The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Whittier, Volume VII (of VII), by
John Greenleaf Whittier
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Works of Whittier, Volume VII (of VII)
The Conflict With Slavery, Politics and Reform, The Inner
Life and Criticism
Author: John Greenleaf Whittier
Release Date: December 2005 [EBook #9599]
Posting Date: July 10, 2009
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF WHITTIER ***
Produced by David Widger
THE WORKS OF JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, Volume VII. (of VII)
THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY, POLITICS AND REFORM, THE INNER LIFE and CRITICISM
By John Greenleaf Whittier
CONTENTS:
THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY
THE ABOLITIONISTS; THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS
LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY
WHAT IS SLAVERY
DEMOCRAT AND SLAVERY
THE TWO PROCESSIONS
A CHAPTER OF HISTORY
THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE QUESTION
FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY
THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY
CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872
THE CENSURE OF SUMNER
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833
KANSAS
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY
RESPONSE TO THE CELEBRATION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
REFORM AND POLITICS.
UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS
LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ITALIAN UNITY
INDIAN CIVILIZATION
READING FOR THE BLIND
THE INDIAN QUESTION
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
OUR DUMB RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN
THE INNER LIFE.
THE AGENCY OF EVIL
HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES
SWEDENBORG
THE BETTER LAND
DORA GREENWELL
THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
THE OLD WAY
HAVERFORD COLLEGE
CRITICISM.
EVANGELINE
MIRTH AND MEDICINE
FAME AND GLORY
FANATICISM
THE POETRY OF THE NORTH
THE CONFLICT WITH SLAVERY
JUSTICE AND EXPEDIENCY
OR, SLAVERY CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO ITS RIGHTFUL AND EFFECTUAL REMEDY,
ABOLITION.
(1833.)
"There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same
throughout the world, the same in all time,--such as it was before
the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened
to one world the sources of wealth and power and knowledge, to
another all unutterable woes; such as it is at this day: it is the
law written by the finger of God upon the heart of man; and by that
law, unchangeable and eternal while men despise fraud, and loathe
rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild
and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man."
--LORD BROUGHAM.
IT may be inquired of me why I seek to agitate the subject of Slavery in
New England, where we all acknowledge it to be an evil. Because such an
acknowledgment is not enough on our part. It is doing no more than the
slave-master and the slave-trader. "We have found," says James Monroe,
in his speech on the subject before the Virginia Convention, "that this
evil has preyed upon the very vitals of the Union; and has been
prejudicial to all the states in which it has existed." All the states
in their several Constitutions and declarations of rights have made a
similar statement. And what has been the consequence of this general
belief in the evil of human servitude? Has it sapped the foundations of
the infamous system? No. Has it decreased the number of its victims?
Quite the contrary. Unaccompanied by philanthropic action, it has been
in a moral point of view worthless, a thing without vitality, sightless,
soulless, dead.
But it may be said that the miserable victims of the system have our
sympathies. Sympathy the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, looking
on, and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from mortal suffering.
Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken of heart, and does the blessing
of those who are ready to perish answer it? Does it hold back the lash
from the slave, or sweeten his bitter bread? One's heart and soul are
becoming weary of this sympathy, this heartless mockery of feeling; sick
of the common cant of hypocrisy, wreathing the artificial flowers of
sentiment over unutterable pollution and unimaginable wrong. It is
white-washing the sepulchre to make us forget its horrible deposit. It
is scattering flowers around the charnel-house and over the yet festering
grave to turn away our thoughts "from the dead men's bones and all
uncleanness," the pollution and loathsomeness below.
No! let the truth on this subject, undisguised, naked, terrible as it is,
stand out before us. Let us no longer seek to cover it; let us no longer
strive to forget it; let us no more dare to palliate it. It is better to
meet it here with repentance than at the bar of God. The cry of the
oppressed, of the millions who have perished among us as the brute
perisheth, shut out from the glad tidings of salvation, has gone there
before us, to Him who as a father pitieth all His children. Their blood
is upon us as a nation; woe unto us, if we repent not, as a nation, in
dust and ashes. Woe unto us if we say in our hearts, "The Lord shall not
see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. He that planted the ear,
shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"
But it may be urged that New England has no participation in slavery, and
is not responsible for its wickedness.
Why are we thus willing to believe a lie? New England not responsible!
Bound by the United States constitution to protect the slave-holder in
his sins, and yet not responsible! Joining hands with crime, covenanting
with oppression, leaguing with pollution, and yet not responsible!
Palliating the evil, hiding the evil, voting for the evil, do we not
participate in it?
(Messrs. Harvey of New Hampshire, Mallary of Vermont, and Ripley of
Maine, voted in the Congress of 1829 against the consideration of a
Resolution for inquiring into the expediency of abolishing slavery
in the District of Columbia.)
Members of one confederacy, children of one family, the curse and the
shame, the sin against our brother, and the sin against our God, all the
iniquity of slavery which is revealed to man, and all which crieth in the
ear, or is manifested to the eye of Jehovah, will assuredly be visited
upon all our people. Why, then, should we stretch out our hands towards
our Southern brethren, and like the Pharisee thank God we are not like
them? For so long as we practically recognize the infernal principle
that "man can hold property in man," God will not hold us guiltless. So
long as we take counsel of the world's policy instead of the justice of
heaven, so long as we follow a mistaken political expediency in
opposition to the express commands of God, so long will the wrongs of the
slaves rise like a cloud of witnesses against us at the inevitable bar.
Slavery is protected by the constitutional compact, by the standing army,
by the militia of the free states.
(J. Q. Adams is the only member of Congress who has ventured to
speak plainly of this protection. See also his very able Report
from the minority of the Committee on Manufactures. In his speech
during the last session, upon the bill of the Committee of Ways and
Means, after discussing the constitutional protection of slavery, he
says: "But that same interest is further protected by the Laws of
the United States. It was protected by the existence of a standing
army. If the States of this Union were all free republican States,
and none of them possessed any of the machinery of which he had
spoken, and if another portion of the Union were not exposed to
another danger, from their vicinity to the tribes of Indian savages,
he believed it would be difficult to prove to the House any such
thing as the necessity of a standing army. What in fact was the
occupation of the army? It had been protecting this very same
interest. It had been doing so ever since the army existed. Of
what use to the district of Plymouth (which he there represented)
was the standing army of the United States? Of not one dollar's
use, and never had been.")
Let us not forget that should the slaves, goaded by wrongs unendurable,
rise in desperation, and pour the torrent of their brutal revenge over
the beautiful Carolinas, or the consecrated soil of Virginia, New England
would be called upon to arrest the progress of rebellion,--to tread out
with the armed heel of her soldiery that spirit of freedom, which knows
no distinction of cast or color; which has been kindled in the heart of
the black as well as in that of the white.
And what is this system which we are thus protecting and upholding? A
system which holds two millions of God's creatures in bondage, which
leaves one million females without any protection save their own feeble
strength, and which makes even the exercise of that strength in
resistance to outrage punishable with death! which considers rational,
immortal beings as articles of traffic, vendible commodities,
merchantable property,--which recognizes no social obligations, no
natural relations,--which tears without scruple the infant from the
mother, the wife from the husband, the parent from the child. In the
strong but just language of another: "It is the full measure of pure,
unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or
comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed
possession of its detestable preeminence."
So fearful an evil should have its remedies. The following are among the
many which have been from time to time proposed:--
1. Placing the slaves in the condition of the serfs of Poland and
Russia, fixed to the soil, and without the right on the part of the
master to sell or remove them. This was intended as a preliminary to
complete emancipation at some remote period, but it is impossible to
perceive either its justice or expediency.
2. Gradual abolition, an indefinite term, but which is understood to
imply the draining away drop by drop, of the great ocean of wrong;
plucking off at long intervals some, straggling branches of the moral
Upas; holding out to unborn generations the shadow of a hope which the
present may never feel gradually ceasing to do evil; gradually refraining
from robbery, lust, and murder: in brief, obeying a short-sighted and
criminal policy rather than the commands of God.
3. Abstinence on the part of the people of the free states from the use
of the known products of slave labor, in order to render that labor
profitless. Beyond a doubt the example of conscientious individuals may
have a salutary effect upon the minds of some of the slave-holders; I but
so long as our confederacy exists, a commercial intercourse with slave
states and a consumption of their products cannot be avoided.
(The following is a recorded statement of the venerated Sir William
Jones: "Let sugar be as cheap as it may, it is better to eat none,
better to eat aloes and colloquintida, than violate a primary law
impressed on every heart not imbruted with avarice; than rob one
human creature of those eternal rights of which no law on earth can
justly deprive him.")
4. Colonization.
The exclusive object of the American Colonization Society, according to
the second article of its constitution, is to colonize the free people of
color residing among us, in Africa or such other place as Congress may
direct. Steadily adhering to this object it has nothing to do with
slavery; and I allude to it as a remedy only because some of its friends
have in view an eventual abolition or an amelioration of the evil.
Let facts speak. The Colonization Society was organized in 1817. It has
two hundred and eighteen auxiliary societies. The legislatures of
fourteen states have recommended it. Contributions have poured into its
treasury from every quarter of the United States. Addresses in its favor
have been heard from all our pulpits. It has been in operation sixteen
years. During this period nearly one million human beings have died in
slavery: and the number of slaves has increased more than half a million,
or in round numbers, 550,000
The Colonization Society has been busily engaged all this while in
conveying the slaves to Africa; in other words, abolishing slavery. In
this very charitable occupation it has carried away of manumitted slaves
613
Balance against the society . . . . 549,387!
But enough of its abolition tendency. What has it done for amelioration?
Witness the newly enacted laws of some of the slave states, laws bloody
as the code of Draco, violating the laws of Cod and the unalienable
rights of His children?--(It will be seen that the society approves of
these laws.)--But why talk of amelioration? Amelioration of what? of
sin, of crime unutterable, of a system of wrong and outrage horrible in
the eye of God Why seek to mark the line of a selfish policy, a carnal
expediency between the criminality of hell and that repentance and its
fruits enjoined of heaven?
For the principles and views of the society we must look to its own
statements and admissions; to its Annual Reports; to those of its
auxiliaries; to the speeches and writings of its advocates; and to its
organ, the African Repository.
1. It excuses slavery and apologizes for slaveholders.
Proof. "Slavery is an evil entailed upon the present generation of
slave-holders, which they must suffer, whether they will or not!" "The
existence of slavery among us, though not at all to be objected to our
Southern brethren as a fault," etc? "It (the society) condemns no man
because he is a slave-holder." "Recognizing the constitutional and
legitimate existence of slavery, it seeks not to interfere, either
directly or indirectly, with the rights it creates. Acknowledging the
necessity by which its present continuance and the rigorous provisions
for its maintenance are justified," etc. "They (the Abolitionists)
confound the misfortunes of one generation with the crimes of another,
and would sacrifice both individual and public good to an unsubstantial
theory of the rights of man."
2. It pledges itself not to oppose the system of slavery.
Proof. "Our society and the friends of colonization wish to be
distinctly understood upon this point. From the beginning they have
disavowed, and they do yet disavow, that their object is the emancipation
of slaves."--(Speech of James S. Green, Esq., First Annual Report of the
New Jersey Colonization Society.)
"This institution proposes to do good by a single specific course of
measures. Its direct and specific purpose is not the abolition of
slavery, or the relief of pauperism, or the extension of commerce and
civilization, or the enlargement of science, or the conversion of the
heathen. The single object which its constitution prescribes, and to
which all its efforts are necessarily directed, is African colonization
from America. It proposes only to afford facilities for the voluntary
emigration of free people of color from this country to the country of
their fathers."
"It is no abolition society; it addresses as yet arguments to no master,
and disavows with horror the idea of offering temptations to any slave.
It denies the design of attempting emancipation, either partial or
general."
"The Colonization Society, as such, have renounced wholly the name and
the characteristics of abolitionists. On this point they have been
unjustly and injuriously slandered. Into their accounts the subject of
emancipation does not enter at all."
"From its origin, and throughout the whole period of its existence, it
has constantly disclaimed all intention of interfering, in the smallest
degree, with the rights of property, or the object of emancipation,
gradual or immediate." . . . "The society presents to the American
public no project of emancipation."--( Mr. Clay's Speech, Idem, vol. vi.
pp. 13, 17.)
"The emancipation of slaves or the amelioration of their condition, with
the moral, intellectual, and political improvement of people of color
within the United States, are subjects foreign to the powers of this
society."
"The society, as a society, recognizes no principles in reference to the
slave system. It says nothing, and proposes to do nothing, respecting
it." . . . "So far as we can ascertain, the supporters of the
colonization policy generally believe that slavery is in this country a
constitptional and legitimate system, which they have no inclination,
interest, nor ability to disturb."
3. It regards God's rational creatures as property.
Proof. "We hold their slaves, as we hold their other property, sacred."
"It is equally plain and undeniable that the society, in the prosecution
of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to
interfere in any way with the rights of proprietors of slaves."
"To the slave-holder, who has charged upon them the wicked design of
interfering with the rights of property under the specious pretext of
removing a vicious and dangerous free population, they address themselves
in a tone of conciliation and sympathy. We know your rights, say they,
and we respect them."
4. It boasts that its measures are calculated to perpetuate the detested
system of slavery, to remove the fears of the slave-holder, and increase
the value of his stock of human beings.
Proof. "They (the Southern slave-holders) will contribute more
effectually to the continuance and strength of this system (slavery) by
removing those now free than by any or all other methods which can
possibly be devised."
"So far from being connected with the abolition of slavery, the measure
proposed would be one of the greatest securities to enable the master to
keep in possession his own property."--(Speech of John Randolph at the
first meeting of the Colonization Society.)
"The tendency of the scheme, and one of its objects, is to secure slave-
holders, and the whole Southern country, against certain evil
consequences growing out of the present threefold mixture of our
population."
"There was but one way (to avert danger), but that might be made
effectual, fortunately. It was to provide and keep open a drain for the
excess beyond the occasions of profitable employment. Mr. Archer had
been stating the case in the supposition, that after the present class of
free blacks had been exhausted, by the operation of the plan he was
recommending, others would be supplied for its action, in the proportion
of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off,
by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result
inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their
disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and
retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid
reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree
beneficial. It was on the ground of interest, therefore, the most
indisputable pecuniary interest, that he addressed himself to the people
and legislatures of the slave-holding states."
"The slave-holder, who is in danger of having his slaves contaminated by
their free friends of color, will not only be relieved from this danger,
but the value of his slave will be enhanced."
5. It denies the power of Christian love to overcome an unholy prejudice
against a portion of our fellow-creatures.
Proof. "The managers consider it clear that causes exist and are
operating to prevent their (the blacks) improvement and elevation to any
considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not
only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, but of any human
power. Christianity will not do for them here what it will do for them
in Africa. This is not the fault of the colored man, nor Christianity;
but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws
of Nature!"--(Last Annual Report of the American Colonization Society.)
"The habits, the feelings, all the prejudices of society--prejudices
which neither refinement, nor argument, nor education, nor religion
itself, can subdue--mark the people of color, whether bond or free, as
the subjects of a degradation inevitable and incurable. The African in
this country belongs by birth to the very lowest station in society, and
from that station he can never rise, be his talents, his enterprise, his
virtues what they may. . . . They constitute a class by themselves, a
class out of which no individual can be elevated, and below which none
can be depressed."
"Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to
admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must,
in this country, remain for ages, probably forever, a separate and
inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable;
which neither legislation nor Christianity can remove?"
6. It opposes strenuously the education of the blacks in this country as
useless as well as dangerous.
Proof. "If the free colored people were generally taught to read it
might be an inducement to them to remain in this country (that is, in
their native country). We would offer then no such inducement."--
(Southern Religious Telegraph, February 19, 1831.)
"The public safety of our brethren at the South requires them (the
slaves) to be kept ignorant and uninstructed."
"It is the business of the free (their safety requires it) to keep the
slaves in ignorance. But a few days ago a proposition was made in the
legislature of Georgia to allow them so much instruction as to enable
them to read the Bible; which was promptly rejected by a large
majority."--(Proceedings of New York State Colonization Society at its
second anniversary.)
E. B. Caldwell, the first Secretary of the American Colonization Society,
in his speech at its formation, recommended them to be kept "in the
lowest state of ignorance and degradation, for (says he) the nearer you
bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them
of possessing their apathy."
My limits will not admit of a more extended examination. To the
documents from whence the above extracts have been made I would call the
attention of every real friend of humanity. I seek to do the
Colonization Society no injustice, but I wish the public generally to
understand its character.
The tendency of the society to abolish the slave-trade by means of its
African colony has been strenuously urged by its friends. But the
fallacy of this is now admitted by all: witness the following from the
reports of the society itself:--
"Some appalling facts in regard to the slave-trade have come to the
knowledge of the Board of Managers during the last year. With
undiminished atrocity and activity is this odious traffic now carried on
all along the African coast. Slave factories are established in the
immediate vicinity of the colony; and at the Gallinas (between Liberia
and Sierra Leone) not less than nine hundred slaves were shipped during
the last summer, in the space of three weeks."
April 6, 1832, the House of Commons of England ordered the printing of a
document entitled "Slave-Trade, Sierra Leone," containing official
evidence of the fact that the pirates engaged in the African slave-trade
are supplied from the stores of Sierra Leone and Liberia with such
articles as the infernal traffic demands! An able English writer on the
subject of Colonization thus notices this astounding fact:--
"And here it may be well to observe, that as long as negro slavery lasts,
all colonies on the African coast, of whatever description, must tend to
support it, because, in all commerce, the supply is more or less
proportioned to the demand. The demand exists in negro slavery; the
supply arises from the African slave-trade. And what greater convenience
could the African slave-traders desire than shops well stored along the
coast with the very articles which their trade demands. That the African
slave-traders do get thus supplied at Sierra Leone and Liberia is matter
of official evidence; and we know, from the nature of human things, that
they will get so supplied, in defiance of all law or precaution, as long
as the demand calls for the supply, and there are free shops stored with
all they want at hand. The shopkeeper, however honest, would find it
impossible always to distinguish between the African slave-trader or his
agents and other dealers. And how many shopkeepers are there anywhere
that would be over scrupulous in questioning a customer with a full
purse?"
But we are told that the Colonization Society is to civilize and
evangelize Africa.
"Each emigrant," says Henry Clay, the ablest advocate which the society
has yet found, "is a missionary, carrying with him credentials in the
holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions."
Beautiful and heart-cheering idea! But stay who are these emigrants,
these missionaries?
The free people of color. "They, and they only," says the African
Repository, the society's organ, "are qualified for colonizing Africa."
What are their qualifications? Let the society answer in its own words:--
Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves."--
(African Repository, vol. ii. p. 328.)
"A horde of miserable people--the objects of universal suspicion--
subsisting by plunder."
"An anomalous race of beings the most debased upon earth."--(African
Repository, vol. vii. p. 230.)
"Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free
colored."--(Tenth Annual Report of the Colonization Society.)
I might go on to quote still further from the "credentials" which the
free people of color are to carry with them to Liberia. But I forbear.
I come now to the only practicable, the only just scheme of emancipation:
Immediate abolition of slavery; an immediate acknowledgment of the great
truth, that man cannot hold property in man; an immediate surrender of
baneful prejudice to Christian love; an immediate practical obedience to
the command of Jesus Christ: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, do ye even so to them."
A correct understanding of what is meant by immediate abolition must
convince every candid mind that it is neither visionary nor dangerous;
that it involves no disastrous consequences of bloodshed and desolation;
but, on the, contrary, that it is a safe, practicable, efficient remedy
for the evils of the slave system.
The term immediate is used in contrast with that of gradual. Earnestly
as I wish it, I do not expect, no one expects, that the tremendous system
of oppression can be instantaneously overthrown. The terrible and
unrebukable indignation of a free people has not yet been sufficiently
concentrated against it. The friends of abolition have not forgotten the
peculiar organization of our confederacy, the delicate division of power
between the states and the general government. They see the many
obstacles in their pathway; but they know that public opinion can
overcome them all. They ask no aid of physical coercion. They seek to
obtain their object not with the weapons of violence and blood, but with
those of reason and truth, prayer to God, and entreaty to man.
They seek to impress indelibly upon every human heart the true doctrines
of the rights of man; to establish now and forever this great and
fundamental truth of human liberty, that man cannot hold property in his
brother; for they believe that the general admission of this truth will
utterly destroy the system of slavery, based as that system is upon a
denial or disregard of it. To make use of the clear exposition of an
eminent advocate of immediate abolition, our plan of emancipation is
simply this: "To promulgate the true doctrine of human rights in high
places and low places, and all places where there are human beings; to
whisper it in chimney corners, and to proclaim it from the house-tops,
yea, from the mountain-tops; to pour it out like water from the pulpit
and the press; to raise it up with all the food of the inner man, from
infancy to gray hairs; to give 'line upon line, and precept upon
precept,' till it forms one of the foundation principles and parts
indestructible of the public soul. Let those who contemn this plan
renounce, if they have not done it already, the gospel plan of converting
the world; let them renounce every plan of moral reformation, and every
plan whatsoever, which does not terminate in the gratification of their
own animal natures."
The friends of emancipation would urge in the first instance an immediate
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the Territories
of Florida and Arkansas.
The number of slaves in these portions of the country, coming under the
direct jurisdiction of the general government, is as follows:--
District of Columbia ..... 6,119
Territory of Arkansas .... 4,576
Territory of Florida .... 15,501
Total 26,196
Here, then, are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image
of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in
the abhorrent chains of slavery. The power to emancipate them is clear.
It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes
in Congress. It lies with the free states. Their duty is before them:
in the fear of God, and not of man let them perform it.
Let them at once strike off the grievous fetters. Let them declare that
man shall no longer hold his fellow-man in bondage, a beast of burden, an
article of traffic, within the governmental domain. God and truth and
eternal justice demand this. The very reputation of our fathers, the
honor of our land, every principle of liberty, humanity, expediency,
demand it. A sacred regard to free principles originated our
independence, not the paltry amount of practical evil complained of. And
although our fathers left their great work unfinished, it is our duty to
follow out their principles. Short of liberty and equality we cannot
stop without doing injustice to their memories. If our fathers intended
that slavery should be perpetual, that our practice should forever give
the lie to our professions, why is the great constitutional compact so
guardedly silent on the subject of human servitude? If state necessity
demanded this perpetual violation of the laws of God and the rights of
man, this continual solecism in a government of freedom, why is it not
met as a necessity, incurable and inevitable, and formally and distinctly
recognized as a settled part of our social system? State necessity, that
imperial tyrant, seeks no disguise. In the language of Sheridan, "What
he does, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification than
the great motives which placed the iron sceptre in his grasp."
Can it be possible that our fathers felt this state necessity strong upon
them? No; for they left open the door for emancipation, they left us the
light of their pure principles of liberty, they framed the great charter
of American rights, without employing a term in its structure to which in
aftertimes of universal freedom the enemies of our country could point
with accusation or reproach.
What, then, is our duty?
To give effect to the spirit of our Constitution; to plant ourselves upon
the great declaration and declare in the face of all the world that
political, religious, and legal hypocrisy shall no longer cover as with
loathsome leprosy the features of American freedom; to loose at once the
bands of wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go
free.
We have indeed been authoritatively told in Congress and elsewhere that
our brethren of the South and West will brook no further agitation of the
subject of slavery. What then! shall we heed the unrighteous
prohibition? No; by our duty as Christians, as politicians, by our duty
to ourselves, to our neighbor, and to God, we are called upon to agitate
this subject; to give slavery no resting-place under the hallowed aegis
of a government of freedom; to tear it root and branch, with all its
fruits of abomination, at least from the soil of the national domain.
The slave-holder may mock us; the representatives of property,
merchandise, vendible commodities, may threaten us; still our duty is
imperative; the spirit of the Constitution should be maintained within
the exclusive jurisdiction of the government. If we cannot "provide for
the general welfare," if we cannot "guarantee to each of the states a
republican form of government," let us at least no longer legislate for a
free nation within view of the falling whip, and within hearing of the
execrations of the task-master and the prayer of his slave!
I deny the right of the slave-holder to impose silence on his brother of
the North in reference to slavery. What! compelled to maintain the
system, to keep up the standing army which protects it, and yet be denied
the poor privilege of remonstrance! Ready, at the summons of the master
to put down the insurrections of his slaves, the outbreaking of that
revenge which is now, and has been, in all nations, and all times, the
inevitable consequence of oppression and wrong, and yet like automata to
act but not speak! Are we to be denied even the right of a slave, the
right to murmur?
I am not unaware that my remarks may be regarded by many as dangerous and
exceptionable; that I may be regarded as a fanatic for quoting the
language of eternal truth, and denounced as an incendiary for
maintaining, in the spirit as well as the letter, the doctrines of
American Independence. But if such are the consequences of a simple
performance of duty, I shall not regard them. If my feeble appeal but
reaches the hearts of any who are now slumbering in iniquity; if it shall
have power given it to shake down one stone from that foul temple where
the blood of human victims is offered to the Moloch of slavery; if under
Providence it can break one fetter from off the image of God, and enable
one suffering African
"To feel
The weight of human misery less, and glide
Ungroaning to the tomb,"
I shall not have written in vain; my conscience will be satisfied.
Far be it from me to cast new bitterness into the gall and wormwood
waters of sectional prejudice. No; I desire peace, the peace of
universal love, of catholic sympathy, the peace of a common interest, a
common feeling, a common humanity. But so long as slavery is tolerated,
no such peace can exist. Liberty and slavery cannot dwell in harmony
together. There will be a perpetual "war in the members" of the
political Mezentius between the living and the dead. God and man have
placed between them an everlasting barrier, an eternal separation. No
matter under what name or law or compact their union is attempted, the
ordination of Providence has forbidden it, and it cannot stand. Peace!
there can be no peace between justice and oppression, between robbery and
righteousness, truth and falsehood, freedom and slavery.
The slave-holding states are not free. The name of liberty is there, but
the spirit is wanting. They do not partake of its invaluable blessings.
Wherever slavery exists to any considerable extent, with the exception of
some recently settled portions of the country, and which have not yet
felt in a great degree the baneful and deteriorating influences of slave
labor, we hear at this moment the cry of suffering. We are told of
grass-grown streets, of crumbling mansions, of beggared planters and
barren plantations, of fear from without, of terror within. The once
fertile fields are wasted and tenantless, for the curse of slavery, the
improvidence of that labor whose hire has been kept back by fraud, has
been there, poisoning the very earth beyond the reviving influence of the
early and the latter rain. A moral mildew mingles with and blasts the
economy of nature. It is as if the finger of the everlasting God had
written upon the soil of the slave-holder the language of His
displeasure.
Let, then, the slave-holding states consult their present interest by
beginning without delay the work of emancipation. If they fear not, and
mock at the fiery indignation of Him, to whom vengeance belongeth, let
temporal interest persuade them. They know, they must know, that the
present state of things cannot long continue. Mind is the same
everywhere, no matter what may be the complexion of the frame which it
animates: there is a love of liberty which the scourge cannot eradicate,
a hatred of oppression which centuries of degradation cannot extinguish.
The slave will become conscious sooner or later of his brute strength,
his physical superiority, and will exert it. His torch will be at the
threshold and his knife at the throat of the planter. Horrible and
indiscriminate will be his vengeance. Where, then, will be the pride,
the beauty, and the chivalry of the South? The smoke of her torment will
rise upward like a thick cloud visible over the whole earth.
"Belie the negro's powers: in headlong will,
Christian, thy brother thou shalt find him still.
Belie his virtues: since his wrongs began,
His follies and his crimes have stamped him man."
Let the cause of insurrection be removed, then, as speedily as possible.
Cease to oppress. "Let him that stole steal no more." Let the laborer
have his hire. Bind him no longer by the cords of slavery, but with
those of kindness and brotherly love. Watch over him for his good. Pray
for him; instruct him; pour light into the darkness of his mind.
