The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus · Chapter 99Part 99
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
[Footnote A: The NATIONAL ENQUIRER, edited by Benjamin Lundy, has been converted into the PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN, edited by John G. Whittier. Mr. Lundy proposes to issue the GENIUS OF UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION, in Illinois.]
From the data I have, I set down the newspapers, as classed above, at upwards of one hundred. Here it may also be stated, that the presses which print the abolition journals above named, throw off besides, a great variety of other anti-slavery matter, in the form of books, pamphlets, single sheets, &c, &c, and that, at many of the principal commercial points throughout the free states, DEPOSITORIES are established, at which our publications of every sort are kept for sale. A large and fast increasing number of the Political journals of the country have become, within the last two years, if not the avowed supporters of our cause, well inclined to it. Formerly, it was a common thing for most of the leading party-papers, especially in the large cities, to speak of the abolitionists in terms signally disrespectful and offensive. Except in rare instances, and these, it is thought, only where they are largely subsidized by southern patronage, it is not so now. The desertions that are taking place from their ranks will, in a short time, render their position undesirable for any, who aspire to gain, or influence, or reputation in the North.
"11. To what class of persons do you address your publications--and are they addressed to the judgment, the imagination, or the feelings?"
ANSWER.--They are intended for the great mass of intelligent mind, both in the free and in the slave states. They partake, of course, of the intellectual peculiarities of the different authors. Jay's "INQUIRY" and Mrs. Child's "APPEAL" abound in facts--are dispassionate, ingenious, argumentative. The "BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY," by the most careful and laborious research, has struck from slavery the prop, which careless Annotators, (writing, unconscious of the influence, the prevailing system of slavery throughout the Christian world exercised on their own minds,) have admitted was furnished for it in the Scriptures. "Wythe" by a pains-taking and lucid adjustment of facts in the history of the Government, both before and after the adoption of the Constitution, and with a rigor of logic, that cannot, it is thought, be successfully encountered, has put to flight forever with unbiased minds, every doubt as to the "Power of Congress over the District of Columbia."
There are among the abolitionists, Poets, and by the acknowledgment of their opponents, poets of no mean name too--who, as the use of poets is, do address themselves often--as John G. Whittier does always--powerfully to the imagination and feelings of their readers.
Our publications cannot be classed according to any particular style or quality of composition. They may characterized generally, as well suited to affect the public mind--to rouse into healthful activity the conscience of this nation, stupified, torpid, almost dead, in relation to HUMAN RIGHTS, the high theme of which they treat!
It has often been alleged, that our writings appeal to the worst passions of the slaves, and that they are placed in their hands with a view to stir them to revolt. Neither charge has any foundation in truth to rest upon. The first finds no support in the tenor of the writings themselves; the last ought forever to be abandoned, in the absence of any single well authenticated instance of their having been conveyed by abolitionists to slaves, or of their having been even found in their possession. To instigate the slaves to revolt, as the means of obtaining their liberty, would prove a lack of wisdom and honesty that none would impute to abolitionists, except such as are unacquainted with their character. Revolt would be followed by the sure destruction, not only of all the slaves who might be concerned in it, but of multitudes of the innocent. Moreover, the abolitionists, as a class, are religious--they favor peace, and stand pledged in their constitution, before the country and heaven, to abide in peace, so far as a forcible vindication of the right of the slaves to their freedom is concerned. Further still, no small number of them deny the right of defence, either to individuals or nations, even when forcibly and wrongfully attacked. This disagreement among ourselves on this single point--of which our adversaries are by no means ignorant, as they often throw it reproachfully in our teeth--would forever prevent concert in any scheme that looked to instigating servile revolt. If there be, in all our ranks, one, who--personal danger out of the question--would excite the slaves to insurrection and massacre, or who would not be swift to repeat the earliest attempt to concoct such an iniquity--I say, on my obligations as a man, he is unknown to me.
Yet it ought not to be matter of surprise to abolitionists, that the South should consider them "fanatics," "incendiaries," "cut-throats," and call them so too. The South has had their character reported to them by the North, by those who are their neighbors, who, it was supposed, knew, and would speak the truth, and the truth only, concerning them. It would, I apprehend, be unavailing for abolitionists now to enter on any formal vindication of their character from charges that can be so easily repeated after every refutation. False and fraudulent as they knew them to be, they must be content to live under them till the consummation of the work of Freedom shall prove to the master that they have been his friends, as well as the friends of the slave. The mischief of these charges has fallen on the South--the malice is to be placed to the credit of the North.
