ABOLITIONISM

“Abolitionists often identified themselves with the slaves in a mood not so much of compassion as of self- seeking liberation.” — Bliss Perry, THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN LITERATURE, page 233

Eli Thayer would comment, after the civil war, about the antebellum abolitionists, that they had constituted “a mutual admiration society possessed by an unusual malignity towards those who did not belong to it.” He instanced that they had “never exhibited any diffidence or modesty in sounding their own praises.”

However, the ultimate denunciation of the abolitionist movement would come considerably later, and from an unexpected source: If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a part of his own heart? — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO I’ve been reading a new biography of William Lloyd Garrison and musing on his life trajectory and have begun to have some really serious doubts about the manner in which this antebellum history has been presented to us in our public education. It has ever been presented as a story about abolitionists who were categorically righteous and were ultimately successful, as of course American slavery bit the dust. It has been presented as a story which is completely disconnected from all the race problems which our nation has faced subsequent to that grand victory, the golden era of fairness that came subsequent to the surrender at Appomattox Court House.

In particular, the story as presented to us during our public schooling makes it really troublesome, that before the civil war American Friends were being warned by their monthly meetings to steer clear of those abolitionists, steer clear of having anything to do with such non-Quaker groups. This detachment is made to seem exceedingly problematic at best.

In fact, however, abolitionism originated not as a movement to end slavery but as a movement to prevent any more blacks from being brought into “our” country. Abolitionism started out in a manner that very compatible with racism. That is, what it had sought to abolish was not slavery, not even the slave trade, but HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM merely the international slave trade. Notice that this had something for everyone, or at least something for everyone white — abolishing the international trade would raise the market value of young blacks raised locally! This went hand in hand with the colonization-in-Africa schemes, the Liberia schemes, which were not at all aimed at enslaved black Americans but instead at black Americans who were free, and which were not intended to help them but rather were intended so that “we” (we white people) could be rid of them.

So then just after the turn of the 19th Century, the international slave trade was at least nominally abolished. That phase of the abolitionist struggle had been triumphant. (Of course, the international slave trade actually did continue without much interruption, and only 1-count-’em-1 white American was ever hanged, half a century later just as the civil war was beginning, for having been caught engaging in it.)

However, after the nominal abolition of the international slave trade, abolitionism became (or pretended to become) a movement to free the black slave. The burden of my remarks here will be to determine what it meant to these non-Quaker abolitionists (such as William Lloyd Garrison, Waldo Emerson, etc.), against whom the Quakers were warning one another, to “free the slave”: was this freeing perhaps intended to benefit the lives of enslaved black Americans — or was it intended rather to do harm to the social reputation and economic prospects of insufferably elitist white slavemasters?

(When I say “insufferably elitist white slavemasters,” I am contemplating the mob of drunken armed young fop Southerner medical students who marched through Philadelphia defiantly shouting out the number of black slaves owned by their families down south, and of the easy manner in which these proud young white masters were constantly taking offense at slights and challenged others to duels to the death, with pistol or sword.)

Another way to ask this question I am asking would be: were the white abolitionists actually intending to help the black slaves or, instead, were they merely intending to harm the white slavemasters? Was it righteous or was it unrighteous? My contention here is going to be, it was decidedly the latter. Here is my reasoning: If one were to set out to ameliorate the lot of employees in general, one might begin with agitation for laws limiting the hours of work to the hours of daylight, laws enforcing Sunday as a day of rest, laws proscribing the employment of children who should be in school, laws adding safety shields to moving machinery, minimum-wage laws, healthcare, etc. A slave is a type of degraded employee, so why was there never any such agitation on the part of the abolitionists in regard to slaves? Why was there never any law providing a slave child with a childhood? Why were the existing laws regarding rape and murder not simply extended to effectively provide protection to the slave from being raped or murdered by his or her slavemaster? Over the decades, were such a campaign of gradual amelioration HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM to have been pursued, the distinction between the degraded “slave” and the ordinary “employee” might have been altogether erased, by gradually leveling up the “slave” to the life condition of the “employee,” until finally the employee with a right to wages and an old- age pension would have become virtually indistinguishable from the slave with a right to proper sustenance. My suggestion is that back then, for the abolitionists, any such movement to gradually alleviate the ills of slavery would have been regarded as a decided step in the wrong direction. It would have reduced outrage when their politics needed the generation of unrelenting over-the-top outrage. The abolitionist needed for enslavement to remain an intolerable offense, so that the political carpet would not be yanked out from underneath his own indignant feet!

(This was a perennial problem in the north, between the white abolitionists and the black abolitionists. The white abolitionists were forever going to the black abolitionists with the admonition “You’ve got to be prepared to sacrifice more for the cause,” and the black abolitionists were forever coming back to the white abolitionists with “What this whole thing is about is, we’re already sacrificing far too much.” Often the two groups were at loggerheads, and if you watch carefully during the carriage scene in the movie “Amistad,” you will see an attempt at a depiction of this situation.)

Since the white abolitionist was opposed on principle to improving the life conditions of the enslaved, what does that say about the motivation of this abolitionist? If the desire was not one of helping the black, then the desire could only have been one of hurting the white. —And our Quaker ancestors would have been very correct in urging one another to steer clear of entanglements with the non-Quakers who engaged in such worldly causes. This must have been a struggle of white American against white American, perhaps a class struggle between those whites rich enough to own blacks and those whites not rich enough to own blacks, in which the goal was to do harm to the social reputation and economic prospects of insufferably elitist white slavemasters.

Which hypothesis, I ask you, best fits the outcome? By the end of our civil war, we are told by our historians, the northern white population had “become weary,” and once the southern blacks were at least nominally freed, we discover them losing all interest. The condition of the southern black population had been rendered utterly desperate, and who except the southern black population gave a damn? They were due to collect, as reparations from their former slavedrivers, their unpaid wages for generation after generation of hard labor in the construction of America, and who except them gave a damn about stuff like that? If the movement to end slavery in America had been what it pretended to be, a movement to improve the lives and the life prospects of black Americans, then at the end of the civil war the northern whites would not have so suddenly and totally abandoned their struggle to produce justice and equity. Our actual behavior at the end of the civil war is explicable HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM only on the hypothesis that the actual motivation for white abolitionism had been the humiliation of other white Americans, a goal which had indeed been accomplished as the plantations had been reduced to ruins. The Southern high and mighty slavemasters had been tumbled and “all glory be to God”! Blacks, you have served our purpose, so now you can just “root hog or die”!

It was not accident that the attitude of contempt projected by most of the abolitionists, Henry Thoreau excluded, toward the white Southerner, was well designed to help the northerner feel better about himself or herself, but poorly designed to motive the white Southerner to clean up his or her act. I fear that it must be stated, as a 1st-order approximation with few significant exceptions, that the abolitionist “cause” lacked an intent to help America’s interracial situation to improve: The Emersons, Adamses, and other New Englanders, who demonstrably knew little about southern intellectual life, announced that southerners had no minds, only temperaments. American intellectual historians have been peddling that bigoted nonsense ever since ... the stubborn refusal of most American historians to take seriously the intellectual life of the Old South has gravely weakened our ability to assess the strength of the proslavery cause and account for its depth throughout the South. I don’t myself know that there was any significant intellectual life among the white slavemasters of the Old South. When I ask myself to produce even one example of such an intellectual life, I draw a blank. I cannot even bring myself to think of the famous slavemaster Thomas Jefferson as an intellectual, despite his inventions and despite a considerable familiarity with his writings (perhaps this is a blind spot). Nevertheless, I find I quite agree with the sense of what I have been told in conversation with Friend Will Stites, who, admittedly, has studied this subject far more thoroughly that have I. I do grasp that we have not as yet been able to bring ourselves to recognize the persuasiveness of the slaveholding argument, from the perspective of the slaveholding way of life. My suggestion is that there is a reason why we have not as yet been able to bring ourselves to such a recognition: were we to allow ourselves to grasp the inherent internal plausibility of this attitude, we might again be tempted. I am quite sure in my own case, for instance, that if for any length of time I were able to own slaves, in particular if I were for any length of time able to make easy sexual use of them, I might be as very readily convinced by the slaveholding argument as I presently am horrified by that argument. (Does such an admission paint me as sicker than most, or does it merely paint me as more honest than most?)

I think we can probably say that most of the white American abolitionists were, indeed, well meaning and sincere people who were quite firmly convinced that slavery was an evil, and who did have concern for the American black slaves. So as a broad generalization, I haven’t been able to buy Friend Will Stites’s thesis. That said, we must immediately add that there were those whom his thesis would describe perfectly; also, that being well HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM meaning, sincere, and firmly convinced of the inherent evil nature of an institution has never stopped anyone from also being just as (or more) racist than the perpetrators of said institution. Indeed, I think one of the most crippling problems the well-meaning, sincere, etc. white liberal do-gooders movement has had has been its own brand of racism and condescending stereotypes of the people who are to have the good done to them (whether or not they wanted that particular type of good done to them). Moreover, the predicament continues to this day.

As far as Quakers, Friend Will Stites has pointed out — well, there are those who warned against becoming involved with or part of larger movements or societies. Examples would include, he offers, Elias Hicks, Jesse Kersey, Rachel Hicks, Thomas Shillitoe, etc. But there were also Quakers who paid no attention to them and did join with these societies — to pick but a few examples, J.J. Gurney, Elizabeth Fry, S.M. Janney, J.G. Whittier, Isaac T. Hopper, and Lucretia Mott. (Isaac T. Hopper appears to one of very few who actually managed to get himself disowned by Hicksites, though he’s not entirely sure how Mott escaped such a fate.)

As far as some of these Quakers and their opposition to slavery and work against it ... Friend Will Stites supposes that somewhere out there, there is a fragment of convention, received Quaker wisdom that actually will stand up to actual historic investigation — the fact notwithstanding, that he has yet to view a single such fragment.

A few of Friend Will Stites’s observations — apparently the Quaker urban folklore network has it that Elias Hicks was a strong and vocal opponent of slavery. While he had not studied Hicks’s sermons, he had at least read through some of his letters, and his 1811 essay on slavery, and his JOURNAL, without uncovering anything a modern liberal Quaker would want to claim, and plowing through tons of stuff they would prefer wasn’t there. It has seemed to him that Friend Elias’s concern was not very much for the slave at all, but for the negative effects slavery had on the children of the slaveholders. His concern appeared to be that slavery produced moral bankruptcy in the children of the slaveholders and left them without any useful vocational skills so that they could become useful, self- sufficient, and productive members of Hicks’s imaginary society of yeoman farmers and artisans, not unlike that described by Crèvecoeur in the 1st half of LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER (which model he spent the 2d half of the volume demolishing).

As far as the sacred role model and producer of sound bites par excellence, Lucretia Mott, the more he read of her letters, sermons, diary, etc. the more he became impressed that her major task in life was the large-scale aggrandizement of Lucretia Mott. He was unwilling to go so far as to ascribe ulterior motives to her, but the more he looked into her materials the more he was led to the inescapable conclusion that she used her various themes with the apparent intention of glorifying herself. She also struck him as one of those white liberals out to do good who was so out of touch with the people she was going HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM to do good for as to being blinded to even realizing she was clueless as to the population she was going to bring good unto.

He offered to me that Jesse Kersey produced some material that is very much worth studying and holding up to close spiritual examination, but his comments and experiences re slavery were not among them. They seemed to be along much the same line as Hicks’s, though Kersey’s NARRATIVE was not as self-serving as Hicks’s JOURNAL.

He supposed that the ones that had most impressed him were Henry Hull, followed closely by Stephen Grellet and William Savery, 3 Friends who actually observed and had real encounters with slaves and who risked the actual wrath of actual slaveowners.

A special honorable mention was given to S.M. Janney. Whatever his other faults were (he seems to be the one who invented the bit of quaker-urban-folklore about William Penn’s sword and Fox’s “wear it as long as thou canst”) he is, the only Hicksite he had read so far who frankly admitted to having been misled at one point (regarding the colonization idea) and openly stated that he had made a mistake.

I’m not as well qualified to speculate on the motives of the abolitionists as Friend Will Stites. However, I have noticed that the thing that didn’t vary from one white abolitionist to another white abolitionist, that was very much a bone of contention between the white abolitionists and the black ones, was that the white ones were opposed on principle to any amelioration of the nature of human bondage. The white ones needed for slavery not only to be depictable as horrific, but also to be horrific. The worse the better. That was because they needed to be right in their righteous indignation. Any amelioration of the situation, clearly, any evolution toward decency, would have tended toward problematizing their outrage and invalidating their cause. On the record, black abolitionists commented on this white attitude, and on the difficulty they had with it. There would of course be exceptions to this, but the only exception to this, among the better-documented white abolitionists, of which I am currently aware, would be Henry Thoreau. Even at the Northampton Institution for Industry and Education, where Sojourner Truth worked, it was somewhat problematic to attempt to erase the distinction between white labor and black labor, so that when a white person went down into the basement and helped “Isabel” with the group’s laundry, that raised eyebrows and caused comment.

If you were to look into the history of labor agitation, you would find that there is no particular distinction to be made between the concerns of white laborers (and employees in general) during the antebellum period for improvement of their lot through legislation, and their concerns for improvement of their lot through legislation nowadays, except for one particular distinction: back then, one of the concerns of the white American worker was to create as much space as possible between the white American worker and the free black American. Not only did the whites need to be able to refuse to work alongside blacks, but also, white workers needed for black HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM workers to be paid less and to be treated worse by their mutual employers. There wasn’t anything that frosted the white workers back then, so much as the idea that black workers might benefit from their labor agitation for better conditions for white laborers. To be in favor of the improvement of the conditions of white labor, and to be a hater of black people, were two things which back then happen to have been inextricably entangled. I’m sorry to have to paint such a distressing, gut- wrenching picture of soul conditions back then, but if you were to study the primary source documents in detail, you’d have to come to the same conclusion. For instance, if you were to study the race riots in New-York, beginning in cigar-rolling factories where they employed both whites and blacks to roll cigars and continuing into the burning of black orphanages, you would find that race hatred was a key ingredient in the mix.

Color-blind commonality of purpose is very much a modern phenomenon on the labor scene. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1662

In Flushing, New York, Friend John Bowne was imprisoned and fined for allowing fellow Quakers to meet in the house he had erected in the previous year.

When the prison door was left unlocked so he might escape, Friend John chose not to avail himself of the opportunity. Instead he would appeal the case to the corporate offices of the Dutch West India Company. Although Governor Peter Stuyvesant would inform the Quaker that he might get off the ship anywhere he chose, and Friend John got off the vessel in Ireland, he then traveled through England to Holland for his trial — the result being that the Directors would instruct Governor Peter Stuyvesant that in the future he should overlook such cases where they did not directly interfere with local government: “The consciences of men at least ought ever to remain free and unshackled.” This was part of the struggle which now travels under the rubric “Flushing Remonstrance,” a significant precedent for the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution.

Friend William Penn would visit the Bowne home in Flushing. In 1694 Friend John would participate in the erection of a regular meetinghouse for the Flushing Monthly Meeting. Visitors to this structure would include Friend John Woolman, plus once some gentleman stopped by who was calling himself George Washington. These walls would witness the beginnings of organization for the purpose of the elimination of American race slavery. (This structure still stands, as the oldest house of worship in the state of New York and the 2d oldest Quaker meetinghouse in America.) RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1716

The Quaker meetinghouse on Nantucket Island, erected in 1711, was expanded at this point so that it would seat the more than 300 Friends who desired to take part in silent worship. At this point some Quakers of the Newport, Rhode Island community were engaging in the “triangular trade,” involving as one of its legs the bulk manufacture of rum and as another of its legs the international slave trade,1 and some black slaves were present on Nantucket, where at least one Quaker, Friend Stephen Hussey, was a slaveholder. During this year an Englishman, Friend John Farmer, was making a missionary tour of the colonies attempting to persuade us that chattel slavery was “not in agreement with Truth.” Winning the support of Friend Priscilla Starbuck Coleman, Friend John was able to persuade the monthly meeting on the island into a minute depicting enslavement as immoral. It was “not agreeable to Truth for Friends to purchase slaves and keep them for a term of life.”2 This declaration made the Nantucket monthly meeting the 1st group of Friends anywhere in the world to disavow human enslavement, but it would seem that the island’s Quakers would fall back somewhat from their commitment to racial fairness, for some sixteen years, while Friend John’s success on the island would

1. Below appears the rotting hulk of the slave ship Jem, as of the Year of Our Lord 1891 at Fort Adams near Newport on Aquidneck Island:

2. Refer to Friend Henry J. Cadbury’s JOHN FARMER’S FIRST AMERICAN JOURNEY, published in Worcester in 1944. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM not be matched by any great success on the mainland of the American colonies — in fact, in the Philadelphia meeting, he would be put under dealing (visited by an official committee and struggled with), and he would, eventually, be publicly disowned by the Friends. Furthermore, the Friends in England would honor the American disownment, so that Friend John would come to be regarded as troublesome on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. ABOLITIONISM

Flushing Quakers who would speak out against slavery would include Friend Horseman Mullenix and Friend Matthew Franklin, who would come with another antislavery Friend John, an American one, Friend John Woolman (not yet born), when he would travel on Paumanok Long Island and visit their monthly meeting to speak against slavery.

Costumes of Philadelphia Quakers HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1732

The issue of race slavery had been submerged among the Quakers on Nantucket Island for some sixteen years after the visit of Friend John Farmer, and the enactment of the initial Quaker minute recognizing human enslavement as “not agreeable to Truth for Friends to purchase slaves and keep them for a term of life.” At this point, however, Friend Elihu Coleman, the son of Friend Priscilla Starbuck Coleman, wrote a tract on the immorality of enslaving fellow human beings, and got it approved by the Nantucket meeting. (It would not be until the 1740s and 1750s that a reform movement against slavery would sweep over the American Friends.) ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1762

When Robert Hazard II died as the largest slaveholder in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, his son Thomas Hazard III, a Quaker abolitionist, declined to inherit these slaves.3

3. Please do not assume that this means that anyone became free. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1766

February 21, Friday: The Bishop of Gloucester preached before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: From the free-savages, I now come (the last point I propose to consider) to the savages in bonds. By these I mean the vast multitudes yearly stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to their great idol, the GOD OF GAIN. But what then? say these sincere worshippers of Mammon; they are our own property which we offer up. Gracious God! to talk (as in herds of cattle) of property in rational creatures! creatures endowed with all our faculties; possessing all our qualities but that of colour; our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense. But, alas! what is there in the infinite abuses of society which does not shock them? Yet nothing is more certain in itself, and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to assert his freedom. In excuse of this violation, it hath been pretended, that though indeed these miserable out-casts of humanity be torn from their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby become the happier, and their condition the more eligible. But who are You, who pretend to judge of another man’s happiness? That state, which each man, under the guidance of his Maker, forms for himself, and not one man for another? To know what constitutes mine or your happiness, is the sole prerogative of Him who created us, and cast us in so various and different moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhappiness amidst their native woods and deserts? Or, rather, let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their lordly masters? where they see, indeed, the accommodations of civil life, but see them all pass to others, themselves unbenefited by them. Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness. And then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a part. A return so passionately longed for, that despairing of happiness here, that is, of escaping the chains of their cruel task-masters, they console themselves with feigning it to be the gracious reward of heaven in their future state, which I do not find their haughty masters have as yet concerned themselves to invade. The less hardy, indeed, wait for this felicity till over-wearied nature sets them free; but the more resolved have recourse even to self-violence, to force a speedier passage. But it will be still urged, that though what is called human happiness be of so fantastic a nature, that each man’s imagination creates it for himself, yet human misery is more substantial and uniform throughout all the tribes of mankind. Now, from the worst of human miseries, the savage Africans, by these forced emigrations, are intirely secured; such as the being perpetually hunted down like beasts of prey or profit, by their more savage and powerful neighbours In truth, a blessed HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM change! from being hunted to being caught. But who are they that have set on foot this general HUNTING? Are they not these very civilized violaters of humanity themselves? who tempt the weak appetites, and provoke the wild passions of the fiercer savages to prey upon the rest. ABOLITIONISM

April: In New Jersey, James Anderson and his wife Ann Anderson manumitted Jane, a “Girl Born of the body of a Negroe Woman but supposed to be begotten by a White man which said Girl according to the Custom of the Land is held in Slavery and bondage.” James Anderson was one of the earliest and staunchest followers of the local religious leader Joseph Nichols, who was antislavery, so it is possible that the manumission was due to his influence. Since this happened a couple of months before the arrival of Friend John Woolman, it cannot be said to have been the result of his Quaker antislavery influence.

May 24, Saturday: In New Jersey, Paris Chipman and Margaret Chipman manumitted Thomas, a Negro boy. The Chipmans, like the Andersons, were followers of the local religious leader Joseph Nichols, who was antislavery, so it is possible that the manumission of a slave was due to his influence. Since this happened prior to the arrival of Friend John Woolman, it cannot be said to have been the result of his Quaker antislavery influence. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1767

Friend Anthony Benezet’s A CAUTION AND WARNING TO GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES, IN A SHORT REPRESENTATION OF THE CALAMITOUS STATE OF THE ENSLAVED NEGROES IN THE BRITISH DOMINIONS. COLLECTED FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS, ETC. (Philadelphia: D. Hall & W. Sellers, 1767) ABOLITIONISM

ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.

March 19, Thursday: The following abolitionist screed appeared in the Virginia Gazette: Mr. RIND, Permit me, in your paper, to address the members of our assembly on two points, in which the public interest is very nearly concerned. The abolition of slavery, and the retrieval of specie in this colony, are the subjects on which I would bespeak their attention. Long and serious reflections upon the nature and consequences of slavery have convinced me, that it is a violation both of justice and religion; that it is dangerous to the safety of the community in which it prevails; that it is destructive to the growth of arts and sciences; and lastly, that it produces a numerous and very fatal train of vices, both in the slave and in his master. To prove these assertions, shall be the purpose of the following essay. That slavery then is a violation of justice, will plainly appear, when we consider what justice is. It is truly and simply defined, as by Justinian, constans et perpetua voluntas ejus suum cuique tribuendi; a constant endeavour to give every man his right. Now, as freedom is unquestionably the birth-right of all mankind, Africans as well as Europeans, to keep the former in a state of slavery, is a constant violation of that right, and therefore of justice. The ground on which the civilians who favour slavery, admit it to be just, namely, consent, force, and birth, is totally disputable; for surely a man’s own will and consent cannot be allowed to introduce so important an innovation into society, as slavery, or to make himself an outlaw, which is really the abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM state of a slave; since neither consenting to, nor aiding the laws of the society in which he lives, he is neither bound to obey them, nor entitled to their protection. To found any right in force, is to frustrate all right, and involve every thing in confusion, violence, and rapine. With these two, the last must fall; since, if the parent cannot justly be made a slave, neither can the child be born in slavery. “The law of nations, says Baron Montesquieu, has doomed prisoners to slavery, to prevent their being slain; the Roman civil law permitted debtors, whom their creditors might treat ill, to sell themselves. And the law of nature requires that children, whom their parents, being slaves, cannot maintain, should be slaves like them. These reasons of the civilians are not just; it is not true that a captive may be slain, unless in a case of absolute necessity; but if he hath been reduced to slavery, it is plain that no such necessity existed, since he was not slain. It is not true that a free man can sell himself, for sale supposes a price; but a slave and his property becomes immediately that of his master; the slave can therefore receive no price, nor the master pay, &c. And if a man cannot sell himself, nor a prisoner of war be reduced to slavery, much less can his child.” Such are the sentiments of this illustrious civilian; his reasonings, which I have been obliged to contract, the reader interested in this subject will do well to consult at large. Yet even these rights of imposing slavery, questionable, nay, refutable as they are, we have not to authorise the bondage of the Africans. For neither do they consent to be our slaves, nor do we purchase them of their conquerors. The British merchants obtain them from Africa by violence, artifice, and treachery, with a few trinkets to prompt those unfortunate people to enslave one another by force or stratagem. Purchase them indeed they may, under the authority of an act of the British parliament. An act entailing upon the Africans, with whom we are not at war, and over whom a British parliament could not of right assume even a shadow of authority, the dreadful curse of perpetual slavery, upon them and their children for ever. There cannot be in nature, there is not in all history, an instance in which every right of men is more flagrantly violated. The laws of the antients never authorised the making slaves, but of those nations whom they had conquered; yet they were heathens, and we are christians. They were misled by a monstrous religion, divested of humanity, by a horrible and barbarous worship; we are directed by the unerring precepts of the revealed religion we possess, enlightened by its wisdom, and humanized by its benevolence; before them, were gods deformed with passions, and horrible for every cruelty and vice; before us, is that incomparable pattern of meekness, charity, love and justice to mankind, which so transcendently distinguished the Founder of christianity, and his ever amiable doctrines. Reader, remember that the corner stone of your religion, is to do unto others as you would they should do unto you; ask then your own heart, whether it would not abhor any one, as the most outrageous violater of that and every other principle of right, justice, and humanity, who should make a slave of you and your posterity for ever! Remember, that God knoweth the heart; lay not this flattering unction to your soul, that it is the custom of the country; that you found it so, that not your will; but HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM your necessity, consents. Ah! think how little such an excuse will avail you in that aweful day, when your Saviour shall pronounce judgment on you for breaking a law too plain to be misunderstood, too sacred to be violated. If we say we are christians, yet act more inhumanly and unjustly than heathens, with what dreadful justice must this sentence of our blessed Saviour fall upon us, “Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” Matth. vii. 21. Think a moment how much your temporal, your eternal welfare depends upon an abolition of a practice which deforms the image of your God, tramples on his revealed will, infringes the most sacred rights, and violates humanity. Enough, I hope, has been asserted, to prove that slavery is a violation of justice and religion. That it is dangerous to the safety of the state in which it prevails, may be as safely asserted. What one’s own experience has not taught; that of others must decide. From hence does history derive its utility; for being, when truly written, a faithful record of the transactions of mankind, and the consequences that flowed from them, we are thence furnished with the means of judging what will be the probable effect of transactions, similar among ourselves. We learn then from history, that slavery, wherever encouraged, has sooner or later been productive of very dangerous commotions. I will not trouble my reader here with quotations in support of this assertion, but content myself with referring those, who may be dubious of its truth, to the histories of Athens, Lacedemon, Rome, and Spain. How long, how bloody and destructive was the contest between the Moorish slaves and the native Spaniards? and after almost deluges of blood had been shed, the Spaniards obtained nothing more than driving them into the mountains. Less bloody indeed, though, not less alarming, have been the insurrections in Jamaica; and to imagine that we shall be for ever exempted from this calamity, which experience teaches us to be inseparable from slavery, so encouraged; is an infatuation as astonishing as it will be surely fatal: &c. &c.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1769

The South Kingstown monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends was the first group of Quakers in Rhode Island to take the issue of abolitionism in New England to the New England Quarterly Meeting of the Quakers, and then to the New England Yearly Meeting. The Yearly Meeting for 1769 would appoint a committee that, in the following year, would report back a recommendation that Friends manumit all slaves owned by them, excepting only the very old and the very young — and the Yearly Meeting for 1770 would act positively upon this recommendation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1770

In the previous year the South Kingstown, Rhode Island monthly meeting had taken the issue of abolitionism in New England to the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, which had appointed a committee to study the matter and report back in the following year. At this year’s meeting, the committee recommended that all New England Quakers manumit all slaves owned by them, excepting only the very old and the very young. The Yearly Meeting embraced this recommendation.4

Up in the northern reaches of the Rhode Island colony, in Cumberland, motherless Friend Jemimah Wilkinson, age 18, was very happy that this was happening. She was decidedly opposed to human slavery. However, apparently without as much parental guidance as she needed, she was also being caught up emotionally in the religious re-awakening that was following the visits of the Reverend George Whitefield to New England. She would be becoming involved with the New Light Baptists of Ledyard, Connecticut, known also as “Rogerenes.” Her attendance at such meetings would lead in August 1776 to her being disowned by her Quaker meeting, the Smithfield, Rhode Island monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends — and then she would in effect transform herself into a New-Age “channeler” for a spirit from the Other World, and create her own religious climate centered around her own person and her own personal whims.5

4. For the benefit of non-Quakers, I need to point out what this means. It means that there was not one single Friend who was so troubled by this as to stand in its way! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1773

8th day of 4th month: During this year the Reverend Samuel Hopkins of the 1st Congregational Church in Newport and President Ezra Stiles of Yale College were urging that freed Africans be resettled in West Africa. The Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends issued a query: Are friends clear of Importing, Buying or any way purchasing disposing or holding of Mankind as Slaves, And are all those who have been held in a State of Slavery discharged therefrom. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY EMANCIPATION

5. Examples of this sort of religious misconduct have always abounded. There has been, for instance, in our own time, “Judge” J.F. Rutherford of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society who channeled bigtime by receiving the concealed true meanings of Scripture direct from God as the occasion arose, and there has been the bestselling Jane Roberts, a housewife from upstate New York who was channeling “Seth,” and there has been the touring-circuit phenomenon J.Z. Knight who was channeling a Cro-Magnon warrior who identified himself as “Ramtha,” and of course, there has been the indefatigable and terminally enthusiastic Shirley MacLaine. The spiritual entities channeled have been variously assigned inventive names such as Ashtar, Aurora, Bashar, Emmanuel, Jesus, K17, Kuthumi, Lazarus, Lily, Mafu, Mary, Mentor, Merlin, Monka, Phebious, Ra, Ramtha, St. Germaine, Zolar, Zoosh — and in this indicated early instance in a Quaker or Baptist context, “Divine Spirit.” (You know the old one about how many legs a dog has, if you call its tail a leg, the answer being four and the reason being that calling a tale a leg doesn’t make it a leg? Well, in this context, calling self-privileging by the name “Divine Spirit,” in very much the same manner, doesn’t evade the sin of self-privileging.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1774

Friends were beginning to encourage one another to bring their African-American servants to meeting for worship, to see to their education, and to arrange special meetings for them.

The New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends was beginning to ban its members from owning slaves but Friend Elias Hicks was noting “a great unwillingness in most of them to set their slaves free.” In his Jericho meeting for worship on Paumanok Long Island in this year, he spoke for the first time.

The New England Yearly Meeting appointed a committee to recommend new laws that would “tend to the abolition of slavery.” Friend Thomas Hazard III of the South Kingstown monthly meeting, and Friends Moses Farnum and Thomas Lapham of the Smithfield monthly meeting, were on this committee. ANTI-SLAVERY

August: Friend Moses Brown petitioned that the town meeting of Providence direct the delegates that town would send to the General Assembly of Rhode Island, to support the bill he had authored in suppression of the participation of local citizens in the international slave trade, and local abolition of slavery, and manumission of existing local slaves. The town meeting rejected his abolitionist petition, instancing that such a proposal contained “matters of great importance” that might well “materially affect the property of individuals” — and that therefore “the freemen of the town” deserved to have more time to organize themselves in opposition to it, and protect their property rights and their American freedoms.

September 12, Monday: The town meeting of Providence, Rhode Island repudiated Friend Moses Brown’s petition that the town’s delegates to the General Assembly be instructed to support the bill he had authored in suppression of the slave trade, and abolition of slavery, and freeing of slaves. The town meeting rejected this by voting “that no instructions be given to the representatives of this town regarding the slave import bill.” Of course, no on the manumission of local slaves. Of course, no on the local abolition of the institution of human enslavement. But also, no on the suppression of local participation in the international slave trade. No, no, and no. There was something very fundamental about the concern that the white citizens of Providence had about liberty, that Moses simply had not grasped. What he had not grasped was that their concern about liberty was entirely a concern about their own liberty, and not at all a concern about somebody else’s liberty.

November: Information had been received that King George had declared the American colonies to be in a state of rebellion, when the General Assembly of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations met. The Rhode Islanders had to face the prospect of being vulnerable to the depredations of the British navy. With this in prospect, there was no time or energy to be wasted on abstract issues such as the nicey-nice agendas of the local abolitionists. A decision was reached that to manumit a slave, a citizen would be required to post a deposit of £1,000, an extraordinary sum, to ensure the town against that freed person becoming “chargeable,” that is, becoming an expense item on the town’s charity rolls. It was a resounding defeat, replicated throughout the colonies: on the eve of a Revolution fought in the name of freedom and liberty, the popular movement against slavery crested, then collapsed. The legislature in Massachusetts considered several abolition bills, but with British troops and ships massing in Boston harbor, the representatives passed the question on to the HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM new Congress, where it languished: John Adams, among others, considered it too “divisive” to pursue. Quakers in New Jersey presented “a flood” of petitions in 1774 seeking abolition and an end to the slave trade, but as in Rhode Island, the resulting bills were riven with amendments; before the abolitionists could demand reconsideration, the government there had collapsed. In Philadelphia in 1774, the immigrant polemicist Thomas Paine made his American debut by publishing an acerbic attack on slavery, and Anthony Benezet organized the world’s first abolition society, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes, Unlawfully Held in Bondage. But the society shut down after only four meetings, its legislative agenda abandoned for another five years. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1775

Robert Hamilton1 received his LL.D. from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in mathematics, and initially took employment in a banking house. TWO OR THREE ROBERT HAMILTONS

King George III signed an order freeing women and children working in British coal and salt mines. Many of the children freed were under 8 years of age and had been being forced to work 10 to 12 hour days. They had been being transferred with the mines or when their masters had no further use for them. The British Parliament enacted a gradual plan for the emancipation of the slaves of Scotland. Up to this point, on the inventory sheets of the collieries, human beings had been listed in precisely the same manner as machinery, as stocks, and as gin horses. At some point in the future, the intention was, hopefully by the turn of the new century, “Colliers and Coal-bearers and Salters” were no longer to be held “in a state of Slavery.”6

“EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES”: All the great geniuses of the British senate, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan, Grey, Canning, ranged themselves on its side; the poet Cowper wrote for it: Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, in this country, all recorded their votes.

This would be a famous year for American liberty as well, for in this year the 1st society for the abolition of slavery was being organized, in Philadelphia.

The first American abolitionist society was founded in Pennsylvania. The slave population below the Mason- Dixon line exceeded 450,000 — in South Carolina, Africans outnumbered whites two to one. Approximately one person out of each five of the people of the mainland North American colonies along the Eastern seaboard was at this point of African ancestry. The population of colonial Williamsburg, for instance, was 52% black.7 Unlike Latin America and the West Indies, North American slaves had a high rate of natural increase. Although only about 250,000 Africans had been brought to the mainland colonies before 1775, on the eve of the revolution the total black population numbered some 567,000. Most, of course, were enslaved on the tobacco and rice plantations of the Southern colonies — the population below the Mason/Dixon line exceeded 450,000. Black slaves outnumbered whites two to one in South Carolina, while in Virginia the numbers were about equal. In Pennsylvania, the 1st American abolition society was formed.

6. “Bearers” were slaves whose occupational specialty it was to carry the coal in sacks slung on their backs suspended from sumplines on their foreheads, or in baskets on their heads and shoulders, from working face to surface dump pile, at the rate of approximately 1 1/2 tons per day per slave. Typically, this occupation was filled by the wives, and often the sons and daughters, of the male slave miners. At the Dunmore colliery, for instance, the corporate asset sheets listed 28 colliers, 23 bearing wives, 17 bearing sons, and 29 bearing daughters. 7. When the town would be being “restored” in the 1920s, neither blacks nor slavery would be receiving any particular consideration! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM April 14, Friday: Friend Anthony Benezet called together a group of seven Quakers, Thomas Paine, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and, one source alleges, Benjamin Franklin (Franklin would indeed, in 1787 after the death of Benezet, become the president of a successor organization), at the Rising Sun tavern in Philadelphia, to form the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This would grow into a group of 24 of whom 17 were Quakers before being disbanded in the following year. ABOLITIONISM SLAVERY

THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1776

The Reverend Samuel Hopkins’s 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. The Calvinist minister of the 1st Congregational Church at Newport, Rhode Island, a white guy, had manumitted his one black slave, and hoped for a future of benevolence, in which as a consequence of the Revolution, the practice of human enslavement in America would be discontinued, and the black people would go back to Africa where they belonged, because America should only be for us white people. Fair’s fair, so if we fail to condemn slavery here, then “The Africans have a good right to make slaves of us and our children.... And the Turks have a good right to all the Christian slaves they have among them; and to make as many more slaves of us and our children, as shall be in their power.” ANTISLAVERY

Discretion being the better part of valor, while Aquidneck Island was occupied by the British military, the Reverend would abandon his 1st Congregational Church there and preach instead at Newburyport in HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Massachusetts and at Canterbury and Stamford in Connecticut (he would not return to Newport until 1780).

This reverend’s training school for black missionaries to Africa would fall apart due to the disruption of the revolutionary fighting.

During Winter 1775/1776, acting on behalf of the Rhode Island legislature, militia General William West had been ferreting out loyalists. For the duration of the American Revolution, Newport sent its Loyalists, including Joseph Wanton (son of the deposed royal governor) and Thomas Vernon (the Comte de Rochambeau would use Vernon House, on Clarke Street in Newport, as his headquarters), to rusticate for the duration pleasantly and harmlessly in Glocester on the farm of Stephen Keach.

VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1784

In Philadelphia, abolitionism was revived with a widened agenda, in the form of an association to be known as the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage and for Improving the Condition of the African Race (as an initialism, this predecessor of the NAACP would have to be known as the SRFNUHBICAR — except that initialisms hadn’t as yet been invented). Dr. Benjamin Rush joined.

April 29, Thursday: The Reverend Samuel Hopkins wrote from Newport, Rhode Island to Friend Moses Brown in Providence about the prospects of their abolitionist efforts: I have dared publicly to declare that this town [Newport] is the most guilty, respecting the trade, of any on the [North American] continent, as it has been, in a great measure, built up by the blood of the poor Africans.... This has greatly displeased a number [of the local white people], and I fear the most are far from a disposition to repent, especially they who have the greatest share of the guilt.... This gives me a gloomy prospect of our future circumstances!

I don’t have a date for this, but will insert it arbitrarily at this point. When the Reverend wrote a polemic against the international slave trade, at first the Newport Herald would agree to print his new tract — but then the editor would change his mind. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Declaration of Independence showed a significant drift of public opinion from the firm stand taken in the “Association” resolutions. The clique of political HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM philosophers to which Jefferson belonged never imagined the continued existence of the country with slavery. It is well known that the first draft of the Declaration contained a severe arraignment of Great Britain as the real promoter of slavery and the slave-trade in America. In it the king was charged with waging “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 open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”8 To this radical and not strictly truthful statement, even the large influence of the Virginia leaders could not gain the assent of the delegates in Congress. The afflatus of 1774 was rapidly subsiding, and changing economic conditions had already led many to look forward to a day when the slave-trade could successfully be reopened. More important than this, the nation as a whole was even less inclined now than in 1774 to denounce the slave-trade uncompromisingly. Jefferson himself says that this clause “was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe,” said he, “felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”9 As the war slowly dragged itself to a close, it became increasingly evident that a firm moral stand against slavery and the slave-trade was not a probability. The reaction which naturally follows a period of prolonged and exhausting strife for high political principles now set in. The economic forces of the country, which had suffered most, sought to recover and rearrange themselves; and all the selfish motives that impelled a bankrupt nation to seek to gain its daily bread did not long hesitate to demand a reopening of the profitable African slave- trade. This demand was especially urgent from the fact that the slaves, by pillage, flight, and actual fighting, had become so reduced in numbers during the war that an urgent demand for more laborers was felt in the South. Nevertheless, the revival of the trade was naturally a matter of some difficulty, as the West India circuit had been cut off, leaving no resort except to contraband traffic and the direct African trade. The English slave-trade after the peace “returned to its former state,” and was by 1784 sending 20,000 slaves

8. Jefferson, WORKS (Washington, 1853-4), I. 23-4. On the Declaration as an anti-slavery document, cf. Elliot, DEBATES (1861), I. 89. 9. Jefferson, WORKS (Washington, 1853-4), I. 19. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM annually to the West Indies.10 Just how large the trade to the continent was at this time there are few means of ascertaining; it is certain that there was a general reopening of the trade in the Carolinas and Georgia, and that the New England traders participated in it. This traffic undoubtedly reached considerable proportions; and through the direct African trade and the illicit West India trade many thousands of Negroes came into the United States during the years 1783-1787.11 Meantime there was slowly arising a significant divergence of opinion on the subject. Probably the whole country still regarded both slavery and the slave-trade as temporary; but the Middle States expected to see the abolition of both within a generation, while the South scarcely thought it probable to prohibit even the slave-trade in that short time. Such a difference might, in all probability, have been satisfactorily adjusted, if both parties had recognized the real gravity of the matter. As it was, both regarded it as a problem of secondary importance, to be solved after many other more pressing ones had been disposed of. The anti-slavery men had seen slavery die in their own communities, and expected it to die the same way in others, with as little active effort on their own part. The Southern planters, born and reared in a slave system, thought that some day the system might change, and possibly disappear; but active effort to this end on their part was ever farthest from their thoughts. Here, then, began that fatal policy toward slavery and the slave-trade that characterized the nation for three-quarters of a century, the policy of laissez-faire, laissez-passer.

May 3, Monday: Anthony Benezet died. His grave is in the Friends’ Burial Ground of Philadelphia.

On this day the abolitionist Friend Moses Brown demanded an answer to the question, “Has General Washington freed his Negroes or has he not?” (There would be no response.)

The Los Angeles newsman and storyteller who has weighed in on this issue, Charles Rappleye, has responded to this factoid on page 234 of his recent SONS OF PROVIDENCE: THE BROWN BROTHERS, THE SLAVE TRADE, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006) by offering some factoids of his own. Unfortunately, Rappleye’s factoids, although part of the “conventional wisdom” familiar to all American newsmen and storytellers, happens to be demonstrably inaccurate: Considering the well-known history of Washington’s stony silence on the question of slavery, and that he finally manumitted his 123 slaves only upon his decease, Moses’ query seems wildly off base.12

10. Clarkson, IMPOLICY OF THE SLAVE-TRADE, pages 25-6; REPORT OF THE LORDS OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL, etc. (London, 1789). 11. Witness the many high duty acts on slaves, and the revenue derived therefrom. Massachusetts had sixty distilleries running in 1783. Cf. Sheffield, OBSERVATIONS ON AMERICAN COMMERCE, page 267. 12. Presumably the newsman meant to use the idiom “wildly off target,” as in “The ball struck the batter on the elbow.” A runner who is “off base” can be tagged out, and one can suppose there to be something like “widely off,” which is to say, far away from the white base bag that the runner is supposed to be touching with one shoe — but there seems to be no such thing as being “wildly” off base. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM First, George Washington was the Virginia slavemaster who had selected a healthy male slave and had that man held down, while a healthy tooth was yanked out of his jaw with pliers, in order to have a piece of ivory to fit into a gap in his personal denture. This is not the act of a man who is maintaining a stony silence on the topic of some people’s lives belonging not to themselves but to other more fortunate people. Second, Washington would manumitted precisely one slave upon his decease, a mulatto manservant he called “Billy” who referred to himself as “William Lee,” who since he had become old and crippled had anyway lost all cash value: And to my Mulatto man William (calling himself William Lee) I give immediate freedom; or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which ha[v]e befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment) to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so: In either case however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars during his natural life, whic[h] shall be independent of the victuals and cloaths he has been accustomed to receive, if he chuses the last alternative; but in full, with his freedom, if he prefers the first; & this I give him as a test[im]ony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War. Third, this ostensibly precise figure supplied by the newsman, “123 slaves,” is a figure that requires considerable elaboration. There were 317 slaves on the various Mount Vernon farms, 153 of whom as the dower property of his spouse Martha Washington would at her death pertain to the Custis heir-at-law, her grandson George Washington Parke Custis, and 40 of whom were the property of a neighbor, Penelope Manley French. Fourth, in accordance with the standard manner in which estates were then probated and are still now probated, all debts must always be discharged in full before any of the deceased’s bequests can be honored. There is no getting away from this. Fifth, in accordance with the manner in which estates were being probated at the turn of the 19th Century in Virginia, since the black beneficiaries counted as mere property, the entitlements of all white beneficiaries would need to be satisfied in full before any of the indicated manumissions could take place. At that time in that place, there was no getting away from this. Therefore, for George Washington to have set up an enforceable plan for the manumission of either 123 or 317 persons upon the eventual demise of his spouse Martha Washington, it would have been mandatory for him to have set up an escrow account and to have registered in that inviolate account moneys or properties at least equal in value to the lives of those 123 or 317 human beings. And this he did not even begin to do. Instead Washington expressed what amounted to good intentions in regard to the balance of the slaves over and above his crippled mulatto manservant William Lee. –And although there is ample extrapolative puffery, in fact we have no documentary record that any one of these 123 or 317 human beings became free upon the demise of the widowed Martha (the only documentary record we have is that Martha expressed considerable irritation upon hearing of the expectation these people had, that as soon as she was dead they would be set free):

[Ite]m[:] Upon the decease [of] my wife, it is my Will & desire th[at] all the Slaves which I hold in [my] own right, shall receive their free[dom]. To emancipate them during [her] life, would, tho’ earnestly wish[ed by] me, be attended with such insu[pera]ble difficulties on account of thei[r interm]ixture by Marriages with the [dow]er Negroes, as to excite the most pa[in]ful sensations, if not disagreeabl[e c]onsequences from the latter, while [both] descriptions are in the occupancy [of] the same Proprietor; it not being [in] my power, under the tenure by which [th]e Dower Negroes are held, to man[umi]t them. And whereas among [thos]e who will recieve freedom ac[cor]ding to this devise, there may b[e so]me, who from old age or bodily infi[rm]ities, and others who on account of [the]ir infancy, that will be unable to [su]pport themselves; it is m[y Will and de]sire that all who [come under the first] & second descrip[tion shall be comfor]tably cloathed & [fed by my heirs HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM while] they live; and that such of the latter description as have no parents living, or if living are unable, or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they shall arrive at the ag[e] of twenty five years; and in cases where no record can be produced, whereby their ages can be ascertained, the judgment of the Court, upon its own view of the subject, shall be adequate and final. The Negros thus bound, are (by their Masters or Mistresses) to be taught to read & write; and to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the Laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the support of Orphan and other poor Children. and I do hereby expressly forbid the Sale, or transportation out of the said Commonwealth, of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly enjoin it upon my Executors hereafter named, or the Survivors of them, to see that th[is cla]use respecting Slaves, and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay, after the Crops which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm; seeing that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support so long as there are subjects requiring it; not trusting to the [u]ncertain provision to be made by individuals. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM In consideration of these pieces of information, does Friend Moses’s demanding interrogative, “Has General Washington freed his Negroes or has he not?” seem –to anyone other than this Charles Rappleye– to have been “off base” or “off target”? I would think not. It was an exceedingly pertinent issue, one that deserved not silence but the answer it did not ever receive, and even now is not receiving. As Friend Moses commented, if this general were to retain his slaves, such a fact would “indeed be a paradox to posterity.”

Should we put up with this sort of trade press book? I suppose we should, if the author is going to come to an important conclusion. But what conclusion does Rappleye draw from all the factoids he summons, true factoids mingled with a few false factoids? – Merely that this struggle between John and Moses, between vicious and greedy enslavers and generous and benign liberators, amounted to nothing but “sibling rivalry on a grand scale” (page 330). All this stuff we moderns think we believe about abolitionism being progressive and enslavement regressive is sheer irrelevance, for these black slaves and their anguish are mere stage props; what we have here is two white brothers “John and Mosie” taking center stage and chewing up the set scenery and relating to each other in the duke-it-out way that brothers relate to each other. “John was never going to cede to Moses the question of what was right and what was wrong.” Such an analysis being so simplistic as to be reductionist, the conclusion I would come to is that no, we should not put up with this sort of trade press book.

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1785

In 1774 there had been sixteen native Americans still alive in Bristol, Rhode Island. By this point the group had dwindled to two survivors.

During this year, according to the 1822 revision to the PUBLIC LAWS OF RHODE ISLAND, page 441, the legislature of Rhode Island enacted some sort of restrictive measure either in regard to slavery or in regard to the international slave trade. Unfortunately, neither the title nor the text of this enactment have so far been located. What we do know is that in this year William Ellery joined the abolitionist movement. This son of an international slave trader would become one of the leading advocates of the abolition of slavery. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1787

October 6, Saturday: An article by “Crito” in opposition to slavery appeared in a Providence, Rhode Island one-page gazette, the Gazette and Country Journal. “Crito” was Moses Brown and Mary Olney Brown, or perhaps was the Reverend Samuel Hopkins. ANTISLAVERY

October 31, Wednesday: Friend Moses Brown and four other Quakers prevailed at a meeting of the General Assembly in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. By a vote of 44 over 4 their long-sought ban on participation in the international slave trade was enacted. Governor John Collins and his ten assistants quickly signed this into effect. “An act to prevent the slave trade and to encourage the abolition of slavery.” This act prohibited and censured trade under penalty of £100 for each person and £1,000 for each vessel. Bartlett, INDEX TO THE PRINTED ACTS AND RESOLVES, p. 333; NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 298-9. ANTISLAVERY W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony. It declared that “Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Collonie forty pounds.”13 This law was for a time enforced,14 but by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter; for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of £3 on Negroes imported.15 This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.16 From the year 1700 on, the citizens of this State engaged more and more in the carrying trade, until Rhode Island became the greatest slave-trader in America. Although she did not import many slaves for her own use, she became the clearing- house for the trade of other colonies. Governor Cranston, as early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred and three vessels were built in the State, all of which were trading to the West Indies and the Southern colonies.17 They took

13. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, I. 240. 14. Cf. letter written in 1681: NEW ENGLAND REGISTER, XXXI. 75-6. Cf. also Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, I. 240. 15. The text of this act is lost (COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 34; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 31). The Acts of Rhode Island were not well preserved, the first being published in Boston in 1719. Perhaps other whole acts are lost. 16. E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to build bridges, etc.: RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 191-3, 225. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM out lumber and brought back molasses, in most cases making a slave voyage in between. From this, the trade grew. Samuel Hopkins, about 1770, was shocked at the state of the trade: more than thirty distilleries were running in the colony, and one hundred and fifty vessels were in the slave-trade.18 “Rhode Island,” said he, “has been more deeply interested in the slave- trade, and has enslaved more Africans than any other colony in New England.” Later, in 1787, he wrote: “The inhabitants of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the greater share in this traffic, of all these United States. This trade in human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended. That town has been built up, and flourished in times past, at the expense of the blood, the liberty, and happiness of the poor Africans; and the inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their wealth and riches.”19 The Act of 1708 was poorly enforced. The “good intentions” of its framers “were wholly frustrated” by the clandestine “hiding and conveying said negroes out of the town [Newport] into the country, where they lie concealed.”20 The act was accordingly strengthened by the Acts of 1712 and 1715, and made to apply to importations by land as well as by sea.21 The Act of 1715, however, favored the trade by admitting African Negroes free of duty. The chaotic state of Rhode Island did not allow England often to review her legislation; but as soon as the Act of 1712 came to notice it was disallowed, and accordingly repealed in 1732.22 Whether the Act of 1715 remained, or whether any other duty act was passed, is not clear. While the foreign trade was flourishing, the influence of the Friends and of other causes eventually led to a movement against slavery as a local institution. Abolition societies multiplied, and in 1770 an abolition bill was ordered by the Assembly, but it was never passed.23 Four years later the city of Providence resolved that “as personal liberty is an essential part of the natural rights of mankind,” the importation of slaves and the system of slavery should cease in the colony.24 This movement finally resulted, in 1774, in an act “prohibiting the importation of Negroes into this Colony,” — a law which curiously illustrated the attitude of Rhode Island toward the slave-trade. The preamble of the act declared: “Whereas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which, that of personal freedom must be considered as the greatest; as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal liberty to others; — Therefore,” etc. The statute then proceeded to enact “that for the future, no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into this colony; and in case any slave shall hereafter be brought in, he or she shall be, and are hereby, rendered immediately free....”

17. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 55-60. 18. Patten, REMINISCENCES OF SAMUEL HOPKINS (1843), page 80. 19. Hopkins, WORKS (1854), II. 615. 20. Preamble of the Act of 1712. 21. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3. 22. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 471. 23. Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 304, 321, 337. For a probable copy of the bill, see NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 299. 24. A man dying intestate left slaves, who became thus the property of the city; they were freed, and the town made the above resolve, May 17, 1774, in town meeting: Staples, ANNALS OF PROVIDENCE (1843), page 236. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The logical ending of such an act would have been a clause prohibiting the participation of Rhode Island citizens in the slave-trade. Not only was such a clause omitted, but the following was inserted instead: “Provided, also, that nothing in this act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to any negro or mulatto slave brought from the coast of Africa, into the West Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this colony, and which negro or mulatto slave could not be disposed of in the West Indies, but shall be brought into this colony. Provided, that the owner of such negro or mulatto slave give bond ... that such negro or mulatto slave shall be exported out of the colony, within one year from the date of such bond; if such negro or mulatto be alive, and in a condition to be removed.”25 In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State was passed,26 and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.27 Not until 1787 did an act pass to forbid participation in the slave-trade. This law laid a penalty of £100 for every slave transported and £1000 for every vessel so engaged.28

25. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 251-2. 26. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 329; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 444; RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VIII. 618. 27. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, X. 7-8; Arnold, HISTORY OF RHODE ISLAND, II. 506. 28. BARTLETT’S INDEX, page 333; NARRAGANSETT HISTORICAL REGISTER, II. 298-9. The number of slaves in Rhode Island has been estimated as follows: — In 1708, 426. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, IV. 59. In 1730, 1,648. RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL TRACTS, No. 19, pt. 2, page 99. In 1749, 3,077. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281. In 1756, 4,697. Williams, HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA, I. 281. In 1774, 3,761. RHODE ISLAND COLONIAL RECORD, VII. 253. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1788

A consignment of Josiah Wedgewood’s jasperware cameos was shipped to Benjamin Franklin, and would be

worn by the white people of Philadelphia as medallions on bracelets, as hair ornaments, and used, in a gold mounting, as lids for snuff boxes:

ABOLITIONISM

Spring: While Friend Moses Brown was in Boston, agitating for Massachusetts to ban the international slave trade, a free American black was kidnapped to be sold into slavery. There was considerable publicity and public outrage. With the help of the Boston Association of Ministers, the abolitionist bill came before the assembly and was enacted. The Massachusetts fines and penalties for violation of this new law would be, however, considerably lower than the fines and penalties that were prescribed in Rhode Island. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1789

February 20, Friday: At the meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends at the corner of Towne and Meeting Streets in Providence, Rhode Island, the Providence Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade came into being and selected its first officers. David Howell (January 1, 1747-July 21, 1824) would be president, Friend Moses Brown would be treasurer, and Friend Thomas Arnold would be recording secretary. Also involved in the creation of this Society were the Reverend Samuel Hopkins, minister of the 1st Congregational Church at Newport, Friend William Rotch, prominent merchant of New Bedford, etc. The new society would function as a sort of non-official “District Attorney,” or “Special Prosecutor,” dedicated to bringing before the bar of justice any violators of the ban that had been enacted by the General Assembly in 1787 against taking part in the international slave trade. ANTISLAVERY

MOSES BROWN According to Mack Thompson’s MOSES BROWN, RELUCTANT REFORMER (Chapel Hill NC: U of North Carolina P, 1962, pages 195-6): He already had a plan, drawn up in 1786, modeled after similar organizations in America and England. There were many people in the state eager to emulate their friends in New-York and Philadelphia. Meetings were held in Providence during January 1789, and on February 20, in the Friends’ meetinghouse, the Providence Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was officially organized with ex-Congressman David Howell as president, Thomas Arnold, merchant and Friend, as secretary, and Moses Brown as treasurer.29 Samuel Hopkins sent his congratulations but objected to the title given the society as being “too confined. It should, at least, be extended to the whole state. And I think it ought not to be confined to the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It ought to promote the freedom of those now in slavery, and to assist those who are free, as far as may be, to the enjoyment of the privileges of freemen, and the comforts of life....”30

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Meantime, in spite of the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried on a large traffic.31 Members stated on the floor of the House that “it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages, without secrecy, 29. See the announcements in the United States Chronicle, February 5, 12, 19, 26, 1789 30. The Reverend Samuel Hopkins to Friend Moses Brown, March 7, 1789, MOSES BROWN PAPERS (John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Volume VI, page 57) 31. Cf. Fowler, LOCAL LAW IN MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, etc., page 126. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their fellow- citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina. So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common consent.”32 These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation, and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation. South Carolina’s own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she “was unable to enforce” her laws. “With navigable rivers running into the heart of it,” said he, “it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.”33 The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of Georgia.

32. Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress, 1st Session, page 1000. Cf. also speech of Bedinger: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, pages 997-8. 33. Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 8th Congress,, 1st Session, page 992. Cf. Stanton’s speech later: ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 9th Congress, 2d Session, page 240. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1791

May 12, Thursday: Zephaniah Swift orated against human slavery at the North Meetinghouse in Hartford, Connecticut: ... So many volumes have been written on this subject, that nothing new can be expected; yet the subject ought never to be deemed exhausted, while an individual of the human race is groaning in shackles of servitude.... These victims are sold with less ceremony than the beasts of the field.... Can there be a human heart that does not soften with compassion at the cries of anguish and exclamations of sorrow when the ships depart from the coast - when the slaves take a last view of their native climes, to which they have no hopes ever to return - when they bid an eternal adieu to all that is dear to them.... ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1789

At the age of about 16 Oney “Ona” Judge was made a body slave (attendant) to First Lady Martha Washington in the presidential households in New-York and then in 1790 in Philadelphia (the Washingtons brought to New-York not only Ona but also her older half-brother Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Christopher Sheels, and William Lee, and then took to Philadelphia with the relocation of the national capital Ona, Austin, Giles, Paris, Moll, Christopher Sheels, “Postilion Joe” or Richardson, Hercules, and Richmond).

During this year 5 black male domestic servants would slip away from the John Brown mansion in Providence, Rhode Island and its associated workshops, going to Boston and attempting to merge into the free black community. Three of these 5 men, facing destitution, would soon return to slavery, promising their slavemaster that they would “behave better” in the future.

CONSTITUTION OF A SOCIETY FOR ABOLISHING THE SLAVE-TRADE. WITH SEVERAL ACTS OF THE LEGISLATURES OF THE STATES OF MASSACHUSETTS, CONNECTICUT AND RHODE-ISLAND, FOR THAT PURPOSE. Printed by John Carter. Providence, 1789. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1791

Robert Carter III, master of Nomoni Hall, where there were nearly 500 slaves, on Virginia’s Northern Neck, declared human slavery to be contrary to the Constitution of the United States, and to religion, and began to emancipate his many slaves.34 (The process would be completed after his death in 1804.) Melvin Patrick Ely would review Andrew Levy’s biography of this first emancipator in the Sunday Washington Post for April 24, 2005. Here are excerpts: Breaking the Chains THE FIRST EMANCIPATOR: THE FORGOTTEN STORY OF ROBERT CARTER, THE FOUNDING FATHER WHO FREED HIS SLAVES By Andrew Levy. Random House. In 1791, Robert Carter III, the master of Nomony Hall plantation on Virginia’s Northern Neck, began to emancipate his many slaves. In the years that followed, 500-600 African Americans received their freedom. The Old South would witness other group liberations, but never one so sweeping as this. Now Andrew Levy, who teaches English at Butler University, has taken up two related challenges in his intriguing but flawed new book: to resurrect and explain Carter’s act of emancipation and to discover why this extraordinary liberator is virtually unknown to Americans today. Far from being the “founding father” of the subtitle, Carter emerges as an outsider by nature who nevertheless remained a member of the planter elite. In one run for Virginia’s House of Burgesses, Carter received only seven votes. Yet he was named to the royal governor’s council, and he played chamber music and discussed the world within a rarefied circle in Williamsburg that included the governor and a young Thomas Jefferson. Levy’s careful reading of Carter family papers yields a vivid narrative of the future emancipator’s evolution. Alienated both from the royal government and many of his selfish Virginia peers, Carter nevertheless went through the Revolutionary War without seriously questioning the morality of slavery. In late spring 1777, feverish after a smallpox inoculation, he saw a “most gracious Illumination” and abandoned deism. Carter then “tested every major faith” and wrote “small but passionate defenses of the poor and enslaved.” He shared communion with humble folk both white and black and joined the Baptist church. 34. When William, Duke of Normandy had crossed the English Channel in 1066 to contest for the crown of England, he brought with him a clan of Norman knights known as Cartiers. According to the tapestry which records the Battle of Hastings, when William was in danger of being surrounded and overwhelmed by English soldiers, it was the Cartiers who rushed to his defense. By the time England founded Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, Cartier had become Carter and the family was elite. Around 1612, the Carter business cartel became intrigued at the potential of the emerging tobacco trade. John Carter was born in 1613 at Edmonton in Middlesex, England. He got to the Virginia Colony in 1635 from Essex in England and settled along the Corotoman River, which flows into the Rappahanock River near Chesapeake bay in Lancaster County, Virginia. This was where he founded the Corotoman Plantation. He became a colonel in the militia and helped drive the remaining natives from the region by 1640. With the support of his wealthy relatives and associates in England, he had the resources to outfit negreros. Noticing that Africans of the Ibo culture were excellent subsistence farmers in a semi-tropical environment, he purchased Ibos to provide the agricultural labor force at Corotoman. He produced numerous progeny by five wives, the most significant being Robert “King” Carter by his 2d wife Sarah Ludlow. He died on June 10, 1669 at Corotoman Plantation and was buried in Christ Church Cemetery in Lancaster County, Virginia. By 1700 “King” Carter was the richest white man in the English Colonies of North America, controlling nearly 300,000 acres of tobacco plantation scattered across the Northern neck of Tidewater Virginia with a labor force of about 1,500 slaves. His son Robert Carter Jr. produced in 1728 an heir named Robert Carter III. “King” Carter raised his grandson, who was educated at Cambridge University, inherited 78,000 of these acres scattered around Tidewater Virginia, and established his headquarters at Nomini Hall. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM By 1780, he forbade overseers to whip his enslaved laborers. Still, he was prepared to sell blacks, whether as punishment for escaping or to make good his prodigal son’s debts. Within a few years, he had drifted away from the Baptists and toward the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose faith encompassed numerology and purported conversations with denizens of other planets; Carter “joyously marginalized himself.” In 1791, Carter began the legal process that would emancipate, one small group at a time, the hundreds of black souls he owned, with whom he had come to empathize. Just as significant, he rejected Jefferson’s belief that liberated slaves ought to be moved away from areas of white settlement. Instead, Carter offered to rent parcels of his land to his former slaves, even displacing white tenants to do so. In 1793, he left Virginia for Maryland; there he lived out his life near his wife’s family, whom he preferred to his own Virginia kin. A sometime Baptist preacher to whom Carter delegated the work of liberation continued releasing group after group of Carter slaves well into the 1820s, long after their emancipator’s death. As Carter had hoped, the gradualness of the procedure seems to have tempered, though not eliminated, white neighbors’ misgivings. Levy pays some attention to the role Carter’s slaves played in their own liberation; once freed, they turned down his offers to sign on as employees, which “aggrieved” Carter. But the author also accepts and even amplifies the traditional view of free blacks as virtually helpless — “easy targets for random violence” and harassment by whites. The evidence he himself marshals suggests a much more complicated reality. Local courts, for example, acquitted one free black man suspected of helping a slave escape. They also heard a black woman charge a white man with assault; lodging such a public accusation was hardly the act of one who felt cowed. Levy attributes instances of free-black self-improvement and interracial cooperation on Virginia’s Northern Neck to the example set by Carter’s mass emancipation. (In fact, similar things occurred elsewhere in the Upper South as well.) The author suggests that gradual elimination of slavery was a viable option in old Virginia — and that Americans have willfully ignored Robert Carter’s story because it exposes our failure to follow in his footsteps. Rather than take Carter’s example to heart, Levy writes, white Southerners circled the wagons in defense of slavery while Yankees embraced abolitionism and, ultimately, a “great sacred war” of liberation. Levy’s argument — that the Civil War could have been averted if only leaders in both the North and South had behaved more sensibly and generously — had its heyday three generations ago; it is seldom broached today. At times, Levy himself seems not to believe it. He is more persuasive when he suggests that history lost sight of Carter because he differed so markedly from those founding fathers who “conducted a conversation with posterity.” Carter wrote little about his interactions with slaves and “wanted to be forgotten.” His relegation to obscurity may not be as willful as Levy fears. Carter’s mysterious life, then, becomes an inspiring vignette of moral self-redemption. Yet even if Carter had behaved less eccentrically than he did and had applied himself to converting his fellow slaveholders, would many of them have followed his example? I doubt it. Levy also undermines his case for the road HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM not taken when he depicts Carter, inaccurately, as the “only one” in the Virginia elite who “showed no fear of free blacks.” Still, those persistent misgivings about slavery in the Upper South could not overcome the reluctance of many whites to live in a biracial society of free people; nor, for most white citizens, did moral qualms outweigh the tragic convenience of keeping 4 million people in bondage — the count at the beginning of the Civil War. Among those who did seek a way out, Robert Carter remains both an emotional puzzle and the moral exemplar Andrew Levy proclaims him to be. Melvin Patrick Ely is a professor of history and black studies at William and Mary and the author of ISRAEL ON THE APPOMATTOX: A SOUTHERN EXPERIMENT IN BLACK FREEDOM FROM THE 1790S THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR, which won the Bancroft Prize for 2004.

