 the number of slaves was 11,423. In 1840, it was 674.

    In 1820 an act was passed emancipating all slaves born after 1805 at the age of twenty-five years, and imposing a fine of one hundred dollars and imprisonment for transporting slaves beyond the limits of the State, except slaves of full age who freely consented to go, before a judge of one of the courts in private.—Statutes of New Jersey, Congress Library. National Era, August 22, 1850.

    Ed. Note: See Alvan Stewart's Legal Argument (1845).

    In April, 1846, a law was passed and approved, ostensibly abolishing slavery, and declaring that every person then held in slavery was free, subject, however, to certain restrictions, which retain the same persons under the control of their masters,   for an indefinite period, as apprentices. They are to “serve until discharged,” and the master is permitted “to discharge them by a writing executed in the presence of at least one witness, provided the apprentice be of sound mind, and capable of procuring a livelihood [having been denied reparations], and upon certificate of the overseers of the poor and two justices of the peace, to such capacity,” &c, &c. Such is the definition of freedom, and of the abolition of slavery, in New Jersey!—MSS, by Gov. Haines.

    The census of 1840 records 3 slaves in Ohio, 3 in Indiana, 331 in Illinois, 11 in Wisconsin, and 16 in lowa. The only States, at that time, without slaves, were Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and Michigan. A short list of really non-slaveholding States!

    In the States now commonly denominated non-slaveholding,

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    there were, in 1776, by computation, 46,099 slaves. In 1790 there were, by census, 40,870. In 1840, there were 1,129.

    This decrease, though chiefly the effect of legislative and judical action, was not wholly so. By voluntary manumissions, the slave population must have been very essentially diminished.
  • Particularly must this have been the case in Rhode Island, where the diminution between 1776 and 1790, an interval of only fourteen years, was from 4,370 to 932, since the law of 1784 liberating only those who were born after that time, could have operated only to a very limited extent, in checking the increase of slave population.

  • In Pennsylvania, too, where legislation had only liberated those born after 1780, we find the decrease of slaves between the years 1776 and 1790, to have been from 10,000 to 3,737.
    • Church action [before their moral deterioration], rather than legislative or judicial, is to be credited with these manumissions in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

    Ed. Note: In that higher morality Revolutionary 1776 era, clergymen such as Samuel Hopkins and Jonathan Edwards were activists against slavery. After church morality had markedly deteriorated, no sucessors to these good activists arose in significance. But after some decades, others took up the cause, e.g.:
  • Rev. John Rankin (1823)
  • Rev. Theodore D. Weld (1837)
  • Rev. Beriah Green (1839)
  • Rev. William W. Patton (1846)
  • Rev. John G. Fee (1851)
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853)
  • Rev. George B. Cheever (1857).

    • It is somewhat remarkable that South Carolina, between 1776 and 1790, exhibits a decrease of slave population, from 110,000 to 107,094, while the slaves of New York, in the same time, increased from 15,000 to 21,324. But the number of slaves in S. Carolina had increased, in 1840, to 327,038.

    The increase of slavery in the Southern States, presents a striking contrast to the decrease in the Northern and Eastern Statcs. In 1776 the number of slaves in these is computed at 456,000. In 1790, by census, it was 567,527. In 1840, it was 2,486,126, including the District of Golumbia.

    Thus, while in one part of the country, the slave population increased from less than half a million to nearly two and a half millions, in another part of the country it was diminished from above 46,000 to a little more than 1,100.

    Ed. Note: The South, despite its "Bible-Belt" reputation, was NOT Bible-adhering. See, e.g., the writings by
  • Rev. Stephen S. Foster (1843)
  • Rev. William W. Patton (1846)
  • Rev. Parker Pillsbury (1847)
  • Rev. John G. Fee (1851)
  • Edward C. Rogers (1855), etc.

    • This diminution [reduction of slavery in the North], whether in the form of voluntary manumissions, or in consequence of legislative or judicial action, may be traced, almost entirely, to the moral, religious and political influences, exhibited in this and the preceding chapters. But for these, the eastern, middle, and north-western

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    States—in despite of all that has been said of soil and climate —would probably have been overspread with the foul stain and the blighting curse of slaveholding. It was the prevailing moral sentiment of the North that led to the abolition of slavery there. This is manifest from the fact that the emancipated slaves and their chiidren, are for the most part, still to be found at the North. They were not, in anticipation of emancipation acts, exported to other States, to any observable extent.

    When, in 1827, ten thousand slaves were, in one day, set free, in the State of New York, they remained on the soil [meaning, they did not move away], and it is not known that a single slave had been sold into another State, in anticipation of that long expected event. Transportation [ouster, deportation] has never been made, in these States, a condition of freedom, nor, until after the organisation of the Colonization Society, was their removal sought as an [alleged] advantage to the communities in which they resided.

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    CHAPTER XI.

    DECLINE OF THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY, AND GROWTH OF SLAVERY,
    SINCE THE REVOLUTION—THEIR CAUSES AND EARLY MANIFESTATIONS.

    Importance of tracing disastrous social changes to their moral causes—Promises
    made in adversity forgotten in prosperity—View of Dr. Hopkius—A humiliating
    fact—Partial revival of the Slave Trade—Fallacy of expecting to abolish the traffic
    during the existence of Slavery—The strategy of postponement—General decline
    of Religion and Morals—Disbanding of the Army—Habits of idleness, and
    tendency to Piracy and Slave Trade—Relaxation of vigilance—Decline of public
    spirit—Vicissitudes of poverty and returning wealth—Concentration and control
    of capital—Anti-Democratic Conservatism, and semi-infidel French Democracy—
    The two rival parties—Misunderstood "horrors of St. Domingo''—Unforeseen
    profitableness of cotton-growing—Unequal apportionment of representation—
    Declining standard of morals in the Church—Rivalry of the Sects—Growing
    prejudice against color—Influence of the Colonization project—Fatal fostering of
    this prejudice—corroborated by estimate of Henry Clay.

    THE study of history is like a journey, or an exploring tour, in the course of which, cheering prospects are sometimes unexpectedly succeeded by scenes less promising but necessary to be traversed, or the proposed end is not reached. If we would faithfully explore a country, we must not confine our attention to the pleasant portions of it. If we would improve it, we must acquaint ourselves with the unseemly features and untoward influences to be removed or remedied. If fields once fertile are becoming sterile, we must learn under what modes of tillage they have become so. If the buildings just erected and yet unfinished, are beginning to crumble, we must inquire after the nature of the materials, and the process of the structure.

    The marked decline of the spirit of liberty in this country for half a century after the Revolution, is a fact too palpable

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    to escape notice. Between, the historical details of the last three chapters, and those that must appear in the following, there will be found, we fear, a chasm too wide and abrupt to comport with the ordinary vicissitudes of credible history. To the reader, of another country, or a future age, we shall appear to have been writing fiction, and even the verity of the public documents cited, will scarcely escape suspicion. But "truth is stranger than fiction."

    The details to be presented will appear credible enough when we shall have become conversant with the moral causes at work beforehand, adapted to the production of them. To the reader who never stops to inquire after moral causes, or who reads on, without keeping them steadily in mind, the perusal of history can be of little value. It can supply him with no guide to the future, no element of congruity for the past. Such causes constitute, in reality, the most essential ingredient of true history. They are facts, at wholesale, fountains of facts, from whence all minor facts flow. We make no digression, then, in stating them.

    We cannot promise a complete enumeration of all these causes. We may not be able, always, to distinguish causes from effects, nor to designate the precise point, in the history, where the defection began, nor decide positively what portion of the body politic was first corrupted, or first became corrupting. But wo can note down a few general facts.

  • 1. We shall first venture to suggest, that the regard for human liberty, and the opposition to the slave trade and slavery, that were manifested during the revolutionary period, may have failed to prove permanent and abiding, because, in respect to great numbers of the people, including some prominent citizens, those sentiments were not as deep seated and as disinterested as they should have been, and therefore a change in the aspect of public affairs would naturally bring with it a change in the manifestation of such sentiments. To suppose otherwise would be to suppose an unprecedented purity of purpose, of which no other nation has yet furnished a parallel. This suggestion does not discredit the fact of an actual declension. It only indicates one of the causes of it. Without any

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    previous tendency to declension [deterioration], other causes would have had little power.

    It is easy to see, that, in many ways, the revolutionary period [1776 era attitude] presented peculiar inducements to the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. To fight for their own liberties while enslaving others, was an incongruity too glaring to consist with national reputation, or with intelligent self-respect. Like all other men [people], in times of pressing danger and sore calamity, our fathers might make solemn promises of amendment [reform, repentance], which would be liable to be forgotten and disregarded, on the return of security and peace. The fear of an insurrection of the slaves, or of their desertion to the enemy, in time of war, might present an argument in favor of their emancipation, that would influence many minds, until the danger had passed away. Such, indeed, was the fact. A note of Dr. Hopkins to his Dialogue, in 1776, will place this fact in a clear and impressive light.

    “God is so ordering it, in his providence, that it seems absolutely necessary that something should speedily be done in respect to the slaves amongus, in order to our safety, and to prevent their turning against us, in our present struggle, in order to get their liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks, and induce them to take up arms against us, by promising them liberty [pursuant to existing law] on this condition; and this plan thcy are prosecuting to the utmost of their power, by which means they have persuaded numbers to join them.

    “And should [if] we attempt to restrain them by force and severity, keeping a strict guard over them, and punishing those severely who shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will be only making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistency and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous, and shocking. and bring down the righteous vengeance of heaven on our heads.

    “The only way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil, is to set the blacks at liberty ourselves, by some public act and laws, and then give them encouragement to labor, or take up arms in defence of the American cause, as they shall choose. This would, at once, be doing them some degree of justice, and defeating our enemies in the scheme they are prosecuting.”

    This wise and righteous counsel was not followed, but it is impossible to tell how extensively the slaves were kept quiet, by the public testimonies made in favor of their freedom, and by the hopes thus inspired.

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    In his Dialogue [1776], Dr. Hopkins had insisted so strongly on the tokens of divine displeasure hanging over the nation, on account of this crying sin, that on the re-publication of the work [1785], after the return of peace, he thought it necessary, in an Appendix, to notice [answer] the objection, that if slavery were so great a national sin, as had been represented, Divine Providence would not have favored the cause of America; and therefore, the representations that had been made of the danger of defeat, in consequence of this wickedness and inconsistency, had been unfounded and rash. One answer of Dr. Hopkins to this objection, was, that

    “since the [1776] publication of this dialogue, many things have been done and steps taken, towards a reformation of this evil”—

    proceeding to enumerate, (as we have before quoted [pp 109-117],) the States that had either abolished slavery or taken measures in that direction.

    He adds, that if these hopeful beginnings, commenced in times of affliction, were not followed up and completed in prosperity, we may expect divine judgments, still.

    Ed. Note: Reference Leviticus 26:3-44;Deuteronomy 4:9, 23, 31;
    Deut. 6:12; 8:11, 14, 19; 9:7; 25:19; and 28:1-68.

    And here, he [Dr. Hopkins] quotes as applicable to this country, in such a case, that remarkable passage in the prophecy of Jeremiah, Chapter 34, where it is recorded that the king and princes of Judah, in a time of siege and distress entered into a solemn

    “resolution and covenant to free all their slaves”—but “when their fears and distress were removed, they returned to their former practice,”—for which God commissioned Jeremiah to tell them that since they had “refused liberty to their brethren, he [God] would proclaim a liberty for them [the Jews], even a most dreadful liberty to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine, and cause them to be removed [exiled] into all the kingdoms of the earth,” &c.

    Ed. Note: See elaboration by George B. Cheever,
    God Against Slavery (1857), Chapters VII and X.

    The contrast between Hopkins and some of his successors, in the same religious denomination in New England, who have recently applauded the efforts of our most recreant politicians to draw, still doser, the fetters of the enslaved, and to punish those who shelter the outcasts [under the Fugitive Slave Law (1850)], is too palpable and glaring to escape observation: and the question forces itself upon our attention, notwithstanding their technical agreement in creeds and forms, whether teachers so opposite in their

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    practical expositions, should be regarded as teaching, in reality, the same religion, and serving the same Master.

    It is in the same connection, in that Appendix, that Dr. Hopkins notices the pecuniary troubles and distresses that still, at that time, (1785) embarrassed the country, and threatened its ruin, in evidence that the danger of divine judgments had not yet disappeared. And as a reason for fearing yet greater judgments, he proceeds to mention, what belongs to this portion of our history, as an important, but painfully humiliating fact. Though the General Congress and the Colonies or States had solemnly covenanted to discontinue the slave traffic [trade], and had interdicted it, yet, by prominent and wealthy individuals, it was now beginning, on the return of peace, to be revived, and was not effectually suppressed by the authorities. We will state this in the words of that celebrated author [Dr. Hopkins].

    “We are again going into the practice of that seven-fold abomination, the slave trade, against which, in the beginning of the war, we bore public testimony, and entered into a united and solemn resolution wholly to renounce it, and all connection with those who should persist in this evil practice.

    “A number of vessels [ships] have been sent from some of the States in New England, and other States, to Africa, to procure slaves, and they are in such demand in the West Indies, and in some of the Southern States, and especially South Carolina, that several [financially] successful voyages have been made, thousands of slaves brought into these United States, and sold at extraordinary prices, by which others are tempted and encouraged to go into this trade, and there is a prospect that it will take place to as great a degree asit has heretofore, unless it should be [is] suppressed by those in public authority, or by the people at large.”

    The precise extent to which this infamous traffic was resumed, cannot now be ascertained. But there is reason to think it was quite limited, until (as before stated) it was allowed by South Carolina, in 1803.

  • 2. The experiment of putting a stop to the slave trade during the existence ofslavery—and the policy of attempting to abolish either the one or the other, or both of them, by the mere force of moral suasion, witbout corresponding and adequate political action, was fully tried by the philanthropists and patriots of the revolutionary period, and with a result
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    that should prove a caution to all their successors who may be engaged in the cause of human freedom. To maintain penal [criminal] laws against any other forms of crime, and permit this crime of crimes to go “unwhipt of justice,” is a solecism in legislation, in jurisprudence, and in civil polity, without a parallel for inconsistency and folly. This capital error we put down as one of the leading causes or outstandmg signs of the lamentable defection [deterioration] of this nation from the principles of civil government they had marked out for themselves, in their declaration of human rights, and their definition, of the objects and characteristics of a legitimate and just civil government.

  • 3. “The ruse of gradualism”—the strategy of delay—the contamination of temporary compromise, was another kindred error, (if it may be called another) and the same with which the friends of liberty have been frequently beset, and sometimes foiled, in their more recent as well as more early endeavors.

  • 4. The general decline of pure religion and sound morality, after the close of the revolutionary struggle [1776-1783], another fact commonly noticed by the better portion of the community at that period, was almost certain to include in it a decline of the spirit of liberty, of a tender regard for human rights, and of sensibility to the flagrant iniquities of the slave trade and slavery.

    Though the war of the Revolution contributed in many respects, and with the better portion of society, to foster the spirit of freedom; yet, like other wars, it had its demoralizing tendencies, and the disbanding of the army was the occasion for the development of them.

    Not a few of the soldiers, and some of the officers, had contracted a distaste for the habits of sober and patient industry, in which they had, in earlier life, been educated; and, to a frightful extent, the spirit of lawlessness and licentiousness had been mistaken for the spirit of freedom. The spirit of gambling adventure, amid the pecuniary fluctuations of that period, and the depreciation of the continental paper currency, contributed its share to pro-

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    duce the recklessness, unscrupulousness, and haphazard adventure for which a considerable portion of that generation were distinguished. The anti-slavery writings of a Hopkins and an Edwards can hardly be supposed to have had much effect upon this [white trash] class of society who had learned to cast off their respect for moral and religious instructions and restraints in general.

    The rapid inroads of intemperance, profanity, and irreligion, were among the marked features of that period, even in New England, as we learn from the testimonies of such writers as Emmons. The [white trash] class of the community just alluded to, were ripe for any unlawful enterprise rather than for patient, quiet rural labor. The slave trade, as well as other forms of piracy, was not lacking for men of this class to man its vessels, and even to take charge of them, as supercargoes [ship officers] and captains. And in how many ways the characteristics of such an age [era] would tend to strengthen and perpetuate slavery, we need not stop to describe.

