CASSIUS M. CLAY and JOHN G. FEE: a STUDY in SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT in the Years Which Followed the Civil War, Men Who

Reprinted from THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, Vol. XLII, No. 3, July 1957

CASSIUS M. CLAY AND JOHN G. FEE: A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT In the years which followed the Civil War, men who con• templated its origins often considered the anti-slavery crusade and its effects upon the tragic event. But as years passed, many forgot that there had been various shades of opinion among opponents of slavery, and put all agitators into the same category. The careers of Cassius M. Clay and John G. Fee, however, revealed a fundamental disagreement which separated fighters of the "peculiar institution. "1 Fee and Clay lived in the same county in a slave state, Madison County, Kentucky, and in that small arena a conflict developed between them which involved the controlling as• sumptions of the entire body of anti-slavery thought. Both men were native Kentuckians, but aside from their birthplace about the only characteristic the two men shared was their opposition to the institution of human slavery. For a time, that was enough to bring them together. But when each learned more about the other's position\they separated and afterwards were as hostile toward each other as toward slav• ery itself. In their case it was the doctrine of the "higher law" which proved to be the stumbling block. Their disagreement on that issue, which arose out of their conflicting motivations, indicated the depth of the division within the ranks of South• ern antislavery spokesmen. Although it was not immediately evident to the Kentucki• ans, their differences were deep-seated. Fee, who was born in 1816 in Bracken County, Kentucky, received his anti-slavery inspiration as a religious commandment from "higher law" moral reformers. A small, weazened man with bulging fore• head and almost hairless pate which emphasized his piercing eyes, Fee had the physique and the temperament of a perse• cuted saint. The son of a slave-owning farmer, while very young he declared his intention to become a Christian min• ister. - After studies at Augusta College in Kentucky and at

1John Gregg Fee (1816-1901), Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, founder of Berea College; Cassius M. Clay (1810-1903), abolitionist, distant kinsman of Henry Clay, veteran of the Mexican War, major-general of volunteers in the Federal army, United States minister to Russia, 1861-2, and 1863-9. For both men, con• sult Dictionary of American Biography. 201 202 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

Miami Univeristy in Ohio, in 1842 young Fee entered Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. There he accepted the anti-slavery religion for which that school was becoming famous.2 ,,. I As the ascetic youth searched for a sin to repent, he discov• ered the moral implications of Kentucky's labor system. After spending much time in private meditation, Fee declared that the Christian doctrine of love required that he "abjure" slav• ery. "I saw that the [Golden] rule ... was fundamental in the religion of Jesus Christ,'' he said, ''and that unless I em• braced the principle and lived it in honest practice, I would lose my soul.' '3 With that interpretation of Christianity, Fee returned to his native state, preached against the "sin" of slaveholding, and promptly met persecution. When some Ken• tucky church members offered him a pastorate if he would "go along and preach the Gospel and let the subject of slavery alone," Fee declared his new faith. "The Gospel is the good news of salvation from sin, all sin, the sin of slaveholding as well as all other sins,'' he replied. ''I will not sell my convic• tions in reference to that which I regard as an iniquity, nor my liberty to utter these convictions for a mess of pottage.' '4 Con• vinced that slaveholders persecuted him because he dared preach the ''truth,'' Fee organized a small church in Lewis County which admitted only non-slaveholders to membership." Fee regarded himself as a religious reformer comparable to Luther, and he insisted that his only interest was in moral change among slaveowners. "As in the days of Martin Luther," he preached, "though the doctrine of justification by faith was plainly written in the Bible, yet the great body of people did not see it," so in Fee's Kentucky few seemed to understand the ''great doctrine of loving God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves.'' Though he reported that he had J been "waylaid, shot at, clubbed, stoned," he did not turn aside from his course. ''The only way to ultimate peace was to hold rigidly to the right,'' he explained, ''though in so do-

2 Autobiography of John G. Fee, Berea, Ky. Published by the National Christian Mission, Chicago, Ill., 1891. Pp. 9, 12. 3 Ibid., 13·4.

ing, I had, in the Gospel sense, to leave ... all for Christ's sake. I was conscious that no other motive impelled me.' '6 John G. Fee's single-minded devotion to his interpretation of Christianity led him to renewed allegiance to the "higher law'' which motivated religiously-inspired abolitionists. How• ever humane slavery might appear, to Fee it was inherently sinful. "It is oppression still; a violation of the law of love," he insisted. "No man can maintain a Christian character and persist in it ... '' He urged his followers to practice the law of love even to the extent of disregarding man-made law when it conflicted with their moral absolutes. "A law that is not im• moral and wicked ought to be borne with until it can be re• pealed," he told them. "But an impious, wicked law may not be obeyed." Laws which instituted human slavery were wicked, he went on. Such a law "violates religious duty, inter• feres with the right of conscience, and is therefore unconstitu• tional, and should really have no binding effect,'' he said. "Let us obey the voice of God, 'Break every yoke and let the oppressed go free.' 'n Fee's unremitting warfare upon slavery soon brought him to the attention of another Kentucky anti-slavery spokesman, Cassius M. Clay. But though Clay agreed with Fee that slav• ery was an evil to be exorcised, his reasoning was altogether different. While Preacher Fee considered the institution sin• ful, Clay considered it harmful to free white laborers and the chief barrier to a diversified economy in the South. But it was not only in his motivation that Clay differed from the preacher -his appearance and his personality were unlike Fee's. He was nearly twice as heavy as the tiny Fee; he was tall and heavy-set, chunky and muscular, with quick, cat-like move• ments; and his head was covered with unruly hair. Moreover, unlike the ascetic Fee, Clay enjoyed the banquet board and the wine cup, and he boasted of his physical prowess. While Fee