March: The Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade brought its initial legal case. The Rhode Island owners of the brigantine Hope would be fined £200 for continuing to participate in the international slave trade after such participation had been outlawed by the General Assembly. ANTISLAVERY

October: Noah Webster, Jr. helped found a Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

It would be a mistake, however, to presume from this that the evil of human enslavement was very high on this dude’s list of Things That Needed To Get Fixed — in 1837 he would instruct a daughter, for instance, one who was being unduly influenced by abolitionists, that “slavery is a great sin and a general calamity – but it is not our sin, though it may prove to be a terrible calamity to us in the north. But we cannot legally interfere with the South on this subject. ... To come north to preach and thus disturb our peace, when we can legally do nothing to effect this object, is, in my view, highly criminal and the preachers of abolitionism deserve the penitentiary.”

Wow, we ought to lock up the Frederick Douglass who had followed the North Star merely to disturb Noah’s daughter’s slumber? –With its support coming from folks like this Noah, abolitionism certainly didn’t require any enemies!

During this month he was publishing, anonymously of course, a PROMPTER similar to Benjamin Franklin’s POOR RICHARD’S ALMANAC. Some representative examples of this publication’s Franklinesque wit and wisdom: • Page 21 — “It will do for the present.” This common saying does as much mischief in society, as rum or pestilence. • Page 34 — “Come, we’ll take the t’other sip.” Not only the grog drinker but too many others in various walks of life make the mistake of taking just the other sip. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM • Page 36 — “Any other time will do as well.” Yes, yes, but are you sure that any other time will arrive? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1793

In Providence, Rhode Island, the Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which had in its lawsuits experienced a little legal success and a few legal setbacks, lapsed into inactivity (until 1821, when its President, David Howell, would bring it back to life). THE TRAFFIC IN MAN-BODY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1794

May 8, Thursday: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who had been born in 1743-1794, had disproved the phlogiston theory, naming oxygen and discovered its importance in respiration and combustion. Here was a guy, I may opinion, who really knew how to think. His last letter: “I have had a fairly long life, above all a very happy one, and I think that I shall be remembered with some regrets and perhaps leave some reputation behind me. What more could I ask? The events in which I am involved will probably save me from the troubles of old age. I shall die in full possession of my faculties.” Lavoisier was obliged to watch as the head of his father-in-law, Jacques Alexis Paulze, fell into the basket, before he himself stepped up to the machine that had come to be known as the Guillotine. His brain was then deprived of its oxygenated blood supply.

(He had indicated an intention to blink as long as he could after the decapitation — but no blinking was observed.)

March 12, Saturday: Some men endeavor to live a constrained life, to subject their whole lives to their wills, as he who said he would give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off, — but he gave no sign.

Theodore Dwight spoke before “The Connecticut Society, for the promotion of freedom and the relief of persons unlawfully holden in bondage,” in Hartford, Connecticut: ... The injustice of it has been generally, if not uniformly acknowledged; and the practice of it severely reprobated. But when the question of total abolition has been seriously put, it has met with steady opposition, and has hitherto miscarried, on the ground of political expediency - That is, it is confessed to be morally wrong, to subject any class of our fellow- HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM creatures to the evils of slavery; but asserted to be politically right, to keep them in such subjection.... In this state indeed, and with the sincerest pleasure I make the remark, in consequence of the small number of slaves, the advancement of civilization, and the diffusion of a liberal policy, the situation of the Negroes is essentially different. Exposed to few severe punishments, and indulged in many amusements, compared with what is found in most other countries, they are here flourishing and happy. But even here they are slaves. The very idea embitters every enjoyment. SLAVERY ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1800

By this point, opponents of human slavery were in the habit of offering several arguments based upon the Old Testament and upon their Antisemitism. One claim was that the Jews, although they had been commanded by God to enslave, conquer, or slaughter His enemies, had been so commanded only on specific occasions, and that therefore this couldn’t amount to a general authorization of the enslavement of other peoples. Just because Jews had supposed on occasion that they were the instrument of God’s wrath didn’t mean that upon just any occasion just any group might elect itself to be the instrument of God’s wrath. Opponents of human slavery pointed out that this was dangerous reasoning as it might well be taken to imply that all Gentiles should be slaves. Opponents also pointed out that it was problematic, to consider all black Africans to be generically God’s enemies, as some of these people were to every appearance living as good Christians. Another, less specific, offering by the abolitionists was that the Christian New Testament, and a new covenant with God, had entirely supplanted the older covenant with the Jews, which had been abrogated due to their wickedness, and that the Christian obligation to love one’s neighbor had superseded any right of enslavement if ever there had been such a right. Various arguments needed to be advanced in order to cope with New Testament statements regarding the obligation that servants had to be obedient to their masters. One such offering was that although the New Testament recognized the actuality of bondage, it also urged slaves to seek their freedom. Another offering was to the effect that although the New Testament ordered the bound to submit to their masters, they were so ordered for purposes of the glory of God — and, manifestly, slave labor was not ever anywhere in the New World an institution in the service of the greater glory of God.

An Antisemitic “typological” method of interpreting Scripture, under which Jewish scriptures amounted merely to prefigurations and foreshadowings of the Christian scriptures which were to come, by signs and symbols in need of interpretation in the light of later Christian revelations, was dominant until the spread of the “higher criticism.” Under the “higher criticism,” the divine injunction to enslave people was actually a divine command to subjugate our sinful impulses. Under the “higher criticism,” which was equivalently Antisemitic, the Old Testament had been meant by God to be a body of spiritual instructions, but had been misunderstood by those wicked and misguided Jews as being merely cultural and ceremonial. This higher criticism was never, however, in any way influential in America’s antebellum South.

Notice that the Antisemitic potential of typology and of the higher criticism applied not only to those Semites who were Jewish, but also to those Semites who were Muslim. In that early generation of abolitionists, the animus against Islam and the animus against Judaism were closely linked. These readings of Christian scripture had considerable anti-Islamic potential. Just as a diatribe against the Jews was an important part of the argument toolkit of early abolitionists, whether they were white abolitionists or black abolitionists, so also was a diatribe against Islam — being for freedom and being against Islam were of a piece for these first abolitionists, whether they were white or black. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1803

Friends Arnold Buffum and Sarah Gould were wed. In Smithfield and Fall River, Rhode Island, this Quaker couple would produce ten children seven of whom would survive, and like their parents be actively involved in the antislavery movement. The daughters Elizabeth, Lydia, Rebecca, and Lucy would become writers. Elizabeth in particular would be prolific under her married name Elizabeth Buffum Chace, championing causes such as women’s suffrage, temperance and working conditions in the New England mills. Elizabeth also would produce a daughter who would become an author, Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman (refer to VIRTUOUS LIVES — FOUR QUAKER SISTERS REMEMBER FAMILY LIFE, ABOLITIONISM, AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE, by Lucille Salitan and Eve Lewis Perera. NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 370 Lexington Avenue). FEMINISM

“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM September 20, Tuesday: In Dublin, Robert Emmett was executed for organizing another Rising.

John Brown died. Charles Rappleye, in his SONS OF PROVIDENCE: THE BROWN BROTHERS, THE SLAVE TRADE, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006, page 336), on the one hand suggests –and on the other hand carefully refrains from suggesting– that John’s death was the reason that his brother Friend Moses Brown withdrew in approximately this timeframe from active participation in the abolitionist cause (we may remember that Rappleye’s major thesis in this recent trade press book shot through with factual errors is that all the Rhode Island hoopla had amounted to a mere case of “sibling rivalry”): It may presume too much to say that John’s death spelled the end of Moses Brown’s campaign against slavery, but it’s hard not to see a connection. Moses remained invested in the cause of Africans in America, and continued his personal engagement in attending to their welfare. But after 1803, he did not author another piece of legislation relating to slavery or the slave trade, nor did he take any steps to orchestrate lobbying efforts by the abolition society. It may be that Moses was simply exhausted by twenty-five years of politics, advocacy, and agitation. It’s possible that, according to some unspoken calculus, Moses decided he had paid off the debt he incurred by his role in the voyage of the Sally. And it is true that the abolition movement as a whole lost momentum around the turn of the century, having achieved much of its agenda in the North and seeing little prospect of success in the South. But in Moses’ case, it appears there was something else at work. It was not like him to leave off a pursuit he cared about so deeply as slavery simply because the political winds had shifted. And though he was growing old, he remained active in several fields, realizing some of his greatest successes late in his long life. His abrupt retreat on the question of slavery suggests that in this most personal and most heartfelt quest, the looming presence of his brother was a more powerful factor than Moses ever acknowledged, even to himself.... With John gone, Moses had lost his personal stake in the contest.35

35. Those of you who want to know the real reason why Moses discontinued his abolitionist activities should consult Rosalind Cobb Wiggins’s article “Paul and Stephen, Unlikely Friends” in Quaker History, Volume 90 Number 1 (Spring 2001). The real reason will surprise you. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1804

In England, the House of Commons passed a general abolition bill for the first time since 1792. However, the House of Lords tabled this bill against enslavement on grounds of late reception. British abolitionists resolved to revive activity, but without mass petitioning. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1819

Friend Benjamin Lundy began to devote himself fulltime to the abolitionist cause and began the antislavery periodical Philanthropist.

December: A rally in protest of the Missouri Compromise and the spread of the peculiar institution of race slavery was Samuel Joseph May’s first exposure to antislavery. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1821

In Providence, Rhode Island, the Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which had been inactive since 1793, resumed sponsoring its lawsuits under President David Howell.

After the extensive slavetrading career of James DeWolf of Bristol had finally been brought to a halt by the antislavery reformers, he had founded the Arkwright Mill in Coventry and had been the owner of the most successful privateer vessel of the War of 1812, the Yankee. At this point he was elected to the US Senate to represent Rhode Island. TRIANGULAR TRADE

The DeWolf Crest

The DeWolf Carriage HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1822

Though Lydia Maria Francis (Lydia Maria Child) was living with her brother the Reverend Convers Francis, Jr., who had become a Unitarian minister at First Parish in Watertown, and was attending his church regularly, she had become a member of the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem. Apparently, she maintained some connection there until the 1830s, when the pro-slavery stance of the pastor made her doubt “whether such a church could have come down from heaven.” Later she would be drawn to the preaching of the Reverend William Ellery Channing, though she despaired over his reluctance to embrace abolitionism wholeheartedly. She found Unitarianism “a mere half-way house, where spiritual travelers find themselves well accommodated for the night, but where they grow weary of spending the day.”

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1827

In Rhode Island, the last recorded meeting of the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade. ANTISLAVERY

The increasing schism among Friends, between Hicksite and Orthodox, began to have a deleterious impact upon Quaker educational institutions. The secondary education that was available inside the city of Philadelphia was under the control of the Orthodox body. Hicksite Friends, therefore, in the country, had begun to have a problem in securing an appropriate secondary education for their young people. Since 1799 they had for instance been sending their young people to the Westtown School in Chester County, but in this year this school also came under the control of Orthodox Friends. QUAKER EDUCATION

Costumes of Philadelphia Quakers We may note in passing that the school sponsored by the New England Yearly Meeting, in Providence, Rhode Island, the school now known as “Moses Brown School,” was firmly under the control of the Orthodox side of the schism. Hicksite Friends were not welcome, not even to visit, not even to worship. The reason for that was Friend Moses Brown himself. Moses was rich, Moses was used to throwing his weight around, and Moses had decided that abolitionism, the abolition of race slavery, meant segregation, the separation of the races — but the Hicksites had decided that instead what abolitionism meant was integration into a “Peaceable Kingdom” of the races: amalgamation. The two sides, Jim Crow segregationism versus liberal race mingling, had become anathema to one another.

(It is an irony of history that this pioneer in antebellum Jim Crow racial segregationism, Friend Moses Brown, is now considered to be among the Quaker saints — merely because, after he had calculated that his black slaves had paid him back through their labors the cash price he had paid for their bodies and souls, he did grant them manumission papers.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1828

Women joined the abolitionist movement in large numbers with increasing influence and visibility; Birmingham women formed The Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Association.

Moses Elias Levy, a radical Jewish social activist and utopian colonizer of East Florida, published, in London, A PLAN FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, CONSISTENTLY WITH THE INTERESTS OF ALL PARTIES CONCERNED. (This is considered to be the 1st Jewish antislavery publication.) “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

March: William Lloyd Garrison met Friend Benjamin Lundy, the Quaker anti-slavery advocate, publisher of the newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation, in Boston, and was converted to the antislavery crusade. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM August 7, Thursday: Friend Benjamin Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison staged an abolitionist meeting in the vestry room of the Baptist church in Boston. After they had said their piece the reverend of the church arose to caution his parishioners against allowing themselves to be swayed by such dangerous enthusiasms as these.

(What was the Reverend suggesting? Was he suggesting “Remember, we’re white people here, this really isn’t any of our problem”? —Well then, can you offer a more plausible parsing of what he was suggesting?)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth with his daughter Dora returned from their tour of the Netherlands and the Rhine.

Russian forces captured Akhalkalaki from the Turks.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day / Our public Quarterly Meeting was not a very satisfactory one, the preaching was far from being sound tho’ charity would induce the hope that the preacher was honest in her views, & what she said did not convey her real meaning else she was very ignorant of what our principles — In the Meeting for buisness we had several cases of importance - particulalry an appeal from a Woman & a case of difference between two Monthly Meetings was referred to the Quarterly Meeting & by them to a committee. — The excellent epistle from the Yearly to the subordinate Meetings was read &c. — After Meeting I rode with Wm Jenkins to Bristol ferry & Dined at Jeremiah Giffords, after crossing the ferry — I rode the rest of the distance to Providence with John Farnum & lodged at Wm Jenkins’s RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1829

Although Elijah Hinsdale Burritt had of course never been overt while residing in a place like Georgia about any antislavery views that he might or might not have brought down with him from New England, he was of course known locally to be a Yankee. Friends in the north had mailed some antislavery pamphlets to him and unfortunately someone came into his office and happened to pick up one of these pamphlets — and saw it for what it was. The teacher and astronomer would be compelled to flee the south in fear of his life, one jump ahead of a tar-and-feathers party, taking none of h is possessions, which of course would be stolen by various local activists. Back home in Connecticut he would open a boarding and day school at which instruction would be offered “in the higher English studies and in the ancient and modern languages,” and he would convert the upstairs of this school building into his observatory in which he would install a telescope and other apparatus. His brother Elihu Burritt, 17 years his junior, would attend this school for a time and would assist in the teaching.

James Madison was proposing a modest proposal before the Virginia Constitutional Convention, which consisted of slavemasters and race bigots, that the institution of human chattel bondage be abolished peacefully through reimbursement of all former slavemasters for property interest thus abandoned.36 SLAVERY “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

36. For some strange reason nobody was proposing a modest proposal that the institution of human chattel bondage be abolished peacefully through reimbursement of all former slaves for the personal abuses and loss of wage income which they had endured. Since this would have been a very real-world compensation and fairness issue, one wonders why no-one brought it up! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Speaking of Virginia slavemasters in need of help: Thomas Jefferson’s 1821 autobiography,37 containing his assertion of his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, made its first public appearance during this 38 year as part of his all-white grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s THE MEMOIRS, CORRESPONDENCE AND PRIVATE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Meanwhile, the Methodist David Walker was speaking with frankness, in his APPEAL, of the last resort to which it might be necessary to descend in order to destroy the peculiar institution of human chattel bondage:

“[O]ne good black man can put to death six white men.” ABOLITIONISM

December 2, Wednesday: To prevent unrest, President Vicente Guerero exempted the Tejas Territory of Mexico from the antislavery decree of September 15th.

“A Monody,39 made on the late Mr. Samuel Patch, by an admirer of the Bathos,” by Robert Sands, appeared in the New-York Commercial Advertiser: ... he dived for the sublime, And found it.

37. “Autobiography.” Peterson, Merrill D., ed. THOMAS JEFFERSON: WRITINGS. NY, 1984 38. Yes indeed, Jefferson had some children who were 100% white. 39. For another “monody,” see July 22, 1882. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

SAM PATCH

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 2nd of 12th M 1829 / Silent Meeting. — This morng I awoke from a Dream just before the Clock struck three - I at Portsmouth & on a piece of Ground near Lawtons Gulley, where I have often been both Sleeping & waking - I dreamed was with me a child it seemed as if he inclined to turn in to a certain place to get some water from a certain spring - I remarked to him he had better not go as it was dangerous but he inclined to, & steped round, on my going in another position I saw him opposite, & saw the Rock was shelving & crumbly or rotten, of which I appraised him & requested him to step round & come on my side - but as he moved his foot hold gave way & down he went into the water & tho’ it was not higher than his middle -he was evidently hurt & crying - in agitation I awoke This dream convey’d instruction & warning which I hope to remember & proffit by - & I dont know but I may convey it to HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM [blank] believing it was for his warning as well as mine.- RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1830

John Quincy Adams was elected to serve Plymouth as a member of the federal congress from Massachusetts.

By this point, age about 18, John Thompson had taught himself to read, if not to write, and he later would allege that he had come across and treasured a printed report of one of the speeches of John Quincy Adams, whom he takes to have been a Senator rather than a Representative: After I had learned to read, I was very fond of reading newspapers, when I could get them. One day in the year 1830, I picked up a piece of old newspaper containing the speech of J.Q. Adams, in the U.S. Senate, upon a petition of the ladies of Massachusetts, praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This I kept hid away for some months, and read it until it was so worn that I could scarce make out the letters. While reading this speech, my heart leaped with joy. I spent many Sabbaths alone in the woods, meditating upon it. I then found out that there was a place where the negro was regarded as a man, and not as a brute; where he might enjoy the “inalienable right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and where he could walk unfettered throughout the length and breadth of the land. These thoughts were constantly revolving in my mind, and I determined to see, ere long, the land from whence echoed that noble voice; where man acknowledged a difference between his brother man and a beast; and where I could “worship God under my own vine and fig tree, with none to molest or make afraid.” Little did Mr. Adams know, when he was uttering that speech, that he was “opening the eyes of the blind”; that he was breaking the iron bands from the limbs of one poor slave, and setting the captive free. But bread cast upon the waters, will be found and gathered after many days. But Mr. Adams has gone from hope to reward, and while his mortal body is laying in the dust of the earth, awaiting the summons for the re-union of soul and body, his spirit is with God in his kingdom above. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM This, we may note, is misdated, because the petition in question, by 150 Massachusetts ladies in opposition to slavery in the District of Columbia, the one the presentation of which to the House was opposed by Southern Representatives Thomas Glascock and Waddy Thompson, dates to something like January/February 1837, and thus could not possibly have been being read and studied by Thompson until seven years later than as here reported. Thompson’s report is also suspiciously similar to the report that had been made by Frederick Douglass in 1845, that in December 1831 he had read in a newspaper about a petition which John Quincy Adams had made to the US House of Representatives “praying for the abolition of slavery.”

ABOLITIONISM

In all probability the newspaper report to which Thompson is referring is a report of Representative Adams’s speech of February 9, 1837 in defense of his conduct in the House. It is as if Thompson had been reading Douglass’s NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, and had by imitation been making up a comparable acquisition-of-literacy fable for himself. Not only that, but he’s retrojecting this acquisition-of-literacy back into a period, 1830, before he would have been able to learn to read. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Robert Purvis met the abolitionists Friend Benjamin Lundy and William Lloyd Garrison.

Annual black conventions began in Philadelphia. In the convention of this year, Robert Purvis joined in an appeal to establish a manual labor school for blacks.

The free mulatto Shadd family moved from Delaware to West Chester outside of Philadelphia. Mary Ann Shadd would attend a Quaker school there, run by Miss Phoebe Darlington. Her father Abraham Shadd would be active in abolitionist groups and other political organizations that discussed black immigration to Canada, Africa, and the West Indies. He would function as an agent of subscriptions for Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator. He and his family would begin to socialize with the more affluent blacks of the area. The Shadd home in West Chester would function as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

In this year the shipbuilders of Chatham in Canada West (where Mary Ann Shadd eventually would teach) were launching their first commercial vessel, the Sans Pareil. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1831

Friend Benjamin Lundy brought his antislavery newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, to Washington DC. However, as William Lee Miller has pointed out, slavery was an interest, “concentrated, persistent, practical, and testily defensive,” while antislavery was a mere sentiment, “diffuse, sporadic, moralistic and tentative.”

January 1, Saturday: William Lloyd Garrison began publication of The Liberator in Boston (this would become the leading abolitionist journal in the United States).

I am in earnest, I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch. AND I WILL BE HEARD.

400 copies were distributed. In the first year of its publication, this new newspaper would attract only 50 white subscribers — but considerably more subscribers among the free blacks of the North. There were, of course, no slave-state subscribers of either race, and there was no Southern distribution. ... Every place I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free states — and particularly in New England — than at the South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave owners themselves.... I will be as harsh as the truth, and as uncompromising as justice.... SLAVERY ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Here is an illustration of the period, indicating what sorts of people the illustrator believed read The Liberator:

In this same illustration, note what the illustrator suspected that such a person might have on his wall, besides an illustration from a Shakespearian play: HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

I’ve had enough fun, I’ll show you the whole illustration:

The Reverend Adin Ballou’s “Epistle General to Restorationists” in the Independent Messenger would bring about a confrontation with the Reverend Thomas Whittemore in the Independent Messenger and the Trumpet and Universalist Magazine.

The following, about early connections between Frederick Douglass and Garrison in Baltimore, is from pages 30-31-32 of William S. McFeely’s FREDERICK DOUGLASS (Norton, 1995): When Frederick was nine, and again when he was twelve, Baltimore was the scene of legal actions involving white men who had insulted each other. The disputes were of seemingly small HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM importance. In the first instance, one party was knocked to the ground and the assailant was fined on dollar; in the second, the man who had done the insulting was jailed, but his punishment was not fierce — the prisoner took his meals with his jailer’s family. Yet these quarrels reverberated down through out history. The man knocked to the ground was Benjamin Lundy; the man put in jail was William Lloyd Garrison. The men with whom they had their disputes were slave traders; the subject of the disputes was slavery. Austin Woolfolk was a prosperous Baltimore merchant whose place of business was on Pratt Street. Like other businessmen then and since, he was eager to be regarded not only as successful but also as benevolent. In his advertisements he stressed his discretion and kindness. Woolfolk was a slave trader. The Maryland economy was changing. There were fewer and fewer huge slaveholding enterprises like Wye House. Landowners were looking for nonagricultural sources of income, which, it turned out, were not dependent on slave labor. It was not considered good form for Marylanders of substance to mistreat their people by dividing families, but it was even worse form to slide down the ladder economically. The landowners sold certain assets – slaves– in order to invest in others — mercantile or manufacturing enterprises. The Maryland archives record hundreds of sales of slaves, then in great demand in the cotton belt south and west of Maryland. Frederick’s aunt Maryann and his cousin Betty were sold south in 1825, for example. That year, Talbot County slaveowners received $22,702 from sales of their people to Woolfolk alone. They made their sales discreetly, but they made them. In 1827, Benjamin Lundy was indiscreet. The unembarrassable Quaker, publisher of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, which he worked on whenever he happened to be on his peripatetic crusade to end slavery, printed an account of Woolfolk’s having cursed one of his wares as the black man stood on the gallows, about to be hanged for participation in an attempted seizure of the Decatur, carrying him from Baltimore to Savannah. In his narrative, Lundy called the slave trader a “monster in human shape.” The merchant sought out the editor and knocked him to the ground. Picking himself up, Lundy did not strike back, but instead went to the courthouse and sued Woolfolk for assault. After many delays, a judge levied a fine of one dollar, saying Woolfolk had been greatly provoked. A week later in Boston, Lundy described the incident, and the ugliness of the slave trade, to a group that included another editor, the conservative young William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison later credited his commitment to the antislavery cause to this meeting with Lundy, in the boarding house at which they were both staying; soon he was attacking slavery in his Vermont newspaper. Impressed by his convert, Lundy walked from Baltimore to Bennington in the winter of 1829 to persuade Garrison to join him in Maryland. The following summer Garrison did come to Baltimore — the city where his mother had lived, briefly, and died. He and Lundy stayed at a boarding house on Market Street run by two Quaker ladies. Garrison soon met Jacob Greener, John Needles, and William Watkins, antislavery leaders in the black community. Immediately, the two editors began to take as their primary HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM target in the Genius of Universal Emancipation the locally hated slave trade that resulted in the sale south of slaves who, in Baltimore, held hopes of entering the growing and articulate free black society. Their most sensational attack was on two New Englanders, Francis Todd and Nicholas Brown, the owner and captain, respectively, of a Newburyport ship, the Francis, then conveying eighty-five slaves, sold by Woolfolk, from Maryland to a plantation on the Mississippi River south of New Orleans — the site of the most dreaded slave markets. Todd and Brown sued for libel, and Garrison, as author of the piece (which was no more offensive in its rhetoric — “domestic piracy,” “horrible traffic” — than the typical campaign invective of the day) was fined fifty dollars. And when he did not pay the fine, he was sent to jail, and from his cell skillfully assailed slaveholders everywhere. Eager to quell this incipient and effective martyrdom, Garrison’s jailers released him after forty-nine days. The publication of his new newspaper, the Liberator, followed, beginning on January 1, 1831.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 1st of 1st M 1831 / In commencing the new Year - my mind is engaged to supplicate for a renew’d engagement of heart to love & serve Him who has long been gracious & Merciful - dispencing his favours to me, who am unworthy of them. We know not what we may have to pass thro’ from season to season - nor how much we may stand in need of from his Holy hand - but may our minds be gathered increasingly to a humble reliance on his mercy & Holy support. —— I was early convinced that the Religion of Jesus Christ stood preeminently above all other sources of consolation & help thro’ the various changes incident to this life - All the Philosphy of Seneca & other Moralists falls below, & cannot stand without the aid & help of revealed religion & may we flee to it as our only rock of refuge against which the Storms of time has ever beat in vain. —— The days has passed pleasantly & may it be an earnest of the future thro’ the coming year. ——40 RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

In New-York, the English traveler Thomas Hamilton was experiencing local customs:41 It is the custom in New York, on the first day of the year, for the gentlemen to visit all their acquaintances; and the omission of this observance in regard to any particular family, would be considered as a decided slight. The clergy, also, hold a levee on this day, which is attended by their congregation.... The routine is as follows: The ladies of a family remain at home to receive visits; the gentlemen are abroad, actively engaged in paying them. You enter, shake hands, are seated, talk for a minute or two on the topics of the day, then hurry off as fast as you can. Wine and cake are on the table, of which each visiter [sic] is invited to partake. The custom is of Dutch origin, and, I believe, does not prevail in any other city of the Union. I 40. Stephen Wanton Gould Diary, 1829-1832: The Gould family papers are stored under control number 2033 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library, Box 8 Folder 14: April 1, 1829-December 31, 1832; also on microfilm, see Series 7 41. Men and Manners in America would be published anonymously two years later through Carey, Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM am told its influence on the social intercourse of families, is very salutary. The first day of the year is considered a day of kindness and reconciliation, on which petty differences are forgotten, and trifling injuries forgiven. It sometimes happens, that between friends long connected, a misunderstanding takes place. Each is too proud to make concessions, alienation follows, and thus are two families, very probably, permanently estranged. But on this day of annual amnesty, each of the offended parties calls on the wife of the other, kind feelings are recalled, past grievances overlooked, and at their next meeting they take each other by the hand, and are again friends.

Early October: Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, prohibited free blacks from taking copies of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator out of the post office. The penalty was that they would need to pay a fine of $20 and spend a month in jail (with “jail fees”), but if they were unable to come up with the $20 or the “jail fees,” an impossible sum, they were to be sold into slavery for four months. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM October 24, Monday: A report in the Star of Raleigh, North Carolina was reprinted in the Patriot and State Gazette of New Hampshire. The Star had reported that a copy of the Liberator, printed in Boston, had come to the postoffice there, and that this issue had been found to contain “the most illiberal and cold-blooded allusions to the late supposed insurrection amongst our slaves.” This sedition publication had been placed in the hands of the local Attorney General, and an indictment had been submitted to the local Grand Jury against the editor, William Lloyd Garrison, and the publisher, Isaac Knapp, and the Grand Jury had found it a “True Bill” of indictment for a felony offense. This newspaper report went on to remind local readers that the punishment for such an offense was established by law as, initially, whipping and imprisonment, and for a repeat of the offense, “death, without benefit of clergy”:

ABOLITIONISM

A cholera scare began in London: HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM November 13, Sunday: The abolitionists met in the law offices of Samuel Eliot Sewall on State Street in Boston to discuss the formation of an anti-slavery society in opposition to the gradualist agenda of the American Colonization Society.

STATE STREET, BOSTON

They agreed going in that it would be mandatory to secure at least a dozen positive votes to get this abolitionist society started. Present, besides of course Sewall whose offices these were, and William Lloyd Garrison, were: • David Lee Child, representing himself and also his spouse Lydia Maria Child who could of course not be present since this was an all-guys thing, a business meeting • Joshua Coffin • Isaac Knaap • Friend Oliver Johnson • Ellis Gray Loring ABOLITIONISM • The Reverend Samuel Joseph May • The Reverend Moses Thacher HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM • Friend Arnold Buffum of old Smithfield, Rhode Island

Their initial ballot unfortunately produced, among the fifteen who voted, only nine persons ready to proceed on an “immediatist” or “just do it” agenda rather than the agreed magic minimum number of twelve. They would therefore need to hold another meeting, in December, and then three more such meetings, before they would be able to complete their agreement on January 1, 1832 and then confirm it with their dozen signatures, in the basement classroom of the African Meeting House on Belknap Street in the presence of black witnesses, on January 6, 1832.

BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.

December: Frederick Douglass read in a newspaper about a petition which John Quincy Adams made to the US House of Representatives “praying for the abolition of slavery.” He had been hearing the word “abolition” and wondering what it meant, but had been rightly fearful to ask. There was enough, in the context of its use, to warn him not to appear to be too interested. The newspaper at this point supplied the connection he had needed. “Abolition” meant “abolition of slavery.” There were people in the world who regarded his condition, slavery, as wrong, wrong not merely for him personally but universally wrong, and these people wanted not merely to free him but also to abolish this condition entirely.

Grok that!

ABOLITIONISM

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM December: A negrero flying the Portuguese flag, the Diedade, master J.P. Carneiro, on its first of two known Middle Passage voyages, bringing an unknown number of enslaved people out of an unknown area of Africa, cast anchor at its destination, a port of Cuba.

The Diedade in particular may have been flying the Portuguese flag, but what concerned President Andrew Jackson in his message to the US Congress was that there were any number of such slaver vessels that were defending themselves against interception by flying at sea the “Stars and Bars” of the United States of America. They were sailing under false colors. Our flag, he suggested, was being “grossly abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations.” THE MIDDLE PASSAGE W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: The enhanced price of slaves throughout the American slave market, brought about by the new industrial development and the laws against the slave-trade, was the irresistible temptation that drew American capital and enterprise into that traffic. In the United States, in spite of the large interstate traffic, the average price of slaves rose from about $325 in 1840, to $360 in 1850, and to $500 in 1860.42 Brazil and Cuba offered similar inducements to smugglers, and the American flag was ready to protect such pirates. As a result, the American slave-trade finally came to be carried on principally by United States capital, in United States ships, officered by United States citizens, and under the United States flag. Executive reports repeatedly acknowledged this fact. In 1839 “a careful revision of these laws” is recommended by the President, in order that “the integrity and honor of our flag may be carefully preserved.”43 In June, 1841, the President declares: “There is reason to believe that the traffic is on the increase,” and advocates “vigorous efforts.”44 His message in December of the same year acknowledges: “That the American flag is grossly abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations is but too probable.”45 The special message of 1845 explains at length that “it would seem” that a regular policy of evading the laws is carried on: American vessels with the knowledge of the owners are chartered by notorious slave dealers in Brazil, aided by English capitalists, with this intent.46 The message of 1849 “earnestly” invites the attention of Congress “to an amendment of our existing laws relating to the African slave-trade, with a view to the effectual suppression of that barbarous traffic. It is not to be denied,” continues the message, “that this trade is still, in part, carried on by means of vessels built in the United States, and owned or navigated by some of our citizens.”47 Governor Buchanan of Liberia reported in 1839: “The chief obstacle to the success of the very active measures pursued by the British government for the suppression of the slave-trade on the coast, is the American flag. Never was the proud banner of freedom so extensively used by those pirates upon liberty and humanity, as at this season.”48 One well-known American slaver was boarded fifteen times and twice taken into port, but always escaped by means of her papers.49 Even American officers report 42. Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, COTTON KINGDOM. 43. HOUSE JOURNAL, 26th Congress, 1st session, page 118. 44. HOUSE JOURNAL, 27th Congress, 1st session, pages 31, 184. 45. HOUSE JOURNAL, 27th Congress, 2d session, pages 14, 15, 86, 113. 46. SENATE JOURNAL, 28th Congress, 2d session, pages 191, 227. 47. HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 31st Congress, 1st session, III. pt. I. No. 5, page 7. 48. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, page 152. 49. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, pages 152-3. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM that the English are doing all they can, but that the American flag protects the trade.50 The evidence which literally poured in from our consuls and ministers at Brazil adds to the story of the guilt of the United States.51 It was proven that the participation of United States citizens in the trade was large and systematic. One of the most notorious slave merchants of Brazil said: “I am worried by the Americans, who insist upon my hiring their vessels for slave-trade.”52 Minister Proffit stated, in 1844, that the “slave-trade is almost entirely carried on under our flag, in American-built vessels.”53 So, too, in Cuba: the British commissioners affirm that American citizens were openly engaged in the traffic; vessels arrived undisguised at Havana from the United States, and cleared for Africa as slavers after an alleged sale.54 The American consul, Trist, was proven to have consciously or unconsciously aided this trade by the issuance of blank clearance papers.55 The presence of American capital in these enterprises, and the connivance of the authorities, were proven in many cases and known in scores. In 1837 the English government informed the United States that from the papers of a captured slaver it appeared that the notorious slave-trading firm, Blanco and Carballo of Havana, who owned the vessel, had correspondents in the United States: “at Baltimore, Messrs. Peter Harmony and Co., in New York, Robert Barry, Esq.”56 The slaver “Martha” of New York, captured by the “Perry,” contained among her papers curious revelations of the guilt of persons in America who were little suspected.57 The slaver “Prova,” which was allowed to lie in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and refit, was afterwards captured with two hundred and twenty-five slaves on board.58 The real reason that prevented many belligerent Congressmen from pressing certain search claims against England lay in the fact that the unjustifiable detentions had unfortunately revealed so much American guilt that it was deemed wiser to let the matter end in talk. For instance, in 1850 Congress demanded information as to illegal searches, and President Fillmore’s report showed the uncomfortable fact that, of the ten American ships wrongly detained by English men-of- war, nine were proven red-handed slavers.59 The consul at Havana reported, in 1836, that whole cargoes of slaves fresh from Africa were being daily shipped to Texas in American vessels, that 1,000 had been sent within a few months, that the rate was increasing, and that many of these slaves “can scarcely fail to find their way into the United States.” Moreover, the consul acknowledged that ships frequently cleared

50. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, page 241. 51. Cf. e.g. HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 28th Congress, 2d session, IV. pt. I. No. 148; 29th Congress, 1st session, III. No. 43; HOUSE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 30th Congress, 2d session, VII. No. 61; SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 30th Congress, 1st session, IV. No. 28; 31st Congress, 2d session, II. No. 6; 33d Congress, 1st session, VIII. No. 47. 52. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, page 218. 53. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, page 221. 54. Palmerston to Stevenson: HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115, page 5. In 1836 five such slavers were known to have cleared; in 1837, eleven; in 1838, nineteen; and in 1839, twenty-three: HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115, pages 220-1. 55. PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS, 1839, Volume XLIX., SLAVE TRADE, class A, Further Series, pages 58-9; class B, Further Series, page 110; class D, Further Series, page 25. Trist pleaded ignorance of the law: Trist to Forsyth, HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115. 56. HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115. 57. Foote, AFRICA AND THE AMERICAN FLAG, page 290. 58. HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115, pages 121, 163-6. 59. SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS, 31st Congress, 1st session, XIV No. 66. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM for the United States in ballast, taking on a cargo at some secret point.60 When with these facts we consider the law facilitating “recovery” of slaves from Texas,61 the repeated refusals to regulate the Texan trade, and the shelving of a proposed congressional investigation into these matters,62 conjecture becomes a practical certainty. It was estimated in 1838 that 15,000 Africans were annually taken to Texas, and “there are even grounds for suspicion that there are other places ... where slaves are introduced.”63 Between 1847 and 1853 the slave smuggler Drake had a slave depot in the Gulf, where sometimes as many as 1,600 Negroes were on hand, and the owners were continually importing and shipping. “The joint-stock company,” writes this smuggler, “was a very extensive one, and connected with leading American and Spanish mercantile houses. Our island64 was visited almost weekly, by agents from Cuba, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and New Orleans.... The seasoned and instructed slaves were taken to Texas, or Florida, overland, and to Cuba, in sailing-boats. As no squad contained more than half a dozen, no difficulty was found in posting them to the United States, without discovery, and generally without suspicion.... The Bay Island plantation sent ventures weekly to the Florida Keys. Slaves were taken into the great American swamps, and there kept till wanted for the market. Hundreds were sold as captured runaways from the Florida wilderness. We had agents in every slave State; and our coasters were built in Maine, and came out with lumber. I could tell curious stories ... of this business of smuggling Bozal negroes into the United States. It is growing more profitable every year, and if you should hang all the Yankee merchants engaged in it, hundreds would fill their places.”65 Inherent probability and concurrent testimony confirm the substantial truth of such confessions. For instance, one traveller discovers on a Southern plantation Negroes who can speak no English.66 The careful reports of the Quakers “apprehend that many [slaves] are also introduced into the United States.”67 Governor Mathew of the Bahama Islands reports that “in more than one instance, Bahama vessels with coloured crews have been purposely wrecked on the coast of Florida, and the crews forcibly sold.” This was brought to the notice of the United States authorities, but the district attorney of Florida could furnish no information.68 Such was the state of the slave-trade in 1850, on the threshold of the critical decade which by a herculean effort was destined finally to suppress it.

60. Trist to Forsyth: HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115. “The business of supplying the United States with Africans from this island is one that must necessarily exist,” because “slaves are a hundred per cent, or more, higher in the United States than in Cuba,” and this profit “is a temptation which it is not in human nature as modified by American institutions to withstand”: HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 2d session, V. No. 115. 61. STATUTES AT LARGE, V. 674. 62. Cf. STATUTES AT LARGE, V., page 157, note 1. 63. Buxton, THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE AND ITS REMEDY, pages 44-5. Cf. 2D REPORT OF THE LONDON AFRICAN SOCIETY, page 22. 64. I.e., Bay Island in the Gulf of Mexico, near the coast of Honduras. 65. REVELATIONS OF A SLAVE SMUGGLER, page 98. 66. Mr. H. Moulton in SLAVERY AS IT IS, page 140; cited in FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE SLAVE TRADE (Friends’ ed. 1841), page 8. 67. In a memorial to Congress, 1840: HOUSE DOCUMENTS, 26th Congress, 1st session, VI. No. 211. 68. BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1845-6, pages 883, 968, 989-90. The governor wrote in reply: “The United States, if properly served by their law officers in the Floridas, will not experience any difficulty in obtaining the requisite knowledge of these illegal transactions, which, I have reason to believe, were the subject of common notoriety in the neighbourhood where they occurred, and of boast on the part of those concerned in them”: BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1845-6, page 990. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Meanwhile, in downtown Boston, abolitionists were holding their 2d meeting in the law offices of Samuel Eliot Sewall on State Street. How to persuade white people to oppose the enslavement of black people? –Were they going to be able to figure out how to get from here to a land of freedom and justice for all? This time, due to the winter weather, the Reverend Samuel Joseph May was unable to attend, but the group had picked up three concerned individuals who had not been present for the initial November 13th meeting: • The Reverend Abijah Blanchard • Alonzo Lewis • William Joseph Snelling

STATE STREET, BOSTON HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM December 26, Monday: Vincenzo Bellini’s tragedia lirica Norma to words of Romani after Soumet was performed in Milan’s Teatro alla Scala (although this initial production was not well received, later performances would be successful).

The riverboat carrying Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont downstream toward New Orleans ran aground on a sand bar. Shortly before this, they had witnessed a distressing scene of the forced expulsion of Choctaw tribespeople. They would also, in a few days, have a conversation with fellow passenger Sam Houston about the native Americans.

It was determined that a reward of $5,000.00 would be appropriate, to be paid out to whomever succeeded in effecting the prosecution and conviction of the abolitionist agitator William Lloyd Garrison. This reward was to be paid by the government of the State of Georgia. ABOLITIONISM

On a very much more mundane note, here’s a snippet from Charles Haskell’s REMINISCENCES OF NEW YORK BY AN OCTOGENARIAN: The East River was closed (jammed) by ice so that several hundred persons crossed on foot between New York and Brooklyn. The estate of Bishop Moore, which was part of that of Captain Thomas Clarke, and known as Chelsea, was inherited by his son Clement Clarke, before mentioned herein, who occupied the house and grounds bounded by Nineteenth and Twenty-fourth streets, Ninth Avenue and the river. In this year he commenced opening streets through the property. Wells & Patterson opened at No. 277 Broadway, next to the corner of Chambers Street, a store for the furnishing and sale of men’s hosiery, gloves, shirts, etc., etc., a man-millinery, as it was then termed-and this was for several years the only store of the kind, as well as the first that was opened in this city. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1832

The Pawtucket Society Church on Mammoth Road in Lowell, Massachusetts, the church of the Lew family, organized the first antislavery meeting of that town.

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier wrote of the Lynn prophet Moll Pitcher nine years after her death.

His poem is about a maiden fond and fair whose sailor lover had gone on a quest “for gold — for yellow gold,” the idea being to return rich and wed her. In his absence the maiden has forebodings and follows a well-trod path to the abode of Moll Pitcher: Moll Pitcher. She stood upon a bare tall crag Which overlooked her rugged cot A wasted, gray and meagre hag, In features evil as her lot. She had the crooked nose of a witch, And a crooked back and chin; And in her gait she had a hitch, And in her hand she carried a switch, To aid her work of sin — A twig of wizard hazel, which Had grown beside a haunted ditch, Where a mother her nameless babe had thrown HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM To the running water and merciless stone. [The fortuneteller harbors enmity towards her trembling visitor ....] The twain passed in — a low dark room, With here and there a crazy chair, A broken glass — a dusty loom — A spinning wheel — a birchen broom, The witch’s courier of the air, As potent as that steed of wings On which the Meocan prophet [the prophet Mohammed] rode Above the wreck of meaner things. Unto the Houris’ bright abode. A low dull fire by flashes shone Across the gray and cold hearthstone, Flinging at times a trembling glare On the low roof and timbers bare. [The fortuneteller gazes into the cup which constitutes her entire paraphernalia. ...] Out spoke the witch — “I know full well Why thou hast sought my humble cot! Come, sit thee down — the tale I tell May not be soon forgot.” She threw her pale blue cloak aside, And stirred the whitening embers up, And long and curiously she eyed The figures of her mystic cup; And low she muttered while the light Gave to her lips a ghastlier white, And her sunk eyes’ unearthly glaring Seemed like the taper’s latest flaring: “Dark hair — eyes black — a goodly form — A maiden weeping — wild dark sea — A tall ship tossing in the storm — A black wreck floating — where is he? Give me thy hand — how soft, and warm, And fair its tapering fingers seem! And who that sees it now would dream That winter’s snow would seem less chill Ere long than these soft fingers will? A lovely palm! how delicate Its veined and wandering lines are drawn! Yet each are prophets of thy fate — Ha! — this is sure a fearful one! That sudden cross — that blank beneath — What may these evil signs betoken? Passion and sorrow, fear and death — A human spirit crushed and broken! Oh, thine hath been a pleasant dream, But darker shall its waking seem!”

Like a cold hand upon her breast, The dark words of the sorceress lay, Something to scare her spirit’s rest Forever more away. Each word had seemed so strangely true. Calling her inmost thoughts in view, And pointing to the form which came Before her in her dreary sleep, HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Whose answered love — whose very name, Though nought of breathing life was near, She scarce had given the winds to keep, Or murmured in a sister’s ear. [... The maiden wanders the rocky shores of Nahant gazing vacantly at the sea. One day in spite of Moll’s prediction her lover’s sail appears and she returns to reason. The witch is tended during her final agonies in her miserable hovel by the little child of the maiden she had so cruelly wronged.] Nathaniel Hawthorne also eventually would write about Moll:

Among them was an Indian chief, with blanket, feathers and war-paint, and uplifted tomahawk; and near him, looking fit to be his woodland-bride, the goddess Diana, with the crescent on her head, and attended by our big, lazy dog, in lack of any fleeter hound. Drawing an arrow from her quiver, she let it fly, at a venture, and hit the very tree behind which I happened to be lurking. Another group consisted of a Bavarian broom-girl, a negro of the Jim Crow order, one or two foresters of the middle-ages, a Kentucky woodsman in his trimmed hunting-shirt and deerskin leggings, and a Shaker elder, quaint, demure, broad-brimmed, and square-skirted. Shepherds of Arcadia, and allegoric figures from the Faerie Queen, were oddly mixed up with these. Arm in arm, or [page 815] otherwise huddled together, in strange discrepancy, stood grim Puritans, gay Cavaliers, and Revolutionary officers, with three-cornered cocked-hats, and queues longer than their swords. A bright-complexioned, dark-haired, vivacious little gipsy, with a red shawl over her head, went from one group to another, telling fortunes by palmistry; and Moll Pitcher, the renowned old witch of Lynn, broomstick in hand, showed herself prominently in the midst, as if announcing all these apparitions to be the offspring of her necromantic art. But Silas Foster, who leaned against a tree near by, in his customary blue frock, and smoking a short pipe, did more to disenchant the scene, with his look of shrewd, acrid, Yankee observation, than twenty witches and necromancers could have done, in the way of rendering it weird and fantastic.

However, according to an anonymous writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica there was a “failed romance” during this period, unspecified as to whether with a male or a female, not to mention ill health, and so Whittier resigned from his duties as editor of the prime political organ of the Whigs of New England, Hartford’s New England Weekly Review, and retreated to his family’s home in Haverhill.

During this year William Lloyd Garrison converted Friend John to abolitionism.

TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. CHAMPION of those who groan beneath Oppression’s iron hand: In view of penury, hate, and death, I see thee fearless stand. Still bearing up thy lofty brow, In the steadfast strength of truth, In manhood sealing well the vow And promise of thy youth. Go on, for thou hast chosen well; On in the strength of God! Long as one human heart shall swell Beneath the tyrant’s rod. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Speak in a slumbering nation’s ear, As thou hast ever spoken, Until the dead in sin shall hear, The fetter’s link be broken! I love thee with a brother’s love, I feel my pulses thrill, To mark thy Spirit soar above The cloud of human ill. My heart hath leaped to answer thine, And echo back thy words, As leaps the warrior’s at the shine And flash of kindred swords! They tell me thou art rash and vain, A searcher after fame; That thou art striving but to gain A long-enduring name; That thou hast nerved the Afric’s hand And steeled the Afric’s heart, To shake aloft his vengeful brand, And rend his chain apart. Have I not known thee well, and read Thy mighty purpose long? And watched the trials which have made Thy human spirit strong? And shall the slanderer’s demon breath Avail with one like me, To dim the sunshine of my faith And earnest trust in thee? Go on, the dagger’s point may glare Amid thy pathway’s gloom; The fate which sternly threatens there Is glorious martyrdom! Then onward with a martyr’s zeal; And wait thy sure reward When man to man no more shall kneel, And God alone be Lord!

The New England Anti-Slavery Society was founded at Boston. ABOLITIONISM

Friend Abby Kelley was introduced to abolitionism by attending a lecture by William Lloyd Garrison in Worcester. ABOLITIONISM

January 6, Friday: In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 6th of 1st M 1832 / This evening recd a letter from my old & long loved friend Thomas Thompson of Liverpool it contained a pleasant acct of the travels of our friend John Wilbour now in that country on a religious visit as well of Stephen Grillett & Christo Healy - it also contained the information of the decease of our dear friend Jonathon Taylor of Ohio, in Ireland, who was also in that country on a religious Mission, I was comforted with receiving a letter from Thomas & think I shall now renew my correspondence with him. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM That evening 12 abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison and others, walked up “Nigger Hill” in Boston in a northeaster snowstorm to meet in the basement of the African Meeting House off Belknap Street and constitute themselves as a New England Anti-Slavery Society, in opposition to the agenda of the American Colonization Society which was seeking to return the freed Africans to Africa. There were “a number of colored citizens” present as observers as these white men filed to the front and placed their signatures in the meeting book. A number of black elders placed their names in a parallel column as a gesture of general support. Friend Arnold Buffum of Old Smithfield and Providence became president. Garrison became corresponding secretary, but declined to allow the new society any control over the editorial policies of his newspaper. ABOLITIONISM

January 25, Wednesday: First use of the majoritarian democratic term “To the Victors belong the spoils” — in a speech by US Senator William Learned Marcy of New York.

An act to abolish human slavery, introduced into the Virginia legislature by an all-white grandson of Thomas Jefferson, was defeated by only seven votes.69 This was the final defeat for all attempts to terminate the institution of slavery by legal means. Thomas Roderick Dew’s REVIEW OF THE DEBATE IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE OF 1831-1832 contained an accounting of the considerations taken subsequent to the Nat Turner revolt, for the elimination of the institution of slavery. In the wake of the insurrection, Georgetown rigidified its black code, threatening to punish with exceptional severity any person of color found in possession of abolitionist literature. On the plantation, via the grapevine, Fred Bailey must have heard a whole lot about the Turner revolt, and at this point he had just figured out what the highly charged term “abolitionist” meant — a term that he had been too cautious to ask about, of anyone who might know. ABOLITIONISM

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 25 of 1st M / Attended Moy [Monthly] Meeting held in 69. What, you didn’t know that Jefferson had some all-white progeny? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Town the weather & traveling was such that it was a small gathering - it however was a season of favour & Wm Almy & Hannah Robinson were engaged in acceptable testimonies. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

March: Friend Arnold Buffum of Old Smithfield and Providence, Rhode Island initiated the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which would be based in Boston and of which he would become the 1st president. Some mystery attends the disownment by Smithfield, Rhode Island, meeting of Arnold Buffum, a European American abolitionist and one of the most visible and vocal radicals in New England. Buffum had converted to the cause after buying the first issue of the Liberator and meeting Garrison. Though numerous sources refer to his disownment, none provide dates for the event, and monthly meeting minutes record no such act. Still, Buffum himself once stated that the Smithfield meeting had disowned him, and his daughter Elizabeth Buffum Chace recalled that the meeting told Buffum the matter might be “amicably settled, if he would give up this abolition lecturing.”70

June 1, Friday: William Lloyd Garrison attacked the proslavery duplicity of the American Colonization Society in his self-published 236-page THOUGHTS ON AFRICAN COLONIZATION: OR AN IMPARTIAL EXHIBITION OF THE DOCTRINES, PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSES OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, TOGETHER WITH THE RESOLUTIONS, ADDRESSES AND REMONSTRANCES OF THE FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR. These folks were, he amply demonstrated on the basis of their own writings, a group of people who rather than desiring the wellbeing of abused Americans of color, desired merely to eliminate the danger posed to slavery by the local presence of free persons of color by getting rid of these free persons of color, an agenda which was entirely due to cupidity and to “an antipathy to blacks.” 2,275 copies were produced and placed on sale at $0.62 each, one of them winding up in the hands of a student in the Lane Seminary of Cincinnati, Theodore Dwight Weld. ABOLITIONISM

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day 1st of 6th M 1832 / Today an Indian Man by the name of

70. Page 89 in Donna McDaniel’s and Vanessa Julye’s FIT FOR FREEDOM, NOT FOR FRIENDSHIP: QUAKERS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL JUSTICE (Philadelphia: Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2009). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Wamsley was hung for Murder, about two miles South of the Road to Pawtucket - I happened in town as he was going to the Gallows & saw him at a distance - it was a most affecting scene to see so many thousands flocking after the Miserable man. - such executions are in my opinion not calculated to effect any moral & certainly no relegious good - for among the crowd were many who were drunk, some staggering & others laying. - my heart was deeply affected with the scene & I could but deplore the fate of the poor object, & intercede that we might all be preserved from crime. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

November: The St. Helena Railway Co. sold the inclined plane known as “Jacob’s Ladder” to the East India Company for £882.50.

The American Colonization Society made its studied response to the accusations William Lloyd Garrison had been publishing against it:

“It is not right that men should possess that freedom, for which they are entirely unprepared, which can only prove injurious to themselves and others.” ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1833

There were a number of antislavery movements, which at times made for strange bedfellows. There was a racist anti-black anti-slavery movement, made up primarily of white persons, which sought to do away with slavery in order to benefit the soul of the white owner, and also in order to destroy the economic basis of the black life of the time, and basically these people believed that black people should not exist, or at least, should not exist here where we white people exist, and that white slaveholders should not exist, or at least, should not be a part of the society which we decent white folks inhabit. In distinct opposition to these folks, there was an anti-slavery movement, made up primarily of persons of color, which sought improved conditions of life for persons of color, ameliorations both material and spiritual. To cut across the division created by two such contrasting motivational patterns, there was an anti-slavery movement made up of persons who sought gradual, step-by-step, piecemeal practical improvements, new good amelioration following new good amelioration, a building process, and there was an anti-slavery movement made up of persons like William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Dwight Weld, Arthur Tappan, and Lewis Tappan who demanded immediate utter freedom and emancipation regardless of the personal or social cost, a tear-it-all-down-and-start-over project, and who were willing to see great harm done to real people if only the result would be some change in the wording of a law, written on paper somewhere. There was an Old Abolitionism which was racist, and an Old Abolitionism which was paternalist. There was a New Abolitionism which was Evangelical and millennialist and sought utter total top-down changes in society, and there was a New Abolitionism which was immanentist and which demanded utter total bottom-up personal transformation, within each individual soul. In Ohio, Shiperd Stewart and Philo Penfield Stewart (a student minister) established Oberlin College (more properly, the Oberlin Collegiate Institute), creating a town of Oberlin, Ohio (one of the last settlements to be created in Lorain County), as our nation’s 1st coeducational institution of higher learning (Oberlin College would be in fact the 1st in the US of A to admit either girls or persons of color on an equal basis with the white boys). The first home of the town was a log cabin put up by Peter Pindar Pease just north of the historic elm. The Pease family became the first Oberlin colonists. The first business, a sawmill, was established at what is now the southeast corner of Vine and Main Streets. It would be owned and operated by the college, at first, to forestall any type of greed or cheating that might derive from the profit motive, the college would be owning and operating all local businesses. (However, this sawmill would become such a financial burden to the college that eventually it would be sold to a private individual, thus setting a precedent for more private ownership of businesses in the town.) The first college building was constructed: “Oberlin Hall,” a boarding house for 40 students, was located approximately where the Ben Franklin store now stands. This building included classrooms for study — and would function as a church on Sundays. Its basement quarters were reserved for the college’s professors. (Oberlin Hall would be used by the college until 1854, when it would be sold to be turned into a retail outlet. It would burn down in 1886.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

According to Frederick Douglass’s NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE of 1845: [M]y master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay- side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’ home. They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed them. We have had three or four preachers there at a time. The names of those who used to come most frequently while I lived there, were Mr. Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr. Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at our house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed him to be a good man. We thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the impression that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the slaves. When he was at our house, we were sure to be called in to prayers. When the others were there, we were sometimes called in and sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more notice of us than either of the other ministers. He could not come among us without betraying his sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity to see it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The slaveholder James Gillespie Birney returned to Danville, Kentucky and devoted himself wholly to the antislavery cause. In the following year he would put his money where his mouth was, freeing his own slaves.71

An ardent abolitionist, Myron Holley began publishing the Rochester, New York Freeman.

December 4, Wednesday: The Calculational Engine project had soaked up to date some £17,000 in tax revenues, a truly enormous sum of money, and there was nothing whatever to show for it. Charles Babbage ordered his contractor Joseph Clement, as preparations for removal of the engine were completed: To move all parts of the engine except the large platform for the calculating end and the large columns; all the drawings, (the 27 still attached to drawing boards were not be taken off them, the contractor was to include cost of the boards if necessary); all the rough sketches, small notebook on contrivances determined upon and the several loose sheets of mechanical notations of the Calculational Engine; and all the patterns from which castings had been made and thus were no longer required. He was to oil and pack all steel parts to avoid rust, and list the parts remaining at his workshop that were the property of the Government (these materials would be removed in 1843 to King’s College, London).

In Philadelphia, a group of black and white male abolitionists organized the American Anti-Slavery Society and Arthur Tappan became its 1st president. The Reverend Samuel Joseph May attended, and William Lloyd

71. Legally, there was a distinction between a slaveowner and a slaveholder. The owner of a slave might rent the custody and use of that slave out for a year, in which case the distinction would arise and be a meaningful one in law, since the other party to such a transaction would be the holder but not the owner. However, in this Kouroo database, I will ordinarily be deploying the term “slaveholder” as the normative term, as we are no longer all that concerned with the making of such fine economic distinctions but are, rather, concerned almost exclusively with the human issues involved in the enslavement of other human beings. I use the term “slaveholder” in preference to “slaveowner” not only because no human being can really own another human being but also because it is important that slavery never be defined as the legal ownership of one person by another — in fact not only had human slavery existed before the first such legislation but also it has continued long since we abolished all legal deployment of the term “slave.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Garrison, and also Friend John Greenleaf Whittier, Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan, Friends James and Lucretia Mott, etc. Of the about 60 people in attendance only 21 were members of the Religious Society of Friends, because conservative Quakers would have been keeping their distance from all involvement in outside organizations, even those such as this one whose aims they generally greatly respected. The Reverend Daniel Starr Southmayd, not of Concord but “of Lowell, Massachusetts,” was a delegate. On the last day of the meeting, the new society urged that white females should also set up their own auxiliary anti-slavery societies. In that period the claim was being made, that True Womanhood would restrict itself to the home, and this claim was being hotly contested by women who would insist that the True Woman was merely following her natural True Womanly inclination, in seeking to succor the defenseless in such institutions as the Samaritan Asylum for Indigent Colored Children in Boston.

As wives and mothers, as sisters and daughters, we are bound to urge men to cease to do evil. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM There were three blacks present, including a Philadelphia barber and dentist named James McCrummill and the well-to-do Robert Purvis of Philadelphia — who although he appeared white:

was known locally to be actually not a white man at all.72 Purvis signed the Declaration of Sentiments.

(Notice that although white men of this period generally feared social contamination by inferior blacks, even an intimate touching, as by a barber, could be permissible, as depicted here in a Virginia barbershop — so long as the relationship was one clearly marked as an intransitive one, between a superior or customer and an inferior or servant.)

72. This would be by way of contrast with Senator Daniel Webster, who was so dark-complected that once he was actually turned away by a commercial establishment that imagined it was dealing with a black American, but who was generally known to be, actually, a white man through and through. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM There were two or three Unitarians. At one point during the convention a young man at the door was speaking of his desire to dip his hand in Garrison’s blood but the Philadelphia police, rather than take such a person into detention, warned the convention organizers that the path of discretion would be for them to meet only during hours of daylight.

Garrison authored the broadside “Declaration of Sentiments” of the meeting (Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention), which under an image of Samson strangling the lion included a renunciation of “the use of carnal weapons” and a declaration that “doing evil that good may come” represented the antithesis of Christian ethics. At one point Friend Lucretia Mott rose to suggest from the back of the room that in the draft of this resolution, the mention of God be placed before rather than after the mention of the Declaration of Independence. As a woman and a non-delegate she spoke with such diffidence that the chairman had to encourage her. This could very well have been the 1st time that many in the room had heard a woman speak in a public meeting.73

After silence in the Quaker manner, it was time for the actual delegates, that is, the menfolk, to file forward and affix their signatures to the declaration — this would be the signature that Whittier would later say he was more proud of, than of his signature on the title page of any of his books.

