The Colored Brother's Few Defenders

OHS Research Library, Library, OHS Research The Colored Brother’s Few Defenders Oregon Argus, Oregon Abolitionists and their Followers Serial no. 6 Serial no. JIM M. LABBE The issue of slavery in the United States is more complicated than traditional narratives of the “good guys” who opposed slavery and “bad guys” who practiced it. Racial policies enacted during the mid nineteenth century reveal ON MAY 26, 1855, organizers of the Oregon Free Soil Convention placed a call for “Friends of that most Oregonians were both anti-slavery and anti-Black — most, but not Freedom” in the Oregon Argus newspaper. The June 27, 1855, meeting was the first political anti- all. In Oregon, a minority of Whites opposed slavery on moral, religious, and slavery gathering in the Oregon Territory. The Free Soil Movement sought to appeal to a broad anti- ethical grounds and fought for its abolition. Even within abolitionist groups, slavery constituency, but the convention’s moralistic resolutions condemning slavery’s proponents as some still could find no room for notions of actual equality between the races, “oppressive and cruel,” advocating the complete “overthrow” of slavery, and championing universal but some could. Some were also willing to make great personal sacrifices and “human liberty” are indicative of the abolitionist sentiments of some of its organizers. face harsh reprisals for their beliefs. These stories must be also told before a true rendering of the slavery controversy in Oregon and the nation can be revealed. final resolve: “That the ladies who have favored us with their presence, be requested to receive the thanks of this meeting for the manifestation they ON THE MORNING of June 27, 1855, the first political anti-slavery gather- have thus made in favor of HUMAN LIBERTY.”1 ing in the Oregon Territory, the Oregon Free Soil Convention, commenced The emergence and growth of the American abolitionist movement in Albany with over forty men and an unknown number of women and chil- between 1830 and the Civil War closely paralleled the overland migration to dren present. The convention’s resolutions, unanimously adopted, struck Oregon. Most historians of the antebellum period agree that after 1830, aboli- a distinctly moral tone, denouncing all Congressional legislation since the tionists demanded an immediate and complete end to slavery (“immediatism”), 1850 Fugitive Slave Act as “unjust and anti-republican, oppressive and asserted opposition in moral terms, and believed that racial prejudice lay at cruel” and railing against “aggressions of the slave power” that “by some the root of America’s social ills.2 Abolitionists consistently sought to advance artful ruse” might precipitate slavery upon Oregon and “any territory on African Americans’ “inalienable rights” as citizens of the United States as part the Pacific coast.” In declaring that “the question of slavery . can never of what historian Manisha Sinha describes as a broader “principled battle be compromised or settled but by the overthrow of an institution so utterly against racially restrictive notions of democracy.” The distinction between opposed to every principle of political as well as of all moral and religious abolitionism and broader anti-slavery politics became muddled as more abo- right,” the Oregon Free Soil Convention went further than the national Free litionists entered politics and anti-slavery arguments emphasized the general Soil Party, established in 1848, in its rejection of slavery. The delegates threat of slavery to American freedom and the republic. But as Sinha notes, planned to enlist everyone with the moral courage to favor the anti-slavery for abolitionists, the movement always remained firstly “the slave’s cause.”3 In cause, to meet again in October to craft a platform, and to share the con- Oregon, White supremacy dominated anti-slavery politics, with many oppo- vention proceedings with territorial newspapers. They concluded with one nents of slavery accepting or even advocating for its continuance or expan- 440 OHQ vol. 120, no. 4 © 2019 Oregon Historical Society Labbe, The Colored Brother’s Few Defenders 441 sion elsewhere, as long as Oregon was preserved for the White race.4 Other posed degradation of White labor. Hence, in March 1857, editor W.L. Adams of anti-slavery men in Oregon, like many Northerners, came to morally condemn the Oregon Argus newspaper denounced Democrats as “black democracy . slavery and support its nationwide demise but either could not fathom or founded on ‘niggerism’,” and declared that “the Republicans are in favor of pre- remained ambivalent about the prospect of a multi-racial democracy in the serving new Territories sacred to free labor, out of love for the teeming millions United States.5 Still, others may have considered it a political liability to the of poor white laborers.” The Republican Party was therefore “the only white anti-slavery cause. 