  • 5. A general decline of the spirit of liberty succeeded to the exhausting struggles of the Revolution, almost by a law of the human mind, if we may adventure to say so, a process in human affairs very difficult to be counteracted, except by the most resolute and disinterested exertions. The one idea of national independence, which had come to stand as the synonym of the idea of freedom, had so long held the mind of the nation in an agony of attention and suspense, that when the struggle was over, and the national independence acknowledged, it was taken for granted [assumed] that the liberties of the nation were secured.

    Even with the most philosophical and philanthropic, a vague, indefinite, and ill-conceived impression of the “spirit of the age” as it is called, that was to carry everybody onward and upward to the dignity of freemen, without the exhausting cares, anxieties, and solicitudes of those who had almost worn themselves out in the long struggle, had operated as a welcome furlough, or discharge from service. When the army and the commander-in-chief [George Washington] were permitted to retire from the public defence, why should not they [do so]?

    The human mind, so long and so intensely kept on the stretch,

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    sought repose, and, unhappily, in this case, before the giant despotism of the age [era] had been vanquished. Even the strong-minded and the keen-sighted failed to perceive this!

    How much more the masses of the people, whose vigilance and combined efforts were then needed? Withdrawing their attention too much from public affairs, they expended their strength on their own personal and domestic concerns, that now needed unusual care, after a season of comparative neglect. A people impoverished by a seven, years' war, were now to replenish their exhausted stores, and pay off their public and private debts, at a time when the proportion of producers had been diminished, first by the demands of the war, and next, by the flood of idlers, or worse than idlers, which had come with the return of peace.

    How easily would most men [people] excuse themselves from anti-slavery agitation [activism] at such a period, to say nothing of an unwillingness to hazard, afresh, at the close of a civil war, the amicable relations that remained. In all this we see a cause, not an adequate excuse, for the general apathy that succeeded to the revolutionary struggle.

    The lesson for our instruction is, the importance of never relinquishing a contest for freedom, till it is thoroughly secured, or of never yielding a moral controversy till it is settled on the right basis.

  • 6. When the private and the public purse were replenished, when prosperity had succeeded to poverty, when wealth, at the opening of the present century, rolled in upon the nation, the former habits of disinterested or even of patriotic devotion to public affairs and the interests of human freedom did not return. The pursuit of wealth had begotten the inordinate love of it. Inattention to the demands of liberty and justice had resulted in the disregard of them.

    Inequality of possession, continually increasing and in striking contrast to earlier times, had undermined the spirit of equality, and introduced aristocratic tastes. Humanity and human rights were less valued than weaith. The concentration of capital created a new element of political power, and diverted it from its former channels. The possession of wealth, or of talents prostituted
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    to the support of its claims, instead of a disinterestcd advocacy of human liberty and equal justice, supplied passports to seats in the State and National Gouncil, to places of authority and power. Here was another cause [loss of the prior agrarian-egalitarian attitude and situation], and another step in the downward tendencies of the nation; the beginning of that powerful aristocracy of wealth that afterwards openly opposed the discussion of the slave question.

  • 7. Earlier than this, and somewhat if not altogether distinct from it in the first place, though afterwards learning to combine with it, and becoming at length wholly absorbed in it, and obliterated by it, was a more elevated aristocracy, (not using the word in its most odious sense,) beginning to exhibit itself, almost immediately after the close of the revolutionary struggle.

    Tn the effort to establish a national Constitution, to organise a new general government, and to mark out a course of national policy, this element became distinctly visible. It might be described as the aristocracy of intellect, combined, to a great extent, (though with some marked exceptions,) with high moral worth, which, in the absence of numbers, gave it, for a time, great weight and power. It was not so much, if at all, an aristocracy of misanthropy or of gross selfishness, as of conscious superiority of intelligence and character, and a distrust in the capacities of the mass of the people for self-government.

    With a goodly share of the friends of humanity and justice in its ranks, (the friends of the enslaved,) seeking earnestly their future or ultimate freedom, it nevertheless failed to yield its full assent to those self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence which must lie at the basis of any consistent and thorough agitation [activism] for the present removal of slavery.

    If the masses of the people could not safely be intrusted with the experiment of self-government, as this class of statesmen seem to have supposed, it would have been the consummation of folly and madness to have set the slaves all loose, at once, without any previous preparation for freedom. Even the professedly democratic portion of our public men were, by no means, prepared to apply their principles to the case of the unlettered and uncultivated negro
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    population, though they were willing to hazard the experiment with the more favored and better educated whites.

    Was it to be expected, then, of those who trembled at the experiment of republican institutions even for the educated yeomanry of New England, without the protecting shadow of a royal throne, or its equivalent in some form—those who sought to restrict as much as possible the right of suffrage, making property the evidence of qualification; those who sought for balances and checks against the people, and the placing of the highest officers of government at the greatest practicable distance from their control—was it to be expected, we demand, of such a school of statesmen, that they should signalize themselves by demanding the immediate and unconditional emancipation of the enslaved? Most assuredly it was not. And no such anomaly was witnessed.

    Admit that they embodied a majorlty of the most intelligent, respectable, philanthropic, and religious portion of the community, as has been plausibly, and perhaps justly, claimed for them—admit that among their prominent men were some of the most prominent and worthy patrons of manumission, and even of abolition societies—admit that they favored the circulation of the more radical and truly democratic anti-slavery doctrines of Hopkins and Edwards*—it nevertheless remains true that no prominent statesman of this class, (nor even of their more democratic opponents,) proposed an immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery.

    The democratic theory of human rights and corresponding capabilities, was not then sufficiently understood, to warrant [enable] such a movement. We mention this as an indisputable and important historical fact—not for any purposes of invidious reproach. If the best friends of the enslaved among our purest and most prominent statesmen were not ready to demand for them immediate justice, then their continued enslavement was a matter of course, until the rise
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    * We cannnot say that Hopkins and Edwards were not both identified, in their political influence, as most of their clerical associates were, with the school of politics we have describod. It would be remarkable if they were not. But their writings on slavery are among the most radically democratic of their times.

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    and ascendency of the slave power riveted their chains. The fact and philosophy of gradualism, and consequent postponement, has, in part, its historical elucidation just here.

    Fidelity to historical truth compels us to add, that the class of statesmen just described exerted a powerful influence in moulding the Federal Constitution; that they distinguished themselves and obtained their political name, as Federalists, by advocating its adoption; that the administration of the Federal Government, on its first organization, came into their hands; that they administered it for the first twelve years [1789-1801], during which time the national policy was gradually but substantially settled upon the basis upon which it has been administered ever since,*   so far as the slave question is concerned, only that the exorbitant demands of the slave power have been constantly “growing with its growth, and strengthening with its strength.”

    Impartiality requires us to notice these facts concerning the Federal party while in power, as the Democratic party so called, is justly obnoxious to the charge of violating, even more conspicuousiy and outrageously, the free principles of which they boast, during their much longer administration [1801-1829, 1833-1841, 1845-1849, 1853-1861] of the government in after [subsequent] years.

    The want [lack] of a thorough, consistent, and Christian democracy, therefore, is distinctiy visible in the origin and continuation of the pro-slavery policy of the national government, and to this fact, as to a comprehensive cause, the present ascendency of the slave power may be traced. Had the “Federalists” been more democratic in their theory of civil government—had the “Democrats” (or “Republicans,” as they were then called [pre-1857]) reduced their own theory to practice.†
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    * Facts, in evidence of this, will be adduced in the proper connection of the history.

    † Having never belonged to either of those parties, nor voted more than twice or thrice before the formation of the Liberty party in 1840, (though an attentive witness of party strugles since 1804,) the writer [William Goodell (1792-1878)] hoped to have presented a picture which would have been admitted by all the intelligent friends of liberty to be a just and impartial one. But on submitting his manuscript to the inspection of judicious friends, he finds his mistake. He now makes up his mind that some good men of

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    the system of American slavery would have been abolished at an early period of our history.

  • 8. In close connection with the preceding facts, it should be noticed that the excesses of the first French Revolution [1789], commencing soon after our Federal Government went into operation, must have contributed largely, as we know it did, to bring democratic principles into disrepute, to increase and fortify the jealousies and fears of conservatists, and confirm the impression of insecurity to life, to property, and to civil order, if large masses of men should at once be released from absolute control.

    If millions of educated and polished Frenchmen could not be transferred at once from a state of mere political servility to a state of civil and political freedom, without becoming fired with the frenzy of demons, abjuring all the restraints of religion, subverting the state, proscribing [banning] the church, engulfing society and property in the wildest chaos of disorder; drenching the land with blood, and exterminating each other by the rapid succession and violent proscription [banning] of rival factions, how could it be thought safe or prudent to release suddenly from a state of still deeper degradation a more ignorant population of slaves?

    Thus it must have been that men [people] reasoned, especially that portion of them whose previous jealousy of [hostility toward] popular ascendency had been so unequivocally manifested, who looked upon these trans-atlantic developments with unmingled horror, and pointed to them as evidences in confirmation of their predictions.

    Even the most sanguine and democratic among our American statesmen, and those who had most joyfully hailed the dawn of liberty in France, were compelled, though reluctantly, at length to join in the general condemnation of such excesses, and to feel if they could not re-echo the appeals now so eloquently made
    ____________________________________
    opposite parties will think him unjust to their party. No course seems to remain for him but the expression of his own convictions. He has no desire nor temptation to follow the bad custom of abusing the obsolete Federal party, the representative of a former age [era]. A more honest and patriotic party never administered the governinent. We have only attributed to it a defective theory, consistently followed—a less reprehensible error than that of its opponent, the holding of a better theory in abeyance, for the sake of pro-slavery support and the spoils of office.

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    concerning the dangers of such freedom. If a conclusion adverse to the sudden emancipation of the slaves was not logically deduced and propounded in the form of a syllogism, the impression must have been effectually made. The horrors of the French Revolution, like the perverted story of “the horrors of St. Domingo” [see p 370, infra] some time afterwards, have ever since been on the lips of the conservators of slavery.

    Ed. Note: Already before the 1789 French Revolution, the educated elite had a strong hostility to the slave trade. The Societe des Amis des Noirs was founded in 1788. Its members included Condorcet (a philosopher who wrote extensively, under a pseudonym, against slavery), Lafayette, Brissot, and Robespierre.
    The Revolutionary agenda included ending both the slave trade and slavery. In a mere five (5) years, in 1794, the National Convention outlawed the slave trade.
    This occurred after bitter disputes. Antoine Barnave, a member of the National Convention, who opposed the abolition of slavery, was executed.

    So late [recently] as the beginning of the present anti-slavery agitation, in 1838, the “reign of terror” in France, and “the horrors of St. Domingo,”*   were successfully adverted to [alleged] by opposers [of emancipation]; and the doctrines of immediate and unconditional emancipation, as taught by Edwards, were systematically confounded with [pretended to be the same as] the “Jacobinism of the first French Revolution”—a misrepresentation less excusable now, than during the dimness and confusion, near the close of the last century.

  • 9. This untoward influence of the French Revolution was increased by the undeniable fact, that a leaven of the French infidelity, and the maxims of disorganization, had insinuated themselves into the ranks of the democratic party in this country, and appeared to find favor with some of the popular leaders of that school, some of whom had advocated slave emancipation. The cry of the French atheists—“No monarch in heaven, no monarch on earth,” if not re-echoed in this
    ____________________________________
    * The story of St. Domingo, correctly told [see p 370, infra], gives no countenance to the idea of the dangers of emancipation. The first act in the tragedy of horror, was hefore emancipation had been proposed. The abolition of slavery, some time after, took place quietly, and was followed by years of good order and prosperity. It was the perfidious attempt of Napoleon, after all this, to subjngate [conquer] the island, and re-enslave the colored inhabitants, that opened the second scene of the tragedy, which was indeed enacted in blood, and drove the surviving whites from the island. The danger of slavery, not freedom, is the only legitimate inference from this history.

    The horrors of the French Revolution, too, in like manner, are to be charged mainly upon the corruption in the Church, and the despotism in the State [government], that reduced the French philosophers into atheism, and drove the populace to desperation. And then it was but a counterfeit of true democracy that was introduced, and holding no nearer affinity to it than the corrupted Christianity of France had held to the Christianity of Christ. In fact, the anarchy that was misnamed liberty, was only a reproduction of the old despotisms in another form, trampling all the inalienable rights of humanity under foot, and resulting in a settled military despotism [Napoleon I] in the end.

    Ed. Note: For more on wicked "Christian" clergy causing infidelity, see Rev. William W. Patton, Pro-slavery Interpretations of the Bible: Productive of Infidelity (1846).
    In reality, the French Revolution was overthrowing fake Christianity, Diocletianism, Emperor-Worship. Real Christianity had long before been essentially abolished. The French Church were Emperor-Worshippers, preaching the heresy of "divine right of kings," thus were correctly rejected.
    Note also: “The readiness with which Southern [politicians] prefer the most false and audacious claims [e.g., falsifying causes] . . . exhibits a state of society in which truth and honor are but little respected.”—Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders of the South: on The Social and Political Evils of Slavery (New York: S.W. Benedict, 1843), p 36.
    For more on such politicians, click here.

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    country, was listened to by many without marked disfavor. The violent overthrow of a corrupt and oppressive [heresy-preaching] Church in France, had involved along with it the open repudiation of Christianity [the Emperor-Worship version] and the Bible [i.e., Church heresies contrary to the Bible], and had suggested the idea of the overthrow of all churches.

    Thomas Paine, a leading democratic writer of this country during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of Thomas Jefferson, came home from a sojourn in France, deeply imbued with these sentiments [beliefs], and found kindred spirits here, where his infidel writings had preceded him.

    In the ranks of this school might be numbered not a few of that class of American revolationists, before noticed, whose influence and example, like Paine's*,   were not on the side of morality and social order, and who could not have contributed, had they been thus disposed (as very many of them were not) to any healthful or hopeful enterprise for slave emancipation. Had any thing been desired or attempted,†   in that direction, by the party absorbing this class of influences, and coming into power with Mr. Jefferson, in 1801, it is not improbable that the cry against them, of “infidelity, anarchy, and bloodshed” would have been, if possible, redoubled. That the opposite
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    * Paine was an advocate of the abolition of slavery, and as clerk of the Pennsylvania House of Assembly, affixed his signature to the act of prospective emancipation in that State. The infidel principles and [alleged] lax morals of Paine occasioned much prejudice against his doctrine of the “rights of man.”

    † There is no evidence that the Democratic or Republican party, at any period, was inclined to abolish slavery. Among all the loud and bitter complaints raised by them against the alleged despotic tendencies of the Federal party, its support of slavery was never mentioned. And among all the democratic measures proposed by Mr. Jefferson while in office, the abolition of slavery was not one. His own eloquent writings against slavery could not persuade him to emancipate (as Washington had done) his own slaves. The early identification of a majority of leading slaveholders with the Democratic party, and the steady control of that party by them, ever since, has always been a great puzzle and a great stumbling-block in the way of Democratic progress.

    The historical solution seems to be, that Northern talent and Northern capital (the natural rivals of Southern talent and capital) had committed themselves against the democratic theory. The only way to “get up an issue” was to espouse the theory, but blink [at] the particular application to slavery, with the double advantage of neutralizing and disarming the hostile principle. And if democratic measures favored labor, the slaveholder adroitly stood in the place of the Sonthern laborer, and might count on the co-operation of the Northern laborer.

    Ed. Note: Southrons and the "Christian Right" for generation have mastered this type scam, mouthing and yapping some moral truth, while sabotaging applying it, a blatant form of "double-talk." These hypocrites and saboteurs of morality continue this evil approach for generations, pretending to be “Bible-Belt” types.
    In the 21st century, they purport themselves to be opponents of abortion, drugs, crime, immorality, AIDS and same-sex marriage, etc., while adroitly causing them via the tobacco connection. For background examples, click here.
    A modern cover-story name for this group is "Right to Life"! -- while supporting nearly every imaginable pro-death activity!
    For Rev. John Wesley's analysis, see p 27, supra. For the voting aspect, see pp 196-197, infra.

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    party, while in power, under Washington and Adams, and amid the opposition they encountered, and the jealousies, the panic, and the confusion of that singular crisis, should have attempted anything so radically democratic and unprecedented as the sudden emancipation of all the slaves, most assuredly was not to have been expected.