The broadside manifesto “Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention Assembled in Philadelphia, December 4, 1833,” as so nicely illustrated by Rueben S. Gilbert of Merrihew & Gunn (his work excerpted above), announced the reasons for formation of the society and enumerated its goals:

73. As a woman she would not of course have been officially a delegate to this convention, but a mere spectator accompanying her spouse. Of course no-one thought of the idea of having women as delegates, let alone to solicit the signatures of women, nor is it likely that any of the women even contemplated the possibility of a woman’s adding her own signature Such things were not just unheard-of, in this period, but also, very clearly, they went unthought as well. For a woman to have sported a signature would have been like for a woman to have sported a beard. During this month Abba Alcott, pregnant wife of Bronson Alcott and mother of an infant author-to-be Louisa May Alcott, was helping Lucretia Mott form the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. THE ALCOTT FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society Whereas the Most High God “hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” and hath commanded them to love their neighbors as themselves; and whereas, our National Existence is based upon this principle, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence, “that all mankind are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and whereas, after the lapse of nearly sixty years, since the faith and honor of the American people were pledged to this avowal, before Almighty God and the World, nearly one-sixth part of the nation are held in bondage by their fellow-citizens; and whereas, Slavery is contrary to the principles of natural justice, of our republican form of government, and of the Christian religion, and is destructive of the prosperity of the country, while it is endangering the peace, union, and liberties of the States; and whereas, we believe it the duty and interest of the masters immediately to emancipate their slaves, and that no scheme of expatriation, either voluntary or by compulsion, can remove this great and increasing evil; and whereas, we believe that it is practicable, by appeals to the consciences, hearts, and interests of the people, to awaken a public sentiment throughout the nation that will be opposed to the continuance of Slavery in any part of the Republic, and by effecting the speedy abolition of Slavery, prevent a general convulsion; and whereas, we believe we owe it to the oppressed, to our fellow-citizens who hold slaves, to our whole country, to posterity, and to God, to do all that is lawfully in our power to bring about the extinction of Slavery, we do hereby agree, with a prayerful reliance on the Divine aid, to form ourselves into a society, to be governed by the following Constitution: — ARTICLE I. — This Society shall be called the AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. ARTICLE II. — The objects of this Society are the entire abolition of Slavery in the United States. While it admits that each State, in which Slavery exists, has, by the Constitution of the United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition in said State, it shall aim to convince all our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and consciences, that Slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God, and that the duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned, require its immediate abandonment, without expatriation. The Society will also endeavor, in a constitutional way, to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic Slave trade, and to abolish Slavery in all those portions of our common country which come under its control, especially in the District of Columbia, -- and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any State that may be hereafter admitted to the Union. ARTICLE III. — This Society shall aim to elevate the character and condition of the people of color, by encouraging their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and by removing public prejudice, that thus they may, according to their intellectual and moral worth, share an equality with the whites, of civil and religious privileges; but this Society will never, in any way, countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force. ARTICLE IV. — Any person who consents to the principles of this Constitution, who contributes to the funds of this Society, and is not a Slaveholder, may be a member of this Society, and shall be entitled to vote at the meetings.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

August: Dr. James Cowles Prichard pioneered “the term monomania, meaning madness affecting one train of thought … adopted in late times instead of melancholia.” (Herman Melville’s father-in-law, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, would utilize this concept “monomania” in a legal opinion in 1844, and Melville would deploy it in MARDI AND A VOYAGE THITHER in 1849, and then in MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE in 1851 as the defining characteristic of the psychology of the maimed Captain Ahab.) As what in this year would have been considered to be a prime instance of such monomania, in this year there appeared Lydia Maria Child’s infamous APPEAL IN FAV OR OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS CALLED AFRICANS.

(The author’s “madness affecting one train of thought” was immediately recognized, and in an attempt at a cure her library privileges at the Boston Athenæum were summarily revoked.) The Reverend William Ellery Channing walked down to Child’s cottage from his home on Beacon Hill, a mile and a half, to discuss the book with her for all of 3 hours, but not because he agreed with her — the Reverend Channing considered Child misguided and a zealot. Child later commented that she had “suffered many a shivering ague-fit in attempting to melt, or batter away the glaciers of his prejudices.” The window of William HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Davis Ticknor’s Old Corner Bookstore was smashed because this APPEAL was on display. Having overheard

his parents discussing APPEAL (and perhaps having heard of that smashed window at the Old Corner Bookstore, which had been smashed by someone leaning against or being shoved against it), the 11-year-old Edward Everett Hale considered heaving a stone at it through the shop window. This is the book that a manager of the American Bible Society refused to read for fear it would make him an abolitionist, and in fact it would be what the 22-year-old Wendell Phillips would be reading just as he was abandoning the practice of law in order to devote his life to abolitionism.

ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Here is the cover of a modern edition of that offending treatise:

Outspoken in her condemnation of slavery, Mrs. Child pointed out its contradiction with Christian teachings, and described the moral and physical degradation it brought upon slaves and owners alike — not omitting to mention the issue of miscegenation, and not excepting the North from its share of responsibility for the system. “I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken,” she wrote in the Introduction, “but though I expect ridicule and censure, it is not in my nature to fear them.” As a direct result of this, she would lose her editorial post with The Juvenile Miscellany (if you are so impolite and inconsiderate that you mention that we routinely molest our black servants, we certainly cannot allow you to have contact with our children).

HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM INSTANCE, IN 1833, THAT A CONCEPT “MONOMANIA” WOULD BE UTILIZED IN A LEGAL OPINION IN 1844, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET — AS OF 1833, 1844 DID NOT EXIST.

August 28, Wednesday: Under the India Act, the island of St. Helena was no longer to be ruled by the Honourable East India Company, but from April 22, 1834, by His Majesty’s Government. ST. HELENA RECORDS

Subsequent to the passage of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act by Parliament, British captains who had been being caught continuing in these international business activities had been being fined £100 for every slave found on board their vessel. However, this 1807 law had by no means been effective in halting British participation in the international slave trade — because, when slavers were in danger of being overtaken by the British navy, their captains could sometimes reduce the fines by having the cargo of blacks shoved off the other side of the vessel, to be dragged under the waves by their chains. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

Some involved in the anti-trade campaign found themselves therefore arguing that to end this cruel practice the entire traffic in humans must be outlawed, and in 1823 a new Anti-Slavery Society had been formed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Members had included Friend Thomas Clarkson, Henry Peter Brougham, William Wilberforce, and Thomas Fowell Buxton. On this day Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act. This act manumitted all slaves anywhere in the British Empire (such as, for instance, in our neighbor to the north, Canada) under the age of

six years with the British government itself to pay full compensation to the deprived slavemasters. All slaves in the West Indies already above the age of six were by this act to be bound as apprentices for a term of 5 to 7 years (this would be reduced to 2 years), to be followed by their manumission. Said liberation was scheduled to begin on August 1, 1834 with the last batch of slaves to receive their manumission papers by August 1, 1838. As a condition of their cooperation the white “owners” of these 700,000 black and red workers were to receive some £20,000,000 sterling in compensation. (For instance, the Bishop of Exeter alone, with 665 slaves to manumit, would receive £12,700 in compensation out of the government’s tax revenues.) ABOLITIONISM SLAVERY

December 4, Wednesday: The Calculational Engine project had soaked up to date some £17,000 in tax revenues, a truly enormous sum of money, and there was nothing whatever to show for it. Charles Babbage ordered his contractor Joseph Clement, as preparations for removal of the engine were completed: To move all parts of the engine except the large platform for the calculating end and the large columns; all the drawings, (the 27 still attached to drawing boards were not be taken off them, the contractor was to include cost of the boards if necessary); all the rough sketches, small notebook on contrivances determined upon and the several loose sheets of mechanical notations of the Calculational Engine; and all the patterns from which castings had been made and thus were no longer required. He was to oil and pack all steel parts to avoid rust, and list the parts remaining at his workshop that were the property of the Government (these materials would be removed in 1843 to King’s College, London).

In Philadelphia, a group of black and white male abolitionists organized the American Anti-Slavery Society and Arthur Tappan became its 1st president. The Reverend Samuel Joseph May attended, and William Lloyd HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Garrison, and also Friend John Greenleaf Whittier, Lewis Tappan and Arthur Tappan, Friends James and Lucretia Mott, etc. Of the about 60 people in attendance only 21 were members of the Religious Society of Friends, because conservative Quakers would have been keeping their distance from all involvement in outside organizations, even those such as this one whose aims they generally greatly respected. The Reverend Daniel Starr Southmayd, not of Concord but “of Lowell, Massachusetts,” was a delegate. On the last day of the meeting, the new society urged that white females should also set up their own auxiliary anti-slavery societies. In that period the claim was being made, that True Womanhood would restrict itself to the home, and this claim was being hotly contested by women who would insist that the True Woman was merely following her natural True Womanly inclination, in seeking to succor the defenseless in such institutions as the Samaritan Asylum for Indigent Colored Children in Boston.

As wives and mothers, as sisters and daughters, we are bound to urge men to cease to do evil. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM There were three blacks present, including a Philadelphia barber and dentist named James McCrummill and the well-to-do Robert Purvis of Philadelphia — who although he appeared white:

was known locally to be actually not a white man at all.74 Purvis signed the Declaration of Sentiments.

(Notice that although white men of this period generally feared social contamination by inferior blacks, even an intimate touching, as by a barber, could be permissible, as depicted here in a Virginia barbershop — so long as the relationship was one clearly marked as an intransitive one, between a superior or customer and an inferior or servant.)

74. This would be by way of contrast with Senator Daniel Webster, who was so dark-complected that once he was actually turned away by a commercial establishment that imagined it was dealing with a black American, but who was generally known to be, actually, a white man through and through. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM There were two or three Unitarians. At one point during the convention a young man at the door was speaking of his desire to dip his hand in Garrison’s blood but the Philadelphia police, rather than take such a person into detention, warned the convention organizers that the path of discretion would be for them to meet only during hours of daylight.

Garrison authored the broadside “Declaration of Sentiments” of the meeting (Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention), which under an image of Samson strangling the lion included a renunciation of “the use of carnal weapons” and a declaration that “doing evil that good may come” represented the antithesis of Christian ethics. At one point Friend Lucretia Mott rose to suggest from the back of the room that in the draft of this resolution, the mention of God be placed before rather than after the mention of the Declaration of Independence. As a woman and a non-delegate she spoke with such diffidence that the chairman had to encourage her. This could very well have been the 1st time that many in the room had heard a woman speak in a public meeting.75

After silence in the Quaker manner, it was time for the actual delegates, that is, the menfolk, to file forward and affix their signatures to the declaration — this would be the signature that Whittier would later say he was more proud of, than of his signature on the title page of any of his books.

The broadside manifesto “Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention Assembled in Philadelphia, December 4, 1833,” as so nicely illustrated by Rueben S. Gilbert of Merrihew & Gunn (his work excerpted above), announced the reasons for formation of the society and enumerated its goals:

75. As a woman she would not of course have been officially a delegate to this convention, but a mere spectator accompanying her spouse. Of course no-one thought of the idea of having women as delegates, let alone to solicit the signatures of women, nor is it likely that any of the women even contemplated the possibility of a woman’s adding her own signature Such things were not just unheard-of, in this period, but also, very clearly, they went unthought as well. For a woman to have sported a signature would have been like for a woman to have sported a beard. During this month Abba Alcott, pregnant wife of Bronson Alcott and mother of an infant author-to-be Louisa May Alcott, was helping Lucretia Mott form the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. THE ALCOTT FAMILY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society Whereas the Most High God “hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” and hath commanded them to love their neighbors as themselves; and whereas, our National Existence is based upon this principle, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence, “that all mankind are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and whereas, after the lapse of nearly sixty years, since the faith and honor of the American people were pledged to this avowal, before Almighty God and the World, nearly one-sixth part of the nation are held in bondage by their fellow-citizens; and whereas, Slavery is contrary to the principles of natural justice, of our republican form of government, and of the Christian religion, and is destructive of the prosperity of the country, while it is endangering the peace, union, and liberties of the States; and whereas, we believe it the duty and interest of the masters immediately to emancipate their slaves, and that no scheme of expatriation, either voluntary or by compulsion, can remove this great and increasing evil; and whereas, we believe that it is practicable, by appeals to the consciences, hearts, and interests of the people, to awaken a public sentiment throughout the nation that will be opposed to the continuance of Slavery in any part of the Republic, and by effecting the speedy abolition of Slavery, prevent a general convulsion; and whereas, we believe we owe it to the oppressed, to our fellow-citizens who hold slaves, to our whole country, to posterity, and to God, to do all that is lawfully in our power to bring about the extinction of Slavery, we do hereby agree, with a prayerful reliance on the Divine aid, to form ourselves into a society, to be governed by the following Constitution: — ARTICLE I. — This Society shall be called the AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. ARTICLE II. — The objects of this Society are the entire abolition of Slavery in the United States. While it admits that each State, in which Slavery exists, has, by the Constitution of the United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition in said State, it shall aim to convince all our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and consciences, that Slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God, and that the duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned, require its immediate abandonment, without expatriation. The Society will also endeavor, in a constitutional way, to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic Slave trade, and to abolish Slavery in all those portions of our common country which come under its control, especially in the District of Columbia, -- and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any State that may be hereafter admitted to the Union. ARTICLE III. — This Society shall aim to elevate the character and condition of the people of color, by encouraging their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and by removing public prejudice, that thus they may, according to their intellectual and moral worth, share an equality with the whites, of civil and religious privileges; but this Society will never, in any way, countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force. ARTICLE IV. — Any person who consents to the principles of this Constitution, who contributes to the funds of this Society, and is not a Slaveholder, may be a member of this Society, and shall be entitled to vote at the meetings.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

December 6, Friday: In Charlestown, Massachusetts, anti-Catholic rioting began after a WASP was beaten to death by Irish immigrants. The homes of many Catholics were destroyed.

The HMS Beagle and Charles Darwin sailed from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata.

According to the “Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society, “In purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of purpose, in intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity of spirit, we would not be inferior to them [to, that is, our forefathers who founded this temple of Freedom]. Their principles led them to wage war against their oppressors, and to spill human blood like water, in order to be free. Ours forbid the doing of evil that good may come, and lead us to reject, and to entreat the oppressed to reject, the use of all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage; relying solely upon those which are spiritual, and mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. Their measures of physical resistance —the marshalling in arms —the hostile array —the moral encounter. Ours shall be such only as the opposition of moral purity to moral corruption —the destruction of error by the potency of truth —the overthrow of prejudice by the power of love —and the abolition of slavery by the spirit of repentance. Their grievances, great as they were, were trifling in comparison with the wrongs and sufferings of those for whom we plead. Our fathers were never slaves —never bought and sold like cattle —never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion —never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters. But those, for whose emancipation we are striving....” ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1834

The Reverend Beriah Green, a long-time friend and confidant of Gerrit Smith, having been active in the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, became its president. ABOLITIONISM

In the USA, Friend John Greenleaf Whittier self-published a 23-page pamphlet arguing for emancipation on moral grounds. SLAVERY “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141

(In this year the English Parliament estimated that the cost of such an abolition of slavery would be in the range of £20,000,000 sterling, because this would involve freeing some 700,000 persons.)

(At the annual meeting of the American Colonization Society there was general agreement among the white philanthropists that there should be no Black Emancipation until arrangements for expatriation were in place. While they are over here in White America — they are going to be here as slaves and as nothing else!)

Friend John would be moved to create the following poem:

THE HUNTERS OF MEN. HAV E ye heard of our hunting, o’er mountain and glen, Through cane-brake and forest, — the hunting of men? The lords of our land to this hunting have gone, As the fox-hunter follows the sound of the horn; Hark! the cheer and the hallo! the crack of the whip, And the yell of the hound as he fastens his grip! All blithe are our hunters, and noble their match, Though hundreds are caught, there are millions to catch. So speed to their hunting, o’er mountain and glen, Through cane-brake and forest, — the hunting of men! Gay luck to our hunters! how nobly they ride In the glow of their zeal, and the strength of their pride! The priest with his cassock flung back on the wind, Just screening the politic statesman behind; The saint and the sinner, with cursing and prayer, The drunk and the sober, ride merrily there. And woman, kind woman, wife, widow, and maid, For the good of the hunted, is lending her aid: Her foot’s in the stirrup, her hand on the rein, How blithely she rides to the hunting of men! Oh, goodly and grand is our hunting to see, HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM In this “land of the brave and this home of the free.” Priest, warrior, and statesman, from Georgia to Maine, All mounting the saddle, all grasping the rein; Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin! Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him at bay! Will our hunters be turned from their purpose and prey? Will their hearts fail within them? their nerves tremble, when All roughly they ride to the hunting of men? Ho! alms for our hunters! all weary and faint, Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer of the saint. The horn is wound faintly, the echoes are still, Over cane-brake and river, and forest and hill. Haste, alms for our hunters! the hunted once more Have turned from their flight with their backs to the shore: What right have they here in the home of the white, Shadowed o’er by our banner of Freedom and Right? Ho! alms for the hunters! or never again Will they ride in their pomp to the hunting of men! Alms, alms for our hunters! why will ye delay, When their pride and their glory are melting away? The parson has turned; for, on charge of his own, Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone? The politic statesman looks back with a sigh, There is doubt in his heart, there is fear in his eye. Oh, haste, lest that doubting and fear shall prevail, And the head of his steed take the place of the tail. Oh, haste, ere he leave us! for who will ride then, For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of men? ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The English reformer George Thompson was lecturing across the USA at the invitation of William Lloyd

Garrison. His tour of the northern states would be said to have led to the formation of more than 150 anti- slavery societies. Theodore Dwight Weld, while a ministerial student at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, helped the young men there create one such abolitionist group, and also he had begun working with black leaders to start a practical night school for black grownups. These “Lane Rebels” would relocate themselves from Cincinnati’s seminary to Oberlin College, bringing new students, faculty and the first college president, Asa Mahan (1835-1850), but Weld himself would withdraw to become an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

ABOLITIONISM I don’t have an illustration of what Lane Theological Seminary looked like before this concerned group’s departure, but this is what it would like in 1846, quite a while after the impact of the exodus had been absorbed HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM and theology-as-usual had been reestablished:

Oberlin, Ohio’s population grew to include 200 colonists and 100 students. For the education of children, an Oberlin School District was organized. ABOLITIONISM

The Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem MA, which had been organized as a segregated (black) association, was reorganizing to allow the participation of white women. ABOLITIONISM

In the face of all these moral dilemmas, the young white man Walt Whitman knew exactly what was needed. We, the very righteous Northerners, needed to stand up in a manly way, and take control of the situation, and resist being dominated by all those dastardly Southerners.

[WHITMAN’S FIRST PUBLISHED POEM APPEARS ON THE NEXT SCREEN] HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM DOUGH-FACE SONG

— Like dough; soft; yielding to pressure; pale. — Webster’s Dictionary. We are all docile dough-faces, And what if children, growing up, They knead us with the fist, In future seasons read They, the dashing southern lords, The thing we do? and heart and tongue We labor as they list; Accurse us for the deed? For them we speak — or hold our tongues, The future cannot touch us; For them we turn and twist. The present gain we heed. We join them in their howl against Then, all together, dough-faces! Free soil and “abolition,” Let’s stop the exciting clatter, That firebrand — that assassin knife — And pacify slave-breeding wrath Which risk our land’s condition, By yielding all the matter; And leave no peace of life to any For otherwise, as sure as guns, Dough-faced politician. The Union it will shatter. To put down “agitation,” now, Besides, to tell the honest truth We think the most judicious; (For us an innovation,) To damn all “northern fanatics,” Keeping in with the slave power Those “traitors” black and vicious; Is our personal salvation; The “reg’lar party usages” We’ve very little to expect For us, and no “new issues.” From t’ other part of the nation. Things have come to a pretty pass, Besides it’s plain at Washington When a trifle small as this, Who likeliest wins the race, Moving and bartering nigger slaves, What earthly chance has “free soil” Can open an abyss, For any good fat place? With jaws a-gape for “the two great parties”; While many a daw has feather’d his nest, A pretty thought, I wis! [Page 1077] By his creamy and meek dough-face. [Page 1078] Principle — freedom! — fiddlesticks! Take heart, then, sweet companions, We know not where they’re found. Be steady, Scripture Dick! Rights of the masses — progress! — bah! Webster, Cooper, Walker, Words that tickle and sound; To your allegiance stick! But claiming to rule o’er “practical men” With Brooks, and Briggs and Phoenix, Is very different ground. Stand up through thin and thick! Beyond all such we know a term We do not ask a bold brave front; Charming to ears and eyes, We never try that game; With it we’ll stab young Freedom, ’Twould bring the storm upon our heads, And do it in disguise; A huge mad storm of shame; Speak soft, ye wily dough-faces — Evade it, brothers — “compromise” That term is “compromise.” Will answer just the same.

ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM A reminisce pertaining to himself in this period, by Walt Whitman: “Specimen Days”

GROWTH — HEALTH — WORK I develop’d (1833-4-5) into a healthy, strong youth (grew too fast, though, was nearly as big as a man at 15 or 16.) Our family at this period moved back to the country, my dear mother very ill for a long time, but recover’d. All these years I was down Long Island more or less every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At 16, 17, and so on, was fond of debating societies, and had an active membership with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or two country towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these and later years, devour’d everything I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in New York, went whenever I could — sometimes witnessing fine performances. 1836-7, work’d as compositor in printing offices in New York city. Then, when little more than eighteen, and for a while afterwards, went to teaching country schools down in Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, and “boarded round.” (This latter I consider one of my best experiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the scenes, and in the masses.) In ’39, ’40, I started and publish’d a weekly paper in my native town, Huntington NY. Then returning to New York city and Brooklyn, work’d on as printer and writer, mostly prose, but an occasional shy at “poetry.”

In this year John Brown was acting as a postmaster under President Andrew Jackson, at Randolph, Pennsylvania — evidently this job was a political plum issued as a reward for support. He wrote his brother Frederick Brown that he purposed to make active war upon the institution of human slavery, by bringing together some “first-rate abolitionist families” and by undertaking the education of young blacks. If once the Christians of the free states would set to work in earnest teaching the blacks, the people of the slaveholding states would find themselves constitutionally driven to set about the work of emancipation immediately. This letter was officially franked and sent for free by Postmaster Brown, as was then the practice. ABOLITIONISM

The emancipation of the English slaveholder that began in this Year of Our Lord 1834 would not be complete until the Year of Our Lord 1838 — however, this idea of liberation would take a bit longer to chew its way out of the brains of less enlightened populations. For instance, the French and the Danish slavemasters would not be similarly emancipated until 1848, and the American … we’ll need to wait awhile for the other shoe to drop in our great land of freedom on the North American continent. The cost of abolition of slavery by the English Parliament was being put at £20,000,000 sterling, for compensation of all the innocent slaveholders being deprived of owned assets. For instance, as slavery was being abolished throughout the British colonies, 35,000 human beings were being purchased and freed in South Africa. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Arthur Tappan was seen in public with a mulatto minister, and his white co-religionists objected. After this incident the abolitionist would refrain from any further public association with any person of color, except in what would be understood by all as a clearly business context.

ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM James Gillespie Birney manumitted all the slaves whom he had inherited.

Since he had become persuaded of the fact that any gradual emancipation would merely stimulate the interstate slave trade, and since he had become persuaded that the dangers of a mixed labour system were greater than those of a straightforward emancipation, he formally repudiated all colonization projects and abandoned the Whig party. He delivered anti-slavery addresses in the North, accepted the vice-presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and announced that his intention was to establish in the following year an anti-slavery journal in Danville. Kentucky society began to shun him. No one would grant him access to a public hall for a lecture and no printer would publish him. Such materials as he was able to get printed, such as ON THE SIN OF HOLDING SLAVES and LETTER ON COLONIZATION, and in the following year VINDICATION OF ABOLITIONISTS, were confiscated by the Southern postmasters.

By this year two out of every five slaves on the island of St. Helena had been purchased by the East India Company, and granted manumission papers. During this year an additional one out of every five would be put through this process. By the completion of this buy-out program the government would have processed a total of 614 individuals for a grand sum total expenditure of £28,062. 17s. Od. ABOLITIONISM

January 30, Thursday: Excerpt from a school essay by Jabez Huntington Tomlinson of Stratford, Connecticut:76 ... The ancient Romans had slavery. Our ancestors who fought so hard & sacrificed so much for liberty held slaves ... and it would seem that a practice sanctioned by the formers of a government could not be opposed by the government.... For the reasons before stated I do not think [slavery] either unconstitutional or unchristian. Still, slavery is an evil but it is unavoidable in the present state of things & its abolition would be a much greater evil. Enthusiasts may talk of abolition & amalgamation but neither will ever take place while the present generation or one with like sentiments & feelings are 76. In this year the Sovereign State of Connecticut was enacting a law making it illegal to provide a free education for black students. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM upon the state. Do they suppose the southern ladies will ever consent to associate with their own Negroes. It is visionary to suppose such a thing.

Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: A man who was at both the battle of Lexington and the battle of Bunker Hill attended ceremonies in New Haven, Connecticut — in the original coat he had then worn.

At the Hermitage Inn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the traditional 4th-of- July address was delivered by David Crockett, and anti-abolitionist Americans destroyed the homes of more than 36 black Americans.

On this day, elsewhere, Richard Henry Dana, Sr. was delivering an oration upon The Law.

In Plymouth, it having been decided that the glacial erratic known as “Forefathers Rock” in the town square was rapidly becoming small, that it needed to be moved to protect it from all the souvenir sellers, it had been relocated. During the move it had rolled off its conveyance in front of the City Hall and broken again — but in this escape attempt it didn’t get far and we had simply cemented it back together. On this date the installation of the rock in its new milieu was suitably celebrated.77 PLYMOUTH ROCK

New-York’s annual Convention of People of Color set July 4th as a day of prayer and contemplation of the condition of blacks. Meanwhile, a group of white laboring men broke up an amalgamated meeting of the Anti-

77. On some date unknown to me, Elizabeth Barrett Browning would create a poem “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” which would implausibly pose a runaway slave before this rock, pouring out to the “pilgrim-souls” the sadness of her own personal pilgrimage to a new land. She had murdered her infant because it had displayed the features of the white master who had raped her. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Slavery Society at the Chatham Street Chapel in New-York to protest blacks and whites sitting in the same audience (they were resentful, of course, of the presence in America of free black Americans to drive down their wages and benefits). Here is a hymn written by Friend John Greenleaf Whittier for the occasion:

O Thou, whose presence went before But oh, for those this day can bring, Our fathers in their weary way, As unto us, no joyful thrill; As with Thy chosen moved of yore, For those who, under Freedom’s wing, The fire by night, the cloud by day! Are bound in Slavery’s fetters still: When from each temple of the free, For those to whom Thy written word A nation’s song ascend to Heaven, Of light and love is never given; Most Holy Father! unto Thee, For those whose ears have never heard May not our humble prayer be given? The promise and the hope of heaven! Thy children still, though hue and form For broken heart, and clouded mind, Are varied in Thine own good will, Whereon no human mercies fall; With Thy own holy breathings warm. Oh, be Thy gracious love inclined, And fashioned in Thine image still. Who, as a Father, pitiest all! We thank Thee, Father! hill land plain And grant, O Father! that the time Around us wave their fruits once more, Of Earth’s deliverance may be near, And clustered vine and blossomed grain When every land and tongue and clime Are bending round each cottage door. The message of Thy love shall hear; And peace is here; and hope and love When, smitten as with fire from heaven, Are round us as a mantle thrown, The captive’s chains shall sink in dust, And unto Thee, supreme above, And to his fettered soul be given The knee of prayer is bowed alone. The glorious freedom of the just!

ABOLITIONISM

This protest would break out, again, on the 10th and 11th of the month, with the trashing not only of 60 black homes and 6 black churches but also of homes of white people known to be seeking to abolish human slavery — this was, after all, the year in which the song “Old Zip Coon,” the minstrel song which eventually would evolve into “Turkey in the Straw,” was born! RACISM POPULAR SONGS

Samuel Ringgold Ward was present, as he had been intending to hear an antislavery lecture by David Paul Brown of Philadelphia, but in his account of the rioting he would prefer to point up the fact that this violence had been organized by members of the local merchant class: A lawyer well known to fame, David Paul Brown, Esq., of Philadelphia, was always ready to render his peerless services in defence of any person claimed as a slave. On the fourth day of July, 1834, this gentleman was invited to deliver an anti- HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM slavery oration in Chatham Chapel, and, of course, the coloured people mustered in strong array to hear so well known a champion of freedom; but the meeting was dispersed by a mob, gathered and sustained by the leading commercial and political men and journals of that great city. It was Independence Day — a day, of all days, sacred to freedom. What Mr. Brown came to tell us was, that the principles, enunciated in few words, in the Declaration of Independence — “We hold these truths to be self- evident truths, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — applied as well to black men as to white men. This the aristocracy of New York could not endure; and therefore, just fifty-eight years from the very hour that the Declaration of 1776 was made, the mob of the New York merchants broke up this assembly. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Here is a view of our nation’s capital city during this year, a painting by George Cooke as transformed into an aquatint engraving by W.J. Bennett. This should be available on 13 1/4” x 16 7/8” cover stock paper in a heavy mailing tube from Historic Urban Plans, Inc., Box 276, Ithaca NY 14851 (607 272-MAPS), for roughly $16.50 inclusive of postage.

In Washington DC, the first Trades Union celebration occurred. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

On this day, elsewhere, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who detested American blacks, was having his 30th birthday.

Publication of Die Schule des Legato und Staccato op.335 by Carl Czerny was announced in the Wiener Zeitung. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Winter: A black married couple came to the home of the Boston attorney David Child and his wife Lydia Maria Child in order to obtain legal advice. The consultation was necessarily a long one and so Maria, ever the dutiful housewife, left the room to prepare afternoon tea. When this black couple perceived what was happening, in order to forestall a coming embarrassment they made excuses and hurriedly departed. In spite of this discretion, a delicious rumor spread quickly through white society (were the couple being closely watched?) that this abolitionist couple had, shudder, extended “an invitation to colored people.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1835

Concluding that emigration to Haiti indeed did offer the best alternative for his immediate family and for free mulattoes generally, the white Florida planter Zephaniah Kingsley carried out a colonization plan for his black and mixed-race family, by sending a son and other freed blacks ahead of him, to start a settlement on that Caribbean island. He would join them, bringing his black wife Anna Kingsley and other dependents, a year later. Eventually at least 53 of his former slaves would follow. A nine-year period of indentured servitude would end with manumission for these people, but other of Kingsley’s black slaves would remain on his Florida plantations — laboring in the sun to support this lovely little experiment in racial harmony.

By this year three out of every five slaves on the island of St. Helena had been purchased by the East India Company, and granted manumission papers. During this year an additional fifth would be put through the process. By the completion of this buy-out program during the following year the government would have processed a total of 614 individuals for a grand sum total expenditure of £28,062. 17s. Od. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Reformers in Northampton began a local antislavery society, and soon ran afoul of the town’s summer tourist trade, which catered to, among others, vacationing Southerner slaveholders — accompanied of course, it need hardly be mentioned, by their personal servants. One of the town’s two newspapers would lead a violent opposition to this antislavery society, nor was the other newspaper at all friendly toward them. Just to make certain that they understood that their racial attitudes were not welcome among neighbors, their meetings would periodically be disrupted.

The death knell was rung for the recently dug Blackstone Canal, as a railroad began to connect the town to other towns.

Construction of a couple of America’s 1st railroad stations, a small doric Temple carrying the track through a colonnade in Lowell MA, and, in Boston, the terminus of the Boston & Lowell RR. Boston’s first powered railroad was the Boston and Worcester, a 45-mile track with four trains pulling “burthen” carriages per day each way (these “burthen” cars tolling that knell, of course, for the Middlesex Canal), plus each noon one mixed train containing passenger coaches as well.

Hosea Hildreth died (after being expelled by Congregationalists during the previous year from ministering over their First Parish Church of Gloucester, Massachusetts, he had been serving as minister for a Unitarian congregation in Westboro, Massachusetts).

Dr. Charles Follen was no longer to be the Professor of Germanic Literature at Harvard College, new funding having failed to appear perhaps on account of his often-proclaimed abolitionist sympathies but more likely because he had been such an outspoken opponent of the disciplinarian President of Harvard, Josiah Quincy, Sr. His widow and his friend Samuel May would be convinced he had been dropped for being indiscreetly vocal about antislavery, but the attitude taken by Harvard’s Dr. Reginald H. Phelps toward this has been that there is nothing whatever in the record which might substantiate such an accusation: outside funds for his professorship, which initially had been being supplied by his wife’s relatives, had run out with the Corporation simply neglecting to endow a more permanent professorship in German. Phelps points out that Follen might have elected to continue on at an instructor’s status and salary, a point which seems to have been neglected by those who hold that he had been dismissed. The maximum case that might be made for persecution on account of antislavery activities would be, not that he had been sluffed off, but that the powers that be in the academic HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM world had failed to prefer him.

He had an alternative, because the friendship of the Reverend William Ellery Channing had drawn him into the Unitarian Church. In this year he was ordained as a minister and called to the pulpit of the 2d Congregational Society at East Lexington, Massachusetts (in 1839 he would build himself an octagonal church, that is now the Follen Church Society-Unitarian Universalist). Instead of continuing at Harvard, but on an instructor’s salary and with an instructor’s status, this energetic gentleman had simply opted for a different sort of career.

In this year efforts to break down the barriers –social, educational, and theological– between Unitarians and Restorationist Universalists ended, with the death of the Reverend Bernard Whitman. After this untimely death, although Adin Ballou would remain a Restorationist, he would take little part in apologetic and ecclesiastical affairs. Instead, already won to the temperance cause, he would devote his energies to social reform.

One of Massachusetts’s senators, Peleg Sprague, was in this year arguing for slavery by invoking the authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus meek and mild, who “would not interfere with the administration of the laws, or abrogate their authority,” it seemed, could have been no abolitionist — or at least, not according to Senator Peleg Sprague!

“It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The Reverend William Henry Brisbane published the first Baptist periodical to be produced outside Philadelphia, The Southern Baptist and General Intelligencer printed by James S. Burges of Charleston, South Carolina, the stated mission of which was to support slavery as a biblically mandated social and economic institution. The periodical would attempt to refute the antislavery writings in THE ELEMENTS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY of the Reverend Francis Wayland, President of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Baptist reverend was struggling against himself: “I am no abolitionist.” Oh, no, he was a regular guy, he could not be one of those detested, deluded people! (Three years later, however, this abolitionism would overcome him — and a local historian would eventually write of him, because he had manumitted his slaves, that “He became, to the white population, the most hated man in the Beaufort District.”)

The Reverend Francis Wayland, President of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in his textbook ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE (Boston: Kendall et al), adopted a stance that was clearly antislavery. This textbook would therefore be banned in the American South. A professor in Virginia would declare that “I dare not give up your minds to the dominion of Wayland’s Philosophy.” (A South Carolinian, Jasper Adams, would produce in 1837 a competing textbook, THE ELEMENTS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, that could be offered to students in the slaveholding Southern states.) The slaves were brought here without their own consent, they have been continued in their present state of degradation without their own consent, and they are not responsible for the consequences. If a man have done injustice to his neighbor, and have also placed impediments in the way of remedying that injustice, he is as much under obligation to remove the impediments in the way of justice, as he is to do justice. (page HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM 256)

An English visitor named David Robertson was traveling in Virginia. Because of the similarity in name and origin to the English visitor Robinson who in 1831 had expressed an antislavery sentiment, some Virginians came to suspect incorrectly that this was the same man whom they had “scourged almost to death.” One planter, who understood that this was not the same man, hid the English visitor until public outrage had had a chance to subside and the visitor was then able to make his escape from the South. (But that wouldn’t be the end of the matter, wouldn’t be the end of it at all: )

W.E. Burghardt Du Bois has attributed the notorious Southern penchant for violence to hegemony:

The white people of the South are essentially a fine kindly breed.... Perhaps their early and fatal mistake was that they refused long before the Civil War to allow the South differences of opinion.... Men act as they do in the South, they murder, they lynch, they insult, because they listen to but one side of a question. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM A reward of $100,000 was offered to anyone who would murder the abolitionists Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan, payable upon delivery of their dead bodies in any slave state. The sponsor of this offer was anonymous. Various presents of pieces of rope would be showing up in the mails received by the Tappan family. On one occasion the family would receive a severed human ear — of course, it was a severed black human ear.

Arthur Tappan lent $10,000 to Oberlin College, to tide the school over a tight spot.

Friend Sarah Moore Grimké’s deceased brother Thomas had been a member of the American Peace Society, and had been able to accept no form of warfare, not even “defensive” warfare, and Sarah had been deeply affected by his attitudes. When, however, Friend Sarah attempted to organize her fellow Quakers to join in such a Peace Society, she encountered resistance and needed to discontinue all of this sort of activity. (Typically, the Friends of that era were opposing any and all efforts to entangle them in any and all affiliation groups which also included any non-Friend member, just as they would disown any Friend who married outside their religion. Their emphasis was upon maintaining their own purity by remaining a people who had set themselves apart.)

Friend Angelina Emily Grimké wrote to William Lloyd Garrison, identifying the antislavery struggle as an opportunity for martyrdom rather than as a legitimation for murder. This letter became public and some people urged her to recant:

It is my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction that this is a cause worth dying for.... YES! LET IT COME — let us suffer, rather than insurrections should arise.

(For this Satan-inspired attitude, Angelina’s Quaker worship group would of course disown her.)

Establishment of the Herald of Freedom as an antislavery gazette.

February 12, Thursday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 12 of 2 M / Good Solid Silent Meetings - This Morning recd a parcell & letter of Three Sheets from my kind & obliging friend Thos Thompson of Liverpool containing Much valued & highly interesting intelligence from that Land as well as from James Backhouse who is on a religious visit at Vandimens Land & New Holland. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Having introduced his Thursday-night audience in Boston’s Masonic Temple to Michel Angelo Buonaroti, Waldo Emerson proceeded to introduce them to Martin Luther. This lecture would be the longest and most prepared of the series, it seems in part due to the fact that the reverend would be contemplating the similarity of Luther’s act in posting his 97 theses in Latin at the door of the Catholic church in Wittenberg to his own act in providing a letter of resignation to Proprietors of the Second Church in Boston on September 11, 1832. He would not ever publish this lecture as an essay.

Friend Angelina Emily Grimké attended a lecture sponsored by the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I went ... to an anti-slavery meeting, and heard with much interest an address from Robert Gordon. It was feeling, temperate, and judicious; but one word struck my ear unpleasantly. He said, “And yet it is audaciously asked: What has the North to do with slavery?” The word “audaciously,” while I am ready to admit its justice, seemed to me inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel; although we may abhor the system of slavery, I want us to remember that the guilt of the oppressor demands Christian pity and Christian prayer.

The following advertisement appeared in the Charleston, South Carolina Courier: FIELD NEGROES. By Thomas Gadsden. On Tuesday, the 17th inst., will be sold, at the north of the Exchange, at ten o’clock, A.M., a prime gang of ten negroes, accustomed to the culture of cotton and provisions, belonging to the Independent Church, in Christ’s Church Parish. Feb. 6th. SLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

March 3, Tuesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the 3d of the 4 volumes of THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH, M.B. A NEW EDITION, IN FOUR VOLUMES. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED SOME ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS. (London: Printed for Richardson & Co., ... 1821).

GOLDSMITH’S MISC., VOL. 3

He also checked out THE ROMAN HISTORY, FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY OF ROME, TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE. THE ROMAN HISTORY, I THE ROMAN HISTORY, II

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Friend Sarah Moore Grimké attended a lecture by George Thompson, a visiting British abolitionist. Her sister Angelina Emily Grimké described this: My sister went last evening to hear George Thompson. She is deeply interested in this subject, and was much pleased with his discourse. Do not the colored people believe that the Colonization Society may prove a blessing to Africa, that it may be the means of liberating some slaves, and that, by sending a portion of them there, they may introduce civilization and Christianity into this benighted region? That the Colonization Society can ever be the means of breaking the yoke in America appears to me utterly impossible, but when I look at poor heathen Africa, I cannot but HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM believe its efforts will be a blessing to her.

Wendell Phillips William Lloyd Garrison George Thompson

May: First appearance of the name of Friend Angelina Emily Grimké in the minutes of the Female Anti- Slavery Society of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

May: David Lee Child traveled to Washington DC to appeal the guilty verdict for the Panda crew of Spanish pirates.

Upset over Lydia Maria Child’s unreasonable stance in regard to the abolition of human slavery, the Boston Athenæum canceled her library privileges — for access to materials needed for her research, in the future she would need to rely on friends.

August 21, Friday: John D. Camp wrote to Austin F. Williams in Connecticut: New York, Aug. 21, 1835 Friend Williams, I just wish to say to you that E. Cowles of the firm Cowles & Daggart when he first came on told me he would not buy Goods of any Abolitionist but I have almost persuaded him to buy of us & I think if when he is in Farmington, [if] you will avoid unnecessary conversation with him on the subject we should succeed in selling him a good Bill on his return, which in the estimation of ... myself is very desirable - there is no man among my acquaintance in whom I have more confidence, or with whom I am more anxious to continue than Eb. Cowles - so I hope you will do all you can consistently with him - to induce him to open an account with us.... ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

The “Times” referred to in the following poem by John Greenleaf Whittier were those of the pro-slavery mass meeting of this date in Faneuil Hall, held by Boston’s conservative businessmen in an attempt to apologize to

the South for the abolitionist sentiment rampant among the populace of their city. In the course of this rally a demand had been made for the suppression of freedom of speech at least for local abolitionists — lest they should through their agitation endanger the foundation of commercial society:

ABOLITIONISM

“I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.” — Alexis de Tocqueville HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM STANZAS FOR THE TIMES.

Is this the land our fathers loved, No; guided by our country’s laws, The freedom which they toiled to win? For truth, and right, and suffering man, Is this the soil whereon they moved? Be ours to strive in Freedom’s cause, Are these the graves they slumber in? As Christians may, as freemen can! Are we the sons by whom are borne Still pouring on unwilling ears The mantles which the dead have worn? That truth oppression only fears. And shall we crouch above these graves, What! shall we guard our neighbor still, With craven soul and fettered lip? While woman shrieks beneath his rod, Yoke in with marked and branded slaves, And while he tramples down at will And tremble at the driver’s whip? The image of a common God? Bend to the earth our pliant knees, Shall watch and ward be round him set, And speak but as our masters please? Of Northern nerve and bayonet? Shall outraged Nature cease to feel? And shall we know and share with him Shall Mercy’s tears no longer flow? The danger and the growing shame? Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, And see our Freedom’s light grow dim, The dungeon’s gloom, the assassin’s blow, Which should have filled the world with flame? Turn back the spirit roused to save And, writhing, feel, where’er we turn, The Truth, our Country, and the Slave? A world’s reproach around us burn? Of human skulls that shrine was made, Is’t not enough that this is borne? Round which the priests of Mexico And asks our haughty neighbor more? Before their loathsome idol prayed; Must fetters which his slaves have worn Is Freedom’s altar fashioned so? Clank round the Yankee farmer’s door? And must we yield to Freedom’s God, Must he be told, beside his plough, As offering meet, the negro’s blood? What he must speak, and when, and how? Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are wrought Must he be told his freedom stands Which well might shame extremest hell? On Slavery’s dark foundations strong; Shall freemen lock the indignant thought? On breaking hearts and fettered hands, Shall Pity’s bosom cease to swell? On robbery, and crime, and wrong? Shall Honor bleed? — shall Truth succumb? That all his fathers taught is vain, — Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb? That Freedom’s emblem is the chain? No; by each spot of haunted ground, Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn! Where Freedom weeps her children’s fall; False, foul, profane! Go, teach as well By Plymouth’s rock, and Bunker’s mound; Of holy Truth from Falsehood born! By Griswold’s stained and shattered wall; Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell! By Warren’s ghost, by Langdon’s shade; Of Virtue in the arms of Vice! By all the memories of our dead! Of Demons planting Paradise! By their enlarging souls, which burst Rail on, then, brethren of the South, The bands and fetters round them set; Ye shall not hear the truth the less; By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed No seal is on the Yankee’s mouth, Within our inmost bosoms, yet, No fetter on the Yankee’s press! By all above, around, below, From our Green Mountains to the sea, Be ours the indignant answer, — No! One voice shall thunder, We are free!

August 30, Sunday: Felix Mendelssohn arrived in Leipzig to take up directorship of the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Friend Angelina Emily Grimké wrote to William Lloyd Garrison informing him that she had made a commitment to abolitionism.

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier and the Englishman George Thompson were egged and stoned in Concord, New Hampshire, on account of their having favored “the niggers” in a speech they had just made in Plymouth, New Hampshire:

“I maintained the testimony and resisted not — I gave place unto wrath.”78 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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One of the thrown stones injured Whittier’s leg. Afterward, the two stopped off at an inn where the landlord asked if they had heard of the ruckus. As they left, stepping into their chaise, Whittier introduced Thompson, then Thompson introduced Whittier, and they drove off with the innkeeper “standing, mouth wide open, gazing after us.” However, Whittier would comment repeatedly, elsewhere, that one cannot expect “that because men are reformers, they will therefore be better than other people.” [According to Russel B. Nye’s FETTERED FREEDOM: CIVIL LIBERTIES AND THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY, 1830-1860 (Michigan: Michigan State UP, 1963, page 203), it was Whittier and Samuel May and they were stoned. Would this have been a separate occasion, in New-York earlier, or in Boston later?]

I was mobbed in Concord, N.H., in company with George Thompson, afterwards member of the British Parliament, and narrowly escaped from great danger. I kept Thompson, whose life was hunted for, concealed in our lonely farm-house for two weeks. I was in Boston during the great mob in Washington Street, soon after, and was threatened with personal violence.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 30 of 8M / Both Meetings were solid & very good ones to me, & after the Afternoon Meeting Attended the funeral of John H Barbers Child - in both Meetings & at the funeral Father had short testimonies & I thought at the funeral was particularly favoured. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

78. To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM August 31, Monday: Harrison Gray Otis lectured at another pro-slavery rally at Faneuil Hall in beautiful downtown Boston, condemning the abolitionists. The hall was packed with anti-abolitionist Bostonians. Meanwhile, a gallows was being erected in front of the home of the Garrisons. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

US Marines again went ashore to protect American interests in Callao and Lima, Peru during an attempted revolution. They would remain until December 7th. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

Felix Mendelssohn attended a rehearsal of the Gewandhaus orchestra for the 1st time since becoming its director. At this rehearsal someone introduced him to Robert Schumann.

Penny Magazine:

http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/219.htm

October: Paulina Kellogg Wright and her 1st husband Francis Wright helped organize an antislavery convention in Utica, New York and were mobbed. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVI S HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM October: The Reverend Samuel Joseph May lectured on slavery in the Hall of Representatives in Montpelier, Vermont, and had a few items thrown at him. Then he was scheduled to lecture again, in a Montpelier Congregationalist church, and a signed placard was posted threatening that if he did speak, the signatories would be forced to respond by “other means.” Five of the seven signers would be tried and would pay small fines — including pillars of the community such as a local bank president, a newspaper editor, a postmaster, and a medical doctor.

ABOLITIONISM

October: The British abolitionist lecturer George Thompson, after having been met with brickbats in Concord,

New Hampshire and garbage, raw eggs, and rocks in Lowell MA, and after being seriously injured by being hit in the face with a rock in Ohio, and having been denounced by President Andrew Jackson in a message to Congress, took passage in Boston for return to England. His return plans were made in secret because of concern that pro-slavery activists would attempt to kidnap him (presumably to tar and feather him).79 To the people who were engaging in the antislavery struggle, this year of 1835 would become known as “the mob year.” In the face of William Lloyd Garrison’s campaign to use the postal system to distribute abolitionist literature, the President proposed that Congress impose censorship, banning all these incendiary abolitionist pieces of literature from delivery by the US Mail. And, in fact, in South Carolina and in Washington DC, groups of indignant citizens had mobilized into vigilante committees which were sitting around opening mail bags, and removing and destroying abolitionist communications. ABOLITIONISM

79. George Thompson fled Boston in a rowboat in order to board a British ship. Safely back in England, he would win election to Parliament. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM October: Three slavers or negreros of the Spanish flag that we otherwise have no record of sailed into the Caribbean this month: the Aquila Vengadora, master A. Equiqurran, bound for Trinidad, the El Mismo, master Perreira, bound for Cuba, and the Amalia, master J.R. Manene, also bound for Cuba.

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE This third vessel when it had sailed out of the mouth of the Congo River had had a cargo of 207 enslaved Africans, but it was arriving at the port of Havana, something of a tropical paradise, with only 203 — because four people had died in transit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1836

Lydia Maria Child created ANTI-SLAVERY CATECHISM, and THE EVILS OF SLAVERY AND THE CURE OF SLAVERY.

Formation of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society.

January: In an effort to suppress the still feeble antislavery forces, Southern congressmen proposed what was, in effect, an intellectual blockade. They urged federal authorities to allow the states to censor literature that they deemed “incendiary,” including not only abolitionist broadsides but also a wide range of general magazines, Northern newspapers, and religious journals that only occasionally mentioned slavery. Postmasters were encouraged to monitor the private mail of citizens and remove anything that they deemed related to abolitionism. All petitions to Congress on the subject of slavery were to be automatically tabled, without being printed or referred to in any way. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM January: Kentucky society having shunned him for having manumitted his slaves, James Gillespie Birney had removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, and in this month founded there the Philanthropist, which would have a very great influence in the northwest and which would generate the most fearsome opposition. Birney would soon relinquished active control of this publication in order to become the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society and act as a lecturer. Although he favored the immediate abolition of human slavery, he differed tactically from the Garrisonian immediatists, who abhorred the Constitution and favored secession from the federal union. Pointing to the assaults which the white people of the South had made upon the right trial by jury and of petition, freedom of speech, and the public press, in their stonewall defense of their peculiar institution of slavery, he described the contest as having become “one not alone of freedom for the blacks but of freedom for the whites.” ABOLITIONISM

“I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.” — Alexis de Tocqueville HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM February 4, Thursday: Representative Henry Laurens Pinckney of South Carolina80 submitted a proposal regarding the bothersome and objectionable petitions that kept being forwarded to the federal legislature, in regard to human enslavement as it was being practiced in these United States of America. So many citizens thought there was something wrong with that! And, they were so persistent and bothersome! For God’s sake, why couldn’t they just let their representatives alone and allow them to tend to the nation’s business? SLAVERY ABOLITIONISM

At the Teatro La Fenice of Venice, Belisario, a tragedia lirica by Gaetano Donizetti to words of Cammarano after von Schenk translated by Marchionni, was performed for the initial time. The work was well received.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Was the Quarterly Meeting at large. In the first our friend Thos Anthony was engaged in a truly Apostolical testimony & was followed by A A Jenkins & Rowland Greene & Mary B Allen in Supplication. — In the last Meeting the buisness was conducted in Harmony & Elizabeth Peckham from So Kingston Moy [Monthly] Meeting was acknowledged as a Minister — I returned to Moses Browns & dined & lodged RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

80. Note the famous patriotic name: Henry Laurens, a Huguenot, had been the biggest slavetrader in Charleston, and while we were establishing our freedom he had served in the Continental Congress. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM February 23, Tuesday: General Antonio López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón’s 3,000 Mexican troops of the Centralist forces surrounded 182 Texian rebels in the Alamo mission at San Antonio de Bexar and the famed “Siege of the Alamo” began.

Maria Sarah Williams of New Haven, Connecticut wrote to Augustus Street: ... In my letter to Sis, I gave her an account of the wretched condition of some Negroes who occupied a pen in the yard attached to the house. They were all shipped today on board a schooner for Charleston to be sold. Wretched as they were appearing in the yard, as I saw them from my window I realized their misery still more as I saw them on their way to the vessel. I should think more than half had scarcely clothing enough to cover them; not one of them had a shoe and but two any thing upon their heads and I was told they had barely enough to eat to keep them from starving.... How little does the situation of these poor wretches compact with the statements of Mr. Hammond of South Carolina in his speech on the subject of abolition in the district of Columbia. He says that the slaves at the south are better fed, better provided for, better clad and more happy and contented than any other laboring class in the universe. It is all a lie. SLAVERY ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Richard Henry Dana, Jr. noted the arrival of the California, fresh from Boston.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: Tuesday, Feb. 23d. This afternoon, a signal was made from the shore, and we went off in the gig, and found the agent’s clerk, who had been up to the pueblo, waiting at the landing-place, with a package under his arm, covered with brown paper, and tied carefully with twine. No sooner had we shoved off than he told us there was good news from Santa Barbara. “What’s that?” said one of the crew; “has the bloody agent slipped off the hooks? Has the old bundle of bones got him at last?”– “No; better than that. The California has arrived.” Letters, papers, news, and, perhaps,– friends, on board! Our hearts were all up in our mouths, and we pulled away like good fellows; for the precious packet could not be opened except by the captain. As we pulled under the stern, the clerk held up the package, and called out to the mate, who was leaning over the taffrail, that the California had arrived. “Hurrah!” said the mate, so as to be heard fore and aft; “California come, and news from Boston!” Instantly there was a confusion on board which no one could account for who has not been in the same situation. All discipline seemed for a moment relaxed. “What’s that, Mr. Brown?” said the cook, putting his head out of the galley– “California come?” “Aye, aye! you angel of darkness, and there’s a letter for you from Bullknop ’treet, number two-two- five– green door and brass knocker!” The packet was sent down into the cabin, and every one waited to hear of the result. As nothing came up, the officers began to feel that they were acting rather a child’s part, and turned the crew to again and the same strict discipline was restored, which prohibits speech between man and man, while at work on deck; so that, when the steward came forward with letters for the crew, each man took his letters, carried them below to his chest, and came up again immediately; and not a letter was read until we had cleared up decks for the night. An overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men, or, rather, of life on board ship. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or cut; and any expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man who has to face the rough and tumble of such a life. From this, too, the sick are neglected at sea, and whatever may be ashore, a sick man finds little sympathy or attention, forward or aft. A man, too, can have nothing peculiar or sacred on board ship; for all the nicer feelings they take pride in disregarding, both in themselves and others. A thin-skinned man could not live an hour on ship-board. One would be torn raw unless he had the hide of an ox. A moment of natural feeling for home and friends, and then the frigid routine of sea-life returned. Jokes were made upon those who showed any interest in the expected news, and everything near and dear was made common stock for rude jokes and unfeeling coarseness, to which no exception could be taken by any one. Supper, too, must be eaten before the letters were read; and when, at last, they were brought out, they all got round any one who had a letter, and expected to have it read aloud, and have it all in common. If any one went by himself to read, it was– “Fair play, there; and no skulking!” I took mine and went into the sailmaker’s berth, where I could read it without interruption. It was dated August, just a year from the time I had sailed from home; and every one was well, and no great change had taken place. Thus, for one year, my mind was set at ease yet it was already six months from the date of the letter, and what another year would bring to pass, who could tell? Every one away from home thinks that some great thing must have happened, while to those at home there seems to be a continued monotony and lack of incident.

August: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 1st issue of an “omnibus” entitled The Anti- Slavery Examiner, containing “To the People of the United States; TEXT or, To Such Americans As Value Their Rights, and Dare to Maintain Them.” INDEX HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

THE REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR DANA, CONCLUDED: As much as my feelings were taken up by my own intelligence from home, I could not but be amused by a scene in the steerage. The carpenter had been married just before leaving Boston, and during the voyage had talked much about his wife, and had to bear and forbear, as every man, known to be married, must, aboard ship; yet the certainty of hearing from his wife by the first ship, seemed to keep up his spirits. The California came, the packet was brought on board; no one was in higher spirits than he; but when the letters came forward, there was none for him. The captain looked again, but there was no mistake. Poor “Chips,” could eat no supper. He was completely down in the mouth. “Sails” (the sailmaker) tried to comfort him, and told him he was a bloody fool to give up his grub for any woman’s daughter, and reminded him that he had told him a dozen times that he’d never see or hear from his wife again. “Ah!” said “Chips,” “you don’t know what it is to have a wife, and” — “Don’t I?” said Sails; and then came, for the hundredth time, the story of his coming ashore at New York, from the Constellation frigate, after a cruise of four years round the Horn,– being paid off with over five hundred dollars,– marrying, and taking a couple of rooms in a four-story houses– furnishing the rooms, (with a particular account of the furniture, including a dozen flag-bottomed chairs, which he always dilated upon, whenever the subject of furniture was alluded to,)– going off to sea again, leaving his wife half-pay, like a fool,– coming home and finding her “off, like Bob’s horse, with nobody to pay the reckoning;” furniture gone,– flag-bottomed chairs and all;– and with it, his “long togs,” the half-pay, his beaver hat, white linen shirts, and everything else. His wife he never saw, or heard of, from that day to this, and never wished to. Then followed a sweeping assertion, not much to the credit of the sex, if true, though he has Pope to back him. “Come, Chips, cheer up like a man, and take some hot man, and take some hot grub! Don’t be made a fool of by anything in petticoats! As for your wife, you’ll never see her again; she was ‘up keeleg and off’ before you were outside of Cape Cod. You hove your money away like a fool; but every man must learn once, just as I did; so you’d better square the yards with her, and make the best of it.” This was the best consolation “Sails” had to offer, but it did not seem to be just the thing the carpenter wanted; for, during several days, he was very much dejected, and bore with difficulty the jokes of the sailors, and with still more difficulty their attempts at advice and consolation, of most of which the sailmaker’s was a good specimen.

September: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 2nd issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti- Slavery Examiner, containing “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.” (This would be followed by “Appeal ... South. Revised and Corrected.”)

October 28, Friday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 3d issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti- INDEX Slavery Examiner, containing “Letter of Gerrit Smith to Rev. James Smylie, of the State of Mississippi.” TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1837

The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 4th issue of its abolitionist “omnibus” entitled The Anti- Slavery Examiner, containing an anonymous “The Bible Against Slavery. An Inquiry Into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights.” (This was by Theodore Dwight Weld and would be TEXT followed by “The Bible ... Human Rights. Third Edition – Revised.” and by “The Bible ... Human Rights. INDEX Fourth Edition – Enlarged.”)

The Reverend Adin Ballou’s THE TOUCHSTONE. The Reverend came out publicly as, shudder, an abolitionist. Although this announcement produced turmoil at his Mendon church, the pastor’s supporters would there prevail. He would be less successful in introducing such a reform at this year’s meeting of the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists, his proposal there only producing a rift in fellowship between a group of social reformers and the conservative divines (under the guidance of the Reverend Paul Dean).

Noah Webster, Jr. instructed a daughter who was being unduly influenced by the abolitionist cause that “slavery is a great sin and a general calamity – but it is not our sin, though it may prove to be a terrible calamity to us in the north. But we cannot legally interfere with the South on this subject. ... To come north to preach and thus disturb our peace, when we can legally do nothing to effect this object, is, in my view, highly criminal and the preachers of abolitionism deserve the penitentiary.” Wow, we ought to lock up the Frederick Douglass who followed the North Star to disturb Noah’s daughter’s peace? –With friends like this the American antislavery crusade certainly didn’t need any enemies! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Publication of THE SLAVE’S FRIEND. These illustrations are from Volume II:

ANTISLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, and his POEMS WRITTEN DURING THE PROGRESS OF THE ABOLITION QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES was published:

In 1837 an edition of my complete poems, up to that time, was published by Ticknor & Fields.

Friend William Basset joined the antislavery society of Lynn, Massachusetts, thus going directly against the Quaker reluctance to insist upon a public condemnation of the institution of slavery, and also running a considerable risk of being disciplined for joining an association outside the Society of Friends. He published a pamphlet in defense of this membership. (Eventually he would in fact be disowned.)

The Pastoral Letter, by Whittier The General Association of Congregational ministers in Massachusetts met at Brookfield, June 27, 1837, and issued a Pastoral Letter to the churches under its care. The immediate occasion of it was the profound sensation produced by the recent public lecture in Massachusetts by Angelina and Sarah Grimké, two noble women from South Carolina who bore their testimony against slavery. The Letter demanded that “the perplexed and agitating subjects which are now common amongst us should not be forced upon any church as matters for debate, at the hazard of alienation and division,” and called attention to the dangers now seeming “to threaten the female character with widespread and permanent injury.” So, this is all, — the utmost reach Of priestly power the mind to fetter! ANGELINA EMILY GRIMKÉ When laymen think, when women preach, A war of words, a “Pastoral Letter!” SARAH MOORE GRIMKÉ Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes! Was it thus with those, your predecessors, Who sealed with racks, and fire, and ropes Their loving-kindness to transgressors? A “Pastoral Letter,” grave and dull; Alas! in hoof and horns and features, How different is your Brookfield bull From him who bellows from St. Peter’s! Your pastoral rights and powers from harm, Think ye, can words alone preserve them? Your wiser fathers taught the arm And sword of temporal power to serve them. Oh, glorious days, when Church and State Were wedded by your spiritual fathers! And on submissive shoulders sat HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Your Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers, No vile “itinerant” then could mar The beauty of your tranquil Zion, But at his peril of the scar Of hangman’s whip and branding-iron. Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church Of heretic and mischief-maker, And priest and bailiff joined in search, By turns, of Papist, witch, and Quaker! The stocks were at each church’s door, The gallows stood on Boston Common, A Papist’s ears the pillory bore, — The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman! Your fathers dealt not as ye deal With “non-professing” frantic teachers; They bored the tongue with red-hot steel, And flayed the backs of “female preachers.” Old Hampton, had her fields a tongue, And Salem’s streets could tell their story, Of fainting woman dragged along, Gashed by the whip accursed and gory! And will ye ask me, why this taunt Of memories sacred from the scorner? And why with reckless hand I plant A nettle on the graves ye honor? Not to reproach New England’s dead This record from the past I summon, Of manhood to the scaffold led, And suffering and heroic woman. No, for yourselves alone, I turn The pages of intolerance over, That, in their spirit, dark and stern, Ye haply may your own discover! For, if ye claim the “pastoral right” To silence Freedom’s voice of warning, And from your precincts shut the light Of Freedom’s day around ye dawning; If when an earthquake voice of power And signs in earth and heaven are showing That forth, in its appointed hour, The Spirit of the Lord is going! And, with that Spirit, Freedom’s light On kindred, tongue, and people breaking, Whose slumbering millions, at the sight, In glory and in strength are waking! When for the sighing of the poor, And for the needy, God hath risen, And chains are breaking, and a door Is opening for the souls in prison! If then ye would, with puny hands, Arrest the very work of Heaven, And bind anew the evil bands Which God’s right arm of power hath riven; What marvel that, in many a mind, Those darker deeds of bigot madness Are closely with your own combined, Yet “less in anger than in sadness “? What marvel, if the people learn To claim the right of free opinion? What marvel, if at times they spurn The ancient yoke of your dominion? A glorious remnant linger yet, HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Whose lips are wet at Freedom’s fountains, The coming of whose welcome feet Is beautiful upon our mountains! Men, who the gospel tidings bring Of Liberty and Love forever, Whose joy is an abiding spring, Whose peace is as a gentle river! But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale Of Carolina’s high-souled daughters, Which echoes here the mournful wail Of sorrow from Edisto’s waters, Close while ye may the public ear, With malice vex, with slander wound them, The pure and good shall throng to hear, And tried and manly hearts surround them. Oh, ever may the power which led Their way to such a fiery trial, And strengthened womanhood to tread The wine-press of such self-denial, Be round them in an evil land, With wisdom and with strength from Heaven, With Miriam’s voice, and Judith’s hand, And Deborah’s song, for triumph given! And what are ye who strive with God Against the ark of His salvation, Moved by the breath of prayer abroad, With blessings for a dying nation? What, but the stubble and the hay To perish, even as flax consuming, With all that bars His glorious way, Before the brightness of His coming? And thou, sad Angel, who so long Hast waited for the glorious token, That Earth from all her bonds of wrong To liberty and light has broken, — Angel of Freedom! soon to thee The sounding trumpet shall be given, And over Earth’s full jubilee Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven!