6 tua., 16-17, 65. 7 John G. Fee, Colonization. The Present Scheme of Colonisation Wrong, Delusive, and Retards Emancipation. American Reform Tract and Book Society, Cincinnati, n.d. [185H] Pp. 6, 44, 45, 47. In the introduction to the pamphlet, Fee clearly declared his purpose: ''Much of this tract is an appeal to conscience and Christian principle; because, says a British writer, 'we never made any head• way in the abolition of the slave trade, and of slavery, till it was taken up by religious men, prosecuted as a concern of the soul, with reference to eternity, and motives drawn from the cross of Christ'." 204 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

course at Kentucky's Transylvania University. As soon as he ·l reached the legal age, he began his political career and served several terms in the state legislature.9 While he was a representative, Clay began to criticize slav• ery but he did not use moral preachments against it as did the religious agitators of the Lane Seminary type. "It is not a matter of conscience with me," he admitted. "I press it not upon the consciences of others.' 11° Clay also rejected the no• tion, dear to religious abolitionists, that the Negro was his brother. John G. Fee had put it bluntly: "The 'colored man' is none the less a man because he is 'colored';" and he added that ''God has ever been on the side of the oppressed, and against the oppressor.' ui But Clay disliked the Negro and sought constitutional emancipation as a means of getting them out of the state. "I have studied the Negro character," he said. "They lack self-reliance--we can make nothing out of them. God has made them for the sun and the banana!' '12 In seeking liberty for the blacks, therefore, he was careful to ex• plain that he did so in order that the ''white laborers of the

8 The Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay: Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches. Cin• cinnati, 1886. Although listed as two volumes, volume two never appeared. Passim. 9 lbw. 10 Cassius M. Clay, A Review of the Late Canvass ... Lexington, Ky., 1840. Pp. 14-15. Cassius M. Clay, The Writings of Cassius M. Clay, Edited by Horace Greeley, New York, 1848, p. 60. 11 Fee, Colonization ... , 6, 46. 12 Clay to Editor, New York World, February 19, 1861, photostat in possession of the author. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 205 state may be men and build us all up by their power and energy.' '13 It was as the advocate of free white labor and of an indus• trial economy, rather than as a proponent of freedom for an oppressed class, that Clay differed from Fee. He arrived at the fundamental tenets of his thought after a sojourn in Con• necticut. While at Yale he was surprised to see a bustling, prosperous community on a rocky, uninviting terrain. "I ... saw a people living there luxuriously on a soil which here would have been deemed the high road to famine and the alms• house,'' he reported later, and he added that slavery, ''nothing but slavery,'' prevented a similar prosperity in the South." "we are provincial, an agricultural people, without division of labor and without capital, and must remain so while slavery lasts," he warned. And as he considered the matter further, he began to declare that slavery prevented the development of manufacturing. "Slavery is destructive of all mechanical ex• cellence,'' he charged. ''The free states build ships and steam cars for the nations of the world; the slave states import the handles for their axes.' '15 Advocating a more diversified economy, Clay sought politi• cal reward as spokesman for non-slaveholding whites in Ken• tucky. They had no vested interest in slavery, he said; they might respond to a campaign to industrialize the state and to protect the wages of free labor. Cassius Clay had recognized the unique geographic diversity which characterized Ken• tucky. A border state, it enjoyed the distinguishing features of the planting South and of the manufacturing North: rich farmland and a plantation economy existed beside a mountain• ous, mineral-rich area which was potentially analogous to in• dustrial New England. In the mountains the plantation-type, slave-worked agriculture did not predominate, and there min• erals and water-power made manufactures feasible. When slaveowners violently rebuffed Clay in the Bluegrass, there• fore, he turned his attention to the highlands. "Now I ... pro• pose to educate a class to make capitalists of the manufac• turers of American Switzerland ... resting on nine States,"

13 The True American, Lexington, Ky., and Cincinnati, February 11, 1846. 14 Clay, Writings, 174-5. 15 The True American, February 25, 1846; Clay, Writings, 204. 206 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

he explained after years of political effort. The southern mountains were, he declared, the "greatest mineral district in the world.' '16 To develop that region, Clay advocated public assistance in the form of internal improvements, tariff protection, and bank currency. But in trying to achieve that program he met deter• mined opposition, and he accused slaveholders of preventing industrial expansion in the state. "There is a class of poli• ticians who have solemnly declared themselves at war with the system of American manufacturers, sustained by Kentucky,'' he said in 1838. ''There are men who have avowed themselves inimical to a system of internal improvements," he continued, and he charged that the same men had destroyed the "best bank circulation among any people." Moreover, they tried to reduce the tariff so as to import goods ''at a sacrifice, from foreign and alien merchants, kingly subjects, rather than sus• tain the freemen of our common country.'' These were the men, he said, who agitated the ''slave question; that question which of all others is most terrible to the hopes of this union.'' Because the planters sought to tie Kentucky to the agricul• tural South and ignored the economic aspirations of white artisans, Clay declared war upon them.17 When he did so, he called upon non-slaveholders to support him with their votes. His revolt was to be political at base, constitutional and legal in method, by ballots rather than by force, and he claimed that the majority of the state's popula• tion had no interest in maintaining slavery. He quoted sta• tistics from the census of 1840 to support his contention. Of the state's 800,000 people, only 31,495 were slaveholders. "Not one in four or five," he pointed out, "but one in twenty-five only, is a slaveholder." To that "insignificant minority" Ken• tuckians had surrendered public schools, freedom of speech