    We say nothing in excuse of the derelictions of either of these parties, nor in peculiar or exclusive reproach of either of them, but we think it important to present a true and impartial account of the facts of that period, that the causes of our present unhappy position may be understood, and avoided in future. A Christianity crippled by an alliance with even the most pure and elevated description of aristocracy, is incompetent to the task of securing human freedom. A democracy, or a philanthropy, however ardent and radical, that is not based upon the Christianity of the Bible, is equally impotent, for the same sublime mission.*

  • 10. Among the influences tending strongly to bribe the public sentiment, and change the political tendencies of the country, especially at the South, on the slave question, have been justly reckoned the increased and unforeseen profitableness of slave labor, in consequence of the invention of the cotton-gin, by Mr. [Eli] Whitney. Of the reasons which had operated to produce the conviction, during the revolutionary period, that slavery was a waning system that must soon. be abandoned, the unprofitableness of slave labor was doubtless, in many minds, a leading one. This economical view of the subject must have become the more prominent as the moral influences and the generous enthusiasm, of the revolutionary period gave place to plans of individual thrift and accumulation. Then it was that the blighting influences of slavery must have begun to be felt; but a wonderful [bad] change was at hand, the almost magical result of a labor-saving machine, in the hands, not of
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    * It belongs to a later period of the history of the parties to remark, that the rival aristocracies of the North and South, throwing the Federal party and its successors into the embraces of the one, and the Democratic into the bands of the othcr, have effectually prevented the abolition of slavery.

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    the laborer himself, but of the capitalist who controlled him, and appropriated the avails of his labor. And thus, at the very moment when the more worthy and noble considerations in favor of liberty had almost ceased to occupy the slaveholder's attention, the most powerful temptations were presented to his cupidity and avarice. Under this temptation, he fell. And the policy of the national government was, in consequence, changed. On this point, we present the testimony of two statesmen holding opposite views, in general, of the slave question.

    “What, then, have been the causes which have created so new a feeling in favor of slavery in the South—which have changed the whole nomenclature of the South on the subject—and from being thought of and described in the [curse, evil, scourge] terms I have mentioned and will not repeat, it has now become an institution, a cherished institution there; no evil, no scourge, but a great [alleged] religious, social, and moral blessing, as I think I have heard it latterly described? I suppose this, sir, is owing to the sudden uprising and rapid growth of the cotton plantations of the South. * * * * * *

    “The tables [economic records] will show that the exports of cotton for the years 1790 and 1791 were hardly more than forty or fifty thousand dollars a year. It has gone on increasing rapidly until it may now be, perhaps, in a season of great product and high prices, a hundred millions of dollars. Then there was more of wax, more of indigo, more of rice, more of almost everything exported from the South than of cotton. I think I have heard it said, when Mr. Jay negotiated the treaty of 1794 with England, he did not know that cotton was exported at all from the United States; and I have heard it said that, after the treaty which gave to the United States the right to carry their own commodities to England in their own ships, the custom-house in London refused to admit cotton, upon an allegation that it could not be an American production, there being, as they supposed, no cotton raised in America. They would hardly think so now.”—Speech of D. Webster, U. S. Senate, March 7, 1850.

    “Unhappily, the original policy of the Government and the original [pro-emancipation] principles of the Government in respect to slavery, did not permanently control its action. A change occurred—almost imperceptible at first, but becoming more and more marked and decided, until nearly total. The Honorable Senator from Massachusetts, in the course of his late speech, noticed this change, and ascribed it to the rapid increase in the production of cotton. Doubtless, sir, this was a leading cause. The production of cotton, in consequence of the invention of the cotton-gin, increased from 487,600 pounds in 1793, to 6,276,300 pounds in 1796, and continued to increase very rapidly

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    afterwards. Of course the market value of slaves advanced, and masters were less inclined to emancipation.”—Speech of S. P. Chase, U. S. Senate, March 26, 1850.

    Ed. Note: Tobacco remained the historic predominant factor in slavery.
    What changed was the attitude, from anti-slavery to pro-slavery. See analysis by Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens.

    When the cotton manufacture of the North came to engross so great an amount of northern capital, a bond of affinity between northern and southern capitalists [the "Lords of the Lash" and the "Lords of the Loom," Wendell Phillips' term] was created, which at length, has almost indissolubly interwoven the Eastern States in the web of the slave power. If anything is to be done to disentangle or cut the threads, it must be done soon.

  • 11. There is yet another cause to be mentioned, that operates, perhaps, still more strongly to attach the slaveholders to their present system, and bind the North to their car [viewpoint]. Except to the growers of cotton and those who raise human herds, further north, to sell to them, the slave system, even now, is not a pecuniary benefit to the slaveholder. Though many individuals are enriching themselves by the system, the southern country, on the whole, is becoming impoverished by it.

    Ed. Note: For details on this effect, see, e.g.,
  • Rev. John Rankin, Letters (1823), pp 64-65
  • Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument (1845), pp 49-50

    • But there is, at the South, a still more potent passion than the love of wealth. It is the lust of political power, and slavery has always been an element of political power to the slaveholders in the Southern States. Though frequently, if not commonly, a minority, in the different States, (counting slaves, free colored persons, and non-slaveholding whites,) the slaveholders have always held the political power of the slave States in their own hands, and may calculate upon doing this while the slave System continues.

    Since the adoption of the Federal Constitution, in 1789, slavery has also become an all-controlling element of political power in this nation, in the hands of an oligarchy of slaveholders. This element, at first, was scarcely perceived. It originated in that [falsely alleged] provision of the Constitution which gives to the South a representation for their slaves, in the apportionment of representatives, and in the election of President and Vice President of the United States. A perception of this advantage has taught the slaveholders to regard the slave system as the grand instrument of their political ascendency in the nation. It has taught political aspirants at the North to become sycophantic and servile.

    Ed. Note: The disproportion in Electoral Votes had been cited a decade earlier by Lewis Tappan, Address to the Non-slaveholders (1843), pp 50-51.

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    These joint influences, like the upper and nether mill-stone, are rapidly grinding to powder [destroying] the last hopes of American freedom, unless the remedy be promptly applied by the resolute withdrawal of votes from slaveholders and their sycophants [accessories]. The federal patronage, and the national policy, in the hands of slavery, have been found too powerful for the remaiming energies of freedom. These advantages remaining with the slave power, the nation becomes enslaved.

    Ed. Note: This power of the Old South was never solved, except minimally. It continues slavery, in modern forms called mass incarcerations and drug addiction, by its continued tobacco power, modern "slave power."

  • 12. Of all the causes or indications, in that period, of a decline of the spirit of liberty, and of a corresponding resuscitation of the once waning system of slavery, tbere was none more comprehensive, more significant, or more influential [horrible] than the changed [morally deteriorated] spirit and position of the Church.

    Ed. Note: See exposés by, e.g.,
  • Deacon James Birney, Bulwarks (1842)
  • Rev. Stephen Foster, Thieves (1843)
  • Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn (1847).

    • Not one of the causes or indications already enumerated, has failed to affect, most injuriously, the character and the influence of the Church, and when the weight [influence] of the Church itself came to be thrown into the scale of [for] slavery, each one of the causes or indications connected with the transition could not fail to receive fresh accessions of strength; and, by being combined in the bosom of the Church, consolidating and intrenching themselves there, with a compactness and solidity unknown before, they have rendered themselves almost impregnable, ever since.

    In speaking of this transition of the Church, we do not forget that the Church had not, at any period, divorced herself wholly from slavery, nor even, as a whole, taken the ground of immediate and uncompromising action on the sabject. The doctrine of "gradual" repentance, resulting, in part, from the defective theologies then commonly in vogue, and which rejected the idea of sudden moral transformations, was the fatal error of the Church, and from her it had been imbibed by the best statesmen of the age, nurtured and taught in her bosom.

    But we speak of the transition of the Church as we do of the corresponding transition of the State. We give both bodies the credit of no small degree of earnestness and honesty, in their opposition to slavery during the revolutionary

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    period, though they failed of applying promptly the appropriate remedy, in its proper form. The transition of which we speak was from this state of honest opposition to slavery and incipient though dilatory action against it, to
  • a state of comparative apathy, first;
  • of a quiescence, next; and
  • finally, of apology, of biblical defence, and of opposition to all
    earnest endeavors to diffuse information on the subject, and
    to array a public sentiment [viewpoint, attitude] against slavery.

    • Ed. Note:
  • The Church is supposed to be a light, not hide it. Matthew 5:14-16.
  • The Church and members are not supposed to be partakers [accessories]
    in others' sin. 1 Timothy 5:22,   Ephesians 5:7,   John 17:15,
    2 Corinthians 6:14-18, and Revelation 18:4.
  • The Church is "in" but not supposed to be "of" the world. 1 Cor. 5:10-13;
    1 John 2:15-17;   1 John 5:4-5.
  • Instead of the Church overcoming evil, evil overcame it. Romans 12:21.

    • When the external pressures, and the special dangers [the "fear" that Britain would enforce the anti-slavery law] incident to the slave system, during the [Revolutionary] war [1776-1783], were removed from the community by the return of peace, they were removed also from the Church.

    The Church, too, as well as the world, forgot her solemn resolutions, in the hour of distress, to put away this iniquity from her bosom. When philanthropists contented themselves with mere moral suasion, without demanding distinct and effective legislation on the subject, they acted upon maxims they had imbibed in the Church; a Church that neglected to preach the religious duty of political justice in “delivering the spoiled out of the hands of the oppresser [Jeremiah 22:3],” and “executing judgment between a man and his neighbor.”

    When projects of gradualism deceived the friends of the oppressed, it was because the Church had taught the doctrines of gradualism ["grace," doing away with Bible commandments] rather than those of immediate and unconditional compliance with all the divine precepts. When the moral reformers of those times consented to moral compromises, they were kept in countenance by the corresponding policy of the Church, from which they had received, directly or indirectly, their moral education [disinformation], and of which the greater part of them were members.

    The general decline of pure religion and sound morality after the Revolution, is known to have affected, very seriously, the Church, and it was the testimony and the complaint of her most vigilant watchmen, that her standard of morality, and the efficacy of her discipline could not be restored to their former state. How evidently and how disastrously must such a fact have affected the position of the Church on the slave question!

    Ed. Note: Others have also noticed depravity in the professing Church, see, e.g.,
  • Rev. Stephen S. Foster, The Brotherhood of Thieves, or, A True Picture of the American
    Church and Clergy (1843)
  • Rev. William W. Patton, Slavery, the Bible, Infidelity: Pro-slavery Interpretations of the
    Bible: Productive of Infidelity” (4 August 1846)
  • Upton B. Sinclair, The Profits Of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation (New
    York: Vanguard Press, 1918), especially §§ 1.6,   § 5.7,   § 16, etc.

    • And how notoriously have these manifestations been increasing ever since!

    Ed. Note: Another factor is the ban on blacks reading and
    writing    , to obstruct them learning their constitutional rights.

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    Even revivals of religion have doue little towards restoring the ancient standard of morals. The moral duties have been less insisted on from the pulpit, and the religion revived and propagated in times of religious awakening, has been commonly of a corresponding [deteriorated] type, till the idea that ministers and churches must not meddle with political [meaning, widespread, commonly committed] sins, has grown up into theories concerning “organic sins,” that would have astonished our fathers.

    The general decline of the spirit of liberty that was witnessed in the community, was witnessed also in the Church, and the same moral lethargy and stupor came over them both. The influx of wealth, the erection of castes and aristocracies in society, that displaced simplicity and equality in the State, produced similar effects in the Church.

    Especially was it true that the more elevated aristocracy of [alleged] intelligence, of [alleged] character, and of spiritual pride, that led prominent statesmen to distrust their fellow-citizens in the exercise of their God-given rights, found its home and its sanctuary in the high places of the Church and the ministry, by whom the policy of those statesmen was most earnestly and effectively sustained.

    Ed. Note: Compare the modern "Christian right," also allied with the most reactionary politicians, only difference being—different excuses.
    Note origin of such "Emperor-worship" religion.

    By these, in an especial manner, were the [alleged] horrors of the French Revolution so exhibited as to teach the danger of according to human beings, as such, the exercise of essential human rights. However honest may have been the error, and however plausibly maintained, it was none the less to be deplored.

    The unexpected profitableness of slave labor in the production of cotton was a temptation to the Church, as well as to the rest of the community, and with the rest of the community the Southern Church fell into the snare. And the profitableness of the cotton manufacture at the North, and the consequent sympathy of the manufacturer with the planter, has influenced the Northern Church, not excepting the Society of Friends [Quakers], as really (if not as universally) as it has the rest of the community.

    The same may be said of the temptations of ambition, connected with this anomalous element of political power, and among our most

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    supple and obsequious politicians, are honored and even [allegedly] devout members of the Church.

    So that all the elements and causes of declension [moral deterioration], in respect to the treatment of slavery, that have appeared and operated in the body politic, have appeared and operated likewise in the Church. There they have become concentrated, there they have been strengthened, there, above all, they
  • have been baptized “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”—

  • have been seated at the communion table,

  • have been elevated into the pulpit,

  • have been installed trustees and professors of Colleges and Theological Seminaries;

  • have been made managers and life members of Bible, Tract, and Missionary Societies,

  • have shaped the course of ecclesiastical bodies,

  • and revised and controlled the discipline [doctrines] of the Church.

    • Besides all this, the Church has seemed to embody elements of deterioration peculiarly her own. Her divisions into rival sects and theological schools have ensnared her; she has compromised her Christian principles, has neutralized, or withdrawn her testimony, and has faltered in her administration of discipline, to gain strength and numbers wherewith to carry on schismatic and polemic [denominational] wars within her own bosom!
    When the Methodist testimonies against slavery were found to stand in the way of the comparative growth and prospective ascendency of the Methodist sect, then the severity of Methodist discipline [doctrine] against slavery must be relaxed (so we have been told by the apologists of that policy) to propitiate the favor of slaveholders.

    In the same way, and for the same object [reason, growth], the testimonies of the Presbyterian sect against slavery must be rendered a dead letter, and the most pointed of them at length, expunged. The unity and extension of the sect, and the harmony of its ecclesiastical action throughout the country, must not be disturbed by any agitation of the exciting [offending] question [slavery issue].

    The cry of “peace, peace,” must drown the voice of remonstrance against the crying sin of the Church. And thus the Church becomes a privileged body, the mem-

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    bers of which appear to claim peculiar exemption from reproof for their sins.

    Ed. Note: For exposés of Church deterioration, see, e.g.,
  • Deacon James Birney, Bulwarks (1840)
  • Rev. Stephen Foster, Thieves (1843).

  • 13. There is still another and a most potent element and evidence of [moral] deterioration, on this subject, that we know not how to treat of, as its magnitude and its meanness demand. Whenever we attempt to speak or write upon it, we feel our cheeks burning with indignation and shame. We know not how or in what terms to describe it; to what origin to trace it, or by what considerations to attempt to dislodge it from the minds of sane men.

    Ed. Note: For more on color prejudice, see pp 200-201, infra. The Southern mind-set became psychotic and infilitrated the North.

    From its flat contradiction of the Bible, we should characterize it as decidedly of infidel parentage, yet we find it nestling in the bosom of the Church. From its unaccountableness, we should describe it by the names of hypocrisy and pretence, did not its malignity prove its sincerity and reality.

    Were it less murderous and less blasphemous, we might laugh at it; were it less ludicrous, we might reason against it; were it less mean, we could enter the lists against it, as an object of honorable warfare.

    We should attribute it [the color prejudice, racism] to sheer vulgarity and ignorance (where we find it signally at home) but that we meet with it also in circles claiming refinement and learning. We allude to the infatuation [prejudice, racism]
  • that virtually predicates humanity upon the hue of the skin, that disbelieves that “God had made of one blood all nations of men” [Acts17:26],

  • that arrogates to less than one-sixth part of the human race the exclusive monopoly of our common humanity,

  • that thus falsifies the self-evident truths of our Declaration of Independence, and sets up, in the temples of Jehovah [the churches], the monuments of heathen caste.
    • Existing in and controlling both the community and the Church, this prejudice should have been noticed earlier in our enumeration of evil influences, but it seems not to have attained its gigantic growth till the united energies of a lapsed Church and State had first provided for it, new methods of culture. We do not say that the Colonization Society organized in 1816, created this prejudice [racism], for without such a [pre-existing] prejudice the [bizarre] idea of colonizing [expelling] a portion of our citizens on the ground of their color could not have been conceived [invented].