Hymn, by John Greenleaf Whittier. Written for the celebration of the third anniversary of British emancipation at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, first of August, 1837.

O HOLY FATHER! just and true Are all Thy works and words and ways, And unto Thee alone are due Thanksgiving and eternal praise!

As children of Thy gracious care, We veil the eye, we bend the knee, With broken words of praise and prayer, Father and God, we come to Thee.

For Thou hast heard, O God of Right, The sighing of the island slave; And stretched for him the arm of might, Not shortened that it could not save. The laborer sits beneath his vine, The shackled soul and hand are free; Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine! Praise! for the blessing is of Thee! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

And oh, we feel Thy presence here, Thy awful arm in judgment bare! Thine eye hath seen the bondman’s tear; Thine ear hath heard the bondman’s prayer. Praise! for the pride of man is low, The counsels of the wise are naught, The fountains of repentance flow; What hath our God in mercy wrought? Speed on Thy work, Lord God of Hosts! And when the bondman’s chain is riven, And swells from all our guilty coasts The anthem of the free to Heaven, Oh, not to those whom Thou hast led, As with Thy cloud and fire before, But. unto Thee, in fear and dread, Be praise and glory evermore.

In 1835 Francis Wayland had authored a textbook, ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE, that had adopted a stance that was clearly antislavery. This textbook had therefore been banned in the American South. A professor in Virginia had declared that “I dare not give up your minds to the dominion of Wayland’s Philosophy.” In this year a South Carolinian, Jasper Adams, produced a competing textbook, THE ELEMENTS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, that was sufficiently proslavery that it could be placed before the (white) students of the slaveholding Southern states for their moral edification.

The Reverend William Henry Brisbane attended lectures and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Medical College of South Carolina. He then relocated his household (the family and their house slaves) to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became pastor of the First Baptist Church (he was accepting, as a condition of this employment, that there was to be no preaching whatever in regard to slavery, either pro or con).

In roughly this timeframe John Buchanan Floyd abandoned his cotton plantation venture in Arkansas to recuperate from malignant fever and resume the practice of law in Virginia. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM You’ve heard slavery referred to as the “peculiar institution” — let’s explore just how peculiar it was.81 In this 1 7 year Matilda Lawrence, /8th black and /8ths white, visited New-York with her father and owner, Larkin Lawrence of St. Louis, a rich Missouri planter. While in that free state she requested her freedom, promising that if her father gave her manumission papers, she would return with him to Missouri. He refused, so, coming down the Ohio River on the way back to Missouri, in Cincinnati, the girl jumped ship. I don’t know how old she was at this point. She got a job as housekeeper in the home of a former slavemaster named James Gillespie Birney who was running an abolitionist newspaper in Cincinnati, The Philanthropist. Birney apparently hired

her in all innocence, but then she was taken into custody on suspicion of being a slave and a fugitive. After her arrest it would be established that she was the slave of, and the natural daughter of, this Larkin Lawrence plantation master. Birney was of course charged with violating the 1804 Fugitive Slave law. Salmon Portland Chase challenged this law in Birney v Ohio, 8 Ohio 230, arguing that it was unconstitutional nationwide and in any case inapplicable in Ohio since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had made slavery illegal there. He also charged that slavery was a violation of the natural right to human liberty, a right “proclaimed by our fathers in the Declaration of Independence,” although of course he must have understood that the court

81. This is, I need to point out, a play on words. “Peculiar” did not mean then what it means now. It didn’t mean “strange.” What southern white people were meaning when they referred to slavery as their peculiar institution was that although it was something which appeared in the North not to make any sense, and was generating hostility, even outrage, in the South in its complex of institutions and arrangements, the enslaving of blacks seemed to them to be making a whole lot of sense, and any alternative was seeming to them at that time to be unthinkably obtuse. –They were wearing their “It’s a Southron Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand” T-shirt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM would consider this merely ludicrous.

“All men are born equally free.”

Judge D.K. Este ruled that Matilda Lawrence was legally her father’s property and ordered her returned to his custody. Birney was fined $50. Two days after this decision Matilda would be transported to New Orleans, where her father would have her sold at public auction. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” right? Chase would appeal Birney’s fine to the state supreme court. In a manner meant to be distinctly uncomplimentary, Kentucky opponents of Chase would characterize him “The Attorney-General of Fugitive Slaves.” Chase would soon be using this title with pride. “I never refused my help to any person black or white; and I liked the office nonetheless because there were neither fees nor salary connected with it.” Appearing in defense of many fugitives, he would never win a single case. At some anti-slavery rallies Chase would have the honor of being pelted with eggs, and on one occasion would have the honor of being hit with a brick. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 4th issue of its abolitionist “omnibus” entitled The Anti- Slavery Examiner, containing an anonymous “The Bible Against Slavery. An Inquiry Into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights.” (This was by Theodore Dwight Weld and would be TEXT followed by “The Bible ... Human Rights. Third Edition – Revised.” and by “The Bible ... Human Rights. INDEX Fourth Edition – Enlarged.”)

The Reverend Adin Ballou’s THE TOUCHSTONE. The Reverend came out publicly as, shudder, an abolitionist. Although this announcement produced turmoil at his Mendon church, the pastor’s supporters would there prevail. He would be less successful in introducing such a reform at this year’s meeting of the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists, his proposal there only producing a rift in fellowship between a group of social reformers and the conservative divines (under the guidance of the Reverend Paul Dean).

Noah Webster, Jr. instructed a daughter who was being unduly influenced by the abolitionist cause that “slavery is a great sin and a general calamity – but it is not our sin, though it may prove to be a terrible calamity to us in the north. But we cannot legally interfere with the South on this subject. ... To come north to preach and thus disturb our peace, when we can legally do nothing to effect this object, is, in my view, highly criminal and the preachers of abolitionism deserve the penitentiary.” Wow, we ought to lock up the Frederick Douglass who followed the North Star to disturb Noah’s daughter’s peace? –With friends like this the American antislavery crusade certainly didn’t need any enemies!

The conspiracy of secrecy entered into by the founding fathers, not to discuss the work done at the Constitutional Convention for fifty years, expired. It was revealed that the founding fathers had not intended, in employing vague phrases such as “We the People,” that the protections would gradually be expanded until they included blacks, and Indians, and women.

Interest alone [by which was meant prosperity, was] the governing principle.

It was revealed, by the expiration of this oath of secrecy in regard to the machinations that had produced the federal Constitution, that the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, Benjamin Franklin, had betrayed the American slave. During the course of the Constitutional Convention he had not so much as brought the topic up for discussion. The convention had simply capitulated to the American slaveholders — and the freedom of women of course never crossed anyone’s mind. The only consideration given to the fact that some Americans were being held in bondage was to allow those who were chaining them to cast more weighty votes than non-slaveholders –in their behalf– in all the national elections! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM “It is simply crazy that there should ever have come into being a world with such a sin in it, in which a man is set apart because of his color — the superficial fact about a human being. Who could want such a world? For an American fighting for his love of country, that the last hope of earth should from its beginning have swallowed slavery, is an irony so withering, a justice so intimate in its rebuke of pride, as to measure only with God.” — Stanley Cavell, MUST WE MEAN WHAT WE SAY? 1976, page 141 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The Constitution of the United States of America was thus revealed to have been a “Covenant with Death and 82 an Agreement with Hell,” to paraphrase ISAIAH 28:15 in the manner favored by abolitionists.

What to do? —To replace the expired 50-year gag agreement on discussing the proceedings of the 1887 Constitutional Convention, Congress enacted a new gag rule that would effectively suppress any and all congressional debate on anything and everything having to do with the national slavery issue.

As the result of a Connecticut trial, Jackson v. Bullock, any slave brought into Connecticut from a slave state of the federal union would be considered to be immediately free. This followed the 1836 Massachusetts case of Commonwealth v. Aves which in turn followed the 1772 British case, Somerset v. Stewart. New York and Pennsylvania overrode the Somerset decision by statutory enactments, according to which Pennsylvania granted 9 months transit until 1847 and New York granted 9 months transit until 1841.

In this year the Reverend Horace Bushnell was warning America to protect its Anglo-Saxon blood from the

82. In a sense, the correct answer to the standard classroom question “What caused the Civil War?” would be “Uh, Ben Franklin?”

Son of so-and-so and so-and-so, this so-and-so helped us to gain our independence, instructed us in economy, and drew down lightning from the clouds.

Repeat after me, class: “Nobody ever does just one thing.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM immigrant tide. RACISM

The Reverend Hosea Easton, a black abolitionist, warned sensibly that doing away with human slavery in itself would not correct America’s wrong, for after that it would still be necessary for the US’s whites to overcome their color prejudice which made dusky skin “a mark of degradation.” One might suppose that the La Amistad slaves would, under such an arrangement, have been free the moment they set foot on Connecticut soil, but no, they had been brought there not from a slave state of our federal union but across the Middle Passage from Africa by way of Cuba, and perhaps they weren’t really slaves in not having been legally enslaved, and therefore there were two significant considerations bearing upon whether this Connecticut law having to do with slaves brought into Connecticut from a slave state of the federal union could be made to stick in court. During this year 11 American negreros would clear from the port of Havana on their way to the coast of Africa to pick up slave cargo (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, page 221). In particular the negrero Washington, named of course in honor of our founding father, was enabled by the American consul at Havana, himself (what are buddies for?), to proceed to the coast of Africa to pick up slave cargo (HOUSE DOCUMENT, 26th Congress, 2d session V, No. 115, pages 488-90, 715 ff; HOUSE DOCUMENT, 27th Congress, 1st session, No. 34, pages 18-21). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”:

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.

Catherine E. Beecher’s “Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism”: ... It is Christianity that has given to woman her true place in society. And it is the peculiar trait of Christianity alone that can sustain her therein. “Peace on earth and good will to men” is the character of all the rights and privileges, the influence, and the power of woman. A man may act on society by the collision of intellect, in public debate; he may urge his measures by a sense of shame, by fear and by personal interest; he may coerce by the combination of public sentiment; he may drive by physical force, and he does not outstep the boundaries of his sphere. But all the power, and all the conquests that are lawful to woman, are those only which appeal to the kindly, generous, peaceful and benevolent principles. Woman is to win every thing by peace and love; by making herself so much respected, esteemed and loved, that to yield to her opinions and to gratify her wishes, will be the free-will offering of the heart. But this is to be all accomplished in the domestic and social circle. There let every woman become so cultivated and refined in intellect ... so unassuming and unambitious ... so “gentle and easy to be entreated,” as that every heart will repose in her presence; then, the fathers, the husbands, and the sons, will find an influence thrown around them, to which they will yield not only willingly but proudly.... But the moment woman begins to feel the promptings of ambition, or the thirst for power, her aegis of defence is gone. All the sacred protection of religion, all the generous promptings of chivalry, all the poetry of romantic gallantry, depend upon woman’s retaining her place as dependent and defenceless, and making no claims, and maintaining no right but what are the gifts of honour, rectitude and love. ... If these general principles are correct, they are entirely opposed to the plan of arraying females in any Abolition movement; because ... it brings them forward as partisans in a conflict that has been begun and carried forward by measures that are any thing rather than peaceful in their tendencies; because it draws them forth from their appropriate retirement, to expose themselves to the ungoverned violence of mobs, and to sneers and ridicule in public places; because it leads them into the arena of political collision, not as peaceful mediators to hush the opposing elements, but as combatants to cheer up and carry forward the measures of strife. ... In this country, petitions to congress, in reference to the official duties of legislators, seem, IN ALL CASES, to fall entirely without the sphere of female duty. Men are the proper persons to make appeals to the rulers whom they appoint, and if their female friends, by arguments and persuasions, can induce them to petition, all the good that can by done by such measures will be secured. But if females cannot influence their nearest friends, to urge forward a public measure in this way, they HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM surely are out of their place, in attempting to do it themselves....

February 6, Monday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, again, from Harvard Library, the 5th volume of the 6-volume edition by the Reverend Henry John Todd (1763-1845), THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON: WITH NOTES OF VARIOUS AUTHORS. TO WHICH ARE ADDED ILLUSTRATIONS, AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MILTON, BY THE REV. HENRY J. TODD (probably the 3d edition, London: Rivington, Cuthell, Nunn, et. al., 1826).

For the beginning of what would come to be referred to as the “Week of the Slaves’ Petitions,” Representative John Quincy Adams offered petitions from nine free women of Fredericksburg and from slaves. Representative Waddy Thompson of South Carolina made a motion that Representative Adams be censured by the House. On the floor of the Senate, John Caldwell Calhoun declared “Slavery a Positive Good”:

READ MY LIPS. I do not belong, said Mr. C., to the school which holds that aggression is to be met by concession. Mine is the opposite creed, which teaches that encroachments must be met at the beginning, and that those who act on the opposite principle are prepared to become slaves. In this case, in particular. I hold HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM concession or compromise to be fatal. If we concede an inch, concession would follow concession — compromise would follow compromise, until our ranks would be so broken that effectual resistance would be impossible. We must meet the enemy on the frontier, with a fixed determination of maintaining our position at every hazard. Consent to receive these insulting petitions, and the next demand will be that they be referred to a committee in order that they may be deliberated and acted upon. At the last session we were modestly asked to receive them, simply to lay them on the table, without any view to ulterior action.... I then said, that the next step would be to refer the petition to a committee, and I already see indications that such is now the intention. If we yield, that will be followed by another, and we will thus proceed, step by step, to the final consummation of the object of these petitions. We are now told that the most effectual mode of arresting the progress of abolition is, to reason it down; and with this view it is urged that the petitions ought to be referred to a committee. That is the very ground which was taken at the last session in the other House, but instead of arresting its progress it has since advanced more rapidly than ever. The most unquestionable right may be rendered doubtful, if once admitted to be a subject of controversy, and that would be the case in the present instance. The subject is beyond the jurisdiction of Congress — they have no right to touch it in any shape or form, or to make it the subject of deliberation or discussion.... As widely as this incendiary spirit has spread, it has not yet infected this body, or the great mass of the intelligent and business portion of the North; but unless it be speedily stopped, it will spread and work upwards till it brings the two great sections of the Union into deadly conflict. This is not a new impression with me. Several years since, in a discussion with one of the Senators from Massachusetts (Mr. Webster), before this fell spirit had showed itself, I then predicted that the doctrine of the proclamation and the Force Bill — that this Government had a right, in the last resort, to determine the extent of its own powers, and enforce its decision at the point of the bayonet, which was so warmly maintained by that Senator, would at no distant day arouse the dormant spirit of abolitionism. I told him that the doctrine was tantamount to the assumption of unlimited power on the part of the Government, and that such would be the impression on the public mind in a large portion of the Union. The consequence would be inevitable. A large portion of the Northern States believed slavery to be a sin, and would consider it as an obligation of conscience to abolish it if they should feel themselves in any degree responsible for its continuance, and that this doctrine would necessarily lead to the belief of such responsibility. I then predicted that it would commence as it has with this fanatical portion of society, and that they would begin their operations on the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless, — and gradually extend upwards till they would become strong enough to obtain political control, when he and others holding the highest stations in society, would, however reluctant, be compelled to yield to their doctrines, or be driven into obscurity. But four years have since elapsed, and all this is already in a course of regular fulfilment. Standing at the point of time at which we have now arrived, it HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM will not be more difficult to trace the course of future events now than it was then. They who imagine that the spirit now abroad in the North, will die away of itself without a shock or convulsion, have formed a very inadequate conception of its real character; it will continue to rise and spread, unless prompt and efficient measures to stay its progress be adopted. Already it has taken possession of the pulpit, of the schools, and, to a considerable extent, of the press; those great instruments by which the mind of the rising generation will be formed. “We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both.” However sound the great body of the non-slaveholding States are at present, in the course of a few years they will be succeeded by those who will have been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one-half of this Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained towards another. It is easy to see the end. By the necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we must become, finally, two people. It is impossible under the deadly hatred which must spring up between the two great nations, if the present causes are permitted to operate unchecked, that we should continue under the same political system. The conflicting elements would burst the Union asunder, powerful as are the links which hold it together. Abolition and the Union cannot coexist. As the friend of the Union I openly proclaim it, — and the sooner it is known the better. The former may now be controlled, but in a short time it will be beyond the power of man to arrest the course of events. We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. It cannot be subverted without drenching the country or the other of the races.... But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding States is an evil: — far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. In the meantime, the white or European race, has not degenerated. It has kept pace with its brethren in other sections of the Union where slavery does not exist. It is odious to make comparison; but I appeal to all sides whether the South is not equal in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage, disinterestedness, and all the high qualities which adorn our nature. “I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good.” But I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject where the honor and interests of those I represent are involved. I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history. This is not the proper occasion, but, if it were, it would not be difficult to trace the various devices by which the wealth of all civilized communities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what means so small a share has been allotted to those by whose labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the non-producing classes. The devices are almost innumerable, from the brute force and gross superstition of ancient times, to the subtle and artful fiscal contrivances of modern. I might well challenge a comparison between them and the more direct, simple, and patriarchal mode by which the labor of the African race is, among us, commanded by the European. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe — look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse. But I will not dwell on this aspect of the question; I turn to the political; and here I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North.... Surrounded as the slaveholding States are with such imminent perils, I rejoice to think that our means of defense are ample, if we shall prove to have the intelligence and spirit to see and apply them before it is too late. All we want is concert, to lay aside all party differences and unite with zeal and energy in repelling approaching dangers. Let there be concert of action, and we shall find ample means of security without resorting to secession or disunion. I speak with full knowledge and a thorough examination of the subject, and for one see my way clearly.... I dare not hope that anything I can say will arouse the South to a due sense of danger; I fear it is beyond the power of mortal voice to awaken it in time from the fatal security into which it has fallen. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Spring: The abolitionist businessmen Arthur Tappan and Lewis Tappan, finding themselves suddenly unable to collect from customers who had ordered their offerings on wholesale credit, were forced into default. Although their friend Nicholas Biddle (who was serving as the director of the Second Bank of the United States) guaranteed their debts up to $150,000, this failure of Arthur Tappan & Co. was a collapse that sent the New-York business community into shock, amounting to in excess of a million dollars (that would be in excess of a hundred million, in today’s greenbacks). Arthur would eventually rebuild his previous enterprise but his brother Lewis would start up an entirely new business venture, that of the Mercantile Agency:

Lewis Tappan’s experiences in business and reform led him to exalt “the Christian self-made man,” according to one historian, “the person who partook in vigorous profit-making ventures along lines that fortified basic Christian morality.” In the next four years, Tappan proceeded to merge the duties of moral reformers, postmasters, bill collectors, and spy-bookers into a unified system of commercial surveillance. In 1839, he championed the mutineers of the slave ship Amistad until the Supreme Court upheld the Africans’ freedom in January 1841. The case benefitted from his talents for moral righteousness and organizational efficiency. That same year, Tappan saw his chance to fight the evils of fraud and ineptitude in the credit economy. Systematic verification would revitalize moral responsibility in commerce. By linking national surveillance to central record- keeping, Tappan meant to archive market memory. An intelligence agency would reward men of integrity and punish rash lenders and crooked borrowers. Thus, after being ruined by defaulters and doing the same unto others, a famous abolitionist set out to break the chain of broken promises. The Mercantile Agency opened in the summer of 1841, and the founder immediately faced the problem of recruiting agents. Like the “spy-books,” Tappan intended to monitor “country merchants” who ordered from urban wholesalers — a goal unlikely to win friends in the hinterlands. Tapping into the wide, communicative circles of antislavery men, he solicited comrades like Ohio’s Salmon P. Chase (future Treasury Secretary and Chief Justice). Using an existing network was canny but also risky. Their cause was no business asset, and in conspiracy-minded times, any mobilization of abolitionist agents could be misread. Even before he opened, New York’s Courier and Enquirer faulted “the business of a secret inquiry into the private affairs and personal standing of every body buying goods in New York.” The Courier also reprinted an item from Virginia. The Norfolk Beacon lauded a local attorney for spurning Tappan’s invitation “to act as a spy” — and added that even a slave would balk at the low- down offices of a snitch. Tappan regarded his “correspondents” more as sentinels than snitches, but he often had to defend himself. Taking a half-page in the NEW-YORK CITY AND CO-PARTNERSHIP DIRECTORY, FOR 1843 AND 1844, IN TWO PARTS [published by John Doggett, Jr. of New-York], he HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM wrote, “It is not a system of espionage, but the same as merchants usually apply –only on an extended plan– to ascertain whether persons applying for credit are worthy of the same and to what extent.” The firm’s “resident and special agents” made similar inquiries, but on a larger, more systematic scale — “an extended plan.” Reports circulated in strictest confidence, “so as not [to] injure anyone.... It is not known that injustice has been done to country traders by this plan.” ...careful readers may have inferred that harm befell some traders — except not unjustly, since the agency adjudged them scoundrels or incompetents. The founder himself set the sanctimonious tone that later subjected his firm to numerous lawsuits for libel and slander. The advertisement showed that by his second year of operations, Tappan’s antislavery friends were off the hook. Correspondents included “attorneys, cashiers of banks, old merchants and other competent persons.” ... Correspondents were expected to send updates every six months, answer urgent inquiries, and warn of imminent collapses. In lieu of payment, they earned a cut of any debt collected from local defaulters. Entrusting evaluations and collections to the same agent, however, invited conflicts of interest.

April (?): Two months after the publication of Bronson Alcott’s CONVERSATIONS, Harriet Martineau’s book SOCIETY IN AMERICA appeared in America: “There is fear of vulgarity, fear of responsibility; and above all, fear of singularity.”

“There is a school in Boston (a large one, when I left the city,) conducted on this principle [the principle of Platonic idealism, that the spirit precedes the body rather than vice versa, that in general it is ideals or ideas that create their own manifestations in the realm of sense rather than vice versa]. The master presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth in philosophy and morals, and that his business is to bring it out into expression, to help the outward life to conform to the inner light; and especially to learn of these enlightened babes, with all humility. Large exposures might be made of the mischief this gentleman is doing to his pupils by relaxing their bodies, pampering their imaginations, over-stimulating the consciences of some, and hardening those of others; and by his extraordinary management, offering them inducements to falsehood and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM hypocrisy.”

Many years later Abba Alcott would comment succinctly on the above paragraph: “Thus Harriet Martineau took the bread from the mouths of my family.” THE ALCOTT FAMILY Harriet Martineau, reporting to her British readers about the state of America, complained of the moral cowardice of the conservative Unitarian leadership, with a handful of exceptions. The schism that divided Unitarians into a conservative institution versus a more radical opposition in the 1820s was epitomized in Emerson’s resignation from the ministry in 1832 and his famous dissatisfaction with the doctrine’s “corpse- cold” institutionalization. The Reverend Charles Follen, a German professor and political radical who arrived in Boston in 1825 and managed to impress both Boston’s conservative-Unitarian establishment and its breakaway intellectuals with his firsthand familiarity with the new ideas and practices in his native land, was also one of Martineau’s exceptions, as he was active in both in Unitarianism and in abolitionism. According to Edmund Spevack’s CHARLES FOLLEN’S SEARCH FOR NATIONALITY AND FREEDOM (Harvard UP, 1997, pages 138ff, 284-85 notes 63 and 65), he became America’s first Germanist, and apparently sat in on some early sessions of Hedge’s transcendental “club.” Here is the matter as expressed by Martineau in her Part IV, Chapter 3, “Administration of Religion.” ...On one side is the oppressor, struggling to keep his power for the sake of his gold; and with him the mercenary, the faithlessly timid, the ambitious, and the weak. On the other side are the friends of the slave; and with them those who, without possibility of recompense, are sacrificing their reputations, their fortunes, their quiet, and risking their lives, for the principle of freedom. What are the Unitarian clergy doing amidst this war which admits of neither peace nor truce, but which must end the subjugation of the principle of freedom, or of oppression? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM I believe Mr. [Samuel] May had the honour of being the first Unitarian pastor who sided with the right. Whether he has sacrificed to his intrepidity one christian grace; whether he has lost one charm of his piety, gentleness, and charity, amidst the trials of insult which he has had to undergo, I dare appeal to his worst enemy. Instead of this, his devotion to a most difficult duty has called forth in him a force of character, a strength of reason, of which his best friends were before unaware. It filled me with awe for the weakness of men, in their noblest offices, to hear the insolent compassion with which some of his priestly brethren spoke of a man whom they have not light and courage enough to follow through the thickets and deserts of duty, and upon whom they therefore bestow their scornful pity from out of their shady bowers of complacency. —Dr. Follen came next: and there is nothing in his power that he has not done and sacrificed in identifying himself with the cause of emancipation. I heard him, in a perilous time, pray in church for the “miserable, degraded, insulted slave; in chains of iron, and chains of gold.” This is not the place in which to exhibit what his sacrifices have really been. —Dr. Channing’s later services are well known. I know of two more of the Unitarian clergy who have made an open and dangerous avowal of the right: and of one or two who have in private resisted wrong in the cause. But this is all. As a body they must, though disapproving slavery, be ranked as the enemies of the abolitionists. Some have pleaded to me that it is a distasteful subject. Some think it sufficient that they can see faults in individual abolitionists. Some say that their pulpits are the property of their people, who are not therefore to have their minds disturbed by what they hear thence. Some say that the question is no business of theirs. Some urge that they should be turned out of their pulpits before the next Sunday, if they touched upon Human Rights. Some think the subject not spiritual enough. The greater number excuse themselves on the ground of a doctrine which, I cannot but think, has grown out of the circumstances; that the duty of the clergy is to decide on how much truth the people can bear, and to administer it accordingly. —So, while society is going through the greatest of moral revolutions, casting out its most vicious anomaly, and bringing its Christianity into its politics and its social conduct, the clergy, even the Unitarian clergy, are some pitying and some ridiculing the apostles of the revolution; preaching spiritualism, learning, speculation; advocating third and fourth-rate objects of human exertion and amelioration, and leaving it to the laity to carry out the first and pressing moral reform of the age. They are blind to their noble mission of enlightening and guiding the moral sentiment of society in its greatest crisis. They not only decline aiding the cause in weekdays by deed or pen, or spoken words; but they agree in private to avoid the subject of Human Rights in the pulpit till the crisis be past. No one asks them to harrow the feelings of their hearers by sermons on slavery: but they avoid offering those christian principles of faith and liberty with which slavery cannot co-exist.

April 28, Friday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 7th issue of its abolitionist “omnibus” TEXT entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Emancipation in the West Indies.” INDEX HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

May 8, Monday: The New England delegates to the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women that was to be held on Manhattan Island assembled in Providence for the overnight steamboat trip to a wharf at the Battery on Manhattan Island.

The steamboat had a Ladies’ Cabin with two tiers of berths, but there was a problem. One of the delegates from Rhode Island was a black woman and normally the steamboat companies did not allow black passengers inside the Gentlemen’s Cabin or the Ladies’ Cabin. At that time black passengers spent the night on the steamboat’s deck regardless of weather conditions, and if for instance a pregnant free black woman died of exposure, she died, that was all. However, in actual fact passengers were able to make their own rules. One delegate recorded later that

I was happy, in the early stages of this journey to have our feelings tested with regard to that bitter prejudice against colored which we have indiscriminately indulged, and to find it giving place to better feelings. Our colored companion slept near my side — she rode with us in the carriage — sat with us at the table of the public boarding-house — walked in company with us. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM This Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women may arguably have been the first significant racially integrated meeting in the United States of America, as well as merely the first public political meeting of women in the United States of America.83 The convention met in the district of New-York that is now referred to as Greenwich Village. Although, in the northern states, the black population was only one in fifty, at this convention the ratio was one in ten. In New York City, never a hotbed of miscegenation, abolitionist ministers were having their black parishioners sit in a segregated upper gallery humorously referred to by some white parishioners as “nigger heaven.”84 Maria W. Stewart, the 1st American woman to have lectured in public, attended, presumably unnoticed. When the colored ladies thoughtfully provided a box lunch for the assembly, one of the delegates commented

They are a race worth saving.

As a further expression of their solidarity, most of the delegates, except for some of the New York ladies, would decide to do without the divisive distinction between Miss and Mrs. The Commercial Advertiser would describe the “sweet lips” of these “oratoresses” who were depriving “the world of men of the high privilege of drinking from those rich rivers of rhetoric.” The key accomplishment of the convention would be to break the “True Womanhood” of female passivity and submission and acceptance by insisting that the True Woman, out of her native emotionality and unselfishness, would vigorously plead the cause of the oppressed, and would therefore be Anti-Slavery. –That this was not what it had been being portrayed to be, a man’s affair in which a woman was not to meddle. DUNBAR FAMILY

From George Templeton Strong’s New-York diary:

This affair of the Dry Dock Bank has gone better than I expected, but I fear it will prove the entering wedge to split up all Wall Street. The other banks are generally blamed for not sustaining it, and justly so. Only imagine that [Uncle Benjamin] should actually have come to such a situation as to be afraid of personal insult if he go into the street! Yet so it is. What can be more dreadful? I can scarcely realize it — as kind and good-hearted and benevolent a man as ever breathed, his character unimpeached and unimpeachable, yet obliged to secure his house from attack and afraid of showing himself. These wretched banks and credit systems and paper wealth; they have done all this.

83. TURNING THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN: THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF AMERICAN WOMEN HELD IN NEW YORK CITY, MAY 9-12, 1837. Introduction by Dorothy Sterling. NY: The Feminist P at the City U of New York, 1993. 84. The exceedingly popular evangelist Charles Finney, for instance, put his foot down when a black choir and a white choir occupied the same platform at the same time at a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society — that was just too much race mixing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Whig bankers in Massachusetts and New York obtained gold bullion from the Bank of England to bolster Boston and New York banks and thus prevented a major financial collapse in the United States. This did not prevent many of President Andrew Jackson’s depository banks from failing in the various states. The nation would recover very slowly from this disaster, although Massachusetts would be one of the earliest states to make a comeback because of its stringent policies and enforcements of currency and bond issuing, loan control, elimination of debtor imprisonment (which had previously been a major expense for the state government), increased licensing (a major source of revenue), and liquor control as a restriction of “causes of pauperism.” The Panic, aside from these fiscal and social improvements, resulted in prolonging the controversy over the Bank of the United States, a controversy which is referred to more often in the writings of Emerson than in those of Henry Thoreau.

August 16, Wednesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould was having second thoughts about the advisability of Quakers, all of whom were white and, therefore, all of whom were free, involving themselves in the ongoing antislavery struggle. It should be enough, for them to keep themselves personally pure within the Quaker Close, not themselves owning any slaves, not themselves purchasing any of the products of slavery such as cane sugar or cotton cloth, and therefore entirely separated from the wicked practices of the non-Quaker world. Clearly, over the years since the death of his friend of color Paul Cuffe, he had come to consider that it was not any of their business to remedy all the ills of the outside world: 4th day 16th of 8 M / I am still at home, having given up the prospect of Lynn & Salem. — Tho’ I felt tolerably in the Morning it looked doubtful whether I should have got to Lynn in season for the Select Meeting & on looking at it felt as if the journey had better be omitted at present — In the course of the forenoon I wrote a letter to Sister Elizabeth [Rodman] Nichols which has very much relieved my mind of the concern to be at Lynn & Salem. After giving her the reason of my not coming I wrote the following “I hope we shall not all run wild with Abolitionism, it is a worthy cause to be zealous in but not intemperate. I am afraid some will not only injure the cause they wish to promote but themselves also, by forcing measures which to move much in at present, would be of no more avail than to cast pearls before Swine, & I am clear it would be giving that which is holy to be sacraficed, trampled on & devoured by the dogish natures, there is a way for every right thing to be rightly moved in, & if way does not open for this, patient waiting is the best resort — David Buffum once told us in our Yearly Meeting at a time when a very difficult case was before it, & it looked as if it was necessary something should be done, yet there was a streight [difference of opinion] in the Meeting as to what ought to be done - He rose & said it was not only necessary to see that something needed to be done, but before we moved we ought to see, what to do, & how to do it” —- It is my opinion that Slavery is a most crying sin & evil in our land, & that if it does not go out in mercy it will in Judgement, & I hope the experiment of Mercy will be fully tried by poor erring & frail mortals, & the Judgement left to Him who judgeth right, & will execute in his own due & appointed time, in such way & manner as he pleases. — I am clear that the excitement raised on Slavery, & is still increasing, is not wholly the Lords work.- it might have had a right beginning, but now it has run into passion, which has carried, & is carrying many far beyond that prudence & sound discression which marked the course of such men in former days as Woolman, Brown, Buffum, & may I not add the honorable names of the Rotch & Arnold, of the days when the Abolition of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Slave trade was effected. — I do not wish to say much more about it, but to express something of this kind to my dear friends Sophrona Page & Avis Keene was very much the drift I felt towards Lynn & Salem & if thou think proper I am willing thou should make them acquainted with my concern. — I am seriously affraid that more hurt will arise from the present excitement regarding Slavery to the Members of this Yearly Meeting, than has ever been done by all the Hixism [the protests and outrages of the Hicksite followers of Friend Elias Hicks] & Beaconism that has been encountered else where. — I much desire that those who are looked up to as the Way Marks in our Society, may give a certain sound & right direction to those who follow after them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM August 1, Tuesday: The vote to free the slaves of the British West Indies in five years had been two years before, leaving three years to go. In New Bedford, on this anniversary of the decision to emancipate the slaves of the British West Indies, a newspaper article called for the formation of an anti-slavery organization. Here is the hymn written by Friend John Greenleaf Whittier for the celebration at the Broadway Tabernacle in New-York of the 3rd anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indies:

O Holy Father! just and true And oh, we feel Thy presence here, Are all Thy works and words and ways, Thy awful arm of judgment bare! And unto Thee alone is due Thine eye hath seen the bondman's tear; Thanksgiving and eternal praise! Thine ear hath heard the bondman's prayer! As children of Thy gracious care, Praise! for the pride of man is low, We veil the eye, we bend the knee, The counsels of the wise are naught, With broken words of praise and prayer, The fountains of repentance flow; Father and God, we come to Thee. What hath our God in mercy wrought? For Thou has heard, O God of Right, Speed on Thy work, Lord God of Hosts! The sighing of the island slave; And when the bondman's chain is riven, And stretched for him the arm of might, And swells from all our guilty coasts Not shortened that is could not save. The anthem of the free to Heaven, The laborer sits beneath his vine. Oh, not to those whom Thou hast led, The shackled soul and hand are free; As with Thy cloud and fire before, Thanksgiving! for the work is Thine! But unto Thee, in fear and dread, Praise! for the blessing is of Thee! Be praise and glory evermore.

In 1837 I was in New York, in conjunction with Henry B. Stanton and Theodore D. Weld, in the office of the American Anti- Slavery Society.

THEODORE DWIGHT WELD ABOLITIONISM

August 16, Wednesday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould was having second thoughts about the advisability of Quakers, all of whom were white and, therefore, all of whom were free, involving themselves in the ongoing antislavery struggle. It should be enough, for them to keep themselves personally pure within the Quaker Close, not themselves owning any slaves, not themselves purchasing any of the products of slavery such as cane sugar or cotton cloth, and therefore entirely separated from the wicked practices of the non-Quaker world. Clearly, over the years since the death of his friend of color Paul Cuffe, he had come to consider that it was not any of their business to remedy all the ills of the outside world: 4th day 16th of 8 M / I am still at home, having given up the prospect of Lynn & Salem. — Tho’ I felt tolerably in the Morning it looked doubtful whether I should have got to Lynn in season for the Select Meeting & on looking at it felt as if the journey had better be omitted at present — In the course of the forenoon I wrote a letter to Sister Elizabeth [Rodman] Nichols which has very much relieved my mind of the concern to be at Lynn & Salem. After giving her the reason of my not coming I wrote the following “I hope we shall not all run wild with Abolitionism, it is a worthy cause to be zealous in but not intemperate. I am afraid some will not only injure the cause they wish to promote but themselves also, by forcing measures which to move much in at present, would be of no more avail than to cast pearls before Swine, & I am clear it would be giving that which is holy to be sacraficed, trampled on & devoured by the dogish natures, there is a way for every right thing to be rightly moved in, & if way HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM does not open for this, patient waiting is the best resort — David Buffum once told us in our Yearly Meeting at a time when a very difficult case was before it, & it looked as if it was necessary something should be done, yet there was a streight [difference of opinion] in the Meeting as to what ought to be done - He rose & said it was not only necessary to see that something needed to be done, but before we moved we ought to see, what to do, & how to do it” —- It is my opinion that Slavery is a most crying sin & evil in our land, & that if it does not go out in mercy it will in Judgement, & I hope the experiment of Mercy will be fully tried by poor erring & frail mortals, & the Judgement left to Him who judgeth right, & will execute in his own due & appointed time, in such way & manner as he pleases. — I am clear that the excitement raised on Slavery, & is still increasing, is not wholly the Lords work.- it might have had a right beginning, but now it has run into passion, which has carried, & is carrying many far beyond that prudence & sound discression which marked the course of such men in former days as Woolman, Brown, Buffum, & may I not add the honorable names of the Rotch & Arnold, of the days when the Abolition of the Slave trade was effected. — I do not wish to say much more about it, but to express something of this kind to my dear friends Sophrona Page & Avis Keene was very much the drift I felt towards Lynn & Salem & if thou think proper I am willing thou should make them acquainted with my concern. — I am seriously affraid that more hurt will arise from the present excitement regarding Slavery to the Members of this Yearly Meeting, than has ever been done by all the Hixism [the protests and outrages of the Hicksite followers of Friend Elias Hicks] & Beaconism that has been encountered else where. — I much desire that those who are looked up to as the Way Marks in our Society, may give a certain sound & right direction to those who follow after them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM November 7, Tuesday: In a speech, Waldo Emerson demonstrated that he was not yet ready for the slavery issue.85

Horace Mann, Sr. accepted the offer of the hospitality of the Emerson family to reside with them while in Concord to attend a school convention.

The abolitionist publisher Reverend Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed in Alton, Illinois with a gun in his hand,

85. Gougeon, Len. “Abolition, The Emersons, and 1837.” New England Quarterly 54 (1981): 345-64 “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

Gougeon details Emerson’s involvement (or lack thereof) with the abolition movement in the years preceding his first antislavery speech delivered in November 1837. Gougeon initially focuses on the interest of Emerson’s own family in promoting freedom for the blacks: Emerson’s sister Mary and his stepfather the honored Reverend Ezra Ripley were actively “involved in the antislavery agitation of the 1830s and 1840s,” the latter consistently supporting the movement until his death in 1841. But the strongest proponent in Emerson’s family was his younger brother Charles, with whom Emerson maintained a close relationship. As early as April 1835 Charles publicly declared his opposition to slavery, delivering in Concord a speech, “Lecture on Slavery.” It was Emerson’s wife, however, who exerted the greatest influence on her husband, for she was “one of [the] most active members from the outset” of the Women’s Anti-Slavery Society. Secondly, in contrast to Boston, “[t]he environment of Concord in the 1830s ... was quite favorable to the abolition cause,” acting as a “depot of the underground railroad” and a junction for well-known abolitionists. These frequent antislavery lecturers stirred the community with their ideas, and the many newspaper articles and library acquisitions opposing slavery provided the community with current information. Although his family and his neighbors participated actively in the abolitionist cause, Emerson remained “largely disengaged from the antislavery agitation” being aware of the issue but unwilling to take a public stand. His reluctance to join the cause was due in part to his adherence to the commonly held belief that the blacks were inferior by nature to the Caucasians and thus, that they would always be subservient. The other factor that confused the issue for Emerson was his emphasis on “individuality, especially individual moral responsibility”: Emerson felt that both the “slaves and slave owners are responsible for the unpardonable outrage of slavery, and only they themselves, as individuals, can correct the situation.” Reform must come from within — not forcefully from without. Even the gradual abolitionist involvement of his highly respected teacher and friend, the Reverend William Ellery Channing, did not spur Emerson to make a public statement. But Emerson finally felt compelled to speak out when, on November 7, 1837, an angry mob brutally murdered an abolitionist publisher in Alton, Illinois. In the resultant speech, however, Emerson placed more emphasis on “the need to allow and encourage a free discussion of the question than upon the problem of slavery itself.” Instead of taking a strong stand with the abolitionists, he stressed the importance of “individual moral judgment regarding the question of slavery,” individual expression of ideas, and an individual need for reform. Hence, neither the abolitionists, his friends, nor Emerson himself was pleased with the speech that was “[t]epid and philosophical to a fault.” Emerson, restricted by his own views, was not yet ready to take a strong public stance on an issue he clearly opposed. [Janet B. Ergino (Sommers), May 1989] HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM attempting to defend his final printing press from a white mob.86

During a memorial prayer meeting in Hudson, Ohio, John Brown would stand in the back and suddenly at the age of 37 publicly consecrate his life to the destruction of human enslavement, by any means necessary (he raised his right hand as if taking a vow and spoke a single sentence: “Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery”). According to a historian, Waldo Emerson was also much impressed, although of course Waldo would not offer to do anything more dangerous than talk

86. Elijah Parish Lovejoy was no amateur at this. He had had four prior presses destroyed by white mobs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM up the idea that other people might feel compelled to do something!

In the midst of a placid lecture on heroism, he suddenly burst out before a Bostonian assembly: Lovejoy has given his breast to the bullet for his part and had died when it was better not to live. He is absolved [...] I sternly rejoice that one was found to die for humanity and the rights of free speech and opinion. It is said that a shudder ran through his cultured audience.

Abby Kelley, however, would have held Mr. Lovejoy to a somewhat higher standard:

He had better have died as did our Savior, saying “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

As would the Reverend Samuel Joseph May: Although May incorrectly assumed that the convention shared his views, he had placed his finger upon the central dilemma of the antislavery movement: the problem of violent means. May failed to gain general acceptance of his opinions, but he proved the more consistent thinker. Without a complete rejection of force, abolitionists had left the door open to acceptance of violence. Self-defense in war naturally paralleled self-defence against the slave owner. The controversy over violent means, which divided the American Peace Society in 1838 and contributed to the demise of the AASS in 1840, began when an angry Alton, Illinois, mob murdered the abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy.... Except for May, few abolitionists rejected Lovejoy’s course. Henry I. Bowditch, a nonresistance advocate, believed that Lovejoy was “the last being on earth an abolitionist ought to think of, if he would be true to the cause he espouses.” Both Grimké sisters disapproved of Lovejoy’s methods. “There is no such thing as trusting in God and pistols at the same time,” Angelina Grimké maintained. May was the only abolitionist to publicly condemn the “martyrdom” of Lovejoy and charge the AASS with duplicity. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM William Lloyd Garrison had declared early on that his quest was for martyrdom: My trust is in God, my aim is to walk in the footsteps of his son, my rejoicing to be crucified to the world, and the world to me.

Nevertheless, martyrdom was a boon which this benefactor never would be granted: William Lloyd Garrison, along with Wendell Phillips, Theodore Dwight Weld, Frederick Douglass, and many other prominent leaders of the Anti-Slavery Society never really experienced “the altar.” Despite their willingness to be sacrificed to the cause, most of the well-known leaders of the movement did not meet a tragic death. They continued to live valuable and meaningful lives long after slavery had been abolished and they died from natural causes in their seventies and eighties. Other abolitionists, less familiar to the general public, suffered attacks, injuries, and even persecution in their struggle against slavery. These persecuted members were necessary to the antislavery movement, since they provided the connection of blood that bound all committed abolitionists in sacrificial ties. Yet most of these persecuted abolitionists did not reach national prominence. The first and only effective martyr to the abolition movement was Elijah Parish Lovejoy.... . He was killed by a mob in Dalton, Illinois, on November 17, 1837, and his personal destruction came to be regarded as a forecast of the fate that all human liberty must suffer if slavery were perpetuated. He won the martyr’s crown because he died and lost, not because he triumphed. His death also affected for a short time members outside of the abolitionists’ ranks. For a decade after Lovejoy’s death, lust for martyrdom permeated abolitionism, and many individuals demonstrated in life what he had demonstrated in death. But without the death ritual their suffering had only a

Here is the matter as it was reported in the Alton Observer: Night had come to the town of Alton, Illinois and a crowd began to gather in the darkness. Some of the men stooped to gather stones. Others fingered the triggers of the guns they carried as they made their way to a warehouse on the banks of the Mississippi River. As they approached, they eyed the windows of the three-story building, searching for some sign of movement from inside. Suddenly, William S. Gilman, one of the owners of the building, appeared in an upper window. “What do you want here?” he asked the crowd. “The press!” came the shouted reply. Inside the warehouse was Elijah Parish Lovejoy..., a Presbyterian minister and editor of the Alton Observer. He and 20 of his supporters were standing guard over a newly arrived printing press from the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. This was the fourth press that Lovejoy had received for his paper. Three others already had been destroyed by people who opposed the antislavery views he expressed in the Observer. But Lovejoy would not give up. This time, in an attempt to hide the arrival of the new press, secret arrangements were made. A steamboat delivered the press at 3 o’clock in the morning on November 7, 1837, and some of Lovejoy’s friends ere there to meet it. Moving quickly, they carried the press to the third floor of Gilman’s warehouse, but not before they were spotted by members HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM of the mob. Word of the arrival of the press spread throughout the town all that day. As nightfall approached, mob leaders were joined by men from the taverns, and now the crowd stood below, demanding this fourth press. Gilman called out: “We have no ill feelings toward, any of you and should much regret to do any injury; but we are authorized by the Mayor to. defend our property and shall do so with our lives.” The mob began to throw stones, breaking out all the windows in the warehouse. Shots were fired by members of the mob, and rifle balls whizzed through the windows of the warehouse, narrowly missing the defenders inside. Lovejoy and his men, returned the fire. Several people in the crowd were hit, and one was killed. “Burn them out!”, someone shouted. Leaders of the mob called for a ladder, which was put up on the side of the building. A boy with a torch was sent up to set fire to the wooden roof. Lovejoy and one of his supporters, Royal Weller, volunteered to stop the boy. The two men crept out- side, hiding in the shadows of the building. Surprising the mob, they rushed to the ladder, pushed it over and quickly retreated inside. Once again a ladder was put in place. As Lovejoy and Weller made another brave attempt to overturn the ladder, they were spotted. Lovejoy was shot five times, and Weller was also wounded. Lovejoy staggered inside the warehouse, making his way to the second floor before he finally fell. “My God. I an shot,” he cried. He died almost immediately. By this time the warehouse roof had begun to burn. The men remaining inside knew they had no choice but to surrender the press. The mob rushed into the vacant building. The press Lovejoy died defending was carried to a window and thrown out onto the river bank. It was broken into pieces that were scattered in the Mississippi River. Fearing more violence, Lovejoy’s friends, did not remove his body from the building until the next morning. Members of the crowd from the night before, feeling no shame at what they had done, laughed and jeered as the funeral wagon moved slowly down the street toward Lovejoy’s home. Lovejoy was buried on November 9, 1837, his 35th birthday.

FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM November 17, Friday: Francis Jackson Meriam was born in Framingham MA. He was not only the grandson but also the namesake of the Garrisonian abolitionist and Boston historian Francis Jackson. He would be a young manic-depressive with but one good eye.

November 17: Sunrise. Now the king of day plays at bo-peep round the world’s corner and every cottage window smiles a golden smile –a very picture of glee– I see the water glistening in the eye. The smothered breathings of awakening day strike the ear with an undulatory motion –over hill and dale, pasture and woodland, come they to me, and I am at home in the world.87 The Sky. If there is nothing new on earth, still there is something new in the heavens. We have always a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types in this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth.

87. William M. White’s version of the above journal entry is:

Now the king of day plays at bo-peep Round the world’s corner, And every cottage window smiles a golden smile,— A very picture of glee.

I see the water glistening in the eye.

The smothered breathings of awakening day Strike the ear with an undulating motion; Over hill and dale, Pasture and woodland, Come they to me, And I am at home in the world. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM December 20, Wednesday: King Othon I replaced Ignaz von Rudhart as prime minister of Greece.

Representative William Slade of Vermont moved to refer an abolitionist petition to the select committee with instructions to bring in a bill for abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. There was pandemonium on the floor of the US House of Representatives at the insolence of this obstructionism, and the Southern representatives walked out in order to hold their own separate meeting. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1838

The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 5th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Power of Congress Over the District of Columbia.” TEXT (This would be followed by “Power ... Columbia. With Additions by the Author.” and by “Power ... Columbia. INDEX Fourth Edition.”)

January 17, Wednesday: Reuben Crandall died in Jamaica — of consumption or tuberculosis which he had contracted during his lengthy incarceration in the Washington DC lockup on charges of having attempted to persuade the citizens of our nation’s capital to give up on human enslavement.

On this same day, at the Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Salem, Massachusetts, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould was struggling with the spiritual error of those Quakers who, like the Hicksites of 1827, were allowing themselves to become over-preoccupied with the ongoing antislavery crusade to the detriment of their religion.

“Abolitionists often identified themselves with the slaves in a mood not so much of compassion as of self- seeking liberation.” — Bliss Perry, THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN LITERATURE, page 233

None of your hyperventilation, please — we are white people here, and this “being enslaved” situation isn’t a problem that we need concern ourselves with. He approved a motion by the Yearly Meeting barring the abolition societies from use of Friends meetinghouses for their inciting gatherings in precisely the same mode in which the abolition societies had been barred in Washington from distributing their inciting pamphlets. 4th day / attended Select meeting which was a time of favour the[n?] attended with a sense of weight & some distress things not being all right among them — Dined at Abijah Chases & met in the Afternoon with the Yearly Meeting committee & endeavoured to feel after the mind of Truth & I believe we were favoured with a right sense & right movements, which resulted in private & tender council to a few who appeared to be much involved the spirit of Anti Slavery, or are at least by their heated zeal injuring a good & right cause by intemperate movements, & in some instances injuring themselves, & society in persuing wrong, or at least unseasonable Measures - We thought some good was done & that we went at present as far as Wisdom dictated - Returned to Brother J R & lodged. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

SELFPRIVILEGING The problem was that these anti-slavery white people were mere self-privilegers. By identifying themselves with the plight of an oppressed minority they achieved a kind of cheap righteousness, not only at the expense of the slaves they purported to be defending but also at the expense of other white people, slavemasters, whom they were cheaply disparaging! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM January 24, Wednesday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 6th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, incautiously presenting a “Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave” that had been narrated to Friend John Greenleaf Whittier by a black man (this was also appearing in book form as NARRATIVE OF JAMES WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE; WHO WAS FOR SEVERAL YEARS A DRIVER ON A COTTON PLANTATION IN ALABAMA). The authenticity of what Friend John had produced would immediately be challenged and suddenly this Williams dude, native informant — would be nowhere to be found. –The book would need to be withdrawn from the bookstores. It would come to appear that “Williams” had been a free black American who had culled stories from neighbors, and invented others, for a little ready cash. (The antislavery press of the period is full of warnings against such bogus fugitives, a fact of life which may help us understand how, when Thoreau would make reference to helping “escaping slaves,” he would need to include the telling modifier “real.”).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 25th of 1st M 1838 / In our first Meeting Father Rodman was engaged in a few words which I thought well adapted — In the last Meeting the buisness that came before us got along with some rubbing but things did as well as I expected - We had several friends to dine with us. Mother Rodman remains weak & low, & it does not seem as if she can remain long — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

May 24, Thursday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 8th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Correspondence, between the Hon. F.H. Elmore, one of the South Carolina Delegation in Congress, and James G. Birney, one of the Secretaries of the American Anti- Slavery Society.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM May 14, Monday: Friend Abby Kelley and four other delegates from the Lynn Female Society had come to Philadelphia to attend the 2nd Women’s meeting, along with William Lloyd Garrison, Henry B. Stanton, Henry C. Wright, and women from the Boston and New-York female societies. It would be at this meeting that Abby would address her first promiscuous audience, amid the shouts and stones shattering the glass windows from the pro-slavery mobs. On that basis Theodore Weld would decide to invite Abby to join the speaking circuit.

Although some had expected her to marry “a great strapping nigger” if she married at all, Friend Angelina Emily Grimké married Theodore Dwight Weld, an emphatic white abolitionist unsympathetic to the “non- resistance” cause, on the evening before the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women was to meet at the grand new Pennsylvania Hall.88

One of Angelina’s woman friends had said to her face that “no man would wish to have such a wife.” (Surely, with friends like that, these people didn’t need their enemies.) Friend Angelina omitted “obey” from her vow! For marrying a man who was not a member of the Religious Society of Friends, she was of course disowned by her worship group. Friend Lucretia Mott and other Quakers decided not to be present at this wedding because had they been in attendance they likely would also have been disowned. Whittier solved the problem by waiting outside the door until the official part of the event was complete, so he could truthfully say he was not present for such a wedding ceremony. Friend Abby, however, as always afraid of nothing, defied the discipline of her worship group, openly attending the entire ceremony, and in fact made herself the 1st woman to sign the traditional parchment certificate. ABOLITIONISM Though the Grimké sisters at first felt they had found their home in Quakerism, they later found there was “no openness among Friends” on the issue of working against enslavement. Biographer Gerda Lerner says that their “blind loyalty to the Quakers had turned into bitter disappointment.” Their reception at meetings was increasingly “chilly” and they were no longer welcome in the homes of Quaker Friends. At the yearly meeting in 1836, presiding elder Jonathan Edwards stopped Sarah as she rose to speak. Sarah elected to use the incident as a “means of releasing” her “from those bonds which almost destroyed my mind.” As the sisters expected, Angelina Grimké’s 1838 marriage to Theodore Weld provided the pretext for disowning her, and her sister’s membership was revoked for attending the ceremony.89

88. This expensive new building dedicated to the right of freedom of speech had a pillared marble entry facing 6th Street, and provided offices and a “free produce” store from which vegetables grown by slave labor were excluded, in addition to its “great saloon” containing blue plush seating for 3,000 people and a platform with a blue damask sofa. The auditorium and offices and store were brilliantly lit with gas, a new innovation. 89. Page 91 in Donna McDaniel’s and Vanessa Julye’s FIT FOR FREEDOM, NOT FOR FRIENDSHIP: QUAKERS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE MYTH OF RACIAL JUSTICE (Philadelphia: Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2009). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier presented a “humorous” poem in which he protested that his buddy Theodore was abandoning him “alone at the desolate shrine,” for he and Weld had once, apparently in bachelor playfulness, taken a joint solemn vow that they would never marry. It would certainly be unsubstantiated, however, and would probably be incorrect, that they had had a homosexual relationship. What is very much more probable is that Whittier, like Henry Thoreau, never experienced sexual congress, even with members of the opposite sex. Thoreau was, we must admit, both small and unhandsome, and, although he confessed to abundant libido, may never really have had significant opportunity. Whittier, on the other hand, although he was tall and slender and striking and attracted many friends both male and female, in his private correspondence gives no particular indication of libido: “my heart is untouched — cold and motionless as a Jutland lake lighted up by the moonlight. I know that they are beautiful — very, but they are nothing to me.”

Soon after the marriage Weld would withdraw to private life on a farm in Belleville, New Jersey. The couple would spend the remainder of their lives directing schools and teaching in New Jersey and Massachusetts.

May 17, Thursday: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, prince de Benevent died at his Paris home.

Franz Liszt performed for the Empress of Austria at court in Vienna.

Dr. Daniel Neall was presiding at the antislavery meeting in Pennsylvania Hall –which had been newly constructed by the abolitionists at a cost of $40,000.00 because of refusal of other hall owners in Philadelphia to rent existing halls– and Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was standing nearby, when glass from the windows showered down, and rioters forced their way onto the platform to declare that the meeting was over: I am here, the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who sent you. I shall do my duty.

Some years after, while visiting in his native State of Delaware, the Doctor would be dragged from the home of some friends to be abused in the street. After these slaveholders were finished with him, he would tell them that he forgave them — for it was not they but Slavery which had done the wrong.90

He would suggest that if they should ever be in Philadelphia and in need of hospitality or aid, they should again call on him. Some years after that, on “6th, 6th month, 1846” to be specific, Friend John would celebrate this hero of gentlemanliness:

DANIEL NEALL. I. FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all; Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when The need of battling Freedom called for men 90. Legally, there was a distinction between a slaveowner and a slaveholder. The owner of a slave might rent the custody and use of that slave out for a year, in which case the distinction would arise and be a meaningful one in law, since the other party to such a transaction would be the holder but not the owner. However, in this Kouroo database, I will ordinarily be deploying the term “slaveholder” as the normative term, as we are no longer all that concerned with the making of such fine economic distinctions but are, rather, concerned almost exclusively with the human issues involved in the enslavement of other human beings. I use the term “slaveholder” in preference to “slaveowner” not only because no human being can really own another human being but also because it is important that slavery never be defined as the legal ownership of one person by another — in fact not only had human slavery existed before the first such legislation but also it has continued long since we abolished all legal deployment of the term “slave.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM To plant the banner on the outer wall; Gentle and kindly, ever at distress Melted to more than woman’s tenderness, Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty’s post Fronting the violence of a maddened host, Like some-gray rock from which the waves are tossed! Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not The faith of one whose walk and word were right; Who tranquilly in Life’s great task-field wrought, And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white: Prompt to redress another’s wrong, his own Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.

II. Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still; And, while “Lord, Lord!” the pious tyrants cried, Who, in the poor, their Master crucified, His daily prayer, far better understood. In acts than words, was simply doing good. So calm, so constant was his rectitude, That by his loss alone we know its worth, HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM And feel how true a man has walked with us on earth.

As the delegates left Pennsylvania Hall after the mayor of Philadelphia had demanded the keys and canceled all meetings, at the suggestion of Friend Angelina Emily Grimké the white women delegates took the arms of the black women delegates in order better to protect them from being grabbed as they passed through the pro- slavery mob of 17,000 Philadelphians outside the doors. Standing on the steps of the hall, the mayor gave his lightly coded instructions to the mob:

WE NEVER CALL OUT THE MILITARY. YOU ARE MY POLICE.

How hard was it for the Philadelphia citizens’ mob to figure this? They gave their mayor three cheers and broke down the doors. In addition to piling the plush chairs and adding abolitionist books and papers to these piles, they turned on the illuminating gas to full on to help the building burn brightly.91 ABOLITIONISM

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier was running the newspaper office of the Pennsylvania Freeman92 in the front of the building, on an upper story.

I took charge of the “Pennsylvania Freeman,” an organ of the Anti-Slavery Society. My office was sacked and burned by a mob soon after, but I continued my paper until my health failed, when I returned to Massachusetts. The farm in Haverhill had, in the meantime, been sold, and my mother, aunt and youngest sister, had moved to Amesbury MA, near the Friends Meeting- house, and I took up my residence with them. All this time I had been actively engaged in writing for the anti-slavery cause.

91. About a decade later the Philadelphia County Commissioners would pay almost $48,000.00 in compensation for this torching of Pennsylvania Hall. 92. This is the periodical that, later, would publish UNCLE TOM’S CABIN as a serial. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM As the hall burned, volunteer fire brigades pumped streams of water — upon the walls of the surrounding structures to keep them from igniting.

John Greenleaf93 Whittier

93. According to the American Methodist Monthly, Volume II, page 229, John Greenleaf Whittier was descended from a Fouillevert who had fled from Brittagne to England in the early states of the persecution of Huguenots by the French government. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Whittier slapped on a wig and an overcoat and managed to get into and out of the building during the commotion, while the building was burning, to retrieve some writings he considered of importance. Some citizens then wanted to continue by torching the home of the Motts, but a friend ran in front of them shouting “On to the Motts!” — and of course led them down the wrong street. While Friends James and Lucretia Mott sat unarmed in the parlor of their home, which was on 9th Street between Race and Vine (this was before the Motts moved to 338 Arch Street), waiting the outcome, he led the mob on up Race Street and farther and farther away from their home until it dissipated.

The rioters instead turned to burn down Bethel Church (AME) and a nearby Quaker-founded Colored Orphan Asylum (a structure not yet occupied).

Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks of Concord had taken her step-daughter Caroline Downes Brooks to Philadelphia to attend the women’s antislavery convention in this hall. Caroline wrote from Philadelphia to her friend Elizabeth Prichard to describe the burning. During the late 1830s, presumably during this period, since Caroline was a Sunday school student in Lidian Emerson’s class at the First Parish, presumably Lidian would have had a chance to hear all about this event.

Summer: “Commenced school in the house in summer of 1838.” Henry Thoreau taught the older students classics, mathematics, and nature study.

This year’s annual convention of the New England Anti-Slavery Society was the 1st to be held in the Marlborough Chapel, dedicated to “the cause of humanity and free discussion.” Boston’s proslavery mob couldn’t burn this hall down because it stood too close to the Marlborough Hotel. ABOLITIONISM

At the meeting, over the protests of a group of ministers of the gospel who were insisting that such a radical step would be “injurious to the cause of the slave,” through bringing their Society into general disrepute, it was decided to admit women to membership. Much of the convention’s time and attention would be consumed in infighting over whether these new female members would be permitted to participate on committees, in motions to dissolve committees that had a woman member, and in dealing with male members who found themselves unable to read aloud in public words that had been written by a female member. A minister pointed to ISAIAH 3:12 to prove that having WOMEN RULE was the ultimate debasement which a Christian society could undergo, and alleged that since a woman had helped to write the convention’s declaration and that since women had cast ballots, therefore “Women ruled the convention.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM [As for] my people, children [are] their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause [thee] to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. MISOGYNY

Friend John Greenleaf Whittier sided with these ministers who considered women’s rights to be “an irrelevant FEMINISM topic.”

The Christian Mirror asked its male readers whether they would want their own wives to be shorn of their honor by allowing them to be “closeted in close consultation with two men, in the preparation of a public document?” Friend James Mott, a husband not unreasonably afraid of his wife, reasonably commented that the overarching principle was “human rights” — and proceeded impolitely to draw the obvious parallel between, on the one hand, the northern gentleman abolitionist struggling for control over his wife, and, on the other, the southern slavemaster struggling to hold his slave property. SLAVERY

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1839

The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 13th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “On the Condition of the Free People of Color in the United States”; containing, also, “Can Abolitionists Vote or Take Office Under the United States Constitution?”; containing, also, “Address to the Friends of Constitutional Liberty, on the Violation by the United States House of Representatives of the Right of Petition at the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society.”

February 9, Saturday: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 10th issue of its “omnibus” entitled TEXT The Anti-Slavery Examiner, containing “Speech of Hon. Thomas Morris, of Ohio, in Reply to the Speech of INDEX the Hon. Henry Clay”; containing, also, “American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses;” containing, also, the Reverend Beriah Green’s CHATTEL PRINCIPLE / THE ABHORRENCE OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES; OR NO REFUGE FOR AMERICAN SLAVERY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. CHATTEL PRINCIPLE THE ABHORRENCE OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES; OR, NO REFUGE FOR AMERICAN SLAVERY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. BY BERIAH GREEN. NEW YORK PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, NO. 143 NASSAU STREET 1839 This No. contains 4-1/2 sheet—Postage under 100 miles, 7 cts. over 100, 10 cts. Please Read and circulate.