Let this be done, and the horrible fears which now haunt the slumbers of
the slave-holder will depart. Conscience will take down its racks and
gibbets, and his soul will be at peace. His lands will no longer
disappoint his hopes. Free labor will renovate them.
Historical facts; the nature of the human mind; the demonstrated truths
of political economy; the analysis of cause and effect, all concur in
establishing:
1. That immediate abolition is a safe and just and peaceful remedy for
the evils of the slave system.
2. That free labor, its necessary consequence, is more productive, and
more advantageous to the planter than slave labor.
In proof of the first proposition it is only necessary to state the
undeniable fact that immediate emancipation, whether by an individual or
a community, has in no instance been attended with violence and disorder
on the part of the emancipated; but that on the contrary it has promoted
cheerfulness, industry, and laudable ambition in the place of sullen
discontent, indolence, and despair.
The case of St. Domingo is in point. Blood was indeed shed on that
island like water, but it was not in consequence of emancipation. It was
shed in the civil war which preceded it, and in the iniquitous attempt to
restore the slave system in 1801. It flowed on the sanguine altar of
slavery, not on the pure and peaceful one of emancipation. No; there, as
in all the world and in all time, the violence of oppression engendered
violence on the part of the oppressed, and vengeance followed only upon
the iron footsteps of wrong. When, where, did justice to the injured
waken their hate and vengeance? When, where, did love and kindness and
sympathy irritate and madden the persecuted, the broken-hearted, the
foully wronged?
In September, 1793, the Commissioner of the French National Convention
issued his proclamation giving immediate freedom to all the slaves of St.
Domingo. Did the slaves baptize their freedom in blood? Did they fight
like unchained desperadoes because they had been made free? Did they
murder their emancipators? No; they acted, as human beings must act,
under similar circumstances, by a law as irresistible as those of the
universe: kindness disarmed them, justice conciliated them, freedom
ennobled them. No tumult followed this wide and instantaneous
emancipation. It cost not one drop of blood; it abated not one tittle of
the wealth or the industry of the island. Colonel Malenfant, a slave
proprietor residing at the time on the island, states that after the
public act of abolition, the negroes remained perfectly quiet; they had
obtained all they asked for, liberty, and they continued to work upon all
the plantations.--(Malenfant in Memoirs for a History of St. Domingo by
General Lecroix, 1819.)
"There were estates," he says, "which had neither owners nor managers
resident upon them, yet upon these estates, though abandoned, the negroes
continued their labors where there were any, even inferior, agents to
guide them; and on those estates where no white men were left to direct
them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all
the plantations where the whites resided the blacks continued to labor as
quietly as before." Colonel Malenfant says that when many of his
neighbors, proprietors or managers, were in prison, the negroes of their
plantations came to him to beg him to direct them in their work. "If you
will take care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but
talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their
labor. How did Toussaint succeed? How did I succeed before his time in
the plain of the Cul-de-Sac on the plantation of Gouraud, during more
than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves? Let
those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves be asked. They
will all reply that not a single negro upon that plantation, consisting
of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, refused to work; and yet
this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the
slaves the most idle of any in the plain. I inspired the same activity
into three other plantations of which I had the management. If all the
negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of
independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be
employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that
without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them;
that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes.
They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so."
This is strong testimony. In 1796, three years after the act of
emancipation, we are told that the colony was flourishing under
Toussaint, that the whites lived happily and peaceably on their estates,
and the blacks continued to work for them. Up to 1801 the same happy
state of things continued. The colony went on as by enchantment;
cultivation made day by day a perceptible progress, under the
recuperative energies of free labor.
In 1801 General Vincent, a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent
by Toussaint to Paris for the purpose of laying before the Directory the
new Constitution which had been adopted at St. Domingo. He reached
France just after the peace of Amiens, when Napoleon was fitting out his
ill-starred armament for the insane purpose of restoring slavery in the
island. General Vincent remonstrated solemnly and earnestly against an
expedition so preposterous, so cruel and unnecessary; undertaken at a
moment when all was peace and quietness in the colony, when the
proprietors were in peaceful possession of their estates, when
cultivation was making a rapid progress, and the blacks were industrious
and happy beyond example. He begged that this beautiful state of things
might not be reversed. The remonstrance was not regarded, and the
expedition proceeded. Its issue is well known. Threatened once more
with the horrors of slavery, the peaceful and quiet laborer became
transformed into a demon of ferocity. The plough-share and the pruning-
hook gave way to the pike and the dagger. The white invaders were driven
back by the sword and the pestilence; and then, and not till then, was
the property of the planters seized upon by the excited and infuriated
blacks.
In 1804 Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor of Hayti. The black troops
were in a great measure disbanded, and they immediately returned to the
cultivation of the plantations. From that period up to the present there
has been no want of industry among the inhabitants.
Mr. Harvey, who during the reign of Christophe resided at Cape Francois,
in describing the character and condition of the inhabitants, says "It
was an interesting sight to behold this class of the Haytiens, now in
possession of their freedom, coming in groups to the market nearest which
they resided, bringing the produce of their industry there for sale; and
afterwards returning, carrying back the necessary articles of living
which the disposal of their commodities had enabled them to purchase; all
evidently cheerful and happy. Nor could it fail to occur to the mind
that their present condition furnished the most satisfactory answer to
that objection to the general emancipation of slaves founded on their
alleged unfitness to value and improve the benefits of liberty. . . .
As they would not suffer, so they do not require, the attendance of one
acting in the capacity of a driver with the instrument of punishment in
his hand. As far as I had an opportunity of ascertaining from what fell
under my own observation, and from what I gathered from other European
residents, I am persuaded of one general fact, which on account of its
importance I shall state in the most explicit terms, namely, that the
Haytiens employed in cultivating the plantations, as well as the rest of
the population, perform as much work in a given time as they were
accustomed to do during their subjection to the French. And if we may
judge of their future improvement by the change which has been already
effected, it may be reasonably anticipated that Hayti will erelong
contain a population not inferior in their industry to that of any
civilized nation in the world. . . . Every man had some calling to
occupy his attention; instances of idleness or intemperance were of rare
occurrence; the most perfect subordination prevailed, and all appeared
contented and happy. A foreigner would have found it difficult to
persuade himself, on his first entering the place, that the people he now
beheld so submissive, industrious, and contented, were the same people
who a few years before had escaped from the shackles of slavery."
The present condition of Hayti may be judged of from the following well-
authenticated facts its population is more than 700,000, its resources
ample, its prosperity and happiness general, its crimes few, its labor
crowned with abundance, with no paupers save the decrepit and aged, its
people hospitable, respectful, orderly, and contented.
The manumitted slaves, who to the number of two thousand were settled in
Nova Scotia by the British Government at the close of the Revolutionary
War, "led a harmless life, and gained the character of an honest,
industrious people from their white neighbors." Of the free laborers of
Trinidad we have the same report. At the Cape of Good Hope, three
thousand negroes received their freedom, and with scarce a single
exception betook themselves to laborious employments.
But we have yet stronger evidence. The total abolishment of slavery in
the southern republics has proved beyond dispute the safety and utility
of immediate abolition. The departed Bolivar indeed deserves his
glorious title of Liberator, for he began his career of freedom by
striking off the fetters of his own slaves, seven hundred in number.
In an official letter from the Mexican Envoy of the British Government,
dated Mexico, March, 1826, and addressed 'to the Right Hon. George
Canning, the superiority of free over slave labor is clearly demonstrated
by the following facts:--
2. It is now carried on exclusively by the labor of free blacks.
3. It was formerly wholly sustained by the forced labor of slaves,
purchased at Vera Cruz at $300 to $400 each.
4. Abolition in this section was effected not by governmental
interference, not even from motives of humanity, but from an irresistible
conviction on the part of the planters that their pecuniary interest
demanded it.
5. The result has proved the entire correctness of this conviction; and
the planters would now be as unwilling as the blacks themselves to return
to the old system.
Let our Southern brethren imitate this example. It is in vain, in the
face of facts like these, to talk of the necessity of maintaining the
abominable system, operating as it does like a double curse upon planters
and slaves. Heaven and earth deny its necessity. It is as necessary as
other robberies, and no more.
Yes, putting aside altogether the righteous law of the living God--the
same yesterday, to-day, and forever--and shutting out the clearest
political truths ever taught by man, still, in human policy selfish
expediency would demand of the planter the immediate emancipation of his
slaves.
Because slave labor is the labor of mere machines; a mechanical impulse
of body and limb, with which the mind of the laborer has no sympathy, and
from which it constantly and loathingly revolts.
Because slave labor deprives the master altogether of the incalculable
benefit of the negro's will. That does not cooperate with the forced
toil of the body. This is but the necessary consequence of all labor
which does not benefit the laborer. It is a just remark of that profound
political economist, Adam Smith, that "a slave can have no other interest
than to eat and waste as much, and work as little, as he can."
To my mind, in the wasteful and blighting influences of slave labor there
is a solemn and warning moral.
They seem the evidence of the displeasure of Him who created man after
His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews,
the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the
avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of
His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His
rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the
ability, of their fellow-mortals, instead of resting under the shadow of
His own Infinite Power and exceeding love.
I shall offer a few more facts and observations on this point.
1. A distinguished scientific gentleman, Mr. Coulomb, the superintendent
of several military works in the French West Indies, gives it as his
opinion, that the slaves do not perform more than one third of the labor
which they would do, provided they were urged by their own interests and
inclinations instead of brute force.
2. A plantation in Barbadoes in 1780 was cultivated by two hundred and
eighty-eight slaves ninety men, eighty-two women, fifty-six boys, and
sixty girls. In three years and three months there were on this
plantation fifty-seven deaths, and only fifteen births. A change was
then made in the government of the slaves. The use of the whip was
denied; all severe and arbitrary punishments were abolished; the laborers
received wages, and their offences were all tried by a sort of negro
court established among themselves: in short, they were practically free.
Under this system, in four years and three months there were forty-four
births, and but forty-one deaths; and the annual net produce of the
plantation was more than three times what it had been before.--(English
Quarterly Magazine and Review, April, 1832.)
3. The following evidence was adduced by Pitt in the British Parliament,
April, 1792. The assembly of Grenada had themselves stated, "that though
the negroes were allowed only the afternoon of one day in a week, they
would do as much work in that afternoon, when employed for their own
benefit, as in the whole day when employed in their master's service."
"Now after this confession," said Mr. Pitt, "the house might burn all its
calculations relative to the negro population. A negro, if he worked for
himself, could no doubt do double work. By an improvement, then, in the
mode of labor, the work in the islands could be doubled."
4. "In coffee districts it is usual for the master to hire his people
after they have done the regular task for the day, at a rate varying from
10d. to 15.8d. for every extra bushel which they pluck from the trees;
and many, almost all, are found eager to earn their wages."
5. In a report made by the commandant of Castries for the government of
St. Lucia, in 1822, it is stated, in proof of the intimacy between the
slaves and the free blacks, that "many small plantations of the latter,
and occupied by only one man and his wife, are better cultivated and have
more land in cultivation than those of the proprietors of many slaves,
and that the labor on them is performed by runaway slaves;" thus clearly
proving that even runaway slaves, under the all-depressing fears of
discovery and oppression, labor well, because the fruits of their labor
are immediately their own.
Let us look at this subject from another point of view. The large sum of
money necessary for stocking a plantation with slaves has an inevitable
tendency to place the agriculture of a slave-holding community
exclusively in the hands of the wealthy, a tendency at war with practical
republicanism and conflicting with the best maxims of political economy.
Two hundred slaves at $200 per head would cost in the outset $40,000.
Compare this enormous outlay for the labor of a single plantation with
the beautiful system of free labor as exhibited in New England, where
every young laborer, with health and ordinary prudence, may acquire by
his labor on the farms of others, in a few years, a farm of his own, and
the stock necessary for its proper cultivation; where on a hard and
unthankful soil independence and competence may be attained by all.
Free labor is perfectly in accordance with the spirit of our
institutions; slave labor is a relic of a barbarous, despotic age. The
one, like the firmament of heaven, is the equal diffusion of similar
lights, manifest, harmonious, regular; the other is the fiery
predominance of some disastrous star, hiding all lesser luminaries around
it in one consuming glare.
Emancipation would reform this evil. The planter would no longer be
under the necessity of a heavy expenditure for slaves. He would only pay
a very moderate price for his labor; a price, indeed, far less than the
cost of the maintenance of a promiscuous gang of slaves, which the
present system requires.
In an old plantation of three hundred slaves, not more than one hundred
effective laborers will be found. Children, the old and superannuated,
the sick and decrepit, the idle and incorrigibly vicious, will be found
to constitute two thirds of the whole number. The remaining third
perform only about one third as much work as the same number of free
laborers.
Now disburden the master of this heavy load of maintenance; let him
employ free able, industrious laborers only, those who feel conscious of
a personal interest in the fruits of their labor, and who does not see
that such a system would be vastly more safe and economical than the
present?
The slave states are learning this truth by fatal experience. Most of
them are silently writhing under the great curse. Virginia has uttered
her complaints aloud. As yet, however, nothing has been done even there,
save a small annual appropriation for the purpose of colonizing the free
colored inhabitants of the state. Is this a remedy?
But it may be said that Virginia will ultimately liberate her slaves on
condition of their colonization in Africa, peacefully if possible,
forcibly if necessary.
Well, admitting that Virginia may be able and willing at some remote
period to rid herself of the evil by commuting the punishment of her
unoffending colored people from slavery to exile, will her fearful remedy
apply to some of the other slaveholding states?
It is a fact, strongly insisted upon by our Southern brethren as a reason
for the perpetuation of slavery, that their climate and peculiar
agriculture will not admit of hard labor on the part of the whites; that
amidst the fatal malaria of the rice plantations the white man is almost
annually visited by the country fever; that few of the white overseers of
these plantations reach the middle period of ordinary life; that the
owners are compelled to fly from their estates as the hot season
approaches, without being able to return until the first frosts have
fallen. But we are told that the slaves remain there, at their work,
mid-leg in putrid water, breathing the noisome atmosphere, loaded with
contagion, and underneath the scorching fervor of a terrible sun; that
they indeed suffer; but, that their habits, constitutions, and their long
practice enable them to labor, surrounded by such destructive influences,
with comparative safety.
The conclusive answer, therefore, to those who in reality cherish the
visionary hope of colonizing all the colored people of the United States
in Africa or elsewhere, is this single, all-important fact: The labor of
the blacks will not and cannot be dispensed with by the planter of the
South.
To what remedy, then, can the friends of humanity betake themselves but
to that of emancipation?
And nothing but a strong, unequivocal expression of public sentiment is
needed to carry into effect this remedy, so far as the general government
is concerned.
And when the voice of all the non-slave-holding states shall be heard on
this question, a voice of expostulation, rebuke, entreaty--when the full
light of truth shall break through the night of prejudice, and reveal all
the foul abominations of slavery, will Delaware still cling to the curse
which is wasting her moral strength, and still rivet the fetters upon her
three or four thousand slaves? Let Delaware begin the work, and Maryland
and Virginia must follow; the example will be contagious; and the great
object of universal emancipation will be attained. Freemen, Christians,
lovers of truth and justice Why stand ye idle? Ours is a government of
opinion, and slavery is interwoven with it. Change the current of
opinion, and slavery will be swept away. Let the awful sovereignty of
the people, a power which is limited only by the sovereignty of Heaven,
arise and pronounce judgment against the crying iniquity. Let each
individual remember that upon himself rests a portion of that
sovereignty; a part of the tremendous responsibility of its exercise.
The burning, withering concentration of public opinion upon the slave
system is alone needed for its total annihilation. God has given us the
power to overthrow it; a power peaceful, yet mighty, benevolent, yet
effectual, "awful without severity," a moral strength equal to the
emergency.
"How does it happen," inquires an able writer, "that whenever duty is named
we begin to hear of the weakness of human nature? That same nature which
outruns the whirlwind in the chase of gain, which rages like a maniac at
the trumpet call of glory, which laughs danger and death to scorn when
its least passion is awakened, becomes weak as childhood when reminded of
the claims of duty." But let no one hope to find an excuse in hypocrisy.
The humblest individual of the community in one way or another possesses
influence; and upon him as well as upon the proudest rests the
responsibility of its rightful exercise and proper direction. The
overthrow of a great national evil like that of slavery can only be
effected by the united energies of the great body of the people.
Shoulder must be put to shoulder and hand linked with hand, the whole
mass must be put in motion and its entire strength applied, until the
fabric of oppression is shaken to its dark foundations and not one stone
is left upon another.
Let the Christian remember that the God of his worship hateth oppression;
that the mystery of faith can only be held by a pure conscience; and that
in vain is the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, if the weihtier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth, are forgotten. Let him
remember that all along the clouded region of slavery the truths of the
everlasting gospel are not spoken, that the ear of iniquity is lulled,
that those who minister between the "porch and the altar" dare not speak
out the language of eternal justice: "Is not this the fast which I have
chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and
to let the oppressed go free?" (Isa. viii. 6.) "He that stealeth a man
and selleth him; or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to
death." (Exod. xxi. 16.1) Yet a little while and the voice of impartial
prayer for humanity will be heard no more in the abiding place of
slavery. The truths of the gospel, its voice of warning and exhortation,
will be denounced as incendiary? The night of that infidelity, which
denies God in the abuse and degradation of man, will settle over the
land, to be broken only by the upheaving earthquake of eternal
retribution.
To the members of the religious Society of Friends, I would earnestly
appeal. They have already done much to put away the evil of slavery in
this country and Great Britain. The blessings of many who were ready to
perish have rested upon them. But their faithful testimony must be still
steadily upborne, for the great work is but begun. Let them not relax
their exertions, nor be contented with a lifeless testimony, a formal
protestation against the evil. Active, prayerful, unwearied exertion is
needed for its overthrow. But above all, let them not aid in excusing
and palliating it. Slavery has no redeeming qualities, no feature of
benevolence, nothing pure, nothing peaceful, nothing just. Let them
carefully keep themselves aloof from all societies and all schemes which
have a tendency to excuse or overlook its crying iniquity. True to a
doctrine founded on love and mercy, "peace on earth and good will to
men," they should regard the suffering slave as their brother, and
endeavor to "put their souls in his soul's stead." They may earnestly
desire the civilization of Africa, but they cannot aid in building up the
colony of Liberia so long as that colony leans for support upon the arm
of military power; so long as it proselytes to Christianity under the
muzzles of its cannon; and preaches the doctrines of Christ while
practising those of Mahomet. When the Sierra Leone Company was formed in
England, not a member of the Society of Friends could be prevailed upon
to engage in it, because the colony was to be supplied with cannon and
other military stores. Yet the Foreign Agent of the Liberia Colony
Society, to which the same insurmountable objection exists, is a member
of the Society of Friends, and I understand has been recently employed in
providing gunpowder, etc., for the use of the colony. There must be an
awakening on this subject; other Woolmans and other Benezets must arise
and speak the truth with the meek love of James and the fervent sincerity
of Paul.
To the women of America, whose sympathies know no distinction of cline,
or sect, or color, the suffering slave is making a strong appeal. Oh,
let it not be unheeded! for of those to whom much is given much will be
required at the last dread tribunal; and never in the strongest terms of
human eulogy was woman's influence overrated. Sisters, daughters, wives,
and mothers, your influence is felt everywhere, at the fireside, and in
the halls of legislation, surrounding, like the all-encircling
atmosphere, brother and father, husband and son! And by your love of
them, by every holy sympathy of your bosoms, by every mournful appeal
which comes up to you from hearts whose sanctuary of affections has been
made waste and desolate, you are called upon to exert it in the cause of
redemption from wrong and outrage.
Let the patriot, the friend of liberty and the Union of the States, no
longer shut his eyes to the great danger, the master-evil before which
all others dwindle into insignificance. Our Union is tottering to its
foundation, and slavery is the cause. Remove the evil. Dry up at their
source the bitter waters. In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs;
in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed
thing is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence remains.
Drag, then, the Achan into light; and let national repentance atone for
national sin.
The conflicting interests of free and slave labor furnish the only ground
for fear in relation to the permanency of the Union. The line of
separation between them is day by day growing broader and deeper;
geographically and politically united, we are already, in a moral point
of view, a divided people. But a few months ago we were on the very
verge of civil war, a war of brothers, a war between the North and the
South, between the slave-holder and the free laborer. The danger has
been delayed for a time; this bolt has fallen without mortal injury to
the Union, but the cloud from whence it came still hangs above us,
reddening with the elements of destruction.
Recent events have furnished ample proof that the slave-holding interest
is prepared to resist any legislation on the part of the general
government which is supposed to have a tendency, directly or indirectly,
to encourage and invigorate free labor; and that it is determined to
charge upon its opposite interest the infliction of all those evils which
necessarily attend its own operation, "the primeval curse of Omnipotence
upon slavery."
We have already felt in too many instances the extreme difficulty of
cherishing in one common course of national legislation the opposite
interests of republican equality and feudal aristocracy and servitude.
The truth is, we have undertaken a moral impossibility. These interests
are from their nature irreconcilable. The one is based upon the pure
principles of rational liberty; the other, under the name of freedom,
revives the ancient European system of barons and villains, nobles and
serfs. Indeed, the state of society which existed among our Anglo-Saxon
ancestors was far more tolerable than that of many portions of our
republican confederacy. For the Anglo-Saxon slaves had it in their power
to purchase their freedom; and the laws of the realm recognized their
liberation and placed them under legal protection.
(The diffusion of Christianity in Great Britain was moreover
followed by a general manumission; for it would seem that the
priests and missionaries of religion in that early and benighted age
were more faithful in the performance of their duties than those of
the present. "The holy fathers, monks, and friars," says Sir T.
Smith, "had in their confessions, and specially in their extreme and
deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a thing it was
for one Christian to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men,
by reason of the terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit
all their villains."--Hilt. Commonwealth, Blackstone, p. 52.)
To counteract the dangers resulting from a state of society so utterly at
variance with the great Declaration of American freedom should be the
earnest endeavor of every patriotic statesman. Nothing unconstitutional,
nothing violent, should be attempted; but the true doctrine of the rights
of man should be steadily kept in view; and the opposition to slavery
should be inflexible and constantly maintained. The almost daily
violations of the Constitution in consequence of the laws of some of the
slave states, subjecting free colored citizens of New England and
elsewhere, who may happen to be on board of our coasting vessels, to
imprisonment immediately on their arrival in a Southern port should be
provided against. Nor should the imprisonment of the free colored
citizens of the Northern and Middle states, on suspicion of being
runaways, subjecting them, even after being pronounced free, to the costs
of their confinement and trial, be longer tolerated; for if we continue
to yield to innovations like these upon the Constitution of our fathers,
we shall erelong have the name only of a free government left us.
Dissemble as we may, it is impossible for us to believe, after fully
considering the nature of slavery, that it can much longer maintain a
peaceable existence among us. A day of revolution must come, and it is
our duty to prepare for it. Its threatened evil may be changed into a
national blessing. The establishment of schools for the instruction of
the slave children, a general diffusion of the lights of Christianity,
and the introduction of a sacred respect for the social obligations of
marriage and for the relations between parents and children, among our
black population, would render emancipation not only perfectly safe, but
also of the highest advantage to the country. Two millions of freemen
would be added to our population, upon whom in the hour of danger we
could safely depend; "the domestic foe" would be changed into a firm
friend, faithful, generous, and ready to encounter all dangers in our
defence. It is well known that during the last war with Great Britain,
wherever the enemy touched upon our Southern coast, the slaves in
multitudes hastened to join them. On the other hand, the free blacks
were highly serviceable in repelling them. So warm was the zeal of the
latter, so manifest their courage in the defence of Louisiana, that the
present Chief Magistrate of the United States publicly bestowed upon them
one of the highest eulogiums ever offered by a commander to his soldiers.
Let no one seek an apology for silence on the subject of slavery because
the laws of the land tolerate and sanction it. But a short time ago the
slave-trade was protected by laws and treaties, and sanctioned by the
example of men eminent for the reputation of piety and integrity. Yet
public opinion broke over these barriers; it lifted the curtain and
revealed the horrors of that most abominable traffic; and unrighteous law
and ancient custom and avarice and luxury gave way before its
irresistible authority. It should never be forgotten that human law
cannot change the nature of human action in the pure eye of infinite
justice; and that the ordinances of man cannot annul those of God. The
slave system, as existing in this country, can be considered in no other
light than as the cause of which the foul traffic in human flesh is the
legitimate consequence. It is the parent, the fosterer, the sole
supporter of the slave-trade. It creates the demand for slaves, and the
foreign supply will always be equal to the demand of consumption. It
keeps the market open. It offers inducements to the slave-trader which
no severity of law against his traffic can overcome. By our laws his
trade is piracy; while slavery, to which alone it owes its existence, is
protected and cherished, and those engaged in it are rewarded by an
increase of political power proportioned to the increase of their stock
of human beings! To steal the natives of Africa is a crime worthy of an
ignominious death; but to steal and enslave annually nearly one hundred
thousand of the descendants of these stolen natives, born in this
country, is considered altogether excusable and proper! For my own part,
I know no difference between robbery in Africa and robbery at home. I
could with as quiet a conscience engage in the one as the other.
"There is not one general principle," justly remarks Lord Nugent, "on
which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery
itself." Kindred in iniquity, both must fall speedily, fall together,
and be consigned to the same dishonorable grave. The spirit which is
thrilling through every nerve of England is awakening America from her
sleep of death. Who, among our statesmen, would not shrink from the
baneful reputation of having supported by his legislative influence the
slave-trade, the traffic in human flesh? Let them then beware; for the
time is near at hand when the present defenders of slavery will sink
under the same fatal reputation, and leave to posterity a memory which
will blacken through all future time, a legacy of infamy.
"Let us not betake us to the common arts and stratagems of nations, but
fear God, and put away the evil which provokes Him; and trust not in man,
but in the living God; and it shall go well for England!" This counsel,
given by the purehearted William Penn, in a former age, is about to be
followed in the present. An intense and powerful feeling is working in
the mighty heart of England; it is speaking through the lips of Brougham
and Buxton and O'Connell, and demanding justice in the name of humanity
and according to the righteous law of God. The immediate emancipation of
eight hundred thousand slaves is demanded with an authority which cannot
much longer be disputed or trifled with. That demand will be obeyed;
justice will be done; the heavy burdens will be unloosed; the oppressed
set free. It shall go well for England.
And when the stain on our own escutcheon shall be seen no more; when the
Declaration of our Independence and the practice of our people shall
agree; when truth shall be exalted among us; when love shall take the
place of wrong; when all the baneful pride and prejudice of caste and
color shall fall forever; when under one common sun of political liberty
the slave-holding portions of our republic shall no longer sit, like the
Egyptians of old, themselves mantled in thick darkness, while all around
them is glowing with the blessed light of freedom and equality, then, and
not till then, shall it go well for America!
THE ABOLITIONISTS. THEIR SENTIMENTS AND OBJECTS.
Two letters to the 'Jeffersonian and Times', Richmond, Va.
I.
A FRIEND has banded me a late number of your paper, containing a brief
notice of a pamphlet, which I have recently published on the subject of
slavery.
From an occasional perusal of your paper, I have formed a favorable
opinion of your talent and independence. Compelled to dissent from some
of your political sentiments, I still give you full credit for the lofty
tone of sincerity and manliness with which these sentiments are avowed
and defended.
I perceive that since the adjustment of the tariff question a new subject
of discontent and agitation seems to engross your attention.
The "accursed tariff" has no sooner ceased to be the stone of stumbling
and the rock of offence, than the "abolition doctrines of the Northern
enthusiasts," as you are pleased to term the doctrines of your own
Jefferson, furnish, in your opinion, a sufficient reason for poising the
"Ancient Dominion" on its sovereignty, and rousing every slaveowner to
military preparations, until the entire South, from the Potomac to the
Gulf, shall bristle with bayonets, "like quills upon the fretful
porcupine."