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    But we do say that the existence and operations of that Society have more than quadrupled the strength and the extent of that prejudice [racism], in a few brief years. It is a prejudice [racism] stronger at the North than at the South, because the two colors do not come so constantly in contact. Yet, at the North, it had scarcely made its appearance in common schools and worshiping assemblies, at the beginning of the present century, as many can testify.

    The Maryland laws, before quoted [p 22], forbidding white women to marry negroes, simply for the reason stated, that the latter were slaves, afford sufficient proof of the modern date of this prejudice [racism], and of its origin in the slave System.

    In countries not familiarized with a population of colored slaves, (as in Russia and Poland, where the serfs are all whites,) the prejudice against colored people is unknown, and its existence among us is there discredited, considered an inexplicable phenomenon.

    In France, in England, in Germany, and throughout all Europe, though the Jews are a degraded [discriminated against] caste [ethnic group], the educated negro has free [unsegregated] access, and on terms of unquestioned equality, to the very highest circles of society.

    It is reserved to a nation [the U.S.] pluming [priding] itself upon being the world's teacher of the doctrine of human equality, to deny the common courtesies of life, along with the essential rights of humanity, to a large part of the human species, (to the very race first proficient in literature and civilization,) on account of their color! Thus do we [the U.S. under “Bible-Belt” domination] invite and merit a world's scorn!

    Were it not for this stupid prejudice against color [racism], the sceptre of the slaveholding oligarchy would drop powerless at once, and the nation would be disenthralled. Sustained by this debasing prejudice, its supremacy must remain unbroken, and the nation must be enslaved [remains under slaver domination, tobacco pushers].

    Slavery knows no color.—

    “In the progress of time, some one hundred and fifty or two hundred years hence, but few vestiges of the black race will remain among our posterity.”

    So says [Kentucky senator] Henry Clay,* and the

    Ed. Note: Clay was alluding to the mass rapes being perpetrated by slavers producing mulattos (½ black); tercerons or quadroons (¼ black); quarterons or octoroons (1/8 black]; quinterons (1/16   black). . . .

    ____________________________________
    * Speech of Henry Clay, in the U. S. Senate, in 1839. In this speech Mr. Clay urged [blatantly false] arguments against “emancipation, immediate or gradual” as he favored slavery continuing forever, including of whites.

    Ed. Note: The South wanted slavery forever, in perpetuity, so were expanding slavery. See, e.g., the views of the Charleston (City) Gazette, cited by James G. Birney, The American Churches: The Bulwarks of American Slavery (1840), p 7. See also the matter of pro-slavery congressmen, cited by Rep. Owen Lovejoy, "The Barbarism of Slavery" (5 April 1860), p 206.
  • “The first [falsely alleged] impediment, is the absolute want [lack] of power in the Federal Government to effect the
    • -140-
    constant and rapid blending of colors [per slavers' mass rapes] at the South justifies the estimate. But the bleaching process removes not the taint of slavery. The child of the slave mother follows her condition. Persons of the whitest complexion are already held as
    ____________________________________
    purpose.”

    Ed. Note: in fact, the federal government had power to end slavery by multiple methods. See examples cited by Lewis Tappan, et al., Proceedings of Convention (New York, 1855), pp 21-22.
  • “The next obstacle in the way of abolition arises out of the fact of the presence, in the Slave States, of three millions of slaves. No practical scheme for their removal or separation from us, has yet been devised or proposed.” [The Colonization scheme, then, is not “practical.”]

  • “The third impediment to immediate abolition, is to be found in the immense amount of capital which is invested in [unconstitutional] slave property.” “The total value of slave property then, by estimate, in the United States, is twelve hundred millions of dollars. And now it is rashly proposed, by a single fiat of legislation, to annihilate this immense amount of property! To annihilate it without indemnity, and without compensation to the owners.”

  • “I know there is a visionary dogma [religious and constitional law viewpoint] which holds that negro slaves [humans] cannot be the subject of property: I shall not dwell long on the speculative abstraction [morals and Constitution]. That is property which the law declares to be property. Two hundred years of [unconstitutional] legislation have sanctified and sanctioned negro slaves as property.”

  • “It is frequently asked, What is to become of the African race among us? Are they forever to remain in bondage?” * * * “Taking the aggregate of the two races, the European is constantly, though slowly, gaining on the African portion. In the progress of time, some one hundred and fifty or two hundred years hence, but few vestiges of the black race will remain among our posterity.”

    • The speech [by this insane but powerful politician unable to distinguish practice from rule of law] will repay close study. In no part of it does Mr. Clay intimate a future abolition of slavery. [Southrons intended slavery forever, expanded it!] The “impediments“ he urges will not diminish. The limited powers of the Federal Government—the sanction of centuries of legislation—the impossibility of separation or removal—the appalling amount of property invested—all these, except the first item, must increase.

    Neither does Mr. Clay predict the future extinction of SLAVERY, but only the disappearance of the “black race from among OUR posterity!” The language is exceedingly guarded, and [in view of slavers' mass rapes] commendably accurate. Mr. Clay knows that the slave population, like the free, are increasing in a geometrical ratio. And that, if it be true that the free (or as he has psays] it, the European portion) are gaining a little more rapidly, this does not alter the fact of the rapid increase of slaves, whatever their color may be. Indisputably it is the process of amalgamation, and nothing else, that lays the foundation for the estimate that one hundred and fifty or two hundred years will “leave but few vestiges of the black race AMONG our posterity!” Neither the “slaves” nor the “blacks” are diminishing by depopulation, like the Indians and the Sandwich Islanders. The reverse is the known fact. Mr. Clay's remedy for the “bondage of the African race” is manifestly a future enslavement of a vastly greater number of “our posterity” “AMONG” whom will remain “but few vestiges of the black race in one hundred and fifty or two hundred years.”

    Gov. [George] McDuffie, of South Carolina, had declared a laboring community [working class, blue collar], “bleached [white] or unbleached [black],” “a dangerous element in the body politic.” He had anticipated their enslavement, in the Northern States, in “less than a quarter of a century.”

    Ed. Note: For more on the issue of "bleached" [white] slavery, see, e.g., William I. Bowditch, Esq., White Slavery in the United States (New York, N.Y.: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1855).

    To Mr. Clay it was reserved to intimate a respite of one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, showing how it must then be inevitably iutroduced, by causes already in operation, and fortified by formidable “obstacles” and “impediments” in

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    slaves—fugitives are thus described in advertisements, hunted, captured at the North, and taken back again. And it is known that, in some cases, white persons have been kidnapped who had no African blood in their veins.

    Ed. Note: For more on Northerner concern about Southrons and increasing white slavery, see
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), pp 183-184
  • William Bowditch, White Slavery in the United States (1855)

    • To this point, then, at length, our [U.S.] declension [moral decline] has reached. We hesitate to give up the insane prejudice that supports slavery, though told never so plainly, and from the best authority, that the consequence must be the loss of our own liberties—the enslavement of our own children! Nay, while we hear it proclaimed from the loftiest battlements of slavedom, that “the noblest blood of Virginia,” the noblest blood of our revolutionary sires [the Founding Fathers], runs in the veins of slaves.*
    ____________________________________
    the way of their removal. Those “obstacles” and “impediments” present the problem for the laboring people of the free States. Unless overcome, the prophecy of Mr. Clay must become history. There is no possible or conceivable alternative. Let the people banish prejudice against color, and all Mr. Clay's “impediments” and “obstacles” would vanish in twenty-four hours.

    Ed. Note: Gerrit Smith, Letter to Henry Clay (1839), had further refuted Clay's “impediments” and “obstacles” assertions.

    * It has been credibly reported, over the signatures of respectable citizens, that a reputed daughter of Thomas Jefferson has been seen exposed for sale at auction in New Orleans, as a slave. The known usages [customs, traditions, habits, practices] of slavery in America are such as to render the statement a highly probable one. It is also said that a grand-daughter of Mr. Jefferson is among the colonists of Liberia. The statement, along with the following, is from a communication in “Frederick Douglass' paper” for March 25,1852:

    Thomas Jefferson“I have heard from an eye witness, that on more than one occasion, when the sage of Monticello left that retreat for the Presidential abode at Washington [now, the “White House”], there would be on the top of the same coach a yellow boy 'running away.'

    “And when told that one of his slaves was going off without leave, Jefferson said, 'Well, let him go, his right is as good as his father's!' And, somehow that boy would get a doceur before the 'parting of the ways.'”

    Ed. Note: See also related modern data on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. This evidence from 1852 is consistent and corrroborative.

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    CHAPTER XII.

    POSITION OF THE AMERICAN CHURCHES RESPECTING SLAVERY
    DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

    I.—METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

    General Conference of 1801—do. of 1836—Contrast with 1797—Leading Ministers—-
    Prof. E. D. Sims—Dr. S. Olin—Pres. Thornton—Bishop Soule—Dr. Bond—Pres.
    Fiske—Bishop Hedding—"Refusal to put to vote Anti-Slavery Resolutions in
    Conference—Georgia Annual Conference—S. Carolina Conference—"Book Concern"
    —General Conference for 1840—Division concerning slaveholding Bishops—
    Grounds of the division—Slaveholding statistics of M. E. Church, North.

    IN speaking of the position of the churches, we shall have reference to the general fact—the principal religious nominations—the leading influences—not forgetting that there are honorable exceptions to the picture we shall be compelled to present.

    The former anti-slavery testimonies of the Society of Friends, and also of the Presbyterian and Methodist, and some of the Baptist churches, until near the close of the last century, we have presented already.* Of other denominations, as such, at that period, we had nothing of an authentic character to record. We are assured that there were earnest opposers of slavery among Episcopalians, and other religious communions.

    Of the course of the principal denominations since that time, and their position at present, we propose now to treat; in doing which, such facts will be brought forward as will enable the reader to form his own judgment in the premises.
    ____________
    *See Chapters IV. and IX.

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    METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

    In reverting to the action, of the Methodist Conferences, towards the close of the last century (Chap. IX.), the reader would almost be warranted to take it for granted that slaveholding, in that religious denomination, must have speedily come to an end. There can be no doubt that such was the intention of the Conferences, and that such was the general expectation at the time. Such, however, was not the fact.

    The fatal error seems to have consisted in an unwarrantable lenity towards delinquent members, in not promptly enforcing the discipline [anti-slavery doctrine], and this under the delusive expectation that they would, in a short time, be prepared to take the step, voluntarily, themselves, without being authoritatively coerced. Never, perhaps, was there a more striking illustration of the danger of such delays. The church that, with a full and clear perception of the iniquity of a practice existing among its members, has not fidelity and energy to expel it at once, has no reason to flatter itself that it ever will.

    Ed. Note: Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison sought to avoid this Methodist error.

    If the Friends [Quakers] were more successful notwithstanding their tardy process, the reason may perhaps be found in the fact, that they did not so directly sin against their own conscientious convictions, in withholding church discipline. They were first led to condemn, what appeared to be the abuses of slavery, then, the slave trade, and at last, slaveholding itself. And so far as their convictions went, they put them in practice. But Methodism, which had its rise amid the testimonies and the conviction that “SLAVERY is the sum of all villanies” [p 27], could not sit down with that iniquity in her skirts without being overcome by it.

    In 1801, the General Conference said—

    “We are more than ever convinced of the great evil of
    African Slavery, which still exists in these United States.”

    And there the testimony still stands [51 years later, 1852]. “More than ever convinced of the great evil,” and “more than ever” wedded to it and embedded in it. Such testimonies, though sometimes apparently relied upon, to disprove the pro-slavery

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    character of the Church, contain the strongest proof of the inexcusableness of its position. The Church knows the evil, but nevertheless hugs it to her bosom.

    Yet there should be noticed here, perhaps, a studied dilution of the testimony previously given. In 1780 [p 106, supra], slavery was admitted to be

    “contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and hurtful to Society, contrary to the dictates of conscience and true religion, and doing what we would not that others should do unto us.”

    This [wording] clearly describes it [slavery] as a sin. But in 1801 it is only designated, in vague terms, as an evil; whether physical or moral, is not expressed. To those who would understand the [deteriorating] course and the [lowered morality] position of our ecclesiastical bodies, these nice distinctions should be noticed with care. “Fraud lurketh in generalities,” said Lord Coke [an eminent word analysis expert].

    “Rev. Robert Emory, in his history of 'The Discipline,' informs us that he finds the following:—

    “In 1789, 'The buying and selling the bodies and souls of men, women, or children, with intention to enslave them.'

    “In 1793, it reads 'The buying or selling of men, women, or children, with an intention to enslave them.'

    “In 1808, it reads 'The buying and selling of men, women, and children,' &c.

    “For this alteration no authority is found in the Journal of the General Conference.”—“The Grounds of Secession, from the M. E. Church”—By O. Scott, p. 45.

    “And the following, from a letter published in the Pittsburg Christian Advocate, by Rev. Mr. Drummond, is not less important:

    “If we take the action of the General Conference as a true index of anti-slavery feeling and zeal in the Church, I think it apparent that these have been considerably diminished, since 1800.”—Ib. pp. 45-46.

    “In 1804, the paragraphs about considering the subject, and petitions to the legislatures (viz: No. 4, of 1796, and No. 6, of 1800) were stricken out.”

    1808—Paragraph 2 and 3 of 1796 were struck out, and the following substituted:

    “3. The General Conference authorizes each Annual Conference to form their own regulations, relative to buying and selling slaves.”—Ib. p. 47.

    Ed. Note: Bibliographic data for Robert Emory's (1814-1848) Discipline book is: History of the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1843; reprinted by Lane & Sandford, 1844 and 1851; and by G. Lane & C.B. Tippett for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1845).
    Bibliographic data for Orange Scott's (1800-1847) Grounds of Secession book is: The Grounds of Secession from the M. E. Church, or, Book for the Times: Being an Examination of Her Connections with Slavery, and Also of Her Form of Government: To Which is Added Wesley upon Slavery (New York: C. Prindle, 1848; reprinted by L.C. Matlack, 1849 and 1851). Co-authors included Jotham Horton; La Roy Sunderland, etc.).

    The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Cincinnati, in 1836, declared that they

    “wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention, to interfere with the civil and

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    political relation of master and slave, as it exists in the slave-holding States of this Union.”
    This was adopted by a vote of 120 to 14.

    The action of the Conference, at the same time against abolitionists, will be noticed in another chapter.

    What we have to do with, now, is the changed [morally deteriorated] attitude of the [1830's - 1850's] Methodist Episcopal Church, respecting slavery. We quote their proceedings still farther on this point. In their Pastoral Address, dissuading their members from agitating [speaking out on] the subject, they say—

    “The question of slavery in the United States, by the constitutional compact whicb binds us together, as a nation, is left to be regulated by the several State Legislatures themselves; and thereby is put beyond the control of the general [federal] government, as well as of all ecclesiastical bodies; it being manifest that in the slaveholding states themselves the entire responsibility of its existence or non-existence rests with those State Legislatures.”

    Ed. Note: Note the extreme moral and integrity deterioration. They used to know that the Constitution was anti-slavery, and the role of the courts in enforcing anti-slavery laws as per the MANY precedents!

    What [new] “Constitutional Compact” had there been made since 1797, when the General Conference, as before shown,* had required its preachers to memorialize [petition] the legislatures?

    And if, as stated in 1836, the sole responsibility rested on the State Legislatures, why not continue to memorialize them still? There must have been Methodists in those legislatures, and probably few or no members of those bodies held seats there without the aid of Methodist votes?

    Aside from this, how could any state or national arrangements relieve the Church from the responsibility of carrying out its own Church discipline [doctrine]? The truth was expressed in the Resolution just now quoted. The Conference had “no wish” “to interfere in the civil and political relation of master and slave.” Too many of them were slavemasters themselves [infilitrated into the Church].

    Another important thing to be noticed here, is, the new views of the M. E. Conference, since 1797 or 1801 and 1836, on the snbject of the bearings [meaning, relevance] of the Federal Constitution on the question. It indicates a corresponding [morally deteriorated] change in the community in general. New expositions and applications of
    ____________________________________
    * Chap. IX.

    -146-
    constitutional law must have grown up [Goodell says sarcastically], or we should not witness such a change of language.

    Ed. Note: Actually, the "change of language" was due to moral and integrity deterioration.