"12. Do you propagate your doctrines by any other means than oral and written discussions--for instance, by prints and pictures in manufactures--say of pocket-handkerchiefs, calicoes, &c? Pray, state the various modes?"
ANSWER.--Two or three years ago, an abolitionist of this city procured to be manufactured, at his own charge, a small lot of children's pocket-handkerchiefs, impressed with anti-slavery pictures and mottoes. I have no recollection of having seen any of them but once. None such, I believe, are now to be found, or I would send you a sample. If any manufactures of the kinds mentioned, or others similar to theta, are in existence, they have been produced independently of the agency of this society. It is thought that none such exist, unless the following should be supposed to fall within the terms of the inquiry. Female abolitionists often unite in sewing societies. They meet together, usually once a week or fortnight, and labor through the afternoon, with their own hands, to furnish means for advancing the cause of the slave. One of the company reads passages from the Bible, or some religious book, whilst the others are engaged at their work. The articles they prepare, especially if they be of the "fancy" kind, are often ornamented with handsomely executed emblems, underwritten with appropriate mottoes. The picture of a slave kneeling (such as you will see impressed on one of the sheets of this letter) and supplicating in the words, "AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER," is an example. The mottoes or sentences are, however, most generally selected from the Scriptures; either appealing to human sympathy in behalf of human suffering, or breathing forth God's tender compassion for the oppressed, or proclaiming, in thunder tones, his avenging justice on the oppressor. A few quotations will show their general character:--
"Blessed is he that considereth the poor."
"Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and the needy; rid him out of the hand of the wicked."
"Open thy mouth for the dumb, plead the cause of the poor and needy."
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."
"First, be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."
Again:--
"For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper."
"The Lord looseth the prisoners; the Lord raiseth them that are bowed down; the Lord preserveth the strangers."
"He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised."'
"For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."
Again:--
"The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed."
"Rob not the poor because he is poor, neither oppress the afflicted in the gate; for the Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that spoiled them."
"And I will come near to you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts."
"Wo unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work."
Fairs, for the sale of articles fabricated by the hands of female abolitionists, and recommended by such pictures and sentences as those quoted above, are held in many of our cities and large towns. Crowds frequent them to purchase; hundreds of dollars are thus realized, to be appropriated to the anti-slavery cause; and, from the cheap rate at which the articles are sold, vast numbers of them are scattered far and wide over the country. Besides these, if we except various drawings or pictures on paper, (samples of which were put up in the packages you ordered a few days ago,) such as the Slave-market in the District of Columbia, with Members of congress attending it--views of slavery in the South--a Lynch court in the slave-states--the scourging of Mr. Dresser by a vigilance committee in the public square of Nashville--the plundering of the post-office in Charleston, S.C., and the conflagration of part of its contents, &c, &c, I am apprised of no other means of propagating our doctrines than by oral and written discussions.
"13. Are your hopes and expectations of success increased or lessened by the events of the last year, and especially by the action of this Congress? And will your exertions be relaxed or increased?"
ANSWER.--The events of the last year, including the action of the present Congress, are of the same character with the events of the eighteen months which immediately preceded it. In the question before us, they may be regarded as one series. I would say, answering your interrogatory generally, that none of them, however unpropitious to the cause of the abolitionists they may appear, to those who look at the subject from an opposite point to the one they occupy, seem, thus far, in any degree to have lessened their hopes and expectations. The events alluded to have not come altogether unexpected. They are regarded as the legitimate manifestations of slavery--necessary, perhaps, in the present dull and unapprehensive state of the public mind as to human rights, to be brought out and spread before the people, before they will sufficiently revolt against slavery itself.