In proof of a conspiracy against your "vested rights," you have commenced
publishing copious extracts from the pamphlets and periodicals of the
abolitionists of New England and New York. An extract from my own
pamphlet you have headed "The Fanatics," and in introducing it to your
readers you inform them that "it exhibits, in strong colors, the morbid
spirit of that false and fanatical philanthropy, which is at work in the
Northern states, and, to some extent, in the South."
Gentlemen, so far as I am personally concerned in the matter, I feel no
disposition to take exceptions to any epithets which you may see fit to
apply to me or my writings. A humble son of New England--a tiller of her
rugged soil, and a companion of her unostentatious yeomanry--it matters
little, in any personal consideration of the subject, whether the voice
of praise or opprobrium reaches me from beyond the narrow limits of my
immediate neighborhood.
But when I find my opinions quoted as the sentiment of New England, and
then denounced as dangerous, "false and fanatical;" and especially when I
see them made the occasion of earnest appeals to the prejudices and
sectional jealousies of the South, it becomes me to endeavor to establish
their truths, and defend them from illegitimate influences and unjust
suspicions.
In the first place, then, let me say, that if it be criminal to publicly
express a belief that it is in the power of the slave states to
emancipate their slaves, with profit and safety to themselves, and that
such is their immediate duty, a majority of the people of New England are
wholly guiltless. Of course, all are nominally opposed to slavery; but
upon the little band of abolitionists should the anathemas of the slave-
holder be directed, for they are the agitators of whom you complain, men
who are acting under a solemn conviction of duty, and who are bending
every energy of their minds to the accomplishment of their object.
And that object is the overthrow of slavery in the United States, by such
means only as are sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion.
I shall endeavor, gentlemen, as briefly as may be, to give you some of
our reasons for opposing slavery and seeking its abolition; and,
secondly, to explain our mode of operation; to disclose our plan of
emancipation, fully and entirely. We wish to do nothing darkly; frank
republicans, we acknowledge no double-dealing. At this busy season of
the year, I cannot but regret that I have not leisure for such a
deliberate examination of the subject as even my poor ability might
warrant. My remarks, penned in the intervals of labor, must necessarily
be brief, and wanting in coherence.
We seek the abolishment of slavery
1. Because it is contrary to the law of God.
In your paper of the 2d of 7th mo., the same in which you denounce the
"false and fanatical philanthropy" of abolitionists, you avow yourselves
members of the Bible Society, and bestow warm and deserved encomiums on
the "truly pious undertaking of sending the truth among all nations."
You, therefore, gentlemen, whatever others may do, will not accuse me of
"fanaticism," if I endeavor to sustain my first great reason for opposing
slavery by a reference to the volume of inspiration:
"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do
ye even so to them."
"Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it;
for there is no iniquity with the Lord, nor respect of persons."
"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of
wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and
that ye break every yoke?"
"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren, and maketh merchandise
of him, or selling him, that thief shall die."
"Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons."
"And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his
hands, he shall surely be put to death."
2. Because it is an open violation of all human equality, of the laws of
Nature and of nations.
The fundamental principle of all equal and just law is contained in the
following extract from Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, sec. 2.
"The rights which God and Nature have established, and which are
therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the
aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they
are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by
municipal laws to be inviolable: on the contrary, no human legislation
has power to abridge or destroy there, unless the owner shall himself
commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
Has the negro committed such offence? Above all, has his infant child
forfeited its unalienable right?
Surely it can be no act of the innocent child.
Yet you must prove the forfeiture, or no human legislation can deprive
that child of its freedom.
Its black skin constitutes the forfeiture!
What! throw the responsibility upon God! Charge the common Father of the
white and the black, He, who is no respecter of persons, with plundering
His unoffending children of all which makes the boon of existence
desirable; their personal liberty!
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--
(Declaration of Independence, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.)
In this general and unqualified declaration, on the 4th of July, 1776,
all the people of the United States, without distinction of color, were
proclaimed free, by the delegates of the people of those states assembled
in their highest sovereign capacity.
For more than half a century we have openly violated that solemn
declaration.
3. Because it renders nugatory the otherwise beneficial example of our
free institutions, and exposes us to the scorn and reproach of the
liberal and enlightened of other nations.
"Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless
Congress."--(Francis Jeffrey.)
"Man to be possessed by man! Man to be made property of! The image of
the Deity to be put under the yoke! Let these usurpers show us their
title-deeds!"--(Simon Boliver.)
"When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American
liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large
portion of the people are slaves! It is a dark spot on the face of the
nation. Such a state of things cannot always exist."--(Lafayette.)
"I deem it right to raise my humble voice to convince the citizens of
America that the slaveholding states are held in abomination by all those
whose opinion ought to be valuable. Man is the property of man in about
one half of the American States: let them not therefore dare to prate of
their institutions or of their national freedom, while they hold their
fellow-men in bondage! Of all men living, the American citizen who is
the owner of slaves is the most despicable. He is a political hypocrite
of the very worst description. The friends of humanity and liberty in
Europe should join in one universal cry of shame on the American slave-
holders! 'Base wretches!' should we shout in chorus; 'base wretches!
how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of
republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in
chains and slavery!'"--(Daniel O'Connell.)
4. Because it subjects one portion of our American brethren to the
unrestrained violence and unholy passions of another.
Here, gentlemen, I might summon to my support a cloud of witnesses, a
host of incontrovertible, damning facts, the legitimate results of a
system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart. But I will not
descend to particulars. I am willing to believe that the majority of the
masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their
unfortunate slaves with kindness. But where the dreadful privilege of
slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be
individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity,
whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies,
nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is daily and hourly
abused.
Will the evidence of your own Jefferson, on this point, be admissible?
"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. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it. 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 the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated,
and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot fail to be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances."--(Notes on
Virginia, p. 241.)
"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais
traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave-
holder, in his late work on the United States.
Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law
limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed,
beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?
You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of
masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
slave decided to be only a trespass!--(Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481,
Harris versus Nichols.)
It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its
practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to
Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.
In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and
justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of
moderate correction!"
In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still
in force:--
"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white
person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give
evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other
person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be
deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other
person can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or
shall by his own oath clear and exculpate himself, which oath every court
where such offence shall be tried is hereby empowered to administer and
to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not
made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding."
Is not this offering a reward for perjury? And what shall we think of
that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses,
in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.
5. Because it induces dangerous sectional jealousies, creates of
necessity a struggle between the opposing interests of free and slave
labor, and threatens the integrity of the Union.
That sectional jealousies do exist, the tone of your paper, gentlemen, is
of itself an evidence, if indeed any were needed. The moral sentiment of
the free states is against slavery. The freeman has declared his
unwillingness that his labor should be reduced to a level with that of
slaves. Harsh epithets and harsh threats have been freely exchanged,
until the beautiful Potomac, wherever it winds its way to the ocean, has
become the dividing line, not of territory only, but of feeling,
interest, national pride, a moral division.
What shook the pillars of the Union when the Missouri question was
agitated? What but a few months ago arrayed in arms a state against the
Union, and the Union against a state?
From Maine to Florida, gentlemen, the answer must be the same, slavery.
6. Because of its pernicious influence upon national wealth and
prosperity.
Political economy has been the peculiar study of Virginia. But there are
some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto
overlooked or wantonly disregarded.
Population increasing with the means of subsistence is a fair test of
national wealth.
By reference to the several censuses of the United States, it will be
seen that the white population increases nearly twice as fast in states
where there are few or no slaves as in the slave states.
Again, in the latter states the slave population has increased twice as
fast as the white. Let us take, for example, the period of twenty years,
from 1790 to 1810, and compare the increase of the two classes in three
of the Southern states.
Per cent. of whites. Per cent. of blacks.
Maryland 13 31
Virginia 24 38
North Carolina 30 70
The causes of this disproportionate increase, so inimical to the true
interests of the country, are very manifest.
A large proportion of the free inhabitants of the United States are
dependent upon their labor for subsistence. The forced, unnatural system
of slavery in some of the states renders the demand for free laborers
less urgent; they are not so readily and abundantly supplied with the
means of subsistence as those of their own class in the free states, and
as the necessaries of life diminish population also diminishes.
There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population. In
the free states labor is reputable. The statesman, whose eloquence has
electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public
service to handle the axe and the hoe. And the woman whose beauty,
talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no
degradation to "look well to her household."
But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation.
It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to
labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man.
Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a
slave-holding community! Compelled to perform the despised offices of
the slave, they can hardly rise above his level. They become the pariahs
of society. No wonder, then, that the tide of emigration flows from the
slave-cursed shores of the Atlantic to the free valleys of the West.
In New England the labor of a farmer or mechanic is worth from $150 to
$200 per annum. That of a female from $50 to $100. Our entire
population, with the exception of those engaged in mercantile affairs,
the professional classes, and a very few moneyed idlers, are working men
and women. If that of the South were equally employed (and slavery
apart, there is no reason why they should not be), how large an addition
would be annually made to the wealth of the country? The truth is, a
very considerable portion of the national wealth produced by Northern
labor is taxed to defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of
Southern property in Congress, and to maintain an army mainly for the
protection of the slave-master against the dangerous tendencies of that
property.
In the early and better days of the Roman Republic, the ancient warriors
and statesmen cultivated their fields with their own hands; but so soon
as their agriculture was left to the slaves, it visibly declined, the
once fertile fields became pastures, and the inhabitants of that garden
of the world were dependent upon foreign nations for the necessaries of
life. The beautiful villages, once peopled by free contented laborers,
became tenantless, and, over the waste of solitude, we see, here and
there, at weary distances, the palaces of the master, contrasting
painfully with the wretched cottages and subterranean cells of the slave.
In speaking of the extraordinary fertility of the soil in the early times
of the Republic, Pliny inquires, "What was the cause of these abundant
harvests? It was this, that men of rank employed themselves in the
culture of the fields; whereas now it is left to wretches loaded with
fetters, who carry in their countenances the shameful evidence of their
slavery."
And what was true in the days of the Roman is now written legibly upon
the soil of your own Virginia. A traveller in your state, in
contemplating the decline of its agriculture, has justly remarked that,
"if the miserable condition of the negro had left his mind for
reflection, he would laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken
the land with ugliness."
Is the rapid increase of a population of slaves in itself no evil? In
all the slave states the increase of the slaves is vastly more rapid than
that of the whites or free blacks. When we recollect that they are under
no natural or moral restraint, careless of providing food or clothing for
themselves or their children; when, too, we consider that they are raised
as an article of profitable traffic, like the cattle of New England and
the hogs of Kentucky; that it is a matter of interest, of dollars and
cents, to the master that they should multiply as fast as possible, there
is surely nothing at all surprising in the increase of their numbers.
Would to heaven there were also nothing alarming!
7. Because, by the terms of the national compact, the free and the slave
states are alike involved in the guilt of maintaining slavery, and the
citizens of the former are liable, at any moment, to be called upon to
aid the latter in suppressing, at the point of the bayonet, the
insurrection of the slaves.
Slavery is, at the best, an unnatural state. And Nature, when her
eternal principles are violated, is perpetually struggling to restore
them to their first estate.
All history, ancient and modern, is full of warning on this point. Need
I refer to the many revolts of the Roman and Grecian slaves, the bloody
insurrection of Etruria, the horrible servile wars of Sicily and Capua?
Or, to come down to later times, to France in the fourteenth century,
Germany in the sixteenth, to Malta in the last? Need I call to mind the
untold horrors of St. Domingo, when that island, under the curse of its
servile war, glowed redly in the view of earth and heaven,--an open hell?
Have our own peculiar warnings gone by unheeded,--the frequent slave
insurrections of the South? One horrible tragedy, gentlemen, must still
be fresh in your recollection,--Southampton, with its fired dwellings and
ghastly dead! Southampton, with its dreadful associations, of the death
struggle with the insurgents, the groans of the tortured negroes, the
lamentations of the surviving whites over woman in her innocence and
beauty, and childhood, and hoary age!
"The hour of emancipation," said Thomas Jefferson, "is advancing in the
march of time. It will come. If not brought on by the generous energy
of our own minds, it will come by the bloody process of St. Domingo!"
To the just and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but
a few words to add. They shall be those of truth and soberness.
We regard the slave system in your section of the country as a great
evil, moral and political,--an evil which, if left to itself for even a
few years longer, will give the entire South into the hands of the
blacks.
The terms of the national compact compel us to consider more than two
millions of our fellow-beings as your property; not, indeed, morally,
really, de facto, but still legally your property! We acknowledge that
you have a power derived from the United States Constitution to hold this
"property," but we deny that you have any moral right to take advantage
of that power. For truth will not allow us to admit that any human law
or compact can make void or put aside the ordinance of the living God and
the eternal laws of Nature.
We therefore hold it to be the duty of the people of the slave-holding
states to begin the work of emancipation now; that any delay must be
dangerous to themselves in time and eternity, and full of injustice to
their slaves and to their brethren of the free states.
Because the slave has never forfeited his right to freedom, and the
continuance of his servitude is a continuance of robbery; and because, in
the event of a servile war, the people of the free states would be called
upon to take a part in its unutterable horrors.
New England would obey that call, for she will abide unto death by the
Constitution of the land. Yet what must be the feelings of her citizens,
while engaged in hunting down like wild beasts their fellow-men--brutal
and black it may be, but still oppressed, suffering human beings,
struggling madly and desperately for their liberty, if they feel and know
that the necessity of so doing has resulted from a blind fatality on the
part of the oppressor, a reckless disregard of the warnings of earth and
heaven, an obstinate perseverance in a system founded and sustained by
robbery and wrong?
All wars are horrible, wicked, inexcusable, and truly and solemnly has
Jefferson himself said that, in a contest of this kind, between the slave
and the master, "the Almighty has no attribute which could take side with
us."
Understand us, gentlemen. We only ask to have the fearful necessity
taken away from us of sustaining the wretched policy of slavery by moral
influence or physical force. We ask alone to be allowed to wash our
hands of the blood of millions of your fellow-beings, the cry of whom is
rising up as a swift witness unto God against us.
8. Because all the facts connected with the subject warrant us in a most
confident belief that a speedy and general emancipation might be made
with entire safety, and that the consequences of such an emancipation
would be highly beneficial to the planters of the South.
Awful as may be their estimate in time and eternity, I will not,
gentlemen, dwell upon the priceless benefits of a conscience at rest, a
soul redeemed from the all-polluting influences of slavery, and against
which the cry of the laborer whose hire has been kept back by fraud does
not ascend. Nor will I rest the defence of my position upon the fact
that it can never be unsafe to obey the commands of God. These are the
old and common arguments of "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," melting away
like frost-work in the glorious sunshine of expediency and utility. In
the light of these modern luminaries, then, let us reason together.
A long and careful examination of the subject will I think fully justify
me in advancing this general proposition.
Wherever, whether in Europe, the East and West Indies, South America, or
in our own country, a fair experiment has been made of the comparative
expense of free and slave labor, the result has uniformly been favorable
to the former.
(See Brougham's Colonial Policy. Hodgdon's Letter to Jean Baptiste
Say. Waleh's Brazil. Official Letter of Hon. Mr. Ward, from
Mexico. Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The
Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation
in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr.
Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy.
Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.)
Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered. Standing on your own ground of
expediency, I am ready to defend my position.
I pass from the utility to the safety of emancipation. And here,
gentlemen, I shall probably be met at the outset with your supposed
consequences, bloodshed, rapine, promiscuous massacre!
The facts, gentlemen! In God's name, bring out your facts! If slavery
is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an
everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than
the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.
Do you find them in the emancipation of the South American Republics? In
Hayti? In the partial experiments of some of the West India Islands?
Does history, ancient or modern, justify your fears? Can you find any
excuse for them in the nature of the human mind, everywhere maddened by
injury and conciliated by kindness? No, gentlemen; the dangers of
slavery are manifest and real, all history lies open for your warning.
But the dangers of emancipation, of "doing justly and loving mercy,"
exist only in your imaginations. You cannot produce one fact in
corroboration of your fears. You cannot point to the stain of a single
drop of any master's blood shed by the slave he has emancipated.
I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery. In my next
letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be
able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing
"unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.
In the mean time, gentlemen, I am your friend and well-wisher.
HAVERHILL, MASS., 22d 7th Mo., 1833.
II.
The abolitionists of the North have been grossly misrepresented. In
attacking the system of slavery, they have never recommended any measure
or measures conflicting with the Constitution of the United States.
They have never sought to excite or encourage a spirit of rebellion among
the slaves: on the contrary, they would hold any such attempt, by
whomsoever made, in utter and stern abhorrence.
All the leading abolitionists of my acquaintance are, from principle,
opposed to war of all kinds, believing that the benefits of no war
whatever can compensate for the sacrifice of one human life by violence.
Consequently, they would be the first to deprecate any physical
interference with your slave system on the part of the general
government.
They are, without exception, opposed to any political interposition of
the government, in regard to slavery as it exists in the states. For,
although they feel and see that the canker of the moral disease is
affecting all parts of the confederacy, they believe that the remedy lies
with yourselves alone. Any such interference they would consider
unlawful and unconstitutional; and the exercise of unconstitutional
power, although sanctioned by the majority of a republican government,
they believe to be a tyranny as monstrous and as odious as the despotism
of a Turkish Sultan.
Having made this disclaimer on the part of myself and my friends, let me
inquire from whence this charge of advocating the interference of the
general government with the sovereign jurisdiction of the states has
arisen? Will you, gentlemen, will the able editors of the United States
Telegraph and the Columbian Telescope, explain? For myself, I have
sought in vain among the writings of our "Northern Enthusiasts," and
among the speeches of the Northern statesmen and politicians, for some
grounds for the accusation.
The doctrine, such as it is, does not belong to us. I think it may be
traced home to the South, to Virginia, to her Convention of 1829, to the
speech of Ex-President Monroe, on the white basis question.
"As to emancipation," said that distinguished son of your state, "if ever
that should take place, it cannot be done by the state; it must be done
by the Union."
Again, "If emancipation can ever be effected, it can only be done with
the aid of the general government."
Gentlemen, you are welcome to your doctrine. It has no advocates among
the abolitionists of New England.
We aim to overthrow slavery by the moral influence of an enlightened
public sentiment;
By a clear and fearless exposition of the guilt of holding property in
man;
By analyzing the true nature of slavery, and boldly rebuking sin;
By a general dissemination of the truths of political economy, in regard
to free and slave labor;
By appeals from the pulpit to the consciences of men;
By the powerful influence of the public press;
By the formation of societies whose object shall be to oppose the
principle of slavery by such means as are consistent with our obligations
to law, religion, and humanity;
By elevating, by means of education and sympathy, the character of the
free people of color among us.
Our testimony against slavery is the same which has uniformly, and with
so much success, been applied to prevailing iniquity in all ages of the
world, the truths of divine revelation.
Believing that there can be nothing in the Providence of God to which His
holy and eternal law is not strictly applicable, we maintain that no
circumstances can justify the slave-holder in a continuance of his
system.
That the fact that this system did not originate with the present
generation is no apology for retaining it, inasmuch as crime cannot be
entailed; and no one is under a necessity of sinning because others have
done so before him;
That the domestic slave-trade is as repugnant to the laws of God, and
should be as odious in the eyes of a Christian community, as the foreign;
That the black child born in a slave plantation is not "an entailed
article of property;" and that the white man who makes of that child a
slave is a thief and a robber, stealing the child as the sea pirate stole
his father!
We do not talk of gradual abolition, because, as Christians, we find no
authority for advocating a gradual relinquishment of sin. We say to
slaveholders, "Repent now, to-day, immediately;" just as we say to the
intemperate, "Break off from your vice at once; touch not, taste not,
handle not, from henceforth forever."
Besides, the plan of gradual abolition has been tried in this country and
the West Indies, and found wanting. It has been in operation in our
slave states ever since the Declaration of Independence, and its results
are before the nation. Let us see.
THE ABOLITIONISTS 79
In 1790 there were in the slave states south of the Potomac and the Ohio
20,415 free blacks. Their increase for the ten years following was at
the rate of sixty per cent., their number in 1800 being 32,604. In 1810
there were 58,046, an increase of seventy-five per cent. This
comparatively large increase was, in a great measure, owing to the free
discussions going on in England and in this country on the subject of the
slave-trade and the rights of man. The benevolent impulse extended to
the slave-masters, and manumissions were frequent. But the salutary
impression died away; the hand of oppression closed again upon its
victims; and the increase for the period of twenty years, 1810 to 1830,
was only seventy-seven per cent., about one half of what it was in the
ten years from 1800 to 1810. And this is the practical result of the
much-lauded plan of gradual abolition.
In 1790, in the states above mentioned, there were only 550,604 slaves,
but in 1830 there were 1,874,098! And this, too, is gradual abolition.
"What, then!" perhaps you will ask, "do you expect to overthrow our whole
slave system at once? to turn loose to-day two millions of negroes?"
No, gentlemen; we expect no such thing. Enough for us if in the spirit
of fraternal duty we point to your notice the commands of God; if we urge
you by every cherished remembrance of common sacrifices upon a common
altar, by every consideration of humanity, justice, and expediency, to
begin now, without a moment's delay, to break away from your miserable
system,--to begin the work of moral reformation, as God commands you to
begin, not as selfishness, or worldly policy, or short-sighted political
expediency, may chance to dictate.
Such is our doctrine of immediate emancipation. A doctrine founded on
God's eternal truth, plain, simple, and perfect,--the doctrine of
immediate, unprocrastinated repentance applied to the sin of slavery.
Of this doctrine, and of our plan for crrrying it into effect, I have
given an exposition, with the most earnest regard to the truth. Does
either embrace anything false, fanatical, or unconstitutional? Do they
afford a reasonable protext for your fierce denunciations of your
Northern brethren? Do they furnish occasion for your newspaper chivalry,
your stereotyped demonstrations of Southern magnanimity and Yankee
meanness?--things, let me say, unworthy of Virginians, degrading to
yourselves, insulting to us.
Gentlemen, it is too late for Virginia, with all her lofty intellect and
nobility of feeling, to defend and advocate the principle of slavery.
The death-like silence which for nearly two centuries brooded over her
execrable system has been broken; light is pouring in upon the minds of
her citizens; truth is abroad, "searching out and overturning the lies of
the age." A moral reformation has been already awakened, and it cannot
now be drugged to sleep by the sophistries of detected sin. A thousand
intelligences are at work in her land; a thousand of her noblest hearts
are glowing with the redeeming spirit of that true philanthropy, which is
moving all the world. No, gentlemen; light is spreading from the hills
of Western Virginia to the extremest East. You cannot arrest its
progress. It is searching the consciences; it is exercising the reason;
it is appealing to the noblest characteristics of intelligent Virginians.
It is no foreign influence. From every abandoned plantation where the
profitless fern and thistle have sprung up under the heel of slavery;
from every falling mansion of the master, through whose windows the fox
may look out securely, and over whose hearth-stone the thin grass is
creeping, a warning voice is sinking deeply into all hearts not imbruted
by avarice, indolence, and the lust of power.
Abolitionist as I am, the intellectual character of Virginia has no
warmer admirer than myself. Her great names, her moral trophies, the
glories of her early day, the still proud and living testimonials of her
mental power, I freely acknowledge and strongly appreciate. And, believe
me, it is with no other feelings than those of regret and heartfelt
sorrow that I speak plainly of her great error, her giant crime, a crime
which is visibly calling down upon her the curse of an offended Deity.
But I cannot forget that upon some of the most influential and highly
favored of her sons rests the responsibility at the present time of
sustaining this fearful iniquity. Blind to the signs of the times,
careless of the wishes of thousands of their white fellow-citizens and of
the manifold wrongs of the black man, they have dared to excuse, defend,
nay, eulogize, the black abominations of slavery.
Against the tottering ark of the idol these strong men have placed their
shoulders. That ark must fall; that idol must be cast down; what, then,
will be the fate of their supporters?
When the Convention of 1829 had gathered in its splendid galaxy of
talents the great names of Virginia, the friends of civil liberty turned
their eyes towards it in the earnest hope and confidence that it would
adopt some measures in regard to slavery worthy of the high character of
its members and of the age in which they lived. I need not say how deep
and bitter was our disappointment. Western Virginia indeed spoke on that
occasion, through some of her delegates, the words of truth and humanity.
But their counsels and warnings were unavailing; the majority turned away
to listen to the bewildering eloquence of Leigh and Upshur and Randolph,
as they desecrated their great intellects to the defence of that system
of oppression under which the whole land is groaning. The memorial of
the citizens of Augusta County, bearing the signatures of many slave-
holders, placed the evils of slavery in a strong light before the
convention. Its facts and arguments could only be arbitrarily thrust
aside and wantonly disregarded; they could not be disproved.
"In a political point of view," says the memorial, "we esteem slavery an
evil greater than the aggregate of all the other evils which beset us,
and we are perfectly willing to bear our proportion of the burden of
removing it. We ask, further, What is the evil of any such alarm as our
proposition may excite in minds unnecessarily jealous compared with that
of the fatal catastrophe which ultimately awaits our country, and the
general depravation of manners which slavery has already produced and is
producing?"
I cannot forbear giving one more extract from this paper. The
memorialists state their belief
"That the labor of slaves is vastly less productive than that of freemen;
that it therefore requires a larger space to furnish subsistence for a
given number of the former than of the latter; that the employment of the
former necessarily excludes that of the latter; that hence our
population, white and black, averages seventeen, when it ought, and would
under other circumstances, average, as in New England, at least sixty to
a square mile; that the possession and management of slaves form a source
of endless vexation and misery in the house, and of waste and ruin on the
farm; that the youth of the country are growing up with a contempt of
steady industry as a low and servile thing, which contempt induces
idleness and all its attendant effeminacy, vice, and worthlessness; that
the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself, is
bringing poverty on all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the
sparseness of population either prevent the institution of schools
throughout the country, or keep them in a most languid and inefficient
condition; and that the same causes most obviously paralyze all our
schemes and efforts for the useful improvement of the country."
Gentlemen, you have only to look around you to know that this picture has
been drawn with the pencil of truth. What has made desolate and sterile
one of the loveliest regions of the whole earth? What mean the signs of
wasteful neglect, of long improvidence around you: the half-finished
mansion already falling into decay, the broken-down enclosures, the weed-
grown garden the slave hut open to the elements, the hillsides galled and
naked, the fields below them run over with brier and fern? Is all this
in the ordinary course of nature? Has man husbanded well the good gifts
of God, and are they nevertheless passing from him, by a process of
deterioration over which he has no control? No, gentlemen. For more
than two centuries the cold and rocky soil of New England has yielded its
annual tribute, and it still lies green and luxuriant beneath the sun of
our brief summer. The nerved and ever-exercised arm of free labor has
changed a landscape wild and savage as the night scenery of Salvator Rosa
into one of pastoral beauty,--the abode of independence and happiness.
Under a similar system of economy and industry, how would Virginia, rich
with Nature's prodigal blessings, have worn at this time over all her
territory the smiles of plenty, the charms of rewarded industry! What a
change would have been manifest in your whole character! Freemen in the
place of slaves, industry, reputable economy, a virtue, dissipation
despised, emigration unnecessary!
(A late Virginia member of Congress described the Virginia slave-
holder as follows: "He is an Eastern Virginian whose good fortune it
has been to have been born wealthy, and to have become a profound
politician at twenty-one without study or labor. This individual,
from birth and habit, is above all labor and exertion. He never
moves a finger for any useful purpose; he lives on the labor of his
slaves, and even this labor he is too proud and indolent to direct
in person. While he is at his ease, a mercenary with a whip in his
hand drives his slaves in the field. Their dinner, consisting of a
few scraps and lean bones, is eaten in the burning sun. They have
no time to go to a shade and be refreshed such easement is reserved
for the horses"!--Speech of Hon. P. P. Doddridge in House of
Delegates, 1829.)