    Leading non-slaveholding ministers of the M. E. Church, were now forward [willing] to take similar [morally deteriorated] ground, and even to vindicate falsely allege] the rightfulness of slaveholding.

    “Having established the point, that the first African slaves were legally brought into bondage, the right to detain their children in bondage, follows as an indispensable consequence. Thus we see that the slavery which exists in America, was founded in right.”—Professor E. D. Simms of Virginia Conference.

    “Not only is holding slaves, on the conditions and under the restrictions of the discipline [church doctrine], no disqualification for the ministerial office; but I will go a little further, and say, that slaveholding is not constitutionally a forfeiture of a man's right, if he may be said to have one, to the office of a bishop.”—Dr. S. Olin, Pres. of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, (Ct.)

    “That God not only permitted it, but absolutely provided for its perpetuity. The act of holding a slave then, under all circumstances, God being judge, is not sin.”—Pres. S. C. Thornton, Centenary College, Miss. Conference.

    “I have never yet advised tbe liberation of a slave, and think I never shall.”—Bishop Soule at the Pittsburg Conference, Washington, Pa., July, 1839.

    “The buying of a slave may be an act of great humanity under certain circumstances, as well as the holding of those already in possession. And, moreover, we should be as much opposed to the introduction, of a rule of discipline [doctrine], to expel from our communion [membership] all who bought a slave, whatever the motives might be, as we are to a rule to expel all slaveholders under all circumstances.”—Dr. Bond of N. Y., to R. Boyd, 1840.

    The late [vile] Wilbur Fisk, D. D., President of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., said:

    “The relation of master and slave may, and does, in many cases, exist under such circumstances as free the master from the just charge and guilt of immorality.”

    “The general rule of Christianity not only permits, but in supposable cases enjoins, a continuance of the master's authority.”

    “The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave, as an obligation DUE to a present rightful authority.”

    Ed. Note: These people are lying. The real truth is:
  • Slavery was begun illegally.
  • Slavery violates Bible commands and principles.
  • No obligation exists to obey "slaveholders."
  • The makers of the pro-slavery claims are vile.

    • “Rev. Elijah Hedding, D. D., one of the six Methodist Bishops,” and also a northern man, said:

    “The right to hold a slave is founded on this rule: 'Therefore, all things

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    whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”—Ch. Adv. and Jour., Oct 20, 1837.

    Bishop Hedding, presiding at the New England Conference, in 1838, refused to put [allow the members to discuss] resolutions, condemning the buying and selling of slaves, and at the same time refused to put [allow discusison of] a motion declaring slavery to be a moral evil.

    “In the year 1837, the Baltimore Conference passed the following resolution:

    “That in all cases of administration under the General Rule in reference to buying and selling men, women, and children, &c., it be, and hereby is recommended to all committees, as the sense of this Conference, that the said rule be taken, construed, and understood so as NOT to make the guilt or innocence of the accused to depend upon the SIMPLE FACT OF PURCHASE OR SALE, but upon the attendant circumstances of cruelty, injustice, or inhumanity on the one hand, or those of kind purposes or good intentions on the other, under which the actions shall have been perpetrated, and further it is recommended, that, in all such cases, the charge be brought for immorality, and the circumstances be adduced as specifications under that charge.'” The Grounds of Secession, &c., pp 53-4.

    “The General Conference of 1840 approved of the journals of the Baltimore Conference, with this resolution in them—approved of them, this resolution and all, consequently, approved of it, and made it their own. ”—Ib.

    For a full account the reader is referred to the work just quoted, and also to Lucius O. Matlack's “History of American Slavery and Methodism,” from 1780 to 1849, an elaborate and documentary work of nearly 400 pages.

    Ed. Note: Its bibliographic citation data is: Lucius C. Matlack, The History of American Slavery and Methodism from 1780 to 1849; and, History of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, in Two Parts (New York: 1849).

    “The Georgia Annual Conference unanimously resolved [contradicting Founder Wesley],“that slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil.”

    The South Carolina Conference unanimously adopted the following: “Whereas, we hold that the subject of slavery in these United States is not one proper for the action of the Church, but isexclusively appropriate to the civil authorities, therefore, resolved, that this Conference will not meddle with it, farther than to express the regret that ithas ever been introduced, in any form, into any of the judicatures of the Church.”

    “Rev. W. Capers, D.D.,” who offered this resolution, explained it as “implying that slavery is not a moral evil. He understood it as equivalent to such a declaration. His purpose was that of not only reproving some wrongdoings at the North, but with respect also to the General Conference,” &c. “If slavery were a moral evil—that is, sin—the Church would be bound to take cognizance of it.”—[January, 1839.]

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    “The Book Concern, in New York, up to the division which followed the General Conference of 1844, published books for the whole connection, North and South; hence, in the republication of English works which have contained allusions to slavery, various [censoring] expedients were resorted to, to render them acceptable to slaveholders. Sometimes the anti-slavery matter is said to have been expunged, and in other cases it has been attempted to explain it away by notes appended by the American Book-room editor.”—True Wesleyan, Jan. 24, 1852.

    The Editor of the True Wesleyan, proceeds to specify an instance of the latter. In re-publishing Watson's Theological Institutes, in which were found some pointed remarks against slaveholders, a note is appended, evidently designed to make [create] the [misleading] impression that it is not applicable to American slavery.

    Ed. Note: Its bibliographic citation data is: Richard Watson (1781-1833) Theological Institutes, or, A View of the Evidences, Doctrines, Morals and Institutions of Christianity (London: J. Mason, 1823, 1829, 1830, 1831, 1832, 1841, 1850; and London: Wesleyan-Methodist-Room, 1830
    and in the U.S.A.

  • New York: N. Bangs & J. Emory for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828;
  • New York: J. & J. Harper, 1830
  • New York: Emory and Waugh, 1831
  • New York, B. Waugh and T. Mason, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1831, 1832, 1834
  • New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1836
  • New York: G. Lane, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840)
  • New York: Lane and Sandford for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1843)
  • New York: G. Lane & C. B. Tippet for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1845, 1848)
  • New York: Lane & Scott, 1850)
  • New York: Carlton & Porter, 1850)
  • New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1850
  • New York: Nelson & Phillips, 1850
  • New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1850
  • Cincinnati: Hitchocock & Walden, 1850)
  • New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1850
  • Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe, 1850
  • New York: Lane & Scott, 1851)
  • New York: Carlton & Phillips, 1852)
    See also John McClintock, Analysis of Watson's Theological Institutes (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1842; New York: Carlton & Porter, 1842; and New York, Phillips & Hunt, 1842).

    • The General Conference for 1840 adopted the following:

    “Resolved, that it is inexpedient and unjustifiable for any preacher to permit colored persons to give testimony against white persons, in any State where they are denied that privilege by [racist] law.”

    A motion was made to re-consider this Resolution, and several attempts were made at compromise, but after a long discussion, the resolution was permitted to stand. Thus was the ecclesiastical polity [doctrine] of the Church conformed [deteriorated] to the slave code.

    Ed. Note: Instead of the Church overcoming the world (Romans 12:21 and Revelation 3:21), fleeing sin (1 Corinthians 6:18, (1 Corinthians 10:14, 1 Timothy 6:11, and 2 Timothy 2:22), resisting the devil (James 4:7), refusing to partake of worldy sins 1 Timothy 5:22), the Church was overcome, embracing sin.
    What should have happened, instead, was that instead of partaking in evil, people were to have become partakers in the holy divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4. Example: “Let him that stole steal no more,” Ephesians 4:28. Don't be overcome by evil, Romans 12:21. Resist the devil, James 4:7 and 2 Peter 5:8-9. Be holy, 1 Peter 1:16. Abstain from lusts, 1 Peter 2:11.

    Sometime after the "Wesleyan" secession from the M. E. Church on account of slavery, a division took place in the Methodist Episcopal Church, growing out of the refusal of the Church to consent to having slaveholding bishops. Of this division we present the following account from the True Wesleyan (a paper of the Wesleyan Secession,) then edited by Rev. Luther Lee, as copied into the Annual Report of the Am. and For. A. S. Society, for 1850:

    “The action of the General Conference which led to the separation, was not against slavery or slaveholding by the membership or ministers, but simply against slaveholding by the Episcopacy [hierarchy, bishops], and that not upon principle, but wholly upon the ground [basis] of expediency. This division was brought about by the Southern and not by the Northern members, who did what they could to prevent it, and now condemn the act as unjustifiable; but it did not throw all the slave States into the Southern General Conference. Official documents show that there are, at the present time, in the Northern

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    General Conference, eight annual Conferences, a part or the whole of whose territory is in the slaveholding States. There are many slaveholding preachers in the M. E. Church, and it ordains slaveholders to the ministry. It is computed that there are in the M. E. Church, North, not less than four thousand slaveholders, and twenty-seven thousand slaves.”*

    It would be difficult to reconcile with these facts the strong anti-slavery resolutions of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church North, in 1849 and in 1850, denouncing slavery in severe terms, repudiating “the low standard of morality that sanctions the settlement of any difficulties by a compromise of moral principles,” and concluding the whole by the following:
    “Resolved, that Christians cannot consistently give their influence to elevate men to places of honor and trust who are known to be supporters of any great social and moral evil.

    “Resolved, that the glory of God and the good of mankind require the exclusion of slaveholders from the Christian Church.”—Annual Report American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1850.

    This progress, (if it be progress) as well as the inconsistencies connected with it, may perhaps be accounted for, by the movements among Northern Methodist Abolitionists, resulting in a secession, and in the organization of a new ecclesiastical connection, called the Wesleyan Church. These movements made it necessary to oppose the election of a slaveholding bishop, and to adopt strong resolutions against slavery.
    ____________________________________
    * The following statement apparently varies from the preceding, in respect to the number of slaveholding Conferences:

    “The Methodist Church North has about one-fifth part as many slaveholding societies as the entire church South. It reports in the slave States three annual conferences, 857 preachers, and 86,627 members, all in actual and full fellowship with slaveholding.”—Pres. Blanchard, as reported by Cleveland True Democrat, Sep. 26, 1851.

    The solution, as furnished us by Mr. Lee, is, that five of the Conferences, viz., the Pittsburg, the Ohio, the Indiana, the Illinois, and the Philadelphia, though bearing Northern names, include portions of slave territory; while the Western Virginia, the Missouri, and the Baltimore, are slaveholding, of course: eight in all.

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    CHAPTER XIII.

    POSITION OF THE AMERICAN CHURCHES, ETC. CONTINUED.

    II.—THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

    General Assembly, 1815—1816—1818—Erasure of anti-slavery testimony of 1794—
    Synod of Kentucky, 1834—Anti-slavery testimony and pro-slavery practice—
    General Assembly, 1835—"Doctors of Divinity" engaged in the traffic—1836—
    Pro-slavery pamphlet from Princeton—Discussion—Indefinite postponement—
    General Assembly of 1837—Anti-slavery memorials laid on the table—Excision of
    four Northern Synods—Division of General Assembly in 1838—And the reason—
    "OLD-SCHOOL" Assembly declined. discussing Slavery—In 1843, laid Anti-slavery
    memorials on the table without reading—In 1845, declared that "to treat slavery
    as necessarily a sin, would be to dissolve itself"—In 1847, re-affirmed its former
    testimonies—In 1850, declared the "interference'' of the General Association of
    Massachusetts on the subject "offensive''—NEW-SCHOOL GENERAL ASSEMBLY,
    1838, Anti-slavery memorials withdrawn—In 1839, "referred the whole subject to
    the Presbyteries"—In 1840, "indefinitely postponed"—"Vesuvius capped, for
    three years"—In 1843, censured Presbyteries that had excluded slaveholders—
    In 1846, declared Slavery unrighteous, but could not exelude slave-holders—In
    1849, was ignorant of any blame resting on its slaveholding members—In 1850,
    refused to call slaveholding "an offence under the discipline"—"Deplored the
    workings of the whole system"—Again "referred it to the Presbyteries"—And
    invited the "Old-School" Assembly to commune with them.

    Notwithstanding the testimony of the Presbyterian Church, in 1794, that it is "man-stealing" to "keep, sell, or buy slaves," or "retain men in slavery," yet the Church contented itself with recording its doctrine without reducing it to practice. No discipline was enforced, and the custom of slave-holding, among its members and even among the officers of the Church, became general [widespread, common, rampant sin], in the slave states.
    In 1815, the General Assembly declared their "approbation of the principles of civil liberty," and their "deep concern at any vestiges of slavery which may remain in our country." This is theory. In practice, they urge the lower judicatures to prepare the young slaves "for the exercise of liberty when God, in his providence, shall open a door for emancipation."

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    “This recommendation is an implied permission to their slaveholding members to dismiss all thoughts of emancipation at present, waiting for some colonization opening, or some undefined providence of God.”—Statement of Pres. Blanchard and others, in letter to Chr. A. S. Convention in Cincinnati.

    In 1816, the General Assembly, while it called slavery a “mournful evil,” directed an erasure of the note (of 1794) to the eighth commandment.

    “In 1818, it adopted an 'expression of views' in which slavery is called a 'gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature, utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves, and totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoin that 'all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them.' [Matthew 7:12.]

    “But, instead of requiring the instant abandonment of this 'gross violation of rights,' &c., the Assembly exhorts the violators to 'continue and increase their exertions to effect a total abolition of slavery, with no greater delay than a regard to the public welfare demands,' and recommends, that if 'a Christian professor shall sell a slave, who is also in communion with our Church,' without the consent of the slave, the seller should 'be suspended till he should repent and make reparation.'”*

    The effect of this temporizing and procrastinating policy was precisely such as might have been anticipated. The “mournful evil” only struck its roots deeper under such pruning.

    In 1834, the Synod of Kentucky adopted a report on slavery, in which they draw a thrilling [horrifying] picture of the cruelties and horrors of the internal slave trade, in which families are forcibly separated from each other. They say:

    “These acts are daily occurring in the midst of us.” “There is not a village or road that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournfui countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear. Our church, years ago, raised its voice of solemn warning against this flagrant violation of every principle of mercy, justice, and humanity. Yet we blush to announce to you, that this warning has been often disregarded, even by those who hold to our communion. Cases have occurred in our own denomination where professors of the reli-
    ____________________________________
    * Vide Amer. Churches, &c., by J. G. Birney, to whose statement we have added a further extract from the Expression of Views, as republished by the General Assembly in 1846. (Ch. In., April, 1846.)

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    gion of mercy HAVE TORN THE MOTHER FROM THE CHILDREN, AND SENT HER INTO A MERCILESS AND RETURNLESS EXILE. Yet acts of discipline have rarely [never!*   followed such conduct.”

    But, who would have believed it?—the Synod of Kentucky were not, and are not, in favor of present emancipation on the soil [without forced deportation]. With a knowledge of the “incontestible fact” (as Henry Clay calls it), that the internal slave trade is inseparable from slavery, and equally aware, as they must be, that no removal of the slaves could be effected in a ccntury, the Synod of Kentucky, and its leading members, who tell us this sad story, are unwilling to listen to any proposal for emancipation, without the colonization [forced deportation] of the slaves.

    And the one only Presbyterian minister within their bounds [denomination] who advocated immediate and unconditional emancipation on the soil [without deportation], was given to understand by his Presbytery, that he could not consistently remain with them.†

    The [Presbyterian] Synod has fresh cause to “blush”—but it will need something besides blushes to purge out the plague spot. To “confess” avails little, unless they “forsake.”

    In 1885, Mr. Stewart, of Illinois, a ruling elder, in advocating sundry anti-slavery memorials [petitions], urged the General Assembly to take action on the subject. He said:

    “In this [Presbyterian] church, a man may take a free-born child, force it away from its parents, to whom God gave it in charge, saying, 'Bring it up for me,' and sell it as a beast, or hold it in perpetual bondage, and not only escape corporal punishment, but really be esteemed an excellent Christian.

    “Nay, even ministers of the Gospel, and Doctors of Divinity, may engage in this unholy traffic, and yet sustain their high and holy calling.”—“Elders, ministers, and Doctors of Divinity, are, with hoth hands, engaged in the [depraved] practice.”

    The facts were not disputed; yet nothing was done to censure the act or the actors, further than to appoint a committee, a majority of whom were known to be opposed to the prayer [petition] of the [anti-slavery] memorialists [activists] (of which the late Dr. Samuel Miller,
    ____________________________________
    * J. G. Birney, long resident in Kentucky, says “never.”