THE NEW TESTAMENT AGAINST SLAVERY. “THE SON OF MAN IS COME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH WAS LOST.” Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? In 1776 THOMAS JEFFERSON, supported by a noble band of patriots and surrounded by the American people, opened his lips in the authoritative declaration: “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; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.” And from the inmost heart of the multitudes around, and in a strong and clear voice, broke forth the unanimous and decisive answer: Amen—such truths we do indeed hold to be self-evident. And animated and sustained by a declaration, so inspiring and sublime, they rushed to arms, and as the result of agonizing efforts and dreadful sufferings, achieved under God the independence of their country. The great truth, whence they derived light and strength to assert and defend their rights, they made the foundation of their republic. And in the midst of this republic, must we prove, that He, who was the Truth, did not contradict “the truths” which He Himself; as their Creator, had made self-evident to mankind? Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? What, according HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM to those laws which make it what it is, is American slavery? In the Statute-book of South Carolina thus it is written:94 “Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, construction and purposes whatever.” The very root of American slavery consists in the assumption, that law has reduced men to chattels. But this assumption is, and must be, a gross falsehood. Men and cattle are separated from each other by the Creator, immutably, eternally, and by an impassable gulf. To confound or identify men and cattle must be to lie most wantonly, impudently, and maliciously. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of palpable, monstrous falsehood? Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? How can a system, built upon a stout and impudent denial of self-evident truth—a system of treating men like cattle—operate? Thomas Jefferson shall answer. Hear him. “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to his worst passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.”95 Such is the practical operation of a system, which puts men and cattle into the same family and treats them alike. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of a school where the worst vices in their most hateful forms are systematically and efficiently taught and practiced? Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? What, in 1818, did the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church affirm respecting its nature and operation? “Slavery creates a paradox in the moral system—it exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings, in such circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of moral action. It exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether they shall receive religious instruction; whether they shall know and worship the true God; whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether they shall perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of justice and humanity. Such are some of the consequences of slavery; consequences not imaginary, but which connect themselves with its very existence. The evils to which the slave is always exposed, often take place in their very worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take place, still the slave is deprived of his natural rights, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardship and injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest.”96 Must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of such things? Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? It is already widely felt and openly acknowledged at the South, that they

94. Stroud’s SLAVE LAWS, page 23. 95. NOTES ON VIRGINIA, Boston Ed. 1832, pp. 169, 170. 96. Minutes of the General assembly for 1818, page 29. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM cannot support slavery without sustaining the opposition of universal Christendom. And Thomas Jefferson declared, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice can not sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become practicable by supernatural influences! The Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such a contest.”97 And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of what universal Christendom is impelled to abhor, denounce, and oppose; is not in favor of what every attribute of Almighty God is armed against? “YE HAVE DESPISED THE POOR.” It is no man of straw, with whom, in making out such proof, we are called to contend. Would to God we had no other antagonist! Would to God that our labor of love could be regarded as a work of supererogation! But we may well be ashamed and grieved to find it necessary to “stop the mouths” of grave and learned ecclesiastics, who from the heights of Zion have undertaken to defend the institution of slavery. We speak not now of those, who amidst the monuments of oppression are engaged in the sacred vocation; who, as ministers of the Gospel, can “prophesy smooth things” to such as pollute the altar of Jehovah with human sacrifices; nay, who themselves bind the victim and kindle the sacrifice. That they should put their Savior to the torture, to wring from his lips something in favor of slavery, is not to be wondered at. They consent to the murder of the children; can they respect the rights of the Father? But what shall we say of distinguished theologians of the north—professors of sacred literature at our oldest divinity schools—who stand up to defend, both by argument and authority, southern slavery! And from the Bible! Who, Balaam-like, try a thousand expedients to force from the mouth of Jehovah a sentence which they know the heart of Jehovah abhors! Surely we have here something more mischievous and formidable than a man of straw. More than two years ago, and just before the meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, appeared an article in the Biblical Repertory,98 understood to be from the pen of the Professor of Sacred Literature at Princeton, in which an effort is made to show, that slavery, whatever may be said of any abuses of it, is not a violation of the precepts of the Gospel. This article, we are informed, was industriously and extensively distributed among the members of the General Assembly—a body of men, who by a frightful majority seemed already too much disposed to wink at the horrors of slavery. The effect of the Princeton Apology on the southern mind, we have high authority for saying, has been most decisive and injurious. It has contributed greatly to turn the public eye off from the sin—from the inherent and necessary evils of slavery to incidental evils, which the abuse of it might be expected to occasion. And how few can be brought to admit, that whatever abuses may prevail nobody knows where or how, any such thing is chargeable upon them! Thus our Princeton prophet has done what he could to lay the southern 97. NOTES ON VIRGINIA, Boston Ed. 1832, pp. 170, 171. 98. For April, 1836. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met in the following May, at Pittsburgh, where, in pamphlet form, this article was distributed. The following appeared upon the title page: PITTSBURGH: 1836. For gratuitous distribution. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM conscience asleep upon ingenious perversions of the sacred volume! About a year after this, an effort in the same direction was jointly made by Dr. Fisk and Professor Stuart. In a letter to a Methodist clergyman, Mr. Merrit, published in Zion’s Herald, Dr. Fisk gives utterance to such things as the following:— “But that you and the public may see and feel, that you have the ablest and those who are among the honestest men of this age, arrayed against you, be pleased to notice the following letter from Prof. Stuart. I wrote to him, knowing as I did his integrity of purpose, his unflinching regard for truth, as well as his deserved reputation as a scholar and biblical critic, proposing the following questions:— 1. Does the New Testament directly or indirectly teach, that slavery existed in the primitive church? 2. In 1 Tim. vi. 2, And they that have believing masters, &c., what is the relation expressed or implied between “they” (servants) and “believing masters?” And what are your reasons for the construction of the passage? 3. What was the character of ancient and eastern slavery?— Especially what (legal) power did this relation give the master over the slave?” PROFESSOR STUART’S REPLY. ANDOVER, 10th Apr., 1837 REV. AND DEAR SIR,—Yours is before me. A sickness of three month’s standing (typhus fever) in which I have just escaped death, and which still confines me to my house, renders it impossible for me to answer your letter at large. 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, (“without violating the Christian faith or the church.”) 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, (“that which is in itself sin.”) 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. The relation did exist, may exist. The abuse of it is the essential and fundamental wrong. Not that the 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 relation once 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 relation of master and slave is not, as a matter of course, abrogated between all Christians. Nay, servants should in such a case, a fortiori, do HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM their duty cheerfully. This sentiment lies on the very face of the case. What 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. 3. Every one knows, who is acquainted with Greek or Latin antiquities, that slavery among heathen nations has ever been more unqualified and at looser ends than among Christian nations. Slaves were property in Greece and Rome. That decides all questions about their relation. Their treatment depended, as it does now, on the temper of their masters. The power of the master over the slave was, for a long time, that of life and death. Horrible cruelties at length mitigated it. In the apostle’s day, it was at least as great as among us. After all the spouting and vehemence on this subject, which have been exhibited, the good old Book remains the same. Paul’s conduct and advice are still safe guides. Paul knew well that Christianity would ultimately destroy slavery, as it certainly will. He knew, too, that it would destroy monarchy and aristocracy from the earth: for it is fundamentally a doctrine of true liberty and equality. Yet Paul did not expect slavery or anarchy to be ousted in a day; and gave precepts to Christians respecting their demeanor ad interim. With sincere and paternal regard, Your friend and brother, M. STUART. —This, sir, is doctrine that will stand, because it is Bible doctrine. The abolitionists, then, are on a wrong course. They have traveled out of the record; and if they would succeed, they must take a different position, and approach the subject in a different manner. Respectfully yours, W. FISK “SO THEY WRAP [SNARL] IT UP.” What are we taught here? That in the ecclesiastical organizations which grew up under the hands of the apostles, slavery was admitted as a relation that did not violate the Christian faith; that the relation may now in like manner exist; that “the abuse of it is the essential and fundamental wrong;” and of course, that American Christians may hold their own brethren in slavery without incurring guilt or inflicting injury. Thus, according to Prof. Stuart, Jesus Christ has not a word to say against “the peculiar institutions” of the South. If our brethren there do not “abuse” the privilege of enacting unpaid labor, they may multiply their slaves to their hearts’ content, without exposing themselves to the frown of the Savior or laying their Christian character open to the least suspicion. Could any trafficker in human flesh ask for greater latitude! And to such doctrines, Dr. Fisk eagerly and earnestly subscribes. He goes further. He urges it on the attention of his brethren, as containing important truth, which they ought to embrace. According to him, it is “Bible doctrine,” showing, that “the abolitionists are on a wrong course,” and must, “if they would succeed, take a different position.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM We now refer to such distinguished names, to show, that in attempting to prove that Jesus Christ is not in favor of American slavery, we contend with something else than a man of straw. The ungrateful task, which a particular examination of Professor Stuart’s letter lays upon us, we hope fairly to dispose of in due season. Enough has now been said to make it clear and certain, that American slavery has its apologists and advocates in the northern pulpit; advocates and apologists, who fall behind few if any of their brethren in the reputation they have acquired, the stations they occupy, and the general influence they are supposed to exert. Is it so? Did slavery exist in Judea, and among the Jews, in its worst form, during the Savior’s incarnation? If the Jews held slaves, they must have done in open and flagrant violation of the letter and the spirit of the Mosaic Dispensation. Whoever has any doubts of this may well resolve his doubts in the light of the Argument entitled “The Bible against Slavery.” If, after a careful and thorough examination of that article, he can believe that slaveholding prevailed during the ministry of Jesus Christ among the Jews and in accordance with the authority of Moses, he would do the reading public an important service to record the grounds of his belief—especially in a fair and full refutation of that Argument. Till that is done, we hold ourselves excused from attempting to prove what we now repeat, that if the Jews during our Savior’s incarnation held slaves, they must have done so in open and flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of the Mosaic Dispensation. Could Christ and the Apostles every where among their countrymen come in contact with slaveholding, being as it was a gross violation of that law which their office and their profession required them to honor and enforce, without exposing and condemning it? In its worst forms, we are told, slavery prevailed over the whole world, not excepting Judea. As, according to such ecclesiastics as Stuart, Hodge and Fisk, slavery in itself is not bad at all, the term “worst” could be applied only to “abuses” of this innocent relation. Slavery accordingly existed among the Jews, disfigured and disgraced by the “worst abuses” to which it is liable. These abuses in the ancient world, Professor Stuart describes as “horrible cruelties.” And in our own country, such abuses have grown so rank, as to lead a distinguished eye- witness—no less a philosopher and statesman than Thomas Jefferson—to say, that they had armed against us every attribute of the Almighty. With these things the Savior every where came in contact, among the people to whose improvement and salvation he devoted his living powers, and yet not a word, not a syllable, in exposure and condemnation of such “horrible cruelties” escaped his lips! He saw—among the “covenant people” of Jehovah he saw, the babe plucked from the bosom of its mother; the wife torn from the embrace of her husband; the daughter driven to the market by the scourge of her own father;—he saw the word of God sealed up from those who, of all men, were especially entitled to its enlightening, quickening influence;—nay, he saw men beaten for kneeling before the throne of heavenly mercy;—such things he saw without a word of admonition or reproof! No sympathy with them who suffered wrong—no indignation at them who inflicted wrong, moved his heart! From the alleged silence of the Savior, when in contact with HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM slavery among the Jews, our divines infer, that it is quite consistent with Christianity. And they affirm, that he saw it in its worst forms; that is, he witnessed what Professor Stuart ventures to call “horrible cruelties.” But what right have these interpreters of the sacred volume to regard any form of slavery which the Savior found, as “worst,” or even bad? According to their inference—which they would thrust gag-wise into the mouths of abolitionists—his silence should seal up their lips. They ought to hold their tongues. They have no right to call any form of slavery bad—an abuse; much less, horribly cruel! Their inference is broad enough to protect the most brutal driver amidst his deadliest inflictions! “THINK NOT THAT I AM COME TO DESTROY THE LAW OR THE PROPHETS; I AM NOT COME TO DESTROY, BUT TO FULFIL.” And did the Head of the new dispensation, then, fall so far behind the prophets of the old in a hearty and effective regard for suffering humanity? The forms of oppression which they witnessed, excited their compassion and aroused their indignation. In terms the most pointed and powerful, they exposed, denounced, threatened. They could not endure the creatures, “who used their neighbors’ service without wages, and gave him not for his work;”99 who imposed “heavy burdens”100 upon their fellows, and loaded them with “the bands of wickedness;” who, “hiding themselves from their own flesh,” disowned their own mothers’ children. Professions of piety joined with the oppression of the poor, they held up to universal scorn and execration, as the dregs of hypocrisy. They warned the creature of such professions, that he could escape the wrath of Jehovah only by heart-felt repentance. And yet, according to the ecclesiastics with whom we have to do, the Lord of these prophets passed by in silence just such enormities as he commanded them to expose and denounce! Every where, he came in contact with slavery in its worst forms— “horrible cruelties” forced themselves upon his notice; but not a word of rebuke or warning did he utter. He saw “a boy given for a harlot, and a girl sold for wine, that they might drink,”101 without the slightest feeling of displeasure, or any mark of disapprobation! To such disgusting and horrible conclusions, do the arguings which, from the haunts of sacred literature, are inflicted on our churches, lead us! According to them, Jesus Christ, instead of shining as the light of the world, extinguished the torches which his own prophets had kindled, and plunged mankind into the palpable darkness of a starless midnight! O savior, in pity to thy suffering people, let thy temple be no longer used as a “den of thieves!” “THOU THOUGHTEST THAT I WAS ALTOGETHER SUCH AN ONE AS THYSELF.” In passing by the worst forms of slavery, with which he every where came in contact among the Jews, the Savior must have been inconsistent with himself. He was commissioned to preach glad tidings to the poor; to heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives; to set at liberty them that are bruised; to preach the year of Jubilee. In accordance with this commission, he bound himself, from the earliest date of his incarnation, to the poor, by the strongest ties; himself “had 99. JEREMIAH xxii. 13. 100. ISAIAH lviii. 6, 7. 101. JOEL iii. 3. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM not where to lay his head;” he exposed himself to misrepresentation and abuse for his affectionate intercourse with the outcasts of society; he stood up as the advocate of the widow, denouncing and dooming the heartless ecclesiastics, who had made her bereavement a source of gain; and in describing the scenes of the final judgment, he selected the very personification of poverty, disease and oppression, as the test by which our regard for him should be determined. To the poor and wretched; to the degraded and despised, his arms were ever open. They had his tenderest sympathies. They had his warmest love. His heart’s blood he poured out upon the ground for the human family, reduced to the deepest degradation, and exposed to the heaviest inflictions, as the slaves of the grand usurper. And yet, according to our ecclesiastics, that class of sufferers who had been reduced immeasurably below every other shape and form of degradation and distress; who had been most rudely thrust out of the family of Adam, and forced to herd with swine; who, without the slightest offence, had been made the footstool of the worst criminals; whose “tears were their meat night and day,” while, under nameless insults and killing injuries they were continually crying, O Lord, O Lord:—this class of sufferers, and this alone, our biblical expositors, occupying the high places of sacred literature, would make us believe the compassionate Savior coldly overlooked. Not an emotion of pity; not a look of sympathy; not a word of consolation, did his gracious heart prompt him to bestow upon them! He denounces damnation upon the devourer of the widow’s house. But the monster, whose trade it is to make widows and devour them and their babes, he can calmly endure! O Savior, when wilt thou stop the mouths of such blasphemers! “IT IS THE SPIRIT THAT QUICKENETH.” It seems that though, according to our Princeton professor, “the subject” of slavery “is hardly alluded to by Christ in any of his personal instructions,”102 he had a way of “treating it.” What was that? Why, “he taught the true nature, DIGNITY, EQUALITY, and destiny of men,” and “inculcated the principles of justice and love.”103 And according to Professor Stuart, the maxims which our Savior furnished, “decide against” “the theory of slavery.” All, then, that these ecclesiastical apologists for slavery can make of the Savior’s alleged silence is, that he did not, in his personal instructions, “apply his own principles to this particular form of wickedness.” For wicked that must be, which the maxims of the Savior decide against, and which our Princeton professor assures us the principles of the gospel, duly acted on, would speedily extinguish.104 How remarkable it is, that a teacher should “hardly allude to a subject in any of his personal instructions,” and yet inculcate principles which have a direct and vital bearing upon it!—should so conduct, as to justify the inference, that “slaveholding is not a crime,”105 and at the same time lend its authority for its “speedy extinction!” Higher authority than sustains self-evident truths there cannot be. As forms of reason, they are rays from the face of Jehovah. 102. Pittsburg pamphlet, (already alluded to,) page 9. 103. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 9. 104. The same, page 34. 105. The same, page 13. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Not only are their presence and power self-manifested, but they also shed a strong and clear light around them. In their light, other truths are visible. Luminaries themselves, it is their office to enlighten. To their authority, in every department of thought, the same mind bows promptly, gratefully, fully. And by their authority, he explains, proves, and disposes of whatever engages his attention and engrosses his powers as a reasonable and reasoning creature. For what, when thus employed and when most successful, is the utmost he can accomplish? Why, to make the conclusions which he would establish and commend, clear in the light of reason;—in other words, to evince that they are reasonable. He expects that those with whom he has to do will acknowledge the authority of principle—will see whatever is exhibited in the light of reason. If they require him to go further, and, in order to convince them, to do something more than show that the doctrines he maintains, and the methods he proposes, are accordant with reason—are illustrated and supported with “self-evident truths”—they are plainly “beside themselves.” They have lost the use of reason. They are not to be argued with. They belong to the mad-house.

“COME NOW, LET US REASON TOGETHER, SAITH THE LORD.” Are we to honor the Bible, which Professor Stuart quaintly calls “the good old book,” by turning away from “self-evident truths” to receive its instructions? Can these truths be contradicted or denied there? Do we search for something there to obscure their clearness, or break their force, or reduce their authority? Do we long to find something there, in the form of premises or conclusions, of arguing or of inference, in broad statement or blind hints, creed-wise or fact-wise, which may set us free from the light and power of first principles? And what if we were to discover what we were thus in search of?—something directly or indirectly, expressly or impliedly prejudicial to the principles, which reason, placing us under the authority of, makes self-evident? In what estimation, in that case, should we be constrained to hold the Bible? Could we longer honor it as the book of God? The book of God opposed to the authority of REASON! Why, before what tribunal do we dispose of the claims of the sacred volume to divine authority? The tribunal of reason. This every one acknowledges the moment he begins to reason on the subject. And what must reason do with a book, which reduces the authority of its own principles—breaks the force of self-evident truths? Is he not, by way of eminence, the apostle of infidelity, who, as a minister of the gospel or a professor of sacred literature, exerts himself, with whatever arts of ingenuity or show of piety, to exalt the Bible at the expense of reason? Let such arts succeed and such piety prevail, and Jesus Christ is “crucified afresh and put to an open shame.” What saith the Princeton professor? Why, in spite of “general principles,” and “clear as we may think the arguments against DESPOTISM, there have been thousands of ENLIGHTENED and good men, who honestly believe it to be of all forms of government the best and most acceptable to God.”106 Now these “good men” must have been thus warmly in favor of despotism, in consequence of, or in opposition to, their being “enlightened.” In other 106. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 12. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM words, the light, which in such abundance they enjoyed, conducted them to the position in favor of despotism, where the Princeton professor so heartily shook hands with them, or they must have forced their way there in despite of its hallowed influence. Either in accordance with, or in resistance to the light, they became what he found them—the advocates of despotism. If in resistance to the light—and he says they were “enlightened men”—what, so far as the subject with which alone he and we are now concerned, becomes of their “honesty” and “goodness?” Good and honest resisters of the light, which was freely poured around them! Of such, what says Professor Stuart’s “good old Book?” Their authority, where “general principles” command the least respect, must be small indeed. But if in accordance with the light, they have become the advocates of despotism, then is despotism “the best form of government and most acceptable to God.” It is sustained by the authority of reason, by the word of Jehovah, by the will of Heaven! If this be the doctrine which prevails at certain theological seminaries, it must be easy to account for the spirit which they breathe, and the general influence which they exert. Why did not the Princeton professor place this “general principle” as a shield, heaven-wrought and reason approved, over that cherished form of despotism which prevails among the churches of the South, and leave the “peculiar institutions” he is so forward to defend, under its protection? What is the “general principle” to which, whatever may become of despotism, with its “honest” admirers and “enlightened” supporters, human governments should be universally and carefully adjusted? Clearly this—that as capable of, man is entitled to, self government. And this is a specific form of a still more general principle, which may well be pronounced self- evident—that every thing should be treated according to its nature. The mind that can doubt this, must be incapable of rational conviction. Man, then,—it is the dictate of reason, it is the voice of Jehovah—must be treated as a man. What is he? What are his distinctive attributes? The Creator impressed his own image on him. In this were found the grand peculiarities of his character. Here shone his glory. Here REASON manifests its laws. Here the WILL puts forth its volitions. Here is the crown of IMMORTALITY. Why such endowments? Thus furnished—the image of Jehovah—is he not capable of self-government? And is he not to be so treated? Within the sphere where the laws of reason place him, may he not act according to his choice—carry out his own volitions?—may he not enjoy life, exult in freedom, and pursue as he will the path of blessedness? If not, why was he so created and endowed? Why the mysterious, awful attribute of will? To be a source, profound as the depths of hell, of exquisite misery, of keen anguish, of insufferable torment! Was man, formed “according to the image of Jehovah,” to be crossed, thwarted, counteracted; to be forced in upon himself; to be the sport of endless contradictions; to be driven back and forth forever between mutually repellant forces; and all, all “at the discretion of another!”107 How can man be treated according to his nature, as endowed with reason or will, if excluded from the powers and privileges of self-government?—if “despotism” be let loose upon him, to “deprive him of personal liberty, oblige him to serve at the discretion of another” and with the power of 107. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 12. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM “transferring” such “authority” over him and such claim upon him, to “another master?” If “thousands of enlightened and good men” can so easily be found, who are forward to support “despotism” as “of all governments the best and most acceptable to God,” we need not wonder at the testimony of universal history, that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Groans and travail pangs must continue to be the order of the day throughout “the whole creation,” till the rod of despotism be broken, and man be treated as man—as capable of, and entitled to, self-government. But what is the despotism whose horrid features our smooth professor tries to hide beneath an array of cunningly selected words and nicely-adjusted sentences? It is the despotism of American slavery—which crushes the very life of humanity out of its victims, and transforms them to cattle! At its touch, they sink from men to things! “Slaves,” saith Professor Stuart, “were property in Greece and Rome. That decides all questions about their relation.” Yes, truly. And slaves in republican America are property; and as that easily, clearly, and definitely settles “all questions about their relation,” why should the Princeton professor have put himself to the trouble of weaving a definition equally ingenious and inadequate—at once subtle and deceitful. Ah, why? Was he willing thus to conceal the wrongs of his mother’s children even from himself? If among the figments of his brain, he could fashion slaves, and make them something else than property, he knew full well that a very different pattern was in use among the southern patriarchs. Why did he not, in plain words and sober earnest, and good faith, describe the thing as it was, instead of employing honied words and courtly phrases, to set forth with all becoming vagueness and ambiguity, what might possibly be supposed to exist in the regions of fancy. “FOR RULERS ARE NOT A TERROR TO GOOD WORKS, BUT TO THE EVIL.” But are we, in maintaining the principle of self-government, to overlook the unripe, or neglected, or broken powers of any of our fellow-men with whom we may be connected?—or the strong passions, vicious propensities, or criminal pursuits of others? Certainly not. But in providing for their welfare, we are to exert influences and impose restraints suited to their character. In wielding those prerogatives which the social of our nature authorizes us to employ for their benefit, we are to regard them as they are in truth, not things, not cattle, not articles of merchandize, but men, our fellow-men—reflecting, from however battered and broken a surface, reflecting with us the image of a common Father. And the great principle of self- government is to be the basis, to which the whole structure of discipline under which they may be placed, should be adapted. From the nursery and village school on to the work-house and state-prison, this principle is ever and in all things to be before the eyes, present in the thoughts, warm on the heart. Otherwise, God is insulted, while his image is despised and abused. Yes, indeed; we remember, that in carrying out the principle of self-government, multiplied embarrassments and obstructions grow out of wickedness on the one hand and passion on the other. Such difficulties and obstacles we are far enough from overlooking. But where are they to be found? Are imbecility and wickedness, bad hearts and bad heads, confined to the bottom HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM of society? Alas, the weakest of the weak, and the desperately wicked, often occupy the high places of the earth, reducing every thing within their reach to subserviency to the foulest purposes. Nay, the very power they have usurped, has often been the chief instrument of turning their heads, inflaming their passions, corrupting their hearts. All the world knows, that the possession of arbitrary power has a strong tendency to make men shamelessly wicked and insufferably mischievous. And this, whether the vassals over whom they domineer, be few or many. If you cannot trust man with himself, will you put his fellows under his control?—and flee from the inconveniences incident to self- government, to the horrors of despotism? “THOU THAT PREACHEST A MAN SHOULD NOT STEAL, DOST THOU STEAL.” Is the slaveholder, the most absolute and shameless of all despots, to be entrusted with the discipline of the injured men who he himself has reduced to cattle?—with the discipline with which they are to be prepared to wield the powers and enjoy the privileges of freemen? Alas, of such discipline as he can furnish, in the relation of owner to property, they have had enough. From this sprang the very ignorance and vice, which in the view of many, lie in the way of their immediate enfranchisement. He it is, who has darkened their eyes and crippled their powers. And are they to look to him for illumination and renewed vigor!—and expect “grapes from thorns and figs from thistles!” Heaven forbid! When, according to arrangements which had usurped the sacred name of law, he consented to receive and use them as property, he forfeited all claims to the esteem and confidence, not only of the helpless sufferers themselves, but also of every philanthropist. In becoming a slaveholder, he became the enemy of mankind. The very act was a declaration of war upon human nature. What less can be made of the process of turning men to cattle? It is rank absurdity—it is the height of madness, to propose to employ him to train, for the places of freemen, those whom he has wantonly robbed of every right—whom he has stolen from themselves. Sooner place Burke, who used to murder for the sake of selling bodies to the dissector, at the head of a hospital. Why, what have our slaveholders been about these two hundred years? Have they not been constantly and earnestly engaged in the work of education?— training up their human cattle? And how? Thomas Jefferson shall answer. “The whole commerce between master and slave, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.” Is this the way to fit the unprepared for the duties and privileges of American citizens? Will the evils of the dreadful process be diminished by adding to its length? What, in 1818, was the unanimous testimony of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church? Why, after describing a variety of influences growing out of slavery, most fatal to mental and moral improvement, the General Assembly assure us, that such “consequences are not imaginary, but connect themselves WITH THE VERY EXISTENCE108 of slavery. The evils to which the slave is always exposed, often take place in fact, and IN THEIR VERY WORST DEGREE AND FORM; and where all of them do not take place,” “still the slave is deprived of his natural right, degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of 108. The words here marked as emphatic, were so distinguished by ourselves. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM passing into the hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest.” Is this the condition in which our ecclesiastics would keep the slave, at least a little longer, to fit him to be restored to himself? “AND THEY STOPPED THEIR EARS.” The methods of discipline under which, as slaveholders; the Southrons now place their human cattle, they with one consent and in great wrath, forbid us to examine. The statesman and the priest unite in the assurance, that these methods are none of our business. Nay, they give us distinctly to understand, that if we come among them to take observations, and make inquiries, and discuss questions, they will dispose of us as outlaws. Nothing will avail to protect us from speedy and deadly violence! What inference does all this warrant? Surely, not that the methods which they employ are happy and worthy of universal application. If so, why do they not take the praise, and give us the benefit of their wisdom, enterprise, and success? Who, that has nothing to hide, practices concealment? “He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be manifest, that they are wrought in God.” Is this the way of slaveholders? Darkness they court—they will have darkness. Doubtless “because their deeds are evil.” Can we confide in methods for the benefit of our enslaved brethren, which it is death for us to examine? What good ever came, what good can we expect, from deeds of darkness? Did the influence of the masters contribute any thing in the West Indies to prepare the apprentices for enfranchisement? Nay, verily. All the world knows better. They did what in them lay, to turn back the tide of blessings, which, through emancipation, was pouring in upon the famishing around them. Are not the best minds and hearts in England now thoroughly convinced, that slavery, under no modification, can be a school for freedom? We say such things to the many who allege, that slaves cannot at once be entrusted with the powers and privileges of self- government. However this may be, they cannot be better qualified under the influence of slavery. That must be broken up from which their ignorance, and viciousness, and wretchedness proceeded. That which can only do what it has always done, pollute and degrade, must not be employed to purify and elevate. The lower their character and condition, the louder, clearer, sterner, the just demand for immediate emancipation. The plague-smitten sufferer can derive no benefit from breathing a little longer an infected atmosphere. In thus referring to elemental principles—in thus availing ourselves of the light of self-evident truths—we bow to the authority and tread in the foot-prints of the great Teacher. He chid those around him for refusing to make the same use of their reason in promoting their spiritual, as they made in promoting their temporal welfare. He gives them distinctly to understand, that they need not go out of themselves to form a just estimation of their position, duties, and prospects, as standing in the presence of the Messiah. “Why, EVEN OF YOURSELVES,” he demands of them, “judge ye not what is right?”109 How could they, unless they had a clear light, and an infallible standard within them, 109. LUKE xii. 57. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM whereby, amidst the relations they sustained and the interests they had to provide for, they might discriminate between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, what they ought to attempt and what they ought to eschew? From this pointed, significant appeal of the Savior, it is clear and certain, that in human consciousness may be found self-evident truths, self-manifested principles; that every man, studying his own consciousness, is bound to recognize their presence and authority, and in sober earnest and good faith to apply them to the highest practical concerns of “life and godliness.” It is in obedience to the Bible, that we apply self-evident truths, and walk in the light of general principles. When our fathers proclaimed these truths, and at the hazard of their property, reputation, and life, stood up in their defence, they did homage to the sacred Scriptures— they honored the Bible. In that volume, not a syllable can be found to justify that form of infidelity, which in the abused name of piety, reproaches us for practising the lessons which nature teacheth. These lessons, the Bible requires us110 reverently to listen to, earnestly to appropriate, and most diligently and faithfully to act upon in every direction, and on all occasions. Why, our Savior goes so far in doing honor to reason, as to encourage men universally to dispose of the characteristic peculiarities and distinctive features of the Gospel in the light of its principles. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”111 Natural religion—the principles which nature reveals, and the lessons which nature teaches—he thus makes a test of the truth and authority of revealed religion. So far was he, as a teacher, from shrinking from the clearest and most piercing rays of reason—from calling off the attention of those around him from the import, bearings, and practical application of general principles. And those who would have us escape from the pressure of self-evident truths, by betaking ourselves to the doctrines and precepts of Christianity, whatever airs of piety they may put on, do foul dishonor to the Savior of mankind. And what shall we say of the Golden Rule, which, according to the Savior, comprehends all the precepts of the Bible? “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” According to this maxim, in human consciousness, universally, may be found, 1. The standard whereby, in all the relations and circumstances of life, we may determine what Heaven demands and expects of us. 2. The just application of this standard, is practicable for, and obligatory upon, every child of Adam. 3. The qualification requisite to a just application of this rule to all the cases in which we can be concerned, is simply this—to regard all the members of the human family as our brethren, our equals. In other words, the Savior here teaches us, that in the principles and laws of reason, we have an infallible guide in all the relations and circumstances of life; that nothing can 110. CORINTHIANS xi. 14. 111. JOHN vii. 17. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM hinder our following this guide, but the bias of selfishness; and that the moment, in deciding any moral question, we place ourselves in the room of our brother, before the bar of reason, we shall see what decision ought to be pronounced. Does this, in the Savior, look like fleeing self-evident truths!—like decrying the authority of general principles!—like exalting himself at the expense of reason!—like opening a refuge in the Gospel for those whose practice is at variance with the dictates of humanity! What then is the just application of the Golden Rule—that fundamental maxim of the Gospel, giving character to, and shedding light upon, all its precepts and arrangements—to the subject of slavery?—that we must “do to” slaves as we would be done by, AS SLAVES, the RELATION itself being justified and continued? Surely not. A little reflection will enable us to see, that the Golden Rule reaches farther in its demands, and strikes deeper in its influences and operations. The natural equality of mankind lies at the very basis of this great precept. It obviously requires every man to acknowledge another self in every other man. With my powers and resources, and in my appropriate circumstances, I am to recognize in any child of Adam who may address me, another self in his appropriate circumstances and with his powers and resources. This is the natural equality of mankind; and this the Golden Rule requires us to admit, defend, and maintain. “WHY DO YE NOT UNDERSTAND MY SPEECH; EVEN BECAUSE YE CANNOT HEAR MY WORD.” They strangely misunderstand and grossly misrepresent this doctrine, who charge upon it the absurdities and mischiefs which any “levelling system” cannot but produce. In all its bearings, tendencies, and effects, it is directly contrary and powerfully hostile to any such system. EQUALITY OF RIGHTS, the doctrine asserts; and this necessarily opens the way for variety of condition. In other words, every child of Adam has, from the Creator, the inalienable right of wielding, within reasonable limits, his own powers, and employing his own resources, according to his own choice;—the right, while he respects his social relations, to promote as he will his own welfare. But mark—HIS OWN powers and resources, and NOT ANOTHER’S, are thus inalienably put under his control. The Creator makes every man free, in whatever he may do, to exert HIMSELF, and not another. Here no man may lawfully cripple or embarrass another. The feeble may not hinder the strong, nor may the strong crush the feeble. Every man may make the most of himself, in his own proper sphere. Now, as in the constitutional endowments; and natural opportunities, and lawful acquisitions of mankind, infinite variety prevails, so in exerting each HIMSELF, in his own sphere, according to his own choice, the variety of human condition can be little less than infinite. Thus equality of rights opens the way for variety of condition. But with all this variety of make, means, and condition, considered individually, the children of Adam are bound together by strong ties which can never be dissolved. They are mutually united by the social of their nature. Hence mutual dependence and mutual claims. While each is inalienably entitled to assert and enjoy his own personality as a man, each sustains to all and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM all to each, various relations. While each owns and honors the individual, all are to own and honor the social of their nature. Now, the Golden Rule distinctly recognizes, lays its requisitions upon, and extends its obligations to, the whole nature of man, in his individual capacities and social relations. What higher honor could it do to man, as an individual, than to constitute him the judge, by whose decision, when fairly rendered, all the claims of his fellows should be authoritatively and definitely disposed of? “Whatsoever YE WOULD” have done to you, so do ye to others. Every member of the family of Adam, placing himself in the position here pointed out, is competent and authorized to pass judgment on all the cases in social life in which he may be concerned. Could higher responsibilities or greater confidence be reposed in men individually? And then, how are their claims upon each other herein magnified! What inherent worth and solid dignity are ascribed to the social of their nature! In every man with whom I may have to do, I am to recognize the presence of another self, whose case I am to make my own. And thus I am to dispose of whatever claims he may urge upon me. Thus, in accordance with the Golden Rule, mankind are naturally brought, in the voluntary use of their powers and resources, to promote each other’s welfare. As his contribution to this great object, it is the inalienable birthright of every child of Adam, to consecrate whatever he may possess. With exalted powers and large resources, he has a natural claim to a correspondent field of effort. If his “abilities” are small, his task must be easy and his burden light. Thus the Golden Rule requires mankind mutually to serve each other. In this service, each is to exert himself—employ his own powers, lay out his own resources, improve his own opportunities. A division of labor is the natural result. One is remarkable for his intellectual endowments and acquisitions; another, for his wealth; and a third, for power and skill in using his muscles. Such attributes, endlessly varied and diversified, proceed from the basis of a common character, by virtue of which all men and each— one as truly as another—are entitled, as a birthright, to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Each and all, one as well as another, may choose his own modes of contributing his share to the general welfare, in which his own is involved and identified. Under one great law of mutual dependence and mutual responsibility, all are placed—the strong as well as the weak, the rich as much as the poor, the learned no less than the unlearned. All bring their wares, the products of their enterprise, skill and industry, to the same market, where mutual exchanges are freely effected. The fruits of muscular exertion procure the fruits of mental effort. John serves Thomas with his hands, and Thomas serves John with his money. Peter wields the axe for James, and James wields the pen for Peter. Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, employ their wisdom, courage, and experience, in the service of the community, and the community serve Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, in furnishing them with food and raiment, and making them partakers of the general prosperity. And all this by mutual understanding and voluntary arrangement. And all this according to the Golden Rule. What then becomes of slavery—a system of arrangements in which one man treats his fellow, not as another self, but as a thing— HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM a chattel—an article of merchandize, which is not to be consulted in any disposition which may be made of it;—a system which is built on the annihilation of the attributes of our common nature—in which man doth to others what he would sooner die than have done to himself? The Golden Rule and slavery are mutually subversive of each other. If one stands, the other must fall. The one strikes at the very root of the other. The Golden Rule aims at the abolition of THE RELATION ITSELF, in which slavery consists. It lays its demands upon every thing within the scope of human action. To “whatever MEN DO.” it extends its authority. And the relation itself, in which slavery consists, is the work of human hands. It is what men have done to each other—contrary to nature and most injurious to the general welfare. This RELATION, therefore, the Golden Rule condemns. Wherever its authority prevails, this relation must be annihilated. Mutual service and slavery—like light and darkness, life and death—are directly opposed to, and subversive of, each other. The one the Golden Rule cannot endure; the other it requires, honors, and blesses. “LOVE WORKETH NO ILL TO HIS NEIGHBOR.” Like unto the Golden Rule is the second great commandment— “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” “A certain lawyer,” who seems to have been fond of applying the doctrine of limitation of human obligations, once demanded of the Savior, within what limits the meaning of the word “neighbor” ought to be confined. “And who is my neighbor?” The parable of the good Samaritan set that matter in the clearest light, and made it manifest and certain, that every man whom we could reach with our sympathy and assistance, was our neighbor, entitled to the same regard which we cherished for ourselves. Consistently with such obligations, can slavery, as a RELATION, be maintained? Is it then a labor of love—such love as we cherish for ourselves—to strip a child of Adam of all the prerogatives and privileges which are his inalienable birthright? To obscure his reason, crush his will, and trample on his immortality?—To strike home to the inmost of his being, and break the heart of his heart?— To thrust him out of the human family, and dispose of him as a chattel—as a thing in the hands of an owner, a beast under the lash of a driver? All this, apart from every thing incidental and extraordinary, belongs to the RELATION, in which slavery, as such, consists. All this—well fed or ill fed, underwrought or overwrought, clothed or naked, caressed or kicked, whether idle songs break from his thoughtless tongue or “tears be his meat night and day,” fondly cherished or cruelly murdered;—all this ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE RELATION ITSELF, by which every slave, AS A SLAVE, is set apart from the rest of the human family. Is it an exercise of love, to place our “neighbor” under the crushing weight, the killing power, of such a relation?—to apply the murderous steel to the very vitals of his humanity? “YE THEREFORE APPLAUD AND DELIGHT IN THE DEEDS OF YOUR FATHERS; FOR THEY KILLED THEM, AND YE BUILD THEIR SEPULCHRES.”112 The slaveholder may eagerly and loudly deny, that any such thing is chargeable upon him. He may confidently and earnestly allege, that he is not responsible for the state of society in which he is placed. Slavery was established before he began to breathe. 112. You join with them in their bloody work. They murder, and you bury the victims. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM It was his inheritance. His slaves are his property by birth or testament. But why will he thus deceive himself? Why will he permit the cunning and rapacious spiders, which in the very sanctuary of ethics and religion are laboriously weaving webs from their own bowels, to catch him with their wretched sophistries?—and devour him, body, soul, and substance? Let him know, as he must one day with shame and terror own, that whoever holds slaves is himself responsible for the relation, into which, whether reluctantly or willingly, he thus enters. The relation cannot be forced upon him. What though Elizabeth countenanced John Hawkins in stealing the natives of Africa?— what though James, and Charles, and George, opened a market for them in the English colonies?—what though modern Dracos have “framed mischief by law,” in legalizing man-stealing and slaveholding?—what though your ancestors, in preparing to go “to their own place,” constituted you the owner of the “neighbors” whom they had used as cattle?—what of all this, and as much more like this, as can be drawn from the history of that dreadful process by which men are “deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal?” Can all this force you to put the cap upon the climax—to clinch the nail by doing that, without which nothing in the work of slave-making would be attempted? The slaveholder is the soul of the whole system. Without him, the chattel principle is a lifeless abstraction. Without him, charters, and markets, and laws, and testaments, are empty names. And does he think to escape responsibility? Why, kidnappers, and soul-drivers, and law-makers, are nothing but his agents. He is the guilty principal. Let him look to it. But what can he do? Do? Keep his hands off his “neighbor’s” throat. Let him refuse to finish and ratify the process by which the chattel principle is carried into effect. Let him refuse, in the face of derision, and reproach, and opposition. Though poverty should fasten its bony hand upon him, and persecution shoot forth its forked tongue; whatever may betide him—scorn, flight, flames—let him promptly and steadfastly refuse. Better the spite and hate of men than the wrath of Heaven! “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee, that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Professor Stewart admits, that the Golden Rule and the second great commandment “decide against the theory of slavery, as being in itself right.” What, then, is their relation to the particular precepts, institutions, and usages, which are authorized and enjoined in the New Testament? Of all these, they are the summary expression—the comprehensive description. No precept in the Bible, enforcing our mutual obligations, can be more or less than the application of these injunctions to specific relations or particular occasions and conditions. Neither in the Old Testament nor the New, do prophets teach or laws enjoin, any thing which the Golden Rule and the second great command do not contain. Whatever they forbid, no other precept can require; and whatever they require, no other precept can forbid. What, then, does he attempt, who turns over the sacred pages to find something in the way of permission or command, which may set him free from the obligations of the Golden Rule? What must his objects, methods, spirit be, to force him to enter upon such inquiries?—to compel him to search the Bible for such HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM a purpose? Can he have good intentions, or be well employed? Is his frame of mind adapted to the study of the Bible?—to make its meaning plain and welcome? What must he think of God, to search his word in quest of gross inconsistencies, and grave contradictions! Inconsistent legislation in Jehovah! Contradictory commands! Permissions at war with prohibitions! General requirements at variance with particular arrangements! What must be the moral character of any institution which the Golden Rule decides against?—which the second great command condemns? It cannot but be wicked, whether newly established or long maintained. However it may be shaped, turned, colored—under every modification and at all times—wickedness must be its proper character. It must be, IN ITSELF, apart from its circumstances, IN ITS ESSENCE, apart from its incidents, SINFUL. “THINK NOT TO SAY WITHIN YOURSELVES, WE HAVE ABRAHAM FOR OUR FATHER.” In disposing of those precepts and exhortations which have a specific bearing upon the subject of slavery, it is greatly important, nay, absolutely essential, that we look forth upon the objects around us from the right post of observation. Our stand we must take at some central point, amidst the general maxims and fundamental precepts, the known circumstances and characteristic arrangements, of primitive Christianity. Otherwise, wrong views and false conclusions will be the result of our studies. We cannot, therefore, be too earnest in trying to catch the general features and prevalent spirit of the New Testament institutions and arrangements. For to what conclusions must we come, if we unwittingly pursue our inquiries under the bias of the prejudice, that the general maxims of social life which now prevail in this country, were current, on the authority of the Savior, among the primitive Christians! That, for instance, wealth, station, talents, are the standard by which our claims upon, and our regard for, others, should be modified?—That those who are pinched by poverty, worn by disease, tasked in menial labors, or marked by features offensive to the taste of the artificial and capricious, are to be excluded from those refreshing and elevating influences which intelligence and refinement may be expected to exert; that thus they are to constitute a class by themselves, and to be made to know and keep their place at the very bottom of society? Or, what if we should think and speak of the primitive Christians, as if they had the same pecuniary resources as Heaven has lavished upon the American churches?—as if they were as remarkable for affluence, elegance, and splendor? Or, as if they had as high a position and as extensive an influence in politics and literature?—having directly or indirectly, the control over the high places of learning and of power? If we should pursue our studies and arrange our arguments—if we should explain words and interpret language—under such a bias, what must inevitably be the results? What would be the worth of our conclusions? What confidence could be reposed in any instruction we might undertake to furnish? And is not this the way in which the advocates and apologists of slavery dispose of the bearing which primitive Christianity has upon it? They first ascribe, unwittingly, perhaps, to the primitive churches; the character, relations, and condition of American Christianity, HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM and amidst the deep darkness and strange confusion thus produced, set about interpreting the language and explaining the usages of the New Testament! “SO THAT YE ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.” Among the lessons of instruction which our Savior imparted, having a general bearing on the subject of slavery, that in which he sets up the true standard of greatness, deserves particular attention. In repressing the ambition of his disciples, he held up before them the methods by which alone healthful aspirations for eminence could be gratified, and thus set the elements of true greatness in the clearest light. “Ye know, that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles, exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you; but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.” In other words, through the selfishness and pride of mankind, the maxim widely prevails in the world, that it is the privilege, prerogative, and mark of greatness, TO EXACT SERVICE; that our superiority to others, while it authorizes us to relax the exertion of our own powers, gives us a fair title to the use of theirs; that “might,” while it exempts us from serving, “gives the right” to be served. The instructions of the Savior open the way to greatness for us in the opposite direction. Superiority to others, in whatever it may consist, gives us a claim to a wider field of exertion, and demands of us a larger amount of service. We can be great only as we are useful. And “might gives right” to bless our fellow men, by improving every opportunity and employing every faculty, affectionately, earnestly, and unweariedly, in their service. Thus the greater the man, the more active, faithful, and useful the servant. The Savior has himself taught us how this doctrine must be applied. He bids us improve every opportunity and employ every power, even through the most menial services, in blessing the human family. And to make this lesson shine upon our understandings and move our hearts, he embodied in it a most instructive and attractive example. On a memorable occasion, and just before his crucifixion, he discharged for his disciples the most menial of all offices—taking, in washing their feet, the place of the lowest servant. He took great pains to make them understand, that only by imitating this example could they honor their relations to him as their Master; that thus only would they find themselves blessed. By what possibility could slavery exist under the influence of such a lesson, set home by such an example? Was it while washing the disciples’ feet, that our Savior authorized one man to make a chattel of another? To refuse to provide for ourselves by useful labor, the apostle Paul teaches us to regard as a grave offence. After reminding the Thessalonian Christians, that in addition to all his official exertions he had with his own muscles earned his own bread, he calls their attention to an arrangement which was supported by apostolical authority, “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” In the most earnest and solemn manner, and as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, he commanded and exhorted those who neglected useful labor, “with quietness to work and eat their own bread.” What must be the bearing of all HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM this upon slavery? Could slavery be maintained where every man eat the bread which himself had earned?—where idleness was esteemed so great a crime, as to be reckoned worthy of starvation as a punishment? How could unrequited labor be exacted, or used, or needed? Must not every one in such a community contribute his share to the general welfare?—and mutual service and mutual support be the natural result? The same apostle, in writing to another church, describes the true source whence the means of liberality ought to be derived. “Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” Let this lesson, as from the lips of Jehovah, be proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of South Carolina. Let it be universally welcomed and reduced to practice. Let thieves give up what they had stolen to the lawful proprietors, cease stealing, and begin at once to “labor, working with their hands,” for necessary and charitable purposes. Could slavery, in such a case, continue to exist? Surely not! Instead of exacting unpaid services from others, every man would be busy, exerting himself not only to provide for his own wants, but also to accumulate funds, “that he might have to give to” the needy. Slavery must disappear, root and branch, at once and forever. In describing the source whence his ministers should expect their support, the Savior furnished a general principle, which has an obvious and powerful bearing on the subject of slavery. He would have them remember, while exerting themselves for the benefit of their fellow men, that “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” He has thus united wages with work. Whoever renders the one is entitled to the other. And this manifestly according to a mutual understanding and a voluntary arrangement. For the doctrine that I may force you to work for me for whatever consideration I may please to fix upon, fairly opens the way for the doctrine, that you, in turn, may force me to render you whatever wages you may choose to exact for any services you may see fit to render. Thus slavery, even as involuntary servitude, is cut up by the root. Even the Princeton professor seems to regard it as a violation of the principle which unites work with wages. The apostle James applies this principle to the claims of manual laborers—of those who hold the plough and thrust in the sickle. He calls the rich lordlings who exacted sweat and withheld wages, to “weeping and howling,” assuring them that the complaints of the injured laborer had entered into the ear of the Lord of Hosts, and that, as a result of their oppression, their riches were corrupted, and their garments moth-eaten; their gold and silver were cankered; that the rust of them should be a witness against them, and should eat their flesh as it were fire; that, in one word, they had heaped treasures together for the last days, when “miseries were coming upon them,” the prospect of which might well drench them in tears and fill them with terror. If these admonitions and warnings were heeded there, would not “the South” break forth into “weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth?” What else are its rich men about, but withholding by a system of fraud, his wages from the laborer, who is wearing himself out under the impulse of fear, in cultivating their fields and producing their luxuries! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Encouragement and support do they derive from James, in maintaining the “peculiar institution” which they call patriarchal, and boast of as the “corner-stone” of the republic? In the New Testament, we have, moreover, the general injunction, “Honor all men.” Under this broad precept, every form of humanity may justly claim protection and respect. The invasion of any human right must do dishonor to humanity, and be a transgression of this command. How then, in the light of such obligations, must slavery be regarded? Are those men honored, who are rudely excluded from a place in the human family, and shut up to the deep degradation and nameless horrors of chattelship? Can they be held as slaves, and at the same time be honored as men? How far, in obeying this command, we are to go, we may infer from the admonitions and instructions which James applies to the arrangements and usages of religious assemblies. Into these he can not allow “respect of persons” to enter. “My brethren,” he exclaims, “have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel; and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool; are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. On this general principle, then, religious assemblies ought to be regulated—that every man is to be estimated, not according to his circumstances—not according to anything incidental to his condition; but according to his moral worth—according to the essential features and vital elements of his character. Gold rings and gay clothing, as they qualify no man for, can entitle no man to, a “good place” in the church. Nor can the “vile raiment of the poor man,” fairly exclude him from any sphere, however exalted, which his heart and head may fit him to fill. To deny this, in theory or practice, is to degrade a man below a thing; for what are gold rings, or gay clothing, or vile raiment, but things, “which perish with the using?” And this must be “to commit sin, and be convinced of the law as transgressor.” In slavery, we have “respect of persons,” strongly marked, and reduced to system. Here men are despised not merely for “the vile raiment,” which may cover their scarred bodies. This is bad enough. But the deepest contempt of humanity here grows out of birth or complexion. Vile raiment may be, often is, the result of indolence, or improvidence, or extravagance. It may be, often is, an index of character. But how can I be responsible for the incidents of my birth?—how for my complexion? To despise or honor me for these, is to be guilty of “respect of persons” in its grossest form, and with its worst effects. It is to reward or punish me for what I had nothing to do with; for which, therefore, I cannot, without the greatest injustice, be held responsible. It is to poison the very fountains of justice, by confounding all moral distinctions. What, then, so far as the authority of the New Testament is concerned, becomes of slavery, which cannot be maintained under any form nor for a single moment, without “respect of persons” the most aggravated and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM unendurable? And what would become of that most pitiful, silly, and wicked arrangement in so many of our churches, in which worshippers of a dark complexion are to be sent up to the negro pew?113 Nor are we permitted to confine this principle to religious assemblies. It is to pervade social life everywhere. Even where plenty, intelligence and refinement, diffuse their brightest rays, the poor are to be welcomed with especial favor. “Then said he to him that bade him, when thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor and the maimed, the lame and the blind, and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.” In the high places of social life then—in the parlor, the drawing-room, the saloon—special reference should be had, in every arrangement, to the comfort and improvement of those who are least able to provide for the cheapest rites of hospitality. For these, ample accommodations must be made, whatever may become of our kinsmen and rich neighbors. And for this good reason, that while such occasions signify little to the latter, to the former they are pregnant with good—raising their drooping spirits, cheering their desponding hearts, inspiring them with life, and hope, and joy. The rich and the poor thus meeting joyfully together, cannot but mutually contribute to each other’s benefit; the rich will be led to moderation, sobriety, and circumspection, and the poor to industry, providence, and contentment. The recompense must be great and sure. A most beautiful and instructive commentary on the text in which these things are taught, the Savior furnished in his own conduct. He freely mingled with those who were reduced to the very bottom of society. At the tables of the outcasts of society he did not hesitate to be a cheerful guest, surrounded by publicans and sinners. And when flouted and reproached by smooth and lofty ecclesiastics, as an ultraist and leveler, he explained and justified himself by observing, that he had only done what his office demanded. It was his to seek the lost, to heal the sick, to pity the wretched;—in a word, to bestow just such benefits as the various necessities of mankind made appropriate and welcome. In his great heart, there was room enough for those who had been excluded from the sympathy of little souls. In its spirit and design, the gospel overlooked none—least of all, the outcasts of a selfish world. Can slavery, however modified, be consistent with such a gospel?—a gospel which requires us, even amidst the highest forms of social life, to exert ourselves to raise the depressed by giving our warmest sympathies to those who have the smallest share in the favor of the world? Those who are in “bonds” are set before us as deserving an especial remembrance. Their claims upon us are described as a modification of the Golden Rule—as one of the many forms to which

113. In Carlyle’s REVIEW OF THE MEMOIRS OF MIRABEAU, we have the following anecdote illustrative of the character of a “grandmother” of the Count. “Fancy the dame Mirabeau sailing stately towards the church font; another dame striking in to take precedence of her; the dame Mirabeau despatching this latter with a box on the ear, and these words, ‘Here, as in the army, THE BAGGAGE goes last!’” Let those who justify the negro-pew arrangement, throw a stone at this proud woman—if they dare. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM its obligations are reducible. To them we are to extend the same affectionate regard as we would covet for ourselves, if the chains upon their limbs were fastened upon ours. To the benefits of this precept, the enslaved have a natural claim of the greatest strength. The wrongs they suffer spring from a persecution which can hardly be surpassed in malignancy. Their birth and complexion are the occasion of the insults and injuries which they can neither endure nor escape. It is for the work of God, and not their own deserts, that they are loaded with chains. This is persecution. Can I regard the slave as another self—can I put myself in his place—and be indifferent to his wrongs? Especially, can I, thus affected, take sides with the oppressor? Could I, in such a state of mind as the gospel requires me to cherish, reduce him to slavery or keep him in bonds? Is not the precept under hand naturally subversive of every system and every form of slavery? The general descriptions of the church, which are found here and there in the New Testament, are highly instructive in their bearing on the subject of slavery. In one connection, the following words meet the eye: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”114 Here we have— 1. A clear and strong description of the doctrine of human equality. “Ye are all ONE;”—so much alike, so truly placed on common ground, all wielding each his own powers with such freedom, that one is the same as another. 2. This doctrine, self-evident in the light of reason, is affirmed on divine authority. “IN CHRIST JESUS, ye are all one.” The natural equality of the human family is a part of the gospel. For— 3. All the human family are included in this description. Whether men or women, whether bond or free, whether Jews or Gentiles, all are alike entitled to the benefit of this doctrine. Whether Christianity prevails, the artificial distinctions which grow out of birth, condition, sex, are done away. Natural distinctions are not destroyed. They are recognized, hallowed, confirmed. The gospel does not abolish the sexes, forbid a division of labor, or extinguish patriotism. It takes woman from beneath the feet, and places her by the side of man; delivers the manual laborer from “the yoke,” and gives him wages for his work; and brings the Jew and the Gentile to embrace each other with fraternal love and confidence. Thus it raises all to a common level, gives to each the free use of his own powers and resources, binds all together in one dear and loving brotherhood. Such, according to the description of the apostle, was the influence, and such the effect of primitive Christianity. “Behold the picture!” Is it like American slavery, which, in all its tendencies and effects, is destructive of all oneness among brethren? “Where the spirit of the Lord is,” exclaims the same apostle, with his eye upon the condition and relations of the church, “where the spirit of the Lord is, THERE IS LIBERTY.” Where, then, may we reverently recognize the presence, and bow before the manifested power, of this spirit? There, where the laborer may

114. GALATIANS iii. 28. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM not choose how he shall be employed!—in what way his wants shall be supplied!—with whom he shall associate!—who shall have the fruit of his exertions! There, where he is not free to enjoy his wife and children! There, where his body and his soul, his very “destiny,”115 are placed altogether beyond his control! There, where every power is crippled, every energy blasted, every hope crushed! There, where in all the relations and concerns of life, he is legally treated as if he had nothing to do with the laws of reason, the light of immortality, or the exercise of will! Is the spirit of the Lord there, where liberty is decried and denounced, mocked at and spit upon, betrayed and crucified! In the midst of a church which justified slavery, which derived its support from slavery, which carried on its enterprises by means of slavery, would the apostle have found the fruits of the Spirit of the Lord! Let that Spirit exert his influences, and assert his authority, and wield his power, and slavery must vanish at once and for ever. In more than one connection, the apostle James describes Christianity as “the law of liberty.” It is, in other words, the law under which liberty cannot but live and flourish—the law in which liberty is clearly defined, strongly asserted, and well protected. As the law of liberty, how can it be consistent with the law of slavery? The presence and the power of this law are felt wherever the light of reason shines. They are felt in the uneasiness and conscious degradation of the slave, and in the shame and remorse which the master betrays in his reluctant and desperate efforts to defend himself. This law it is which has armed human nature against the oppressor. Wherever it is obeyed, “every yoke is broken.” In these references to the New Testament we have a general description of the primitive church, and the principles on which it was founded and fashioned. These principles bear the same relation to Christian history as to Christian character, since the former is occupied with the development of the latter. What then is Christian character but Christian principle realized, acted out, bodied forth, and animated? Christian principle is the soul, of which Christian character is the expression—the manifestation. It comprehends in itself, as a living seed, such Christian character, under every form, modification, and complexion. The former is, therefore, the test and interpreter of the latter. In the light of Christian principle, and in that light only we can judge of and explain Christian character. Christian history is occupied with the forms, modifications, and various aspects of Christian character. The facts which are there recorded serve to show, how Christian principle has fared in this world—how it has appeared, what it has done, how it has been treated. In these facts we have the various institutions, usages, designs, doings, and sufferings of the church of Christ. And all these have of necessity, the closest relation to Christian principle. They are the production of its power. Through them, it is revealed and manifested. In its light, they are to be studied, explained, and understood. Without it they must be as unintelligible and insignificant as the letters of a book scattered on the wind.