16 Clay to Louis Marshall, November 20, 1895, in Berea College Library, Berea, Ky. Reviewing his career many years after the event, Clay said that "no state, except Louisiana, is without its mountains and its mountain men.'' And in neither mountains nor in a border area, he went on, ''can slavery find long a resting place." Therefore, he concluded, "I turned my eyes towards the moun• tains eastward, where few slaves were held." Review of John G. Fee's Autobiog• raphy, dated August 24, 1896, in Scrapbook #2, in the collection of Professor J. T. Dorris, Eastern Kentucky State College, Richmond, Ky. 17 Cassius M. Clay, "Speech on the bill conferring Banking Privileges on the Charleston, Cincinnati, and Louisville Railroad Company," in Clay, Writings, 54-5. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 207 and press, and an industrial economy.18 But non-slaveholders had the right to vote, and Clay intended to educate them into an expression of their own interests. "I can vote-nail all such maxims to the masthead,'' he ordered. ''You are in the majority. Assert what is right, and do it, and the day is yours.''19 Not only did he expect such a course to bring victory to non-slaveholders, however; it might also provide a political officefor Cassius Clay. In 1841, after he met def eat in the state legislative race, he made desperate pleas for assistance in his efforts to regain a lost career. "How long, my countrymen," he implored, "seeing you have the power of the ballot-box, shall these things be1 ... Will you not at last awake, arise, and be men 1 Then shall I be delivered from this outlawry, this impending ruin, this insufferable exile, this living death!' '20 Thus the politician differed from the minister, who talked of the "voice of God" and of breaking the yokes of the op• pressed. Fee, a Lane Seminary graduate, based his efforts upon religious appeals to slaveowners and he urged his hear• ers to obey a law higher than that made by man. Clay, with a political career in mind, appealed to non-slaveholders for votes and rejected Fee's higher law doctrines. "That is prop• erty which the law makes property,'' Clay insisted, and he de• clared that every law must be obeyed until repealed by a ma• jority of the voters.21 He rejected the extra-legal moralizing of religious abolitionists, and emphasized more mundane prin• ciples of politics and economics. Despite their fundamental differences, their common op• position to human slavery drew the two reformers together. Early in 1853, after years of correspondence, Clay invited Fee to preach in Madison County, with the hope that he would organize political activity among people in the hills. "I saw that a large portion of the State was mountainous, where there were but few slaves, and the people courageous,'' he recalled later. "If they were once committed to liberation of the slaves, we could have a permanent nucleus of political and physical

18 Clay, Writings, 141, 143-4. 19 The True .AmericlJ!ll., February 4, 1846. 20 Clay, Writings, 317-8. 21.Anti-Slavery Bugle, Salem, Ohio, October 31, 1845. 208 JOURNAL OF NEGRO Hrs TORY force.' '22 Clay donated 600 acres of land to establish an anti• slavery community at Berea, in the southern part of Madison County, arid gave Fee a farm in the tract. Henceforth the two were residents of the same county. Clay and Fee found much in common in their dislike for slavery and worked together with little hint of trouble. ''I saw in Fee's heroic and pious character a fit man for the service I projected," Clay said. In return, Fee admired his patron and encouraged him when critics attacked. In 1849,when Clay par• ticipated in a constituent election on behalf of emancipation candidates, Fee supported him. "You have and are fast win• ning a name that can not be reached by ... calumny,'' he said. "Bear long, as Christ your Saviour did. Men spat upon Him, and reviled Him ... May God guide and preserve you for the noble and glorious cause which you have espoused.'' Fee as• sisted Clay in the cause, and became corresponding secretary of Clay's Central Republican Club.23 In return, Clay served as Fee's protector whenever the meek little man met violence. In 1855, Fee announced that he would speak against slavery in Lincoln County, Kentucky, but a mob prevented him. Clay promptly seized the opportunity to def end his ministerial friend. He assembled a company of armed ruffians and traveled to the scene of the dispute, defiant• ly announcing that he intended to speak there, freely if possi• ble, but " by [orce" if necessary. Guarded by the private army, Clay and Fee spoke without further incident.24 But such cooperation did not long continue, for each man was learning more of the other's position, and neither liked what he learned. On the Fourth of July, 1856, at a gathering of Madison Countians at Slate Lick Springs, the association between Clay and Fee came to an end. Both had agreed to ad• dress the assemblage, but they argued over which should speak first. The preacher distrusted Clay's insistence that Fee begin the oratory. "I thought I saw his policy," Fee said later; "have me utter my radical sentiments, and he then review me.'' For the little preacher had realized that Clay considered

the ''higher law'' doctrine-the foundation of his thought• untenable. Fee decided to meet the issue squarely. He mounted the rostrum with a copy of the Declaration of Independence in his hand. ''All men are created free and equal,'' he read, in his piping voice, ''and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.'' If some rights were inalienable, and the gift of God, he said, then no man or no government could take them away: "it is impious in us to attempt to take away .. " He quoted judicial opinion against slavery, but culminated his argument with a religious premise, ''what is stronger than all, the Word of God forbids it." That which opposed natural right and divine teaching was ''mere usurpation,'' he went on, hammering the stand, and asserted that it was "incapable of legalization.'' Clearly he reiterated his allegiance to the higher law doctrines he had imbibed at Lane Seminary. "A law con• fessedly contrary to the law of God ought not by human counts to be enforced,'' he concluded, ref erring to the Fugitive Slave Law. Proudly he subscribed to the creed of the Radical Aboli• tionists; he announced that he would refuse to obey the law.25 As Fee came down from the rostrum, Cassius Clay stood before the assembly with his countenance dark and troubled. "As my political friends, I warn you," he began, "Mr. Fee's position is revolutionary, insurrectionary, and dangerous.'' As long as a law was on the statute books, he continued, citi• zens should respect and obey it until they could repeal it by the "republican majority." In answer to Fee's religious argu• ment, Clay propounded the politician's philosophy. "My theory is, that slavery is a creature of law,'' he asserted. ''That so long as it constitutes property, by laws-those laws must be respected and enforced in good faith." But that did not mean he approved of the laws establishing slave property. Clay said that there was an "inborn sentiment of justice and humanity" at the basis of all law, but that slavery existed in opposition to that sentiment and should therefore be abol• ished. The people should secure that objective, however, not by anarchial disobedience, but by "free discussion and the ballot.' '26

25 Fee, Autobiography, 101-3. 26 Fee, Autobiography, 103-4; Clay, Life, 241, 571-2. 210 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HrsTORY