    † J. G. Fee.—The intimation was heeded.

    Ed. Note: See examples of Rev. Fee's anti-slavery writings:
  • Non-Fellowship With Slaveholders The Duty of Christians (1849)
  • Sinfulness of Slaveholding, Shown by Appeals to Reason and Scripture (1851)
  • Anti-Slavery Manual, or, The Wrongs of American Slavery Exposed By the Light
    of the Bible and of Facts, with A Remedy for the Evil (1851)

    • -153-
    Professor at Princeton, was chairman), to report at the next session.

    In 1836, this [pro-slavery] report was presented at Pittsburg. In a preamble, it is said that
  • “the subject of slavery is inseparably connected with the [unconstitutional] laws of many of the States of this Union, with which it is by no means proper for an ecclesiastical body to interfere,”* [to have Church members follow Bible anti-slavery commands!] and that

  • “any action on the part of this Assembly, &c., would tend to distract and divide our churches,” &c. [by exposing the blatant sinners]
    • Resolutions were therefore recommended declaring it
  • “inexpedient for the Assembly to take any further order in relation to this subject;”

  • also affirming [alleging] that the note on the eighth commandment, in 1794 [p 151, supra], was “introduced irregularly—never had the sanction of the church, and therefore never possessed any authority,” &c.
    • A minority of the committee, Messrs. Dickey and Beman, presented a report, declaring “the buying, selling, or holding a human being as property” “a heinous sin,” that “ought to subject the doer of it to the censures of the church,” &c., &c.; whereupon forty-eight slaveholding delegates met apart, and resolved that if any such action was taken by the Assembly they [as unrepentant blatant sinners] would not submit to the decision. They also, at an adjourned meeting, prepared a substitute for Dr. Miller's resolution, declaring that “the General Assembly have no authority to assume or exercise jurisdiction in regard to the existence of slavery.”

    The subject was finally disposed of by a long preamble and a brief resolution, that “this whole snbject be indefinitely postponed.”

    In the meantime, while the Assembly were in session, a pamphlet being a reprint of an article in the Princeton Repertory, was issued from the Pittsburg press, labelled, “for gratuitous circulation” among the members of the Assembly. It is said to have been written by [vile] Prof. Hodge, of Princeton,
    ____________________________________
    * Yet the funds of the Presbyterian Church, at this moment, to the amount of more than $94,000, were invested in the South-Western banks, in prospect of gaming more than 6 per cent. interest, on account of the unprecedented briskness of the domestic slave trade. For the sequel see a succeeding Chapter.

    -154-
    and is regarded at the South as the strongest Bible argument for slavery. It contained the following [blatantly false pro-slavery disinformation]:

    “At the time of the advent of Jesus Christ, slavery in its worst forms prevailed over the world. The Savior found it around him in Judea, the apostles met with it in Asia, Greece, and Italy. How did they treat it? Not by the denunciation of SLAVEHOLDIXG as necessarily SINFUL. The assumption that slaveholding is, in itself, a crime, is not only an error, but it is an error fraught with evil consequences.”

    Ed. Note: See the rebuttal to Hodge's lying pro-slavery disinformation piece, by Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle: The Abhorrence of Jesus Christ and the Apostles; or, No Refuge for American Slavery in The New Testament (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839).

    In 1837, many anti-slavery memorials [petitions] were presented to the [Presbyterian] Assembly. They were referred to a committee, of which [vile] Dr. Witherspoon, a slaveholder, of South Carolina, was chairman, and which reported, near the time for adjournment, that the memorials be “returned to the house,” and the chairman moved to lay the whole subject on the table [refuse consideration of the subject]. This was done by a vote of 97 to 28.

    At this same session the General Assembly excinded [expelled, excommunicated, disfellowshipped] four northern Synods, called New School, containing a Presbyterian population of about sixty thousand persons. This was done ostensibly on account of theological differences, but it is remarkable that it cut off a very large proportion [percentage] of the active opponents of slavery in the communion [membership] of the Presbyterian Church. Dr. G. A. Baxter, President of the Union Theological Serninary, Prince Edward Co., Va., changed sides suddenly from New School to Old, about the same time, and justified the change by avowing that “one motive” was the firm position of the Old School against abolition. And since the separation, in 1838, some anti-abolition clergyman, once known as New School, within the bounds of the excinded Synods, in the State of New York, have transferred their relations to the Old School.

    OLD SCHOOL GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

    “In 1838, the two Schools separated,*   leaving three slaveholding Presby-
    ____________________________________
    * The separation in 1838 is understood to have been for the same cause [pro-slavery] as the excision of 1837.

    According to a correspondent of the New York Observer, Dr. Gardiner Spring, of New York, at a Colonization Meeting in Washington City [D.C.], in 1839, held the following language:

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    teries represented in the New, and between thirty and forty in the Old.”— “Since that time the Old School has abode firmly on the [pro-slavery] Princeton ground.”

    In 1838, the O. S. General Assembly resolved that “it is of the greatest consequence to the best interests of our [Presbyterian] church, that the subject of slavery shall not be discussed in the ensuing General Assembly,” &c.

    lu 1843, they laid anti-slavery memorials [pettions] on the table without reading [refusing to consider them].

    In 1845, after an hour's discussion, at Cincinnati, they adopted a report that they could not treat slavery as necessarily a sin, “without charging the apostles of Christ with conniving at such sin.” “For the [Presbyterian] Assembly to make slaveholding a bar to communion would be to dissolve itself.”—Vide statements of Pres. Blanchard and Cincinnati Herald of May 28, 1845; Chr. Inv., June, 1847.

    Ed. Note: They were doing more pro-slavery disinformation. See honest background on the Early Church Apostolic Era, by, e.g.,
  • Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations (1855), pp 27-33
  • Rev. John G. Fee, An Anti-Slavery Manual, or, The Wrongs of American
    Slavery Exposed By the Light of the Bible and of Facts (1851), pp 72-86
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), pp 228-240.

    • In 1847, the General Assembly reaffirmed all its former testimonies on slavery, contradictory as they were.

    In 1850, in reply to a resolution of the General Association of Massachusetts communicated to the General Assembly, and very courteously expressing their conviction that the cause of religion required the removal of slavery from the churches, the General Assembly adopted the following [hostile, disdainful, substitute for a reply]:

    Resolved, “That our delegates to the next General Association of Massachusetts be directed to inform that venerable body that this General Assembly must consider itself the best judge of the action which it is necessary for it to take as to all subjects within its jurisdiction, and that any interference on the part of that General Association with its action upon any subject upon which this General Assembly has taken action, is offensive, and must lead to an interruption of the correspondence which subsists between that Association and the General Assembly.”—Oberlin Evan., June 19, 1850.

    Ed. Note: As these were pro-slavery sinners, unrepentant sinners, they were not “easily entreated” as per Bible guidance, James 3:17.

    From the Old School we now turn to the New.
    ____________________________________
    “He stated that the unhappy divisions in the Presbyterian Church had grown out of this opposition” (i. e. to “the [slaver hostility to the pro-Bible] proceedings and designs of the Abolition Society”), “and, painful as it was, they [slavers] were obliged to rend [split] the church to avoid being engulfed in [caused to repent by] the [pro-Bible] sentiments, feelings [views], and schemes of abolitionists [to enforce Bible teadchings].”

    At other times, the ground of division had been stated to be the heresy of “New School” theology, and tendencies towards Congregational Church government in the New School portion of the Presbyterian Church.

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    New-School General Assembly

    “In 1838, the New-School General Assembly appointed a committee on anti-slavery memorials, which reported 'that the applicants, for reasons satisfactory to themselves, have withdrawn their papers.' The committee was discharged.”—Birney's American Churches, &c., p. 33.

    The excuse [pretext] was, that business connected with the division of the two assemblies made it difficult to attend to another subject.

    “In 1839, it referred the whole subject to the Presbyteries, to do what they might deem advisable.”

    “In 1840, a large number of memorials and petitions against slavery were sent in, and referred to the usual committee. The committee reported a resolution—referring to what had been done last year*—declaring it inexpedient for the Assembly to do anything further on the subject. Several attempts were made by the abolition members of the Assembly to obtain a decided expression of its views, but they proved ineffectual, and the whole subject was indefinitely postponed.”—Ib.

    This measure was adopted on motion of “Rev. Samuel H. Cox, D.D.,” of the city of Brooklyn (N. Y.) On the motion being carried, he exultingly said: “Our Vesuvius is safely capped for three years”—the Assembly not meeting again till 1843.—Ib.

    “In 1843, the General Assembly censured the action of those anti-slavery Presbyteries which had excluded slaveholding from their pulpits and communion tables, and requested them to rescind their acts; thus condemning them for obeying their own advice, or excluding slaveholding" from fellowship.”—Letter of Pres. Blanchard, &c.

    In 1836, the General Assembly adopted a paper drawn up by Dr. Duffield, declaring the unrighteous and oppressive character of slavery, lamenting its continued existence in the churches, exhorting to the use of all means in their power to put it away from them, since no mere mitigation of its severity “would be regarded as a testimony against the system, or as, in the least degree, changing its essential character.”

    After all this, the Assembly, nevertheless, at the same time,
    ____________________________________
    * The language employed, either in 1839 or '40, we believe, was this: “Solemnly referring the whole subject to the lower judicatories, to take such action as in their jndgment is most judicious and adapted to remove the evil”—refusing the request of Rev. Geo. Beecher to insert the word moral before evil; that is, they refused to call slavery a moral evil.”—Vide Letter of Pres. Blanchard and others.

    -157-
    proceeded to say that it

  • “cannot determine the degree of moral turpitude involved”—
  • “cannot pronounce a judgment of general and promiscuous condemnation,”—
  • it recognizes “embarrassments and obstacles in the way of emancipation”—
  • it cannot “excinde [exclude, excommunicate, disfellowship] slaveholders from the table of the Lord”—
  • it would rather "sympathize with and succor them in their embarrassments”—
  • it “condemns all [pro-Bible] divisive and schismatic measures tending to destroy the [atheist] unity, and disturb the peace of our [Presbyterian] Church.”
  • The “Assembly possesses no legislative or judicial authority;” it must, therefore, “leave it with the [lower, subordinate] Sessions, Presbyteries, and Synods,” &c., &c.! —Vide Chr. Inv., June, 1847.

    • The confusion, incongruity, and self-contradiction of this action, can hardly escape notice, even when our attention is confined to the doings of this one session. Slavery is characterized as unrighteous and oppressive; but this unrighteousness and oppression must not be promiscuously [widely] condemned, nor excluded from the table of thc Lord, lest it should destroy the unity and disturb the peace of the Church.

    Still more confused, incongruous, and self-contradictory does the action of the General Assembly appear, when the doings of one session, in one year, are compared with those of another. In 1839, the whole subjcct was referred to the Presbyteries; in 1848, the Presbyteries were censured for acting, and requested to rcscind their acts; but in 1846 the subject was again referred to the Presbyteries. In 1846, as in 1839, the Assembly possessed no legislative or judicial authority; but in 1843 its powers appear to have been ample.

    The true solution seems to be that the Assembly has no power against slavery, but claims and exercises power in its favor. It could not censure slavery, but it could censure Presbyteries by whom slavery is censured.

    It could go farther than this, and restore to his former standing, a minister (Dr. Graham) who, in 1845, had been suspended by his Presbytery (acting on recommendation of the Assembly,) for [fraudulently] defending slavery by the Bible.*   This was done in 1846, or afterwards.
    ____________________________________
    * He [heretically] maintained that Jesus Christ “has authorized slaveholding, in the charters of the Church, and in all the laws he ever made, for its regulation.”

    -158-
    The General Assembly of 1846 also invited the Old School General Assembly, then sitting in the same city, to unite with them in a celebration of the Lord's Supper, but the invitation was declined, and the [pro-slavery] Old School Assembly bears the blame of the “schism.”

    Thus does the Presbyterian New School, like the Methodist Episcopal Church North, by a fair implication, profess that slavery is not to be regarded as a sufficient cause of division, or a bar against Christian communion. This will further appear as we proceed.

    In 1849, the General Assembly, in strange forgetfulness, one would think, of the facts conceded or implied in its testimony of 1846, declared:

    “That there has been no information before this Assembly to prove that the members of our Church, in the slave States, are not doing all they can (situated as they are, in the providence of God) to hring about the possession and enjoyment of liberty by the enslaved.”—Copied from Letter of Pres. Blanchard, &c.

    The slaveholders could, at any time, if they pleased, give their slaves a “pass” into the Free States, which, in most cases, would not only be eagerly accepted, but carried into operation with little or no expense or trouble to the masters, to say nothing of the practicability, in Kentucky, &c., of making them legally free on the soil [meaning, without deportation].

    In 1850, the General Assembly, (no longer triennial, *) came together again, and after a long discussion, during which a number of propositions for acting against slavery were rejected, settled down upon a declaration vcry closely resembling that of 1816, so far as direct action by thc General Assembly is concerned.

    Among the propositions rejected, one, presented by “Rev.
    ____________________________________
    * In 1849, overtures were sent down to the Presbyteries in favor of making the General Assemblies annual again, instead of triennial, and in 1850, on their coming together, the answer being favorable, the constitution was changed back again, making the [denomination-wide] meetings henceforth annual. The policy of having triennial conventions had answered [achieved] its [immoral, pro-slavery] purpose, there being now no fires in the “Vesuvius” [i.e., the abolitionists had been expelled or were otherwise gone] to threaten an explosion.

    -159-
    H. Curtiss of Indiana,” was,

    “That the enslaving of men [humans], or the holding of them as property, is an offence, as defined in our Book of Discipline, Chap. I., Sec. 3, and that as such, it calls for inquiry, correction, and removal, in the manner prescribed by our rules, and should be treated with a due regard to all the aggravating or mitigating circumstances of each particular case”—also, “that this General Assembly, in the exercise of its power of bearing testimony against immorality in practice,“ and “of attempting reformation of manners, and the promotion of charity, truth, and holiness, through all the churches under their care, do most earnestly recommend to the proper [subordinate] judicatories to take measures in accordance with the foregoing principles.”

    This would seem sufficiently mild and guarded, if the [Presbyterian] Assembly had been willing to meet directly, the sin, in any way of effective reproof.

    Equally so was another proposition presented by P. F. Smith, an Elder, from Pennsylvania, affirming that slaveholding was “prima facia an offence within the meaning of our Book of Discipline,” and throwing upon the slaveholder “the burden of showing such circumstances” as “will take away from him the guilt of the offence.”

    The rejection of these propositions will assist the reader to a better understanding of the [weak, near-meaningless] propositions adopted by the Assembly, the most pointed of which was the following:

    That slavery “is fraught with many and great evils.” That they “deplore the workings*   of the whole system of slavery,” and that “the holding of our fellow-men in the condition of slavery, except in those cases where it is unavoidable by the [unconstitutional] laws of the State, the obligations of guardianship, or the demands of humanity, is an offence in the proper import of that term, as used in the Book of Discipline, Chap. I., Sec. 3, and should be regarded and treated in the same manner as other offences.” Also referring the subject to the [subordinate] “Sessions and Presbyteries, &c.”

    ____________________________________
    * In 1846, the General Assembly had called slavery “unrighteous.” Having failed to purge away this “unrighteousness,” it must, in 1850, be spoken of in milder terms. It is only an “evil,” the “workings” of which are “deplorable.” Among its ”deplorable workings” should be reckoned its power to neutralize and alter the moral creed of the church.

    -160-
    The exceptions above specified will be found to embrace the very excuses in view of which all slaveholders continue the practice, except those who justify slavery, “in the abstract,” and consider it a blessing instead of an evil.

    Even this [limited] action [allowing “exception” a mile wide], however, was strenuously opposed.

    “The vote stood 84 to 16, under a written protest of the minority who were for no action, in the present [depraved] state of the country. Two were excused from voting.”—N. Y. Observer, June 15, 1850.

    The adoption of even this evasive [weak exception-oriented] testimony is to be construed in the light of the following action, by the same body, at the same session, by which, after this idle show of threatening some sorts of slaveholders with Church discipline, the New School General Assembly eagerly throws its arms of embrace around all sorts of slaveholders in the Old School Assembly, including slavery propagandists, extensionists, slave sellers, and all. A statement was unanimouslyadopted, of which the following is the substance:

    This Assembly cherished the idea of re-union, (with the Old School Assembly,) until 1841, when it was reluctantly relinquished.   “Again, in 1846 they expressed the desire for union with onr brethern, and, pained by the unusual exhibition of two such bodies, at apparent strife with each other, they proposed to the other Assembly, a mutual recognition of each other, by communing together at the table of our Master.”   “These propositions and overtures were all made in good faith.”   “We do not pretend to question the motives of our brethren in rejecting them.”

