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[[handwritten text on side of paper: "25.00" "E. RICHARDS" "2016.166.41.12"]] [[double line]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] THE LIBERATOR --IS PUBLISHED-- EVERY FRIDAY MORNING, --AT THE-- ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, 21 CORNHILL. [[line]] ROBERT F. WALLCUT, General Agent. [[line]] [[manicule punctuation mark]] TERMS--Two dollars and fifty cents per annum, in advance. [[manicule punctuation mark]] Five copies will be sent to one address for TEN DOLLARS, if payment be made in advance. [[manicule punctuation mark]] All remittances are to be made, and all letters relating to the pecuniary concerns of the paper are to be directed, (POST PAID,) to the General Agent. [[manicule punctuation mark]] Advertisements making less than one square inserted three times for 75 cents--one square for $1.00. [[manicule punctuation mark]] The Agents of the American, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan Anti-Slavery Societies are authorised to receive subscriptions for THE LIBERATOR. [[manicule punctuation mark]] The following gentlemen constitute the Financial Committee, but are not responsible for any of the debts of the paper, viz:--FRANCIS JACKSON, ELLIS GRAY LORING, EDMUND QUINCY, SAMUEL PHILBRICK, and WENDELL PHILLIPS. [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] [[newspaper masthead: drawing of a slave auction with a sign reading: "SLAVES, HORSES, & OTHER CATTLE IN LOTS TO SUIT PURCHASE"]][[drawing of Jesus, a black man, and a white man with the text: "I COME TO BREAK THE BONDS OF THE OPPRESSOR"]][[drawing of a black family and in the background an arch with the word "EMANCIPATION"]][[ribbon across the bottom of the drawing with the text: "THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF"]] THE LIBERATOR.[[/column 2]] [[column 3]] NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS. ----- The United States Constitution is a 'covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.' ----- [[manicule punctuation mark]] 'The free States are the guardians and essential supports of slavery. we are the jailers and constables of the institution. . . . There is some excuse for communities, when, under a generous impulse, they espouse the cause of the oppressed in other States, and by force restore their rights; but they are without excuse in aiding other States in binding on men an unrighteous yoke. On this subject, OUR FATHERS, IN FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION, SWERVED FROM THE RIGHT. We their children, at the end of half a century, see the path of duty more clearly than they, and must walk in it. To this point the public mind has long been tending, and the time has come for looking at it fully, dispassionately, and with manly and Christian resolution. . . . No blessing of the Union can be a compensation for taking part in the enslaving of our fellow-creatures; nor ought this bond to be perpetuated, if experience shall demonstrate that it can only continue through our participation in wrong doing. To this conviction the free States are tending.'--WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. [[double line]] [[/column 3]] [[double line]] WM. LLOYD GARRISON, Editor. Our Country is the World, our Countrymen are all Mankind. J. B. YERRINTON & SON, Printers. [[double line]] VOL. XXVII. NO. 22. BOSTON, FRIDAY, MAY 29, 1857. WHOLE NUMBER, 1377. [[double line]] [[6 columns]] [[column one]] The Liberator. [[double line]] TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. [[line]] SECOND DAY--MORNING SESSION. The meeting was called to order, a few minutes past 10 o'clock, by the President. On motion of SAMUEL MAY, Jr., the following committee was appointed to nominate officers of the Society for the ensuing year:-- Samuel May, Jr., of Mass.; Thomas Whitson, of Pa.; Pliny Sexton, of Palmyra, N. Y.; Lydia Mott, of Albany; Thomas Garrett, of Del.; Marius R. Robinson, of Ohio; Charles C. Burleigh, of Conn.; N. R. Johnston, of Vt.; Andrew T. Foss, of N. H. At the same time, the following officers were chosen for the present:-- Secretaries, pro tem.--A. M. Powell, Henrietta W. Johnson. Finance Committee--Susan B. Anthony, Abby Kelley Foster. On motion of Mrs. FOSTER, the hour of 11 1/2 o'clock was fixed as the order of the day for the financial business. The PRESIDENT then introduced to the audience, as the first speaker, ANDREW T. Foss, of New Hampshire. SPEECH OF MR. FOSS. It has been said by two of the speakers on this occasion, (Mr. Phillips and Mr. Higginson,) that we are in the midst of a revolution. Many years ago, it was announced by Henry Clay, in the United States Senate, that this country was in the midst of a revolution, and I suppose it was true. But his was a revolution of a very different character from the present. It made very little difference whether that revolution went on or fell through, because it was a revolution of a financial character. We have had a number of revolutions; they date back as early as 1776; and each one was deemed important in its day. But I deem the present revolution as of more importance than them all. In Mr. Clay's revolution, nothing was involved but dollars and cents, and in the revolution of 1776, only the question of national independence was involved; in this revolution, the rights