All this, you will say, comes too late; the curse is upon you, the evil
in the vitals of your state, the desolation widening day by day. No, it
is not too late. There are elements in the Virginian character capable
of meeting the danger, extreme as it is, and turning it aside. Could you
but forget for a time partisan contest and unprofitable political
speculations, you might successfully meet the dangerous exigencies of
your state with those efficient remedies which the spirit of the age
suggests; you might, and that too without pecuniary loss, relinquish your
claims to human beings as slaves, and employ them as free laborers, under
such restraint and supervision as their present degraded condition may
render necessary. In the language of one of your own citizens, "it is
useless for you to attempt to linger on the skirts of the age which is
departed. The action of existing causes and principles is steady and
progressive. It cannot be retarded, unless you would blow out all the
moral lights around you; and if you refuse to keep up with it, you will
be towed in the wake, whether you will or not."--(Speech in Virginia
legislature, 1832.)
The late noble example of the eloquent statesman of Roanoke, the
manumission of his slaves, speaks volumes to his political friends. In
the last hour of existence, when his soul was struggling from his broken
tenement, his latest effort was the confirmation of this generous act of
a former period. Light rest the turf upon him beneath his own
patrimonial oaks! The prayers of many hearts made happy by his
benevolence shall linger over his grave and bless it.
Gentlemen, in concluding these letters, let me once more assure you that
I entertain towards you and your political friends none other than kindly
feelings. If I have spoken at all with apparent harshness, it has been
of principles rather than of men. But I deprecate no censure. Conscious
of the honest and patriotic motives which have prompted their avowal, I
cheerfully leave my sentiments to their fate. Despised and contemned as
they may be, I believe they cannot be gainsaid. Sustained by the truth
as it exists in Nature and Revelation, sanctioned by the prevailing
spirit of the age, they are yet destined to work out the political and
moral regeneration of our country. The opposition which they meet with
does not dishearten me. In the lofty confidence of John Milton, I
believe that "though all the winds of doctrine be let loose upon the
earth, so Truth be among them, we need not fear. Let her and Falsehood
grapple; whoever knew her to be put to the worst in a free and open
encounter?"
HAVERHILL, MASS., 29th of 7th Mo., 1833.
LETTER TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL.
HAVERHILL, 10th of 1st Mo., 1834.
SAMUEL E. SEWALL, ESQ.,
Secretary New England A. S. Society
DEAR FRIEND,--I regret that circumstances beyond my control will not
allow of my attendance at the annual meeting of the New England Anti-
Slavery Society.
I need not say to the members of that society that I am with them, heart
and soul, in the cause of abolition; the abolition not of physical
slavery alone, abhorrent and monstrous as it is, but of that intellectual
slavery, the bondage of corrupt and mistaken opinion, which has fettered
as with iron the moral energies and intellectual strength of New England.
For what is slavery, after all, but fear,--fear, forcing mind and body
into unnatural action? And it matters little whether it be the terror of
the slave-whip on the body, or of the scourge of popular opinion upon the
inner man.
We all know how often the representatives of the Southern division of the
country have amused themselves in Congress by applying the opprobrious
name of "slave" to the free Northern laborer. And how familiar have the
significant epithets of "white slave" and "dough-face" become!
I fear these epithets have not been wholly misapplied. Have we not been
told here, gravely and authoritatively, by some of our learned judges,
divines, and politicians, that we, the free people of New England, have
no right to discuss the subject of slavery? Freemen, and no right to
suggest the duty or the policy of a practical adherence to the doctrines
of that immortal declaration upon which our liberties are founded!
Christians, enjoying perfect liberty of conscience, yet possessing no
right to breathe one whisper against a system of adultery and blood,
which is filling the whole land with abomination and blasphemy! And this
craven sentiment is echoed by the very men whose industry is taxed to
defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of property, vested in
beings fashioned in the awful image of their Maker; by men whose hard
earnings aid in supporting a standing army mainly for the protection of
slaveholding indolence; by men who are liable at any moment to be called
from the field and workshop to put down by force the ever upward
tendencies of oppressed humanity, to aid the negro-breeder and the negro-
trader in the prosecution of a traffic most horrible in the eye of God,
to wall round with their bayonets two millions of colored Americans,
children of a common Father and heirs of a common eternity, while the
broken chain is riveted anew and the thrown-off fetter replaced.
I am for the abolition of this kind of slavery. It must be accomplished
before we can hope to abolish the negro slavery of the country. The
people of the free states, with a perfect understanding of their own
rights and a sacred respect for the rights of others, must put their
strong shoulders to the work of moral reform, and our statesmen, orators,
and politicians will follow, floating as they must with the tendency of
the current, the mere indices of popular sentiment. They cannot be
expected to lead in this matter. They are but instruments in the hands
of the people for good or evil:--
"A breath can make them, as a breath has made."
Be it our task to give tone and direction to these instruments; to turn
the tide of popular feeling into the pure channels of justice; to break
up the sinful silence of the nation; to bring the vaunted Christianity of
our age and country to the test of truth; to try the strength and purity
of our republicanism. If the Christianity we profess has not power to
pull down the strongholds of prejudice, and overcome hate, and melt the
heart of oppression, it is not of God. If our republicanism is based on
other foundation than justice and humanity, let it fall forever.
No better evidence is needed of the suicidal policy of this nation than
the death-like silence on the subject of slavery which pervades its
public documents. Who that peruses the annual messages of the national
executive would, from their perusal alone, conjecture that such an evil
as slavery had existence among us? Have the people reflected upon the
cause of this silence? The evil has grown to be too monstrous to be
questioned. Its very magnitude has sealed the lips of the rulers.
Uneasily, and troubled with its dream of guilt, the nation sleeps on.
The volcano is beneath. God is above us.
At every step of our peaceful and legal agitation of this subject we are
met with one grave objection. We are told that the system which we are
conscientiously opposing is recognized and protected by the Constitution.
For all the benefits of our fathers' patriotism--and they are neither few
nor trifling--let us be grateful to God and to their memories. But it
should not be forgotten that the same constitutional compact which now
sanctions slavery guaranteed protection for twenty years to the foreign
slave-trade. It threw the shield of its "sanctity" around the now
universally branded pirate. It legalized the most abhorrent system of
robbery which ever cursed the family of man.
During those years of sinful compromise the crime of man-robbery less
atrocious than at present? Because the Constitution permitted, in that
single crime, the violation of all the commandments of God, was that
violation less terrible to earth or offensive to heaven?
No one now defends that "constitutional" slavetrade. Loaded with the
curse of God and man, it stands amidst minor iniquities, like Satan in
Pandemonium, preeminent and monstrous in crime.
And if the slave-trade has become thus odious, what must be the fate,
erelong, of its parent, slavery? If the mere consequence be thus
blackening under the execration of all the world, who shall measure the
dreadful amount of infamy which must finally settle on the cause itself?
The titled ecclesiastic and the ambitious statesman should have their
warning on this point. They should know that public opinion is steadily
turning to the light of truth. The fountains are breaking up around us,
and the great deep will soon be in motion. A stern, uncompromising, and
solemn spirit of inquiry is abroad. It cannot be arrested, and its
result may be easily foreseen. It will not long be popular to talk of
the legality of soul-murder, the constitutionality of man-robbery.
One word in relation to our duty to our Southern brethren. If we detest
their system of slavery in our hearts, let us not play the hypocrite with
our lips. Let us not pay so poor a compliment to their understandings as
to suppose that we can deceive them into a compliance with our views of
justice by ambiguous sophistry, and overcome their sinful practices and
established prejudices by miserable stratagem. Let us not first do
violence to our consciences by admitting their moral right to property in
man, and then go to work like so many vagabond pedlers to cheat them out
of it. They have a right to complain of such treatment. It is mean, and
wicked, and dishonorable. Let us rather treat our Southern friends as
intelligent and high-minded men, who, whatever may be their faults,
despise unmanly artifice, and loathe cant, and abhor hypocrisy.
Connected with them, not by political ties alone, but by common
sacrifices and mutual benefits, let us seek to expostulate with them
earnestly and openly, to gain at least their confidence in our sincerity,
to appeal to their consciences, reason, and interests; and, using no
other weapons than those of moral truth, contend fearlessly with the evil
system they are cherishing. And if, in an immediate compliance with the
strict demands of justice, they should need our aid and sympathy, let us
open to them our hearts and our purses. But in the name of sincerity,
and for the love of peace and the harmony of the Union, let there be no
more mining and countermining, no more blending of apology with
denunciation, no more Janus-like systems of reform, with one face for the
South and another for the North.
If we steadily adhere to the principles upon which we have heretofore
acted, if we present our naked hearts to the view of all, if we meet the
threats and violence of our misguided enemies with the bare bosom and
weaponless hand of innocence, may we not trust that the arm of our
Heavenly Father will be under us, to strengthen and support us? And
although we may not be able to save our country from the awful judgment
she is provoking, though the pillars of the Union fall and all the
elements of her greatness perish, still let it be our part to rally
around the standard of truth and justice, to wash our hands of evil, to
keep our own souls unspotted, and, bearing our testimony and lifting our
warning voices to the last, leave the event in the hands of a righteous
God.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.
In 1837 Isaac Knapp printed Letters from John Quincy Adams to his
Constituents of the Twelfth Congressional District in Massachusetts,
to which is added his Speech in Congress, delivered February 9,
1837, and the following stood as an introduction to the pamphlet.
THE following letters have been published, within a few weeks, in the
Quincy (Mass.) 'Patriot'. Notwithstanding the great importance of the
subjects which they discuss, the intense interest which they are
calculated to awaken throughout this commonwealth and the whole country,
and the exalted reputation of their author as a profound statesman and
powerful writer, they are as yet hardly known beyond the limits of the
constituency to whom they are particularly addressed. The reason of this
is sufficiently obvious. John Quincy Adams belongs to neither of the
prominent political parties, fights no partisan battles, and cannot be
prevailed upon to sacrifice truth and principle upon the altar of party
expediency and interest. Hence neither party is interested in defending
his course, or in giving him an opportunity to defend himself. But
however systematic may be the efforts of mere partisan presses to
suppress and hold back from the public eye the powerful and triumphant
vindication of the Right of Petition, the graphic delineation of the
slavery spirit in Congress, and the humbling disclosure of Northern
cowardice and treachery, contained in these letters, they are destined to
exert a powerful influence upon the public mind. They will constitute
one of the most striking pages in the history of our times. They will be
read with avidity in the North and in the South, and throughout Europe.
Apart from the interest excited by the subjects under discussion, and
viewed only as literary productions, they may be ranked among the highest
intellectual efforts of their author. Their sarcasm is Junius-like,--
cold, keen, unsparing. In boldness, directness, and eloquent appeal,
they will bear comparison with O'Connell's celebrated 'Letters to the
Reformers of Great Britain'. They are the offspring of an intellect
unshorn of its primal strength, and combining the ardor of youth with the
experience of age.
The disclosure made in these letters of the slavery influence exerted in
Congress over the representatives of the free states, of the manner in
which the rights of freemen have been bartered for Southern votes, or
basely yielded to the threats of men educated in despotism, and stamped
by the free indulgence of unrestrained tyranny with the "odious
peculiarities" of slavery, is painful and humiliating in the extreme. It
will be seen that, in the great struggle for and against the Right of
Petition, an account of which is given in the following pages, their
author stood, in a great measure, alone and unsupported by his Northern
colleagues. On his "gray, discrowned head" the entire fury of slave-
holding arrogance and wrath was expended. He stood alone, beating back,
with his aged and single arm, the tide which would have borne down and
overwhelmed a less sturdy and determined spirit.
We need not solicit for these letters, and the speech which accompanies
them, a thorough perusal. They deserve, and we trust will receive, a
circulation throughout the entire country. They will meet a cordial
welcome from every lover of human liberty, from every friend of justice
and the rights of man, irrespective of color or condition. The
principles which they defend, the sentiments which they express, are
those of Massachusetts, as recently asserted, almost unanimously, by her
legislature. In both branches of that body, during the discussion of the
subject of slavery and the right of petition, the course of the ex-
President was warmly and eloquently commended. Massachusetts will
sustain her tried and faithful representative; and the time is not far
distant when the best and worthiest citizens of the entire North will
proffer him their thanks for his noble defence of their rights as
freemen, and of the rights of the slave as a man.
THE BIBLE AND SLAVERY.
From a review of a pro-slavery pamphlet by "Evangelicus" in the
Boston Emancipator in 1843.
THE second part of the essay is occupied in proving that the slavery in
the Roman world, at the time of our Saviour, was similar in all essential
features to American slavery at the present day; and the third and
concluding part is devoted to an examination of the apostolical
directions to slaves and masters, as applicable to the same classes in
the United States. He thinks the command to give to servants that which
is just and equal means simply that the masters should treat their slaves
with equity, and that while the servant is to be profitable to the
master, the latter is bound in "a fair and equitable manner to provide
for the slave's subsistence and happiness." Although he professes to
believe that a faithful adherence to Scriptural injunctions on this point
would eventually terminate in the emancipation of the slaves, he thinks
it not necessary to inquire whether the New Testament does or does not
"tolerate slavery as a permanent institution"!
From the foregoing synopsis it will be seen at once that whatever may
have been the motives of the writer, the effect of his publication, so
far as it is at all felt, will be to strengthen the oppressor in his
guilt, and hold him back from the performance of his immediate duty in
respect to his slaves, and to shield his conscience from the reproofs of
that class who, according to "Evangelicus," have "no personal
acquaintance with the actual domestic state or the social and political
connections of their Southern fellow-citizens." We look upon it only as
another vain attempt to strike a balance between Christian duty and
criminal policy, to reconcile Christ and Belial, the holy philanthropy of
Him who went about doing good with the most abhorrent manifestation of
human selfishness, lust, and hatred which ever provoked the divine
displeasure. There is a grave-stone coldness about it. The author
manifests as little feeling as if he were solving a question in algebra.
No sigh of sympathy breathes through its frozen pages for the dumb,
chained millions, no evidence of a feeling akin to that of Him who at the
grave of Lazarus
"Wept, and forgot His power to save;"
no outburst of that indignant reproof with which the Divine Master
rebuked the devourers of widows' houses and the oppressors of the poor is
called forth by the writer's stoical contemplation of the tyranny of his
"Christian brethren" at the South.
"It is not necessary," says Evangelicus, "to inquire whether the New
Testament does not tolerate slavery as a permanent institution." And
this is said when the entire slave-holding church has sheltered its
abominations under the pretended sanction of the gospel; when slavery,
including within itself a violation of every command uttered amidst the
thunders of Sinai, a system which has filled the whole South with the
oppression of Egypt and the pollutions of Sodom, is declared to be an
institution of the Most High. With all due deference to the author, we
tell him, and we tell the church, North and South, that this question
must be met. Once more we repeat the solemn inquiry which has been
already made in our columns, "Is the Bible to enslave the world?" Has it
been but a vain dream of ours that the mission of the Author of the
gospel was to undo the heavy burdens, to open the prison doors, and to
break the yoke of the captive? Let Andover and Princeton answer. If the
gospel does sanction the vilest wrong which man can inflict upon his
fellow-man, if it does rivet the chains which humanity, left to itself,
would otherwise cast off, then, in humanity's name, let it perish forever
from the face of the earth. Let the Bible societies dissolve; let not
another sheet issue from their presses. Scatter not its leaves abroad
over the dark places of the earth; they are not for the healing of the
nations. Leave rather to the Persian his Zendavesta, to the Mussulman
his Koran. We repeat it, this question must be met. Already we have
heard infidelity exulting over the astute discoveries of bespectacled
theological professors, that the great Head of the Christian Church
tolerated the horrible atrocities of Roman slavery, and that His most
favored apostle combined slave-catching with his missionary labors. And
why should it not exult? Fouler blasphemy than this was never uttered.
A more monstrous libel upon the Divine Author of Christianity was never
propagated by Paine or Voltaire, Kneeland or Owen; and we are constrained
to regard the professor of theology or the doctor of divinity who tasks
his sophistry and learning in an attempt to show that the Divine Mind
looks with complacency upon chattel slavery as the most dangerous enemy
with which Christianity has to contend. The friends of pure and
undefiled religion must awake to this danger. The Northern church must
shake itself clean from its present connection with blasphemers and
slave-holders, or perish with them.
WHAT IS SLAVERY
Addressed to the Liberty Party Convention at New Bedford in
September, 1843.
I HAVE just received your kind invitation to attend the meeting of the
Liberty Party in New Bedford on the 2d of next month. Believe me, it is
with no ordinary feelings of regret that I find myself under the
necessity of foregoing the pleasure of meeting with you on that occasion.
But I need not say to you, and through you to the convention, that you
have my hearty sympathy.
I am with the Liberty Party because it is the only party in the country
which is striving openly and honestly to reduce to practice the great
truths which lie at the foundation of our republic: all men created
equal, endowed with rights inalienable; the security of these rights the
only just object of government; the right of the people to alter or
modify government until this great object is attained. Precious and
glorious truths! Sacred in the sight of their Divine Author, grateful
and beneficent to suffering humanity, essential elements of that ultimate
and universal government of which God is laying the strong and wide
foundations, turning and overturning, until He whose right it is shall
rule. The voice which calls upon us to sustain them is the voice of God.
In the eloquent language of the lamented Myron Holley, the man who first
lifted up the standard of the Liberty Party: "He calls upon us to sustain
these truths in the recorded voice of the holy of ancient times. He
calls us to sustain them in the sound as of many waters and mighty
thunderings rising from the fields of Europe, converted into one vast
Aceldama by the exertions of despots to suppress them; in the persuasive
history of the best thoughts and boldest deeds of all our brave, self-
sacrificing ancestors; in the tender, heart-reaching whispers of our
children, preparing to suffer or enjoy the future, as we leave it for
them; in the broken and disordered but moving accents of half our race
yet groping in darkness and galled by the chains of bondage. He calls
upon us to sustain them by the solemn and considerate use of all the
powers with which He has invested us." In a time of almost universal
political scepticism, in the midst of a pervading and growing unbelief in
the great principles enunciated in the revolutionary declaration, the
Liberty Party has dared to avow its belief in these truths, and to carry
them into action as far as it has the power. It is a protest against the
political infidelity of the day, a recurrence to first principles, a
summons once more to that deserted altar upon which our fathers laid
their offerings.
It may be asked why it is that a party resting upon such broad principles
is directing its exclusive exertions against slavery. "Are there not
other great interests?" ask all manner of Whig and Democrat editors and
politicians. "Consider, for instance," say the Democrats, "the mighty
question which is agitating us, whether a 'Northern man with Southern
principles' or a Southern man with the principles of a Nero or Caligula
shall be President." "Or look at us," say the Whigs, "deprived of our
inalienable right to office by this Tyler-Calhoun administration. And
bethink you, gentlemen, how could your Liberty Party do better than to
vote with us for a man who, if he does hold some threescore of slaves,
and maintain that 'two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
sanctified negro slavery,' is, at the same time, the champion of Greek
liberty, and Polish liberty, and South American liberty, and, in short,
of all sorts of liberties, save liberty at home."
Yes, friends, we have considered all this, and more, namely, that one
sixth part of our entire population are slaves, and that you, with your
subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them. Nay,
farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your
authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have
been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its
first object the breaking of these chains.
What is slavery? For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty
Party depend for its justification.
The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into
articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into
"chattels personal." The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which
to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that
of master and slave. The master holds the plough which turns the soil of
his plantation, the horse which draws it, and the slave who guides it by
one and the same tenure. The profit of the master is the great end of
the slave's existence. For this end he is fed, clothed, and prescribed
for in sickness. He learns nothing, acquires nothing, for himself. He
cannot use his own body for his own benefit. His very personality is
destroyed. He is a mere instrument, a means in the hands of another for
the accomplishment of an end in which his own interests are not regarded,
a machine moved not by his own will, but by another's. In him the awful
distinction between a person and a thing is annihilated: he is thrust
down from the place which God and Nature assigned him, from the equal
companionship of rational intelligence's,--a man herded with beasts, an
immortal nature classed with the wares of the merchant!
The relations of parent and child, master and apprentice, government and
subject, are based upon the principle of benevolence, reciprocal
benefits, and the wants of human society; relations which sacredly
respect the rights and legacies which God has given to all His rational
creatures. But slavery exists only by annihilating or monopolizing these
rights and legacies. In every other modification of society, man's
personal ownership remains secure. He may be oppressed, deprived of
privileges, loaded with burdens, hemmed about with legal disabilities,
his liberties restrained. But, through all, the right to his own body
and soul remains inviolate. He retains his inherent, original possession
of himself. Even crime cannot forfeit it, for that law which destroys
his personality makes void its own claims upon him as a moral agent; and
the power to punish ceases with the accountability of the criminal. He
may suffer and die under the penalties of the law, but he suffers as a
man, he perishes as a man, and not as a thing. To the last moments of
his existence the rights of a moral agent are his; they go with him to
the grave; they constitute the ground of his accountability at the bar of
infinite justice,--rights fixed, eternal, inseparable; attributes of all
rational intelligence in time and eternity; the same in essence, and
differing in degree only, with those of the highest moral being, of God
himself.
Slavery alone lays its grasp upon the right of personal ownership, that
foundation right, the removal of which uncreates the man; a right which
God himself could not take away without absolving the being thus deprived
of all moral accountability; and so far as that being is concerned,
making sin and holiness, crime and virtue, words without significance,
and the promises and sanctions of revelation, dreams. Hence, the
crowning horror of slavery, that which lifts it above all other
iniquities, is not that it usurps the prerogatives of Deity, but that it
attempts that which even He who has said, "All souls are mine," cannot
do, without breaking up the foundations of His moral government. Slavery
is, in fact, a struggle with the Almighty for dominion over His rational
creatures. It is leagued with the powers of darkness, in wresting man
from his Maker. It is blasphemy lifting brazen brow and violent hand to
heaven, attempting a reversal of God's laws. Man claiming the right to
uncreate his brother; to undo that last and most glorious work, which God
himself pronounced good, amidst the rejoicing hosts of heaven! Man
arrogating to himself the right to change, for his own selfish purposes,
the beautiful order of created existences; to pluck the crown of an
immortal nature, scarce lower than that of angels, from the brow of his
brother; to erase the God-like image and superscription stamped upon him
by the hand of his Creator, and to write on the despoiled and desecrated
tablet, "A chattel personal!"
This, then, is slavery. Nature, with her thousand voices, cries out
against it. Against it, divine revelation launches its thunders. The
voice of God condemns it in the deep places of the human heart. The woes
and wrongs unutterable which attend this dreadful violation of natural
justice, the stripes, the tortures, the sunderings of kindred, the
desolation of human affections, the unchastity and lust, the toil
uncompensated, the abrogated marriage, the legalized heathenism, the
burial of the mind, are but the mere incidentals of the first grand
outrage, that seizure of the entire man, nerve, sinew, and spirit, which
robs him of his body, and God of his soul. These are but the natural
results and outward demonstrations of slavery, the crystallizations from
the chattel principle.
It is against this system, in its active operation upon three millions of
our countrymen, that the Liberty Party is, for the present, directing all
its efforts. With such an object well may we be "men of one idea." Nor
do we neglect "other great interests," for all are colored and controlled
by slavery, and the removal of this disastrous influence would most
effectually benefit them.
Political action is the result and immediate object of moral suasion on
this subject. Action, action, is the spirit's means of progress, its
sole test of rectitude, its only source of happiness. And should not
decided action follow our deep convictions of the wrong of slavery?
Shall we denounce the slave-holders of the states, while we retain our
slavery in the District of Columbia? Shall we pray that the God of the
oppressed will turn the hearts of "the rulers" in South Carolina, while
we, the rulers of the District, refuse to open the prisons and break up
the slave-markets on its ten miles square? God keep us from such
hypocrisy! Everybody now professes to be opposed to slavery. The
leaders of the two great political parties are grievously concerned lest
the purity of the antislavery enterprise will suffer in its connection
with politics. In the midst of grossest pro-slavery action, they are
full of anti-slavery sentiment. They love the cause, but, on the whole,
think it too good for this world. They would keep it sublimated, aloft,
out of vulgar reach or use altogether, intangible as Magellan's clouds.
Everybody will join us in denouncing slavery, in the abstract; not a
faithless priest nor politician will oppose us; abandon action, and
forsooth we can have an abolition millennium; the wolf shall lie down
with the lamb, while slavery in practice clanks, in derision, its three
millions of unbroken chains. Our opponents have no fear of the harmless
spectre of an abstract idea. They dread it only when it puts on the
flesh and sinews of a practical reality, and lifts its right arm in the
strength which God giveth to do as well as theorize.
As honest men, then, we must needs act; let us do so as becomes men
engaged in a great and solemn cause. Not by processions and idle parades
and spasmodic enthusiasms, by shallow tricks and shows and artifices, can
a cause like ours be carried onward. Leave these to parties contending
for office, as the "spoils of victory." We need no disguises, nor false
pretences, nor subterfuges; enough for us to present before our fellow-
countrymen the holy truths of freedom, in their unadorned and native
beauty. Dark as the present may seem, let us remember with hearty
confidence that truth and right are destined to triumph. Let us blot out
the word "discouragement" from the anti-slavery vocabulary. Let the
enemies of freedom be discouraged; let the advocates of oppression
despair; but let those who grapple with wrong and falsehood, in the name
of God and in the power of His truth, take courage. Slavery must die.
The Lord hath spoken it. The vials of His hot displeasure, like those
which chastised the nations in the Apocalyptic vision, are smoking even
now, above its "habitations of cruelty." It can no longer be borne with
by Heaven. Universal humanity cries out against it. Let us work, then,
to hasten its downfall, doing whatsoever our hands find to do, "with all
our might."
October, 1843.
DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. (1843.)
THE great leader of American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson, was an
ultra-abolitionist in theory, while from youth to age a slave-holder in
practice. With a zeal which never abated, with a warmth which the frost
of years could not chill, he urged the great truths, that each man should
be the guardian of his own weal; that one man should never have absolute
control over another. He maintained the entire equality of the race, the
inherent right of self-ownership, the equal claim of all to a fair
participation in the enactment of the laws by which they are governed.
He saw clearly that slavery, as it existed in the South and on his own
plantation, was inconsistent with this doctrine. His early efforts for
emancipation in Virginia failed of success; but he next turned his
attention to the vast northwestern territory, and laid the foundation of
that ordinance of 1787, which, like the flaming sword of the angel at the
gates of Paradise, has effectually guarded that territory against the
entrance of slavery. Nor did he stop here. He was the friend and
admirer of the ultra-abolitionists of revolutionary France; he warmly
urged his British friend, Dr. Price, to send his anti-slavery pamphlets
into Virginia; he omitted no opportunity to protest against slavery as
anti-democratic, unjust, and dangerous to the common welfare; and in his
letter to the territorial governor of Illinois, written in old age, he
bequeathed, in earnest and affecting language, the cause of negro
emancipation to the rising generation. "This enterprise," said he, "is
for the young, for those who can carry it forward to its consummation.
It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old
man."
Such was Thomas Jefferson, the great founder of American Democracy, the
advocate of the equality of human rights, irrespective of any conditions
of birth, or climate, or color. His political doctrines, it is strange
to say, found their earliest recipients and most zealous admirers in the
slave states of the Union. The privileged class of slaveholders, whose
rank and station "supersede the necessity of an order of nobility,"
became earnest advocates of equality among themselves--the democracy of
aristocracy. With the misery and degradation of servitude always before
them, in the condition of their own slaves, an intense love of personal
independence, and a haughty impatience of any control over their actions,
prepared them to adopt the democratic idea, so far as it might be applied
to their own order. Of that enlarged and generous democracy, the love,
not of individual freedom alone, but of the rights and liberties of all
men, the unselfish desire to give to others the privileges which all men
value for themselves, we are constrained to believe the great body of
Thomas Jefferson's slave-holding admirers had no adequate conception.
They were just such democrats as the patricians of Rome and the
aristocracy of Venice; lords over their own plantations, a sort of "holy
alliance" of planters, admitting and defending each other's divine right
of mastership.