115. “The legislature (of South Carolina) from time to time, has passed many restricted and penal acts, with a view to bring under direct control and subjection the DESTINY of the black population.” See the REMONSTRANCE of James S. Pope and 352 others against home missionary efforts for the benefit of the enslaved—a most instructive paper. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM In the principles of Christianity, then, we have a comprehensive and faithful account of its objects, institutions, and usages— of how it must behave, and act, and suffer, in a world of sin and misery. For between the principles which God reveals, on the one hand, and the precepts he enjoins, the institutions he establishes, and the usages he approves, on the other, there must be consistency and harmony. Otherwise we impute to God what we must abhor in man—practice at war with principle. Does the Savior, then, lay down the principle that our standing in the church must depend upon the habits formed within us, of readily and heartily subserving the welfare of others; and permit us in practice to invade the rights and trample on the happiness of our fellows, by reducing them to slavery. Does he, in principle and by example, require us to go all lengths in rendering mutual service, or comprehending offices that most menial, as well as the most honorable; and permit us in practice to EXACT service of our brethren, as if they were nothing better than “articles of merchandize!” Does he require us in principle “to work with quietness and eat our own bread;” and permit us in practice to wrest from our brethren the fruits of their unrequited toil? Does he in principle require us, abstaining from every form of theft, to employ our powers in useful labor, not only to provide for ourselves but also to relieve the indigence of others; and permit us in practice, abstaining from every form of labor, to enrich and aggrandize ourselves with the fruits of man-stealing? Does he require us in principle to regard “the laborer as worthy of his hire”; and permit us in practice to defraud him of his wages? Does he require us in principle to honor ALL men; and permit us in practice to treat multitudes like cattle? Does he in principle prohibit “respect of persons;” and permit us in practice to place the feet of the rich upon the necks of the poor? Does he in principle require us to sympathize with the bondman as another self; and permit us in practice to leave him unpitied and unhelped in the hands of the oppressor? In principle, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;” in practice, is slavery the fruit of the Spirit? In principle, Christianity is the law of liberty; in practice, it is the law of slavery? Bring practice in these various respects into harmony with principle, and what becomes of slavery? And if, where the divine government is concerned, practice is the expression of principle, and principle the standard and interpreter of practice, such harmony cannot but be maintained and must be asserted. In studying, therefore, fragments of history and sketches of biography—in disposing of references to institutions, usages, and facts in the New Testament, this necessary harmony between principle and practice in the government of God, should be continually present to the thoughts of the interpreter. Principles assert what practice must be. Whatever principle condemns, God condemns. It belongs to those weeds of the dung-hill which, planted by “an enemy,” his hand will assuredly “root up.” It is most certain then, that if slavery prevailed in the first ages of Christianity, it could nowhere have prevailed under its influence and with its sanction. * * * * * The condition in which in its efforts to bless mankind, the primitive church was placed, must have greatly assisted the HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM early Christians in understanding and applying the principles of the gospel. Their Master was born in great obscurity, lived in the deepest poverty, and died the most ignominious death. The place of his residence, his familiarity with the outcasts of society, his welcoming assistance and support from female hands, his casting his beloved mother, when he hung upon the cross, upon the charity of a disciple—such things evince the depth of his poverty, and show to what derision and contempt he must have been exposed. Could such an one, “despised and rejected of men— a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” play the oppressor, or smile on those who made merchandize of the poor! And what was the history of the apostles, but an illustration of the doctrine, that “it is enough for the disciple, that he be as his Master?” Were they lordly ecclesiastics, abounding with wealth, shining with splendor, bloated with luxury! Were they ambitious of distinction, fleecing, and trampling, and devouring “the flocks,” that they themselves might “have the pre-eminence!” Were they slaveholding bishops! Or did they derive their support from the wages of iniquity and the price of blood! Can such inferences be drawn from the account of their condition, which the most gifted and enterprising of their number has put upon record? “Even unto this present hour, we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffetted, and have no certain dwelling place, and labor working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat; we are made as the filth of the world, and are THE OFFSCOURING OF ALL THINGS unto this day.”116 Are these the men who practised or countenanced slavery? With such a temper, they WOULD NOT; in such circumstances, they COULD NOT. Exposed to “tribulation, distress, and persecution;” subject to famine and nakedness, to peril and the sword; “killed all the day long; accounted as sheep for the slaughter,”117 they would have made but a sorry figure at the great-house or slave-market. Nor was the condition of the brethren, generally, better than that of the apostles. The position of the apostles doubtless entitled them to the strongest opposition, the heaviest reproaches, the fiercest persecution. But derision and contempt must have been the lot of Christians generally. Surely we cannot think so ill of primitive Christianity as to suppose that believers, generally, refused to share in the trials and sufferings of their leaders; as to suppose that while the leaders submitted to manual labor, to buffeting, to be reckoned the filth of the world, to be accounted as sheep for the slaughter, his brethren lived in affluence, ease, and honor! despising manual labor and living upon the sweat of unrequited toil! But on this point we are not left to mere inference and conjecture. The apostle Paul in the plainest language explains the ordination of Heaven. “But God hath CHOSEN the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath CHOSEN the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God CHOSEN, yea, and THINGS WHICH ARE NOT, to bring to nought things that are.”118 Here we may well notice, 1. That it was not by accident, that the primitive churches were 116. 1 CORINTHIANS iv. 11-13. 117. ROMANS viii. 35, 36. 118. 1 CORINTHIANS i. 27, 28. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM made up of such elements, but the result of the DIVINE CHOICE— an arrangement of His wise and gracious Providence. The inference is natural, that this ordination was co-extensive with the triumphs of Christianity. It was nothing new or strange, that Jehovah had concealed his glory “from the wise and prudent, and had revealed it unto babes,” or that “the common people heard him gladly,” while “not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, had been called.” 2. The description of character, which the apostle records, could be adapted only to what are reckoned the very dregs of humanity. The foolish and the weak, the base and the contemptible, in the estimation of worldly pride and wisdom— these were they whose broken hearts were reached, and moulded, and refreshed by the gospel; these were they whom the apostle took to his bosom as his own brethren. That slaves abounded at Corinth, may easily be admitted. They have a place in the enumeration of elements of which, according to the apostle, the church there was composed. The most remarkable class found there, consisted of “THINGS WHICH ARE NOT”—mere nobodies, not admitted to the privileges of men, but degraded to a level with “goods and chattels;” of whom no account was made in such arrangements of society as subserved the improvement, and dignity, and happiness of MANKIND. How accurately the description applies to those who are crushed under the chattel principle! The reference which the apostle makes to the “deep poverty of the churches of Macedonia,”119 and this to stir up the sluggish liberality of his Corinthian brethren, naturally leaves the impression, that the latter were by no means inferior to the former in the gifts of Providence. But, pressed with want and pinched by poverty as were the believers in “Macedonia and Achaia, it pleased them to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which were at Jerusalem.”120 Thus it appears, that Christians everywhere were familiar with contempt and indigence, so much so, that the apostle would dissuade such as had no families from assuming the responsibilities of the conjugal relation!121 Now, how did these good people treat each other? Did the few among them, who were esteemed wise, mighty, or noble, exert their influence and employ their power in oppressing the weak, in disposing of the “things that are not,” as marketable commodities!—kneeling with them in prayer in the evening, and putting them up at auction the next morning! Did the church sell any of the members to swell the “certain contribution for the poor saints at Jerusalem!” Far other wise—as far as possible! In those Christian communities where the influence of the apostles was most powerful, and where the arrangements drew forth their highest commendations, believers treated each other as brethren, in the strongest sense of that sweet word. So warm was their mutual love, so strong the public spirit, so open- handed and abundant the general liberality, that they are set forth as “having all things common.”122 Slaves and their holders here? Neither the one nor the other could, in that relation to 119. 2 CORINTHIANS viii. 2. 120. ROMANS xviii. 18-25. 121. CORINTHIANS vii. 26, 27. 122. ACTS iv. 32. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM each other, have breathed such an atmosphere. The appeal of the kneeling bondman, “Am I not a man and a brother,” must here have met with a prompt and powerful response. The tests by which our Savior tries the character of his professed disciples, shed a strong light upon the genius of the gospel. In one connection,123 an inquirer demands of the Savior, “What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” After being reminded of the obligations which his social nature imposed upon him, he ventured, while claiming to be free from guilt in his relations to mankind, to demand, “what lack I yet?” The radical deficiency under which his character labored, the Savior was not long or obscure in pointing out. “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me.” On this passage it is natural to suggest— 1. That we have here a test of universal application. The rectitude and benevolence of our Savior’s character forbid us to suppose, that he would subject this inquirer, especially as he was highly amiable, to a trial, where eternal life was at stake, peculiarly severe. Indeed, the test seems to have been only a fair exposition of the second great command, and of course it must be applicable to all who are placed under the obligations of that precept. Those who cannot stand this test, as their character is radically imperfect and unsound, must, with the inquirer to whom our Lord applied it, be pronounced unfit for the kingdom of heaven. 2. The least that our Savior can in that passage be understood to demand is, that we disinterestedly and heartily devote ourselves to the welfare of mankind, “the poor” especially. We are to put ourselves on a level with them, as we must do “in selling that we have” for their benefit—in other words, in employing our powers and resources to elevate their character, condition, and prospects. This our Savior did; and if we refuse to enter into sympathy and co-operation with him, how can we be his followers? Apply this test to the slaveholder. Instead of “selling that he hath” for the benefit of the poor, he BUYS THE POOR, and exacts their sweat with stripes, to enable him to “clothe himself in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day;” or, HE SELLS THE POOR to support the gospel and convert the heathen! What, in describing the scenes of the final judgment, does our Savior teach us? By what standard must our character be estimated, and the retributions of eternity be awarded? A standard, which both the righteous and the wicked will be surprised to see erected. From the “offscouring of all things,” the meanest specimen of humanity will be selected—a “stranger” in the hands of the oppressor, naked, hungry, sickly; and this stranger, placed in the midst of the assembled universe, by the side of the sovereign Judge, will be openly acknowledged as his representative. “Glory, honor, and immortality,” will be the reward of those who had recognized and cheered their Lord through his outraged poor. And tribulation, anguish, and despair, will seize on “every soul of man” who had neglected or despised them. But whom, within the limits of our country, are we to regard especially as the representatives of our final

123. LUKE xviii. 18-25. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Judge? Every feature of the Savior’s picture finds its appropriate original in our enslaved countrymen. 1. They are the LEAST of his brethren. 2. They are subject to thirst and hunger, unable to command a cup of water or a crumb of bread. 3. They are exposed to wasting sickness, without the ability to procure a nurse or employ a physician. 4. They are emphatically “in prison,” restrained by chains, goaded with whips, tasked, and under keepers. Not a wretch groans in any cell of the prisons of our country, who is exposed to a confinement so vigorous and heartbreaking as the law allows theirs to be continually and permanently. 5. And then they are emphatically, and peculiarly, and exclusively, STRANGERS—strangers in the land which gave them birth. Whom else do we constrain to remain aliens in the midst of our free institutions? The Welch, the Swiss, the Irish? The Jews even? Alas, it is the negro only, who may not strike his roots into our soil. Every where we have conspired to treat him as a stranger—every where he is forced to feel himself a stranger. In the stage and steamboat, in the parlor and at our tables, in the scenes of business and in the scenes of amusement— even in the church of God and at the communion table, he is regarded as a stranger. The intelligent and religious are generally disgusted and horror-struck at the thought of his becoming identified with the citizens of our republic—so much so, that thousands of them have entered into a conspiracy to send him off “out of sight,” to find a home on a foreign shore!— and justify themselves by openly alleging, that a “single drop” of his blood, in the veins of any human creature, must make him hateful to his fellow citizens!—That nothing but banishment from “our coasts,” can redeem him from the scorn and contempt to which his “stranger” blood has reduced him among his own mother’s children! Who, then, in this land “of milk and honey,” is “hungry and athirst,” but the man from whom the law takes away the last crumb of bread and the smallest drop of water? Who “naked,” but the man whom the law strips of the last rag of clothing? Who “sick,” but the man whom the law deprives of the power of procuring medicine or sending for a physician? Who “in prison,” but the man who, all his life, is under the control of merciless masters and cruel keepers! Who a “stranger,” but the man who is scornfully denied the cheapest courtesies of life—who is treated as an alien in his native country? There is one point in this awful description which deserves particular attention. Those who are doomed to the left hand of the Judge, are not charged with inflicting positive injuries on their helpless, needy, and oppressed brother. Theirs was what is often called negative character. What they had done is not described in the indictment. Their neglect of duty, what they had NOT done, was the ground of their “everlasting punishment.” The representative of their Judge, they had seen a hungered and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM they gave him no meat, thirsty and they gave him no drink, a stranger and they took him not in, naked and they clothed him not, sick and in prison and they visited him not. In as much as they did NOT yield to the claims of suffering humanity—did NOT exert themselves to bless the meanest of the human family, they were driven away in their wickedness. But what if the indictment had run thus: I was a hungered and ye snatched away the crust which might have saved me from starvation; I was thirsty and ye dashed to the ground the “cup of cold water,” which might have moistened my parched lips; I was a stranger and ye drove me from the hovel which might have sheltered me from the piercing wind; I was sick and ye scourged me to my task; in prison and you sold me for my jail-fees—to what depths of hell must not those who were convicted under such charges be consigned! And what is the history of American slavery but one long indictment, describing under ever-varying forms and hues just such injuries! Nor should it be forgotten, that those who incurred the displeasure of their Judge, took far other views than he, of their own past history. The charges which he brought against them, they heard with great surprise. They were sure that they had never thus turned away from his necessities. Indeed, when had they seen him thus subject to poverty, insult, and oppression? Never. And as to that poor friendless creature, whom they left unpitied and unhelped in the hands of the oppressor, and whom their Judge now presented as his own representative, they never once supposed, that he had any claims on their compassion and assistance. Had they known, that he was destined to so prominent a place at the final judgment, they would have treated him as a human being, in despite of any social, pecuniary, or political considerations. But neither their negative virtue nor their voluntary ignorance could shield them from the penal fire which their selfishness had kindled. Now amidst the general maxims, the leading principles, the “great commandments” of the gospel; amidst its comprehensive descriptions and authorized tests of Christian character, we should take our position in disposing of any particular allusions to such forms and usages of the primitive churches as are supported by divine authority. The latter must be interpreted and understood in the light of the former. But how do the apologists and defenders of slavery proceed? Placing themselves amidst the arrangements and usages which grew out of the corruptions of Christianity, they make these the standard by which the gospel is to be explained and understood! Some Recorder or Justice. without the light of inquiry or the aid of a jury, consigns the negro whom the kidnapper has dragged into his presence to the horrors of slavery. As the poor wretch shrieks and faints, Humanity shudders and demands why such atrocities are endured. Some “priest” or “Levite,” “passing by on the other side,” quite self-possessed and all complacent, reads in reply from his broad phylactery, Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon! Yes, echoes the negro-hating mob, made up of “gentlemen of property and standing” together with equally gentle-men reeking from the gutter; Yes—Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon! And Humanity, brow-beaten, stunned with noise and tumult, is pushed aside by the crowd! A fair specimen this of the manner in which modern usages are made to interpret the sacred Scriptures? HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Of the particular passages in the New Testament on which the apologists for slavery especially rely, the epistle to Philemon first demands our attention. 1. This letter was written by the apostle Paul while a “prisoner of Jesus Christ” at Rome. 2. Philemon was a benevolent and trustworthy member of the church at Colosse, at whose house the disciples of Christ held their assemblies, and who owed his conversion, under God, directly or indirectly to the ministry of Paul. 3. Onesimus was the servant of Philemon; under a relation which it is difficult with accuracy and certainty to define. His condition, though servile, could not have been like that of an American slave; as, in that case, however he might have “wronged” Philemon, he could not also have “owed him ought.”124 The American slave is, according to law, as much the property of his master as any other chattel; and can no more “owe” his master than can a sheep or a horse. The basis of all pecuniary obligations lies in some “value received.” How can “an article of merchandise” stand on this basis and sustain commercial relations to its owner? There is no person to offer or promise. Personality is swallowed up in American slavery! 4. How Onesimus found his way to Rome it is not easy to determine. He and Philemon appear to have parted from each other on ill terms. The general character of Onesimus, certainly, in his relation to Philemon, had been far from attractive, and he seems to have left him without repairing the wrongs he had done him or paying the debts which he owed him. At Rome, by the blessing of God upon the exertions of the apostle, he was brought to reflection and repentance. 5. In reviewing his history in the light of Christian truth, he became painfully aware of the injuries he had inflicted on Philemon. He longed for an opportunity for frank confession and full restitution. Having, however, parted with Philemon on ill terms, he knew not how to appear in his presence. Under such embarrassments, he naturally sought sympathy and advice of Paul. His influence upon Philemon, Onesimus knew must be powerful, especially as an apostle. 6. A letter in behalf of Onesimus was therefore written by the apostle to Philemon. After such salutations, benedictions, and thanksgiving as the good character and useful life of Philemon naturally drew from the heart of Paul, he proceeds to the object of the letter. He admits that Onesimus had behaved ill in the service of Philemon; not in running away, for how they had parted with each other is not explained; but in being unprofitable and in refusing to pay the debts125 which he had contracted. But his character had undergone a radical change. Thenceforward fidelity and usefulness would be his aim and mark his course. And as to any pecuniary obligations which he had violated, the apostle authorized Philemon to put them on his account.126 Thus a way was fairly opened to the heart of Philemon. And now what does the apostles ask? 7. He asks that Philemon would receive Onesimus, How? “Not as a

124. PHILEMON, 18. 125. Verse 18. 126. Verse 16. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM servant, but above a servant.”127 How much above? Philemon was to receive him as “a son” of the apostle— “as a brother beloved”— nay, if he counted Paul a partner, an equal, he was to receive Onesimus as he would receive the apostle himself.128 So much above a servant was he to receive him! 8. But was not this request to be so interpreted and complied with as to put Onesimus in the hands of Philemon as “an article of merchandise,” CARNALLY, while it raised him to the dignity of a “brother beloved,” SPIRITUALLY? In other words, might not Philemon consistently with the request of Paul have reduced Onesimus to a chattel, as A MAN, while he admitted him fraternally to his bosom, as a CHRISTIAN? Such gibberish in an apostolic epistle! Never. As if, however to guard against such folly, the natural product of mist and moonshine, the apostle would have Onesimus raised above a servant to the dignity of a brother beloved, “BOTH IN THE FLESH AND IN THE LORD;”129 as a man and Christian, in all the relations, circumstances, and responsibilities of life. It is easy now with definiteness and certainty to determine in what sense the apostle in such connections uses the word “brother”. It describes a relation inconsistent with and opposite to the servile. It is “NOT” the relation of a “SERVANT.” It elevates its subject “above” the servile condition. It raises him to full equality with the master, to the same equality, on which Paul and Philemon stood side by side as brothers; and this, not in some vague, undefined, spiritual sense, affecting the soul and leaving the body in bonds, but in every way, “both in the FLESH and in the Lord.” This matter deserves particular and earnest attention. It sheds a strong light on other lessons of apostolic instruction. 9. It is greatly to our purpose, moreover, to observe that the apostle clearly defines the moral character of his request. It was fit, proper, right, suited to the nature and relation of things—a thing which ought to be done.130 On this account, he might have urged it upon Philemon in the form of an injunction, on apostolic authority and with great boldness.131 The very nature of the request made it obligatory on Philemon. He was sacredly bound, out of regard to the fitness of things, to admit Onesimus to full equality with himself—to treat him as a brother both in the Lord and as having flesh—as a fellow man. Thus were the inalienable rights and birthright privileges of Onesimus, as a member of the human family, defined and protected by apostolic authority. 10. The apostle preferred a request instead of imposing a command, on the ground of CHARITY.132 He would give Philemon an opportunity of discharging his obligations under the impulse of love. To this impulse, he was confident Philemon would promptly and fully yield. How could he do otherwise? The thing itself was right. The request respecting it came from a benefactor, to whom, under God, he was under the highest obligations.133 That 127. Verse 10, 16, 17. 128. Verse 11, 18. 129. Verse 16. 130. Verse 8. To [Greek: anaekon]. See Robinson’s NEW TESTAMENT LEXICON; “it is fit, proper, becoming, it ought.” In what sense King James’ translators used the word “convenient” any one may see who will read ROMANS i. 28 and EPHESIANS v. 3, 4. 131. Verse 8. 132. Verse 9—[Greek: dia taen agapaen] HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM benefactor, now an old man, and in the hands of persecutors, manifested a deep and tender interest in the matter and had the strongest persuasion that Philemon was more ready to grant than himself to entreat. The result, as he was soon to visit Collosse, and had commissioned Philemon to prepare a lodging for him, must come under the eye of the apostle. The request was so manifestly reasonable and obligatory, that the apostle, after all, described a compliance with it, by the strong word “obedience.”134 Now, how must all this have been understood by the church at Colosse? —a church, doubtless, made up of such materials as the church at Corinth, that is, of members chiefly from the humblest walks of life. Many of them had probably felt the degradation and tasted the bitterness of the servile condition. Would they have been likely to interpret the apostle’s letter under the bias of feelings friendly to slavery!—And put the slaveholder’s construction on its contents! Would their past experience or present sufferings—for doubtless some of them were still “under the yoke”—have suggested to their thoughts such glosses as some of our theological professors venture to put upon the words of the apostle! Far otherwise. The Spirit of the Lord was there, and the epistle was read in the light of “liberty.” It contained the principles of holy freedom, faithfully and affectionately applied. This must have made it precious in the eyes of such men “of low degree” as were most of the believers, and welcome to a place in the sacred canon. There let it remain as a luminous and powerful defence of the cause of emancipation! But what saith Professor Stuart? “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.”135 “Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon.” By what process? Did the apostle, a prisoner at Rome, seize upon the fugitive, and drag him before some heartless and perfidious “Judge,” for authority to send him back to Colosse? Did he hurry his victim away from the presence of the fat and supple magistrate, to be driven under chains and the lash to the field of unrequited toil, whence he had escaped? Had the apostle been like some teachers in the American churches, he might, as a professor of sacred literature in one of our seminaries, or a preacher of the gospel to the rich in some of our cities, have consented thus to subserve the “peculiar” interests of a dear slaveholding brother. But the venerable champion of truth and freedom was himself under bonds in the imperial city, waiting for the crown of martyrdom. He wrote a letter to the church a Colosse, which was accustomed to meet at the house of Philemon, and another letter to that magnanimous disciple, and sent them by the hand of Onesimus. So much for the way in which Onesimus was sent back to his master. A slave escapes from a patriarch in Georgia, and seeks a refuge in the parish of the Connecticut doctor of Divinity, who once gave public notice that he saw no reason for caring for the servitude of his fellow men.136 Under his influence, Caesar becomes a Christian convert. Burning with love for the son whom 133. Verse 19. 134. Verse 21. 135. See his letter to Dr. Fisk, supra pp. 7, 8. 136. “Why should I care?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM he hath begotten in the gospel, our doctor resolves to send him back to his master. Accordingly, he writes a letter, gives it to Caesar, and bids him return, staff in hand, to the “corner- stone of our republican institutions.” Now, what would my Caesar do, who had ever felt a link of slavery’s chain? As he left his spiritual father, should we be surprised to hear him say to himself, What, return of my own accord to the man who, with the hand of a robber, plucked me from my mother’s bosom!—for whom I have been so often drenched in the sweat of unrequited toil!— whose violence so often cut my flesh and scarred my limbs!—who shut out every ray of light from my mind!—who laid claim to those honors to which my Creator and Redeemer only are entitled! And for what am I to return? To be cursed, and smitten, and sold! To be tempted, and torn, and destroyed! I cannot thus throw myself away—thus rush upon my own destruction. Who ever heard of the voluntary return of a fugitive from American oppression? Do you think that the doctor and his friends could persuade one to carry a letter to the patriarch from whom he had escaped? And must we believe this of Onesimus? “Paul sent back Onesimus to Philemon.” On what occasion?— “If,” writes the apostle, “he hath wronged thee, or oweth the aught, put that on my account.” Alive to the claims of duty, Onesimus would “restore” whatever he “had taken away.” He would honestly pay his debts. This resolution the apostle warmly approved. He was ready, at whatever expense, to help his young disciple in carrying it into full effect. Of this he assured Philemon, in language the most explicit and emphatic. Here we find one reason for the conduct of Paul in sending Onesimus to Philemon. If a fugitive slave of the Rev. Dr. Smylie, of Mississippi, should return to him with a letter from a doctor of divinity in New York, containing such an assurance, how would the reverend slaveholder dispose of it? What, he exclaims, have we here? “If Cato has not been upright in his pecuniary intercourse with you— if he owes you any thing—put that on my account.” What ignorance of southern institutions! What mockery, to talk of pecuniary intercourse between a slave and his master! The slave himself, with all he is and has, is an article of merchandise. What can he owe his master? A rustic may lay a wager with his mule, and give the creature the peck of oats which he has permitted it to win. But who, in sober earnest, would call this a pecuniary transaction? “TO BE HIS SERVANT FOR LIFE!” From what part of the epistle could the expositor have evolved a thought so soothing to tyrants—so revolting to every man who loves his own nature? From this? “For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldst receive him for ever.” Receive him how? As a servant, exclaims our commentator. But what wrote the apostle? “NOT now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord.” Who authorized the professor to bereave the word “not” of its negative influence? According to Paul, Philemon was to receive Onesimus “not as a servant;”—according to Stuart, he was to receive him “as a servant!” If the professor will apply the same rules of exposition to the writings of the abolitionists, all difference between him and them must in his view presently vanish away. The harmonizing process would be equally simple and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM effectual. He has only to understand them as affirming what they deny, and as denying what they affirm. Suppose that Professor Stuart had a son residing, at the South. His slave, having stolen money of his master, effected his escape. He fled to Andover, to find a refuge among the “sons of the prophets.” There he finds his way to Professor Stuart’s house, and offers to render any service which the professor, dangerously ill “of a typhus fever,” might require. He is soon found to be a most active, skilful, faithful nurse. He spares no pains, night and day, to make himself useful to the venerable sufferer. He anticipates every want. In the most delicate and tender manner, he tries to sooth every pain. He fastens himself strongly on the heart of the reverend object of his care. Touched with the heavenly spirit, the meek demeanor, the submissive frame, which the sick bed exhibits, Archy becomes a Christian. A new bond now ties him and his convalescent teacher together. As soon as he is able to write, the professor sends Archy with the following letter to the South, to Isaac Stuart, Esq.:— “MY DEAR SON,—With a hand enfeebled by a distressing and dangerous illness, from which I am slowly recovering, I address you on a subject which lies very near my heart. I have a request to urge, which our mutual relation to each other, and your strong obligations to me, will, I cannot doubt, make you eager fully to grant. I say a request, though the thing I ask is, in its very nature and on the principles of the gospel, obligatory upon you. I might, therefore, boldly demand, what I earnestly entreat. But I know how generous, magnanimous, and Christ-like you are, and how readily you will ‘do even more than I say’—I, your own father, an old man, almost exhausted with multiplied exertions for the benefit of my family and my country and now just rising, emaciated and broken, from the brink of the grave. I write in behalf of Archy, whom I regard with the affection of a father, and whom, indeed, ‘I have forgotten in my sickness.’ Gladly would I have retained him, to be an Isaac to me; for how often did not his soothing voice, and skilful hand, and unwearied attention to my wants remind me of you! But I chose to give you an opportunity of manifesting, voluntarily, the goodness of your heart; as, if I had retained him with me, you might seem to have been forced to grant what you will gratefully bestow. His temporary absence from you may have opened the way for his permanent continuance with you. Not now as a slave. Heaven forbid! But superior to a slave. Superior, did I say? Take him to your bosom, as a beloved brother; for I own him as a son, and regard him as such, in all the relations of life, both as a man and a Christian. ‘Receive him as myself.’ And that nothing may hinder you from complying with my request at once, I hereby promise, without adverting to your many and great obligations to me, to pay you every cent which he took from your drawer. Any preparation which my comfort with you may require, you will make without much delay, when you learn, that I intend, as soon as I shall be able ‘to perform the journey,’ to make you a visit.” And what if Dr. Baxter, in giving an account of this letter should publicly declare that Professor Stuart, of Andover regarded slaveholding as lawful; for that “he had sent Archy back to his son Isaac, with an apology for his running away” to be held in perpetual slavery? With what propriety might not the HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM professor exclaim: False, every syllable false. I sent him back, NOT TO BE HELD AS A SLAVE, but recognized as a dear brother, in all respects, under every relation, civil and ecclesiastical. I bade my son receive Archy as myself. If this was not equivalent to a requisition to set him fully and most honorably free, and that, too, on the ground of natural obligation and Christian principle, then I know not how to frame such a requisition. I am well aware that my supposition is by no means strong enough fully to illustrate the case to which it is applied. Professor Stuart lacks apostolical authority. Isaac Stuart is not a leading member of a church consisting, as the early churches chiefly consisted, of what the world regard as the dregs of society— “the offscouring of all things.” Nor was slavery at Colosse, it seems, supported by such barbarous usages, such horrid laws as disgrace the South. But it is time to turn to another passage which, in its bearing on the subject in hand, is, in our view, as well as in the view of Dr. Fisk. and Prof. Stuart, in the highest degree authoritative and instructive. “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrines be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit.”137 1. The apostle addresses himself here to two classes of servants, with instructions to each respectively appropriate.

137. 1 TIM. vi. 1. 2. The following exposition of this passage is from the pen of ELIZUR WRIGHT, JR.:— “This word [Greek: antilambanesthai] in our humble opinion, has been so unfairly used by the commentators, that we feel constrained to take its part. Our excellent translators, in rendering the clause ‘partakers of the benefit,’ evidently lost sight of the component preposition, which expresses the opposition of reciprocity, rather than the connection of participation. They have given it exactly the sense of [Greek: metalambanein], (2 Tim. ii. 6.) Had the apostle intended such a sense, he would have used the latter verb, or one of the more common words, [Greek: metochoi, koinonomtes, &c.] (See Heb. iii. 1, and 1 Tim. v. 22, where the latter word is used in the clause, ‘neither be partaker of other men’s sins.’ Had the verb in our text been used, it might have been rendered, ‘neither be the part-taker of other men’s sins.’) The primary sense of [Greek: antilambans] is to take in return—to take instead of, &c. Hence, in the middle with the genitive, it signifies assist, or do one’s part towards the person or thing expressed by that genitive. In this sense only is the word used in the New Testament,—(See Luke i. 54, and Acts, xx. 35.) If this be true, the word [Greek: emsgesai] cannot signify the benefit conferred by the gospel, as our common version would make it, but the well doing of the servants, who should continue to serve their believing masters, while they were no longer under the yoke of compulsion. This word is used elsewhere in the New Testament but once (Acts. iv. 3.) in relation to the ‘good deed’ done to the impotent man. The plain import of the clause, unmystified by the commentators, is, that believing masters would not fail to do their part towards, or encourage by suitable returns, the free service of those who had once been under the yoke.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Both the one class and the other, in Professor Stuart’s eye, were slaves. This he assumes, and thus begs the very question in dispute. The term servant is generic, as used by the sacred writers. It comprehends all the various offices which men discharge for the benefit of each other, however honorable, or however menial; from that of an apostle138 opening the path to heaven, to that of washing “one another’s feet.”139 A general term it is, comprehending every office which belongs to human relations and Christian character.140 A leading signification gives us the manual laborer, to whom, in the division of labor, muscular exertion was allotted. As in his exertions the bodily powers are especially employed—such powers as belong to man in common with mere animals—his sphere has generally been considered low and humble. And as intellectual power is superior to bodily, the manual laborer has always been exposed in very numerous ways and in various degrees to oppression. Cunning, intrigue, the oily tongue, have, through extended and powerful conspiracies, brought the resources of society under the control of the few, who stood aloof from his homely toil. Hence his dependence upon them. Hence the multiplied injuries which have fallen so heavily upon him. Hence the reduction of his wages from one degree to another, till at length, in the case of millions, fraud and violence strip him of his all, blot his name from the record of mankind, and, putting a yoke upon his neck, drive him away to toil among the cattle. Here you find the slave. To reduce the servant to his condition, requires abuses altogether monstrous—injuries reaching the very vitals of man—stabs upon the very heart of humanity. Now, what right has Professor Stuart to make the word “servants,” comprehending, even as manual laborers, so many and such various meanings, signify “slaves,” especially where different classes are concerned? Such a right he could never have derived from humanity, or philosophy, or hermeneutics. It is his by sympathy with the oppressor? Yes, different classes. This is implied in the term “as many,”141 which sets apart the class now to be addressed. From these he proceeds to others, who are introduced by a particle,142 whose natural meaning indicates the presence of another and a different subject. 2. The first class are described as “under the yoke”—a yoke from which they were, according to the apostle, to make their escape if possible.143 If not, they must in every way regard the master with respect—bowing to his authority, working his will, subserving his interests so far as might be consistent with Christian character.144 And this, to prevent blasphemy—to prevent the pagan master from heaping profane reproaches upon the name of God and the doctrines of the gospel. They should beware of rousing his passions, which, as his helpless victims, they might be unable to allay or withstand. But all the servants whom the apostle addressed were not “under 138. MAT. xx, 26-28. 139. CORINTHIANS iv. 5. 140. JOHN xiii, 14. 141. [Greek: Ochli] See Passow’s Schneider. 142. [Greek: Dd.] See Passow. 143. See 1 CORINTHIANS vii, 21—[Greek: All’ ei kai dunasai eleuphoros genesthai]. 144. See 1 CORINTHIANS vii, 23—[Greek: Mae ginesthe doulos anthroton]. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM the yoke”145—an instrument appropriate to cattle and to slaves. These he distinguishes from another class, who instead of a “yoke”—the badge of a slave—had “believing masters.” To have a “believing master,” then, was equivalent to freedom from “the yoke.” These servants were exhorted not to despise their masters. What need of such an exhortation, if their masters had been slaveholders, holding them as property, wielding them as mere instruments, disposing of them as “articles of merchandise.” But this was not consistent with believing. Faith, “breaking every yoke,” united master and servants in the bonds of brotherhood. Brethren they were, joined in a relation which, excluding the yoke,146 placed them side by side on the ground of equality, where, each in his appropriate sphere, they might exert themselves freely and usefully, to the mutual benefit of each other. Here, servants might need to be cautioned against getting above their appropriate business, putting on airs, despising their masters, and thus declining or neglecting their service.147 Instead of this, they should be, as emancipated slaves often have been,148 models of enterprise, fidelity, activity, and usefulness—especially as their masters were “worthy of their confidence and love,” their helpers in this well-doing. Such, then, is the relation between those who, in the view of Professor Stuart, were Christian masters and Christian slaves149—the relation of “brethren,” which, excluding “the yoke,” and of course conferring freedom, placed them side by side on the common ground of mutual service, both retaining, for convenience sake, the one while giving and the other while receiving employment, the correlative name, as is usual in such cases, under which they had been known. Such was the instruction which Timothy was required, as a Christian minister, to give. Was it friendly to slaveholding? And on what ground, according to the Princeton professor, did these masters and these servants stand in their relation to each other? On that of a “perfect religious equality.”150 In all the relations, duties, and privileges—in all the objects, interests, and prospects, which belong to the province of Christianity, servants were as free as their master. The powers of the one, were allowed as wide a range and as free an exercise, with as warm encouragements, as active aids, and as high results, as the other. Here, the relation of a servant to his master imposed no restrictions, involved no embarrassments, occasioned no injury. All this, clearly and certainly, is implied in “perfect religious equality,” which the Princeton professor accords to servants in relation to their master. Might the master, then, in order more fully to attain the great ends for which he was created and redeemed, freely exert himself to increase his acquaintance with his own powers, and relations, and resources— with his prospects, opportunities, and advantages? So might his servants. Was he at liberty to “study to approve himself to God,” to submit to his will and bow to his authority, as the sole standard of affection and exertion? So were they. Was he at 145. See LEV. xxvi. 13; ISA lviii. 6, 9. 146. Supra page 44. 147. See MAT. vi. 24. 148. Those, for instance, set free by that “believing master” James G. Birney. 149. Letter to Dr. Fisk, supra, page 7. 150. Pittsburg Pamphlet, page 9. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM liberty to sanctify the Sabbath, and frequent the “solemn assembly?” So were they. Was he at liberty so to honor the filial, conjugal, and paternal relations, as to find in them that spring of activity and that source of enjoyment, which they are capable of yielding? So were they. In every department of interest and exertion, they might use their capacities, and wield their powers, and improve their opportunities, and employ their resources, as freely as he, in glorifying God, in blessing mankind, and in laying up imperishable treasures for themselves! Give perfect religious equality to the American slave, and the most eager abolitionist must be satisfied. Such equality would, like the breath of the Almighty, dissolve the last link of the chain of servitude. Dare those who, for the benefit of slavery, have given so wide and active a circulation to the Pittsburg pamphlet, make the experiment? In the epistle to the Colossians, the following passage deserves earnest attention:— “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing, that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance; for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons.—Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye have a Master in heaven.”151 Here it is natural to remark— 1. That in maintaining the relation, which mutually united them, both masters and servants were to act in conformity with the principles of the divine government. Whatever they did, servants were to do in hearty obedience to the Lord, by whose authority they were to be controlled and by whose hand they were to be rewarded. To the same Lord, and according to the same law, was the master to hold himself responsible. Both the one and the other were of course equally at liberty and alike required to study and apply the standard, by which they were to be governed and judged. 2. The basis of the government under which they thus were placed, was righteousness—strict, stern, impartial. Nothing here of bias or antipathy. Birth, wealth, station,—the dust of the balance not so light! Both master and servants were hastening to a tribunal, where nothing of “respect of persons” could be feared or hoped for. There the wrong-doer, whoever he might be, and whether from the top or bottom of society, must be dealt with according to his deservings. 3. Under this government, servants were to be universally and heartily obedient; and both in the presence and absence of the master, faithfully to discharge their obligations. The master on his part, in his relations to the servants, was to make JUSTICE AND EQUALITY the standard of his conduct. Under the authority of such instructions, slavery falls discountenanced, condemned, abhorred. It is flagrantly at war with the government of God, consists in “respect of persons” the most shameless and outrageous, treads justice and equality under foot, and in its natural tendency and practical effects is nothing else than a system of wrong-doing. What have they to do with the just and 151. COL. iii. 22 to iv. 1. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM the equal who in their “respect of persons” proceed to such a pitch as to treat one brother as a thing because he is a servant, and place him, without the least regard to his welfare here, or his prospects hereafter, absolutely at the disposal of another brother, under the name of master, in the relation of owner to property? Justice and equality on the one hand, and the chattel principle on the other, are naturally subversive of each other— proof clear and decisive that the correlates, masters and servants, cannot here be rendered slaves and owners, without the grossest absurdity and the greatest violence. “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.”152 Without repeating here what has already been offered in exposition of kindred passages, it may be sufficient to say:— 1. That the relation of the servants here addressed, to their master, was adapted to make him the object of their heart-felt attachment. Otherwise they could not have been required to render him an affectionate service. 2. This relation demanded a perfect reciprocity of benefits. It had its soul in good-will, mutually cherished and properly expressed. Hence “THE SAME THINGS,” the same in principle, the same in substance, the same in their mutual bearing upon the welfare of the master and the servants, was to be rendered back and forth by the one and the other. It was clearly the relation of mutual service. Do we here find the chattel principle? 3. Of course, the servants might not be slack, time-serving, unfaithful. Of course, the master must “FORBEAR THREATENING.” Slavery without threatening! Impossible. Wherever maintained, it is of necessity a system of threatening, injecting into the bosom of the slave such terrors, as never cease for a moment to haunt and torment him. Take from the chattel principle the support, which it derives from “threatening,” and you annihilate it at once and forever. 4. This relation was to be maintained in accordance with the principles of the divine government, where “RESPECT OF PERSONS” could not be admitted. It was, therefore, totally inconsistent with, and submissive of, the chattel principle, which in American slavery is developed in a system of “respect of persons,” equally gross and hurtful. No Abolitionist, however eager and determined in his opposition to slavery, could ask for more than these precepts, once obeyed, would be sure to confer. “The relation of slavery,” according to Professor Stuart, is recognized in “the precepts of the New Testament,” as one which “may still exist without violating the Christian faith or the church.”153 Slavery and the chattel principle! So our professor 152. EPHESIANS vi. 5-9. 153. Letter to Dr. Fisk, supra page 7. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM thinks; otherwise his reference has nothing to do with the subject—with the slavery which the abolitionist, whom he derides, stands opposed to. How gross and hurtful is the mistake into which he allows himself to fall. The relation recognized in the precepts of the New Testament had its basis and support in “justice and equality;” the very opposite of the chattel principle; a relation which may exist as long as justice and equality remain, and thus escape the destruction to which, in the view of Professor Stuart, slavery is doomed. The description of Paul obliterates every feature of American slavery, raising the servant to equality with his master, and placing his rights under the protection of justice; yet the eye of Professor Stuart can see nothing in his master and servant but a slave and his owner. With this relation he is so thoroughly possessed, that, like an evil angel, it haunts him even when he enters the temple of justice! “It is remarkable,” saith the Princeton professor, “that there is not even an exhortation” in the writings of the apostles “to masters to liberate their slaves, much less is it urged as an imperative and immediate duty.”154 It would be remarkable, indeed, if they were chargeable with a defect so great and glaring. And so they have nothing to say upon the subject? That not even the Princeton professor has the assurance to affirm. He admits that KINDNESS, MERCY, AND JUSTICE, were enjoined with a distinct reference to the government of God.155 “Without respect of persons,” they were to be God-like in doing justice. They were to act the part of kind and merciful “brethren.” And whither would this lead them? Could they stop short of restoring to every man his natural, inalienable rights?—of doing what they could to redress the wrongs, sooth the sorrows, improve the character, and raise the condition of the degraded and oppressed? Especially, if oppressed and degraded by any agency of theirs. Could it be kind, merciful, or just to keep the chains of slavery on their helpless, unoffending brother? Would this be to honor the Golden Rule, or obey the second great command of “their Master in Heaven?” Could the apostles have subserved the cause of freedom more directly, intelligibly, and effectually, than to enjoin the principles, and sentiments, and habits, in which freedom consists—constituting its living root and fruitful germ! The Princeton professor himself, in the very paper which the South has so warmly welcomed and so loudly applauded as a scriptural defence of “the peculiar institution,” maintains, that the “GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE GOSPEL have DESTROYED SLAVERY throughout the greater part of Christendom”156 — “THAT CHRISTIANITY HAS ABOLISHED BOTH POLITICAL AND DOMESTIC BONDAGE WHEREVER IT HAS HAD FREE SCOPE—that it ENJOINS a fair compensation for labor; insists on the mental and intellectual improvement of ALL classes of men; condemns ALL infractions of marital or parental rights; requires, in short, not only that FREE SCOPE should be allowed to human improvement, but that ALL SUITABLE MEANS should be employed for the attainment of that end.”157 It is indeed “remarkable,” that while neither Christ nor his apostles ever gave “an exhortation to masters to liberate 154. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 9. 155. The same, page 10. 156. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 18, 19. 157. The same, page 31. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM their slaves,” they enjoined such “general principles as have destroyed domestic slavery throughout the greater part of Christendom;” that while Christianity forbears “to urge” emancipation “as an imperative and immediate duty,” it throws a barrier, heaven high, around every domestic circle; protects all the rights of the husband and the father; gives every laborer a fair compensation; and makes the moral and intellectual improvement of all classes, with free scope and all suitable means, the object of its tender solicitude and high authority. This is not only “remarkable,” but inexplicable. Yes and no—hot and cold, in one and the same breath! And yet these things stand prominent in what is reckoned an acute, ingenious, effective defence of slavery! In his letter to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul furnishes another lesson of instruction, expressive of his views and feelings on the subject of slavery. “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.”158 In explaining and applying this passage, it is proper to suggest: 1. That it could not have been the object of the apostle to bind the Corinthian converts to the stations and employments in which the gospel found them. For he exhorts some of them to escape, if possible, from their present condition. In the servile state, “under the yoke,” they ought not to remain unless impelled by stern necessity. “If thou canst be free, use it rather.” If they ought to prefer freedom to bondage and to exert themselves to escape from the latter for the sake of the former, could their master consistently with the claims and spirit of the gospel have hindered or discouraged them in so doing? Their “brother” could he be, who kept “the yoke” upon their neck, which the apostle would have them shake off if possible? And had such masters been members of the Corinthian church, what inferences must they have drawn from this exhortation to their servants? That the apostle regarded slavery as a Christian institution?— or could look complacently on any efforts to introduce or maintain it in the church? Could they have expected less from him than a stern rebuke, if they refused to exert themselves in the cause of freedom? 2. But while they were to use their freedom, if they could obtain it, they should not, even on such a subject, give themselves up to ceaseless anxiety. “The Lord was no respecter of persons.” They need not fear, that the “low estate,” to which they had been wickedly reduced, would prevent them from enjoying the gifts of his hand or the light of his countenance. He would respect their rights, sooth their sorrows, and pour upon their hearts, and cherish there, the spirit of liberty. “For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman.” In him, therefore, should they cheerfully confide. 3. The apostle, however, forbids them so to acquiesce in the servile relation, as to act inconsistently with their Christian 158. 1 CORINTHIANS vii. 20-23. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM obligations. To their Savior they belonged. By his blood they had been purchased. It should be their great object, therefore, to render Him a hearty and effective service. They should permit no man, whoever he might be, to thrust in himself between them and their Redeemer. “Ye are bought with a price; BE NOT YE THE SERVANTS OF MEN.” With his eye upon the passage just quoted and explained, the Princeton professor asserts that “Paul represents this relation”—the relation of slavery— “as of comparatively little account.”159 And this he applies—otherwise it is nothing to his purpose—to American slavery. Does he then regard it as a small matter, a mere trifle, to be thrown under the slave-laws of this republic, grimly and fiercely excluding their victim from almost every means of improvement, and field of usefulness, and source of comfort; and making him, body and substance, with his wife and babes, “the servant of men?” Could such a relation be acquiesced in consistently with the instructions of the apostle? To the Princeton professor we commend a practical trial of the bearing of the passage in hand upon American slavery. His regard for the unity and prosperity of the ecclesiastical organizations, which in various forms and under different names, unite the southern with the northern churches, will make the experiment grateful to his feelings. Let him, then, as soon as his convenience will permit, proceed to Georgia. No religious teacher160 from any free State, can be likely to receive so general and so warm a welcome there. To allay the heat, which the doctrines and movements of the abolitionists have occasioned in the southern mind, let him with as much despatch as possible, collect, as he goes from place to place, masters and their slaves. Now let all men, whom it may concern, see and own that slavery is a Christian institution! With his Bible in his hand and his eye upon the passage in question, he addresses himself to the task of instructing the slaves around him. Let not your hearts, my brethren, be overcharged with sorrow, or eaten up with anxiety. Your servile condition cannot deprive you of the fatherly regards of Him “who is no respecter of persons.” Freedom you ought, indeed, to prefer. If you can escape from “the yoke,” throw it off. In the mean time rejoice that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;” that the gospel places slaves “on a perfect religious equality” with their master; so that every Christian is “the Lord’s freeman.” And, for your encouragement, remember that “Christianity has abolished both political and domestic servitude wherever it has had free scope. It enjoins a fair compensation for labor; it insists on the moral and intellectual improvement of all classes of men; it condemns all infractions of marital or parental rights; in short it requires not only that free scope be allowed to human improvement, but that all suitable means should be employed for the attainment of that end.”161 Let your lives, then, be honorable to your relations to your Savior. He bought you with his own blood; and is entitled to your warmest love and 159. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 10. 160. Rev. Mr. Savage, of Utica, New York, had, not very long ago, a free conversation with a gentleman of high standing in the literary and religious world from a slaveholding State, where the “peculiar institution” is cherished with great warmth and maintained with iron rigor. By him, Mr. Savage was assured, that the Princeton professor had, through the Pittsburg pamphlet, contributed most powerfully and effectually to bring the “whole South” under the persuasion, that slaveholding is in itself right— a system to which the Bible gives countenance and support. 161. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 31. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM most effective service. “Be not ye the servants of men.” Let no human arrangements prevent you, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, from making the most of your powers and opportunities. Would such an effort, generally and heartily made, allay excitement at the South, and quench the flames of discord, every day rising higher and waxing hotter, in almost every part of the republic, and cement “the Union?” In an extract from an article in the Southern Christian Sentinel, a new Presbyterian paper established in Charleston, South Carolina, and inserted in the Christian Journal for March 21, 1839, we find the following paragraphs from the pen of Rev. C.W. Howard, and, according to Mr. Chester, ably and freely endorsed by the editor. “There is scarcely any diversity of sentiment at the North upon this subject. The great mass of the people, believing slavery to be sinful, are clearly of the opinion that, as a system, it should be abolished throughout this land and throughout the world. They differ as to the time and mode of abolition. The abolitionists consistently argue, that whatever is sinful should be instantly abandoned. The others, by a strange sort of reasoning for Christian men, contend that though slavery is sinful, yet it may be allowed to exist until it shall he expedient to abolish it; or, if, in many cases, this reasoning might be translated into plain English, the sense would be, both in Church and State, slavery, though sinful, may be allowed to exist until our interest will suffer us to say that it must be abolished. This is not slander; it is simply a plain way of stating a plain truth. It does seem the evident duty of every man to become an abolitionist, who believes slavery to be sinful, for the Bible allows no tampering with sin. “To these remarks, there are some noble exceptions, to be found in both parties in the church. The South owes a debt of gratitude to the Biblical Repertory, for the fearless argument in behalf of the position, that slavery is not forbidden by the Bible. The writer of that article is said, without contradiction, to be Professor Hodge, of Princeton—HIS NAME OUGHT TO BE KNOWN AND REVERED AMONG YOU, my brethren, for in a land of anti-slavery men, he is the ONLY ONE who has dared to vindicate your character from the serious charge of living in the habitual transgression of God’s holy law.”] “It is,” affirms the Princeton professor, “on all hands acknowledged, that, at the time of the advent of Jesus Christ, slavery in its worst forms prevailed over the whole world. The Savior found it around him IN JUDEA.”162 To say that he found it in Judea, is to speak ambiguously. Many things were to be found “in Judea,” which neither belonged to, nor were characteristic of the Jews. It is not denied that the Gentiles, who resided among them, might have had slaves; but of the Jews this is denied. How could the professor take that as granted, the proof of which entered vitally into the argument and was essential to the soundness of the conclusions to which he would conduct us? How could he take advantage of an ambiguous expression to conduct his confiding readers on to a position which, if his own eyes were open, he must have known they could not hold in the light of open day!

162. The same, page 9. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM We do not charge the Savior with any want of wisdom, goodness, or courage,163 for refusing to “break down the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles” “before the time appointed.” While this barrier stood, he could not, consistently with the plan of redemption, impart instruction freely to the Gentiles. To some extent, and on extraordinary occasions, he might have done so. But his business then was with “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”164 The propriety of this arrangement is not the matter of dispute between the Princeton professor and ourselves. In disposing of the question whether the Jews held slaves during our Savior’s incarnation among them, the following points deserve earnest attention:— 1. Slaveholding is inconsistent with the Mosaic economy. For the proof of this, we would refer our readers, among other arguments more or less appropriate and powerful, to the tract already alluded to.165 In all the external relations and visible arrangements of life, the Jews, during our Savior’s ministry among them, seem to have been scrupulously observant of the institutions and usages of the “Old Dispensation.” They stood far aloof from whatever was characteristic of Samaritans and Gentiles. From idolatry and slaveholding—those twin-vices which had always so greatly prevailed among the heathen—they seem at length, as the result of a most painful discipline, to have been effectually divorced. 2. While, therefore, John the Baptist; with marked fidelity and great power, acted among the Jews the part of a reprover, he found no occasion to repeat and apply the language of his predecessors,166 in exposing and rebuking idolatry and slaveholding. Could he, the greatest of the prophets, have been less effectually aroused by the presence of “the yoke,” than was Isaiah?—or less intrepid and decisive in exposing and denouncing the sin of oppression under its most hateful and injurious forms? 3. The Savior was not backward in applying his own principles plainly and pointedly to such forms of oppression as appeared among the Jews. These principles, whenever they have been freely acted on, the Princeton professor admits, have abolished domestic bondage. Had this prevailed within the sphere of our Savior’s ministry, he could not, consistently with his general character, have failed to expose and condemn it. The oppression of the people by lordly ecclesiastics, of parents by their selfish children, of widows by their ghostly counsellors, drew from his lips scorching rebukes and terrible denunciations.167 How, then, must he have felt and spoke in the presence of such tyranny, if such tyranny had been within his official sphere, as should have made widows, by driving their husbands to some flesh-market, and their children not orphans, but cattle? 4. Domestic slavery was manifestly inconsistent with the industry, which, in the form of manual labor, so generally prevailed among the Jews. In one connection, in the Acts of the Apostles, we are informed, that, coming from Athens to Corinth, 163. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 10. 164. MATT. xv. 24. 165. “The Bible against Slavery.” 166. PSALM lxxxii; ISA. lviii. 1-12 JER. xxii. 13-16. 167. MATT. xxiii; MARK vii. 1-13. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Paul “found a certain Jew, named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome;) and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them and wrought: (for by their occupation they were tent-makers.”)168 This passage has opened the way for different commentators to refer us to the public sentiment and general practice of the Jews respecting useful industry and manual labor. According to Lightfoot, “it was their custom to bring up their children to some trade, yea, though they gave them learning or estates.” According to Rabbi Judah, “He that teaches not his son a trade, is as if he taught him to be a thief.”169 It was, Kuinoel affirms, customary even for Jewish teachers to unite labor (opificium) with the study of the law. This he confirms by the highest Rabbinical authority.170 Heinrichs quotes a Rabbi as teaching, that no man should by any means neglect to train his son to honest industry.171 Accordingly, the apostle Paul, though brought up at the “feet of Gamaliel,” the distinguished disciple of a most illustrious teacher, practised the art of tent-making. His own hands ministered to his necessities; and his example is so doing, he commends to his Gentile brethren for their imitation.172 That Zebedee, the father of John the Evangelist, had wealth, various hints in the New Testament render probable.173 Yet how do we find him and his sons, while prosecuting their appropriate business? In the midst of the hired servants, “in the ship mending their nets.”174 Slavery among a people who, from the highest to the lowest, were used to manual labor! What occasion for slavery there? And how could it be maintained? No place can be found for slavery among a people generally inured to useful industry. With such, especially if men of learning, wealth, and station, “labor, working with their hands,” such labor must be honorable. On this subject, let Jewish maxims and Jewish habits be adopted at the South, and the “peculiar institution” would vanish like a ghost at daybreak. 5. Another hint, here deserving particular attention, is furnished in the allusions of the New Testament to the lowest casts and most servile employments among the Jews. With profligates, publicans were joined as depraved and contemptible. The outcasts of society were described, not as fit to herd with slaves, but as deserving a place among Samaritans and publicans. They were “hired servants,” whom Zebedee employed. In the parable of the prodigal son we have a wealthy Jewish family. Here servants seem to have abounded. The prodigal, bitterly bewailing his wretchedness and folly, described their condition as greatly superior to his own. How happy the change which should place him by their side? His remorse, and shame, and penitence made him willing to embrace the lot of the lowest of them all. But these—what was their condition? They were HIRED SERVANTS. “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” Such he refers to as the lowest menials known in Jewish life. 168. ACTS xviii. 1-3. 169. Henry on ACTS xviii. 1-3. 170. Kuinoel on ACTS. 171. Heinrichs on ACTS. 172. ACTS xx. 34, 35; 1 THESS. iv. 11. 173. See Kuinoel’s PROLEGOM. TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. 174. MARK i. 19, 20. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Lay such hints as have now been suggested together; let it be remembered, that slavery was inconsistent with the Mosaic economy; that John the Baptist in preparing the way for the Messiah makes no reference “to the yoke” which, had it been before him, he would, like Isaiah, have condemned; that the Savior, while he took the part of the poor and sympathized with the oppressed, was evidently spared the pain of witnessing within the sphere of his ministry, the presence, of the chattel principle, that it was the habit of the Jews, whoever they might be, high or low, rich or poor, learned or rude, “to labor, working with their hands;” and that where reference was had to the most menial employments, in families, they were described as carried on by hired servants; and the question of slavery “in Judea,” so far as the seed of Abraham were concerned, is very easily disposed of. With every phase and form of society among them slavery was inconsistent. The position which, in the article so often referred to in this paper, the Princeton professor takes, is sufficiently remarkable. Northern abolitionists he saw in an earnest struggle with southern slaveholders. The present welfare and future happiness of myriads of the human family were at stake in this contest. In the heat of the battle, he throws himself between the belligerent powers. He gives the abolitionists to understand, that they are quite mistaken in the character of the objections they have set themselves so openly and sternly against. Slaveholding is not, as they suppose, contrary to the law of God. It was witnessed by the Savior “in its worst forms”175 without extorting from his laps a syllable of rebuke. “The sacred writers did not condemn it.”176 And why should they? By a definition177 sufficiently ambiguous and slippery, he undertakes to set forth a form of slavery which he looks upon as consistent with the law of Righteousness. From this definition he infers that the abolitionists are greatly to blame for maintaining that American slavery is inherently and essentially sinful, and for insisting that it ought at once to be abolished. For this labor of love the slaveholding South is warmly grateful and applauds its reverend ally, as if a very Daniel had come as their advocate to judgment.178 A few questions, briefly put, may not here be inappropriate. 1. Was the form of slavery which our professor pronounces innocent the form witnessed by our Savior “in Judea?” That, he will by no means admit. The slavery there was, he affirms, of the “worst” kind. How then does he account for the alleged silence of the Savior?—a silence covering the essence and the form—the institution and its “worst” abuses? 2. Is the slaveholding, which, according to the Princeton professor, Christianity justifies, the same as that which the abolitionists so earnestly wish to see abolished? Let us see. Christianity in supporting The American system Slavery, according to Professor for supporting Slavery, Hodge, “Enjoins a fair compensation Makes compensation 175. Pittsburg pamphlet, page 9. 176. The same, page 13. 177. The same, page 12. 178. Supra, page 58. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM for labor” impossible by reducing the laborer to a chattel. “It insists on the moral and It sternly forbids its intellectual improvement of all victim to learn to read classes of men” even the name of his Creator and Redeemer. “It condemns all infractions of It outlaws the conjugal marital or parental rights.” and parental relations. “It requires that free scope It forbids any effort, on should be allowed to human on the part of myriads of improvement.” the human family, to improve their character, condition, and prospects. “It requires that all suitable It inflicts heavy means should be employed to penalties for teaching improve mankind” letters to the poorest of the poor. “Wherever it has had free scope, Wherever it has free it has abolished domestic scope, it perpetuates bondage.” domestic bondage. Now it is slavery according to the American system that the abolitionists are set against. Of the existence of any such form of slavery as is consistent with Professor Hodge’s account of the requisitions of Christianity, they know nothing. It has never met their notice, and of course, has never roused their feelings or called forth their exertions. What, then, have they to do with the censures and reproaches which the Princeton professor deals around? Let those who have leisure and good nature protect the man of straw he is so hot against. The abolitionists have other business. It is not the figment of some sickly brain; but that system of oppression which in theory is corrupting, and in practice destroying both Church and State;— it is this that they feel pledged to do battle upon, till by the just judgment of Almighty God it is thrown, dead and damned, into the bottomless abyss. 3. How can the South feel itself protected by any shield which may be thrown over SUCH SLAVERY, as may be consistent with what the Princeton professor describes as the requisitions of Christianity? Is this THE slavery which their laws describe, and their hands maintain? “Fair compensation for labor”— “marital and parental rights”— “free scope” and “all suitable means” for the “improvement, moral and intellectual, of all classes of men;”—are these, according to the statutes of the South, among the objects of slaveholding legislation? Every body knows that any such requisitions and American slavery are flatly opposed to and directly subversive of each other. What service, then, has the Princeton professor, with all his ingenuity and all his zeal, rendered the “peculiar institution?” Their gratitude must be of a stamp and complexion quite peculiar, if they can thank him for throwing their “domestic system” under the weight of such Christian requisitions as must at once crush its snaky head “and grind it to powder.” And what, moreover, is the bearing of the Christian requisitions, which Professor Hodge quotes, upon the definition HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM of slavery which he has elaborated? “All the ideas which necessarily enter into the definition of slavery are, deprivation of personal liberty, obligation of service at the discretion of another, and the transferable character of the authority and claim of service of the master.”179 According to Professor Hodge’s According to Professor account of the requisitions Hodge’s definition of Christianity, of Slavery, The spring of effort in the The laborer must serve at laborer is a fair compensation. the discretion of another. Free scope must be given for He is deprived of personal his moral and intellectual liberty—the necessary improvement. condition, and living soul of improvement, without which he has no control of either intellect or morals. His rights as a husband and The authority and claims of a father are to be protected. the master may throw an ocean between him and his family, and separate them from each other’s presence at any moment and forever. Christianity, then, requires such slavery as Professor Hodge so cunningly defines, to be abolished. It was well provided for the peace of the respective parties, that he placed his definition so far from the requisitions of Christianity. Had he brought them into each other’s presence, their natural and invincible antipathy to each other would have broken out into open and exterminating warfare. But why should we delay longer upon an argument which is based on gross and monstrous sophistry? It can mislead only such as wish to be misled. The lovers of sunlight are in little danger of rushing into the professor’s dungeon. Those who, having something to conceal, covet darkness, can find it there, to their heart’s content. The hour cannot be far away, when upright and reflective minds at the South will be astonished at the blindness which could welcome such protection as the Princeton argument offers to the slaveholder. But Professor Stuart must not be forgotten. In his celebrated letter to Dr. Fisk, he affirms that “Paul did not expect slavery to be ousted in a day.”180 Did not EXPECT! What then! Are the requisitions of Christianity adapted to any EXPECTATIONS which in any quarter and on any ground might have risen to human consciousness? And are we to interpret the precepts of the gospel by the expectations of Paul? The Savior commanded all men every where to repent, and this, though “Paul did not expect” that human wickedness, in its ten thousand forms would in any community “be ousted in a day.” Expectations are one thing; requisitions quite another. In the mean time, while expectation waited, Paul, the professor adds, “gave precepts to Christians respecting their demeanor.” That he did. Of what character were these precepts? Must they not have been in harmony with the Golden Rule? But this, 179. Pittsburg pamphlet page 12. 180. Supra, page 7. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM according to Professor Stuart, “decides against the righteousness of slavery” even as a “theory.” Accordingly, Christians were required, without respect of persons, to do each other justice—to maintain equality as common ground for all to stand upon—to cherish and express in all their intercourse that tender love and disinterested charity which one brother naturally feels for another. These were the “ad interim precepts.”181 which cannot fail, if obeyed, to cut up slavery, “root and branch,” at once and forever. Professor Stuart comforts us with the assurance that “Christianity will ultimately certainly destroy slavery.” Of this we have not the feeblest doubt. But how could he admit a persuasion and utter a prediction so much at war with the doctrine he maintains, that “slavery may exist without VIOLATING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH OR THE CHURCH?”182 What, Christianity bent on the destruction of an ancient and cherished institution which hurts neither her character nor condition?183 Why not correct its abuses and purify its spirit; and shedding upon it her own beauty, preserve it, as a living trophy of her reformatory power? Whence the discovery that, in her onward progress, she would trample down and destroy what was no way hurtful to her? This is to be aggressive with a witness. Far be it from the Judge of all the earth to whelm the innocent and guilty in the same destruction! In aid of Professor Stuart, in the rude and scarcely covert attack which he makes upon himself, we maintain that Christianity will certainly destroy slavery on account of its inherent wickedness—its malignant temper—its deadly effects—its constitutional, insolent, and unmitigable opposition to the authority of God and the welfare of man. “Christianity will ultimately destroy slavery.” “ULTIMATELY!” What meaneth that portentous word? To what limit of remotest time, concealed in the darkness of futurity, may it look? Tell us, O watchman, on the hill of Andover. Almost nineteen centuries have rolled over this world of wrong and outrage—and yet we tremble in the presence of a form of slavery whose breath is poison, whose fang is death! If any one of the incidents of slavery should fall, but for a single day, upon the head of the prophet, who dipped his pen in such cold blood, to write that word “ultimately,” how, under the sufferings of the first tedious hour, would he break out in the lamentable cry, “How long, O Lord, HOW LONG!” In the agony of beholding a wife or daughter upon the table of the auctioneer, while every bid fell upon his heart like the groan of despair, small comfort would he find in the dull assurance of some heartless prophet, quite at “ease in Zion,” that “ULTIMATELY Christianity would destroy slavery.” As the hammer falls, and the beloved of his soul, all helpless and most wretched, is borne away to the haunts of legalized debauchery, his hearts turns to stone, while the cry dies upon his lips, “How LONG, O Lord, HOW LONG!” “Ultimately!” In what circumstances does Professor Stuart assure himself that Christianity will destroy slavery? Are we, as American citizens, under the sceptre of a Nero? When, as integral parts of this republic—as living members of this community, did we forfeit the prerogatives of freemen? Have we 181. Letter to Dr. Fisk, page 7. 182. Letter to Dr. Fisk, page 7. 183. Professor Stuart applies here the words, salva fide et salva ecclesia. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM not the right to speak and act as wielding the powers which the privileges of self-government has put in our possession? And without asking leave of priest or statesman of the North or the South, may we not make the most of the freedom which we enjoy under the guaranty of the ordinances of Heaven and the Constitution of our country! Can we expect to see Christianity on higher vantage-ground than in this country she stands upon? In the midst of a republic based on the principle of the equality of mankind, where every Christian, as vitally connected with the state, freely wields the highest political rights and enjoys the richest political privileges; where the unanimous demand of one- half of the members of the churches would be promptly met in the abolition of slavery, what “ultimately” must Christianity here wait for before she crushes the chattel principle beneath her heel? Her triumph over slavery is retarded by nothing but the corruption and defection so widely spread through the “sacramental host” beneath her banners! Let her voice be heard and her energies exerted, and the ultimately of the “dark spirit of slavery” would at once give place to the immediately of the Avenger of the Poor.

March 21, Thursday: Modest Petrovich Musorgsky was born in Karevo, Pskov south of St. Petersburg, the 4th and youngest child of well-to-do landowner Pyotr Alyekseyevich Musorgsky with Yulia Ivanovna Chirikova (herself a daughter of a middle-class landowner).

Symphony in C major “Great” D.944 by Franz Schubert was performed for the initial time, in Leipzig, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. The score had been found 3 months earlier as Robert Schumann visited Schubert’s brother Ferdinand in Vienna.

Clara Wieck made her Paris debut at the Salle Erard. The same evening she played for Paris society at the home of Pierre Zimmerman, a professor of piano at the Conservatoire. She created a “sensation.”