of man as man, not in his associated, but in his individual capacity, are involved; therefore, this is the greatest revolution the world was ever called to witness. This revolution is the legitimate fruit of the government which our fathers made. I know it is treading on dangerous ground to criticise the fathers, because they are generally believed to have been perfect men; but I consider that our fathers did a very wrong and wicked work, and therefore I deem it my duty to say so. If a father desires the respect and approbation of his son, he must do what is respectable and right; respect is due to no man unless he deserves it. I do not mean to say that our fathers are not entitled to our respect for their good acts, but simply that they are not to be approved for their wrong acts. Now, in making this government, they did a very wrong act, and we, their children, are reaping the fruits of their doings. Every man of them knew it was wrong to enter into a compact with slavery, but they deemed it safer to do wrong than right, and the American people have followed their example ever since. We talk about the Jesuits; there never was such a nation of Jesuits as the American people. They have always acted upon the Jesuitical maxim that the end sanctifies the means, and that it is better to do wrong than right, under certain circumstances. The framers of the Constitution acted upon this maxim, and every one who goes for the freedom of these States, with slavery, acts Jesuitically. I make free, therefore, to criticise the fathers; and if their spirits are hovering over this assembly and listening to these criticisms, I don't know that they could be better employed; and I am sure they will be better pleased with my honest, manly criticism, than with the fulsome adulations that are usually beslavered upon their memory. I want my son to be a better man than I am; if he is a new edition, I want him revised and corrected; and I think our fathers would have no objection to their sons being better men than they were. We certainly ought to be better, because we have opportunities and advantages that they had not. Our fathers did a very wicked thing when they consented to the continuance of the slave trade for twenty years. They did a very wicked thing when they stipulated for the rendition of fugitive slaves. Would it have been any more wrong for George the Third to have hunted and caught George Washington, and put chains on his limbs, than for Washington to catch fugitive slaves, and put chains on their limbs? And yet that is what Gen. Washington did when he signed his name to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. I am proud of all the good he did, but I am mortified and ashamed of that act, and I hope he repented of it. Our fathers believed that slavery would in a few years come to an end, but in this they were mistaken. It was all in vain, for the government which they formed could produce no other result than that which it has produced. They cast the seed of slavery into the soil, and it was in vain for them to expect to reap liberty. Our Republicans think that if they could get the government back again to what it was in the days of Washington and Jefferson, they could make the machine produce a different result. What assurance have you of that? When they undertook to run the machine, there were only half a million of slaves; now there are four millions. Then the great interests of industry were not controlled by slavery; now they are. Then the public sentiment and the religious sentiment were not debauched as they now are. And if they could not keep slavery sectional when it was already so, how can you expect to make it sectional when it has become national? But the truth is, the government is not out of order; it is running as it was made to run; it could not possibly run differently. A man who builds a mill, and puts the wheel below the level of the water, cannot expect that the water will disobey nature's law of gravitation. What would you think of a man doing such a foolish thing, and then getting an act of Con- [[/column one]] [[column two]] gress passed, declaring that hereafter water shall run up hill, in order to make the wheel go, and then getting the President to sign it, and then the Supreme Court to pronounce it constitutional, (laughter,) and then the clergy to say there is no higher law? (Renewed laughter and applause.) It is in vain to attempt to go against the laws of Jehovah; if you want to be successful, you must put yourself in true relations to His laws. Your compromises are in vain; what God has separated, you cannot unite. There has been no peace nor harmony in this government, and will be none while the Union lasts. If the Union of these States had not been formed, there would have been no increase of slavery. There was a disposition at the time, as every body knows, to get rid of slavery, but the formation of the Union was the perpetuation of slavery. It was because the Union was formed that Louisiana was purchased, that Florida was purchased, and Texas annexed. And now, if the Union were dissolved, I have the testimony of distinguished statesmen, North and South, that slavery could not last a single year; and among the rest, I have the testimony of Henry Wilson on this subject. How long do you suppose South Carolina could protect herself against