Still, in Virginia, Maryland, and in other sections of the slave states,
truer exponents and exemplifiers of the idea of democracy, as it existed
in the mind of Jefferson, were not wanting. In the debate on the
memorials presented to the first Congress of the United States, praying
for the abolition of slavery, the voice of the Virginia delegation in
that body was unanimous in deprecation of slavery as an evil, social,
moral, and political. In the Virginia constitutional convention--of 1829
there were men who had the wisdom to perceive and the firmness to declare
that slavery was not only incompatible with the honor and prosperity of
the state, but wholly indefensible on any grounds which could be
consistently taken by a republican people. In the debate on the same
subject in the legislature in 1832, universal and impartial democracy
found utterance from eloquent lips. We might say as much of Kentucky,
the child of Virginia. But it remains true that these were exceptions to
the general rule. With the language of universal liberty on their lips,
and moved by the most zealous spirit of democratic propagandism, the
greater number of the slave-holders of the Union seem never to have
understood the true meaning, or to have measured the length and breadth
of that doctrine which they were the first to adopt, and of which they
have claimed all along to be the peculiar and chosen advocates.
The Northern States were slow to adopt the Democratic creed. The
oligarchy of New England, and the rich proprietors and landholders of the
Middle States, turned with alarm and horror from the levelling doctrines
urged upon them by the "liberty and equality" propagandists of the South.
The doctrines of Virginia were quite as unpalatable to Massachusetts at
the beginning of the present century as those of Massachusetts now are to
the Old Dominion. Democracy interfered with old usages and time-honored
institutions, and threatened to plough up the very foundations of the
social fabric. It was zealously opposed by the representatives of New
England in Congress and in the home legislatures; and in many pulpits
hands were lifted to God in humble entreaty that the curse and bane of
democracy, an offshoot of the rabid Jacobinism of revolutionary France,
might not be permitted to take root and overshadow the goodly heritage of
Puritanism. The alarmists of the South, in their most fervid pictures of
the evils to be apprehended from the prevalence of anti-slavery doctrines
in their midst, have drawn nothing more fearful than the visions of such
"Prophets of war and harbingers of ill"
as Fisher Ames in the forum and Parish in the desk, when contemplating
the inroads of Jeffersonian democracy upon the politics, religion, and
property of the North.
But great numbers of the free laborers of the Northern States, the
mechanics and small farmers, took a very different view of the matter.
The doctrines of Jefferson were received as their political gospel. It
was in vain that federalism denounced with indignation the impertinent
inconsistency of slave-holding interference in behalf of liberty in the
free states. Come the doctrine from whom it might, the people felt it to
be true. State after state revolted from the ranks of federalism, and
enrolled itself on the side of democracy. The old order of things was
broken up; equality before the law was established, religious tests and
restrictions of the right of suffrage were abrogated. Take
Massachusetts, for example. There the resistance to democratic
principles was the most strenuous and longest continued. Yet, at this
time, there is no state in the Union more thorough in its practical
adoption of them. No property qualifications or religious tests prevail;
all distinctions of sect, birth, or color, are repudiated, and suffrage
is universal. The democracy, which in the South has only been held in a
state of gaseous abstraction, hardened into concrete reality in the cold
air of the North. The ideal became practical, for it had found lodgment
among men who were accustomed to act out their convictions and test all
their theories by actual experience.
While thus making a practical application of the new doctrine, the people
of the free states could not but perceive the incongruity of democracy
and slavery.
Selleck Osborn, who narrowly escaped the honor of a Democratic martyr in
Connecticut, denounced slave-holding, in common with other forms of
oppression. Barlow, fresh from communion with Gregoire, Brissot, and
Robespierre, devoted to negro slavery some of the most vigorous and
truthful lines of his great poem. Eaton, returning from his romantic
achievements in Tunis for the deliverance of white slaves, improved the
occasion to read a lecture to his countrymen on the inconsistency and
guilt of holding blacks in servitude. In the Missouri struggle of 1819-
20, the people of the free states, with a few ignoble exceptions, took
issue with the South against the extension of slavery. Some ten years
later, the present antislavery agitation commenced. It originated,
beyond a question, in the democratic element. With the words of
Jefferson on their lips, young, earnest, and enthusiastic men called the
attention of the community to the moral wrong and political reproach of
slavery. In the name and spirit of democracy, the moral and political
powers of the people were invoked to limit, discountenance, and put an
end to a system so manifestly subversive of its foundation principles.
It was a revival of the language of Jefferson and Page and Randolph, an
echo of the voice of him who penned the Declaration of Independence and
originated the ordinance of 1787.
Meanwhile the South had wellnigh forgotten the actual significance of the
teachings of its early political prophets, and their renewal in the shape
of abolitionism was, as might have been expected, strange and unwelcome.
Pleasant enough it had been to hold up occasionally these democratic
abstractions for the purpose of challenging the world's admiration and
cheaply acquiring the character of lovers of liberty and equality.
Frederick of Prussia, apostrophizing the shades of Cato and Brutus,
"Vous de la liberte heros que je revere,"
while in the full exercise of his despotic power, was quite as consistent
as these democratic slaveowners, whose admiration of liberty increased in
exact ratio with its distance from their own plantations. They had not
calculated upon seeing their doctrine clothed with life and power, a
practical reality, pressing for application to their slaves as well as to
themselves. They had not taken into account the beautiful ordination of
Providence, that no man can vindicate his own rights, without directly or
impliedly including in that vindication the rights of all other men. The
haughty and oppressive barons who wrung from their reluctant monarch the
Great Charter at Runnymede, acting only for themselves and their class,
little dreamed of the universal application which has since been made of
their guaranty of rights and liberties. As little did the nobles of the
parliament of Paris, when strengthening themselves by limiting the kingly
prerogative, dream of the emancipation of their own serfs, by a
revolution to which they were blindly giving the first impulse. God's
truth is universal; it cannot be monopolized by selfishness.
THE TWO PROCESSIONS. (1844.)
"Look upon this picture, and on this." HAMLET.
CONSIDERING that we have a slave population of nearly three millions, and
that in one half of the states of the Republic it is more hazardous to
act upon the presumption that "all men are created free and equal" than
it would be in Austria or Russia, the lavish expression of sympathy and
extravagant jubilation with which, as a people, we are accustomed to
greet movements in favor of freedom abroad are not a little remarkable.
We almost went into ecstasies over the first French revolution; we filled
our papers with the speeches of orator Hunt and the English radicals; we
fraternized with the United Irishmen; we hailed as brothers in the cause
of freedom the very Mexicans whom we have since wasted with fire and
sword; our orators, North and South, grew eloquent and classic over the
Greek and Polish revolutions. In short, long ere this, if the walls of
kingcraft and despotism had been, like those of Jericho, destined to be
overthrown by sound, our Fourth of July cannon-shootings and bell-
ringings, together with our fierce, grandiloquent speech-makings in and
out of Congress, on the occasions referred to, would have left no stone
upon another.
It is true that an exception must be made in the case of Hayti. We fired
no guns, drank no toasts, made no speeches in favor of the establishment
of that new republic in our neighborhood. The very mention of the
possibility that Haytien delegates might ask admittance to the congress
of the free republics of the New World at Panama "frightened from their
propriety" the eager propagandists of republicanism in the Senate, and
gave a death-blow to their philanthropic projects. But as Hayti is a
republic of blacks who, having revolted from their masters as well as
from the mother country, have placed themselves entirely without the pale
of Anglo-Saxon sympathy by their impertinent interference with the
monopoly of white liberty, this exception by no means disproves the
general fact, that in the matter of powder-burning, bell-jangling,
speech-making, toast-drinking admiration of freedom afar off and in the
abstract we have no rivals. The caricature of our "general sympathizers"
in Martin Chuzzlewit is by no means a fancy sketch.
The news of the revolution of the three days in Paris, and the triumph of
the French people over Charles X. and his ministers, as a matter of
course acted with great effect upon our national susceptibility. We all
threw up our hats in excessive joy at the spectacle of a king dashed down
headlong from his throne and chased out of his kingdom by his long-
suffering and oppressed subjects. We took half the credit of the
performance to ourselves, inasmuch as Lafayette was a principal actor in
it. Our editors, from Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, indited paragraphs
for a thousand and one newspapers, congratulating the Parisian patriots,
and prophesying all manner of evil to holy alliances, kings, and
aristocracies. The National Intelligencer for September 27, 1830,
contains a full account of the public rejoicings of the good people of
Washington on the occasion. Bells were rung in all the steeples, guns
were fired, and a grand procession was formed, including the President of
the United States, the heads of departments, and other public
functionaries. Decorated with tricolored ribbons, and with tricolored
flags mingling with the stripes and stars over their heads, and gazed
down upon by bright eyes from window and balcony, the "general
sympathizers" moved slowly and majestically through the broad avenue
towards the Capitol to celebrate the revival of French liberty in a
manner becoming the chosen rulers of a free people.
What a spectacle was this for the representatives of European kingcraft
at our seat of government! How the titled agents of Metternich and
Nicholas must have trembled, in view of this imposing demonstration, for
the safety of their "peculiar institutions!"
Unluckily, however, the moral effect of this grand spectacle was marred
somewhat by the appearance of another procession, moving in a contrary
direction. It was a gang of slaves! Handcuffed in pairs, with the
sullen sadness of despair in their faces, they marched wearily onward to
the music of the driver's whip and the clanking iron on their limbs.
Think of it! Shouts of triumph, rejoicing bells, gay banners, and
glittering cavalcades, in honor of Liberty, in immediate contrast with
men and women chained and driven like cattle to market! The editor of
the American Spectator, a paper published at Washington at that time,
speaking of this black procession of slavery, describes it as "driven
along by what had the appearance of a man on horseback." The miserable
wretches who composed it were doubtless consigned to a slave-jail to
await their purchase and transportation to the South or Southwest; and
perhaps formed a part of that drove of human beings which the same editor
states that he saw on the Saturday following, "males and females chained
in couples, starting from Robey's tavern, on foot, for Alexandria, to
embark on board a slave-ship."
At a Virginia camp-meeting, many years ago, one of the brethren,
attempting an exhortation, stammered, faltered, and finally came to a
dead stand. "Sit down, brother," said old Father Kyle, the one-eyed
abolition preacher; "it's no use to try; you can't preach with twenty
negroes sticking in your throat!" It strikes us that our country is very
much in the condition of the poor confused preacher at the camp-meeting.
Slavery sticks in its throat, and spoils its finest performances,
political and ecclesiastical; confuses the tongues of its evangelical
alliances; makes a farce of its Fourth of July celebrations; and, as in
the case of the grand Washington procession of 1830, sadly mars the
effect of its rejoicings in view of the progress of liberty abroad.
There is a stammer in all our exhortations; our moral and political
homilies are sure to run into confusions and contradictions; and the
response which comes to us from the nations is not unlike that of Father
Kyle to the planter's attempt at sermonizing: "It's no use, brother
Jonathan; you can't preach liberty with three millions of slaves in your
throat!"
A CHAPTER OF HISTORY. (1844.)
THE theory which a grave and learned Northern senator has recently
announced in Congress, that slavery, like the cotton-plant, is confined
by natural laws to certain parallels of latitude, beyond which it can by
no possibility exist, however it may have satisfied its author and its
auditors, has unfortunately no verification in the facts of the case.
Slavery is singularly cosmopolitan in its habits. The offspring of
pride, and lust, and avarice, it is indigenous to the world. Rooted in
the human heart, it defies the rigors of winter in the steppes of Tartary
and the fierce sun of the tropics. It has the universal acclimation of
sin.
The first account we have of negro slaves in New England is from the pen
of John Josselyn. Nineteen years after the landing at Plymouth, this
interesting traveller was for some time the guest of Samuel Maverick, who
then dwelt, like a feudal baron, in his fortalice on Noddle's Island,
surrounded by retainers and servants, bidding defiance to his Indian
neighbors behind his strong walls, with "four great guns" mounted
thereon, and "giving entertainment to all new-comers gratis."
"On the 2d of October, 1639, about nine o'clock in the morning, Mr.
Maverick's negro woman," says Josselyn, "came to my chamber, and in her
own country language and tune sang very loud and shrill. Going out to
her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and would willingly
have expressed her grief in English had she been able to speak the
language; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment.
Whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, and resolved
to entreat him in her behalf; for I had understood that she was a queen
in her own country, and observed a very dutiful and humble garb used
towards her by another negro, who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was
desirous to have a breed of negroes; and therefore, seeing she would not
yield by persuasions to company with a negro young man he had in his
house, he commanded him, willed she, nilled she, to go to her bed, which
was no sooner done than she thrust him out again. This she took in high
disdain beyond her slavery; and this was the cause of her grief."
That the peculiar domestic arrangements and unfastidious economy of this
slave-breeding settler were not countenanced by the Puritans of that
early time we have sufficient evidence. It is but fair to suppose, from
the silence of all other writers of the time with respect to negroes and
slaves, that this case was a marked exception to the general habits and
usage of the Colonists. At an early period a traffic was commenced
between the New England Colonies and that of Barbadoes; and it is not
improbable that slaves were brought to Boston from that island. The
laws, however, discouraged their introduction and purchase, giving
freedom to all held to service at the close of seven years.
In 1641, two years after Josselyn's adventure on Noddle's Island, the
code of laws known by the name of the Body of Liberties was adopted by
the Colony. It was drawn up by Nathaniel Ward, the learned and ingenious
author of the 'Simple Cobbler of Agawarn', the earliest poetical satire
of New England. One of its provisions was as follows:--
"There shall be never any bond slaverie, villainage, or captivitie
amongst us, unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres and such
strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these
shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God
established in Israel doth morally require."
In 1646, Captain Smith, a Boston church-member, in connection with one
Keeser, brought home two negroes whom he obtained by the surprise and
burning of a negro village in Africa and the massacre of many of its
inhabitants. Sir Richard Saltonstall, one of the assistants, presented a
petition to the General Court, stating the outrage thereby committed as
threefold in its nature, namely murder, man-stealing, and Sabbath-
breaking; inasmuch as the offence of "chasing the negers, as aforesayde,
upon the Sabbath day (being a servile work, and such as cannot be
considered under any other head) is expressly capital by the law of God;"
for which reason he prays that the offenders may be brought to justice,
"soe that the sin they have committed may be upon their own heads and not
upon ourselves."
Upon this petition the General Court passed the following order,
eminently worthy of men professing to rule in the fear and according to
the law of God,--a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do
well:--
"The General Court, conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity
to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as
also to prescribe such timely redress for what has passed, and such a law
for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to
have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good
and just men, do order that the negro interpreter, and others unlawfully
taken, be by the first opportunity, at the charge of the country for the
present, sent to his native country, Guinea, and a letter with him of the
indignation of the Court thereabout, and justice thereof, desiring our
honored Governor would please put this order in execution."
There is, so far as we know, no historical record of the actual return of
these stolen men to their home. A letter is extant, however, addressed
in behalf of the General Court to a Mr. Williams on the Piscataqua, by
whom one of the negroes had been purchased, requesting him to send the
man forthwith to Boston, that he may be sent home, "which this Court do
resolve to send back without delay."
Three years after, in 1649, the following law was placed upon the
statute-book of the Massachusetts Colony:--
"If any man stealeth a man, or mankind, he shall surely be put to death."
It will thus be seen that these early attempts to introduce slavery into
New England were opposed by severe laws and by that strong popular
sentiment in favor of human liberty which characterized the Christian
radicals who laid the foundations of the Colonies. It was not the rigor
of her Northern winter, nor the unkindly soil of Massachusetts, which
discouraged the introduction of slavery in the first half-century of her
existence as a colony. It was the Puritan's recognition of the
brotherhood of man in sin, suffering, and redemption, his estimate of the
awful responsibilities and eternal destinies of humanity, his hatred of
wrong and tyranny, and his stern sense of justice, which led him to
impose upon the African slave-trader the terrible penalty of the Mosaic
code.
But that brave old generation passed away. The civil contentions in the
mother country drove across the seas multitudes of restless adventurers
and speculators. The Indian wars unsettled and demoralized the people.
Habits of luxury and the greed of gain took the place of the severe self-
denial and rigid virtues of the fathers. Hence we are not surprised to
find that Josselyn, in his second visit to New England, some twenty-five
years after his first, speaks of the great increase of servants and
negroes. In 1680 Governor Bradstreet, in answer to the inquiries of his
Majesty's Privy Council, states that two years before a vessel from
Madagasca "brought into the Colony betwixt forty and fifty negroes,
mostly women and children, who were sold at a loss to the owner of the
vessel." "Now and then," he continues, "two or three negroes are brought
from Barbadoes and other of his Majesty's plantations and sold for twenty
pounds apiece; so that there may be within the government about one
hundred or one hundred and twenty, and it may be as many Scots, brought
hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and
about half as many Irish."
The owning of a black or white slave, or servant, at this period was
regarded as an evidence of dignity and respectability; and hence
magistrates and clergymen winked at the violation of the law by the
mercenary traders, and supplied themselves without scruple. Indian
slaves were common, and are named in old wills, deeds, and inventories,
with horses, cows, and household furniture. As early as the year 1649 we
find William Hilton, of Newbury, sells to George Carr, "for one quarter
part of a vessel, James, my Indian, with all the interest I have in him,
to be his servant forever." Some were taken in the Narragansett war and
other Indian wars; others were brought from South Carolina and the
Spanish Main. It is an instructive fact, as illustrating the retributive
dealings of Providence, that the direst affliction of the Massachusetts
Colony--the witchcraft terror of 1692--originated with the Indian Tituba,
a slave in the family of the minister of Danvers.
In the year 1690 the inhabitants of Newbury were greatly excited by the
arrest of a Jerseyman who had been engaged in enticing Indians and
negroes to leave their masters. He was charged before the court with
saying that "the English should be cut off and the negroes set free."
James, a negro slave, and Joseph, an Indian, were arrested with him.
Their design was reported to be, to seize a vessel in the port and escape
to Canada and join the French, and return and lay waste and plunder their
masters. They were to come back with five hundred Indians and three
hundred Canadians; and the place of crossing the Merrimac River, and of
the first encampment on the other side, were even said to be fixed upon.
When we consider that there could not have been more than a score of
slaves in the settlement, the excitement into which the inhabitants were
thrown by this absurd rumor of conspiracy seems not very unlike that of a
convocation of small planters in a backwoods settlement in South Carolina
on finding an anti-slavery newspaper in their weekly mail bag.
In 1709 Colonel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, had several negroes, and among
them a high-spirited girl, who, for some alleged misdemeanor, was
severely chastised. The slave resolved upon revenge for her injury, and
soon found the means of obtaining it. The Colonel had on hand, for
service in the Indian war then raging, a considerable store of gunpowder.
This she placed under the room in which her master and mistress slept,
laid a long train, and dropped a coal on it. She had barely time to
escape to the farm-house before the explosion took place, shattering the
stately mansion into fragments. Saltonstall and his wife were carried on
their bed a considerable distance, happily escaping serious injury. Some
soldiers stationed in the house were scattered in all directions; but no
lives were lost. The Colonel, on recovering from the effects of his
sudden overturn, hastened to the farm-house and found his servants all up
save the author of the mischief, who was snug in bed and apparently in a
quiet sleep.
In 1701 an attempt was made in the General Court of Massachusetts to
prevent the increase of slaves. Judge Sewall soon after published a
pamphlet against slavery, but it seems with little effect. Boston
merchants and ship-owners became, to a considerable extent, involved in
the slave-trade. Distilleries, established in that place and in Rhode
Island, furnished rum for the African market. The slaves were usually
taken to the West Indies, although occasionally part of a cargo found its
way to New England, where the wholesome old laws against man-stealing had
become a dead letter on the statute-book.
In 1767 a bill was brought before the Legislature of Massachusetts to
prevent "the unwarrantable and unnatural custom of enslaving mankind."
The Council of Governor Bernard sent it back to the House greatly changed
and curtailed, and it was lost by the disagreement of the two branches.
Governor Bernard threw his influence on the side of slavery. In 1774 a
bill prohibiting the traffic in slaves passed both Houses; but Governor
Hutchinson withheld his assent and dismissed the Legislature. The
colored men sent a deputation of their own to the Governor to solicit his
consent to the bill; but he told them his instructions forbade him. A
similar committee waiting upon General Gage received the same answer.
In the year 1770 a servant of Richard Lechmere, of Cambridge, stimulated
by the general discussion of the slavery question and by the advice of
some of the zealous advocates of emancipation, brought an action against
his master for detaining him in bondage. The suit was decided in his
favor two years before the similar decision in the case of Somerset in
England. The funds necessary for carrying on this suit were raised among
the blacks themselves. Other suits followed in various parts of the
Province; and the result was, in every instance, the freedom of the
plaintiff. In 1773 Caesar Hendrick sued his master, one Greenleaf, of
Newburyport, for damages, laid at fifty pounds, for holding him as a
slave. The jury awarded him his freedom and eighteen pounds.
According to Dr. Belknap, whose answers to the queries on the subject,
propounded by Judge Tucker, of Virginia, have furnished us with many of
the facts above stated, the principal grounds upon which the counsel of
the masters depended were, that the negroes were purchased in open
market, and included in the bills of sale like other property; that
slavery was sanctioned by usage; and, finally, that the laws of the
Province recognized its existence by making masters liable for the
maintenance of their slaves, or servants.
On the part of the blacks, the law and usage of the mother country,
confirmed by the Great Charter, that no man can be deprived of his
liberty but by the judgment of his peers, were effectually pleaded. The
early laws of the Province prohibited slavery, and no subsequent
legislation had sanctioned it; for, although the laws did recognize its
existence, they did so only to mitigate and modify an admitted evil.
The present state constitution was established in 1780. The first
article of the Bill of Rights prohibited slavery by affirming the
foundation truth of our republic, that "all men are born free and equal."
The Supreme Court decided in 1783 that no man could hold another as
property without a direct violation of that article.
In 1788 three free black citizens of Boston were kidnapped and sold into
slavery in one of the French islands. An intense excitement followed.
Governor Hancock took efficient measures for reclaiming the unfortunate
men. The clergy of Boston petitioned the Legislature for a total
prohibition of the foreign slave-trade. The Society of Friends, and the
blacks generally, presented similar petitions; and the same year an act
was passed prohibiting the slave-trade and granting relief to persons
kidnapped or decoyed out of the Commonwealth. The fear of a burden to
the state from the influx of negroes from abroad led the Legislature, in
connection with this law, to prevent those who were not citizens of the
state or of other states from gaining a residence.
The first case of the arrest of a fugitive slave in Massachusetts under
the law of 1793 took place in Boston soon after the passage of the law.
It is the case to which President Quincy alludes in his late letter
against the fugitive slave law. The populace at the trial aided the
slave to escape, and nothing further was done about it.
The arrest of George Latimer as a slave, in Boston, and his illegal
confinement in jail, in 1842, led to the passage of the law of 1843 for
the "protection of personal liberty," prohibiting state officers from
arresting or detaining persons claimed as slaves, and the use of the
jails of the Commonwealth for their confinement. This law was strictly
in accordance with the decision of the supreme judiciary, in the case of
Prigg vs. The State of Pennsylvania, that the reclaiming of fugitives was
a matter exclusively belonging to the general government; yet that the
state officials might, if they saw fit, carry into effect the law of
Congress on the subject, "unless prohibited by state legislation."
It will be seen by the facts we have adduced that slavery in
Massachusetts never had a legal existence. The ermine of the judiciary
of the Puritan state has never been sullied by the admission of its
detestable claims. It crept into the Commonwealth like other evils and
vices, but never succeeded in clothing itself with the sanction and
authority of law. It stood only upon its own execrable foundation of
robbery and wrong.
With a history like this to look back upon, is it strange that the people
of Massachusetts at the present day are unwilling to see their time-
honored defences of personal freedom, the good old safeguards of Saxon
liberty, overridden and swept away after the summary fashion of "the
Fugitive Slave Bill;" that they should loathe and scorn the task which
that bill imposes upon them of aiding professional slave-hunters in
seizing, fettering, and consigning to bondage men and women accused only
of that which commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and
hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to
"constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved
for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been,
and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great-
hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at
Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning,
some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before letting loose the
dogs of war upon her. Let them give her time, and treat with forbearance
her hesitation, qualms of conscience, and wounded pride. Her people,
indeed, are awkward in the work of slave-catching, and, it would seem,
rendered but indifferent service in a late hunt in Boston. Whether they
would do better under the surveillance of the army and navy of the United
States is a question which we leave with the President and his Secretary
of State. General Putnam once undertook to drill a company of Quakers,
and instruct them, by force of arms, in the art and mystery of fighting;
but not a single pair of drab-colored breeches moved at his "forward
march;" not a broad beaver wheeled at his word of command; no hand
unclosed to receive a proffered musket. Patriotic appeal, hard swearing,
and prick of bayonet had no effect upon these impracticable raw recruits;
and the stout general gave them up in despair. We are inclined to
believe that any attempt on the part of the Commander-in-chief of our
army and navy to convert the good people of Massachusetts into expert
slave-catchers, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would
prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.
THOMAS CARLYLE ON THE SLAVE-QUESTION. (1846.)
A LATE number of Fraser's Magazine contains an article bearing the
unmistakable impress of the Anglo-German peculiarities of Thomas Carlyle,
entitled, 'An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be
interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so
unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of
amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous
irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of
Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of
Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices
from the West Indies have diminished since emancipation,--and that the
negroes, having worked, as they believed, quite long enough without
wages, now refuse to work for the planters without higher pay than the
latter, with the thriftless and evil habits of slavery still clinging to
them, can afford to give,--the author considers himself justified in
denouncing negro emancipation as one of the "shams" which he was
specially sent into this world to belabor. Had he confned himself to
simple abuse and caricature of the self-denying and Christian
abolitionists of England--"the broad-brimmed philanthropists of Exeter
Hall"--there would have been small occasion for noticing his splenetic
and discreditable production. Doubtless there is a cant of philanthropy
--the alloy of human frailty and folly--in the most righteous reforms,
which is a fair subject for the indignant sarcasm of a professed hater of
shows and falsities. Whatever is hollow and hypocritical in politics,
morals, or religion, comes very properly within the scope of his mockery,
and we bid him Godspeed in plying his satirical lash upon it. Impostures
and frauds of all kinds deserve nothing better than detection and
exposure. Let him blow them up to his heart's content, as Daniel did the
image of Bell and the Dragon.
But our author, in this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply
his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to
humanity itself. He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the
amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred
rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the children of his
Heavenly Father to the doom of compulsory servitude. He vituperates the
poor black man with a coarse brutality which would do credit to a
Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on
the banks of the Potomac. His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and
auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good
taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the author and insults
his readers.
He assumes (for he is one of those sublimated philosophers who reject the
Baconian system of induction and depend upon intuition without recourse
to facts and figures) that the emancipated class in the West India
Islands are universally idle, improvident, and unfit for freedom; that
God created them to be the servants and slaves of their "born lords," the
white men, and designed them to grow sugar, coffee, and spices for their
masters, instead of raising pumpkins and yams for themselves; and that,
if they will not do this, "the beneficent whip" should be again employed
to compel them. He adopts, in speaking of the black class, the lowest
slang of vulgar prejudice. "Black Quashee," sneers the gentlemanly
philosopher,--"black Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the
spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little
less ugly than his present one), and with beneficent whip, since other
methods avail not, will be compelled to work."
It is difficult to treat sentiments so atrocious and couched in such
offensive language with anything like respect. Common sense and
unperverted conscience revolt instinctively against them. The doctrine
they inculcate is that which underlies all tyranny and wrong of man
towards man. It is that under which "the creation groaneth and
travaileth unto this day." It is as old as sin; the perpetual argument
of strength against weakness, of power against right; that of the Greek
philosopher, that the barbarians, being of an inferior race, were born to
be slaves to the Greeks; and of the infidel Hobbes, that every man, being
by nature at war with every other man, has a perpetual right to reduce
him to servitude if he has the power. It is the cardinal doctrine of
what John Quincy Adams has very properly styled the Satanic school of
philosophy,--the ethics of an old Norse sea robber or an Arab plunderer
of caravans. It is as widely removed from the sweet humanities and
unselfish benevolence of Christianity as the faith and practice of the
East India Thug or the New Zealand cannibal.