Concerning the Fugitive Slave Law, however, Clay's view of "inborn" justice in law brought him into embarrassment. "I would not obey it myself," he conceded, when forced to answer the question. "It is contrary to natural right, and I would not degrade my nature by obeying it.'' When he said that, Fee leaped to his feet. "My friend, Mr. Clay, has con• ceded the whole point at issue, that there is a Higher Law,'' he shouted triumphantly. But Clay objected that the Fugitive Slave Law was unconstitutional. "But," Fee quickly pointed out, "it is on the statute book and unrepealed by the republi• can majority.'' And to that, Clay had no answer; politically he opposed the law as a good Republican should in an election year, but he intended to use the law for party purposes. As there was no political force in the higher law teaching, except in isolated areas, Fee would never make a convert of Clay.27 After the Fourth of July argument, Clay and Fee repeated and justified their opinions of each other. Fee accused Clay of rejecting the religious view because of ''expediency.'' The ''great mistake of his life,'' the minister said of Clay, was the "notion of expediency in the non-utterance of moral truth, lest it should seem to hinder success.'' In his turn, Clay reiterated his warnings that Fee held an "insurrectionary" position, and that political action was the proper course to pursue against the evil of slavery. "With regard to the allegation that I acted always upon the ground of 'expediency,' '' Clay admitted in all frankness, ''I say that all human action is based upon it.'' Because of their conflicting purposes, the two men were no longer associated. Fee resigned his position in the Republican ''club,'' and Clay no longer extended his protection to the Berea community.28 It was not long before the Bereans would need his assist• ance. For the next few years, Clay busily pursued his political career in the Republican Party, while Fee preached to the faithful at Berea. It was a misquoted remark of Fee's which caused Clay publicly and :finally to disavow the preacher and his religious radicalism. Fee, preaching in Henry Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn in late 1859, called for re• ligiously-inspired John Browns to invade the South. "We

21 Fee, Autobiography, 103-4. 28 Fee, Autobiography, 126; Clay, Life, 572. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 211

want more John Browns," he said, "not in manner of action, but in spirit of consecration; not to do with carnal weapons, but with spiritual, men who with Bibles in their hands and tears in their eyes, will beseech men to be reconciled to God. Give us such men,'' he concluded, ''and we may yet save the South.'' When his words, in garbled form, circulated in the South, some people concluded that Fee planned a Brown-like raid of his own. In Madison County, mobs gathered to drive Fee and his Berea disciples out of the state." In the crisis, Cassius Clay denounced John Fee. He feared that his political efforts would suffer if he defended the un• popular Radical Abolitionists. Earlier, in 1855, he had dra• matically gone to Fee's support, but in December, 1859,he held himself aloof from the frightened minister. He reminded his neighbors that he had ceased to associate with Fee. "It is well known that, on the 4th of July, from the stump, three years ago, I denounced the doctrine of the 'Radical Abolitionists' and the Rev. John G. Fee, that 'There is no law for Slav• ery!'" Clay said that he would use force to defend freedom of speech and of the press, but that he would not "jeopard" his life for such a "false issue. "30 A few months later, after Fee and ten of his friends had fled to Ohio, and just before the campaign of 1860 got under way, Clay repeated his position on the radicals, to show that the Republican Party had no part in the "higher law" group. "The Republicans in Kentucky have been opposed to, and have steadily denounced, any illegal in• terference with slaves, from home or abroad, they have given no countenance to the escape of slaves, to insubordination, or to servile insurrection. Hence, ... when the Rev. John G. Fee avowed from the stump the Radical Abolition doctrine, I de• nounced it from the stump.'' Such careful repetition illus• trated Clay's fear of being confused with the religious group.31 So the higher law teaching had been the stumbling block for these Kentucky anti-slavery spokesmen. A significant chapter in the history of Southern protest thought had ended. Cassius Clay and John Fee symbolized two wings of the movement, but

29 Fee, Autobiography, 146-8. so Clay to Richmond, Ky., Messenger, December 28, 1859, in Clay, Life, 236-7, footnote. 81 Appeal of C. M. Clay, March 31, 1860, in Clay, Life, 242. 212 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

they also indicated its weakness. Neither was successful in attracting an effective following in Kentucky. Reverend Fee could claim less than one hundred supporters, and many of these disappeared in the crisis. He had the reputation of being misguided, though his critics differed as to whether he were harmless or the leader of a band of "fanatical outlaws. "32 His argument contained a fatal weakness, however, which pre• cluded a wide reception. As he preached the thesis that slav• ery was inherently sinful, he saw erected the antithesis that the institution was divinely-inspired and Biblically acceptable. While Southern planters were not demonstrably less morally• conscious than other comparable groups at the time, they re• sisted and rationalized any effort to brand them as particu• larly sinful. As Fee preached to a dwindling congregation, so Clay also failed to attract a significant percentage of Kentucky's popu• lation. In 1851', in a gubernatorial election which counted more than one hundred thousand ballots, he received less than three , percent of the total vote. In the decade of the 1850's, as sec• tional loyalties grew stronger, even that small party dimin• ished. But the idea that Clay propounded was appropriate and accurately reflected Southern economic and geographic reality. N on.slaveholding white voters rejected it more from fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding than because they dis• liked it. Clay ruefully complained of the situation. ''When I converted mechanics, tenants, and laborers to my liberal views," he said, as he reviewed his career, "the Slave-Power either bulldozed them, or starved them into emigration to Ohio, Indiana, and the West.' '33 With all the propagandists of the pro-slavery party against him for fear of his bold plan to change the economic basis of the state, Kentucky voters fell into line. But when emancipation came, it came more as a re• sult of action by Cassius M. Clay and his political colleagues than from the preachments of John G. Fee and his religious associates. The careers of Clay and Fee indicated that the crusade against the "peculiar institution" was no homogeneous as-

:12 Editor of Louisville Journal, in issue for April 4, 1860, copied into Clay, Life, 240-1. 33 Clay, Life, 570. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 213 sembly of agitators, nor was it merely a religious movement for the moral reform of slaveholders. It was instead a complex movement whose members were capable of heated intramural conflict and who flagellated those who differed with them. In 1856, at the Slate Lick Springs meeting where Clay and Fee argued, Fee well expressed the difficulty facing Southern anti• slavery leaders. After the break between the two, he said that ''The friends of slavery were not pleased; the friends of free• dom were divided.' '34 So they were, and Fee and Clay them• selves revealed the division which weakened the emancipation effort. DAVID L. SMILEY Wake Forest College Reprinted from THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, Vol. XLII, No. 3, July 1957