slave insurrections without the Union? The slaves would need no other weapons than those nature has given them to obtain their freedom: if it was refused them, they would thrust their stalwart fingers in the hair of those lily-fingered gentry, their masters, and twist off their necks. (Laughter.) Don't understand me as saying that the American Anti-Slavery Society is in favor of twisting off the necks of the Southern gentlemen: nobody is responsible for that sentiment but myself. I am no non-resistant; though I was twenty-five years in the pulpit, I have not attained that degree of grace yet. (Laughter.) I admire those who have attained to it; but, since I have not, it's no use making any profession of what ain't in me; and I say that, rather than be a slave, I would twist of any body's neck that attempted to enslave me. (Applause.) The speaker then made some estimate of the probable increase of the slave population in time to come, and the inevitable consequences that must ensue from keeping them in bondage. The only practicable plan in meeting the slavery question was the dissolution of the Union. For that purpose, all that was necessary was a disregard of the compacts with slavery, a simple withdrawal of the support of the North. People said that the Abolitionists were impracticable, and yet they were not so far in advance of the public sentiment but that the people kept constantly within cursing distance. The position of the political anti-slavery parties reminded him of the Yankee boy who used every year, at just the same season, to bring the heads of three or four wolves and get his bounty of $20 a head. At length he was asked how he always happened to bring just so many and no more every year. He said he knew where there was a den, and he got the whelps every year. 'Why don't you destroy the old wolves?' they asked him. 'Why,' said he, 'then I shan't get any more whelps.' (Laughter.) The Republican party was for letting the old wolves alone, and catching the young ones; but, the miserable hunters, they hadn't even caught the first whelp yet. (Laughter.) Mr. Banks, in a speech in New York, subscribed to the compromise of 1850, and, by so doing, the Fugitive Slave bill. John P. Hale went to Washington with a large rotund body and manly soul, but, with the poison at the National Hotel and the poison in Congress, he had returned to New Hampshire shrivelled both in body and soul. Charles Sumner stood the contest nobly, but got a broken head. Dissolution was the only practicable remedy. If that was treason, so be it; there was no salvation, then, but in treason. Every worthy reformer in every age had been a traitor to tyrannical governments, and an infidel to a corrupt religion. In conclusion, Mr. Foss adverted to the position of the Tract Society in reference to slavery, and of the Church generally. Dr. Spring stood up in his pulpit and said that the natural condition of the colored man was that of servitude. That was ecclesiastical parlance; come down to the vernacular of the grog-shop and it would be this: 'The d---d nigger is fit for nothing but a slave.' Both meant the same thing. He denounced such religion as that; the devil would hold a festival when men professing such a religion held their anniversary meetings. (Applause.) Mrs. FOSTER followed with a few remarks and an appeal for contributions, after which she passed through the audience for that purpose. Mr. GARRISON meanwhile made a further appeal. The PRESIDENT said he had great pleasure in next introducing to the audience the Rev. O. B. FROTHINGRAM, of Jersey City. [[line]] SPEECH OF MR. FROTHINGHAM There is no sadder story among the fables of antiquity than that of Cassandra. She was the fairest daughter of Priam, king of Troy. The god Apollo, enamored of her beauty, bestowed upon her the gift of divination, by which she was enabled to foresee and foretell the approach of events; but when she refused to yield to his desires, he added to the gift the fatal qualification that her predictions never should be believed. And so, when the Grecian armies encamped about the walls of Troy, and she, with certain vision, descried the shadowy advance of disaster, announced beforehand the calamities that were to befall, and passionately implored her countrymen to hear her prophetic words, the infatuated people laughed her to scorn as one who was beside herself, and even her kingly father regarded her as a maniac, whose ravings were dangerous to the State. She had the satisfaction of knowing that her words were inspired; but she had the terrible grief of anticipating every blow, and of being sure that it was out of her power to avert the attack. The position of the anti-slavery men in America has presented a striking parallel to that of the ancient prophetess of Troy. Like her, they seem to have received the gift of divination. Like her, in the exercise of that gift, they have been practically frustrated by the disbelief of men. Each new approach of evil they foresaw as it loomed up, dark and shadowy, from the abyss of the future; each new assault they predicted in confident words; each new prediction was received with obstinate unbelief; and though their [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] presentiments were in every instance verified by the event, still the popular incredulity turned a deaf ear to their