    Declining, under these circumstances, to make any new overtures, the Report and the Assembly, say:

    “We should be untrue to ourselves, before God and the world, did we not frankly avow our readiness tu meet in a spirit of fraternal kindness and christian love, any overtures which may be made to us by the other body.”—See N. Y. Observer, June 15, 1850.

    Thus, then, “before God and the world,” the New School General Assembly of 1850 “unanimously” declared itself ready to commune with the Old School, at a tirne when the great body of Old School Presbyterians at the South were zealous for the extension of slavery, claimed of the Federal Government its extension as an act of justice, and defended it

    -161-
    as a Bible institution.—See letter of a Southern Clergyman in New York Observer, same date as the above.

    The discriminating reader will now judge for himself respecting the moral difference between the Old School and the New, in their relations to slavery. The one has more slave-holders under its jurisdiction than the other, but both tolerate the practice.* The one does this to retain many members; the other to retain a few. The one does it believing slavery to be a Bible institution; the other, believing it to be "unrighteous" and "oppressive." The one makes no pretence of any intention to discipline any sort of slaveholders; the other holds the rod over a class of them that it "has no information" of being found within its enclosures, but yearns to go out of its boundaries to clasp them to its bosom.

    In 1851, the General Assembly met at Utica, New York. It declined to take action against slavery, and won the commendation of President [Millard] Fillmore [1850-1853], who expressed to some members of the Assembly his high gratification with the proceedings.
    ____________
    *The following statement is from a lecture by Pres. Blanchard, as reported in the Cleveland True Democrat of Sept. 26, 1851:

    "The Old School branch has now fifty slaveholding Presbyteries; more than one-third of its whole number.

    "The New School Assembly, at its first separate meeting in 1838, was followed by but three slaveholding-commissioners, and there was fervent prayer and strong hope that this might become an anti-slavery body. But once separated from the Old School and seized by the natural desire for denominational success, it has steadily increased its slaveholding wing till it has now twenty slaveholding Presbyteries, between one and two hundred ministers, and from fifteen to twenty thousand members, in the slave States, all walking in Christian fellowship with slaveholders.

    -162-
    CHAPTER XIV.

    POSITION OF THE AMERICAN CHURCHES, ETC. CONTINUED.

    III.—CONGREGATIONALISTS.

    Connection with Presbyterians and the South—Pro-slavery Sermons—Prof. Stuart—
    Andover Theo. Seminary—General Association of Connecticut, 1834, 1836, 1840,
    1845—Rejected Resolutions compared with Resolutions Adopted—General Asso.
    of Massachusetts, 1834, 1837, 1849—Convention of Cong. Ministers, 1848—Gen.
    Conf. of Maine—Cong. Periodicals, N. E. Spectator, Vermont Chronicle.

    CONGREGATIONALISTS, like Baptists, are subject to the control of no ecclesiastical body, holding jurisdiction over the whole country. Unlike Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists, they number no churches, or none sufficient to deserve notice, in the present slaveholding States. They claim to be, emphatically, the descendants and successors of the Puritans, and of that particular branch of them whose democratic polity gave origin to the free institutions—so far as they are free— of republican America.

    Congregationalists have had, moreover, the chief influence in moulding the religious and moral sentiment of New England; they have their central home and seat in the birth-place of Hopkins and Edwards, the scene of their agitating anti-slavery labors, in the atmosphere of a theological literature enriched by those luminaries, and still cherished in the churches as a badge of honorable distinction.

    Theoretically, they are, for the most part, or claim to be, of the same creed or phase of religious faith, the very technicalities of which are identified with the most uncompromising of all schemes of ethics, allowing no palliatives of transgression, no exceptions to the demand of immediate and unconditional

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    abandonment of all sin. Assuredly, then, Congregationalists can have no valid excuse, if they are not foremost in their opposition to slavery. Of those to whom much is given shall much be required. [Luke 12:48].

    But Congregationalists, through their Associations of Ministers, have held regular correspondence and close affinity with Presbyterians; have received delegates from the General Assembly, and sent delegates to them. Congregational ministers removing out of New England, have readily become Presbyterian. And Presbyterian ministers have been received as pastors of Gongregational churches. Congregationalism in Connecticut has been so modified as to be claimed by Presbyterian writers as being virtually Presbyterian. In the Middle and Northwestern States, a “plan of accommodation,” so called, has brought churches claiming to be Congregational into connection with the Presbyteries.

    In all these ways, as well as by missionary co-operation, by plans and processes of ministerial education, as well as by similarity of creed, and identity of rituals and forms of public worship, the cord of sympathy and the bond of unity betwcen Congregationalists and Presbyterians have been strengthened. Congregational ministers, educated in New England, transferred to the Presbyterian church, and located, by the enterprising spirit of New England emigration, in the slaveholding States, have often become slaveholders themselves, and defenders or apologists of the slave system, and commonly without forfeiting their [alleged] religious character or ecclesiastical standing with their friends and relatives in New England.*   The same spirit of emigra-
    ____________________________________
    * The following statement, made by “Rev. A. H. H. Boyd, of Virginia,” in the New School General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in 1850, has a bearing quite as appropriate and significant upon Northern Congregationalists, as upon northern Presbyterians:

    “In the Southern country we depend upon the north for ministers, in a great neasure. Few of our Southern young men are educated for ministers. In some parts it is necessary that some born South should endorse a minister, before commencing his labor [job], because some have endeavored [by daring to preach Bible principles] to loosen the [alleged] relation of master and slave.”—N. Y. Observer, June 15, 1850.

    Ed. Note: The South (pretending to be "Bible-Belt") was behind the North in
  • literacy
  • Church libraries
  • education rights
  • numbers of Churches
  • religious newspapers
  • education to train its own youths to become clergymen.

    • A similar remark would apply to schoolmasters, only that there is, perhaps, less

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    tion, and especially the habit of temporary sojourn, or residence, as school teachers, or as commercial adventurers, in the slaveholding States, has drawn large numbers of Congregational laymen into close sympathy with Presbyterian slaveholders at the South, with whom they have worshipped. Becoming comparatively wealthy, and returning home to the North, to settle for life, not a few of them, though preferring for their own comfort a residence in a free State, have lost their abhorrence of the sin of slavery, and have exerted a wide and strong influence in favor of a religious fraternity with slaveholders. Intermarriages between slaveholding and non-slaveholding familles, commercial intercourse [businesses], and political co-operation, are thrown into the same scale.

    Congregationalists in New England, as well as other members of churches, and perhaps to a greater extent than in most other sects at the North, as being most numerous and enterprising, have been subjected to [vile] influences of this character. Besides all this, Congregational ministers in New England, along with other gentlemen of the learned professions, (who were then chiefly members of Congregational churches,) constituted a large portion of the few who were slaveholders, during the existence of slavery in the Northern and Eastern States, there being few, then, in New England, of other religious sects, thus making that denomination responsible for a very great portion of all the slaveholding that ever existed in New England. And there is no reason to think that all of these slaveholding Congregationalists, whether laymen or ministers, ever welcomed heartily and fully the radical [Biblical] views of Hopkins and Edwards on this subject, or ceased to become slaveholders until slaveholding became impraeticable under the State laws.

    It would be idle to suppose that facts like these would be without their significance and bearing in that general decline
    ____________________________________
    jealousy of them. Schoolmasters and ministers for the South have been reckoned among the staple exports of New England, and they are commonly adapted to the market. Can the Congregational churches of New England, which supply a large share of these teachers of religion and literature, be uninfluenced by such facts?

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    of the spirit of liberty already noticed [pp 118-142, supra], or that they could fail to affect the position of the Congregational ministers and churches of New England, on the opening [beginning] of the present anti-slavery contest [activism].

    The distribution of the Princeton pamphlet among the members of the Presbyterian General Assembly, at Pittsburg, in 1836, before mentioned [pp 154-155, supra], was the beglnning of a series of similar [vile] demonstrations among clergymen at the North, not excepting Congregational ministers in New England, from whom at least three printed sermons in [pretended] biblical defence or palliation of slavery appeared not long afterwards. They were echoes of the Princeton doctrine, not marked with any unusual force of reasoning; and, not coming from sources particularly suited to arrest attention, they produced no very deep, general, or permanent impression.

    The most remarkable thing in respect to them was, that they procured for their authors no such ecclesiastical disclaimers, in the proceedings of their respective associations and consociations, as those with which the doctrines or measures of abolitionists in the same ecclesiastical connections were so bountifully visited about the same time. If not fully approved, they were not accounted so heretical as to deserve the notice that would have been given to any departure from their recognized thelogical standards. The same doctrine from Dr. Graham, some years afterwards, was branded as a heresy by the Pres•yterian Synod of Cincinnati. But in 1836 it does not appear to have been regarded as “heresy,” by the Congregational bodies in New England, whatever may be supposed to have been the prevalent sentiment [beliefs, doctrines] among them.

    Nor can it be said that any remarkable improvement was perceptible in 1837. In that year an occasion presented itself for remonstrating against the heresy of biblical human chattelhood, had it been accounted a heresy, as promulgated from a quarter that could not be accounted too obscure to require notice.

    MOSES STUART, Professor in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., stood then, and for many years afterwards,

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    at the very head of the department of sacred literature among the Congregationalists in New England. To him, more than to any other man living at that time, and while he held his professorship, were biblical students of the Congregational order encouraged to look up for solid instruction in the science of expounding the Scriptures. What he might say concerning the teachings of the Bible on the subject of slavery would be likely to exert, at least, as powerful an influence among Congregationalists as the expressed opinions of any other man.

    The late Dr. Fisk, then President of the Wesleyan University, at Middletown, Conn., whose views of slavery the reader has seen in our account [p 147, supra] of the position of the Methodist Episcopal Church, addressed a letter to Prof. Stuart, designed to draw out, for publication, his views of the slave question. The following is an extract from Prof. Stuart's answer:

    Ed. Note: For full answer, see reprint in Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), pp 7-8.

    “1. The precepts of the New Testament respecting the demeanor of slaves and of their masters, beyond all question, recognize the existence of slavery. The masters are in part 'believing masters,' so that a precept to them, how they are to behave as masters, recognizes that the relation may still exist, salva fide et salva ecclesia*   Otherwise, Paul had nothing to do but to cut the band asunder at once. He could not lawfully and properly temporize with a malum in se.†

    “If any one doubts, let him take the case of Paul's sending Onesimus back to Philemon, with an apology for his running away, and sending him back to be his servant for life.

    Ed. Note: This claim is blatantly untrue.

    The relation did exist, may exist. The abuse of it is the essential and fundamental wrong. Not that the [extortion] theory of slavery is in itself right. No. 'Love thy neighbor as thyself'—'Do unto others that which ye would that others should do unto you,' decide against this. But the [extortion] relation once [immorally] constituted and continued, is not such a malum in se as calls for immediate and violent disruption at all hazards. So Paul did not counsel.

    “2. 1 Tim. vi. 2, expresses the sentiment, that slaves, who are Christians and have Christian masters, are not, on that account, and because, as Christians they are brethren, to forego the reverence due to them as masters. That is, the [extortion] relation of master and slave is not, as a matter of course, abrogated between all Christians. Nay, servants should in such a case,
    ____________________________________
    * i.e., “Without violating the Christian faith or the church.”

    † i.e., “That which is, in itself, sin.”

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    a fortiori, do their duty cheerfully. This sentiment lies on the very face of the case. What is the master's duty in such a case may be in respect to liberation, is another question, and one which the apostle does not here treat of.”

    Learned men are not always wise.

    Ed. Note: Here it is not a matter of “wisdom.” Stuart's problem is psychiatric. Stuart is a tobacco user. Such are notoriously medically documented as mentally disturbed in their reasoning. For example, Dr. William M'Donald, says, in 1 The Lancet (#1748) 231 (28 Feb 1857), “no smoker can think steadily or continuously on any subject. . . . He cannot follow out a train of ideas.” Here Stuart cannot comprehend that a relation or situation begun immorally, in extortion, cannot morally be continued!
    See also Pastor Rufus W. Clark, M.A., A Review of the Rev. Moses Stuart's Pamphlet on Slavery, entitled Conscience and the Constitution (Boston: C. C. P. Moody, 1850).

    Beneficial as the science of biblical exigesis may be, when needed, and when directed by Christian simplicity and manly common sense, it can never be otherwise than powerless, except for mischief, when wielded either without or against them, or when used to mystify and perplex what is already plain. Aside from such glosses as those just now quoted, and in the absence of the iniquitous practices that gave rise to them, no simple-minded reader of the New Testament would ever have detected in the passages commented upon, the slightest sanction of such usages as those that go to define modern slaveholding.

    The art [here, fraud], most assuredly, is not a desirable one, that could thus torture and invert [alter] the plain import [meaning] of Paul's Letter to Philemon.

    In this instance, the beautiful and affectionate dissuasive of “Paul the aged” against the too rigid exaction of an honest debt, voluntarily assumed, is transmuted [falsified] into an apostolic warranty and example for the rendition, of fugitive slaves. This result could not be reached without a palpable and direct falsification of the text; which says, “Receive him”—“Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved,” “both in the flesh, and in the Lord:” a brother, in the secular as well as the religious acceptation of the term. Instead of this, the apostle is [falsely] represented as “sending him back to be a servant for life.”

    Onesimus was not a slave, for a slave can make no contract and incur no debt. Yet Paul entreated (what he says he might have enjoined by authority), that the obligation should be cancelled.

    But whatever we consider to be the relation between the parties, the entire drift [meaning, purpose] of the epistle was evidently to induce a change, and not a continuance, of the relation.

    In his exposition [alleged explanation] of 1 Tim. 6: 2, the learned [but mentally ill] writer coolly [insanely] took for granted [assumed] the very gist of the controversy, by [psychotically] assuming that the word rendered “master” is equivalent to “slaveholder,” and that there could have been no “servants” [employees] but

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    “slaves.” It had often been shown that this was not the fact, but the Professor takes no notice of this [prior scholarship], and makes no attempt to prove or show the contrary.

    It would be difficult to reconcile Prof. Stuart with himself, or with the plain dictates of the Christian religion and of common sense, which the learned and the unlearned can equally understand. The following [irrational, disturbed] propositions and results will be found involved in his statements:

  • “The theory of slavery is not, in itself, right,” but the practice of slavery is not, in, itself, wrong.

  • The law of love and the golden rule decide the question of slavery one way, but Paul's advice to servants and masters, and his sending back Onesimus, decide it the other way.

  • The [extortion] relation may exist without violating Christianity or the Church, but the relation is founded in a theory that is not, in itself, right; in other words, Christianity and the Church are not violated by the opposite of moral right.

  • The “abuse” of the relation “is the fundamental and essential wrong,” but the relation itself cannot claim its origin in moral right.

  • The relation, though not founded in moral right, when “once constitued” is not a moral wrong.

  • Paul “could not temporize with” what was wrong in itself; but he would not “cut asunder at once” the bond of a relation that was the opposite of moral right.

  • And while the [mentally ill] Professor decides promptly that Paul would not do this, he confesses he cannot tell what Paul would say of “the duty of the master in respect to liberation” because that question was “one of which the apostle does not here treat of.”

    “The duty of the master in respect to liberation,” was the very question that then agitated the country. It was because abolitionists insisted upon this “duty,” that they were opposed and censured, and the pen of Prof. Stuart was invoked [by pro-slavery Dr. Fisk] to counteract their influence. To this end he controverted [fraudulently, indeed psychotically, denied via bizarre self-contradictory claims] their [abolitionists'] doctrine [from the Bible], that slaveholding is sinful.

    If [slavery is] not sinful, who could urge upon them [slavers] the “duty” of giving up the practice? But,

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    after all, it is conceded [by Stuart] that Paul was not treating of the duty of liberation, and Prof. Stuart does not know [!] what he [Paul] would have said on that subject.

    Ed. Note: It is not that the mentally ill "do not know" the truth, e.g., that he is not Napoleon, for example, but that their brain condition is so damaged as to be unable to reason correctly, linearly!