CASSIUS M. CLAY AND JOHN G. FEE: A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT In the years which followed the Civil War, men who con• templated its origins often considered the anti-slavery crusade and its effects upon the tragic event. But as years passed, many forgot that there had been various shades of opinion among opponents of slavery, and put all agitators into the same category. The careers of Cassius M. Clay and John G. Fee, however, revealed a fundamental disagreement which separated :fighters of the "peculiar institution. "1 Fee and Clay lived in the same county in a slave state, Madison County, Kentucky, and in that small arena a conflict developed between them which involved the controlling as• sumptions of the entire body of anti-slavery thought. Both men were native Kentuckians, but aside from their birthplace about the only characteristic the two men shared was their opposition to the institution of human slavery. For a time, that was enough to bring them together. But when each learned more about the other's position they separated and afterwards were as hostile toward each other as toward slav• ery itself. In their case it was the doctrine of the "higher law" which proved to be the stumbling block. Their disagreement on that issue, which arose out of their conflicting motivations, indicated the depth of the division within the ranks of South• ern antislavery spokesmen. Although it was not immediately evident to the Kentucki• ans, their differences were deep-seated. Fee, who was born in 1816 in Bracken County, Kentucky, received his anti-slavery inspiration as a religious commandment from "higher law" moral reformers. A small, weazened man with bulging fore• head and almost hairless pate which emphasized his piercing eyes, Fee had the physique and the temperament of a perse• cuted saint. The son of a slave-owning farmer, while very young he declared his intention to become a Christian min• ister. After studies at Augusta College in Kentucky and at

1 John Gregg Fee (1816-1901), Presbyterian minister, abolitionist, founder of Berea College; Cassius M. Clay (1810-1903), abolitionist, distant kinsman of Henry Clay, veteran of the Mexican War, major-general of volunteers in the Federal army, United States minister to Russia, 1861-2, and 1863-9. For both men, con• sult Dictionary of American Biography. 201 202 JOURNAL OF NEGRO lliSTORY

Miami Univeristy in Ohio, in 1842 young Fee entered Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. There he accepted the anti-slavery religion for which that school was becoming famous.2 As the ascetic youth searched for a sin to repent, he discov• ered the moral implications of Kentucky's labor system. After spending much time in private meditation, Fee declared that the Christian doctrine of love required that he "abjure" slav• ery. "I saw that the [Golden] rule ... was fundamental in the religion of Jesus Christ," he said, "and that unless I em• braced the principle and lived it in honest practice, I would lose my soul. "3 With that interpretation of Christianity, Fee returned to his native state, preached against the "sin" of slaveholding, and promptly met persecution. When some Ken• tucky church members o:ff ered him a pastorate if he would "go along and preach the Gospel and let the subject of slavery alone," Fee declared his new faith. "The Gospel is the good news of salvation from sin, all sin, the sin of slaveholding as well as all other sins," he replied. "I will not sell my convic• tions in reference to that which I regard as an iniquity, nor my liberty to utter these convictions for a mess of pottage.' '4 Con• vinced that slaveholders persecuted him because he dared preach the ''truth,'' Fee organized a small church in Lewis County which admitted only non-slaveholders to membership." Fee regarded himself as a religious reformer comparable to Luther, and he insisted that his only interest was in moral change among slaveowners. "As in the days of Martin Luther," he preached, "though the doctrine of justification by faith was plainly written in the Bible, yet the great body of people did not see it," so in Fee's Kentucky few seemed to understand the "great doctrine of loving God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves.'' Though he reported that he had been "waylaid, shot at, clubbed, stoned," he did not turn aside from his course. ''The only way to ultimate peace was to hold rigidly to the right,'' he explained, ''though in so do-

2 Autobiography of John G. Fee, Berea, Ky. Published by the National Christian Mission, Chicago, IB., 1891. Pp. 9, 12. 3 zus., 13·4. «iua; 20-1. 5 tue., 59. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY rrHoUGHT 203

ing, I had, in the Gospel sense, to leave ... all for Christ's sake. I was conscious that no other motive impelled me.' '6 John G. Fee's single-minded devotion to his interpretation of Christianity led him to renewed allegiance to the "higher law" which motivated religiously-inspired abolitionists. How• ever humane slavery might appear, to Fee it was inherently sinful. "It is oppression still; a violation of the law of love," he insisted. "No man can maintain a Christian character and persist in it ... '' He urged his followers to practice the law of love even to the extent of disregarding man-made law when it conflicted with their moral absolutes. ''A law that is not im• moral and wicked ought to be borne with until it can be re• pealed,'' he told them. ''But an impious, wicked law may not be obeyed.'' Laws which instituted human slavery were wicked, he went on. Such a law "violates religious duty, inter• feres with the right of conscience, and is therefore unconstitu• tional, and should really have no binding effect,'' he said. "Let us obey the voice of God, 'Break every yoke and let the oppressed go free.' '17 Fee's unremitting warfare upon slavery soon brought him to the attention of another Kentucky anti-slavery spokesman, Cassius M. Clay. But though Clay agreed with Fee that slav• ery was an evil to be exorcised, his reasoning was altogether different. While Preacher Fee considered the institution sin• ful, Clay considered it harmful to free white laborers and the chief barrier to a diversified economy in the South. But it was not only in his motivation that Clay differed from the preacher -his appearance and his personality were unlike Fee's. He was nearly twice as heavy as the tiny Fee; he was tall and heavy-set, chunky and muscular, with quick, cat-like move• ments; and his head was covered with unruly hair. Moreover, unlike the ascetic Fee, Clay enjoyed the banquet board and the wine cup, and he boasted of his physical prowess. While Fee