warning cry, and they were left to stand alone, like drivelling maniacs shouting against the wind. But the popular infatuation by no means weakens their faith in their own premonitions. Still, they stand alone, if it must be so, the prophets of disaster, discerning in the coming time yet further aggressions of the Slave Power, the admission of Kansas as a slave state, the invasion of Nebraska, Oregon, Central America and New Mexico, the subjugation of Texas, the seizure of Cuba, the opening of the slave trade, and the ultimate establishment of a vast slave empire in the West. If anticipations like these seem wild and visionary, it is more because they are too terrible to be believed, than because they are too ill-grounded to be just. There is a vague trust in Providence that will not allow us to expect the worst--a trust that is wise as a feeling, but extremely unwise as a judgment--a trust that does not criticise or reason, and which may be to the saddest degree delusive by making us forgetful of our own responsibility, and to the actual forces of human wickedness, and presumptuous in view of the vigorous and incessant activity of organized wrong. Let us look, for a few moments, at some of the broader indications of our future, as they lie before our actual notice. Let us go back but a single year, and call to mind only the more conspicuous events which have transpired. It was very soon after our last anniversary--only twelve days after--that Mr. Sumner delivered, in the Senate at Washington, his masterly speech upon Kansas--a speech that sounded like a voice from the whole Northern country, loud, strong, aggressive, a declaration of war against a system of barbarism. But it was not that speech , nor was it any speech uttered by free lips, that brought the slavery question so boldly into the halls of Congress. Mr. Sumner found it already there, introduced there, not by him, nor by any other representative of the free States, but by the friends of the Slave Power, now become so strong and so audacious as to fear no discussion, protest or vote; with plans so ripe and resources so large that they courted a provocation to open war. Slavery was not dragged into Congress for judgment by the intrepidity of Northern Senators; it marched in deliberately, with its bills removing the Missouri restriction, and it constitutions establishing slavery in Kansas; it stalked in with pistol and bludgeon, practically asserting its rights to supremacy by beating opposition into bloody unconsciousness, and triumphantly accepting testimonials of patriotism from its lords and constituencies. Since the assault upon Senator Sumner, the country has been ringing with the word slavery. But in which interest has that cry been raised? Mainly, it will be granted, in the interest of the South. The claims of slavery, instead of being withdrawn, have been more arrogantly pressed. Southern politicians and newspapers have assumed a loftier tone; not deigning now to apologize for their favorite institutions, but openly defending it, on moral and religious, as well as on industrial and financial grounds; contending that, as a system, it is not only pardonable, but wise; not only patriarchal, but benevolent; not only natural, but super-natural, Christian, and super-Christian; a thing to be secured, and cherished, and extended; a thing so excellent as that all means of sustaining it are justifiable by law and gospel. The revival of the benignant slave trade is openly advocated by respectable presses. Republicanism is pronounced a failure, labor in all classes a degradation, the grand abstractions of the Gospel are self-evident falsehoods, and the axioms of history are the weakest of delusions. This, certainly, does not look much like the triumph of free sentiments. Does the history of the Kansas investigation disclose any thing like fear or shame in the propagandists of slavery? What must we think of the moral condition of the country in which such transactions pass quietly along without revolution? Which spirit was prevailing in the nation when the disgraceful debates upon the reports of the Kansas Committee were exciting the surprise and rousing the wrath of every land in Christendom, except our own? Then came the Presidential campaign--a campaign unparalleled in the history of the country for the distinctness and the magnitude of its issues--in the whole course of which one, and but one, great idea was made prominent--a campaign which was regarded as a simple battle between Northern and Southern ideas, fought, as bravely as Northern men dared, upon an imperial scale. Shall a region large enough for three kingdoms be slave or free? This was the matter ostensibly in debate. The efforts made on either side were prodigious. Money flowed in rivers. The press deluged the country with publications, tracts, addresses, in every spoken tongue. On the Northern side appeared champions such as had never before entered the lists of political discussion. Senators whose names were a praise in all mouths, whose courage had aroused the enthusiasm of the masses to an extraordinary pitch, men of letters, authors of wide celebrity, poets of extensive fame, left their retirement, and devoted months of time and toil to the instruction and rousing of the people. Clergymen, not only in pulpits which rang with the theme, but on the platform