Our author does not, however, take us altogether by surprise. He has
before given no uncertain intimations of the point towards which his
philosophy was tending. In his brilliant essay upon 'Francia of
Paraguay', for instance, we find him entering with manifest satisfaction
and admiration into the details of his hero's tyranny. In his 'Letters
and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell'--in half a dozen pages of savage and
almost diabolical sarcasm directed against the growing humanity of the
age, the "rose-pink sentimentalisms," and squeamishness which shudders at
the sight of blood and infliction of pain--he prepares the way for a
justification of the massacre of Drogheda. More recently he has
intimated that the extermination of the Celtic race is the best way of
settling the Irish question; and that the enslavement and forcible
transportation of her poor, to labor under armed taskmasters in the
colonies, is the only rightful and proper remedy for the political and
social evils of England. In the 'Discourse on Negro Slavery' we see this
devilish philosophy in full bloom. The gods, he tells us, are with the
strong. Might has a divine right to rule,--blessed are the crafty of
brain and strong of hand! Weakness is crime. "Vae victis!" as Brennus
said when he threw his sword into the scale,--Woe to the conquered! The
negro is weaker in intellect than his "born lord," the white man, and has
no right to choose his own vocation. Let the latter do it for him, and,
if need be, return to the "beneficent whip." "On the side of the
oppressor there is power;" let him use it without mercy, and hold flesh
and blood to the grindstone with unrelenting rigor. Humanity is
squeamishness; pity for the suffering mere "rose-pink sentimentalism,"
maudlin and unmanly. The gods (the old Norse gods doubtless) laugh to
scorn alike the complaints of the miserable and the weak compassions and
"philanthropisms" of those who would relieve them. This is the substance
of Thomas Carlyle's advice; this is the matured fruit of his philosophic
husbandry,--the grand result for which he has been all his life sounding
unfathomable abysses or beating about in the thin air of
Transcendentalism. Such is the substitute which he offers us for the
Sermon on the Mount.
He tells us that the blacks have no right to use the islands of the West
Indies for growing pumpkins and garden stuffs for their own use and
behoof, because, but for the wisdom and skill of the whites, these
islands would have been productive only of "jungle, savagery, and swamp
malaria." The negro alone could never have improved the islands or
civilized himself; and therefore their and his "born lord," the white
man, has a right to the benefits of his own betterments of land and "two-
legged cattle!" "Black Quashee" has no right to dispose of himself and
his labor because he owes his partial civilization to others! And pray
how has it been with the white race, for whom our philosopher claims the
divine prerogative of enslaving? Some twenty and odd centuries ago, a
pair of half-naked savages, daubed with paint, might have been seen
roaming among the hills and woods of the northern part of the British
island, subsisting on acorns and the flesh of wild animals, with an
occasional relish of the smoked hams and pickled fingers of some
unfortunate stranger caught on the wrong side of the Tweed. This
interesting couple reared, as they best could, a family of children, who,
in turn, became the heads of families; and some time about the beginning
of the present century one of their descendants in the borough of
Ecclefechan rejoiced over the birth of a man child now somewhat famous as
"Thomas Carlyle, a maker of books." Does it become such a one to rave
against the West India negro's incapacity for self-civilization? Unaided
by the arts, sciences, and refinements of the Romans, he might have been,
at this very day, squatted on his naked haunches in the woods of
Ecclefechan, painting his weather-hardened epidermis in the sun like his
Piet ancestors. Where, in fact, can we look for unaided self-improvement
and spontaneous internal development, to any considerable extent, on the
part of any nation or people? From people to people the original God-
given impulse towards civilization and perfection has been transmitted,
as from Egypt to Greece, and thence to the Roman world.
But the blacks, we are told, are indolent and insensible to the duty of
raising sugar and coffee and spice for the whites, being mainly careful
to provide for their own household and till their own gardens for
domestic comforts and necessaries. The exports have fallen off somewhat.
And what does this prove? Only that the negro is now a consumer of
products, of which, under the rule of the whip, he was a producer merely.
As to indolence, under the proper stimulus of fair wages we have reason
to believe that the charge is not sustained. If unthrifty habits and
lack of prudence on the part of the owners of estates, combined with the
repeal of duties on foreign sugars by the British government, have placed
it out of their power to pay just and reasonable wages for labor, who can
blame the blacks if they prefer to cultivate their own garden plots
rather than raise sugar and spice for their late masters upon terms
little better than those of their old condition, the "beneficent whip"
always excepted? The despatches of the colonial governors agree in
admitting that the blacks have had great cause for complaint and
dissatisfaction, owing to the delay or non-payment of their wages. Sir
C. E. Gray, writing from Jamaica, says, that "in a good many instances
the payment of the wages they have earned has been either very
irregularly made, or not at all, probably on account of the inability of
the employers." He says, moreover:--
"The negroes appear to me to be generally as free from rebellious
tendencies or turbulent feelings and malicious thoughts as any race of
laborers I ever saw or heard of. My impression is, indeed, that under a
system of perfectly fair dealing and of real justice they will come to be
an admirable peasantry and yeomanry; able-bodied, industrious, and hard-
working, frank, and well-disposed."
It must, indeed, be admitted that, judging by their diminished exports
and the growing complaints of the owners of estates, the condition of the
islands, in a financial point of view, is by no means favorable. An
immediate cause of this, however, must be found in the unfortunate Sugar
Act of 1846. The more remote, but for the most part powerful, cause of
the present depression is to be traced to the vicious and unnatural
system of slavery, which has been gradually but surely preparing the way
for ruin, bankruptcy, and demoralization. Never yet, by a community or
an individual, have the righteous laws of God been violated with
impunity. Sooner or later comes the penalty which the infinite justice
has affixed to sin. Partial and temporary evils and inconveniences have
undoubtedly resulted from the emancipation of the laborers; and many
years must elapse before the relations of the two heretofore antagonistic
classes can be perfectly adjusted and their interests brought into entire
harmony. But that freedom is not to be held mainly accountable for the
depression of the British colonies is obvious from the fact that Dutch
Surinam, where the old system of slavery remains in its original rigor,
is in an equally depressed condition. The 'Paramaribo Neuws en
Advertentie Blad', quoted in the Jamaica Gazette, says, under date of
January 2, 1850: "Around us we hear nothing but complaints. People seek
and find matter in everything to picture to themselves the lot of the
place in which they live as bitterer than that of any other country. Of
a large number of flourishing plantations, few remain that can now be
called such. So deteriorated has property become within the last few
years, that many of these estates have not been able to defray their
weekly expenses. The colony stands on the brink of a yawning abyss, into
which it must inevitably plunge unless some new and better system is
speedily adopted. It is impossible that our agriculture can any longer
proceed on its old footing; our laboring force is dying away, and the
social position they held must undergo a revolution."
The paper from which we have quoted, the official journal of the colony,
thinks the condition of the emancipated British colonies decidedly
preferable to that of Surinam, where the old slave system has continued
in force, and insists that the Dutch government must follow the example
of Great Britain. The actual condition of the British colonies since
emancipation is perfectly well known in Surinam: three of them,
Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, being its immediate neighbors, whatever
evils and inconveniences have resuited from emancipation must be well
understood by the Dutch slave-holders; yet we find them looking towards
emancipation as the only prospect of remedy for the greater evils of
their own system.
This fact is of itself a sufficient answer to the assumption of Carlyle
and others, that what they call "the ruin of the colonies" has been
produced by the emancipation acts of 1833 and 1838.
We have no fears whatever of the effect of this literary monstrosity,
which we have been considering upon the British colonies. Quashee, black
and ignorant as he may be, will not "get himself made a slave again."
The mission of the "beneficent whip" is there pretty well over; and it
may now find its place in museums and cabinets of ghastly curiosities,
with the racks, pillories, thumbscrews, and branding-irons of old days.
What we have feared, however, is, that the advocates and defenders of
slave-holding in this country might find in this discourse matter of
encouragement, and that our anti-christian prejudices against the colored
man might be strengthened and confirmed by its malignant vituperation and
sarcasm. On this point we have sympathized with the forebodings of an
eloquent writer in the London Enquirer:--
"We cannot imagine a more deadly moral poison for the American people
than his (Carlyle's) last composition. Every cruel practice of social
exclusion will derive from it new sharpness and venom. The slave-holder,
of course, will exult to find himself, not apologized for, but
enthusiastically cheered, upheld, and glorified, by a writer of European
celebrity. But it is not merely the slave who will feel Mr. Carlyle's
hand in the torture of his flesh, the riveting of his fetters, and the
denial of light to his mind. The free black will feel him, too, in the
more contemptuous and abhorrent scowl of his brother man, who will easily
derive from this unfortunate essay the belief that his inhuman feelings
are of divine ordination. It is a true work of the Devil, the fostering
of a tyrannical prejudice. Far and wide over space, and long into the
future, the winged words of evil counsel will go. In the market-place,
in the house, in the theatre, and in the church,--by land and by sea, in
all the haunts of men,--their influence will be felt in a perennial
growth of hate and scorn, and suffering and resentment. Amongst the
sufferers will be many to whom education has given every refined
susceptibility that makes contempt and exclusion bitter. Men and women,
faithful and diligent, loving and worthy to be loved, and bearing, it may
be, no more than an almost imperceptible trace of African descent, will
continue yet longer to be banished from the social meal of the white man,
and to be spurned from his presence in the house of God, because a writer
of genius has lent the weight of his authority and his fame, if not of
his power, to the perpetuation of a prejudice which Christianity was
undermining."
A more recent production, 'Latter Day Pamphlets', in which man's
capability of self-government is more than doubted, democracy somewhat
contemptuously sneered at, and the "model republic" itself stigmatized as
a "nation of bores," may have a salutary effect in restraining our
admiration and in lessening our respect for the defender and eulogist of
slavery. The sweeping impartiality with which in this latter production
he applies the principle of our "peculiar institution" to the laboring
poor man, irrespective of color, recognizing as his only inalienable
right "the right of being set to labor" for his "born lords," will, we
imagine, go far to neutralize the mischief of his Discourse upon Negro
Slavery. It is a sad thing to find so much intellectual power as Carlyle
really possesses so little under the control of the moral sentiments. In
some of his earlier writings--as, for instance, his beautiful tribute to
the Corn Law Rhymer--we thought we saw evidence of a warm and generous
sympathy with the poor and the wronged, a desire to ameliorate human
suffering, which would have done credit to the "philanthropisms of Exeter
Hall" and the "Abolition of Pain Society." Latterly, however, like
Moliere's quack, he has "changed all that;" his heart has got upon the
wrong side; or rather, he seems to us very much in the condition of the
coal-burner in the German tale, who had swapped his heart of flesh for a
cobblestone.
FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY.
A letter to William Lloyd Garrison, President of the Society.
AMESBURY, 24th 11th mo., 1863.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have received thy kind letter, with the accompanying
circular, inviting me to attend the commemoration of the thirtieth
anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at
Philadelphia. It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled, by the
feeble state of my health, to give up all hope of meeting thee and my
other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest. How much
it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell
thee better than any words of mine.
I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of
my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr.
Thurston of Maine, even then, as we thought, an old man, but still
living, and true as ever to the good cause. I recall the early gray
morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to
prepare a Declaration of Sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the
small "upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first
draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history. I see
the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one
by one, and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity
to freedom. Of the signers, many have passed away from earth, a few have
faltered and turned back, but I believe the majority still live to
rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what
remains of time and strength to the cause to which they consecrated their
youth and manhood thirty years ago.
For while we may well thank God and congratulate one another on the
prospect of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of the United States,
we must not for a moment forget that, from this hour, new and mighty
responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these
millions, left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and
foodless in the wild chaos of civil war. We have to undo the accumulated
wrongs of two centuries; to remake the manhood which slavery has well-
nigh unmade; to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair
field for development and improvement; and to tread under our feet the
last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest
external support of Southern slavery. We must lift ourselves at once to
the true Christian altitude where all distinctions of black and white are
overlooked in the heartfelt recognition of the brotherhood of man.
I must not close this letter without confessing that I cannot be
sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence which, in a great measure
through thy instrumentality, turned me away so early from what Roger
Williams calls "the world's great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honor,"
to take side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible to
literary reputation. I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will
of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the
Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book.
Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings, I rejoice
that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature, and that,
in the long intervening years,
"My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom
raised her cry of pain."
Let me, through thee, extend a warm greeting to the friends, whether of
our own or the new generation, who may assemble on the occasion of
commemoration. There is work yet to be done which will task the best
efforts of us all. For thyself, I need not say that the love and esteem
of early boyhood have lost nothing by the test of time; and
I am, very cordially, thy friend,
JOHN G. WHITTIER
THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY.
From the Amesbury Villager.
(1865.)
IN the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the unspeakably brutal
assault upon Secretary Seward slavery has made another revelation of
itself. Perhaps it was needed. In the magnanimity of assured victory we
were perhaps disposed to overlook, not so much the guilty leaders and
misguided masses of the great rebellion as the unutterable horror and sin
of slavery which prompted it.
How slowly we of the North have learned the true character of this mighty
mischief! How our politicians bowed their strong shoulders under its
burthens! How our churches reverenced it! How our clergy contrasted the
heresy-tolerating North with the purely orthodox and Scriptural type of
slave-holding Christianity! How all classes hunted down, not merely the
fugitive slave, but the few who ventured to give him food and shelter and
a Godspeed in his flight from bondage! How utterly ignored was the
negro's claim of common humanity! How readily was the decision of the
slave-holding chief justice acquiesced in, that "the black man had no
rights which the white man is bound to respect"!
We saw a senator of the United States, world-known and honored for his
learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but
murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the
crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the
dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal
perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as
a chivalrous gentleman. We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in
hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by
secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers,
fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments
for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open
hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of
helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder,
for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the
occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners
massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence
and the murder of its principal citizens. The flames of our merchant
vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of
the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled
with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail
cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers. Yet in
spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery
and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very
point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of
reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union
men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a
religion and murder a sacrament. The nation needed one more terrible
lesson. It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the
attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all
others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion
back to allegiance.
Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned. In
the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading
traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary
chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively
little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of
abominations, slavery. The government is exhorted to remember that it
does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts
of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous
nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people
of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of
oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with
the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and
file of disbanded rebels. The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is
not applied to them. Much is said of executing justice upon rebels;
little of justice to loyal black men. Hanging a few ringleaders of
treason, it seems to be supposed, is all that is needed to restore and
reestablish the revolted states. The negro is to be left powerless in
the hands of the "white trash," who hate him with a bitter hatred,
exceeding that of the large slave-holders. In short, four years of
terrible chastisement, of God's unmistakable judgments, have not taught
us, as a people, their lesson, which could scarcely be plainer if it had
been written in letters of fire on the sky. Why is it that we are so
slow to learn, so unwilling to confess that slavery is the accursed thing
which whets the knife of murder, and transforms men, with the exterior of
gentlemen and Christians, into fiends? How pitiful is our exultation
over the capture of the wretched Booth and his associates! The great
criminal, of whom he and they were but paltry instruments, still stalks
abroad in the pine woods of Jersey, where the state has thrown around him
her legislative sanction and protection. He is in Pennsylvania,
thrusting the black man from public conveyances. Wherever God's children
are despised, insulted, and abused on account of their color, there is
the real assassin of the President still at large. I do not wonder at
the indignation which has been awakened by the late outrage, for I have
painfully shared it. But let us see to it that it is rightly directed.
The hanging of a score of Southern traitors will not restore Abraham
Lincoln nor atone for the mighty loss. In wreaking revenge upon these
miserable men, we must see to it that we do not degrade ourselves and do
dishonor to the sacred memory of the dead. We do well to be angry; and,
if need be, let our wrath wax seven times hotter, until that which "was a
murderer from the beginning" is consumed from the face of the earth. As
the people stand by the grave of Lincoln, let them lift their right hands
to heaven and take a solemn vow upon their souls to give no sleep to
their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids until slavery is hunted from its
last shelter, and every man, black and white, stands equal before the
law.
In dealing with the guilty leaders and instigators of the rebellion we
should beware how we take counsel of passion. Hatred has no place beside
the calm and awful dignity of justice. Human life is still a very sacred
thing; Christian forbearance and patience are still virtues. For my own
part, I should be satisfied to see the chiefs of the great treason go out
from among us homeless, exiled, with the mark of Cain on their foreheads,
carrying with them, wherever they go, the avenging Nemesis of conscience.
We cannot take lessons, at this late day, in their school of barbarism;
we cannot starve and torture them as they have starved and tortured our
soldiers. Let them live. Perhaps that is, after all, the most terrible
penalty. For wherever they hide themselves the story of their acts will
pursue them; they can have no rest nor peace save in that deep repentance
which, through the mercy of God, is possible for all.
I have no disposition to stand between these men and justice. If
arrested, they can have no claim to exemption from the liabilities of
criminals. But it is not simply a question of deserts that is to be
considered; we are to take into account our own reputation as a Christian
people, the wishes of our best friends abroad, and the humane instincts
of the age, which forbid all unnecessary severity. Happily we are not
called upon to take counsel of our fears. Rabbinical writers tell us
that evil spirits who are once baffled in a contest with human beings
lose from thenceforth all power of further mischief. The defeated rebels
are in the precise condition of these Jewish demons. Deprived of
slavery, they are like wasps that have lost their stings.
As respects the misguided masses of the South, the shattered and crippled
remnants of the armies of treason, the desolate wives, mothers, and
children mourning for dear ones who have fallen in a vain and hopeless
struggle, it seems to me our duty is very plain. We must forgive their
past treason, and welcome and encourage their returning loyalty. None
but cowards will insult and taunt the defeated and defenceless. We must
feed and clothe the destitute, instruct the ignorant, and, bearing
patiently with the bitterness and prejudice which will doubtless for a
time thwart our efforts and misinterpret our motives, aid them in
rebuilding their states on the foundation of freedom. Our sole enemy was
slavery, and slavery is dead. We have now no quarrel with the people of
the South, who have really more reason than we have to rejoice over the
downfall of a system which impeded their material progress, perverted
their religion, shut them out from the sympathies of the world, and
ridged their land with the graves of its victims.
We are victors, the cause of all this evil and suffering is removed
forever, and we can well afford to be magnanimous. How better can we
evince our gratitude to God for His great mercy than in doing good to
those who hated us, and in having compassion on those who have
despitefully used us? The hour is hastening for us all when our sole
ground of dependence will be the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let us
endeavor so to feel and act in our relations to the people of the South
that we can repeat in sincerity the prayer of our Lord: "Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," reverently
acknowledging that He has indeed "led captivity captive and received
gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might
dwell among them."
CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE-DEPARTMENT. (1868.)
THE wise reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet
has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition.
That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will
carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of
patriotic services, ability, and fitness for specific duties, no one who
has studied his character, and witnessed his discretion, clear insight,
and wise adaptation of means to ends, under the mighty responsibilities
of his past career, can reasonably doubt.
It is not probable that the distinguished statesman now at the head of
the State Department will, under the circumstances, look for a
continuance in office. History will do justice to his eminent services
in the Senate and in the cabinet during the first years of the rebellion,
but the fact that he has to some extent shared the unpopularity of the
present chief magistrate seems to preclude the idea of his retention in
the new cabinet. In looking over the list of our public men in search of
a successor, General Grant is not likely to be embarrassed by the number
of individuals fitted by nature, culture, and experience for such an
important post. The newspaper press, in its wide license of conjecture
and suggestion, has, as far as I have seen, mentioned but three or four
names in this connection. Allusions have been made to Senator Fessenden
of Maine, ex-Minister Motley, General Dix, ex-Secretary Stanton, and
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.
Without disparaging in any degree his assumed competitors, the last-named
gentleman is unquestionably preeminently fitted for the place. He has
had a lifelong education for it. The entire cast of his mind, the bent
of his studies, the habit and experience of his public life, his profound
knowledge of international law and the diplomatic history of his own and
other countries, his well-earned reputation as a statesman and
constitutional lawyer, not only at home, but wherever our country has
relations of amity and commerce, the honorable distinction which he
enjoys of having held a foremost place in the great conflict between
freedom and slavery, union and rebellion, all mark him as the man for the
occasion. There seems, indeed, a certain propriety in assigning to the
man who struck the heaviest blows at secession and slavery in the
national Senate the first place under him who, in the field, made them
henceforth impossible. The great captain and the great senator united in
war should not be dissevered in peace.
I am not unaware that there are some, even in the Republican party, who
have failed to recognize in Senator Sumner the really wise and practical
statesmanship which a careful review of his public labors cannot but make
manifest. It is only necessary to point such to the open record of his
senatorial career. Few men have had the honor of introducing and
defending with exhaustive ability and thoroughness so many measures of
acknowledged practical importance to his immediate constituents, the
country at large, and the wider interests of humanity and civilization.
In what exigency has he been found wanting? What legislative act of
public utility for the last eighteen years has lacked his encouragement?
At the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his clearness of vision,
firmness, moderation, and ready comprehension of the duties of his time
and place must be admitted by all parties. It was shrewdly said by Burke
that "men are wise with little reflection and good with little self-
denial, in business of all times except their own." But Charles Sumner,
the scholar, loving the "still air of delightful studies," has shown
himself as capable of thoroughly comprehending and digesting the events
transpiring before his eyes as of pronouncing judgment upon those
recorded in history. Far in advance of most of his contemporaries, he
saw and enunciated the true doctrine of reconstruction, the early
adoption of which would have been of incalculable service to the country.
One of the ablest statesmen and jurists of the Democratic party has had
the rare magnanimity to acknowledge that in this matter the Republican
senator was right, and himself and his party wrong.
The Republicans of Massachusetts will make no fractious or importunate
demand upon the new President. They are content to leave to his unbiased
and impartial judgment the selection of his cabinet. But if, looking to
the best interests of the country, he shall see fit to give their
distinguished fellow-citizen the first place in it, they will feel no
solicitude as to the manner in which the duties of the office will be
discharged. They will feel that "the tools are with him who can use
them." Nothing more directly affects the reputation of a country than
the character of its diplomatic correspondence and its foreign
representatives. We have suffered in times past from sad mismanagement
abroad, and intelligent Americans have too often been compelled to hang
their heads with shame to see the flag of their country floating over the
consular offices of worthless, incompetent agents. There can be no
question that so far as they are entrusted to Senator Sumner's hands, the
interest, honor, and dignity of the nation will be safe.
In a few weeks Charles Summer will be returned for his fourth term in the
United States Senate by the well-nigh unanimous vote of both branches of
the legislature of Massachusetts. Not a syllable of opposition to his
reelection is heard from any quarter. There is not a Republican in the
legislature who could have been elected unless he had been virtually
pledged to his support. No stronger evidence of the popular estimate of
his ability and integrity than this could be offered. As a matter of
course, the marked individuality of his intense convictions, earnestness,
persistence, and confident reliance upon the justice of his conclusions,
naturally growing out of the consciousness of having brought to his
honest search after truth all the lights of his learning and experience,
may, at times, have brought him into unpleasant relations with some of
his colleagues; but no one, friend or foe, has questioned his ability and
patriotism, or doubted his fidelity to principle. He has lent himself to
no schemes of greed. While so many others have taken advantage of the
facilities of their official stations to fill, directly or indirectly,
their own pockets or those of their relatives and retainers, it is to the
honor of Massachusetts that her representatives in the Senate have not
only "shaken their hands from the holding of bribes," but have so borne
themselves that no shadow of suspicion has ever rested on them.
In this connection it may be proper to state that, in the event of a
change in the War Department, the claims of General Wilson, to whose
services in the committee on military affairs the country is deeply
indebted, may be brought under consideration. In that case Massachusetts
would not, if it were in her power, discriminate between her senators.
Both have deserved well of her and of the country. In expressing thus
briefly my opinion, I do not forget that after all the choice and
responsibility rest with General Grant alone. There I am content to
leave them. I am very far from urging any sectional claim. Let the
country but have peace after its long discord, let its good faith and
financial credit be sustained, and all classes of its citizens everywhere
protected in person and estate, and it matters very little to me whether
Massachusetts is represented at the Executive Council board, or not.
Personally, Charles Sumner would gain nothing by a transfer from the
Senate Chamber to the State Department. He does not need a place in the
American cabinet any more than John Bright does in the British. The
highest ambition might well be satisfied with his present position, from
which, looking back upon an honorable record, he might be justified in
using Milton's language of lofty confidence in the reply to Salmasius: "I
am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct,
or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave, but, by the grace
of God, I have kept my life unsullied."
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872.
The following letter was written on receiving a request from a
committee of colored voters for advice as to their action at the
presidential election of 1872.
AMESBURY, 9th mo. 3d, 1872.
DEAR FRIENDS,--I have just received your letter of the 29th ult. asking
my opinion of your present duty as colored voters in the choice between
General Grant and Horace Greeley for the presidency. You state that you
have been confused by the contradictory advice given you by such friends
of your people as Charles Sumner on one hand, and William L. Garrison and
Wendell Phillips on the other; and you ask me, as one whom you are
pleased to think "free from all bias," to add my counsel to theirs.
I thank you for the very kind expression of your confidence and your
generous reference to my endeavors to serve the cause of freedom; but I
must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to
the already too long list of political epistles. I have felt it my duty
in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in
political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my
country from the crime and curse of slavery. That great question being
now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger
and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service. Pained
and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass
now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as
possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations
and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love
and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence. In the
present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special
action as an abolitionist was required at my hands. Both of the great
parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on
substantially the same platform. The Republican party, originally
pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious
representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the
Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly
instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the
Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the
North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave
interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the
civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of
events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new
departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the
long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity
of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The
underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed
and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party
expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change
itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift
and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is
desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and
the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the attempt of professed
friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving
aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old
party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.
As respects the candidates now before us, I can see no good reason why
colored voters as such should oppose General Grant, who, though not an
abolitionist and not even a member of the Republican party previous to
his nomination, has faithfully carried out the laws of Congress in their
behalf. Nor, on the other hand, can I see any just grounds for distrust
of such a man as Horace Greeley, who has so nobly distinguished himself
as the advocate of human rights irrespective of race or color, and who by
the instrumentality of his press has been for thirty years the educator
of the people in the principles of justice, temperance, and freedom.
Both of these men have, in different ways, deserved too well of the
country to be unnecessarily subjected to the brutalities of a
presidential canvass; and, so far as they are personally concerned, it
would doubtless have been better if the one had declined a second term of
uncongenial duties, and the other continued to indite words of wisdom in
the shades of Chappaqua. But they have chosen otherwise; and I am
willing, for one, to leave my colored fellow-citizens to the unbiased
exercise of their own judgment and instincts in deciding between them.
The Democratic party labors under the disadvantage of antecedents not
calculated to promote a rapid growth of confidence; and it is no matter
of surprise that the vote of the emancipated class is likely to be
largely against it. But if, as will doubtless be the case, that vote
shall be to some extent divided between the two candidates, it will have
the effect of inducing politicians of the rival parties to treat with
respect and consideration this new element of political power, from self-
interest if from no higher motive. The fact that at this time both
parties are welcoming colored orators to their platforms, and that, in
the South, old slave-masters and their former slaves fraternize at caucus
and barbecue, and vote for each other at the polls, is full of
significance. If, in New England, the very men who thrust Frederick
Douglass from car and stage-coach, and mobbed and hunted him like a wild
beast, now crowd to shake his hand and cheer him, let us not despair of
seeing even the Ku-Klux tarried into decency, and sitting "clothed in
their right minds" as listeners to their former victims. The colored man
is to-day the master of his own destiny. No power on earth can deprive
him of his rights as an American citizen. And it is in the light of
American citizenship that I choose to regard my colored friends, as men
having a common stake in the welfare of the country; mingled with, and
not separate from, their white fellow-citizens; not herded together as a
distinct class to be wielded by others, without self-dependence and
incapable of self-determination. Thanks to such men as Sumner and Wilson
and their compeers, nearly all that legislation can do for them has
already been done. We can now only help them to help themselves.