1. They are seen in the CHURCH, and in the practice of its individual members. The southern portion of the American church may now be regarded as having admitted the dogma, that slavery is a Divine institution. She has been forced by the anti-slavery discussion into this position--either to cease from slaveholding, or formally to adopt the only alternative, that slaveholding is right. She has chosen the alternative--reluctantly, to be sure, but substantially, and, within the last year, almost unequivocally. In defending what was dear to her, she has been forced to cast away her garments, and thus to reveal a deformity, of which she herself, before, was scarcely aware, and the existence of which others did not credit. So much for the action of the southern church as a body.--On the part of her MEMBERS, the revelation of a time-serving spirit, that not only yielded to the ferocity of the multitude, but fell in with it, may be reckoned among the events of the last three years. Instances of this may be found in the attendance of the "clergy of all denominations," at a tumultuous meeting of the citizens of Charleston, S.C., held in August, 1835, for the purpose of reducing to system their unlawful surveillance and control of the post-office and mail; and in the alacrity with which they obeyed the popular call to dissolve the Sunday-schools for the instruction of the colored people. Also in the fact, that, throughout the whole South, church members are not only found on the Vigilance Committees, (tribunals organized in opposition to the laws of the states where they exist,) but uniting with the merciless and the profligate in passing sentence consigning to infamous and excruciating, if not extreme punishment, persons, by their own acknowledgment, innocent of any unlawful act. Out of sixty persons that composed the vigilance committee which condemned Mr. Dresser to be scourged in the public square of Nashville, TWENTY-SEVEN were members of churches, and one of them a professed Teachers of Christianity. A member of the committee stated afterward, in a newspaper of which he was the editor, that Mr. D. had not laid himself liable to any punishment known to the laws. Another instance is to be found in the conduct of the Rev. Wm. S. Plumer, of Virginia. Having been absent from Richmond, when the ministers of the gospel assembled together formally to testify their abhorrence of the abolitionists, he addressed the chairman of the committee of correspondence a note, in which he uses this language:--"If abolitionists will set the country in a blaze, it is but fair that they should have the first warming at the fire."--"Let them understand, that they will be caught, if they come among us, and they will take good heed to keep out of our way." Mr. P. has no doubtful standing in the Presbyterian church with which he is connected. He has been regarded as one of its brightest ornaments.[A] To drive the slaveholding church and its members from the equivocal, the neutral position, from which they had so long successfully defended slavery--to compel them to elevate their practice to an even height with their avowed principles, or to degrade their principles to the level of their known practice, was a preliminary, necessary in the view of abolitionists, either for bringing that part of the church into the common action against slavery, or as a ground for treating it as confederate with oppressors. So far, then, as the action of the church, or of its individual members, is to be reckoned among the events of the last two or three years, the abolitionists find in it nothing to lessen their hopes or expectations.
[Footnote A: In the division of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, that has just taken place, Mr. Plumer has been elected Moderator of the "Old School" portion.]
2. The abolitionists believed, from the beginning, that the slaves of the South were (as slaves are everywhere) unhappy, because of their condition. Their adversaries denied it, averring that, as a class, they were "contented and happy." The abolitionists thought that the argument against slavery could be made good, so far as this point was concerned, by either admitting or denying the assertion.
Admitting it, they insisted, that, nothing could demonstrate the turpitude of any system more surely than the fact, that MAN--made in the image of God--but a little lower than the angels--crowned with glory and honor, and set over the works of God's hands--his mind sweeping in an instant from planet to planet, from the sun of one system to the sun of another, even to the great centre sun of them all--contemplating the machinery of the universe "wheeling unshaken" in the awful and mysterious grandeur of its movements "through the void immense"--with a spirit delighting in upward aspiration--bounding from earth to heaven--that seats itself fast by the throne of God, to drink in the instructions of Infinite Wisdom, or flies to execute the commands of Infinite Goodness;--that such a being could be made "contented and happy" with "enough to eat, and drink, and wear," and shelter from the weather--with the base provision that satisfies the brutes, is (say the abolitionists) enough to render superfluous all other arguments for the instant abandonment of a system whose appropriate work is such infinite wrong.
Denying that "the slaves are contented and happy," the abolitionists have argued, that, from the structure of his moral nature--the laws of his mind--man cannot be happy in the fact, that he is enslaved. True, he may be happy in slavery, but it is not slavery that makes him so--it is virtue and faith, elevating him above the afflictions of his lot. The slave has a will, leading him to seek those things which the Author of his nature has made conducive to its happiness. In these things, the will of the master comes in collision with his will. The slave desires to receive the rewards of his own labor; the power of the master wrests them from him. The slave desires to possess his wife, to whom God has joined him, in affection, to have the superintendence, and enjoy the services, of the children whom God has confided to him as a parent to train them, by the habits of the filial relation, for the yet higher relation that they may sustain to him as their heavenly Father. But here he is met by the opposing will of the master, pressing his claims with irresistible power. The ties that heaven has sanctioned and blessed--of husband and wife, of parent and child--are all sundered in a moment by the master, at the prompting of avarice or luxury or lust; and there is none that can stay his ruthless hand, or say unto him, "What doest thou?" The slave thirsts for the pleasures of refined and elevated intellect--the master denies to him the humblest literary acquisition. The slave pants to know something of that still higher nature that he feels burning within him--of his present state, his future destiny, of the Being who made him, to whose judgment-seat he is going. The master's interests cry, "No!" "Such knowledge is too wonderful for you; it is high, you cannot attain unto it." To predicate happiness of a class of beings, placed in circumstances where their will is everlastingly defeated by an irresistible power--the abolitionists say, is to prove them destitute of the sympathies of our nature--not human. It is to declare with the Atheist, that man is independent of the goodness of his Creator for his enjoyments--that human happiness calls not for any of the appliances of his bounty--that God's throne is a nullity, himself a superfluity.