and the stump, contributed the weight of their professional character and eloquence to the popular cause. Never were such multitudes addressed by such speakers in such lofty and persuasive strain. Never were such appeals made to the popular heart. The murderous assault upon Senator Sumner had done all that could be done to open men's eyes to the temper of the Slave Power, and to fire their blood with holy rage at its dastardly insolence. The ruffian code of Kansas was daily administered by brutal officials, under the direction of judges more infamous than ever disgraced a bench. Assassinations of Northern people, merely because they were Northern people, and were suspected of Northern prejudices, were frequent in open day, and were unavenged. Property was destroyed by fire and by pillage; towns were sacked; men and women were kept under arms night and day to protect themselves and their families from assault. The Government connived at all these atrocities, sent its musketeers into a legislative assembly to dissolve it by force of military authority, refused aid to the imploring citizens, and for the manifold wrong in- [[/column 3]] [[column4]] flicted would grant no redress. All this and more the Northern orators had to tell. Their only difficulty arose from the superabundance of their materials, for the story was fresh every day. To select the best arguments where all were overwhelming, to choose the most cogent facts where each one seemed decisive in its undeniableness, and crushing from its weight, was no easy task. Add to all this a candidate of spotless character and national fame, acquired, not on the field of political warfare, but in the pursuit of scientific enterprise, an intrepid explorer, whom foreign savants delighted to honor. And we must certainly grant the cause of freedom in the United States had such an opportunity and such a political advocacy as it never had before, and is not likely, under Providence, to have again. If there was any thing in wholesale injury and in wholesale insults, in oppressive wrongs cruelly inflicted, and in the most copious disdain spit forth upon our favorite institutions and our loved civilization--if there was any thing in savage menace and vulgar sneer to awaken a flaming and invincible wrath in the breasts of freemen--their victory last fall should have been complete and final; it should have been an annihilation of the Slave Extension party. But what was the actual result? It was the election of Mr. Buchanan; and not only his election, but his triumphant election--his election, not by a small majority, but by a tremendous popular vote. The figures report to us, I believe, this gloomy tale: In 1852, Pierce received 1,601,225 votes; Scott, 1,388,073. In 1856, Buchanan's popular vote was 1,834,337, while Fremont's was only 1,341,812. So that even Pierce's sweeping success fell below that of Buchanan, with all the terrific odds against the latter. Only 1,194 votes were cast for Fremont out of the free States and here, on his own ground, Buchanan came so closely in the competition that he needed but little more than a sixth of his Southern votes to gain the victory. Here, on his own and his only ground, the suffrages for Mr. Fremont outnumbered by no more than 114,868 those given to his antagonist, Mr. Buchanan, who might have spared more than four-fifths of his Southern votes, and yet polled the majority. A result like this declares decisively against a growing love of liberty among our people, and indicates a temper not merely indifferent to slavery itself, but careless even about its extension over new domain. For, let it be further considered, in this connection, that the Republican party was not, in any strict construction of the term, an anti-slavery party. It expressly disclaimed any sympathy with the Abolitionists, by whom it was in turn repudiated; it disavowed, earnestly and constantly, all intent and desire to interfere with slavery in the States where it already existed as an institution; it magnified the Union even more loudly and grandiloquently than the Democratic party cared to do under the lead of pro-slavery politicians; it swore at all hazards to support the Constitution. So far from being fanatical in its anti-slavery zeal, it proclaimed in pamphlet, speech and newspaper, that it cherished no pointed hostility to the Southern institution--that is was contending for the freedom of the whites, and not for the freedom of the blacks--that its whole design was to secure an equal privilege in the new Territories to their own industry and the right to plant there, unmolested, their saw-mills and their schools. More than one champion of the Republican cause has told me that he was warned by the Club Committees against saying too much about slavery, or denouncing too vehemently the Fugitive Slave law; and I myself, in my limited experience as a stump-speaker, was told that I should do the cause no good by any remarks that savored of abolitionism. It is true that in Massachusetts, Ohio, and interior New York, the speeches were of bolder and higher tone; but elsewhere it was considered a recommendation that they should be mild and cautious. The Republicans, as a party, were anxious to remove from themselves all anti-slavery reproach; they deprecated everything like an anti-slavery name; and yet they were defeated. Does not