    Then Paul was not treating of the [Bible] lawfulness or unlawfulness of slaveholding:—he was not treating on the question whether “the relation of master and slave” was “abrogated among Christians.” If Prof. Stuart was aware of all this, why did he labor to make the contrary impression?

    Ed. Note: “Why?” Due to Stuart's bad psychiatric health.

    Does any one now inquire whether, or to what extent, the Congregationalists of the North and of New England were responsible for these [vile] opinions of Prof. Stuart? We will answer by propounding another inquiry.

    Suppose Prof. Stuart, instead of writing what we have here quoted concerning slavery, had written a biblical defonce of Universalism, or of some other doctrine that orthodox Congregationalists had considered “heresy.” Then suppose the intercourse, the bearing, and the relations of the Congregational sect towards Prof. Stuart had continued to be what every one knows they were [favorable and supportive], at the time of his writing on slavery, and for fifteen years afterwards—we ask, whether orthodox Congregationalists in England, and whether public sentiment, the world over, would not inevitably have held New England Gongregationalists, as a body, responsible for his doctrines?

    When Dr. Graham, in the Presbyterian Church, wrote a biblical defence of slaveholding, his Synod suspended him from the ministry. Why? Because they knew that they should otherwise be held responsible for his heresy; which was substantially the same with that of Prof. Stuart,*   who, had he been a member of the Synod of Cincinnati, would probably have been suspended, likewise.

    It may be said [alleged] that Congregationalists hold no such ecclesiastical powers. But they hold and freely exercise (no
    ____________________________________
    * It may be said that Prof. Stuart's defence of slavery was less self-consistent than Dr. Graham's, containing concessions that [on scrutiny] overturned his whole argument. This only shows that he was not unaware that the prlnciples of Christianity were hostile to slavery, while he was laboring to construe particular texts in its favor.

    Ed. Note: This is a typical sitaution of tobacco-caused physical deterioration of the brain due to typical tobacco-caused psychiatric disorder. Wherefore, Stuart was unable
  • [1] "to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct [writing],”
  • [2] “to conform his conduct [writing] to the requirements of the [Bible] law.”
    These are the two factors for being deemed insane in the eyes of the law, see precedents, e.g., People v Matulonis, 115 Mich App 263; 320 NW2d 238 (1982).

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    “General Assembly” forbidding them) the power of withdrawing religious co-operation and communion. Had Prof. Stuart avowed himself a Universalist, it would have been promptly done. And the same result would have been witnessed had a defence of slavery been thought as heretical as Universalism.

    Suppose, again, that Prof. Stuart had written concerning adultery, or concubinage (one feature of slavery), or concerning robbery, or horse-stealing, or any other known and proscribed crime, as he wrote concerning slaveholding. Would or would not an impartial public sentiment abroad, or in coming ages, hold the sect responsible that continued to hold fraternity with him, to confide in him as a religious teacher, an accomplished educator of religious teachers?

    No personal dislike of Prof. Stuart has occasioned these remarks. He had his attractive traits of character. He was the admired representative of a class—a very large class—of Congregational ministers, his associates and pupils. His memory is still venerated; he is proudly pointed to, by his sect, as “the father of the science of biblical criticism in America;” and the clergy of other sects recognize the validity of the claim.

    All this [pretense that the Bible condones slavery] tends directly and almost irresistibly to confirm, in the community, the [wrong] belief that slaveholding is not inconsistent with the Bible. If “the father of biblical criticism” says so, who shall contradict it? One in ten of those who receive his testimony, may infer the innocency of slaveholding; while nine in ten will infer the moral deficiency of the Bible, and this will swell the tide of horror and amazement at “infidel abolitionism.”

    Ed. Note: Rev. William Patton had also said that pretenses of the Bible being for slavery, were promoting heathenism / infidelity, see his “Slavery, the Bible, Infidelity: Pro-slavery Interpretations of the Bible: Productive of Infidelity” (4 August 1946).

    Impartial history, if it attempts to look below the surface of things, and trace effects to their causes, must give marked prominence to influences like these. The real position of the sects [denominations] could not otherwise be understood.

    It is not known that the Trustees, Faculty, and friends of the Theological Seminary at Andover, were ever distressed with the apprehension [concern] that Prof. Stuart's heresy on the slave question would [promote heathenism,] diminish the patronage, or injure the reputa-

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    tion of their institution, in which he held so conspicuous a post. But no one will doubt that those fears would have risen to a high pitch, had he dissented from the policy of the Colonization Society, or avowed himself an advocate of immediate and unconditional emancipation.

    The views of Prof. Stuart were extensively circulated among the Congregational churches and ministry of New England. Had there been any general or earnest dissent from them, or if his intimate associates had been grieved at his course, the religious journals of the denomination would have contained evidence of the fact.

    Slight shades of difference in metaphysical speculation, among professors of theology, have given rise to rival claims among the Theological Seminaries of New England, but the position of the learned Professor at Andover concerning slavery has occasioned no manifestations of that character. Dissent was indeed strongly expressed; but it was the dissent of an inconsiderable though increasing minority, not of the main body.

    It may be in place to add here, that soon, after the passage, by Congress, of the Fugitive Slave Bill, in 1850, Prof. Stuart (who had previously resigned his Professorship at Andover), appeared as the public defender and eulogist of Hon. Daniel Webster, for the part he took in procuring and vindicating that iniquitous measure. In company with Dr. Leonard Woods, late Professor at Andover, Prof. Ralph Emerson, of the same institution, and other Congregational ministers,*   he gave his signature to a paper drawn up for the purpose. And afterwards he vindicated his position in a pamphlet, at some length.

    This new demonstration in favor of slavery, we are happy to add, appears to have been less favorably received among Congregationalists, than the former one. It is understood that most of the Professors at Andover declined signing the paper above-mentioned (though they entered no public protest
    ____________________________________
    * Among the names appended to this paper were those of Dr. Dana of Newburyport, Rev. W. W. Rogers of Boston, Prof. Sparks of Harvard College (Unitarian), &c., &c.

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    or disclaimer against it), and the pamphlet has probably exerted an influence in the direction opposite to its design.*

    GENERAL ASSOCIATION OF CONNECTICUT.

    The General Association of Congregational Ministers in Connecticut have repeatedly defined their position in respect to slavery. The resolutions adopted at different times are as follows:

    “At Vernon, in 1834. Resolved, That to buy and sell human beings, or to hold and treat them. as merchandise, or to treat servants, free or bond, in any manner inconsistent with the fact that they are intelligent and voluntary beings, made in the image of God, is a violation of the principles of the word of God, and should be treated by all the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ as an immorality, inconsistent with a profession of the Christian religion.

    “Resolved, that this Association regards the laws and usages in respect to slavery, which exist in many of the States of this Union, as inconsistent with the character and responsibilities of a free and Christian people, and holds it to be the duty of every Christian, and especially of every Minister of the Gospel, to use all prudent and lawful efforts for the peaceful abolition of slavery.

    “At Norfolk, in 1836. Resolved, that in the judgment of this Association, the buying and selling of human beings, and the holding them for selfish ends [purposes], by the ministers and members of our Churches removing to the South, is a great sin, and utterly inconsistent with their Christian profession.

    “At New Haven, in 1840. Resolued, that American slavery, is, in the opinion of this body, inconsistent with the principles of the Gospel, and its immediate abolition by those who have the legal power, is a duty in the discharge of which the blessing of heaven may be expected.

    “Resolved, that we recommend to the churches under our care, a prayerful consideration of this important subject, and the exertion of their appropriate influence for the emancipation of all the enslaved throughout this land and throughout the world.”
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    * And yet it remains true that the Fugitive Slave Bill of 1850 has its earnest advocates among Congregationalists, as it certainly has among the leading ministers and editors of the Presbyterian and other denominations, by whom a strenuous effort has been made to cast odium and reproach npon those who maintain, in reference to this enactment, that [per Acts 5:29] the laws of God are paramount [superior] to the unrighteous edicts of man, and annul them. Under such circumstances, it would seem the duty of all who fear [respect, obey] God, to bear solemn testimony agaiust such impiety.

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    “In 1845. Resolved, that we again adopt these resolutions, as the expression of our present views, and direct our scribe to transmit a copy of them to the stated clerks of each of the bodies, styled “The General Assembly.”

    To the reader uninitiated in the nice distinctions elaborated by the New England Congregational Clergy, in their discussions on this subject, these Resolutions, standing by themselves, would appear to be tolerably distinct testimonies against the practice of slaveholding. To understand them correctly, they must be construed in the light of what the same bodies refused to say, on the same subject, and also in the light of the discussions had, at the time of adopting them.

    We will, therefore, put them by the side of the resolutions “offered by Rev. Mr. Perkins of Meriden, in 1845,” but not adopted:

    “Whereas, this Association has frequently delivered its opinions in relation to slaveholding—and whereas, recent events, such as the imprisonment of Christian men, on the charge of aiding slaves to escape, and the late [recent] action of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, seems to require the reiteration of our views, therefore resolved:

    “1st. That we consider slaveholding as an outrage on human rights, and at variance with the spirit of Christianity.

    “2d. That no man is bound in conscience to obey slave law.

    “3d. That while it may be matter of judgment and expediency what measures should be taken, and what risks incurred in aiding the colored man to escape from bondage, as once the like considerations should have been weighed in deciding how far we should have gone in aiding a white slave to escape from Algiers; yet the right to give such aid, we hold to be undeniable.

    “4th. That we recommend, to our churches, to give a place to the slave in their prayers and benevolent efforts, together with the usual religious objects of the day.

    “5th. That our delegate to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, carry from us to that body, a letter on its connection with slavery.”

    After a long debate, these Resolutions were set aside [rejected], and the action taken which has already been recorded. On a comparison it will be seen that the Association declined saying that “no man is bound in conscience to obey slave law”—declined expressing sympathy for “Christian men,” imprisoned on charge of aiding fugitive slaves—declined affirming the

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    right of [Good Samaritan-like] assisting such fugitives—declined recommending to the Churches to place anti-slavery efforts with other benevolent and religious objects—declined addressing to the General Assembly ofthe Presbyterian Church, a letter on its connection with slavery [aiding and abetting, i.e., partaking contrary to 1 Timothy 5:22.

    On a further examination of the Resolutions at different times adopted by the General Association, and re-affirmed in 1845, some further differences between the sentiments [views] expressed, and the rejected resolations of Mr. Perkins, will be manifest.

    The General Association, even in 1834, had learned, it seems, to condemn “slavery,” rather than “slaveholding.” The distinction was not then understood by the public as it has since been insisted on, and the preamble of [by] Mr. Perkins, stating that the General Association had “frequently delivered its opinions in relation to slaveholding,” seems to have been considered too inaccurate a statement (as doubtless it was) to be endorsed. The Association had not condemned the act, but only the abstraction.

    The resolutions of 1834 expended their strength upon “laws and usages,” rather than upon persons doing a wrong act under shelter of them. They would be understood at the South as bearing against the slave trade, rather than against slave holding. They suggested, likewise the implication of a sentiment [view] since insisted on, that slaves may be held without being “treated as merchandise,” and that the distinction between “bond and free” is, by no means, the significant point in that matter.

    The resolution of 1836, plainly condemns huying, selling, and holding human beings as slaves, only when it is done for selfish ends; thus teaching, by implication, the doctrine now openly insisted on, that all this may be innocently and even laudably done, for benevolent ends—which is all the license the slaveholder asks. He thinks [pretends to outsiders, that] he only holds slaves for their own good.

    The resolution of 1840 retains the same distinction between slavery and slave-holding; that is, slavery in the abstract, and

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    slavery in practice, the former being almost universally condemned: the latter, very extensively defended or palliated [excused].

    The debates on the proposed Resolutions of Mr. Perkins illustrate the meaning [meaninglessness] of the Resolutions adopted.

    Rev. Mr. Andrews vindicated the course of the General Assembly. Slavery (he [deceptively] said) existed in the time of Christ and his apostles. They did not condemn it. He would vote for no resolution that did not distinctly avow that slaveholding was not sin.

    Ed. Note: For the truth about Christ, the Apostles, and early Christianity, see, e.g.,
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), pp 228-243
  • Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations (1855), pp 27-33
  • Rev. John G. Fee, An Anti-Slavery Manual, or, The Wrongs of American Slavery
    Exposed (1851), pp 72-95.

    • Rev. E. Hall, of Norwalk, said that if he supposed there was the least danger that these resolutions would pass, he would make a strenuous speech. He abhorred slavery totally, and from the bottom of his heart, but these resolutions were rank Garrisonism and Dorrism. He could not think more than one or two persons would vote for them.

    Dr. Bennett Tyler (of the Theological Seminary at East Windsor) said [with intent to mislead] that “Christ and his apostles did not condemn slaveholders, nor command them to emancipate their slaves.”

    “Rev. Mr. Ely” repeated the old [knowingly false] story of Paul's returning a fugitive slave to his master. He would seek the conversion of the slaves first, and then seek their liberty in the Lord's way and in the Lord's time.

    Ed. Note: This "let the Lord do it" attitude is blatant sin. Note the case of Eli in 1 Samuel 2:12 - 4:22.
    In the U.S. the result was like that of Ancient Judah's, e.g., war and numbers of casualties.

    The [pro-slavery] New York Observer, in its account of this matter, declares that the resolutions introduced by Mr. Perkins were the most ultra and untenable [most pro-Bible!] ever heard of in any ecclesiastical body.

    A severer satire upon “ecclesiastical bodies” it would be difficult to indite [cite]. If the Resolutions of Mr. Perkins were too ultra, there was an opportunity presented to the General Association, had they been disposed, to have adopted others of a sufficiently accommodating [weak] character.

    “Rev. S. W. S. Dutton was convinced that the [Bible-based] resolutions of Mr. Perkins would not pass. If they were disposed of, he would offer the following:

    “1. Resolved [to deal with the "abuses" in slavery],
  • That the buying and selling of human beings for gain;
  • the forced separation of husbands and wives, parents and children;
  • the permission, by masters, to servants under their control, to live in a temporary concubinage [fornication, adultery], liable to be ended at any time by the caprice of either party, or by the caprice of others;
  • the withholding the Bible and the ability to read the Bible, by masters, from servants under their control and care;
  • and in general, the treatment of servants by masters in any manner inconsistent with their nature as immortal beings, for whom Christ gave himself to die,
    are crimes utterly inconsistent with a standing and a name in the Church of Christ.

    “2. Resolved, That all those [unconstitutional] laws, whether of individual States or of the United States, which, instead of prohibiting and punishing these crimes [sins],

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    “require, or encourage, or allow them, are a foul disgrace to a people who glory in the possession of freedom as God's inalienable gift to man, and are deeply to be deplored by all friends of their country, as fitted [foreseeably] to call down upon it the direst judgments of heaven.

    “3. Whereas, There is a common fame [infamy], the cry of which has gone abroad to the ends of the earth, that these crimes [sins] are perpetrated hy ministers and members in both branches of the Prcsbyterian Church in this country; therefore,

    “Resolved, That our delegates be directed to present a copy of these resolutions to each branch of the Presbyterian Church, with our fraternal request, that the truth of this common fame [infamy] be puhlicly denied, or, if that be inconsistent with facts, that proper and effectual measures be taken to bring the offenders to repentance.”

    These Resolutions are similar in spirit to those presented to the American Board at Brooklyn, the same year, by Dr. Leonard Bacon of New Haven, and unsuccessfully advocated by him, on that occasion. He also advocated the above resolutions of Mr. Dutton, before the General Association of Connecticut.

    What objection could there have been against them? They were specially designed to waive the mooted questions of the sinfulness both of slavery and slaveholding, and fix upon what are claimed to be the abuses of the system. He urged upon the Board, and upon the General Assembly, the importance of condemning, distinctly, these practices.

    Why could it not be done? Why, but because, instead of an indefinite and vague abstraction there was an inconvenient and well understood specification [listing] of prevalent practices; of practices which would criminate the great body of [pretended] religious slaveholders ["Bible-Belt"] at the [demonized] South? Because, moreover, the third Resolution would be understood at the South as evidence that the General Association of Connecticut were in earnest [at last sincere] for the removal of these practices.

    It will be seen, on inspection, that the action of the General Association of Connecticut does not conflict with the positions of Professor Stuart, or, at least, only as Professor Stuart's positions conflict with each other. Self-consistency is not to be expected, where the effo