But, independently of any abstract reasoning drawn from the nature of moral and intelligent beings, FACTS have been elicited in the discussion of the point before us, proving slavery everywhere (especially Southern slavery, maintained by enlightened Protestants of the nineteenth century) replete with torments and horrors--the direst form of oppression that upheaves itself before the sun. These facts have been so successfully impressed on a large portion of the intelligent mind of the country, that the slaves of the South are beginning to be considered as those whom God emphatically regards as the "poor," the "needy," the "afflicted," the "oppressed," the "bowed down;" and for whose consolation he has said, "Now will I arise--I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him."
This state of the public mind has been brought about within the last two or three years; and it is an event which, so far from lessening, greatly animates, the hopes and expectations of abolitionists.
3. The abolitionists believed from the first, that the tendency of slavery is to produce, on the part of the whites, looseness of morals, disdain of the wholesome restraints of law, and a ferocity of temper, found, only in solitary instances, in those countries where slavery is unknown. They were not ignorant of the fact, that this was disputed; nor that the "CHIVALRY OF THE SOUTH" had become a cant phrase, including, all that is high-minded and honorable among men; nor, that it had been formally asserted in our National legislature, that slavery, as it exists in the South, "produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth." Nor were the abolitionists unaware, that these pretensions, proving anything else but their own solidity, had been echoed and re-echoed so long by the unthinking and the interested of the North, that the character of the South had been injuriously affected by them--till she began boldly to attribute her peculiar superiority to her peculiar institution, and thus to strengthen it. All this the abolitionists saw and knew. But few others saw and understood it as they did. The revelations of the last three years are fast dissipating the old notion, and bringing multitudes in the North to see the subject as the abolitionists see it. When "Southern Chivalry" and the purity of southern society are spoken of now, it is at once replied, that a large number of the slaves show, by their color, their indisputable claim to white paternity; and that, notwithstanding their near consanguineous relation to the whites, they are still held and treated, in all respects, as slaves. Nor is it forgotten now, when the claims of the South to "hospitality" are pressed, to object, because they are grounded on the unpaid wages of the laborer--on the robbery of the poor. When "Southern generosity" is mentioned, the old adage, "be just before you are generous," furnishes the reply. It is no proof of generosity (say the objectors) to take the bread of the laborer, to lavish it in banquetings on the rich. When "Southern Chivalry" is the theme of its admirers, the hard-handed, but intelligent, working man of the North asks, if the espionage of southern hotels, and of ships and steamboats on their arrival at southern ports; if the prowl, by day and by night, for the solitary stranger suspected of sympathizing with the enslaved, that he may be delivered over to the mercies of a vigilance committee, furnishes the proof of its existence; if the unlawful importation of slaves from Africa[A] furnishes the proof; if the abuse, the scourging, the hanging on suspicion, without law, of friendless strangers, furnish the proof; if the summary execution of slaves and of colored freemen, almost by the score, without legal trial, furnishes the proof; if the cruelties and tortures to which citizens have been exposed, and the burning to death of slaves by slow fires,[B] furnish the proof. All these things, says he, furnish any thing but proof of true hospitality, or generosity, or gallantry, or purity, or chivalry.
[Footnote A: Mr. Mercer, of Virginia, some years ago, asserted in Congress, that "CARGOES" of African slaves were smuggled into the southern states to a deplorable extent. Mr. Middleton, of South Carolina, declared it to be his belief, that THIRTEEN THOUSAND Africans were annually smuggled into the southern states. Mr. Wright, of Maryland, estimated the number at FIFTEEN THOUSAND. Miss Martineau was told in 1835, by a wealthy slaveholder of Louisiana, (who probably spoke of that state alone,) that the annual importation of native Africans was from THIRTEEN THOUSAND to FIFTEEN THOUSAND. The President of the United States, in his last Annual Message, speaking of the Navy, says, "The large force under Commodore Dallas [on the West India station] has been most actively and efficiently employed in protecting our commerce, IN PREVENTING THE IMPORTATION OF SLAVES, &c."]