this bare statement prove that the sentiment of Freedom is at a very low ebb? that prosperity has enfeebled the Northern conscience, and our people are reckless of injustice, so they can get fortune? And have we not here the very worst omens for the future? I am aware of the qualifications which are made upon these facts as furnishing the ground of prophecy. It was urged that Fremont's vote was commensurate with the intelligence of the North, and that this intelligence is rapidly increasing; that the next generation will be far in advance of the last, through the agencies of a cheap postage system, the laying down of railroads, and the multiplication of schools, books and churches; so that southern Indiana and Illinois, where Buchanan received his heaviest Northern vote, and where enlightenment is just beginning to penetrate, will ere long register their suffrages on the side of Liberty. I know it is confidently asserted that quite one half of the people dwelling north of Mason and Dixon's line are at heart the enemies of the slave system, and nine out of ten of the clergy are anti-slavery men. But experience forbids our laying great stress upon considerations like these. The spread of education is not necessarily coincident with the spread of moral convictions. Where were the votes of that anti-slavery half of the Northern population? Where was the influence of those nine-tenths of the clergy? We all know that profession in this matter is no test or indication of virtue. We all know that many who make the most indignant remonstrance against being regarded as pro-slavery men do nevertheless throw all their actual influence on the pro-slavery side. Party lines, unfortunately, are too often drawn without reference to personal opinions upon grave, social questions; and if men avowing themselves the conscientious foes of slavery could in great numbers be induced, by party considerations or by the influence of demagogues, to cast their votes for Mr. Buchanan, why should not the same thing happen again, and happen continually? Nay, is not this one of the deplorable signs of our political corruption, that party considerations are paramount to all other consideration, that demagogues are able to lead the people withersoever they will, and to render their feeble convictions of absolutely no effect? [[/column 4]] [[column 5]] There can be not doubt, as it seems to me, that the country, in regard to its nobler sentiments, is deeply demoralized; and this process of demoralization is aided by a large class of people who represent the current anti-slavery opinion. They who contend against the extension only of slavery, of course, have no radical antipathy to slavery itself, and exert an influence to lessen that radical antipathy where it may exist in others. And they who, in their discussions of the question, are perpetually addressing arguments to the pocket, and are anxious to press their opposition to the system no further than pecuniary wisdom justifies, do but add to that mercantile and mercenary spirit already too strong for the movement of a free humanity. Forty years ago, this question was debated earnestly as a question touching the vital principle of society and the inherent right of man; and in those times a singe man, like Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, was able, by the high tone of his mind, to elevate the sentiments of a community; but now sentiments are readily changed for cents, and for principles we have pennies; for the laws of nature we have substituted the laws of trade; and for the rights of man the rights of property. Of course, it must come to pass that the conscience of the country is locked up in the country's purse, and interest, not patriotism, still less humanity, presides over the ballot-box. They must be sanguine men who hope that political machinery alone will effect a permanent cure of this evil. For politics is a trade, like any other; and it is not in a trading spirit, nor by trading operations, that God's great work of justice is done. Still more sanguine, unfortunately, are they who expect any aid from the Church in this enterprise of relieving the land from slavery. For not only are the clergy fettered by their organization under the voluntary system, and by their traditions under the ecclesiastical -- not only are they hampered by their superstitious reverence for the letter of the Bible, and the essentials of the creed -- not only is their theory of salvation, of the Gospel's purpose and plan, of the minister's function and the pulpit's place, an insuperable obstacle in the way of their large practical humanity, but the clergy are the representatives and not the leaders of the public feeling. They do not form the popular opinion. They do but repeat and confirm it. Not in the Evangelical sense alone, but literally, they are the servants of those who maintain them. The Churches are sustained by the commercial class. This is the self-evident fact. And what are we to expect as the result of it but exactly what we find, that they 'surrender the lead of moral reforms, and follow with poor inertion, the infatuated vigor of selfishness, or the conservative creeping of atheistic distrust.' You will spare me the humiliation of quoting the unchristian and atheistic sentiments of members of my own profession. The Adameses, Rosses and Meades