6 ius; 16-17, 65. 7 John G. Fee, Cofonization. The Present Scheme of Colonieation. Wrong, Delusive, and Retards Emancipation. American Reform Tract and Book Society, Cincinnati, n.d. (1854'] Pp. 6, 44, 45, 47. In the introduction to the pamphlet, Fee clearly declared his purpose: "Much of this tract is an appeal to conscience and Christian principle; because, says a British writer, 'we never made any head• way in the abolition of t·he slave trade, and of slavery, till it was taken up by religious men, prosecuted as a concern of the soul, with reference to eternity, and motives drawn from the cross of Christ'." 204 J ouRN AL OF NEGRO Hrs TORY

was a nonresister, Clay referred to himself as a ":fighting Christian,'' and he never went out unarmed. In the course of an active career he fought opponents with fists, with cane, with pistols, and with bowie-knife, and he gained a wide reputation as a dangerous man in a rough-and-tumble :fight.8 Perhaps the most important difference between the two men was in heritage. Clay was born into Kentucky landed aristocracy, and he enjoyed the advantages of family and of wealth. His father, a pioneer to the Dark and Bloody Ground, had amassed a fortune in land and commercial ventures and was able to give his sons the best available advantages in life. Cassius, the youngest, born in 1810 in Madison County, was well educated with a degree from Yale College and a law course at Kentucky's Transylvania University. As soon as he reached the legal age, he began his political career and served several terms in the state legislature.9 While he was a representative, Clay began to criticize slav• ery but he did not use moral preachments against it as did the religious agitators of the Lane Seminary type. "It is not a I matter of conscience with me," he admitted. "I press it not upon the consciences of others.' 'lo Clay also rejected the no• tion, dear to religious abolitionists, that the Negro was his brother. John G. Fee had put it bluntly: "The 'colored man' is none the less a man because he is 'colored';" and he added that ''God has ever been on the side of the oppressed, and against the oppressor. "11 But Clay disliked the Negro and sought constitutional emancipation as a means of getting them out of the state. "I have studied the Negro character," he said. "They lack self-reliance-we can make nothing out of them. God has made them for the sun and the banana!' '12 In seeking liberty for the blacks, therefore, he was careful to ex• plain that he did so in order that the ''white laborers of the

8 The Life of Cassius Marcellus Clay: Memoirs, Writings, and Speeches. Cin• > cinnati, 1886. Although listed as two volumes, volume two never appeared. Passim. 9 Ibid. 10 Cassius M. Clay, A Rtiview of the Late Canvass ... Lexington, Ky., 1840. Pp. 14-15. Cassius M. Clay, The Writings of Cassius M. Clay, Edited by Horace Greeley, New York, 1848, p. 60. 11 Fee, Colonization ... , 6, 46. 12 Clay to Editor, New York World, February 19, 1861, photostat in possession of the author. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 205

state may be men and build us all up by their power and energy.' '13 It was as the advocate of free white labor and of an indus• trial economy, rather than as a proponent of freedom for an oppressed class, that Clay differed from Fee. He arrived at ) the fundamental tenets of his thought after a sojourn in Con• necticut. While at Yale he was surprised to see a bustling, prosperous community on a rocky, uninviting terrain. "I ... saw a people living there luxuriously on a soil which here would have been deemed the high road to famine and the alms• house," he reported later, and he added that slavery, "nothing but slavery,'' prevented a similar prosperity in the South.> "We are provincial, an agricultural people, without division of labor and without capital, and must remain so while slavery lasts," he warned. And as he considered the matter further, he began to declare that slavery prevented the development of manufacturing. ''Slavery is destructive of all mechanical ex• cellence,'' he charged. ''The free states build ships and steam cars for the nations of the world; the slave states import the handles for their axes.' '15 Advocating a more diversified economy, Clay sought politi• cal reward as spokesman for non-slaveholding whites in Ken• tucky. They had no vested interest in slavery, he said; they might respond to a campaign to industrialize the state and to protect the wages of free labor. Cassius Clay had recognized the unique geographic diversity which characterized Ken• tucky. A border state, it enjoyed the distinguishing features of the planting South and of the manufacturing North: rich farmland and a plantation economy existed beside a mountain• ous, mineral-rich area which was potentially analogous to in• dustrial New England. In the mountains the plantation-type, slave-worked agriculture did not predominate, and there min• erals and water-power made manufactures feasible. When slaveowners violently rebuffed Clay in the Bluegrass, there• fore, he turned his attention to the highlands. "Now I ... pro• pose to educate a class to make capitalists of the manufac• turers of American Switzerland ... resting on nine States,"

13 The True American, Lexington, Ky., and Cincinnati, February 11, 1846. 14 Clay, Writings, 174-5. 15 The True American, February 25, 1846; Clay, Writings, 204. 206 JOURNAL OF NEGRO Hrs TORY

he explained after years of political effort. The southern mountains were, he declared, the ''greatest mineral district in the world. "16 To develop that region, Clay advocated public assistance in the form of internal improvements, tariff protection, and bank currency. But in trying to achieve that program he met deter• mined opposition, and he accused slaveholders of preventing industrial expansion in the state. "There is a class of poli• ticians who have solemnly declared themselves at war with the system of American manufacturers, sustained by Kentucky,'' he said in 1838. ''There are men who have avowed themselves inimical to a system of internal improvements,'' he continued, and he charged that the same men had destroyed the "best bank circulation among any people." Moreover, they tried to reduce the tariff so as to import goods ''at a sacrifice, from foreign and alien merchants, kingly subjects, rather than sus• tain the freemen of our common country.'' These were the men, he said, who agitated the ''slave question; that question which of all others is most terrible to the hopes of this union.'' I Because the planters sought to tie Kentucky to the agricul• tural South and ignored the economic aspirations of white artisans, Clay declared war upon them.17 When he did so, he called upon non-slaveholders to support him with their votes. His revolt was to be political at base, constitutional and legal in method, by ballots rather than by force, and he claimed that the majority of the state's popula• tion had no interest in maintaining slavery. He quoted sta• tistics from the census of 1840 to support his contention. Of the state's 800,000 people, only 31,495were slaveholders. "Not one in four or five," he pointed out, "but one in twenty-five only, is a slaveholder." To that "insignificant minority" Ken• ., tuckians had surrendered public schools, freedom of speech