[Footnote B: Within the last few years, four slaves, and one citizen of color, have been put to death in this manner, in Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas.]
Certain it is, that the time when southern slavery derived countenance at the North, from its supposed connection with "chivalry," is rapidly passing away. "Southern Chivalry" will soon be regarded as one of the by-gone fooleries of a less intelligent and less virtuous age. It will soon be cast out--giving place to the more reasonable idea, that the denial of wages to the laborer, the selling of men and women, the whipping of husbands and wives in each others presence, to compel them to unrequited toil, the deliberate attempt to extinguish mind, and, consequently, to destroy the soul--is among the highest offences against God and man--unspeakably mean and ungentlemanly.
The impression made on the minds of the people as to this matter, is one of the events of the last two or three years that does not contribute to lessen the hopes or expectations of abolitionists.
4. The ascendency that Slavery has acquired, and exercises, in the administration of the government, and the apprehension now prevailing among the sober and intelligent, irrespective of party, that it will soon overmaster the Constitution itself, may be ranked among the events of the last two or three years that affect the course of abolitionists. The abolitionists regard the Constitution with unabated affection. They hold in no common veneration the memory of those who made it. They would be the last to brand Franklin and King and Morris and Wilson and Sherman and Hamilton with the ineffaceable infamy of attempting to ingraft on the Constitution, and therefore to perpetuate, a system of oppression in absolute antagonism to its high and professed objects, one which their own practice condemned,--and this, too, when they had scarcely wiped away the dust and sweat of the Revolution from their brows! Whilst abolitionists feel and speak thus of our Constitutional fathers, they do not justify the dereliction of principle into which they were betrayed, when they imparted to the work of their hands any power to contribute to the continuance of such a system. They can only palliate it, by supposing, that they thought, slavery was already a waning institution, destined soon to pass away. In their time, (1787) slaves were comparatively of little value--there being then no great slave-labor staple (as cotton is now) to make them profitable to their holders.[A] Had the circumstances of the country remained as they then were, slave-labor, always and every where the most expensive--would have disappeared before the competition of free labour. They had seen, too, the principle of universal liberty, on which the Revolution was justified, recognised and embodied in most of the State Constitutions; they had seen slavery utterly forbidden in that of Vermont--instantaneously abolished in that of Massachusetts--and laws enacted in the New-England States and in Pennsylvania, for its gradual abolition. Well might they have anticipated, that Justice and Humanity, now starting forth with fresh vigor, would, in their march, sweep away the whole system; more especially, as freedom of speech and of the press--the legitimate abolisher not only of the acknowledged vice of slavery, but of every other that time should reveal in our institutions or practices--had been fully secured to the people. Again; power was conferred on Congress to put a stop to the African slave-trade, without which it was thought, at that time, to be impossible to maintain slavery, as a system, on this continent,--so great was the havoc it committed on human life. Authority was also granted to Congress to prevent the transfer of slaves, as articles of commerce, from one State to another; and the introduction of slavery into the territories. All this was crowned by the power of refusing admission into the Union, to any new state, whose form of government was repugnant to the principles of liberty set forth in that of the United States. The faithful execution, by Congress, of these powers, it was reasonably enough supposed, would, at least, prevent the growth of slavery, if it did not entirely remove it. Congress did, at the set time, execute one of them--deemed, then, the most effectual of the whole; but, as it has turned out, the least so.
[Footnote A: The cultivation of cotton was almost unknown in the United States before 1787. It was not till two years afterward that it began to be raised or exported. (See Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Feb. 29, 1836.)--See Appendix, D.]
The effect of the interdiction of the African slave-trade was, not to diminish the trade itself, or greatly to mitigate its horrors; it only changed its name from African to American--transferred the seat of commerce from Africa to America--its profits from African princes to American farmers. Indeed, it is almost certain, if the African slave-trade had been left unrestrained, that slavery would not have covered so large a portion of our country as it does now. The cheap rate at which slaves might have been imported by the planters of the south, would have prevented the rearing of them for sale, by the farmers of Maryland, Virginia, and the other slave-selling states. If these states could be restrained from the commerce in slaves, slavery could not be supported by them for any length of time, or to any considerable extent. They could not maintain it, as an economical system, under the competition of free labor. It is owing to the non-user by Congress, or rather to their unfaithful application of their power to the other points, on which it was expected to act for the limitation or extermination of slavery, that the hopes of our fathers have not been realized; and that slavery has, at length, become so audacious, as openly to challenge the principles of 1776--to trample on the most precious rights secured to the citizen--to menace the integrity of the Union and the very existence of the government itself.