are, doubless, familiar to you all. The scum, by a natural law, always rises to the surface of a seething cauldron. But when I hear of 'South-side Views' and Bible arguments on oppression's part, when I hear 'ministers of Christ unblushingly defend the institution of slavery, blandly anoint it with the oil of a spurious sanctity, and bless its black banner going forth to new conquests,' I am painfully reminded of the early days of Christendom, when the Church still dwelt under the awful eye of its Master, when the principles of the Gospel had not been translated into mercantile common sense, nor Uncle Richard's maxims been substituted for the Sermon on the Mount--when clergymen had not experienced a new heart under the genial influences of the Cotton Trade, and the Silver-Gray politician was as yet unborn, and the duty of saving the Union had not superseded the duty of saving men. In those ages of simple faith, when Christianity meant something, and something serious -- when it was not merely a more graceful conformity to the world, but a power which overcame the world in all its pleasurable and fiendish shapes -- when the Church was struggling with the gigantic evils of an effete and pagan civilization, and individual Christians, instead of making money by the sale of pews, held themselves ready to surrender money and life itself in the Master's cause -- in those earnest, intense ages, I find that slavery was regarded with the utmost abhorrence, was spoken of with terms of vehement reprobation, was opposed with most determined efforts. You will pardon me if I show the degeneracy of the modern Church by giving one or two examples of this. Abbot Isidore, of Pelusium, writing to a master in a slave's behalf, said, with a straightforward courage, 'I did not suppose that a man loving Christ, and knowing the grace which has made all men free, could still hold a slave in bondage.' Gregory of Nyssa, fifteen hundred years ago, questioned the slave-owners sharply, thus: 'Who can be the possessor of human beings save God? These men that you say belong to you, did not God create them free? Command brute creation; well and good; but do not degrade the image of God. Show me your titles of possession. Is not your own nature the same as theirs, whom you call your slaves?' Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed preacher, exhorted Christians to buy up slaves, instruct them in the liberal arts, and furnish them with the means of earning a livelihood. And so holy was this cause of emancipation regarded, that bishops did not hesitate to sell the silver vessels of the sanctuary, even the goblets and salvers used at the Lord's supper, to redeem their brethren from chains. Clement of Rome writes to the Corinthians, 'We have known many among us who have delivered themselves into bonds of slavery, that they might restore others to liberty; many that have let themselves out as servants, that, by their wages, they might support those who were in need.' The bishop of Nola expended all his substance in the redemption of slaves; and when, at last, a poor widow came to him and begged him to ransom her son, who had been sold among the Vandals, he said to her, 'I have not a single penny remaining, but I am willing to go myself and take the place of your son.' The poor woman thought he was jesting with her anxiety; but he assured her that he was in earnest, and he actually accompanied her to Africa, found the owner, begged him to release the youth, as he was a widow's only son, volunteering to work freely in his stead. The proposition was accepted, the lad was released; the Bishop took the field implements, and went to work. [[/column 5]] [[column 6]] His industry and fidelity gained the favor of his master, who, discovering that he was a bishop, and impressed by the nobleness of his self-devotion, gave him at once his liberty, and, at his request, freed all his slaves, and sent them back, well provisioned to their homes. The difference between Christianity like this and the Christianity of our time, the fashionable representative of that sturdy original, is all the difference between Christianity and Paganism. And when we reflect upon this single fact, that the Church, the professedly religious power in the country, has so far lost the recollection of its glorious traditions and become demoralized to the point of common worldliness, who can help having dreary forebodings of the future? Who can wonder that they who feel most upon this matter cherish the least hope? Who can wonder at the sad smile which greets the light-hearted prophecy, that American slavery is doomed, and is already hastening to its decay? What the future may bring forth, no one can tell. It is our duty to hope for the best. The prospect of throwing a cordon sanitaire round the slave States has wholly disappeared. For suppose that Kansas comes in as a free State, afterwards Nebraska, then Oregon, and all the territory to the Pacific shore. There remains an unlimited Southern region still open. Utah, Central America, the Mexicos, Texas and Indian lands, to say nothing now of Cuba, offer a larger tract to the slavery extension than the North allows for freedom. But against this scheme of conquest, Providence may be plotting. Providence, which uses man's agency as its instrument, but also anticipates it, prepares the way for