The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 9th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti- TEXT Slavery Examiner, containing “Letter of Gerrit Smith, to Hon. Henry Clay.” INDEX

August 1, Thursday: In New Bedford, on this anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indies, the Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society sponsored a program featuring the Reverend Thomas Andros184 at the Old Congregational meetinghouse at the corner of William and Purchase streets. Over the next few years, there would be similar gatherings in this town, organized by similar groups. ABOLITIONISM

184. Clearly, this Reverend Thomas Andros was not the “Captain Thomas Andros or Andrews” who in February of this year was engaging in the coastal slave trade, taking the brig Smithfield, one of Nicholas Brown & Company’s ships, into the port of Charleston, South Carolina with a couple of coffles of American slaves aboard. This was instead the Reverend Thomas Andros who had been born in Norwich, Connecticut on May 1, 1759. This Thomas Andros had joined the revolutionary army at 16 as a private and musician and had served under Sullivan at the Battle of Rhode Island. He had also been in the battles of Long Island and White Plains. In 1781 he had enlisted on a privateer in New London, but had been captured by the British forces and confined aboard the Jersey, a dismasted 74-gun frigate, one of the decommissioned hulks anchored in Wallabout Bay (later the site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard). He had after a few months escaped from this floating hell, and later studied theology with Dr. Benedict in Plainfield, Connecticut. He had been ordained at Berkley, Massachusetts in 1788, and for 46 years would remain in charge of the Church there. He published sermons, and a narrative of his experience with the Jersey. For an account of this Reverend’s life by his son R.S.S. Andros, refer to Emery’s “Ministry of Taunton.” (He would die in Berkley on December 30, 1845.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM November 15, Friday: William Murdock died in Birmingham, Warwickshire at the age of 86.

Franz Liszt reached Vienna from Trieste.

Abolitionists met in Warsaw, New York to form a Liberty Party, with the black abolitionist Reverends Samuel

Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet as leading supporters, accepting James Gillespie Birney as their

candidate for President of the United States and Pennsylvania’s Francis J. Lemoyne for his Vice-President. Boycotts of crops produced by slave labor were organized (knowing that if the market for cotton were to collapse, slavery would not be able to survive, Garnet would try to organize in England a worldwide HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM boycott). ABOLITIONISM

Samuel Ringgold Ward would attempt to explain, later, this foray into American politics: [T]he abolitionists, such as those with whom it was my honour to be associated, inquired how far they could wield their political powers, with the parties of the day, innocently. About the time to which I was referring —viz., 1839-40— they began to see the great fact, that the political parties of the country departed as widely from the old maxims of democracy and republicanism as did the Churches from the gospel. They saw the North divided into two great parties, wielding two thirds of the votes of the nation, each of these having Southern members who controlled them, and both of them catering for the largest share of the Southern vote, which was about one third of the entire suffrage. They saw the best, highest offices, given freely to Southern men, on purpose to propitiate the South; while the South demanded and accepted this unnatural, undue, and disproportioned amount of power and emolument, both as the price of their aid to the party giving them, and as a means of securing the interests of slavery. Hence it was that the diplomatic agents of the country were sure to be Southerners, or pro- slavery men. Who ever knew any other character at the Court of St. James, or the Court of St. Cloud? Hence it was, too, that ere a Northern man could be qualified for any post of honour in the national gift, he must prove himself to have been always entirely free from the least taint of abolitionism, or to have been thoroughly purged of it, if he had ever been so much as reasonably suspected of it. At the same time, in Northern localities the friends and members of these parties sought to cajole and seduce abolitionists into voting with one or the other of them, under the plea that it was more favourable to the anti-slavery cause than its opposite, while manifestly both were HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM the tools and the props of the slave powers. Abolitionists did not fail to see, that to vote with either of these parties was alike repugnant to their cherished principles and to their self- respect. Then, they must do one of two things; either refrain from voting altogether, or concentrate their votes upon candidates of their own selection — in other words, form a political party upon anti-slavery principles. They adopted, wisely, the latter. That party was formed in August, 1840, at Syracuse. I then became, for the first time, a member of a political party. With it I cast my first vote; to it I devoted my political activities; with it I lived my political life — which terminated when, eleven years subsequently, I left the country. As the abolitionists saw the Churches were trampling under foot the fundamental principles of Christianity, touching slavery, so they saw the Government and the political parties to be false to their own sworn principles of freedom and democracy. They departed from the constitution, which was made “to secure the blessings of liberty,” and which ordained that “no man shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law.” The Whigs denied the faith of their revolutionary fathers, whose Whiggism was but another name for self-sacrificing love of liberty. The Democrats, claiming Thomas Jefferson as their father and boasting of his having written the Declaration of Independence, hated nothing so intensely as Jefferson’s writings against slavery — and that very Declaration of Independence, when, among “ALL MEN” in it declared to be entitled by God to the unalienable right to liberty, Negroes were said to be included. Both professed to be admirers of the great Washington; but neither of them, like him, coveted the opportunity of using his political power against slavery in his native State. What the abolitionists then demanded, and now contend for, is the simple application of the principles of the Declaration of Independence to the black as well as the white, and that the former should share the benefits secured by the constitution as well as the latter. Believing just what the Declaration of Independence says, that the right of man to liberty is unalienable, they hold that no enactments, no constitutions, no consent of the man himself, no combinations of men, can alienate that which is by God’s fiat made unalienable. They agree with England’s greatest living jurist, Henry Peter Brougham, that the idea that man can be the property of man is to be rejected as a “wild and guilty phantasy”: neither overlooking nor neglecting other great questions with which governments and parties have to do, they make their basis principle the unalienable right of man “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It was to the promulgation of these political principles, and of those religious principles to which I referred in the preceding pages, that, as an agent of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, it was my duty and my pleasure to devote myself. This duty brought me into contact with all classes of the enemies of the cause — made me familiar with all the different objections urged against it on the one hand; and it gave me the ever-to-be- remembered pleasure of meeting all classes of abolitionists, profiting by their suggestions, accepting their hospitalities, rejoicing in their sympathies, and sharing their devotions. A truer, a more discerning set of men, America does not hold. They are fully alive to the issue before them. They see that, if the HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM principle be admitted that a black man may be legally, righteously enslaved, so may any other man; that slavery is altogether regardless of the colour of its victims: that its encroachments upon the right of petition, the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech — its whipping, tarring and feathering, and lynching, white abolitionists at the South — its enslavement of the light-coloured children of white men — its unscrupulous, insatiate demands, nature, character — all make it the enemy of any and every class opposing it, willing to jeopard and to destroy the liberties of any whom it can crush as its victims. They see that the real political issue is, not whether the black man’s slavery shall be perpetuated, but whether the freedom of any Americans can be permanent. Blessings on the men who, at all hazards, are prepared to welcome and to meet that issue, with all its sacrifices and all its consequences! Whether they succeed or not, whether there is sufficient soundness and vitality in the republic to admit of its being saved or not, they, let the worst come, will ever bear in their bosoms the satisfaction of having done their duty in times of the utmost trial. Yea, blessings on that fearless band! Allow me once more to state, what I fear Englishmen but too seldom and too slightly consider — 1. The religious issue betwixt the American antislavery men and their opposers is deep, radical, vital, involving the religious weal or woe of the American Church. 2. The political issue is as deep, radical, and vital, in its kind: involving the safety, the stability — not the unity alone, but the very existence, of the republic. It is not like the emancipation question in Great Britain, or the corn-law question, or the reform question. It is not, What are the powers and scope of the Government, to what limit do they extend, to what classes do they apply, and of what improvements are they capable? It is a question affecting all classes, involving the fate of the whole people, undermining the basis of their best institutions, lying at the root of all constitutional government, and in its grasp including the whole range of American rights. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1840

At the annual meeting of the American Anti-slavery Society, by a vote of 557 to 451 Abby Kelley was nominated to the committee that would set the convention’s agenda. Lewis Tappan, the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society, invited all those opposed to Abby’s position on the business committee to join him for another meeting, thus forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Although Abby was blamed for the split, disagreements between William Lloyd Garrison and Tappan had been growing for a number of years. It was thus that Arthur Tappan became the president of the American and Foreign Anti- Slavery Society.

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ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANAC FOR 1840. By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence, Rhode Island: Hugh H. Brown.

The American Anti-Slavery Society issued its 5th annual almanac, the AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY ALMANAC FOR 1840. The cover depicted slavemasters with a shackled slave. Inside were 16 woodcuts of slaves in chains, slaves being hunted by dogs, “Selling a Mother From Her Child,” whipping, branding, burning at the stake, etc. with accompanying stories: ABOLITIONISM

“Our Peculiar Domestic Institutions.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Northern Hospitality—New York nine months law.185

185. The slave steps out of the slave state into the state of New York, and his chains fall. New York, although a free state, stands ready to reenslave him if he should remain for more than 9 months. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Burning of McIntosh at St. Louis during April 1836 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Showing how slavery improves the condition of the female sex HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Negro Pew, or “Free” Seats for black Christians HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mayor of New-York refusing a Carman’s license to a colored Man HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Servility of the Northern States in arresting and returning fugitive Slaves HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Selling a Mother from her Child HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Hunting Slaves with dogs and guns. A Slave drowned by the dogs. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Poor things, ‘they can’t take care of themselves.’” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Mothers with young Children at work in the field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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A Woman chained to a Girl, and a Man in irons at work in the field HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Branding Slaves HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Cutting up a Slave in Kentucky HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Paid, Unpaid

Nathan Johnson was elected one of five vice presidents of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its convention of this year. ABOLITIONISM

For a time during this decade, Nathan Johnson would be running a dry goods store and a bathhouse on William Street in New Bedford. He was part-owner of the whaleship Draper, and seemed to have income from real estate investments, including rents from the old Friends meetinghouse at 17-19 Seventh Street. He was doing better than he ever had before, or ever would again. Unfortunately, he would over-extend himself financially and the result would be disastrous. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The platform of the National Anti-Slavery Standard would be the immediate, complete abolition of slavery. The editors would include Lydia Maria Child, Oliver Johnson, Parker Pillsbury, and Aaron Powell. This paper would exist until 1870.

Abby Kelley continued to travel, at this point all over New England. She met Frederick Douglass and the radical New Hampshire abolitionist, Stephen Symonds Foster. Many of Abby’s letters and speeches were being published in The Liberator. Abby and Douglass went on a New York tour conducting conventions twice per week, each convention lasting two to three days. While living with Paulina and Francis Wright in Utica NY, Stephen came to stay there during a convention. It was at this point that they decided to marry. ABOLITIONISM

April: While the American Anti-Slavery Society was splitting over issues of the participation of women, and its political activity, Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters were attempting uncomfortably to remain neutral and uncommitted. Angelina Emily Grimké Weld became again pregnant. SEXISM

THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM November: At the Chardon Street Chapel in Boston, a continuation of the 1st meeting of the Convention of Friends of Universal Reform, that had begun during March. Attending “to discuss the origin and authority of the ministry” were, among others, the Reverend George Ripley from Brook Farm and David Mack from the Association of Industry and Education, plus at least four other future members of that Northampton association. Waldo Emerson’s report of this is on the following screen.

[go to the following screen] HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

In the month of November, 1840, a Convention of Friends of Universal Reform assembled in the Chardon Street Chapel, in Boston, in obedience to a call in the newspapers signed by a few individuals, inviting all persons to a public discussion of the institutions of the Sabbath, the Church and the Ministry. The Convention organized itself by the choice of Edmund Quincy, as Moderator, spent three days in the consideration of the Sabbath, and adjourned to a day in March, of the following year, for the discussion of the second topic. In March, accordingly, a three- days’ session was holden, in the same place, on the subject of the Church, and a third meeting fixed for the following November, which was accordingly holden, and the Convention, debated, for three days again, the remaining subject of the Priesthood. This Convention never printed any report of its deliberations, nor pretended to arrive at any Result, by the expression of its sense in formal resolutions, — the professed object of those persons who felt the greatest interest in its meetings being simply the elucidation of truth through free discussion. The daily newspapers reported, at the time, brief sketches of the course of proceedings, and the remarks of the principal speakers. These meetings attracted a good deal of public attention, and were spoken of in different circles in every note of hope, of sympathy, of joy, of alarm, of abhorrence, and of merriment. The composition of the assembly was rich and various. The singularity and latitude of the summons drew together, from all parts of New England, and also from the Middle States, men of every shade of opinion, from the straitest orthodoxy to the wildest heresy, and many persons whose church was a church of one member only. A great variety of dialect and of costume was noticed; a great deal of confusion, eccentricity, and freak appeared, as well as of zeal and enthusiasm. If the assembly was disorderly, it was picturesque. Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, Muggletonians, Come-Outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-day-Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians, and Philosophers, — all came successively to the top, and seized their moment, if not their hour, wherein to chide, or pray, or preach, or protest. The faces were a study. The most daring innovators, and the champions-until-death of the old cause, sat side by side. The still living merit of the oldest New England families, glowing yet, after several generations, encountered the founders of families, fresh merit, emerging, and expanding the brows to a new breadth, and lighting a clownish face with sacred fire. The assembly was characterized by the predominance of a certain plain, sylvan strength and earnestness, whilst many of the most intellectual and cultivated persons attended its councils. Dr. William Henry Channing, Edward Thompson Taylor, Bronson Alcott, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, Mr. Samuel Joseph May, Theodore Parker, Henry C. Wright, Dr. Joseph Osgood, William Adams, Edward Palmer, Jones Very, Maria W. Chapman, and many other persons of a mystical, or sectarian, or philanthropic renown, were present, and some of them participant. And there was no want of female speakers; Mrs. Little and Mrs. Lucy Sessions took a pleasing and memorable part in the debate, and that flea of Conventions, Mrs. Abigail Folsom, was but too ready with her interminable scroll. If there was not parliamentary order, there was life, and the assurance of that constitutional love for religion and religious liberty, which, in all periods, characterizes the inhabitants of this part of America.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1841

Indiana Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends closed all its Quaker meetinghouses to abolitionist lecturers.

This is likely to have been the map of Indiana available to Henry Thoreau, out of his atlas by Anthony Finley:

April 24, Saturday: The Reverend Dr. William Henry Brisbane called at the home in Brooklyn to which the family of Lewis Tappan had moved, after they had been burnt out by the mob in Manhattan in 1834. (The abolitionist businessman, just at that point, was rejoicing at the January 1841 decision of the US Supreme Court in the Amistad case, and preparing to open his Mercantile Agency credit-verification office in July 1841.) The Reverend Brisbane wrote in his diary: “In N. York took tea at Lewis Tappan’s.”

April 24. Music is the sound of the circulation in nature’s veins. It is the flux which melts nature. Men HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM dance to it, glasses ring and vibrate, and the fields seem to undulate. The healthy ear always hears it, nearer or more remote. It has been a cloudy, drizzling day, with occasional brightenings in the mist, when the trill of the tree sparrow seemed to be ushering in sunny hours.

December 27, Monday: Franz Liszt played his first concert in Berlin, before King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. It was here where “Lisztomania” first occurred (a word coined by Heinrich Heine). He was so successful that he would remain in Berlin for ten weeks playing 21 concerts. Liszt would receive the Ordre pour le Mérite from the King and be elected to the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts.

In protest of the racist Dorr constitution, Frederick Douglass spoke on this day and the following one at the Regional Anti-Slavery Convention in Providence, Rhode Island.

It seems unlikely that during this visit William J. Brown met Douglass, since if he had he surely would have mentioned it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1842

In Albany, New York, Stephen Myers, who had worked as a grocer and as a steamboat steward, and his wife Harriet Myers, began their abolitionist Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate. (Later there would be other publishing ventures including the Pioneer, and Telegraph and Temperance Journal.)

In Rochester, New York, temperance forces prevented a reduction in the price of liquor licenses.

The Sons of Temperance came into existence, at, the same time the Order of Rechabites was organized, and the Congressional Temperance Society of 1833 was revived on the basis of total abstinence. In the meantime, however, the United States government, which had heaped honors upon Father Matthew, would conclude a HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM treaty with King Kamehameha III of the Hawaiian Islands in 1850 permitting the introduction and sale of liquor on his island.

According to Thomas D. Hamm (GOD’S GOVERNMENT BEGUN: THE SOCIETY FOR UNIVERSAL INQUIRY AND REFORM, 1842-1846. Indiana UP, 1995.), God’s government was begun by William Lloyd Garrison: Chapter 4 details how the Garrisonian abolitionists, on the far-left fringe of the abolitionist movement, a collection of people who tied other reforms (rights for women, peace, “no-government,” among others) to their view that moral suasion was the way to end slavery, set out to promote their causes. Kicked off in New England, bands of speakers planned to move westward, through New York, into Ohio and Indiana and back to Pennsylvania; they were to have 100 Conventions and leave behind the seeds for further reform. With almost no preparation in advance, the effort was plagued by different conceptions of what was needed and succeeded in isolating and dividing the already splintered abolitionists on the ground. Their summer’s effort was pretty much a dismal failure, despite the efforts of “spin doctors” to put the best face possible on the 1843 activities.

One of the things many probably learned in an early course in World or Western Civilization is that authentic and long-lasting change emerges out of the grass roots and cannot be imposed from the top down. To think that those in Boston know what people out in the boonies should do and be is to practice a kind of Leninist “elitism” that almost inevitably undercuts the goals so passionately hoped for. Christianity and the Reformation (and the Great Awakening in this country) are examples in the area of religion of how these efforts bubbled up from below to challenge all aspects of the existing order and sweep away much of the old order. Reform and change will not endure when promoted by far-off experts; they must take place as real people wrestle with their real and concrete problems. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM January 26, Wednesday-28, Friday: Although some 5,000 people were in beautiful downtown Boston, they were not primarily there to size up their diminutive visitor from merry old England, Charles Dickens, but rather to attend ATTITUDES ON DICKENS

the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held in the hall of the house of representatives in the State House (another source says, at the Melodeon). Abby Kelley was being reproved by this assembly

for having portrayed the clergy as “thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates and murderers.” The next day the Boston newspapers were full of descriptions of the appearance of this female orator, but they all stonewalled in regard to the contents of the speech she had made. A woman. She opened her mouth in public.186

186. Her speech had gone right off the dial of their pornograph. Too bad we’re so jaded — it cannot affect us the same way now. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Another person who was opening his mouth in public in beautiful downtown Boston was Frederick Douglass, who in a speech in Faneuil Hall on the 28th mimicked a Southern white preacher telling slaves that they must

be good Christians by being obedient their masters. Douglass was a master of regional and ethnic dialect and his oration was regarded at that time as a classic of the art of satire. Even in this age it might draw guffaws from a “Saturday Night Live” audience.187 So how was it that a black man was getting away with mocking a white man, while a white woman was failing to get away with challenging the clergy? –Hey, smartie, figure that one out when you’ve a spare moment!

187. Hey, too bad the phonograph hadn’t yet been invented! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

As would eventually be minuted in The Dickens’s AMERICAN NOTES, the Reverend William Ellery Channing’s health had improved to such an extent that he became able to preach, in beautiful downtown Boston, for the first time in a very long interval, against that most hideous blot and foul disgrace, human Slavery:

Not being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, to go to church that day, we were compelled to decline the kindnesses, one and all; and I was reluctantly obliged to forego the delight of hearing Dr. Channing, who happened to preach that morning for the first time in a very long interval. I mention the name of this distinguished and accomplished man (with whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted), that I may have the gratification of recording my humble tribute of admiration and respect for his high abilities and character; and for the bold philanthropy with which he has ever opposed himself to that most hideous blot and foul disgrace — Slavery.

ANTISLAVERY

April 1, Friday: Frederick Douglass spoke in Harvard, Massachusetts for the Harvard Anti-Slavery Society.

The Reverend Adin Ballou on this day completed his ministry at Mendon, Massachusetts. While residing there he had published an address on the subject of American Slavery, republished in England. SLAVERY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM October: George Latimer, who was 1/8th black on his mother’s side, was seized without warrant in Boston at the request of James B. Gray of Norfolk, Virginia, allegedly his owner and the brother of his white father — and charged with being a runaway slave.188 SLAVERY

Meanwhile, Florida was pressing for national legislation paying a bounty for Native American scalps, or for Native Americans captured and enslaved. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, there were fights between groups of black coal miners and groups of Irish coal miners.

188. Ultimately, for the sum of $400.00, his freedom would be purchasable from his owner by the Reverend Nathaniel Colver, since sufficient publicity had been generated to produce embarrassment. (In America, the road to justice often passes by way of adequate publicity.) Latimer would be able to remain in Boston as a free man, and would become an effective antislavery secret agent. When Charles Francis Adams, Sr. would sponsor an act forbidding the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from rendering any assistance to the US federal government in the enforcement of its Fugitive Slave Law, he would denominate this Massachusetts statute the “Latimer Law.” ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1843

November 28, Tuesday: Friend Elizabeth Buffum Chace resigned from the Providence, Rhode Island monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends because of the increasing difficulty encountered by abolitionists like herself in obtaining the use of Quaker meetinghouses for anti-slavery meeting (she would later comment “When the Friends shut the slave out of their religious houses, they shut me out also”). ABOLITIONISM

TO PROVIDENCE MONTHLY MEETING OF FRIENDS 28th of 11th mo., 1843. Dear Friends: After many months of serious deliberation, attended not unfrequently by severe conflicts, with sincere desires for the direction of the Spirit of Truth, I have arrived at the conclusion that it will no longer be right for me to remain a member of your body. By birthright and education connected with the Society of Friends, I very early became attached to the Christian principles it professed, and this attachment, growing with my growth and strengthening with my strength, has remained with me through my riper years, and is now strong, and, I trust, enduring. But when, for many years, I have looked for the fruits of these righteous principles in the proceedings of the Society, or the practice of its most highly professing members, I have been forced to admit that they were not suffered to produce their legitimate effects, but that the Society, having become blindly attached to mere formal observances and in a great measure dependent thereon, instead of carrying out those principles which it was called to maintain in the face of the world, had settled down quietly to enjoy the exalted reputation it had obtained by its early reformatory labors, in apathy and indifference concerning the crying sins of “a world lying in wickedness,” and the suffering and degradation occasioned thereby; and (I have been forced also to admit) that it was only aroused by the fear that individual members were doing what they believed to be right independently of its authority. The pro-slavery position assumed and maintained by New England Yearly meeting, and consequently by its subordinate branches, has, for many years, been a subject of painful regret to my mind; and I long cherished the hope that, the principles of truth and righteousness finally prevailing, this large and influential body would yet come up, with its strong band of spirits yearning to do right, to the to the rescue of down-trodden humanity. But I have hoped and waited in vain. It still, like the priest and the Levite, “passes by on the other side,” incurring the fearful responsibility of continuing in cruel slavery millions of our fellow-countrymen. For I fully believe that had the Friends in this country rightly persevered in their Anti-Slavery efforts since the time that they ceased from actual participation in the gilt of holding human beings as property, no slavery would now pollute the soil of these United States, no tears would flow from the eyes, no blood from the lacerated flesh of its wretched suffering victims. The delinquency of the Society in this respect has, probably HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM more than anything else, been made instrumental in opening my eyes to perceive that many corruptions have become too deeply interwoven with its present organization to be ever separated therefrom, and my firm belief now is that by the hand of Providence they will be removed together. The love of dominion and its unlimited exercise by the few over the many, the practical denial to the weak of the right to call in question the authority of the powerful, whose power is too often seen to rest on the influence of wealth and worldly station and on the favor of those possessing these earthly gifts, more than on holiness of heart and life, and the countenance and support given to a blood-stained government are not the least among the abuses which I find so deeply rooted in the Society, that I feel that it would be sinful for me any longer to share its responsibilities. In reply to any enquiries concerning the important step I am now taking, I can only answer, that, firmly believing in the doctrine of the immediate influences of the Holy Spirit, I, as firmly, believe that it requires this of me, and I can find no peace in resisting the pleadings of its “still, small voice.” With those who, seeing the corruptions, do not believe it to be their duty to withdraw from the Society, I have no warfare. I have been in the same state myself, and it would have been very agreeable to my natural feelings to have remained so. Their path of duty may be different from mine. I would only urge them to walk carefully by the light of truth shed abroad in the heart, and fearlessly to follow its dictates. Neither have I enmity towards those who sincerely believe that the Society is still in its purity, following in the footsteps of our Lord and Master, who “went about doing good.” Some of them are my personal friends, and the fault shall not be mine if they do not remain so. My earnest desire for them is that “by a light let in from above” they may be led to see things as they really are. So let us all seek that we may find the truth; “proving all things and holding fast that which is good.” And now, one and all, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

ELIZABETH B. CHACE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1844

To ease the homesickness of Mrs. Anne Lawton Brisbane in Ohio, her brother Willy Lawton came from South Carolina to reside with the family, and the Reverend Dr. William Henry Brisbane set him up to manage his apothecary shop in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Reverend Dr. Brisbane began an abolitionist gazette, The Crisis, and was nominated to run for Congress on the Liberty Party slate, but declined this nomination — because he scrupled that it would be inappropriate for a minister, a man of the cloth, to engage in politics.

By his own later account, it was in the timeframe of this year and the following one that Friend Daniel Ricketson took up the abolitionist cause. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Here is Frederick Douglass’s US speaking schedule for the year 1844:

January 24 Boston for the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society

February 11-18 Concord, New Hampshire

February 19-April 30 Framingham, Dorchester, Reading, Lowell, Groton, Townsend, Braintree, Foxboro, Medway, Wrentham

March 1-2 New Bedford

March 6 (approx.) Sudbury, Massachusetts

March 11 Medford, Massachusetts

March 17 Neponset Village, Massachusetts

March 18-19 Dedham, Massachusetts

March 24 Walpole, Massachusetts

March 29-30 Pawtucket, Rhode Island

April 4 Essex County Anti-Slavery Society

April 25 Lynn, Massachusetts

April 28 Northampton, Massachusetts

May 6-11 New-York’s Broadway Tabernacle and Concert Hall, for the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society

May 28, 29, 31 Boston’s Marlboro Chapel for the annual meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society

June 12 Concord, Massachusetts for the Middlesex County Anti-Slavery Society

June 28 Methuen, Massachusetts for the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society

August 1 Concord for the celebration of the First of August, with Waldo Emerson, William A. White, the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, Moses Grandy, and Headmaster Cyrus Pierce of the normal school in Lexington

August 12 Norristown, Pennsylvania for the annual meeting of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society

August 17 The lawn of the State House in Philadelphia

before August 28 Chester County, Pennsylvania

August 30 Wilbur Fisk Hall in Philadelphia

August 31 Clarkson Hall in Philadelphia

September 21 Gardiner’s Church, and the Friends’ Meetinghouse, in Philadelphia

September 15-30 New Hampshire and Maine

October 19-20 Liberty Hall in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for the Bristol County Anti-Slavery Society

October 24 Liberty Hall in New Bedford, Massachusetts

November 3 Mechanics’ Hall in Salem, for the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society

November 4-5 Marblehead, Massachusetts for the quarterly meeting of the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society

November 11 (approx.) Mechanics’ Hall in Salem

November 20-22 Mechanics’ Hall in Providence for the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society

November 26 Town Hall of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts for the Middlesex County Anti-Slavery Society

December 21-22 Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society

November: The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 11th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti- Slavery Examiner, containing “The Constitution A Pro-Slavery Compact Or Selections From the Madison INDEX Papers, &c.” (to be followed by a “Second Edition, Enlarged”). TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

November 20, Wednesday-22, Friday: Frederick Douglass lectured at Mechanics’ Hall in Providence before the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society.

In the library of the British Museum, while in London for a meeting of the Geological Society, Charles Darwin read VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION: Large parts of what moved other readers, such as the stirring account of the nebular hypothesis or the future of humanity, were quickly skimmed. Darwin approached the text not as a sweeping cosmological narrative but as a botched version of his own manuscript. [H]is geology strikes me as bad, & his zoology far worse. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM December 26, Wednesday: James Russell Lowell got married with Maria White,189 and began to write editorials for the abolitionist paper Pennsylvania Freeman.190

189. A gifted poet educated at the Ursuline Convent that had been torched in 1834, she had inspired his poems in AYEAR’S LIFE (1841). 190. This poet offered, in rhyming dialect, that his readers ought to be in favor of the abolition of the institution of slavery because anyone who would make “niggers” into “black slaves” might also attempt to make “you” into “wite [sic] slaves.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1845

The American Anti-Slavery Society put out the 12th issue of its “omnibus” entitled The Anti-Slavery Examiner, entitled “Disunion. Address of the American Anti-Slavery Society and TEXT INDEX F. Jackson’s Letter on the Pro-Slavery Character of the Constitution;” containing, also, “Chattel Principle / The Abhorrence of Jesus Christ and the Apostles; Or No Refuge for American Slavery in the New Testament,” by Beriah Green.

EDWARD HICKS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1846

The Reverend Adin Ballou published CHRISTIAN NON-RESISTANCE, IN ALL ITS IMPORTANT BEARINGS, ILLUSTRATED AND DEFENDED, his primary work on his specific version of absolute pacifism. (This is the work that would so impress Lev Nikolævich Tolstòy.) NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL

During the Hopedale years the Reverend had been traveling around New England lecturing on and debating Practical Christianity, Christian Non-resistance, abolition, temperance, and other social issues. In this year he made in addition an anti-slavery lecture foray into Pennsylvania. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The family of the Reverend Dr. William Henry Brisbane relocated from Cincinnati, Ohio to Brook Farm outside Boston, Massachusetts. Here the Reverend would write a novel of race slavery, and a Biblical exegesis in regard to abolitionism.

William Elliott’s CAROLINA SPORTS BY LAND AND WATER: INCLUDING DEVIL-FISHING, WILD-CAT, DEER AND BEAR HUNTING, &C (Burges and James), a collection of articles written for a local newspaper under the pen names “Piscator” and “Venator.” This volume would be available to Henry Thoreau in Stacy’s Circulating Library of Concord, Massachusetts. CAROLINA SPORTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1847

April: Hung Hsiu Ch’üan the scholar-manque would study Christianity for a couple of months under the tutelage of a Reverend Issachar J. Roberts , a Tennessee Baptist who had been in China since 1837, and then (upon being belatedly informed that his new status in the Christian community would definitely not include his being the recipient of any pecuniary compensation whatever) joined the movement known as the Pai Shang-ti Hui or The God Worshipers’ Society which had been initiated among the peasantry of Kwangsi province by his friend Feng Yün-shan . He would become successful beyond the wildest dreams of any Tennessee Baptist, as the T’ien-wang –the Heavenly King– of a far-flung Chinese Christian movement. He would be able to plot an entire galaxy of stars in his heavenly crown right up to the point at which, at the unfortunate conclusion of the largest and bloodiest civil war our planet has ever known, he would need to off himself.

THE TAEPING REBELLION Andrew Twombly Foss became an agent of the Baptist Church North. He would later serve the American Anti- Slavery Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as an agent, lecturing widely in the North and West till the US Civil War. (There is an article by Guy S. Rix on his life, at The New England Historic Genealogical Society.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Frederick Douglass inscribed a copy of his NARRATIVE in ink on the flyleaf and presented it to N.B. [Boone?] Spooner of Plymouth MA in a quarter-leather clamshell box with ornate gold stamping on the spine: “N.B. Spooner / From his sincere / Friend. / Frederick Douglass / 1847” (estimated present value at auction, $12,500- $15,000):

The Spooner family was a founding family, although we do not know on what ship they came over. Their Plymouth home is presently open for tourist visits. This N.B. Spooner was of the same household in Plymouth as Thoreau’s friend and disciple James Walter Spooner. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Wendell Phillips responded to Lysander Spooner’s THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY, issued in 1845 and 1846 in two parts, with a lengthy legal brief REVIEW OF LYSANDER SPOONER’S ESSAY ON THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY, demonstrating that the Founding Fathers had intended the Constitution to legalize human slavery. Under this circumstance, the only corrective was disunion. The Constitution, because it allowed the use of force by one man, the slavemaster, over another man, the slave, was not an instrument of order but one of anarchy.

YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.

abolitionism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1848

William Whiting was president and Mary Merrick Brooks a member of the executive committee of the Middlesex County Antislavery Society.

During the Hopedale years the Reverend Adin Ballou had been traveling around New England lecturing on and debating Practical Christianity, Christian Non-resistance, abolition, temperance, and other social issues, and in 1846 he had made in addition an anti-slavery lecture foray into Pennsylvania. In this year he lectured on anti-slavery in the state of New York. ABOLITIONISM

William Stevens Robinson, an antislavery newspaper editor under the pen name “Warrington,” got married with Harriet Jane Hanson (Harriet Hanson Robinson). She would become a woman’s rights advocate.

ABOLITIONISM FEMINISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1849

The Reverend Dr. William Henry Brisbane resigned from his Baptist pulpit in Camden, New Jersey and returned to Cincinnati, Ohio. He began to again put out his abolitionist gazette, The Crisis.

June 22, Friday: The tiny body of Elizabeth DeForest was retrieved from a rock below the always-deadly American Falls of Niagara Falls. SUICIDE

Stephen C. Massett opened at the San Francisco courthouse as its 1st professional entertainer, utilizing what was allegedly the only piano yet to have arrived in California.

The Liberator carried the following obituary of Helen Louisa Thoreau, apparently by William Lloyd Garrison:

ANOTHER FRIEND OF THE SLAVE GONE Died, in Concord, on Thursday, June 14th, Miss HELEN THOREAU, aged 36 years. Our friend, Miss Thoreau, was an abolitionist. Endowed by nature with tender sensibilities, quick to feel for the woes of others, the cause of the slave met with a ready response in her heart. She had a mind of fine native powers, enlarged and matured by cultivation. She had the patience to investigate truth, the candor to acknowledge it when sufficient evidence was presented to her mind, and the moral courage to act in conformity with her convictions, however unpopular these convictions might be to the community around her. The cause of the slave did not come before her in its earliest beginnings; but as soon as it was presented, she set herself to inquire how it was, that a system which imbrutes man so cruelly, which tears asunder all the tenderest ties so ruthlessly, which puts out the life of the soul, by denying it the means of growth and progress so effectually, was supported. She saw the religious denominations with which she had been connected vehemently crying out against the Catholics for denying the BIBLE to the people, and yet one-sixth part of the people of the Protestant United States were legally deprived of the right to read God’s word, nay, worse than the Catholics, the right of learning to read. She ascertained that the actual number of slaveholders in the land was not more than two hundred and fifty or three hundred thousand. How, she said, can these keep three millions of people in bondage? Why do not the slaves rise, as did our fathers in the revolution, and demand their rights at the point of the bayonet? She ascertained that the bayonets of the North were pledged to unite with those of the Southern tyrants, in case of any attempt at insurrection, and put down the poor crushed bondman, if, in his agony, he would strike down the oppressor. She saw that the nation had written in the Constitution the grievousness it had prescribed to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of the people, that widows might be its prey, and that it might rob the fatherless. This Constitution, every man, either by himself or his deputy, held up his hand to heaven, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM swore, So help me God, I will sustain. She saw that in the same Constitution, they agreed, by the same solemn oath, if the poor victim of oppression should flee to any of the so-called free States, braving incredible danger, facing death in its most terrible forms, to obtain deliverance from his oppressors, and appeal to Northern men for protection, being pursued by his enslaver, they must perjure themselves, or allow his being delivered up to his pursuers, and sent back again to the most cruel bondage, without lifting a finger in his defence — thus stifling the noblest feelings of their natures. In despair, she turned to the church. Surely, she said, the church of Christ is free from these abominations. But she found the church made up of men from all the political parties, alike pledged to the support of the accursed institution. In keeping with this, she saw the church, almost universally, giving to the slaveholder or his abettor, the right hand of Christian fellowship — calling him dear brother in Christ. She saw the pulpits of the North open to Southern divines, while the advocates of the slave knocked in vain for admission at the door of almost every church in the land. She said to herself, Is this the church of Christ, and has it come down so low? She repudiated such a church. Immediately did she turn her back upon its communion, and if she went to the house of prayer, as she occasionally did, she went to see if the spirit of Christ and humanity might not be rising among them. Again and again has she called upon the writer of this notice, when returning from church, and said, with strong emotion, it is all darkness and gloom. It was not eloquent declamation which led her from the church; but it was the array of strong, incontrovertible facts, which impelled her to the course she felt called upon to pursue and she knew that the eloquence of anti-slavery owed its source to these same facts, and endowed with eloquence the most ungifted tongues. To her, as to many others, it was pleasant to go to the church on the Sabbath, and worship with her friends; and nothing but an entire conviction of its wrongfulness, in her case, would have prevented her constant attendance upon the institutions of religion. But the call to her was imperative — “Come out of her, that ye be not partaker of her plagues,” and she obeyed. This obedience brought peace in health, and peace in sickness. Not an hour of gloom did she experience during her protracted illness. Though constitutionally timid, the gloom of death was all taken away, and the king of terrors became to her an angel of hope and joy, opening before her bright visions of beauty; to use her own expression. One day, in conversation, she expressed her gratitude for what anti-slavery had done for her, in opening new and juster views of God, and truth, and duty, and exclaimed — “O how much has anti-slavery done for me, and how little have I done for it! I wanted health, that I might keep school, and in this way do something for the cause I so much love. But it is ordered otherwise.” She experienced in its fullest extent the fulfilment of the promise — “Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord shall be with him upon his bed of languishing, and make all his bed in his sickness.” Her long continued illness made the suffering virtues, patience and resignation, to shine brightly, and smoothed away the sharp edges of her character, fitting her, we doubt not, for a polished stone in the great temple above. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM The abolitionists of Concord will mourn deeply her loss; for, few and feeble as they are, they can ill afford to lose one so intelligent and so true. But they feel, that though no longer present with them in the flesh, she will still be a co-laborer with them in the great and good cause in which they have so long been associated. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1850

In an antislavery address, the Reverend Theodore Parker characterized democracy as “a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.”191

During this decade Abraham Lincoln would begin to exploit the conflicting uses of the Declaration of Independence and, by the time of his debates with Stephen Douglas, would have come to see the document’s statements on equality and rights, according to Pauline Maier, “as setting a standard for the future, one that demanded the gradual extinction of conflicting practices” (AMERICAN SCRIPTURE: MAKING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997, page 205).

191. It is not clear that Abraham Lincoln ever learned of this. The alliteration is of course an obvious one. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1851

August 1, Friday: In New Bedford, on this anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indies, there was a particularly large procession, which drew the New-York Cadets accompanied by the New-York Brass Band. Guest speakers included Charles Lenox Remond, a liberty orator from Salem, and Robert Morris, a black lawyer from Boston. EMANCIPATION DAY ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1854

During the Anthony Burns case, after Transcendentalist poets and preachers had attacked the Boston courthouse, the building had been converted into a sort of armored slavepen, in that it was guarded by a

detachment of US Marines, and two artillery companies with loaded cannons and with fixed bayonets on their rifles, as well as by the US Marshall’s guard consisting of “a gang of about one-hundred and twenty men, the lowest villains in the community, keepers of brothels, bullies, blacklegs, convicts....” Not even the judges, let alone the jurors, the witnesses, and the litigant attorneys, were being permitted inside the courthouse without first passing a cordon of men five men deep, and proving their right to be there. Boston abolitionists had offered the slavemaster of Burns the sum of $1,200 in return for a document in manumission, but had been refused.

Nothing in the whole record of the Burns affair is more striking to a modern audience or at first more off- putting than the apparent incapacity of even the most committed of the radicals to express a direct, authentic outrage on Burns’s personal behalf. Phillips’s unelaborated reference to his “suffering” is as close as they come. The evil that Parker undertakes to agitate against is the threat to the civil liberties of Northern white men. There is an oddity about this argument even on the supposition that it consciously appeals to self-interest ... if they are to be made to fight again, it must probably be for the same thing [their own personal liberty] and not ... for ... the right of another man than oneself to be free.

WENDELL PHILLIPS THEODORE PARKER HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM At some point in the year, in regard to the enforcement of the federal Fugitive Slave Act in regard to the Burns case, the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson would deliver a sermon entitled “Massachusetts in Mourning.”

Jesse Hoover moved from Ohio with his father Eli. They traveled by river boat and covered wagon to a farm outside West Branch, Iowa, a small town founded by Quakers. HERBERT HOOVER

During this year 84 certificates of membership from very divergent sources would be received by the Iowa Quakers. When the Red Cedar Monthly Meeting (“Springdale”) became overcrowded these new immigrants moved on to the northwest, and for many years the fertile divide between the Iowa River and Cedar River to the northwest of Springdale would be known as “Quaker Ridge.” The immigration into Iowa the present season is astonishing and unprecedented. For miles and miles, day after day, the prairies of Illinois are lined with cattle and wagons, pushing on towards this prosperous State. At a point beyond Peoria, during a single month, seventeen hundred and forty-three wagons had passed, and all for Iowa.

How very different the peaceable settlement of Iowa was, as above, from the warlike settlement that was going on simultaneously in the Kansas Territory! Amos A. Lawrence, co-founder of the emigration company concept, has a town there named after him; after Kansas would become “Bleeding Kansas” such emigration companies would be supplying arms and ammunition to their anti-slavery settlers. The city of Topeka was founded by 5 antislavery activists. Five of John Brown’s sons went to the Kansas Territory, taking with them 2 small shotguns and a revolver and staking claims 8 or 10 miles from Osawatomie.

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION The beginning of publication of the Leavenworth Herald, 1st newspaper in the Kansas Territory.

Thaddeus Hyatt became actively involved in the abolitionist movement after Congress passed the Kansas- Nebraska Act. The law, which mandated that the question of legalizing slavery in the Kansas Territory be settled by the territory’s voters, would spark a race between proslavery and antislavery factions to move to HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Kansas and tip the ballot boxes. These factions would clash in what would come to be regarded as “Bleeding Kansas.” Several state-level committees would be formed to provide aid to antislavery settlers, including the New York Kansas League of which Hyatt was president (during this year, also, he would be awarded Patent No. 11,695 for a “Vault-Light”). Hyatt and William Barnes simultaneously but separately embarked on efforts to organize counties in upstate New York to participate in packing the Kansas Territory with antislavery voters.

Meanwhile the South was packing the territory with armed proslavery settlers. You do understand what was going on here, don’t you? –The antislavery North and the proslavery South, locked in opposition to one another in the US federal Senate, had determined that they would fight a proxy war in this territory, by pouring in armed proslavery activists and armed antislavery activists as sponsored “settlers.” They would kill each other and kill each other, and otherwise dominate and subdue each other, until in the end one or the other side in this proxy struggle would succeed in packing the ballot boxes sufficiently full — and the new state of Kansas would then emerge in the form of two extra votes in the US Senate for the proslavery South, that would allow the proslavery South to dominate the nation, or else emerge as two extra votes in the US Senate for the antislavery North, which would allow the antislavery North to dominate the nation. Study up on proxy war, it isn’t just something that happened to Vietnam.

After British abolitionists had “purchased” his manumission papers, redeeming him from the danger of re- enslavement under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, William Wells Brown returned to reside in the Boston area. While abroad he had created CLOTEL, which would be the 1st novel by an American of color, and he had ST. DOMINGO, a work indicative of growing antislavery militancy, in process. (He had also produced a travelogue complete with a rolled 24-scene panorama, and would produce a play, a compilation of antislavery songs, and finally three volumes of black history.) ABOLITIONISM

Late Summer: Someone in Missouri offering the name “Samuel Clemens” contacted Frederick Jackson, the treasurer of the Boston Vigilance Committee, and wheedled from him $24.50 for train fare to Boston, by representing himself as a northern abolitionist who had been imprisoned for two years in Missouri for “aiding fugitives to escape.” However, no Missouri record of the incarceration of any such person has ever been found and there is no abolitionist record of any publicity due to this hero Samuel Clemens’s arrival in Boston. The only person we can find in Missouri records who used any similar name was in fact the Samuel Langhorn Clemens who would later begin to write for publication, and therefore Professor Robert Sattelmeyer believes that this may well have been an early scam by the personage who would later make himself well known to the world as “Mark Twain.” It is known that Clemens was not at that time particularly concerned over the fact of human enslavement — and so it is plausible that he would not have had moral scruples about the diversion of funds into his own pocket that would otherwise be used for the functioning of the Underground Railroad. It is also known that for a brief period during this year, Clemens was at Washington DC.

October 15, Saturday: The Lawrence, Kansas Territory Kansas Tribune appeared (it would be generally antigovernment and anti-slavery).

Florence Nightingale was solicited to organize nurses in Crimea. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1855

Attending a lecture by Edward Davis, a son-in-law of Friends James and Lucretia Mott, and meeting Friend Lucretia herself at Davis’s home in Philadelphia, Robert Collyer soon became persuaded of the antislavery cause.

In this year in Philadelphia, publication of the initial volume of John W. Watson’s WATSON’S ANNALS OF PHILADELPHIA AND PENNSYLVANIA A COLLECTION OF MEMOIRS, ANECDOTES, AND INCIDENTS OF THE CITY AND ITS INHABITANTS AND OF THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENTS OF THE INLAND PART OF PENNSYLVANIA FROM THE DAYS OF THE FOUNDERS INTENDED TO PRESERVE THE RECOLLECTIONS OF OLDEN TIME, AND TO EXHIBIT SOCIETY IN ITS CHANGES OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, AND THE CITY AND COUNTRY IN THEIR LOCAL CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS. JOHN F. WATSON, I, 1855 JOHN F. WATSON, II, 1857

February 5, Monday: The Anti-Slavery Society of New York opened its New-York convention.

February 5. It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed. It sparkled as if we lived inside of a cave, but this morning it has moderated considerably and is snowing. Already one inch of snow has fallen According to Webster, in Welsh a hare is “furze or gorse-cat.” Also, “Chuk, a word used in calling swine. It is the original name of that animal, which our ancestors brought with them from Persia, where it is still in use. Pers. chuk,” etc. “Sans. sugara. Our ancestors while in England adopted the Welsh hwc, hog; but chuck is retained in our popular name of woodchuck, that is, wood hog.” In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings. That which was so important at the time cannot be unimportant to remember Day before yesterday the fine snow, blowing over the meadow in parallel streams between which the darker ice was seen, looked just like the steam curling along the surface of a river. In the midst of this, midleg deep at least, you surged along. It was surprising how, in the midst of all this stationary and drifting snow, the skate found a smooth and level surface over which it glided so securely, with a muffled rumble. The ice for the last week has reached quite up into the village, so that you could get on to it just in the rear of the bank and set sail on skates for any part of the Concord River valley Found Therien cutting down the two largest chestnuts in the wood-lot behind where my house was. On the butt of one about two feet in diameter I counted seventy-five rings. T. soon after broke his axe in cutting through a knot in this tree, which he was cutting up for posts. He broke out a piece half an inch deep. This he says often happens. Perhaps there is some frost in his axe. Several choppers have broken their axes to-day. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1856

Just after the writing of the fictive narrative CLOTEL; OR, THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER: A NARRATIVE OF SLAVE LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES and just prior to the publication of his play THE ESCAPE; OR, A LEAP FOR FREEDOM, which would be the 1st published play by a black American, William Wells Brown gave up “his agency” with the American Anti-Slavery Society, deciding that he had better things to do with his time: he needed to “devote his time to giving his lyceum lectures and the reading of his drama.”

Although Susan B. Anthony would never similarly lapse in her commitment to women’s rights, as the Civil War approached, always an anti-slavery advocate, she would be pouring more and more of her energy into working with the abolitionists. From 1856 until the Civil War, she would be the principal New York agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. As such, she would be constantly appearing before the public, frequently before violent and hostile crowds. When the Civil War finally would break out, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would be organizing the Women’s Loyal National League, which would sponsor petition drives for freedom for slaves and in the process secure hundreds of thousands of signatures. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1857

In previous years, Indiana Friends who had been disowned by their Orthodox Indiana Yearly Meeting due to their antislavery sentiments had formed an association of their own, known as “Anti-Slavery Friends of Indiana.” In this year the Orthodox Yearly Meeting that had disowned them decided that it would allow them to rejoin the Religious Society of Friends without requiring any “acknowledgment of wrongdoing” for having previously been seduced into supposing human slavery to be an abomination. Nearly all of them therefore rejoined the Orthodox Indiana Yearly Meeting, and the Anti-Slavery Friends of Indiana was laid down.

Hey, here come d’judge. The freedoms and liberties of America’s slavemasters were protected by the US Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. In this year and the next President Buchanan’s pro-slavery policies, combined with this determination that slaves are not freed when they are moved into free states with their owners, that Congress can not bar slavery from a territory, and that blacks could not become citizens, would kill off both the Whig and the Know-Nothing parties. In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supremes in effect declared that the already-discarded Missouri Compromise of 1820 had been unconstitutional because the effect of it had been to deprive citizens –white people– of their property –black people– without due process of law.

The court also determined that slaves were neither citizens of any state nor citizens of the USA (this latter part HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM of the decision would be overturned in 1868 by ratification of the XIVth Amendment).

This man had no rights that any white American was bound to respect. None at all. Nope.

We ought to notice, says Richard F. Teichgraeber III, that for five years after the summer of 1854 (with its agitation against the infamous Daniel Webster sellout that produced the Fugitive Slave Law), “Thoreau chose not to speak again in public against slavery.” In particular, he allowed this year of 1857 (with its Dred Scott supreme court decision that no American slave had any rights which any American slaveholder was obliged to respect), to pass “without any comment in his diary, private letters, or later published writings.” Although Henry Thoreau would in 1862 visit the site at which Dred and Harriet Scott had been held in slavery, on the grounds of a US military reservation south of St. Paul, Minnesota, Teichgraeber points out that evidently at this point he was “unclear” as to exactly how he might effectively intercede in the nation’s racial situation. Only when John Brown entered the picture would Thoreau find his way clear “to take an effective stand for abolition.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1859

During this year the Illinois legislature chose Stephen A. Douglas for the federal Senate over Abraham Lincoln, by a vote of 54 to 46 — but this was not because the Illinois legislature was experiencing any distress at Lincoln’s racism.

There was a report from Arkansas that 3 white men there had been hanged when they had been found to have in their possession literature by the troublesome antislavery racist Hinton Rowan Helper. In London, in this year, the US Minister was approached by a representative of Her Majesty’s government, on behalf of a visiting white Englishman who had been caught distributing Helperite materials in Virginia. The US Minister refused to intercede on behalf of Her Majesty’s government in the internal criminal affairs of the State of Virginia. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

(Get this, just as it wasn’t enough to be a white man in the southern states of the United States of America, it also wasn’t enough to be a racist — being the wrong kind of white racist could get one into really big trouble in the fastest way.)

William Still started a press campaign to end racial discrimination on Philadelphia’s railroad cars. After John Brown and his insurrection at Harpers Ferry failed, Still would shelter some of his men and help them escape capture.

The slave Harriet Roberts Newby wrote 3 letters to her free mulatto husband Dangerfield Newby begging him to come and buy her and his children. The Virginia family that owned them was said to be in need of money, so the husband was traveling around Ohio asking for donations. The family of Dr. Jesse Jennings back in Warington [Warrenton?], Virginia, however, would reject Dangerfield Newby’s offer, so when he was killed while serving as a bridge sentinel at Harpers Ferry, Dangerfield left an account amounting to $742 (approximately $13,000-$19,000 in our turn-of-the-millennium dollars).

James Redpath’s THE ROVING EDITOR; OR, TALKS WITH SLAVES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES, an abolitionist book dedicated to John Brown, was suggesting that slavery could be ended by inciting “a few scores of rattling insurrections ... and by a little wholesome slaughter to arouse the conscience of the people.” Redpath was giving no indication whether the aforesaid red path of slaughter ought to consist of the blood of white Americans killed by black, the blood of black Americans killed by white, or the blood of black and white HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Americans indiscriminately intermingled.192

At some point during this year Frederick Douglass would meet secretly with Captain John Brown in an abandoned rock quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and be briefed on the progress of the plan to attack the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

Douglass would opt out of the plot, which he considered too risky, and flee via Canada to England rather than himself personally participate. He would then remark humorously: 192. Francis Jackson Meriam had helped James Redpath collect his materials for this book, in Haiti and across the American South. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

“I’ve always been more distinguished for running than for fighting.”

(Note that in abandoning the struggle in this manner, Douglass was not doing anything that other folks were not doing. For instance, praising Brown’s actions at Harpers Ferry but declaring that she could foresee a “crisis” which was going to be inevitable, the little lady Harriet Beecher Stowe who did more than anyone else to start America’s biggest war would be withdrawing from all anti-slavery agitation and embarking in her swishy silk dress upon her 3d genteel tour of the grand hotels of the European subcontinent, paid for of course with the enormous extent of the ongoing royalties she was receiving from her writings — which had touched the pulse of the nation she was abandoning to its fate. Meanwhile another little lady, Harriet Tubman, would be pleading to John Brown that she could not participate in his raid on the federal arsenal as she had become ill — although I know of no historian who has ever attempted to check the trustworthiness of that excuse.)193

In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s new novel THE MINISTER’S WOOING set at the turn of the 18th Century, one of the characters, Candace the fat wife of Cato and slave of the Merwyns, was according to Nell Painter, “probably inspired in part by Truth” — despite the blunt reality that in Litchfield, Massachusetts the Beecher family’s laundry had been done by a black woman, named Candace. When Mr. Merwyn tried to find out whether his slaves didn’t really prefer the freedom from life’s cares which sprang from their being so many pieces of property:

When Gineral Washington was here, I hearn ’em read de Declaration ob Independence and Bill o’ Rights; an’ I tole Cato den, says I, “Ef dat ar’ true, you an’ I are as free as anybody.” It stands to reason. Why, look at me — I a’n’t a critter. ... I’s a reasonable bein’ —a woman, —as much a woman as anybody.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE This character modeled upon Truth had ideas not only about racism but also about feminism:

“I de weaker vessel?” said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence ... “I de weaker vessel? Umph!”

And she had ideas about Calvinism and man’s natural depravity as products of the Adam who fell into sin:

... nebber did eat dat ar’ apple ... Don’t tell me!

193. A practical woman, she mistrusted these white men to the point at which she had recurrent nightmares in which John Brown and his sons figured as serpents. On the day of the raid, Harriet Tubman had a premonition that this was a lost cause. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

Charles Mackay’s LIFE AND LIBERTY IN AMERICA: OR, SKETCHES OF A TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA IN 1857-1858 (NY: Harper & Brothers) carefully defined how compatible racism and antislavery in fact were during this pre-Civil War era:

Language of the free North: We shall not make the black man a slave; we shall not buy him or sell him; but we shall not associate with him. He shall be free to live, and to thrive, if he can, and to pay taxes and perform duties; but he shall not be free to dine and drink at our board — to share with us the deliberations of the jury box — to sit upon the seat of judgment, however capable he may be — to plead in our courts — to represent us in the Legislature — to attend us at the bed of sickness and pain — to mingle with us in the concert-room, the lecture-room, the theatre, or the church, or to marry with our daughters. We are of another race, and he is inferior. Let him know his place — and keep it.

Dan Emmett was writing “Dixie’s Land,”194 which during the Civil War would be the most popular song, among Southern soldiers.

January: Robert Collyer asked to resign or was asked to resign from the Methodist Church, among the various points of contention being the total unacceptability of his antislavery posture. Hey, what’s the matter with you, don’t you know you’re a white man? He and his wife, facing a shortage of work, left Philadelphia.

194. To the north of his home town of Mount Vernon, Ohio there is a tombstone where two blacks are buried who had come to this region in 1827. The stone bears the following inscription:

THEY TAUGHT “DIXIE” TO DAN EMMETT

(The term “Dixie” had actually been in existence for almost a decade, as it had been introduced by a minstrel show in New-York.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1860

January 20, Friday: A Rhode Island “Copperhead” sympathizer with the Southern slavemasters wrote to a politician who had made a pro-south speech: “I know of no better way of preventing the spread of abolitionism than the very course which you adopted, viz by shewing the public of Rhode Island ... that their ancestors were engaged in the same ‘horrible crime’ of slave holding, and slave dealing, without any body doubting their claims to christianity or humanity.”

William Cooper Nell was appointed to a committee that was to sponsor the striking of the word “white” out of all statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Jan. 20. 2 P. M.—39°. Up Assabet. The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them! No sooner has fresh snow fallen and covered up the old crop than down comes a new supply all the more distinct on the spotless snow. Here comes a little flock of chickadees, attracted by me as usual, and perching close by boldly; then, descending to the snow and ice, I see them pick up the hemlock seed which lies all around them. Occasionally they take one to a twig and hammer at it there under their claws, perhaps to separate it from the wing, or even the shell. The snowy ice and the snow on shore have been blackened with these fallen cones several times over this winter. The snow along the sides of the river is also all dusted over with birch and alder seed, and I see where little birds have picked up the alder seed. At R.W.E.’s red oak I see a gray squirrel, which has been looking after acorns there, run across the river. The half-inch snow of yesterday morning shows its tracks plainly. They are much larger and more like a rabbit’s than I expected.

The squirrel runs in an undulating manner, though it is a succession of low leaps of from two and a half to three feet. Each four tracks occupy a space some six or seven inches long. Each foot-track is very distinct, showing the toes and protuberances of the foot, and is from an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters long. The clear interval between the hind and fore feet is four to five inches. The fore feet are from one and a half to three inches apart in the clear; the hind, one to two inches apart. I see that what is probably the track of the same squirrel near by is sometimes in the horseshoe form, i.e., when its feet are all brought close together:

the open side still forward. I must have often mistaken this for a rabbit. But is not the bottom of the rabbit’s foot so hairy that I should never see these distinct marks or protuberances? This squirrel ran up a maple till he got to where the stem was but little bigger than his body, and then, getting behind the gray-barked stem, which was almost exactly the color of its body, it clasped it with its fore feet and there hung motionless with the end of its tail blowing in the wind. As I moved, it steadily edged round so as to keep the maples always between me and it, and I only saw its tail, the sides of its body projecting, and its little paws clasping the tree. It remained otherwise perfectly still as long as I was thereabouts, or five or ten minutes. There was a leafy nest in the tree. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM March 6, Tuesday: Senator James Mason, chairman of the special Harpers Ferry / Secret “Six” committee, lost patience and had Thaddeus Hyatt arrested by the Senate Sergeant at Arms and brought before the body of the Senate. The Senate demanded to know why Hyatt had ignored the subpoena and whether Hyatt would now submit to the special committee.

Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln spoke on slavery in New Haven, Connecticut. In the course of this speech, always eager to display his humble roots to the American voters, the tall candidate posed a rhetorical question “What is the true condition of the laborer?” which enabled him to indulge in this penchant: “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.” Maybe he was merely someone else’s hired laborer “this year” but he could look forward to being his own boss “the next” and, eventually, due to our remarkable system of initiative, obtain persons of lesser initiative “to work for him.” This pyramid scheme the goal of which is alienating oneself from labor he presented as “the true system” for the generation of wealth. For, whether we will or not, the question of Slavery is the question, the all absorbing topic of the day. It is true that all of us - and by that I mean, not the Republican party alone, but the whole American people, here and elsewhere - all of us wish this question settled - wish it out of the way. It stands in the way, and prevents the adjustment, and the giving of necessary attention to other questions of national house-keeping. The people of the whole nation agree that this question ought to be settled, and yet it is not settled. And the reason is that they are not yet agreed how it shall be settled. All wish it done, but some wish one way and some another, and some a third, or fourth, or fifth; different bodies are pulling in different directions, and none of them having a decided majority, are able to accomplish the common object.... If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought Slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? ABOLITIONISM

March 6. 3 P. M. 44°. Fair and springlike, i. e. rather still for March, with some raw wind. Pleasant in sun. Going by Messer’s, I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers. They are more fearless than the song sparrow. These attract notice by their numbers and incessant twittering in a social manner. The linarias have been the most numerous birds the past winter. Mr. Stacy tells me that the flies buzzed about him as he was splitting wood in his yard to-day. I can scarcely see a heel of a snow-drift from my window. Jonas Melvin says he saw hundreds of “speckled” turtles out on the banks to-day in a voyage to Billerica for musquash. Also saw gulls. Sheldrakes and black ducks are the only ones he has seen this year. They are fishing on Flint’s Pond to-day, but find it hard to get on and off. C. hears the nuthatch. Jonas Melvin says that he shot a sheldrake in the river late last December. A still and mild moonlight night and people walking about the streets. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM October: A Rhode Island “Copperhead” sympathizer with the Southern slavemasters, critical of the abolitionists, wrote: “I consider that from the first, we are the aggressors — We are everlastingly assaulting them from the time Hoar was first sent to S Carolina.”

Captain Nathaniel Gordon, who had been caught redhanded engaging in the international slave trade, was arraigned before a New-York circuit court on this capital charge equivalent to piracy on the high seas. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

DEAD MAN WALKING

This pompous ass of a sea captain could easily have escaped, since he was paying his jailer $50 per day to let him roam the streets of New-York during the day — but instead he would choose to sit out his trial procedures, since he had complete confidence that nobody would really ever want to burn a white man’s ass merely for harming the lives of black people. After all, although what he had done had been a capital crime for two full generations of human life, in fact since January 1, 1812, nobody had ever ever ever so much as had their fingers slapped! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1861

August 1, Thursday: In England, John Anderson spoke in Spafields Chapel under the auspices of the London Emancipation Committee, at the annual commemoration of the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indies.

August 1, Thursday: Confederate President Jefferson Davis moved into the executive mansion in Richmond, Virginia. US CIVIL WAR

A pro-federal-union government was installed in Missouri.