and press, and an industrial economy.18 But non-slaveholders had the right to vote, and Clay intended to educate them into an expression of their own interests. "I can vote-nail all such maxims to the masthead,'' he ordered. ''You are in the majority. Assert what is right, and do it, and the day is .) yours.'n9 Not only did he expect such a course to bring victory to non-slaveholders, however; it might also provide a political officefor Cassius Clay. In 1841, after he met def eat in the state legislative race, he made desperate pleas for assistance in his efforts to regain a lost career. "How long, my countrymen," he implored, "seeing you have the power of the ballot-box, shall these things be 1 ... Will you not at last awake, arise, and be men 1 Then shall I be delivered from this outlawry, this impending ruin, this insufferable exile, this living death!' '20 Thus the politician differed from the minister, who talked of the ''voice of God'' and of breaking the yokes of the op• pressed. Fee, a Lane Seminary graduate, based his efforts upon religious appeals to slaveowners and he urged his hear• ers to obey a law higher than that made by man. Clay, with a political career in mind, appealed to non-slaveholders for votes and rejected Fee's higher law doctrines. "That is prop• erty which the law makes property,'' Clay insisted, and he de• clared that every law must be obeyed until repealed by a ma• jority of the voters.21 He rejected the extra-legal moralizing of religious abolitionists, and emphasized more mundane prin• ciples of politics and economics. Despite their fundamental differences, their common op• position to human slavery drew the two reformers together. Early in 1853, after years of correspondence, Clay invited Fee to preach in Madison County, with the hope that he would organize political activity among people in the hills. "I saw that a large portion of the State was mountainous, where there were but few slaves, and the people courageous," he recalled later. "If they were once committed to liberation of the slaves, we could have a permanent nucleus of political and physical

18 Clay, Writings, 141, 143-4. 19 The True A.mericam, February 4, 1846. 20 Clay, Writings, 317-8. 21 Anti-Slavery Bugle, Salem, Ohio, October 31, 1845. 208 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY force. "22 Clay donated 600 acres of land to establish an anti• slavery community at Berea, in the southern part of Madison County, and gave Fee a farm in the tract. Henceforth the two were residents of the same county. Clay and Fee found much in common in their dislike for slavery and worked together with little hint of trouble. ''I saw in Fee's heroic and pious character a fit man for the service I projected,'' Clay said. In return, Fee admired his patron and encouraged him when critics attacked. In 1849,when Clay par• ticipated in a constituent election on behalf of emancipation candidates, Fee supported him. "You have and are fast win• ning a name that can not be reached by ... calumny,'' he said. "Bear long, as Christ your Saviour did. Men spat upon Him, and reviled Him ... May God guide and preserve you for the noble and glorious cause which you have espoused.'' Fee as• sisted Clay in the cause, and became corresponding secretary of Clay's Central Republican Club.23 In return, Clay served as Fee's protector whenever the meek little man met violence. In 1855, Fee announced that he would speak against slavery in Lincoln County, Kentucky, but a mob prevented him. Clay promptly seized the opportunity to def end his ministerial friend. He assembled a company of armed ruffians and traveled to the scene of the dispute, defiant• ly announcing that he intended to speak there, freely if possi• ble, but" by force" if necessary. Guarded by the private army, Clay and Fee spoke without further incident.24 But such cooperation did not long continue, for each man was learning more of the other's position, and neither liked what he learned. On the Fourth of July, 1856, at a gathering of Madison Countians at Slate Lick Springs, the association between Clay and Fee came to an end. Both had agreed to ad• dress the assemblage, but they argued over which should speak first. The preacher distrusted Clay's insistence that Fee begin the oratory. "I thought I saw his policy," Fee said later; ''have me utter my radical sentiments, and he then review me.'' For the little preacher had realized that Clay considered

22 Clay, Life, 570. 23 Fee to Clay, June 31, 1849, in Clay, Life, 573-5. 24 Daily Cincinnati Gazette, June 18, July 23, 1855; Lexington, Ky., Observer and Reporter, July 18, August 22, 1855; Frankfort, Ky., Commonwealth, July 27, 1855. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 209 the "higher law" doctrine-the foundation of his thought• untenable. Fee decided to meet the issue squarely. He mounted the rostrum with a copy of the Declaration of Independence in his hand. ''All men are created free and equal,'' he read, in his piping voice, ''and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.'' If some rights were inalienable, and the gift of God, he said, then no man or no government could take them away: "it is impious in us to attempt to take away." He quoted judicial opinion against slavery, but culminated his argument with a religious premise, "what is stronger than all, the Word of God forbids it." That which opposed natural right and divine teaching was "mere usurpation," he went on, hammering the stand, and asserted that it was "incapable of legalization.'' Clearly he reiterated his allegiance to the higher law doctrines he had imbibed at Lane Seminary. "A law con• fessedly contrary to the law of God ought not by human counts to be enforced,'' he concluded, referring to the Fugitive Slave Law. Proudly he subscribed to the creed of the Radical Aboli• tionists; he announced that he would refuse to obey the law.25 As Fee came down from the rostrum, Cassius Clay stood before the assembly with his countenance dark and troubled. "As my political friends, I warn you," he began, "Mr. Fee's position is revolutionary, insurrectionary, and dangerous.'' As long as a law was on the statute books, he continued, citi• zens should respect and obey it until they could repeal it by the "republican majority." In answer to Fee's religious argu• ment, Clay propounded the politician's philosophy. "My theory is, that slavery is a creature of law,'' he asserted. "That so long as it constitutes property, by laws-those laws must be respected and enforced in good faith.'' But that did not mean he approved of the laws establishing slave property. Clay said that there was an "inborn sentiment of justice and humanity" at the basis of all law, but that slavery existed in opposition to that sentiment and should therefore be abol• ished. The people should secure that objective, however, not by anarchial disobedience, but by "free discussion and the ballot.' '26

25 Fee, Autobiography, 101-3. 26 Fee, Autobiography, 103-4; Clay, Life, 241, 571-2. 210 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