Industry, economy, temperance, self-culture, education for their
children,--these things, indispensable to their elevation and progress,
are in a great measure in their own hands.
You will, therefore, my friends and fellow-citizens, pardon me if I
decline to undertake to decide for you the question of your political
duty as respects the candidates for the presidency,--a question which you
have probably already settled in your own minds. If it had been apparent
to me that your rights and liberties were really in danger from the
success of either candidate, your letter would not have been needed to
call forth my opinion. In the long struggle of well-nigh forty years, I
can honestly say that no consideration of private interest, nor my
natural love of peace and retirement and the good-will of others, have
kept me silent when a word could be fitly spoken for human rights. I
have not so long acted with the class to which you belong without
acquiring respect for your intelligence and capacity for judging wisely
for yourselves. I shall abide your decision with confidence, and
cheerfully acquiesce in it.
If, on the whole, you prefer to vote for the reelection of General Grant,
let me hope you will do so without joining with eleventh-hour friends in
denouncing and reviling such an old and tried friend as Charles Sumner,
who has done and suffered so much in your behalf. If, on the other hand,
some of you decide to vote for Horace Greeley, you need not in so doing
forget your great obligations to such friends as William Lloyd Garrison,
Wendell Phillips, and Lydia Maria Child. Agree or disagree with them,
take their advice or reject it, but stand by them still, and teach the
parties with which you are connected to respect your feelings towards
your benefactors.
THE CENSURE OF SUMNER.
A letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser in reference to the petition
for the rescinding of the resolutions censuring Senator Sumner for
his motion to erase from the United States flags the record of the
battles of the civil war.
I BEG leave to occupy a small space in the columns of the Advertiser for
the purpose of noticing a charge which has been brought against the
petitioners for rescinding the resolutions of the late extra session
virtually censuring the Hon. Charles Sumner. It is intimated that the
action of these petitioners evinces a lack of appreciation of the
services of the soldiers of the Union, and that not to censure Charles
Sumner is to censure the volunteers of Massachusetts.
As a matter of fact, the petitioners express no opinion as to the policy
or expediency of the senator's proposition. Some may believe it not only
right in itself, but expedient and well-timed; others that it was
inexpedient or premature. None doubt that, sooner or later, the thing
which it contemplates must be done, if we are to continue a united
people. What they feel and insist upon is that the proposition is one
which implies no disparagement of the soldiers of Massachusetts and the
Union; that it neither receives nor merits the "unqualified condemnation
of the people" of the state; and that it furnishes no ground whatever for
legislative interference or censure. A single glance at the names of the
petitioners is a sufficient answer to the insinuation that they are
unmindful of that self-sacrifice and devotion, the marble and granite
memorials of which, dotting the state from the Merrimac to the
Connecticut, testify the gratitude of the loyal heart of Massachusetts.
I have seen no soldier yet who considered himself wronged or "insulted"
by the proposition. In point of fact the soldiers have never asked for
such censure of the brave and loyal statesman who was the bosom friend
and confidant of Secretary Stanton (the great war-minister, second, if at
all, only to Carnot) and of John A. Andrew, dear to the heart of every
Massachusetts soldier, and whose tender care and sympathy reached them
wherever they struggled or died for country and freedom. The proposal of
Senator Sumner, instead of being an "insult," was, in fact, the highest
compliment which could be paid to brave men; for it implied that they
cherished no vindictive hatred of fallen foes; that they were too proudly
secure of the love and gratitude of their countrymen to need above their
heads the flaunting blazon of their achievements; that they were as
magnanimous in peace and victory as they were heroic and patient through
the dark and doubtful arbitrament of war. As such they understand it. I
should be sorry to think there existed a single son of Massachusetts weak
enough to believe that his reputation and honor as a soldier needed this
censure of Charles Sumner. I have before me letters from men, ranking
from orderly sergeant to general, who have looked at death full in the
face on every battlefield where the flag of Massachusetts floated, and
they all thank me for my efforts to rescind this uncalled-for censure,
and pledge me their hearty support. They cordially indorse the noble
letter of Vice-President Wilson offering his signature to the petition
for rescinding the obnoxious resolutions; and if these resolutions are
not annulled, it will not be the fault of Massachusetts volunteers, but
rather of the mistaken zeal of men more familiar with the drill of the
caucus than with that of the camp.
I am no blind partisan of Charles Sumner. I have often differed from him
in opinion. I regretted deeply the position which he thought it his duty
to take during the late presidential campaign. He felt the atmosphere
about him thick and foul with corruption and bribery and greed; he saw
the treasury ringed about like Saturn with unscrupulous combinations and
corporations; and it is to be regretted more than wondered at if he
struck out wildly in his indignation, and that his blows fell sometimes
upon the wrong object. But I did not intend to act the part of his
apologist. The twenty years of his senatorial life are crowded with
memorials of his loyalty to truth and free dom and humanity, which will
be enduring as our history. He is no party to this movement, in which my
name has been more prominent than I could have wished, and no word of his
prompted or suggested it. From its inception to the present time he has
remained silent in his chamber of pain, waiting to bequeath, like the
testator of the dramatist,
"A fame by scandal untouched
To Memory and Time's old daughter Truth."
He can well afford to wait, and the issue of the present question before
our legislature is of far less consequence to him than to us. To use the
words of one who stood by him in the dark days of the Fugitive Slave Law,
the Chief Justice of the United States,--"Time and the wiser thought will
vindicate the illustrious statesman to whom Massachusetts, the country,
and humanity owe so much, but the state can ill afford the damage to its
own reputation which such a censure of such a man will inflict."
AMESBURY, 3d month, 8, 1873.
THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833. (1874.)
In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years ago, a
dear friend of mine, residing in Boston, made his appearance at the old
farm-house in East Haverhill. He had been deputed by the abolitionists
of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall, and others, to
inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the Convention about to be
held in Philadelphia for the formation of an American Anti-Slavery
Society, and to urge upon me the necessity of my attendance.
Few words of persuasion, however, were needed. I was unused to
travelling; my life had been spent on a secluded farm; and the journey,
mostly by stage-coach, at that time was really a formidable one.
Moreover, the few abolitionists were everywhere spoken against, their
persons threatened, and in some instances a price set on their heads by
Southern legislators. Pennsylvania was on the borders of slavery, and it
needed small effort of imagination to picture to one's self the breaking
up of the Convention and maltreatment of its members. This latter
consideration I do not think weighed much with me, although I was better
prepared for serious danger than for anything like personal indignity. I
had read Governor Trumbull's description of the tarring and feathering of
his hero MacFingal, when, after the application of the melted tar, the
feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, until
"Not Maia's son, with wings for ears,
Such plumes about his visage wears,
Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers
Such superfluity of feathers,"
and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom which my best
friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at. But a summons like that
of Garrison's bugle-blast could scarcely be unheeded by one who, from
birth and education, held fast the traditions of that earlier
abolitionism which, under the lead of Benezet and Woolman, had effaced
from the Society of Friends every vestige of slave-holding. I had thrown
myself, with a young man's fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which
commended itself to my reason and conscience, to my love of country, and
my sense of duty to God and my fellow-men. My first venture in
authorship was the publication, at my own expense, in the spring of 1833,
of a pamphlet entitled Justice and Expediency, on the moral and political
evils of slavery, and the duty of emancipation. Under such circumstances
I could not hesitate, but prepared at once for my journey. It was
necessary that I should start on the morrow, and the intervening time,
with a small allowance for sleep, was spent in providing for the care of
the farm and homestead during my absence.
So the next morning I took the stage for Boston, stopping at the ancient
hostelry known as the Eastern Stage Tavern; and on the day following, in
company with William Lloyd Garrison, I left for New York. At that city
we were joined by other delegates, among them David Thurston, a
Congregational minister from Maine. On our way to Philadelphia, we took,
as a matter of necessary economy, a second-class conveyance, and found
ourselves, in consequence, among rough and hilarious companions, whose
language was more noteworthy for strength than refinement. Our worthy
friend the clergyman bore it awhile in painful silence, but at last felt
it his duty to utter words of remonstrance and admonition. The leader of
the young roisterers listened with a ludicrous mock gravity, thanked him
for his exhortation, and, expressing fears that the extraordinary effort
had exhausted his strength, invited him to take a drink with him. Father
Thurston buried his grieved face in his cloak-collar, and wisely left the
young reprobates to their own devices.
On reaching Philadelphia, we at once betook, ourselves to the humble
dwelling on Fifth Street occupied by Evan Lewis, a plain, earnest man and
lifelong abolitionist, who had been largely interested in preparing the
way for the Convention. In one respect the time of our assembling seemed
unfavorable. The Society of Friends, upon whose cooperation we had
counted, had but recently been rent asunder by one of those unhappy
controversies which so often mark the decline of practical righteousness.
The martyr-age of the society had passed, wealth and luxury had taken the
place of the old simplicity, there was a growing conformity to the maxims
of the world in trade and fashion, and with it a corresponding
unwillingness to hazard respectability by the advocacy of unpopular
reforms. Unprofitable speculation and disputation on one hand, and a
vain attempt on the other to enforce uniformity of opinion, had
measurably lost sight of the fact that the end of the gospel is love, and
that charity is its crowning virtue. After a long and painful struggle
the disruption had taken place; the shattered fragments, under the name
of Orthodox and Hicksite, so like and yet so separate in feeling,
confronted each other as hostile sects, and
"Never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining;
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs that have been torn asunder
A dreary sea now flows between;
But neither rain, nor frost, nor thunder,
Can wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once has been."
We found about forty members assembled in the parlors of our friend
Lewis, and, after some general conversation, Lewis Tappan was asked to
preside over an informal meeting, preparatory to the opening of the
Convention. A handsome, intellectual-looking man, in the prime of life,
responded to the invitation, and in a clear, well-modulated voice, the
firm tones of which inspired hope and confidence, stated the objects of
our preliminary council, and the purpose which had called us together, in
earnest and well-chosen words. In making arrangements for the
Convention, it was thought expedient to secure, if possible, the services
of some citizen of Philadelphia, of distinction and high social standing,
to preside over its deliberations. Looking round among ourselves in vain
for some titled civilian or doctor of divinity, we were fain to confess
that to outward seeming we were but "a feeble folk," sorely needing the
shield of a popular name. A committee, of which I was a member, was
appointed to go in search of a president of this description. We visited
two prominent gentlemen, known as friendly to emancipation and of high
social standing. They received us with the dignified courtesy of the old
school, declined our proposition in civil terms, and bowed us out with a
cool politeness equalled only by that of the senior Winkle towards the
unlucky deputation of Pickwick and his unprepossessing companions. As we
left their doors we could not refrain from smiling in each other's faces
at the thought of the small inducement our proffer of the presidency held
out to men of their class. Evidently our company was not one for
respectability to march through Coventry with.
On the following morning we repaired to the Adelphi Building, on Fifth
Street, below Walnut, which had been secured for our use. Sixty-two
delegates were found to be in attendance. Beriah Green, of the Oneida
(New York) Institute, was chosen president, a fresh-faced, sandy-haired,
rather common-looking man, but who had the reputation of an able and
eloquent speaker. He had already made himself known to us as a resolute
and self-sacrificing abolitionist. Lewis Tappan and myself took our
places at his side as secretaries, on the elevation at the west end of
the hall.
Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed of
comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
period. They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to comfort
rather than elegance. Many of the faces turned towards me wore a look of
expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm; all had the earnestness which might
be expected of men engaged in an enterprise beset with difficulty and
perhaps with peril. The fine, intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely
bald, was conspicuous; the sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all
the beatitudes seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in
his veins the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys,--a man so
exceptionally pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that
he could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy.
"The de'il wad look into his face,
And swear he couldna wrang him."
That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose somewhat
martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley
Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery;
that slight, eager man, intensely alive in every feature and gesture, was
Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector of the free
colored people of Philadelphia, and whose name was whispered reverently
in the slave cabins of Maryland as the friend of the black man, one of a
class peculiar to old Quakerism, who in doing what they felt to be duty,
and walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank from
no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing
in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas
Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in
Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted
by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting
strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight.
Elizur Wright, the young professor of a Western college, who had lost his
place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration
in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched
the proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak
directly to the purpose. The portly form of Dr. Bartholomew Russell, the
beloved physician, from that beautiful land of plenty and peace which
Bayard Taylor has described in his Story of Kennett, was not to be
overlooked. Abolitionist in heart and soul, his house was known as the
shelter of runaway slaves, and no sportsman ever entered into the chase
with such zest as he did into the arduous and sometimes dangerous work of
aiding their escape and baffling their pursuers. The youngest man
present was, I believe, James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian minister from
Columbia, afterwards one of our most efficient workers. James Mott, E.
L. Capron, Arnold Buffum, and Nathan Winslow, men well known in the anti-
slavery agitation, were conspicuous members. Vermont sent down from her
mountains Orson S. Murray, a man terribly in earnest, with a zeal that
bordered on fanaticism, and who was none the more genial for the mob-
violence to which he had been subjected. In front of me, awakening
pleasant associations of the old homestead in Merrimac valley, sat my
first school-teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian
and historian of Newbury. A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite
division of Friends, were present, in broad brims and plain bonnets,
among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott.
Committees were chosen to draft a constitution for a national Anti-
Slavery Society, nominate a list of officers, and prepare a declaration
of principles to be signed by the members. Dr. A. L. Cox of New York,
while these committees were absent, read something from my pen eulogistic
of William Lloyd Garrison; and Lewis Tappan and Amos A. Phelps, a
Congregational clergyman of Boston, afterwards one of the most devoted
laborers in the cause, followed in generous commendation of the zeal,
courage, and devotion of the young pioneer. The president, after calling
James McCrummell, one of the two or three colored members of the
Convention, to the chair, made some eloquent remarks upon those editors
who had ventured to advocate emancipation. At the close of his speech a
young man rose to speak, whose appearance at once arrested my attention.
I think I have never seen a finer face and figure, and his manner, words,
and bearing were in keeping. "Who is he?" I asked of one of the
Pennsylvania delegates. "Robert Purvis, of this city, a colored man,"
was the answer. He began by uttering his heart-felt thanks to the
delegates who had convened for the deliverance of his people. He spoke
of Garrison in terms of warmest eulogy, as one who had stirred the heart
of the nation, broken the tomblike slumber of the church, and compelled
it to listen to the story of the slave's wrongs. He closed by declaring
that the friends of colored Americans would not be forgotten. "Their
memories," he said, "will be cherished when pyramids and monuments shall
have crumbled in dust. The flood of time which is sweeping away the
refuge of lies is bearing on the advocates of our cause to a glorious
immortality."
The committee on the constitution made their report, which after
discussion was adopted. It disclaimed any right or intention of
interfering, otherwise than by persuasion and Christian expostulation,
with slavery as it existed in the states, but affirming the duty of
Congress to abolish it in the District of Columbia and territories, and
to put an end to the domestic slave-trade. A list of officers of the new
society was then chosen: Arthur Tappan of New York, president, and Elizur
Wright, Jr., William Lloyd Garrison, and A. L. Cox, secretaries. Among
the vice-presidents was Dr. Lord of Dartmouth College, then professedly
in favor of emancipation, but who afterwards turned a moral somersault, a
self-inversion which left him ever after on his head instead of his feet.
He became a querulous advocate of slavery as a divine institution, and
denounced woe upon the abolitionists for interfering with the will and
purpose of the Creator. As the cause of freedom gained ground, the poor
man's heart failed him, and his hope for church and state grew fainter
and fainter. A sad prophet of the evangel of slavery, he testified in
the unwilling ears of an unbelieving generation, and died at last
despairing of a world which seemed determined that Canaan should no
longer be cursed, nor Onesimus sent back to Philemon.
The committee on the declaration of principles, of which I was a member,
held a long session, discussing the proper scope and tenor of the
document. But little progress being made, it was finally decided to
entrust the matter to a sub-committee, consisting of William L.
Garrison, S. J. May, and myself; and after a brief consultation and
comparison of each other's views, the drafting of the important paper was
assigned to the former gentleman. We agreed to meet him at his lodgings
in the house of a colored friend early the next morning. It was still
dark when we climbed up to his room, and the lamp was still burning by
the light of which he was writing the last sentence of the declaration.
We read it carefully, made a few verbal changes, and submitted it to the
large committee, who unanimously agreed to report it to the Convention.
The paper was read to the Convention by Dr. Atlee, chairman of the
committee, and listened to with the profoundest interest.
Commencing with a reference to the time, fifty-seven years before, when,
in the same city of Philadelphia, our fathers announced to the world
their Declaration of Independence,--based on the self-evident truths of
human equality and rights,--and appealed to arms for its defence, it
spoke of the new enterprise as one "without which that of our fathers is
incomplete," and as transcending theirs in magnitude, solemnity, and
probable results as much "as moral truth does physical force." It spoke
of the difference of the two in the means and ends proposed, and of the
trifling grievances of our fathers compared with the wrongs and
sufferings of the slaves, which it forcibly characterized as unequalled
by any others on the face of the earth. It claimed that the nation was
bound to repent at once, to let the oppressed go free, and to admit them
to all the rights and privileges of others; because, it asserted, no man
has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; because liberty is
inalienable; because there is no difference, in principle, between slave-
holding and man-stealing, which the law brands as piracy; and because no
length of bondage can invalidate man's claim to himself, or render slave
laws anything but "an audacious usurpation."
It maintained that no compensation should be given to planters
emancipating slaves, because that would be a surrender of fundamental
principles; "slavery is a crime, and is, therefore, not an article to be
sold;" because slave-holders are not just proprietors of what they claim;
because emancipation would destroy only nominal, not real property; and
because compensation, if given at all, should be given to the slaves.
It declared any "scheme of expatriation" to be "delusive, cruel, and
dangerous." It fully recognized the right of each state to legislate
exclusively on the subject of slavery within its limits, and conceded
that Congress, under the present national compact, had no right to
interfere; though still contending that it had the power, and should
exercise it, "to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several
states," and "to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in
those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under
its exclusive jurisdiction."
After clearly and emphatically avowing the principles underlying the
enterprise, and guarding with scrupulous care the rights of persons and
states under the Constitution, in prosecuting it, the declaration closed
with these eloquent words:--
We also maintain that there are, at the present time, the highest
obligations resting upon the people of the free states to remove slavery
by moral and political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the
United States. They are now living under a pledge of their tremendous
physical force to fasten the galling fetters of tyranny upon the limbs of
millions in the Southern states; they are liable to be called at any
moment to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves; they authorize
the slave-owner to vote on three fifths of his slaves as property, and
thus enable him to perpetuate his oppression; they support a standing
army at the South for its protection; and they seize the slave who has
escaped into their territories, and send him back to be tortured by an
enraged master or a brutal driver. This relation to slavery is criminal
and full of danger. It must be broken up.
"These are our views and principles,--these our designs and measures.
With entire confidence in the overruling justice of God, we plant
ourselves upon the Declaration of Independence and the truths of divine
revelation as upon the everlasting rock.
"We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city,
town, and village in our land.
"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of
warning, of entreaty and rebuke.
"We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively anti-slavery tracts and
periodicals.
"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
and the dumb.
"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in
the guilt of slavery.
"We shall encourage the labor of freemen over that of the slaves, by
giving a preference to their productions; and
"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
speedy repentance.
"Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be personally defeated,
but our principles never. Truth, justice, reason, humanity, must and
will gloriously triumph. Already a host is coming up to the help of the
Lord against the mighty, and the prospect before us is full of
encouragement.
"Submitting this declaration to the candid examination of the people of
this country, and of the friends of liberty all over the world, we hereby
affix our signatures to it; pledging ourselves that, under the guidance
and by the help of Almighty God, we will do all that in us lies,
consistently with this declaration of our principles, to overthrow the
most execrable system of slavery that has ever been witnessed upon earth,
to deliver our land from its deadliest curse, to wipe out the foulest
stain which rests upon our national escutcheon, and to secure to the
colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges
which belong to them as men and as Americans, come what may to our
persons, our interests, or our reputations, whether we live to witness
the triumph of justice, liberty, and humanity, or perish untimely as
martyrs in this great, benevolent, and holy cause."
The reading of the paper was followed by a discussion which lasted
several hours. A member of the Society of Friends moved its immediate
adoption. "We have," he said, "all given it our assent: every heart here
responds to it. It is a doctrine of Friends that these strong and deep
impressions should be heeded." The Convention, nevertheless, deemed it
important to go over the declaration carefully, paragraph by paragraph.
During the discussion, one of the spectators asked leave to say a few
words. A beautiful and graceful woman, in the prime of life, with a face
beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of Madame Roland,
offered some wise and valuable suggestions, in a clear, sweet voice, the
charm of which I have never forgotten. It was Lucretia Mott of
Philadelphia. The president courteously thanked her, and encouraged her
to take a part in the discussion. On the morning of the last day of our
session, the declaration, with its few verbal amendments, carefully
engrossed on parchment, was brought before the Convention. Samuel J. May
rose to read it for the last time. His sweet, persuasive voice faltered
with the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of
the concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston of
Maine rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries, and affixed
his name to the document. One after another passed up to the platform,
signed, and retired in silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the
occasion the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon
every countenance.
Our work as a Convention was now done. President Green arose to make the
concluding address. The circumstances under which it was uttered may
have lent it an impressiveness not its own; but as I now recall it, it
seems to me the most powerful and eloquent speech to which I have ever
listened. He passed in review the work that had been done, the
constitution of the new society, the declaration of sentiments, and the
union and earnestness which had marked the proceedings. His closing
words will never be forgotten by those who heard them:--
"Brethren, it has been good to be here. In this hallowed atmosphere I
have been revived and refreshed. This brief interview has more than
repaid me for all that I have ever suffered. I have here met congenial
minds; I have rejoiced in sympathies delightful to the soul. Heart has
beat responsive to heart, and the holy work of seeking to benefit the
outraged and despised has proved the most blessed employment.
"But now we must retire from these balmy influences and breathe another
atmosphere. The chill hoar-frost will be upon us. The storm and tempest
will rise, and the waves of persecution will dash against our souls. Let
us be prepared for the worst. Let us fasten ourselves to the throne of
God as with hooks of steel. If we cling not to Him, our names to that
document will be but as dust.
"Let us court no applause, indulge in no spirit of vain boasting. Let us
be assured that our only hope in grappling with the bony monster is in an
Arm that is stronger than ours. Let us fix our gaze on God, and walk in
the light of His countenance. If our cause be just--and we know it is--
His omnipotence is pledged to its triumph. Let this cause be entwined
around the very fibres of our hearts. Let our hearts grow to it, so that
nothing but death can sunder the bond."
He ceased, and then, amidst a silence broken only by the deep-drawn
breath of emotion in the assembly, lifted up his voice in a prayer to
Almighty God, full of fervor and feeling, imploring His blessing and
sanctification upon the Convention and its labors. And with the
solemnity of this supplication in our hearts we clasped hands in
farewell, and went forth each man to his place of duty, not knowing the
things that should befall us as individuals, but with a confidence, never
shaken by abuse and persecution, in the certain triumph of our cause.
KANSAS
Read at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the state of
Kansas.
BEAR CAMP HOUSE, WEST OSSIPEE, N. H.,
Eighth month, 29th, 1879.
To J. S. EMERY, R. MORROW, AND C. W. SMITH, COMMITTEE:
I HAVE received your invitation to the twenty-fifth anniversary
celebration of the first settlement of Kansas. It would give me great
pleasure to visit your state on an occasion of such peculiar interest,
and to make the acquaintance of its brave and self-denying pioneers, but
I have not health and strength for the journey. It is very fitting that
this anniversary should be duly recognized. No one of your sister states
has such a record as yours,--so full of peril and adventure, fortitude,
self-sacrifice, and heroic devotion to freedom. Its baptism of martyr
blood not only saved the state to liberty, but made the abolition of
slavery everywhere possible. Barber and Stillwell and Colpetzer and
their associates did not die in vain. All through your long, hard
struggle I watched the course of events in Kansas with absorbing
interest. I rejoiced, while I marvelled at the steady courage which no
danger could shake, at the firm endurance which outwearied the
brutalities of your slaveholding invaders, and at that fidelity to right
and duty which the seduction of immediate self-interest could not swerve,
nor the military force of a proslavery government overawe. All my
sympathies were with you in that stern trial of your loyalty to God and
humanity. And when, in the end, you had conquered peace, and the last of
the baffled border ruffians had left your territory, I felt that the doom
of the accursed institution was sealed, and that its abolition was but a
question of time. A state with such a record will, I am sure, be true to
its noble traditions, and will do all in its power to aid the victims of
prejudice and oppression who may be compelled to seek shelter within its
borders. I will not for a moment distrust the fidelity of Kansas to her
foundation principle. God bless and prosper her! Thanking you for the
kind terms of your invitation, I am, gentlemen, very truly your friend.
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
An Introduction to Oliver Johnson's "William Lloyd Garrison and his
Times."
(1879.)
I no not know that any word of mine can give additional interest to this
memorial of William Lloyd Garrison from the pen of one of his earliest
and most devoted friends, whose privilege it has been to share his
confidence and his labors for nearly half a century; but I cannot well
forego the opportunity afforded me to add briefly my testimony to the
tribute to the memory of the great Reformer, whose friendship I have
shared, and with whom I have been associated in a common cause from youth
to age.
My acquaintance with him commenced in boyhood. My father was a
subscriber to his first paper, the Free Press, and the humanitarian tone
of his editorials awakened a deep interest in our little household, which
was increased by a visit which he made us. When he afterwards edited the
Journal of the Times, at Bennington, Vt., I ventured to write him a
letter of encouragement and sympathy, urging him to continue his labors
against slavery, and assuring him that he could "do great things," an
unconscious prophecy which has been fulfilled beyond the dream of my
boyish enthusiasm. The friendship thus commenced has remained unbroken
through half a century, confirming my early confidence in his zeal and
devotion, and in the great intellectual and moral strength which he
brought to the cause with which his name is identified.
During the long and hard struggle in which the abolitionists were
engaged, and amidst the new and difficult questions and side-issues which
presented themselves, it could scarcely be otherwise than that
differences of opinion and action should arise among them. The leader
and his disciples could not always see alike. My friend, the author of
this book, I think, generally found himself in full accord with him,
while I often decidedly dissented. I felt it my duty to use my right of
citizenship at the ballot-box in the cause of liberty, while Garrison,
with equal sincerity, judged and counselled otherwise. Each acted under
a sense of individual duty and responsibility, and our personal relations
were undisturbed. If, at times, the great anti-slavery leader failed to
do justice to the motives of those who, while in hearty sympathy with his
hatred of slavery, did not agree with some of his opinions and methods,
it was but the pardonable and not unnatural result of his intensity of
purpose, and his self-identification with the cause he advocated; and,
while compelled to dissent, in some particulars, from his judgment of men
and measures, the great mass of the antislavcry people recognized his
moral leadership. The controversies of old and new organization,
nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties
to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows
the subsidence of prejudice and passion. We were but fallible men, and
doubtless often erred in feeling, speech, and action. Ours was but the
common experience of reformers in all ages.
"Never in Custom's oiled grooves
The world to a higher level moves,
But grates and grinds with friction hard
On granite bowlder and flinty shard.
Ever the Virtues blush to find
The Vices wearing their badge behind,
And Graces and Charities feel the fire
Wherein the sins of the age expire."