In New Bedford, on this anniversary of the emancipation EMANCIPATION of the slaves of the British West Indies, Emancipation Day organizers and supporters had expanded their activities into a more political realm, as they lobbied for admission of blacks into the militia. ABOLITIONISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1862

June 20, Friday: According to a report that would appear in the New-York Tribune on the following day, a delegation of Progressive Friends called upon President Abraham Lincoln to present a memorial praying him to decree the emancipation (general manumission) of the slaves, which had been adopted at their annual meeting in the Religious Society of Friends. Members of the delegation were: Friend Thomas Garrett, Friend Alice Eliza Hambleton, Friend Oliver Johnson, Friend Dinah Mendenhall, Friend William Barnard, and Friend Eliza Agnew: The President was reported to have said that, as he had not been furnished with a copy of the memorial in advance, he could not be expected to make any extended remarks. It was a relief to be assured that the deputation were not applicants for office, for his chief trouble was from that class of persons. The next most troublesome subject was Slavery. He agreed with the memorialists, that Slavery was wrong, but in regard to the ways and means of its removal, his views probably differed from theirs.195 The quotation in the memorial, from his Springfield speech, was incomplete. It should have embraced another sentence, in which he indicated his views as to the effect upon Slavery itself of the resistance to its extension. The sentiments contained in that passage were deliberately uttered, and he held them now. If a decree of emancipation could abolish Slavery, John Brown would have done the work effectually. Such a decree surely could not be more binding upon the South than the Constitution, and that cannot be enforced in that part of the country now. Would a proclamation of freedom be any more effective? Friend Oliver Johnson was reported to have replied as follows: “True, Mr. President, the Constitution cannot now be enforced at the South, but you do not on that account intermit the effort to enforce it, and the memorialists are solemnly convinced that the abolition of Slavery is indispensable to your success.” The President was reported to have further said that he felt the magnitude of the task before him, and hoped to be rightly directed in the very trying circumstances by which he was surrounded. Wm. Barnard was reported to have addressed the President in a few words, expressing sympathy for him in all his embarrassments, and an earnest desire that he might, under divine guidance, be led to free the slaves and thus save the nation from destruction. In that case, nations yet unborn would rise up to call him blessed and, better still, he would secure the blessing of God. The President was reported to have responded very impressively, saying that he was deeply sensible of his need of Divine assistance. He had sometime thought that perhaps he might be an instrument in God’s hands of accomplishing a great work and he certainly was not unwilling to be. Perhaps, however, God’s way of accomplishing the end which the memorialists have in view may be different from theirs. It would be his earnest endeavor, with a firm reliance upon the Divine arm, and seeking light from above, to do his duty in the place to which he had been called. US CIVIL WAR

Frederick Palmer wrote from New Orleans to his sister in Connecticut: Good Morning Sister, ... A little boy about Franks age came in last night with a pair of handcuffs around his leg where his [owner] fastened him to keep from running away. They suffer very much. Do you pity them poor creatures? Do you ever think of them? How beautiful Montville must look ... I will imagine you preparing to sit down to write me a letter which I do not believe you are doing. Do not be afraid to write me all the news. Do you miss me at home? Do the neighbors ever inquire for me? 195. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward the prospect of an Emancipation Proclamation was that this would be, if it would be anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never would a man be more reluctant to come to the aid of his fellow. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

August 1, Friday: In New Bedford, on this anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves of the British West Indies, Emancipation Day organizers and supporters had expanded their activities into a more political realm, as they lobbied for admission of blacks into the militia. Nearly 1,000 people from New Bedford assembled at Myricks, where resolutions to that effect were proposed and passed by popular acclamation. EMANCIPATION DAY ABOLITIONISM

December: In its support for the armies of the Union, William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator was becoming more and more downright chauvinist –tendentiously ambiguous statements such as that “the true fight is only begun” – statements such as “Never was death more nobly laughed to scorn” (which would indicate were they to be taken with any seriousness that what soldiers were going out to the battlefields for was to be killed, rather than in order to kill others). ABOLITIONISM

Irish Catholic Archbishop John Joseph Hughes warned Secretary of State William H. Seward in general terms without naming the names of any of the penitents, of the sort of talk that was going down in the confessionals of his Catholic churches in the city of New-York. Some of his confessors were commenting that “their fighting” was fighting that was “to be done in the streets of this city.” Very clearly, the federal government was being made aware of the anti-draft white race riots that were about to begin. US CIVIL WAR

At the Gatling Gun Company factory in Indianapolis, Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling’s initial production run of 6 weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by fire. This was most unsettling for the good doctor, who had been able to persuade himself that by increasing the efficiency of war killing and thus making for himself a shit-pot full of money, he could decrease the war killing. Dr. Gatling would arrange for a 2d production run, of 13 of these weapons of mass destruction, to be manufactured at the Cincinnati Type Factory. GATLING’S MACHINE GUN HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1864

September 26, Monday: Waldo Emerson was getting righteously indignant about the Democratic party and its wild Irish element with their terror of black Americans, and indulging in the psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats, of getting with the popular northern war spirit of destroying people with a good conscience.

Take from it the wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty five years into this country, & led by Romish priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism, & you would bereave it of all its numerical strength.... This war has been conducted over the heads of all the actors in it: the foolish terrors– “what shall we do with the negro?” “the entire black population is coming north to be fed,” &c. have strangely ended in the fact, that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and all the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the natural ally & soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now takes the place of 200,000 soldiers; & will be, as this conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till peace, without slavery, returns. [American] Slaveholders in London have filled English ears with their wishes & perhaps beliefs...

ABOLITIONISM “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” — Aldous Huxley, CHROME YELLOW, 1922 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1950

Interracial marriage was at this point prohibited not just in Indiana but in 30 of our 48 states (this happened to be the same figure as for the year 1944; by the US Supreme Court ruling in 1967, 13 states would have repealed such laws). During this year the South African Union amended its 1927 “Immorality Act” to extend it to “Coloureds”; sexual intercourse or even “immoral or indecent acts” between whites and all nonwhite groups were prohibited; maximum punishment of seven years of hard labor, corporal punishment for men; the only exemptions allowed were for couples who had been legally married prior to the 1949 Act. “Sexual relations between persons of African, Coloured, and Asiatic origin were not forbidden by law.” According to Wauthier’s LITERATURE AND THOUGHT OF MODERN AFRICA, page 181, the official number of those found guilty from this enactment to June 1964 would exceed 5,000:

ETHNICITY MEN WOMEN

EUROPEANS 2,614 118

AFRICANS 119 1,208

COLOUREDS 76 1,072

ASIANS, MAINLY OF INDIAN ORIGIN 17 28

Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, two white historians of considerable repute for white audiences, delivered themselves of the opinion that “As for Sambo, whose wrongs moved the abolitionists to wrath and tears, there is some reason to believe that he suffered less than any other class in the South from its ‘peculiar institution.’” Since these gents didn’t specify what the “some reason” was, we may suspect that it may have been something like “they needed to be brought up to speed before they could manage things for themselves,” but we may also be aware that one of the recognized possibilities has been that the blacks, like the lower animals to which they are more closely related than us, like the lower animals, don’t feel pain the way we do, and thus can’t “suffer.”196 Oh, surely they couldn’t have meant that, right? –But we notice that this is one of the possibilities which are commonly recognized, and we note that the book in which they ventured this opinion was a book intended for general distribution, and we note that the authors made no gesture to exclude this from the range of possibilities. ABOLITIONISM

Actually, it is obvious what was going down. With the civil war over, abolitionism was a lost cause because it was no longer possible to use it as a club, to abuse and condemn Southern white slavemasters. There was no longer any psychic payoff for a white man to concern himself with the wellbeing of a person of color: “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” — Aldous Huxley, CHROME YELLOW, 1922

196. Professor Morison may have had a rather casual attitude toward lower beings. Once, when disturbed at his writing by the incessant barking of a neighbor’s dog, he simply went out and shot said dog. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1998

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. of North Andover, Massachusetts had some thoughts to offer about the antebellum abolitionists: Every schoolboy’s textbook portrays the nineteenth-century abolitionists as peace-loving American heroes, uniquely skilled in Constitutional interpretation and Biblical exegesis, and debated to something called “American ideals.” As with so much in standard American history texts, this characterization is not only false, but laughably so. To begin with, the abolitionists were never particularly concerned about avoiding war, and they habitually engaged in recklessly inflammatory rhetoric that was bound to alienate decent Southerners. William Lloyd Garrison, for example, once declared: “We would sooner trust the honor of our country ... in the hands of the inmates of our penitentiaries and prisons than in their hands.... [T]hey are the meanest of thieves and the worst of robbers.... We do not acknowledge them to be within the pale of Christianity or republicanism, or humanity!” Garrison’s comment may seem harsh, but compared to much of what the abolitionists had to say about the South, his remark is imbued with a spirit of sectional reconciliation. Historian Avery Craven was therefore on the mark when he concluded that hatred of the South had supplanted love for the Negro. The Old Guard, a Copperhead newspaper in New York, commented that among the “abolitionized” churches of New England, “far more time has been devoted to the generating of hatred against the people of the southern States than has been consumed in fostering the personal piety of the flocks committed to their charge.” Some of the more astute observers recognized that there was much more to the abolitionist crusade than merely the ending of slavery. The influential abolitionist George W. Julian of Ohio was frank about this: The abolition of poverty is the next work in order and the Abolitionist who does not see this fails to grasp the logic of the anti-slavery movement, and calls a halt to the inevitable march of progress.... The system of Southern slavery was the natural outgrowth of that generally accepted political philosophy which makes the protection of property the chief end of government. Charles Sumner had equally mischievous plans for postbellum society: to elevate the Declaration of Independence that it might “stand side by side with the Constitution, and enjoy with it coequal authority.” “Full well ... I know that in other days, when Slavery prevailed ... there was a different rule of interpretation,” Sumner conceded. This “different rule of interpretation,” which it pleased our Fathers to call “constitutionalism,” was far too restrictive to allow the kind of innovations of which the scheming Sumner dreamed. The war, he claimed, had established “a new rule of interpretation by which the institutions of our country are dedicated forevermore to Human Rights, and the Declaration of Independence is made a living letter instead of a promise.” Thus the statement that all men are created equal, condemned by John HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Randolph of Roanoke as a most pernicious falsehood, was to become the central organizing principle for the republic. It is to this polluted source that we may trace the scores of crusaders for equality from forced busing to affirmative action which have been visited upon us ever since. After centuries of bitter experience, it should now be clear that an abstract commitment to equality and human rights has away of degenerating into totalitarianism and mass murder. The Jacobins spoke glowingly about the Rights of Man during the French Revolution, all the while slaughtering their countrymen by the hundreds of thousands. “If you want to know the effect of metaphysical madness,” observed John Randolph of Roanoke, “look to the history of the French Revolution, and to the undoing of the country.” On an individual level, this was most spectacularly true in the case of John Brown. Several years before his raid on Harper’s Ferry, Brown and several other men killed and mutilated five men and boys in what became known as the Pottawatomie Creek massacre. The victims, who owned no slaves, were guilty of the high crime of having supported the Missouri faction in the dispute over the Kansas government, and had thus committed a thought crime against human rights. (They had “committed murder in their hearts,” Brown said.) Indiscriminate slaughter thus became a legitimate vehicle for vindicating human rights. Following Brown’s execution in 1859, church bells rang all across the North in honor of the fallen martyr. Emerson and Thoreau actually compared Brown to Christ himself. Louisa May Alcott referred to him as Saint John the Just. Among Northern literary figures, Nathaniel Hawthorne stood virtually alone in insisting that there was never a man more justly hanged. The Rev. Thomas Beecher, the conservative sibling of abolitionists Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, was horrified by the way abolitionists employed the Bible in the service of fanaticism. In the anti-slavery crusade, he wrote, the Bible is torn up to wad the guns of controversy. God’s truth ceases to be bread and becomes bullets. It created a particularly insufferable kind of self-righteousness one which made abolitionists capable of singing the words “His truth is marching on” as the South was being looted and burned. The direct results of abolitionist fanaticism include, at the very least: the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Americans, including civilians; the precedent-setting violation of nearly every norm of civilized warfare; the destruction of America’s constitutional order and the growth of a centralized State ‘a la Rousseau; and the conquest; physical, economic, and cultural, of the Southern states all to accomplish an end that was achieved by peaceful means elsewhere throughout our hemisphere. Any civilized man must recognize in the abolitionists not noble crusaders whose one flaw was a tendency toward extremism, but utterly reprehensible agitators who put metaphysical abstractions ahead of prudence, charity, and rationality. Indeed, with heroes like this, who needs villains? Mr. Woods holds a B.A. and an M.A.in history from Harvard and is a Founding member of the League of the South. Mr. Woods is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University. DixieNet™ is maintained by Apologia Services © Copyright 1995-1998, The League of the South, Inc., HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Tuscaloosa, Alabama, CSA. All rights reserved. Last revised on Tuesday, 3 November 1998.

Joanne Pope Melish had some thoughts on a similar topic, in DISOWNING SLAVERY: GRADUAL EMANCIPATION AND 1780-1860 (Ithaca, New York and London: Cornell UP): In the long and rich historiography of North American slavery, relatively few scholars have explored the subject of slavery in New England or the impact of slavery and emancipation in the region on the racial attitudes of New Englanders. Joanne Pope Melish’s book Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860 seeks, in her words, to put “slavery and the painful process of gradual emancipation back into the history of New England (p. 200).” Melish views as a blind spot the assumption by previous scholars that slavery in New England was peripheral to the economic, social, or political development of the region. She argues that New England slavery had a far more powerful impact on the thinking of New Englanders than they wanted to believe, and their longstanding view of the region as “free and white” has been a kind of historical amnesia, an effort to erase slavery and black people from the history of the region. That erasure of black people, she argues, resulted directly from white anxiety and confusion about how to view free blacks in their midst and what to do with or about them. Melish maintains that white New Englanders’ views of black people emerged directly from their experiences with blacks living in bondage and from their association of blackness with slavery. She writes that the unsettling process of gradual emancipation in the region after the American Revolution stirred white fears that disorderly blacks would threaten the new republic. Whereas blacks assumed that they would become free and independent citizens, whites assumed that blacks still needed to be controlled. She also argues that white people experienced anxiety about racial identity, freedom, and servitude, wondering if freedom would turn black people white and if white people could become slaves. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Melish writes, New England whites gradually resolved these questions by coming to regard blacks as inherently inferior and in need of control. She argues that a clear ideology of race thus first emerged in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century New England, in response to gradual emancipation. New Englanders, she argues, gradually came to view “racial” characteristics as immutable, inherited, and located in the body, and to view the black and white “races” as hierarchical and largely opposite in nature. Such a view permitted white New Englanders to seek to expel or erase black people, both literally and figuratively, from their region. Melish’s book makes an important contribution to the literature on slavery and abolition and fills a significant gap in our understanding of how slavery in New England affected both that region and the nation. Through her use of various local sources including town records, court records, slaveholders’ diaries, and the letters, narratives, and freedom petitions of slaves, Melish brings the reader into the world of Revolutionary-era New England masters and slaves. She illuminates their daily interactions and offers insightful interpretations of how masters and slaves each understood the meaning of slavery and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM emancipation. She makes a compelling case that slavery was indeed significant in the New England economy and society. Using, among other evidence, racist broadsides from the region, she also illustrates clearly the willingness of many white New Englanders to denigrate, harass, and seek to erase black people in the decades after the Revolution. While Melish is right that most white New Englanders probably did wish black people would go away in the years of the early republic, she may overstate the extent to which New England whites were in agreement on this. She correctly observes that many white New Englanders supported the movement to colonize blacks outside the United States, particularly in Africa. But New England also produced a movement for immediate abolition that was explicitly opposed to colonization and demanded the right of free blacks to live as free and equal citizens of the United States. William Lloyd Garrison of Boston was probably the best-known white abolitionist in the country after 1830, and he was also a passionate opponent of colonization and a strong champion of the rights of free blacks in North America. Free blacks loved Garrison. A host of other New England activists stood with him, demanding the inclusion of free blacks as equal citizens. If most New Englanders sought to expel or eliminate blacks from their midst, these radical abolitionists often embraced the freed slaves, sought to educate them, published their narratives, and even, as in the case of Frederick Douglass, hired them as abolitionist speakers. One goal of the abolitionist efforts was to show the public that black people were fully human, able to be educated, and deserving of all the rights that whites had. Thus, well into the nineteenth century, a segment of white New Englanders actively resisted the view that blacks were inherently inferior and different from whites, and they fought to educate blacks for life as full American citizens. If, as Melish argues, New England whites sought to eradicate blacks, this process was contested by some whites as well as blacks. Melish’s most important contribution may be to the emerging body of literature on how North Americans constructed and made use of an ideology of race. Here she pushes to locate precisely when and how Americans racialized difference and came to define blackness and whiteness as fixed, immutable, biological categories. Her answer, that this process took place in New England during gradual emancipation, is new and surprising. Melish suggests that New England was first in developing a new ideology of race because of its early experience with slave emancipation. However, the struggle to define the meaning of emancipation and the fundamental nature and place of blacks was also going on in the upper South. There, manumissions increased during and after the American Revolution, and the growing numbers of free blacks increased white anxiety. Indeed, anxiety there was more pronounced than in New England, because of the larger black population. Colonization was also very popular in the upper South, and much of the strongest and most persistent support for colonization came from that region. In contrast to New England, opponents of slavery in the upper South never embraced the idea that freed slaves ought to remain in the United States, and antislavery activists in the upper South always combined efforts at gradual emancipation with plans HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM for colonization. The process that Melish describes of racializing identity and seeking to expel blacks may thus have been taking place simultaneously in New England and the upper South. A comparative study of emancipation efforts in the two regions would be illuminating. Of course, the upper South did not achieve gradual emancipation, and over time, antislavery activism and even voluntary manumission there were largely choked off. Melish’s book takes the reader through the process by which white New Englanders, through their responses to slavery, emancipation, and black people, created the myth of themselves and their region as free and white. Melish’s angle of vision and her argument are both fresh, and she offers new insights and raises new questions about how the end of slavery led to a new construction of race in North America. This is a terrific book, one that all scholars of slavery, abolition, and the early republic absolutely must read. Enjoy this one; I certainly did. Copyright © 1998, H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission questions, please contact hbooks@h- net.msu.edu.

Tunde Adeleke’s UNAFRICAN AMERICANS: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLACK NATIONALISTS AND THE CIVILIZING MISSION (Lexington: UP of Kentucky). Key nineteenth-century American black nationalists —Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Henry McNeal Turner— are derisively portrayed in Tunde Adeleke’s UNAFRICAN AMERICANS. Professor Adeleke, educated at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and the University of Western Ontario and currently employed at Loyola University (New Orleans), argues that Delany, Crummell, and Turner —all occasional emigrationists who themselves sojourned in Liberia— were collaborators in the late-nineteenth-century imperialist ideas and policies that led to the colonization of most of Africa. Adeleke understands his subjects as reaching toward black nationalism, or pan-Africanism, but failing because of two conditions: First, relatively few African Americans endorsed or envisioned emigration to West Africa, so the theoreticians of resettlement lacked the audience that might have pushed them further into black nationalism. Second, European businessmen and governments were interested in the natural resources and cheap labor that Africa seemed to promise. Hence, Delany, Crummell, and Turner were led into collaboration with economic and military forces that the black men thought might serve their interests but soon proved to be powerful beyond their influence. The strength of UNAFRICAN AMERICANS is its author’s frank presentation of the anti-African, or civilizationist, face of its subjects. The weakness of the work is its blindness to the historical background of emigrationism. Adeleke begins his story around 1850, but many of the patterns he analyzes —including the roles individuals like Delany, Crummell, and Turner played in commerce, governance, and migration— were established between 1780 and 1830. The black nationalists’ beliefs and actions look less individual and more HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM structural, less idealistic and more self-serving, if we consider the earlier history. Moreover, the book conveys an overall uneasiness with the idea of black nationalism — an uneasiness the author does not confront but that is worth discussing in a review. Adeleke argues that, beginning with the approval of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, former integrationist Martin Robison Delany turned to Africa. Abandoning hope for liberty and self- governance for black people in the USA, Delany announced that African Americans could achieve civil rights in West Africa and, in 1859 and 1860, he traveled in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Niger Valley to arrange the future himself. In Abeokuta (birthplace of Wole Soyinka, Fela, and in the 1940s, a Nigerian women’s anti-collaborationist resistance movement) Delany contracted with local chiefs for land for African American settlers. Equality with indigenous peoples —whether cultural, economic, or political— was an impossibility for Delany, who was convinced that African American men would carry civilization, including Christianity, to West Africa and would be the governors of new states there. He thought that African American men could not achieve independence in isolation, but would rely on European markets for West African produce (cotton would be a prime export, he thought) and on cheap, indigenous labor for agricultural production. He envisioned what Adeleke acidly calls a “triple alliance” —collaboration among European industrialists, African American governors, and native laborers— in the development of new societies and commercial systems in West Africa. To this end, Delany traveled to Great Britain in 1860 and lectured to businessmen, scientists, and government officials about the value of African produce and the cheapness and availability of African labor. Tension between the American North and South in the 1850s gave him an opportunity to predict to British manufacturers the unreliability of the American cotton crop in the 1860s and to extol West African agricultural produce for manufacturers who needed steady sources of raw materials. He did argue that “legitimate” trade would muscle out the remnants of the slave trade. But his overwhelming vision was one of African workmen employed by African American settlers who traded with European manufacturers. As an episcopal priest, missionary, entrepreneur, “civilizationist,” and Delany’s host in Monrovia, Crummell could be seen as an even less attractive figure than Delany. Crummell presented West Africa as a field of rich natural resources waiting to be exploited by African Americans. He justified the use of violence against indigenous peoples, whether by African American settlers or Europeans. Not only did he assert the right of settlers to battle with native peoples, but he commended the Belgian government for its forceful moves against Africans in the Congo. (Adeleke does not note that other emigrations, like John Russwurm, saw the Americo-Liberian settlers as being in the same relationship that Englishmen had been with American Indians in the seventeenth century.) Moreover, Crummell argued that the slave trade and New World slavery were providential, were God’s way of preparing black people to enter the modern world of commerce, religion, and democratic governance. African American settlers, according to this argument, were divine instruments, forged in the New World, for civilizing and converting Africa. Turner, who went to Liberia some years after Delany and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Crummell, echoed their ideas about civilization and commerce, but with some significant variations. After the federal retreat from Reconstruction and the Supreme Court’s recision of civil rights extended in the 1870s to African Americans, Turner began to speak of “reparation” to blacks for the sufferings and inequities of enslavement. He demanded of the federal government $40 billion to fund the travel of African Americans to West Africa and start-up costs for their agricultural and mining concerns there. He criticized American isolationism, contrasting it to European focus on Africa. He traveled as bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to South Africa and congratulated the Boer settlers for bringing civilization to the native peoples there. Turner had an aptitude for the infelicitous phrase. One day, he wrote, “millions will thank heaven for the limited toleration of American slavery” (p. 101). Adeleke’s distaste for his subjects is evident throughout his book, but he is also sometimes sympathetic to them. He resists the easy road of stating that Delany, Crummell, and Turner were so enthralled by European civilization that they dismissed African culture and, indeed, Africans’ lives. Instead, he argues, more complexly, that the three men aimed for black nationalism but were hamstrung by their context (insufficient interest in settlement on the part of African Americans and overwhelming interest in commercial appropriation on the part of Europeans). They were at heart American integrationists who had little true interest in Africa and who returned to the USA as soon as they felt the political climate was hopeful there. Crummell, for instance, lived in Liberia only between 1853 and 1872. They never knew, Adeleke reasons, the Africa they betrayed and abandoned. Consideration of the seventy years before Adeleke begins his analysis reveals that his subjects’ anti-Africanism can be explained in another way. Efforts to quell the slave trade by means of “legitimate trade” began in the 1780s, but were neither purely pro-African in intent nor antislavery in practice. The Sierra Leone Company, for instance, envisioned African laborers “liberated” from their traditional societies and social leadership and busy producing raw material for British manufacture and consumption. The same laborers were to become consumers of British finished goods. The “legitimate trade” campaign actually strengthened the institution of slavery in areas where goods for the Atlantic trade could be produced. The goods were produced and transported not by independent farmers but often by slaves. The first generation of Americo-Liberian settlers knew this and sought to take advantage of it. From its inception in the 1820s, Liberia was meant to be a commercial colony utilizing cheap African labor. Despite the rhetoric of carrying civilization and religion to the natives and undermining the slave trade, the Americo-Liberians and their white supporters envisioned Monrovia as an entrepot that would shuttle American goods (including such slave-produced goods as tobacco, along with whiskey, cloth, glassware, and guns) to Africans while returning African goods (including such goods as palm oil, camwood, and ivory, harvested and transported to the coast by slaves) to the United States. Records of the blacks and whites who traveled to Liberia in the 1820s under the aegis of the American Colonization Society reveal that they knew that slave labor could produce tremendous wealth and had few HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM compunctions about dealing in slave-produced material even if they opposed the Atlantic slave trade. The violent disagreements between the Americo-Liberian settlers and the native groups, beginning in the mid-1820s, are usually described as disputes about land possession, but it is at least as likely that they were disputes about the misuse of local laborers by the settlers. Even less fortunate than the locals who ended up working for the settlers were the “recaptives,” who were rescued from slavers at sea only to be indentured to Americo-Liberian settlers. A tradition of the misuse of laborers would of course result in the investigation in the 1920s by the League of Nations the result of which was that Liberian officials were condemned for profiting from the unfree labor of indigenous people. The Americo-Liberian colonist is usually understood in American historiography as an abolitionist or freedom fighter, but he was really a middleman attempting to shuttle goods produced by unfree or semi-free black people to the Atlantic economy. He was someone who transferred the value of the labor of black people, often enslaved, to a larger economic system, hoping to retain a portion for himself. Perhaps a good example is Lott Cary, who is often seen as a black Virginian preacher and abolitionist who sought a greater freedom in Liberia. In the early nineteenth century, Cary was a hired slave in a Richmond tobacco warehouse — exactly the person through whose hands the value of slave labor passed. In the 1820s, he sailed to Monrovia, ostensibly as a missionary (one of his nineteenth-century hagiographers conceded that there was no evidence that he ever preached to the natives), but actually with plans to settle himself as an entrepreneur moving goods between the USA and areas around Monrovia. The move to Liberia was meant primarily to improve his position as a middleman. He became a scourge of the natives and died in a gunpowder explosion as he was preparing for one of many assaults on them. The large question, of course, is why someone like Cary has persistently gotten good press as an American freedom fighter. The importance of Cary and early Liberia for Adeleke’s book is that the role of middleman between black labor (whether it was cheap, semi-free, or slave) and the Euro-American economy was an established one into which men like Delany, Crummell, and Turner fell easily. It was part of the structure of the Atlantic world, not merely a choice Delany and company made. Although black nationalist rhetoric might be a part of it —Cary indeed said he was going to found a black nation— the role was essentially economic and suggested no abolitionist implications at all. Often skilled people with some experience of economic advancement, the Americo-Liberian settlers, about 13,000 between 1822 and 1865, migrated in an effort to ratchet up their positions in the Atlantic economy by availing themselves of indigenous land and labor. Perhaps the most accurate way to describe the American black nationalists of the mid-nineteenth century is that they stood at the interface of slavery and imperialism, drawing their assumptions about labor and markets from the past while gesturing toward the future forms of commerce and governance they understood only imperfectly. Crummell earns particular scorn in UNAFRICAN AMERICANS for the lengths to which he was willing to pursue the providential argument that God had planned the slave trade and New World slavery as instruments of a great good — the Christianizing and HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM civilizing of Africa. The use of this providential argument in the 1860s was even worse than Adeleke relates, since it had been a standard application of theodicy to the slave trade and to slavery in the eighteenth century, but by the second half of the nineteenth century had lost its respectability. Had Crummell articulated the providential argument about a century earlier, as did Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, James Albert Ukawasw Gronniosaw, Lemuel Haynes, and Phillis Wheatley, he would have been in the black avant-garde, which was using providentialism to argue for its own role in the Atlantic world, but in his time he was at best out of date, at worst in bad faith. Crummell’s use of providence was entirely self-serving and out of line with mid-to-late-nineteenth-century Anglican theology. The omnipotent, omniscient God of the Protestant Reformation was an overruling deity who brought good out of evil by overruling the sins of humankind with events He wills to be. The most obvious example was the overruling of the Crucifixion by the Resurrection: the Reformed God worked in human affairs by bringing good out of evil. However, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century British Protestants began criticizing the idea that God works through human sin and suffering. Central to Arminian religion was the claim that suffering was not part of the divine plan. The older idea of a God who wounds with one hand and heals with the other (as the Puritans put it) retreated in the end of the eighteenth century into theology branded derisively the “New Divinity” and often called “hyper-Calvinism” or “consistent Calvinism.” This discredited theodicy did have one value to Crummell in exalting the person who could perceive and articulate the providential design in human suffering. Probably Crummell’s pronouncements on the divine design in the slave trade and slavery were not the defense of “religious optimism” (p. 102) against the pain of racism, but rather an effort to situate himself as the major interpreter both of centuries of the slave trade and enslavement and of the establishment of black settlers societies in West Africa. Unfortunately, Adeleke does not treat reparations in depth, but mentions the idea only as part of Turner’s program that had not appeared in Delany’s or Crummell’s. But one assumes that had he written more he would have argued that as an idea reparations signify an effort to deal with the costs of slavery, but in practice they are liable to become the property of elites like Turner. Funds for the establishment of a governing, entrepreneurial class of African Americans in West Africa can scarcely be seen as an honest effort at reparations. UNAFRICAN AMERICANS shows an uneasiness with black nationalism, or pan-Africanism, that Adeleke does not seek to resolve. On the one hand, the author assumes that black nationalism, or pan- Africanism, in the sense of ideas and practices predicated on the unity of black people throughout the world and aimed at their common good, does exist and can be embodied in a state as well as articulated in a philosophy. Delany, Crummell, and Turner, Adeleke reasons, moved toward black nationalism but reached only an impure form of it. Black nationalism, or pan-Africanism, can inhere in an African state as well as in the hearts and minds of diasporic blacks. On the other hand, the author’s arguments imply the opposite — that there is no unity among black people and that African states are not embodiments of black nationalism. Hence, on the one hand, Adeleke writes that “a HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM truly Pan-African and black nationalist program is one propelled by conscious efforts to harmonize, theoretically and practically, blacks in the diaspora and in the African continent” (p. 145) and “the spirit of Pan-Africanism ... emphasizes, a priori, solidarity between Africa and peoples of African descent in the diaspora” (p. 151). Yet, on the other hand, he acknowledges complexity, diversity, and conflict among black people and states that “to expect of black American nationalists absolute and unswerving commitment to Africanism and Pan-Africanism is unrealistic” (p. 148). A good example of the author’s irresolution is his argument that in “the articulation and defense of black/African interests” against European imperialism “one area of success was Liberia.” In reality, Liberia expanded its borders through aggression, provided unfree laborers for rubber plantations, and degenerated into various tribal and settler factions that have poisoned the country with carnage and mayhem. It is true that Adeleke addresses only a slice of Liberian history, but one questions the integrity of thinking about Liberia in the imperialist decades without also considering the colonizing decades as well as the years in which Nigerian-dominated ECOMOG forces intervened in Liberian politics in the name of stability. Adeleke’s comments about black and African interests and Liberia’s “success” are strange. Here, Delany and company are small fry: the real questions are the legitimacy of black nationalist philosophy and the legitimacy of African states that have relied upon it. If Adeleke is representative of current thinking about black nationalism, the philosophy is probably in much the same situation as American republicanism was in the post- Revolutionary years. A revolutionary ideology made virtually no allowance for differences and conflict among the white population and used various blunt instruments to exclude blacks and Indians from political life. Growth in the population, in the economy, and in the size of the nation blew away the revolutionary ideology forever and pulled forward a middle-class democracy in which diversity is accepted and in which the government must be responsive to a mass of politically-active citizens. Minority groups like blacks and Indians did not advance to equality quickly, but democracy has fostered their advancement in the long run. As democracy grew out of republicanism, older ideals like the mental and moral unity of the citizens (what Karl Popper called the mark of a closed society) were replaced by pragmatic notions like adaptation, inclusion, progress, and toleration (what Popper called the standard of an open society). Perhaps tomorrow’s black nationalism will grow out of today’s (or yesterday’s) just as democratic ideology grew out of republicanism. Acceptance of diversity and different interests among black people could reform black nationalist philosophy, and a reformed black nationalism could deflate the rhetoric of center and unity as well as guide a worthwhile political culture in nations like Liberia. Although he is not mentioned in UNAFRICAN AMERICANS, Wole Soyinka, one suspects, is the giant behind the book, particularly in his arguments about the importance of transcending the ideas and the politics of centralization while still maintaining the African nation-states that were formed in HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM the imperialist and nationalist decades. John Saillant. “Review of Tunde Adeleke, UNAFRICAN AMERICANS: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLACK NATIONALISTS AND THE CIVILIZING MISSION.” http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/ showrev.cgi?path=25398919184889. Copyright © 1999, H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission questions, please contact hbooks@h- net.msu.edu.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

1999

Kitson, Peter, et al, eds. SLAVERY, ABOLITION AND EMANCIPATION: WRITINGS IN THE BRITISH ROMANTIC PERIOD (London: Pickering and Chatto), 8 volumes. ABOLITIONISM EMANCIPATION HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

2005

September: According to Simon Schama’s ROUGH CROSSINGS: BRITAIN, THE SLAVES AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (BBC), our Southern colonies such as Virginia, the Carolinas, etc. engaged in the American Revolution during 1775-1778 “first and foremost to protect slavery” from the winds of the abolitionist movement in England. Damn them, they were trying to free the slaves of our Land of Liberty!

Boy oh boy, has this Brit, Simon Schama, ever gotten it wrong! He must be one of those America-haters we’ve been hearing so much about. All we have to do to reassure ourselves that this was not the way it went down is go see the latest Hollywood movie about the Revolutionary War in the southern Colonies, entitled The Patriot. Mel Gibson doesn’t own the blacks on his plantation: they confess that they are working for him, actually, because he is such a swell guy. A black employee named Occam fights alongside him for freedom. The movie shows us how a white boy explained to Occam that he needed to enlist in the effort to drive away the British, so that these southern Colonies could create a “new world” in which all men were to be created equal. All he needs to do, he is informed, is serve the revolution for one year, and he will be legally a free man. In the movie the black character, told this, nods sagely. Hey, pictures don’t lie! HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM

2006

September: Wendy’s announced that its french fries would henceforward be trans fat-free. The New York City health department proposed elimination of trans fats in Gotham’s restaurants.

A review appeared in [email protected] of a book on colonization as the “peculiar solution” for American slavery, Eric Burin’s SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION: A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY (Southern Dissent Series. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005). The review, by Eugene VanSickle of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, sparked off an interesting discussion:

What Is to Be Done? During the Early Republic, Americans struggled to address the paradox of slavery and freedom. This dichotomy prompted numerous debates and wild schemes designed to address the existence of slavery in a society based on individual freedom. Among the reform-minded societies that came out of such discussions was the American Colonization Society. This society addressed this paradox through the plan of African colonization. Eric Burin’s study of the American Colonization Society (ACS) is the latest interpretation of the African colonization movement and the actions of that organization at the local level. Part of the Southern Dissent series edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller, its title, as most scholars will note, appears a play on Kenneth Stampp’s THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION (1956). The study focuses on “colonization’s relationship with slavery ... from two vantage points. First, it gauges the movement’s effect on black bondage by providing a panoramic overview of the colonization crusade; second, it scrutinizes ACS activities as they played out at the local level” (page 2). The emphasis on ACS activities at the local level in the South is the most important contribution this study makes, as most studies tend to look at the colonization movement from the national perspective. Burin delves into the debate regarding the true purpose of the ACS, suggesting that “colonization tended to undermine slavery” (page 2). Thus, his examination returns the ACS and African colonization to the antislavery interpretation. Such an assertion is problematic, which Burin admits. Historians have attempted to fit the ACS into a particular mold since the 1920s. Nonetheless, his study is probably the first since P.J. Staudenraus’s THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT (1961) to place the society in the antislavery circle.197 The suggestion that colonization was a crusade against slavery is, arguably, an exaggeration. The vast majority of colonizationists supported the movement in hopes of keeping slavery (and the debate over it) from destroying the Union. Many accepted the Jeffersonians’ proposition that slavery was doomed for extinction anyway; colonization would only aid in the eventual outcome. This thought process did not change much until after Nat Turner’s Rebellion, the Virginia Debates of 1832, and the Nullification Crisis. Most white Americans believed that the republic would fall if there were two free races, especially if 197. Staudenraus argued that the ACS was a humanitarian organization. P.J. Staudenraus, THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT, 1816-1865 (Columbia: Columbia UP, 1961). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM one of those races was denied political and social rights. Colonization offered a solution to this dilemma. Burin recognizes this fact: “The enterprise’s longevity and salience partly stemmed from its malleability: the venture certainly meant different things to different people” (page 33). It remains difficult to see colonization as a crusade, especially when John Randolph and Henry Clay, both founding members, insisted that the ACS not address the issue of slavery at all.198 Nonetheless, the membership of prominent slaveholders in the ACS, as well as the number of slaves manumitted for colonization, does imply dissent against slavery in the South. Burin further locates the true base of support for colonization in the Upper South and Border States. He also demonstrates the influence of revolutionary ideology in the discussion regarding slavery and colonization. The ideals of the revolution were most important to the post-revolution generation. For example, Burin turned to Charles Fenton Mercer, whom he credits with “laying the groundwork for the establishment of the ACS.” Mercer was a southern modernizer “who wished to replace the slave-based agrarian economy with a free-labor, commercial-industrial one” (page 13). There were, indeed, many men similar to Mercer, and to place the impetus for the ACS’s formation on him ignores prominent northern figures such as the Reverend Robert S. Finley from New Jersey. These men looked to an industrial society based on free labor; they sought also to preserve the Union. Colonization was the means to do both and address the question of their time — the fate of slavery and African descendants in America. One quite interesting question that Burin addresses is why colonizationists thought that they could succeed at settling African Americans outside the United States (pages 20-21). Burin cites historian William Freehling’s explanation that the era under examination provided no evidence that the scheme would not work. In the context of the mass migration then occurring in the Atlantic world, ACS supporters had no reason to think that they could not re-settle African Americans. Burin suggests that the problem with the thesis is that Freehling did not consider the realities of colonization at the local level (page 21). Thus, Burin returns to his study’s real contribution to the scholarship on this topic. Colonization was not a simplistic endeavor that effortlessly moved colonists across the Atlantic. Situations at the local level complicated and slowed emigration, making ACS efforts less tenable in reality. For example, Burin finds that liberated slaves in urban areas generally opposed emigration to Liberia; thus, the ACS targeted rural areas. Colonizationists encountered problems there, however, as slaveholders faced scorn and sometimes worse from neighbors (page 36). Moreover, by the early 1830s a rift emerged “between the Upper South men who dominated the powerful board of managers, and the northerners who filled many important positions in the organization” (page 23), which worked against the ACS. The conflict was primarily over the public image of the ACS and its position on slavery. Burin also points out that a split occurred in the movement because of poor fiscal management, which further slowed the organization’s progress (page 24).

198. Staudenraus, THE AFRICAN COLONIZATION MOVEMENT, pages 28-29; AFRICAN REPOSITORY, 1 (October 1825): 225, and 1 (January 1826): 335. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Another significant contribution of Burin’s study is his examination of manumissions in the South. Burin notes that the vast majority of individual manumissions in the early colonization period took place in the Upper South (page 36). Of greater interest, however, is his conclusion that the number of manumissions also depended on whether slaveholders lived in urban or rural areas. Manumission was much more difficult, he contends, in rural areas. Burin then proceeds to discuss the factors that influenced slaveholders’ decisions. This is an important part of the study, as no other study (that the reviewer is aware of) has differentiated manumissions specifically for colonization in such a way. That a greater number occurred in the Upper South is not surprising. Northern, free neighboring states had larger immigrant populations, which Burin mentions, specifically the Germans who moved into the western regions of Maryland and later West Virginia. These people had little to tie them to the institution of slavery. In addition, a considerable factor was the industrialization of growing urban centers such as Baltimore. The emergence of the market economy, the transition to mixed agriculture, and the loss of political influence in the Chesapeake region weakened slavery’s hold there. Maryland had the largest (proportionally adjusted) free black population in the country. Further, soil depletion and the migration of planters’ sons to western territories contributed to the declining numbers of slaves in the state and, of course, higher numbers of manumissions (pages 37-40). Burin further differentiates ACS manumissions by examining programs employed by some larger slaveholders. He emphasizes that programs such as those promoted by John McDonogh, a Louisiana slave owner, actually aided in controlling slave populations. The promise of literacy in preparation for emigration and freedom in Africa, Burin argues, gave slaveholders an added element of control over their slaves. The potential pitfall of using slaveholding emancipators like McDonogh as a model, however, is that they were atypical. Burin relied on other historical collections; nonetheless, he seems to place more emphasis on McDonogh than on other slave owners. McDonogh’s plan was to provide education and training that would allow the soon-to-be-freedmen to carry the gospel to Africa, among other things, while profiting from their labors for additional years (page 41). His slaves, in fact, financed their emigration. He also did not release all of his slaves for colonization by the ACS. Slaves freed in such programs, Burin notes, were also predominantly adult males. This practice arguably increased control over slave populations (page 43). Yet, this example is perhaps not so profound given the preference of all the colonization societies for adult males in their colonies, especially those known to be industrious and obedient. Adult males would not drain social resources; adult males would develop the colonies more quickly, allowing increasing numbers to be sent; finally, adult males were most likely to make the colonies prosperous, which would lure free African Americans whose position in the United States, economically and socially, was tenuous. The numbers of African Americans transported, and little else, measured success for most white Americans supportive of colonization. Adult males were the most needed group in the colonies for these objectives to be met. Burin either ignores this fact or views the social HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM control that manumission programs gave to slaveholders as more important. Another of Burin’s contentions that scholars will certainly debate is that “ACS liberations were not instances of complaisant slaves dutifully working toward freedom, as white colonizationists originally expected. Rather, they were the product of tenacious negotiations that fundamentally recast slaveholders’ manumission plans” (page 58). In short, Burin suggests that slaves weighed offers of manumission on condition of emigration carefully to exploit the offers to their best advantage (page 59). In assessing these offers, Burin’s study explores the types of information slaves considered, as well as the sources of that information. Scrutiny was necessary as colonizationists manipulated accounts from the colony to best serve their purposes (pages 70-73). That such activities occurred is not surprising. Auxiliary societies and ACS publications were geared more towards white society because colonizationists relied on white America for the money to cover colonization, place pressure on the government to support the movement, emancipation, and the diffusion of information to African Americans. Burin in fact makes these points (chapter 4) in examining the role of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society in the larger movement the ACS led. The Pennsylvania Colonization Society (PCS), Burin contends, contributed most to the ACS objective by working hard to get funds (pages 79-80). This theme is not given the prominence it deserved in a chapter mostly about the organizational goals of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society and its members’ wishes to help emancipate slaves. While the interpretation fits within the argument that the ACS was an antislavery organization, there was considerable tension between the Pennsylvania society and the ACS — that tension no doubt a factor in the PCS’s joining the New York society in 1838 to promote their own colony in Africa. The chapter also returns to the theme of colonizationists “rationalizing” (page 86) negative reports from Africa for the benefit of the movement. Again, historians need to consider the audience as much as the agenda for this state auxiliary. The PCS appealed to a white audience appalled by the growth in the free black population in Pennsylvania — that is what motivated them to donate money to promote manumission of slaves for emigration. They had to believe that freedom was going to be accompanied by emigration — “a constant theme in discussions of individual manumission and general emancipation” (page ix). The role of the PCS in the context of this study seems overstated. Opinions about the ACS and colonization as well as the success of the organization depended on the “location of the manumission, the magnitude of the emancipating operation, and the observer’s proximity to the enterprise” (page 100). The farther south one went and the greater the slave population, the more the resistance to the movement, especially after 1832. That a full third of the manumissions took place in Virginia (page 101) supports Burin’s assessment that support for colonization was strongest in the Border States. His examination of who was most likely to emancipate slaves for emigration will prove useful as will his analysis of the problems agents had in getting potential colonists to port (pages 105-110). That opposition to colonization increased in the South as the Civil War approached HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM is not a profound observation, however. Colonizationists’ true failure was in containing the debate over slavery at the national level — one of the goals supporters established when the movement began. Burin also addresses the legal questions raised by colonization- driven manumission. The two pressing legal questions dealt with whether the state had the power to circumscribe slaveholders’ property rights (disowning slaves) and if the state would sanction slave agency (bondsmen being able to choose) in ACS operations (page 121). The former was a question colonizationists’ founding members recognized in 1816. Part of the reason they did not publicly address the question of slavery was their reluctance to interfere “with the legal rights and obligations of slavery.”199 Burin traces these legal questions throughout the period under review and finds that legal opposition tended to increase as tensions over slavery traversed the national discourse. To no one’s surprise, Upper South judges found in favor of the slaveholders and colonization, while further south, jurists eventually moved to repudiate the notion that slaves could choose between slavery in the United States and freedom in Africa (page 136). The final chapter analyzes the experience of freepersons in Liberia. This subject is very well documented with other studies. That settlers’ experiences varied is clear from their correspondence to the colonization societies or to former masters. Many were disappointed while many others were satisfied with their new homes. Still others preferred a hard existence where they were truly free to a life of degradation in American society. Aside from showing that the settlers’ negative accounts hurt colonizationists’ recruiting efforts, this chapter seemed unrelated to the rest of the study, particularly if the overriding conclusion is that the ACS was an antislavery organization. The conclusion ends the study by suggesting, “Colonization played a vital role in the Civil War” (page 160). That Lincoln was a supporter of colonization is well known. The degree to which he pursued it is probably less so. While tracing the evolution of Lincoln’s notion of colonization, what seems most clear in this portion of the analysis is that the Civil War removed colonization from the national spotlight as a solution to the slavery problem. The vital role of colonization in the war itself is unclear other than the fact that Lincoln clearly went through an evolution of his position on both colonization and slavery as well as what the war would ultimately be about. Certainly, the war and colonization did little to solve the real question — what was to be done with the African American? His strong evidence notwithstanding, historians will undoubtedly contest the overall conclusions of Burin’s work. Likewise, the notion that colonization was a peculiar solution to slavery will spark debate, especially given the prevalence of auxiliary societies that sprang up around the nation after the ACS was created in 1816. That does not mean, however, that THE PECULIAR SOLUTION is without merit. Ultimately, this is a study of how some white Americans struggled to resolve the great American paradox of freedom and slavery while giving finality to the question about the racial future of the United States. Burin makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the 199. AFRICAN REPOSITORY 1 (January 1826): 335. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM subject of colonization and slavery in the era before the Civil War. The true strength of the book is its examination of colonization at the state level. Here he shows the complexities of colonization as well as the problems facing slaveholders who dared to free their bondsmen. Yet, if the colonization movement was peculiar for anything, it was probably more so for its longevity. The ACS did, after all, continue to thrive and send African Americans to Liberia long after the peculiar institution’s demise. Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: [email protected].

Reply to Eugene VanSickle, by Eric Burin Many authors have sat bewildered after reading reviews of their books, wondering if the work under consideration was really their own. As Professor Kirsten Wood noted on H-SHEAR last year, “an author’s idea of what her book is ‘really about’ does not necessarily determine how readers perceive it.”200 The likelihood of misinterpretation is particularly high when the work concerns the nineteenth century colonization movement, a subject that has generated heated debate among historians. Scholars who write about colonization may not tread “dark and bloody ground,” but the field has landmines aplenty. For the most part, Dr. VanSickle, in reviewing SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION, has navigated the turf well, ably summarizing the organization and arguments of the book. At the same time, however, VanSickle’s review did not escape unscathed, as I explain below. In a strange way, VanSickle offers SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION high praise. According to VanSickle, the book’s arguments about slaves’ deliberations over emigration are “not surprising.” Its insights regarding local responses to ACS manumissions are not “profound observation[s].” Its analysis of the legal conundrums posed by ACS liberations should come “to no one’s surprise.” So why are these compliments? Because the literature on these subjects is not extensive, and to declare novel arguments banal is to pay the highest of tributes. “No duh” is another way of saying “case closed.” And yet, despite its putatively mundane character, VanSickle concludes that “historians will undoubtedly contest the overall conclusions” of SLAVERY AND THE P ECULIAR S OLUTION. A book both prosaic and problematic? Like the colonization movement, VanSickle’s review is full of contradictions. VanSickle’s review is reminiscent of the colonization movement in other ways. Indeed, there is a curious similarity between nineteenth century colonizationists and the scholars who study them: some scholars, like the colonizationists, often hold convictions so strongly that they remain impervious to evidence and arguments that challenge their preconceived notions. 200. Kirsten E. Wood responds to review of MASTERFUL WOMEN: SLAVEHOLDING WIDOWS FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR H-SHEAR (May 10, 2005). HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM Consider the question of how reports from Liberia influenced the colonization movement in America. Clearly, settler accounts not only shaped the thinking of would-be emancipators and prospective emigrants, they also irked proslavery southerners who protested as scores of Liberian letters, sojourners, recruiters, and refugees circulated through the South. There is abundant evidence on the matter, yet VanSickle opines that the chapter on Liberia is unrelated to the rest of the book, that it does not bear on the question of the ACS’s impact on slavery. Proslavery southerners knew better. As Edmund Ruffin seethed in 1859, when colonizationists urged would-be manumittees to emigrate, bad things happened: “Such lessons, when designed to operate on one individual, and even without having direct effect on that one, may reach hundreds of others, to the injury of their contentment, and their worth as laborers and slaves.”201 Finally, there’s the matter of historiography. I am not, as VanSickle suggests, the first scholar since Philip Staudenraus (1961) to argue that colonization undermined slavery. While many Civil Rights Era historians questioned the ACS’s antislavery credentials, more recent scholars have reconsidered the matter. William Freehling, Douglas Egerton, Peter Onuf, and Elizabeth Varon, among many, many others, have analyzed the ways in which colonization impaired (and aided) slavery. To overlook their important work would be remiss. Put another way, I wrote SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION while standing on the shoulders of giants. And I had a lot of company up there. In the past few years, there has been an outpouring of scholarship on colonization. Since 2000, seven books have been published on the subject, not to mention a host of articles and dissertations. With the hope of abetting work on colonization, I would like to call H-net subscribers’ attention to my ACS Database, which contains information on 560 ACS emancipators, the 6,000 slaves they liberated, the 9,000 free blacks who also moved to Liberia, the counties in which they resided, and the emigrants’ experiences in Africa. Ultimately, I will put this database on the Web. In the meantime, I would be happy to provide data for H-net members who are working on the colonization movement. In conclusion, I would like to thank H-SHEAR, Dr. VanSickle, and all the scholars who have helped me over the years, giant or otherwise. ======From: “Charles Irons” I learned a great deal from Eric Burin’s SLAVERY AND THE PECULIAR SOLUTION and was therefore disappointed to read Professor VanSickle’s clumsy review. Professor VanSickle makes two, related missteps in his comments. First, while he recognizes the importance of Burin’s treatment of “ACS activities at the local level,” he substantially ignores that contribution in his review. Second, he oversimplifies Burin’s characterization of the ACS as an antislavery organization. Burin acknowledges the well-known proslavery convictions of Randolph and Clay but shows that the ACS could be functionally antislavery in its operation no matter how compromised the emancipationist message was from those at the center. Colonization was often functionally antislavery precisely 201. De Bow’s Review 27 (July 1859): 65. HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM because of those “activities on the local level” which VanSickle ignores. Each manumission, as Burin shows, pulled scores of black and white Southerners into a series of negotiations about the fate of the manumittee. As Burin puts it, “The tug-and-pull between slaves, their owners, and other parties rendered their liberations logistically complex, financially troublesome, legally complicated, and, at times, socially disruptive enterprises. ... Like pebbles dropped in water, ACS manumissions rippled outward, destabilizing slavery in their wake” (5). VanSickle wants to put colonization firmly in the proslavery column. Burin, on the other hand, acknowledges ideological diversity in the movement’s leadership. Moreover, he shows how manumitted men and women so complicated colonization’s operations on the local level that colonization often assumed an antislavery character in spite of itself. Charles Irons Elon University ======From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] I am concerned that much is being missed in this discussion of the ACS — mainly, the fact that African Americans (with a few exceptions that have been well documented) responded to the ACS very strongly, extensively, and negatively. Any discussion of the ACS’s efforts that does not try to understand black opposition on its own terms is incomplete. Burin mentions very briefly that most African Americans did not support colonization, but if we are asking whether it was an emancipatory organization, we must explore fully the critiques by free black spokespeople of the ACS. It is obvious that if most free blacks opposed it, it can hardly be called unequivocally antislavery; slavery was, as the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, insisted, a central issue for both free and enslaved blacks in the United States. African Americans of the time were not simply making general statements about colonization but very thoroughly critiqued the ACS’s positions in detail; these arguments are extant for scholars to study (and there is also secondary literature on the topic). If we are truly to understand the ACS’s effects on slavery and freedom, we must read antebellum blacks’ arguments against it. What emerges from such an examination is clear: the ACS cannot be considered antislavery unless a very narrow (and basically meaningless) definition of “antislavery” is adopted that would not fit with how most antebellum African Americans saw slavery or how most scholars of African American history view it. Slavery, black abolitionists stressed, was not just a matter of individual manumissions and terms of bondage — it was a system, an institution. So to say that any organization was antislavery that did not treat slavery as an institution is to adopt a narrow perspective that renders the term “antislavery” meaningless. As most of us know, individual judges in various locales freed some slaves sent into their courts and kept others in bondage. Were these judges “antislavery” when they freed certain slaves? No — they just saw each case individually and supported slaves in some cases, slaveholders in others. So, too, with the ACS HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM manumissions. African Americans made the point clearly and unequivocally that the ACS’s fundamental contention — that African Americans could never be full citizens of the United States — was offensive and racist. They also argued that it was a perspective that enabled, if not endorsed slavery. Because this perspective apologized for and enabled racism, it was part of the system of slavery that oppressed all African Americans, slave and free. They also argued clearly that even if some people were freed, the fact that they then were sent to Liberia meant that those still in bondage lost some potential support (since free blacks were advocates for slaves). It is problematic to suggest that the ACS could be antislavery even though there were slaveholders with prominent positions. Nineteenth-century African Americans responded to this argument, which was often made by ACS apologists, clearly and unequivocally: it was misleading and disingenuous. An early contributor to Freedom’s Journal remarked, “Any plan, which implies in our brethren or their descendants, inferiority, or carries with it the idea that they cannot be raised to respectable standing in this country . . . is wholly at war with our best interests, and we cannot view the Advocates of such sentiments, in any other light, than that of enemies, whatever their principles may be.” Because ACS rhetoric continually described African Americans negatively, this contributor said, it was “increasing prejudice” and “retarding the cause of emancipation.” Free blacks did not see themselves or their enslaved brethren as individuals whose bondage or freedom in each case stood alone. They saw themselves as part of a community, slave and free, with the effects on one group impinging on the lives and experiences of the other. African Americans believed fundamentally that even if some individual slaves were freed by the ACS, the overall prejudice and oppression that was at the root of the organization’s philosophy made the situation in the United States worse for all free and enslaved blacks. In addition, the coercive aspect of the organization should not be overlooked; by arguing that only in Africa could American blacks be free, whites apologized for oppression and excused themselves from trying to change the racist institutions of the United States. This view did not allow blacks to be seen as free agents or as citizens. As another contributor to Freedom’s Journal argued, there was no need to spend “money in colonizing free people in Africa,” since they are already “free at home” and can, “if not satisfied here,” on their own “go where they may think best.” It is troubling to me that despite the admonitions of prominent scholars such as Nathan Huggins and John Hope Franklin, scholarship about nineteenth-century reform efforts directed at blacks does not fully consider their views. Burin does look at the views of those who did emigrate about their own freedom and their prospects, but an understanding of blacks’ views on the larger issue are necessary if we are to make any generalizations about the organization. The majority of African Americans who opposed colonization addressed the central question we seem to be now focused on with the ACS — was it antislavery in theory, practice, or function? Free blacks did not stand by while the ACS argued about their futures — they argued back, and in their HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM full discussions we can learn about what effect the organization had on them, on prejudice, and on slavery. There is much that is interesting and useful in Burin’s account — particularly the individual stories of manumissions and the focus on local histories. Both of these areas (local histories, narratives of ordinary people) are important to historians and interesting to readers. But to make an assessment of the ACS as “antislavery” is to take a leap — a leap which requires ignoring African Americans’ strong arguments that prove otherwise. It also raises the question of why some seem to be, almost two hundred years after its formation, concerned with casting an organization in a positive light whose rhetoric and plans were (and continue to be in their modern iterations) so offensive and detrimental. Jacqueline Bacon, Independent Scholar www.jacquelinebacon.com ======From: Clayton E. Cramer [mailto:[email protected]] >From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] African Americans made the point clearly and unequivocally that the ACS’s fundamental contention — that African Americans could never be full citizens of the United States — was offensive and racist. They also argued that it was a perspective that enabled, if not endorsed slavery. Because this perspective apologized for and enabled racism, it was part of the system of slavery that oppressed all African Americans, slave and free. They also argued clearly that even if some people were freed, the fact that they then were sent to Liberia meant that those still in bondage lost some potential support (since free blacks were advocates for slaves). It is problematic to suggest that the ACS could be antislavery even though there were slaveholders with prominent positions. While I understand Jackie’s concern, her point seems to be that because the ACS was built on racist assumptions, and served the interests of slaveholders, it could not be an antislavery organization. I am not sure that this is correct. Even among those who strongly opposed slavery there were many (especially in the early Republic period) who held assumptions of black racial inferiority that caused them to back colonization. Today, these ideas seem frighteningly reactionary; at the time, with white racial superiority a rising idea among intellectuals across the Western world, it was not at all difficult for some opponents of slavery to see the prospect of full racial equality as impossible. Even Jefferson, prone to what I would call excessive optimism about the potential for rational behavior by the masses, made that point: that the history of abuse under slavery and the white fear of retribution would preclude a society free and equal. Now, you can ascribe that to a slaveholder trying to justify in his own mind the maintenance of a system that prepared his meals, grew his crops, and kept his bed warm at night, but even among abolitionists with nothing to prevent them from looking in the mirror in the morning, you can see this widespread belief that the races were unequal, and would always be so — and yes, I’m thinking of UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, whose most “manly” blacks are those of mixed blood. Here’s a suggestion for another way to consider the ACS: a HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM confederation of Americans who buried their differences about slavery long enough to concentrate on what they perceived as a worthy goal — returning blacks to Africa. This would not be the first time that unlikely allies have come together on such matters. Consider the way in which the 1808 ban on imports came about, with a devil’s brew of abolitionists (who were morally opposed to slavery); slave owners who managed to rationalize HOLDING slaves, and even selling them from state to state — but found international slave trading objectionable; and those slave breeders who expected to make a good bit of money by passing what was effectively protectionist legislation, wiping out the cheap competition of fresh imports. Clayton E. Cramer [email protected] ======>From: Jackie Bacon [mailto:[email protected]] I am concerned that much is being missed in this discussion of the ACS — mainly, the fact that African Americans (with a few exceptions that have been well documented) responded to the ACS very strongly, extensively, and negatively. Any discussion of the ACS’s efforts that does not try to understand black opposition on its own terms is incomplete. Burin mentions very briefly that most African Americans did not support colonization, but if we are asking whether it was an emancipatory organization, we must explore fully the critiques by free black spokespeople of the ACS. It is obvious that if most free blacks opposed it, it can hardly be called unequivocally antislavery; slavery was, as the editors of Freedom’s Journal, the first black newspaper, insisted, a central issue for both free and enslaved blacks in the United States. [much sensible material cut] >But to make an assessment of the ACS as “antislavery” is to take a leap — a leap which requires ignoring African Americans’ strong arguments that prove otherwise. It also raises the question of why some seem to be, almost two hundred years after its formation, concerned with casting an organization in a positive light whose rhetoric and plans were (and continue to be in their modern iterations) so offensive and detrimental. I think Jackie’s argument points to the problem of trying to make the issue “pro” or “anti” slavery. Certainly, African Americans saw the project as relentlessly proslavery, in the specific sense that it strengthened the racial and legal hierarchies necessary to slavery. Meanwhile, however, many defenders of slavery perceived the colonization movement as antithetical to slavery and synonymous with abolitionism. Their argument (when they made one) was that it accepted the premise that slavery was bad. Like most political issues, slavery is not one that is well- captured through any kind of binary opposition. Some scholars have used taxonomies like “anti-slavery,” “anti- anti-slavery,” “proslavery.” Colonization would be in the category of “anti- anti-slavery.” But, I’m not sure that really helps — it’s almost as though one needs a matrix. One axis would be for how bad one thinks slavery is; another axis for how committed one is to a pragmatic policy that might actually end it. So, colonization HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM would be medium in terms of criticism of slavery, but no higher than rabid proslavery rhetors in terms of a realistic policy. (Personally, I like Kenneth Burke’s use of the term “prim irony” (for southerners who bemoaned a racism from which they benefitted and about which they did nothing). In my snarkier moments, I use the term “conscience swot” for colonization because it enabled people to feel better about themselves while not actually having any impact on the institution of slavery. I think colonization bears the same relation to abolition that self-proclaimed “white moderates” had to the Civil Rights movement. They were in its way.) For the authors about whom Jackie is writing, abolition of slavery was necessarily connected to civic inclusion of African Americans; the goal of colonization was explicitly to keep those two policies separated. More profoundly, colonization was about dealing with slavery in a way that wouldn’t upset the apple cart — racially, economically, or politically. It may have been mildly anti-slavery in sentiment (a claim about which I’m dubious), but it was proslavery in consequence. — Trish Roberts-Miller [email protected] ======From: Mark E. Dixon [mailto:[email protected]] “More profoundly, colonization was about dealing with slavery in a way that wouldn’t upset the apple cart — racially, economically, or politically.” The problem with upsetting apple carts is that they tend to fall on people. Like most, perhaps, I have some knowledge of historical niches that have caught my interest, but can’t claim comprehensive knowledge of anything. My peculiar little passion is Quaker history, so I know something of how some Quakers were — for a time — involved in colonization and why they later withdrew. Let’s consider a brief outline of their involvement in ACS. Quakers were slaveholders — even slave traders — in the colonial period, but through the 18th Century gradually evolved toward anti-slavery. By the Revolutionary era, the yearly meetings up and down the East Coast were making slaveowning a disownable offense. This was comparatively easy in states like Pennsylvania where the idea that one could be both black and free was well- established and a sizeable community of free blacks existed. It was not so easy in southern states in which it was illegal to free a slave. When North Carolina Quakers began to free their slaves, for instance, the 1777 legislature toughened an earlier (1741) law that manumissions were permissible only for meritorious service and that the slaves thus freed had to leave the state within six months or be seized and resold. The 1777 amendment allowed illegally freed slaves to be picked up and resold immediately. For 50 years, North Carolina Quakers got around this law by making the church itself the blacks’ owner of record while allowing them to live freely — or at least as freely as possible, given the time and place. In 1827, however, a North Carolina Supreme Court decision broke through the subterfuge. Writing for the majority, the chief justice wrote, “When Quakers hold slaves, nothing but the name is wanting to render it at once a complete emancipation.” The HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM court ruled that, since Quakers’ opposition to slavery was well known, neither Quakers as individuals nor their meetings could be slaveowners. In the face of these facts, what were the North Carolina Quakers and their “property” to do in 1827? The Quakers didn’t want to be slaveowners and the blacks didn’t want to be slaves. Should the Quakers have swallowed their qualms to prevent the blacks from being sold to worse masters? Should the blacks have asked the Quakers to take them back for the same reason? Should the blacks have abandoned their family ties and moved to free states (which didn’t want them either)? Given the situation, I think it’s not surprising that North Carolina Quakers threw themselves into alliance with ACS. They sent agents to explain the colonization plan to blacks (who could choose to go, or not) and Quakers across the country helped raise money for it. According to 19th Century historian Stephen Weeks, relations with ACS were so intimate that North Carolina Yearly Meeting was practically its “collection agency.” Several Quaker-funded ships left North Carolina ports, including the “Nautilus” which, in 1832, carried 164 emigrants to Liberia from the counties of Perquimans, Pasquotank and Wayne. I have no doubt that black leaders of the era probably frowned on all this. They were focused on upsetting the “apple cart” — specifically on fighting slavery as an institution and creating a place for free blacks in America. Sending blacks out of the country wouldn’t further those goals. That’s what leaders do: Focus on the big picture and discount the effect on individuals. Individuals, however, do what is best for themselves. In the case of many North Carolina blacks “owned” by Quakers, colonization seemed like the best alternative. I can’t fault their decision, or those who helped them. Mark E. Dixon, www.markedixon.com HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2016. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: October 4, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX

ABOLITIONISM ABOLITIONISM the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.