Concerning the Fugitive Slave Law, however, Clay's view of "inborn" justice in law brought him into embarrassment. "I would not obey it myself," he conceded, when forced to answer the question. "It is contrary to natural right, and I would not degrade my nature by obeying it.'' When he said that, Fee leaped to his feet. "My friend, Mr. Clay, has con• ceded the whole point at issue, that there is a Higher Law,'' he shouted triumphantly. But Clay objected that the Fugitive Slave Law was unconstitutional. "But," Fee quickly pointed out, "it is on the statute book and unrepealed by the republi• can majority.'' And to that, Clay had no answer; politically he opposed the law as a good Republican should in an election year, but he intended to use the law for party purposes. As there was no political force in the higher law teaching, except in isolated areas, Fee would never make a convert of Clay.27 After the Fourth of July argument, Clay and Fee repeated and justified their opinions of each other. Fee accused Clay of rejecting the religious view because of ''expediency.'' The ''great mistake of his life,'' the minister said of Clay, was the "notion of expediency in the non-utterance of moral truth, lest it should seem to hinder success.'' In his turn, Clay reiterated his warnings that Fee held an "insurrectionary" position, and that political action was the proper course to pursue against the evil of slavery. ''With regard to the allegation that I acted always upon the ground of 'expediency,' '' Clay admitted in all frankness, ''I say that all human action is based upon it.'' Because of their conflicting purposes, the two men were no longer associated. Fee resigned his position in the Republican ''club,'' and Clay no longer extended his protection to the Berea community.28 It was not long before the Bereans would need his assist• ance. For the next few years, Clay busily pursued his political career in the Republican Party, while Fee preached to the faithful at Berea. It was a misquoted remark of Fee's which caused Clay publicly and finally to disavow the preacher and his religious radicalism. Fee, preaching in Henry Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn in late 1859, called for re• ligiously-inspired John Browns to invade the South. "We

27 Fee, .Autobiography, 103-4. 28 Fee, .Autobiography, 126; Clay, Life, 572. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 211

want more John Browns," he said, "not in manner of action, but in spirit of consecration; not to do with carnal weapons, but with spiritual, men who with Bibles in their hands and tears in their eyes, will beseech men to be reconciled to God. Give us such men," he concluded, "and we may yet save the J South." When his words, in garbled form, circulated in the South, some people concluded that Fee planned a Brown-like raid of his own. In Madison County, mobs gathered to drive Fee and his Berea disciples out of the state.f" In the crisis, Cassius Clay denounced John Fee. He feared that his political efforts would suffer if he def ended the un• popular Radical Abolitionists. Earlier, in 1855, he had dra• matically gone to Fee's support, but in December, 1859,he held himself aloof from the frightened minister. He reminded his neighbors that he had ceased to associate with Fee. ''It is well known that, on the 4th of July, from the stump, three years ago, I denounced the doctrine of the 'Radical Abolitionists' and the Rev. John G. Fee, that 'There is no law for Slav• ery!' " Clay said that he would use force to defend freedom of speech and of the press, but that he would not ''jeopard'' his life for such a "false issue.'?" A few months later, after Fee and ten of his friends had fled to Ohio, and just before the campaign of 1860 got under way, Clay repeated his position on the radicals, to show that the Republican Party had no part in the "higher law" group. "The Republicans in Kentucky have been opposed to, and have steadily denounced, any illegal in• terference with slaves, from home or abroad, they have given no countenance to the escape of slaves, to insubordination, or to servile insurrection. Hence, ... when the Rev. John G. Fee avowed from the stump the Radical Abolition doctrine, I de• nounced it from the stump.'' Such careful repetition illus• trated Clay's fear of being confused with the religious group.31 So the higher law teaching had been the stumbling block for these Kentucky anti-slavery spokesmen. A significant chapter in the history of Southern protest thought had ended. Cassius Clay and John Fee symbolized two wings of the movement, but

29 Fee, Autobiography, 146-8. so Clay to Richmond, Ky., Messenger, December 28, ~859, in Clay, Life, 236-7, footnote. 31 Appeal of C. M. Clay, March 31, 1860, in Clay, Life, 242. 212 JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY

they also indicated its weakness. Neither was successful in attracting an effective following in Kentucky. Reverend Fee could claim less than one hundred supporters, and many of these disappeared in the crisis. He had the reputation of being misguided, though his critics differed as to whether he were harmless or the leader of a band of "fanatical outlaws. "32 His argument contained a fatal weakness, however, which pre• cluded a wide reception. As he preached the thesis that slav• ery was inherently sinful, he saw erected the antithesis that the institution was divinely-inspired and Biblically acceptable. While Southern planters were not demonstrably less morally• conscious than other comparable groups at the time, they re• sisted and rationalized any effort to brand them as particu• larly sinful. As Fee preached to a dwindling congregation, so Clay also failed to attract a significant percentage of Kentucky's popu• lation. In 1851', in a gubernatorial election which counted more than one hundred thousand ballots, he received less than three percent of the total vote. In the decade of the 1850's, as sec• tional loyalties grew stronger, even that small party dimin• ished. But the idea that Clay propounded was appropriate and accurately reflected Southern economic and geographic reality. N on-slaveholding white voters rejected it more from fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding than because they dis• liked it. Clay ruefully complained of the situation. "When I converted mechanics, tenants, and laborers to my liberal views," he said, as he reviewed his career, "the Slave-Power either bulldozed them, or starved them into emigration to Ohio, Indiana, and the West.' '33 With all the propagandists of the pro-slavery party against him for fear of his bold plan to change the economic basis of the state, Kentucky voters fell into line. But when emancipation came, it came more as a re• sult of action by Cassius M. Clay and his political colleagues than from the preachments of John G. Fee and his religious associates. The careers of Clay and Fee indicated that the crusade against the "peculiar institution" was no homogeneous as-

32 Editor of Louisville Journal, in issue for April 4, 1860, copied into Clay, Life, 240-1. 33 Clay, Life, 570. A STUDY IN SOUTHERN ANTI-SLAVERY THOUGHT 213

sembly of agitators, nor was it merely a religious movement for the moral reform of slaveholders. It was instead a complex movement whose members were capable of heated intramural conflict and who flagellated those who differed with them. In 1856, at the Slate Lick Springs meeting where Clay and Fee argued, Fee well expressed the difficulty facing Southern anti• slavery leaders. After the break between the two, he said that ''The friends of slavery were not pleased; the friends of free• dom were divided.' '34 So they were, and Fee and Clay them• selves revealed the division which weakened the emancipation effort. DAVID L. SMILEY Wake Forest College