it, and furnishes the occasions for its application, may offer, any twelve month, an unexpected solution, and an unlooked-for escape. Should the free Germans in Texas fulfil Mr. Olmstead's expectations--should Central America, relieved of Walker and his fillibusters, gain a little breathing space--should the example of Missouri prove contagious, and stir the heart of free labor in the Southern country--should Northern enterprise gain a foothold in Virginia, and thence pass down into the neighboring slave States--should the prices of cotton decline, owing to the British culture in India, or the French plantations in Algiers--should Southern fanaticism provoke a Northern call for disunion, or light the torch of civil war--slavery certainly must come to an end. But the 'if' is a tremendous one. At the best, these are only suppositions, which afford no ground for prophecy, certainly none for action; most assuredly, none for supine indifference and repose. In this state of things, a reassertion of the cardinal and fundamental principles of our opposition to slavery will not be otherwise than timely. 1. First, then, we claim justice for the black man, justice for the enslaved race; a race barbarized, stolen, deprived of rights inalienable to man, bartered, bought, beaten, brutalized by custom and by law; a race that has never experienced any thing but wrong, and has been deliberately demoralized that it might be the more safely and completely subjugated. We do not plead in behalf of the white man, to secure his right to free speech and free soil, and to give him the liberty to exclude the black man from his dominions; we plead for the black man. If the white man suffers, as certainly he does suffer, from the institution of slavery, it is because he made the black man suffer first; and therefore it is the black man's cause that we plead. And we plead his cause, not in the interest of economy, but in that of humanity. We demand his emancipation, not as a matter of prudence, or safety, or profit to ourselves, but as a matter of simple justice due to him. It is not as farmers, traders,political economists, that we engage our interests in his behalf, but as men, who wish to see the plain rule of right carried out in this application. And wishing earnestly to see that great consummation of African liberty brought about equitably, high-mindedly, honorably, we do not believe that any arguments addressed to the pocket will be of the least value or effect towards this end. We do not believe that a wise regard for the white man's advantages and privileges, either in Kansas, Virginia, Texas, or any where else, is likely to work out this end in the spirit of a true and noble righteousness. On the the contrary, we profoundly believe that a cause like this must be taken up from strong moral, let me say religious, convictions; must be advocated upon Christian grounds; must be pressed with a deep and genuine enthusiasm, which has its sources not in the love of mammon, but in the love of God. It is not to us a satisfactory or a pleasing thought, that slavery may have to be dropped, some time, because it will not pay; it is not to us a welcome contemplation that the slaves may one day be cast off like so much unprofitable rubbish, driven out like so much useless cattle, legislated out of the country, expatriated, pushed into the sea, because their labor is expensive, and they are a nuisance. We are not mainly anxious to see slavery abolished by the annihilation of the slaves. The slaves are the objects of our sympathy. Our concern is to have justice done to them, though it be done at the price of the freemen's surrender of some of their privileges, the diminishing of the funds in the exchequer, and the impoverishing of the national domain. And it is our conviction, that this is to be done not by the efforts of selfishness, but by the exertions of self-denial; not by the agency of the senses, but by the action of the soul. Justice for the black man, at any price; this, then, is our leading principle. It is a principle which distinguishes the Anti-Slavery movement from every other movement that is only incidentally and partially anti-slavery. It is a principle that explains and justifies all the methods proposed by anti-slavery people. 2. It is this principle which forces us to make our next demand, the immediate emancipation of the slave. For the same reason which makes us wish that an individual who is pursuing vicious courses, in gambling, drunkenness, evil companionship, or in any other way, shall break them off instantly and for ever, at any cost of physical and mental suffering, short of death itself, we insist that States and persons who are guilty of holding human beings in bondage, to the detriment of their physical, social and mental condition, shall at once put an end to that practice. The duty is a moral duty, precisely the same on a large scale as on a small one; for goodness is goodness and vice is vice, and the law that regulates man's conduct towards them recognises no distinction between great [[/column 6]]
Transcription Notes:
obscured text found at: http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1857/05/29/the-liberator-27-22.pdf
(illegible text due to folds in the top of the paper should be able to be inserted from another copy of THE LIBERATOR since it is the masthead text.)