6Abolitionists and their ideas about greater racial equality, man’s party there is.”12 George Williams’s notorious “Free State Letter” (pub- however, were never entirely missing from anti-slavery politics, even in Oregon, lished in full elsewhere in this issue) rep- whose historians have almost entirely overlooked them or only mentioned resents the culmination and distillation 979, OrHi 086130 photo file no. Library, OHS Research them in passing. Oregon’s Democratic politicians, however, put considerable of “white man’s” anti-slavery in Oregon. effort into assailing the abolitionists in their midst during the1850 s.7 Williams amplified anti-Black prejudice, Asahel Bush, editor of the Oregon Statesman and leader of the power- dismissed abolitionists as fanatics, and ful “Salem Clique” of prominent Democratic partisans, responded to the fortified assumptions about the purity of Free Soil Convention in his characteristic invective style. “A collection of the White race and its exclusive claims to old grannies held an abolition meeting in Albany,” he reported, declaring the region. Such sentiments prevailed in that these “nigger struck dames” had the audacity to expect the Statesman 1857, when a large majority of White male “to publish their stale fanaticism” and to ask “us to fill our columns with a voters adopted a state constitution that batch of Fred Douglasisms, which the sensible men who do patronize and rejected slavery, excluded free Blacks, sustain the paper don’t wish to see.” He dismissed the participants’ naive and denied suffrage and other civil rights moralism and added his frequent warning that “if anything could make the to all but White males.13 people of Oregon desire slavery, it would be the agitation of the subject But beyond the rhetoric of the most by such fanatics as these.”8 A week later, in a column entitled “Abolition- visible and powerful elites and the vast ism,” another powerful Democratic partisan and seasoned anti-abolitionist, majority of White male voters who gave Delazon Smith, piled on with similarly gendered and racist defamations and their consent can be found genuine a dismissal of the convention participants.9 Although small in number, the abolitionists who resisted Oregon’s Free Soil Convention attendees had clearly struck a nerve. White supremacist founding. White and DELAZON SMITH, a leading Democratic In the political debates leading up to statehood, Democratic partisans and Black, male and female, the overlooked partisan and published anti-abolitionist, editors across the territory branded their political opponents as “abolitionists” stories of Oregon abolitionists elucidate was among those who dismissed and or “black republicans” for their alleged “nigger-worshipping” and support an important part of our past, revealing denigrated the 1855 Free Soil Convention for “negro equality.” Democrats applied these labels indiscriminately both to how White supremacy functions to sup- participants and indiscriminately accused discredit and divide their opponents and to avoid conflict over slavery within press or marginalize dissent and the cir- them of “abolitionism,” a charge that was not their own party. Consequently, few individuals they targeted fit the label of cumstances that foster resistance. They entirely inaccurate. Smith played a key role in establishing viva voce voting in the Oregon “abolitionist” as historians have come to understand it.10 include the remarkable story of Black Territory in 1854, with the purpose of exposing As the Civil War approached, most Oregon politicians came to deride real abolitionists Abner H. and Sydna E.R.D. and controlling dissent in the electorate. abolitionists as fanatics because it was politically expedient and because abo- Francis, who directly collaborated with litionists advocated some degree of civil, political, or even social equality for prominent Eastern abolitionists such as African Americans — sentiments that directly challenged White supremacy.11 Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, opposed racist schemes to Slandering abolitionists and their support for greater racial equality became a resettle free Blacks in Africa, and championed Black civil rights in New Jersey popular tactic for uniting constituencies around the question of slavery. Bush, and New York — all before moving to Portland in 1851 and operating a suc- who quietly disfavored slavery in Oregon but rightly feared it would divide his cessful businesses until the early 1860s. Their lives and activism — spanning party, labeled his opponents the “Negro equality movement,” leading most of the East and West coasts of the United States as well as Canada — have yet to them to disavow abolitionism and base their opposition to slavery on its sup- receive a full historical account but highlight the uniquely repressive political 442 OHQ vol. 120, no. 4 Labbe, The Colored Brother’s Few Defenders 443 Jennings County Library environment in Oregon as well as a rare moment of interracial opposition to Black exclusion.14 In Oregon’s White abolitionists, the focus of this essay, we see a similar pattern of interracial experience and collaboration. They were individuals who had directly witnessed slavery or its effects and assisted in the struggle for Black freedom and equality before coming west.

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