It is too late now to dwell on these differences. I choose rather, with
a feeling of gratitude to God, to recall the great happiness of laboring
with the noble company of whom Garrison was the central figure. I love
to think of him as he seemed to me, when in the fresh dawn of manhood he
sat with me in the old Haverhill farmhouse, revolving even then schemes
of benevolence; or, with cheery smile, welcoming me to his frugal meal of
bread and milk in the dingy Boston printing-room; or, as I found him in
the gray December morning in the small attic of a colored man, in
Philadelphia, finishing his night-long task of drafting his immortal
Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society; or, as I
saw him in the jail of Leverett Street, after his almost miraculous
escape from the mob, playfully inviting me to share the safe lodgings
which the state had provided for him; and in all the varied scenes and
situations where we acted together our parts in the great endeavor and
success of Freedom.
The verdict of posterity in his case may be safely anticipated. With the
true reformers and benefactors of his race he occupies a place inferior
to none other. The private lives of many who fought well the battles of
humanity have not been without spot or blemish. But his private
character, like his public, knew no dishonor. No shadow of suspicion
rests upon the white statue of a life, the fitting garland of which
should be the Alpine flower that symbolizes noble purity.
ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY.
Read at the semi-centennial celebration of the American Anti-Slavery
Society at Philadelphia, on the 3d December, 1883.
OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
11th mo., 30, 1883.
I NEED not say how gladly I would be with you at the semi-centennial of
the American Anti-Slavery Society. I am, I regret to say, quite unable
to gratify this wish, and can only represent myself by a letter.
Looking back over the long years of half a century, I can scarcely
realize the conditions under which the convention of 1833 assembled.
Slavery was predominant. Like Apollyon in Pilgrim's Progress, it
"straddled over the whole breadth of the way." Church and state, press
and pulpit, business interests, literature, and fashion were prostrate at
its feet. Our convention, with few exceptions, was composed of men
without influence or position, poor and little known, strong only in
their convictions and faith in the justice of their cause. To onlookers
our endeavor to undo the evil work of two centuries and convert a nation
to the "great renunciation" involved in emancipation must have seemed
absurd in the last degree. Our voices in such an atmosphere found no
echo. We could look for no response but laughs of derision or the
missiles of a mob.
But we felt that we had the strength of truth on our side; we were right,
and all the world about us was wrong. We had faith, hope, and
enthusiasm, and did our work, nothing doubting, amidst a generation who
first despised and then feared and hated us. For myself I have never
ceased to be grateful to the Divine Providence for the privilege of
taking a part in that work.
And now for more than twenty years we have had a free country. No slave
treads its soil. The anticipated dangerous consequences of complete
emancipation have not been felt. The emancipated class, as a whole, have
done wisely, and well under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. The
masters have learned that cotton can be raised better by free than by
slave labor, and nobody now wishes a return to slave-holding. Sectional
prejudices are subsiding, the bitterness of the civil war is slowly
passing away. We are beginning to feel that we are one people, with no
really clashing interests, and none more truly rejoice in the growing
prosperity of the South than the old abolitionists, who hated slavery as
a curse to the master as well as to the slave.
In view of this commemorative semi-centennial occasion, many thoughts
crowd upon me; memory recalls vanished faces and voices long hushed. Of
those who acted with me in the convention fifty years ago nearly all have
passed into another state of being. We who remain must soon follow; we
have seen the fulfilment of our desire; we have outlived scorn and
persecution; the lengthening shadows invite us to rest. If, in looking
back, we feel that we sometimes erred through impatient zeal in our
contest with a great wrong, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we
were influenced by no merely selfish considerations. The low light of
our setting sun shines over a free, united people, and our last prayer
shall be for their peace, prosperity, and happiness.
RESPONSE TO THE CELEBRATION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
BY THE COLORED CITIZENS OF WASHINGTON D. C.
To R. H. TERRELL AND GEORGE W. WILLIAMS, ESQUIRES.
GENTLEMEN,--Among the great number of tokens of interest and good-will
which reached me on my birthday, none have touched me more deeply than
the proceedings of the great meeting of the colored citizens of the
nation's capital, of which you are the representatives. The resolutions
of that meeting came to me as the voice of millions of my fellow-
countrymen. That voice was dumb in slavery when, more than half a
century ago, I put forth my plea for the freedom of the slave.
It could not answer me from the rice swamp and cotton field, but now, God
be praised, it speaks from your great meeting in Washington and from all
the colleges and schools where the youth of your race are taught. I
scarcely expected then that the people for whom I pleaded would ever know
of my efforts in their behalf. I cannot be too thankful to the Divine
Providence that I have lived to hear their grateful response.
I stand amazed at the rapid strides which your people have made since
emancipation, at your industry, your acquisition of property and land,
your zeal for education, your self-respecting but unresentful attitude
toward those who formerly claimed to be your masters, your pathetic but
manly appeal for just treatment and recognition. I see in all this the
promise that the time is not far distant when, in common with the white
race, you will have the free, undisputed rights of American citizenship
in all parts of the Union, and your rightful share in the honors as well
as the protection of the government.
Your letter would have been answered sooner if it had been possible. I
have been literally overwhelmed with letters and telegrams, which, owing
to illness, I have been in a great measure unable to answer or even read.
I tender to you, gentlemen, and to the people you represent my heartfelt
thanks, and the assurance that while life lasts you will find me, as I
have been heretofore, under more difficult circumstances, your faithful
friend.
OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS.,
first mo., 9, 1888.
REFORM AND POLITICS. UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL THEORISTS.
THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils
of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their
allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
an old poet has quaintly described:--
"The citizens like pounded pikes;
The lesser feed the great;
The rich for food seek stomachs,
And the poor for stomachs meat."
This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists,
reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the
world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They
are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as
comfortable in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those
who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough
alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good
old-fashioned order of things in church and state? The idea of making
the world better and happier is to them an absurdity. He who entertains
it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical
wisdom. His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be
impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, _Utopian._
The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this
are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
solaced himself in his long imprisonment.
The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of
a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
could
"Forerun his age and race, and let
His feet millenniums hence be set
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."
Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact, a part of the frame-work of
European governments, and the political truths of his imaginary state are
now practically recognized in our own democratic system. As might be
expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the
exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands
for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want
of proportion and symmetry in the structure. Many of his theories are no
doubt impracticable and unsound. But, as a whole, the work is an
admirable one, striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a
government of religious toleration and political freedom. The following
extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than
folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:--
"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt
whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God,
who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the
variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man
to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike
him as true."
Passing by the "Telemachus" of Fenelon, we come to the political romance
of Harrington, written in the time of Cromwell. "Oceana" is the name by
which the author represents England; and the republican plan of
government which he describes with much minuteness is such as he would
have recommended for adoption in case a free commonwealth had been
established. It deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet
the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who,
after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole,
with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman
need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had
won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be scribbled out of."
Notwithstanding the liberality and freedom of his speculations upon
government and religion in his Utopia, it must be confessed that Sir
Thomas More, in after life, fell into the very practices of intolerance
and bigotry which he condemned. When in the possession of the great seal
under that scandal of kingship, Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to
the persecution of heretics. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a
gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his
presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical
opinions. In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with
merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the
chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith,
"if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past
life, he must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a
permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more learned, honest, and
conscientious than the mass of men has ever been, could in the course of
one short life fall into such glaring and frightful rebellion against his
own doctrines."
Harrington, on the other hand, as became the friend of Milton and Marvel,
held fast, through good and evil report, his republican faith. He
published his work after the Restoration, and defended it boldly and ably
from the numerous attacks made upon it. Regarded as too dangerous an
enthusiast to be left at liberty, he was imprisoned at the instance of
Lord Chancellor Hyde, first in the Tower, and afterwards on the Island of
St. Nicholas, where disease and imprudent remedies brought on a partial
derangement, from which he never recovered.
Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has
found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment,
entitled "Arcadia," attempted to depict an ideal republic, without
priest, noble, or slave, where all are so religious that each man is the
pontiff of his family, where each man is prepared to defend his country,
and where all are in such a state of equality that there are no such
persons as servants. The plan of it was suggested by his friend Rousseau
during their pleasant walking excursions about the environs of Paris, in
which the two enthusiastic philosophers, baffled by the evil passions and
intractable materials of human nature as manifested in existing society,
comforted themselves by appealing from the actual to the possible, from
the real to the imaginary. Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de
Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy
world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors,--gladly
escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and
happiness,--at once misanthropes and philanthropists,--amused and solaced
themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which
the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught;
where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to
prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves.
They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try,
and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and
luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or
gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid
plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in
desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity. Religion
was to speak to all hearts in the eternal language of Nature. Death was
no longer to be feared; perspectives of holy consolation were to open
through the cypress shadows of the tomb; to live or to die was to be
equally an object of desire.
The plan of the "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young
Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of
benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of
carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt. He is shipwrecked on
his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is
entertained by an Arcadian, to whom he relates his adventures, and from
whom he receives in turn an account of the simple happiness and peace of
Arcadia, the virtues and felicity of whose inhabitants are beautifully
exemplified in the lives and conversation of the shepherd and his
daughter. This pleasant little prose poem closes somewhat abruptly.
Although inferior in artistic skill to "Paul and Virginia" or the "Indian
Cottage", there is not a little to admire in the simple beauty of its
pastoral descriptions. The closing paragraph reminds one of Bunyan's
upper chamber, where the weary pilgrim's windows opened to the sunrising
and the singing of birds:--
"Tyrteus conducted his guests to an adjoining chamber. It had a window
shut by a curtain of rushes, through the crevices of which the islands of
the Alpheus might be seen in the light of the moon. There were in this
chamber two excellent beds, with coverlets of warm and light wool.
"Now, as soon as Amasis was left alone with Cephas, he spoke with joy of
the delight and tranquillity of the valley, of the goodness of the
shepherd, and the grace of his young daughter, to whom he had seen none
worthy to be compared, and of the pleasure which he promised himself the
next day, at the festival on Mount Lyceum, of beholding a whole people as
happy as this sequestered family. Converse so delightful might have
charmed away the night without the aid of sleep, had they not been
invited to repose by the mild light of the moon shining through the
window, the murmuring wind in the leaves of the poplars, and the distant
noise of the Achelous, which falls roaring from the summit of Mount
Lyceum."
The young patrician wits of Athens doubtless laughed over Plato's ideal
republic. Campanella's "City of the Sun" was looked upon, no doubt, as
the distempered vision of a crazy state prisoner. Bacon's college, in
his "New Atlantis," moved the risibles of fat-witted Oxford. More's
"Utopia," as we know, gave to our language a new word, expressive of the
vagaries and dreams of fanatics and lunatics. The merciless wits,
clerical and profane, of the court of Charles II. regarded Harrington's
romance as a perfect godsend to their vocation of ridicule. The gay
dames and carpet knights of Versailles made themselves merry with the
prose pastoral of St. Pierre; and the poor old enthusiast went down to
his grave without finding an auditory for his lectures upon natural
society.
The world had its laugh over these romances. When unable to refute their
theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the
satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general
charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those
of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five
years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of
making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain
and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the
medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors,
however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of
finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the
political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of
"such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Rounded with sleep."
They have entered into and become parts of the social and political
fabrics of Europe and America. The prophecies of imagination have been
fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.
What is the moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should
look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the
political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture
upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider
that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another
generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now
seem to us absurd and impossible? Many of the evils of society have been
measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the
Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although
quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper
application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general
suffering? Rejecting, as we must, whatever is inconsistent with or
hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, on which alone rests our hope
for humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon all attempts to apply
those doctrines to the details of human life, to the social, political,
and industrial relations of the race. If it is not permitted us to
believe all things, we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity and
death. Temporally and spiritually, the declaration of inspiration holds
good, "We are saved by hope."
PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS. (1851.)
BERNARDIN ST. PIERRE, in his Wishes of a Solitary, asks for his country
neither wealth, nor military glory, nor magnificent palaces and
monuments, nor splendor of court nobility, nor clerical pomp. "Rather,"
he says, "O France, may no beggar tread thy plains, no sick or suffering
man ask in vain for relief; in all thy hamlets may every young woman find
a lover and every lover a true wife; may the young be trained arightly
and guarded from evil; may the old close their days in the tranquil hope
of those who love God and their fellow-men."
We are reminded of the amiable wish of the French essayist--a wish even
yet very far from realization, we fear, in the empire of Napoleon III.--
by the perusal of two documents recently submitted to the legislature of
the State of Massachusetts. They indicate, in our view, the real glory
of a state, and foreshadow the coming of that time when Milton's
definition of a true commonwealth shall be no longer a prophecy, but the
description of an existing fact,--"a huge Christian personage, a mighty
growth and stature of an honest man, moved by the purpose of a love of
God and of mankind."
Some years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts, at the suggestion of
several benevolent gentlemen whose attention had been turned to the
subject, appointed a commission to inquire into the condition of the
idiots of the Commonwealth, to ascertain their numbers, and whether
anything could be done in their behalf.
The commissioners were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, so well and honorably known
for his long and arduous labors in behalf of the blind, Judge Byington,
and Dr. Gilman Kimball. The burden of the labor fell upon the chairman,
who entered upon it with the enthusiasm, perseverance, and practical
adaptation of means to ends which have made him so efficient in his
varied schemes of benevolence. On the 26th of the second month, 1848, a
full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor,
accompanied by statistical tables and minute details. One hundred towns
had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five
hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered.
These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as
mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw
light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection
in the creation of God. The proximate causes Dr. Howe mentions are to be
found in the state of the bodily organization, deranged and
disproportioned by some violation of natural law on the part of the
parents or remoter ancestors of the sufferers. Out of 420 cases of
idiocy, he had obtained information respecting the condition of the
progenitors of 359; and in all but four of these eases he found that one
or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way
departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or
predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried
with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual
excesses.
Of the 575 cases, 420 were those of idiocy from birth, and 155 of idiocy
afterwards. Of the born idiots, 187 were under twenty-five years of age,
and all but 13 seemed capable of improvement. Of those above twenty-five
years of age, 73 appeared incapable of improvement in their mental
condition, being helpless as children at seven years of age; 43 out of
the 420 seemed as helpless as children at two years of age; 33 were in
the condition of mere infants; and 220 were supported at the public
charge in almshouses. A large proportion of them were found to be given
over to filthy and loathsome habits, gluttony, and lust, and constantly
sinking lower towards the condition of absolute brutishness.
Those in private houses were found, if possible, in a still more
deplorable state. Their parents were generally poor, feeble in mind and
body, and often of very intemperate habits. Many of them seemed scarcely
able to take care of themselves, and totally unfit for the training of
ordinary children. It was the blind leading the blind, imbecility
teaching imbecility. Some instances of the experiments of parental
ignorance upon idiotic offspring, which fell under the observation of Dr.
Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their
heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish
parents supposed would tan the brain and harden it as the tanner does his
ox-hides, and so make it capable of retaining impressions and remembering
lessons. In other cases, finding that the child could not be made to
comprehend anything, the sagacious heads of the household, on the
supposition that its brain was too hard, tortured it with hot poultices
of bread and milk to soften it. Others plastered over their children's
heads with tar. Some administered strong doses of mercury, to "solder up
the openings" in the head and make it tight and strong. Others
encouraged the savage gluttony of their children, stimulating their
unnatural and bestial appetites, on the ground that "the poor creatures
had nothing else to enjoy but their food, and they should have enough of
that!"
In consequence of this report, the legislature, in the spring of 1848,
made an annual appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, for three
years, for the purpose of training and teaching ten idiot children, to be
selected by the Governor and Council. The trustees of the Asylum for the
Blind, under the charge of Dr. Howe, made arrangements for receiving
these pupils. The school was opened in the autumn of 1848; and its first
annual report, addressed to the Governor and printed by order of the
Senate, is now before us.
Of the ten pupils, it appears that not one had the usual command of
muscular motion,--the languid body obeyed not the service of the imbecile
will. Some could walk and use their limbs and hands in simple motions;
others could make only make slight use of their muscles; and two were
without any power of locomotion.
One of these last, a boy six years of age, who had been stupefied on the
day of his birth by the application of hot rum to his head, could
scarcely see or notice objects, and was almost destitute of the sense of
touch. He could neither stand nor sit upright, nor even creep, but would
lie on the floor in whatever position he was placed. He could not feed
himself nor chew solid food, and had no more sense of decency than an
infant. His intellect was a blank; he had no knowledge, no desires, no
affections. A more hopeless object for experiment could scarcely have
been selected.
A year of patient endeavor has nevertheless wrought a wonderful change in
the condition of this miserable being. Cold bathing, rubbing of the
limbs, exercise of the muscles, exposure to the air, and other appliances
have enabled him to stand upright, to sit at table and feed himself, and
chew his food, and to walk about with slight assistance. His habits are
no longer those of a brute; he observes decency; his eye is brighter; his
cheeks glow with health; his countenance, is more expressive of thought.
He has learned many words and constructs simple sentences; his affections
begin to develop; and there is every prospect that he will be so far
renovated as to be able to provide for himself in manhood.
In the case of another boy, aged twelve years, the improvement has been
equally remarkable. The gentleman who first called attention to him, in
a recent note to Dr. Howe, published in the report, thus speaks of his
present condition: "When I remember his former wild and almost frantic
demeanor when approached by any one, and the apparent impossibility of
communicating with him, and now see him standing in his class, playing
with his fellows, and willingly and familiarly approaching me, examining
what I gave him,--and when I see him already selecting articles named by
his teacher, and even correctly pronouncing words printed on cards,--
improvement does not convey the idea presented to my mind; it is
creation; it is making him anew."
All the pupils have more or less advanced. Their health and habits have
improved; and there is no reason to doubt that the experiment, at the
close of its three years, will be found to have been quite as successful
as its most sanguine projectors could have anticipated. Dr. Howe has
been ably seconded by an accomplished teacher, James B. Richards, who has
devoted his whole time to the pupils. Of the nature and magnitude of
their task, an idea may be formed only by considering the utter
listlessness of idiocy, the incapability of the poor pupil to fix his
attention upon anything, and his general want of susceptibility to
impressions. All his senses are dulled and perverted. Touch, hearing,
sight, smell, are all more or less defective. His gluttony is
unaccompanied with the gratification of taste,--the most savory viands
and the offal which he shares with the pigs equally satisfy him. His
mental state is still worse than his physical. Thought is painful and
irksome to him.
His teacher can only engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud,
earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of
some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders,
and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned
into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the
teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must
sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them. Yet
the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher are rewarded by a progress,
slow and unequal, but still marked and manifest. Step by step, often
compelled to turn back and go over the inch of ground he had gained, the
idiot is still creeping forward; and by almost imperceptible degrees his
sick, cramped, and prisoned spirit casts off the burden of its body of
death, breath as from the Almighty--is breathed into him, and he becomes
a living soul.
After the senses of the idiot are trained to take note
of their appropriate objects, the various perceptive faculties are next
to be exercised. The greatest possible number of facts are to be
gathered up through the medium of these faculties into the storehouse of
memory, from whence eventually the higher faculties of mind may draw the
material of general ideas. It has been found difficult, if not
impossible, to teach the idiot to read by the letters first, as in the
ordinary method; but while the varied powers of the three letters, h, a,
t, could not be understood by him, he could be made to comprehend the
complex sign of the word hat, made by uniting the three.
The moral nature of the idiot needs training and development as well as
his physical and mental. All that can be said of him is, that he has the
latent capacity for moral development and culture. Uninstructed and left
to himself, he has no ideas of regulated appetites and propensities, of
decency and delicacy of affection and social relations. The germs of
these ideas, which constitute the glory and beauty of humanity,
undoubtedly exist in him; but there can be no growth without patient and
persevering culture. Where this is afforded, to use the language of the
report, "the idiot may learn what love is, though he may not know the
word which expresses it; he may feel kindly affections while unable to
understand the simplest virtuous principle; and he may begin to live
acceptably to God before he has learned the name by which men call him."
In the facts and statistics presented in the report, light is shed upon
some of the dark pages of God's providence, and it is seen that the
suffering and shame of idiocy are the result of sin, of a violation of
the merciful laws of God and of the harmonies of His benign order. The
penalties which are ordained for the violators of natural laws are
inexorable and certain. For the transgressor of the laws of life there
is, as in the case of Esau, "no place for repentance, though he seek it
earnestly and with tears." The curse cleaves to him and his children.
In this view, how important becomes the subject of the hereditary
transmission of moral and physical disease and debility! and how
necessary it is that there should be a clearer understanding of, and a
willing obedience, at any cost, to the eternal law which makes the parent
the blessing or the curse of the child, giving strength and beauty, and
the capacity to know and do the will of God, or bequeathing
loathsomeness, deformity, and animal appetite, incapable of the
restraints of the moral faculties! Even if the labors of Dr. Howe and
his benevolent associates do not materially lessen the amount of present
actual evil and suffering in this respect, they will not be put forth in
vain if they have the effect of calling public attention to the great
laws of our being, the violation of which has made this goodly earth a
vast lazarhouse of pain and sorrow.
The late annual message of the Governor of Massachusetts invites our
attention to a kindred institution of charity. The chief magistrate
congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and
heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals,
established by an act of a previous legislature. The act provides that,
when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime
punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by
imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or
justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such
imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence. The school is
placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy
thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in
the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal
law of the state. They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at
their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth. And whenever any
boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age
of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence.
It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in
piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular
course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such
other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment,
reformation, and future benefit of the boys. The class of offenders for
whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by
crime or suffering from poverty and want,--the victims often of
circumstances of evil which almost constitute a necessity,--issuing from
homes polluted and miserable, from the sight and hearing of loathsome
impurities and hideous discords, to avenge upon society the ignorance,
and destitution, and neglect with which it is too often justly
chargeable. In 1846 three hundred of these youthful violators of law
were sentenced to jails and other places of punishment in Massachusetts,
where they incurred the fearful liability of being still more thoroughly
corrupted by contact with older criminals, familiar with atrocity, and
rolling their loathsome vices "as a sweet morsel under the tongue." In
view of this state of things the Reform School has been established,
twenty-two thousand dollars having been contributed to the state for that
purpose by an unknown benefactor of his race. The school is located in
Westboro', on a fine farm of two hundred acres. The buildings are in the
form of a square, with a court in the centre, three stories in front,
with wings. They are constructed with a degree of architectural taste,
and their site is happily chosen,--a gentle eminence, overlooking one of
the loveliest of the small lakes which form a pleasing feature in New
England scenery. From this place the atmosphere and associations of the
prison are excluded. The discipline is strict, as a matter of course;
but it is that of a well-regulated home or school-room,--order, neatness,
and harmony within doors; and without, the beautiful 'sights and sounds
and healthful influences of Nature. One would almost suppose that the
poetical dream of Coleridge, in his tragedy of Remorse, had found its
realization in the Westboro' School, and that, weary of the hopelessness
and cruelty of the old penal system, our legislators had embodied in
their statutes the idea of the poet:--
"With other ministrations thou, O Nature,
Healest thy wandering and distempered child
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amidst this general dance and minstrelsy."
Thus it is that the Christian idea of reformation, rather than revenge,
is slowly but surely incorporating itself in our statute books. We have
only to look back but a single century to be able to appreciate the
immense gain for humanity in the treatment of criminals which has been
secured in that space of time. Then the use of torture was common
throughout Europe. Inability to comprehend and believe certain religious
dogmas was a crime to be expiated by death, or confiscation of estate, or
lingering imprisonment. Petty offences against property furnished
subjects for the hangman. The stocks and the whipping-post stood by the
side of the meeting-house. Tongues were bored with redhot irons and ears
shorn off. The jails were loathsome dungeons, swarming with vermin,
unventilated, unwarmed. A century and a half ago the populace of
Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a
miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking-
stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the
unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'--pressed slowly to
death under planks,--for refusing to plead to an indictment for
witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State
Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries,
to keen-eyed benevolence watching over the administration of justice,
which, in securing society from lawless aggression, is not suffered to
overlook the true interest and reformation of the criminal, nor to forget
that the magistrate, in the words of the Apostle, is to be indeed "the
minister of God to man for good!"
LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES.
"THEY that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," was
the significant answer of our Lord to the self-righteous Pharisees who
took offence at his companions,--the poor, the degraded, the weak, and
the sinful. "Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."
The great lesson of duty inculcated by this answer of the Divine Teacher
has been too long overlooked by individuals and communities professedly
governed by His maxims. The phylacteries of our modern Pharisees are as
broad as those of the old Jewish saints. The respectable Christian
detests his vicious and ill-conditioned neighbors as heartily as the
Israelite did the publicans and sinners of his day. He folds his robe of
self-righteousness closely about him, and denounces as little better than
sinful weakness all commiseration for the guilty; and all attempts to
restore and reclaim the erring violators of human law otherwise than by
pains and penalties as wicked collusion with crime, dangerous to the
stability and safety of society, and offensive in the sight of God. And
yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the example
of our Lord has been followed in respect to the outcast and criminal, the
effect has been to reform and elevate,--to snatch as brands from the
burning souls not yet wholly given over to the service of evil. The
wonderful influence for good exerted over the most degraded and reckless
criminals of London by the excellent and self-denying Elizabeth Fry, the
happy results of the establishment of houses of refuge, and reformation,
and Magdalen asylums, all illustrate the wisdom of Him who went about
doing good, in pointing out the morally diseased as the appropriate
subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples. No one is to be
despaired of. We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures
as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most
repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a
consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the
loathsomeness of sin,--one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly
profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened and miserable
spirit for deliverance. Deep down under the squalid exterior,
unparticipative in the hideous merriment and recklessness of the
criminal, there is another self,--a chained and suffering inner man,--
crying out, in the intervals of intoxication and brutal excesses, like
Jonah from the bosom of hell. To this lingering consciousness the
sympathy and kindness of benevolent and humane spirits seldom appeal in
vain; for, whatever may be outward appearances, it remains true that the
way of the transgressor is hard, and that sin and suffering are
inseparable. Crime is seldom loved or persevered in for its own sake;
but, when once the evil path is entered upon, a return is in reality
extremely difficult to the unhappy wanderer, and often seems as well nigh
impossible. The laws of social life rise up like insurmountable barriers
between him and escape. As he turns towards the society whose rights he
has outraged, its frown settles upon him; the penalties of the laws he
has violated await him; and he falls back despairing, and suffers the
fetters of the evil habit to whose power he has yielded himself to be
fastened closer and heavier upon him. O for some good angel, in the form
of a brother-man and touched with a feeling of his sins and infirmities,
to reassure his better nature and to point out a way of escape from its
body of death!
We have been led into these remarks by an account, given in the London
Weekly Chronicle, of a most remarkable interview between the professional
thieves of London and Lord Ashley,--a gentleman whose best patent of
nobility is to be found in his generous and untiring devotion to the
interests of his fellow-men. It appears that a philanthropic gentleman
in London had been applied to by two young thieves, who had relinquished
their evil practices and were obtaining a precarious but honest
livelihood by picking up bones and rags in the streets, their loss of
character closing against them all other employments. He had just been
reading an address of Lord Ashley's in favor of colonial emigration, and
he was led to ask one of the young men how he would like to emigrate.
"I should jump at the chance!" was the reply. Not long after the
gentleman was sent for to visit one of those obscure and ruinous courts
of the great metropolis where crime and poverty lie down together,--
localities which Dickens has pictured with such painful distinctness.
Here, to his surprise, he met a number of thieves and outlaws, who
declared themselves extremely anxious to know whether any hope could be
held out to them of obtaining an honest living, however humble, in the
colonies, as their only reason for continuing in their criminal course
was the impossibility of extricating themselves. He gave them such
advice and encouragement as he was able, and invited them to assemble
again, with such of their companions as they could persuade to do so, at
the room of the Irish Free School, for the purpose of meeting Lord
Ashley. On the 27th of the seventh month last the meeting took place.
At the hour appointed, Lord Ashley and five or six other benevolent
gentlemen, interested in emigration as a means of relief and reformation
to the criminal poor, entered the room, which was already well-nigh
filled. Two hundred and seven professed thieves were present. "Several
of the most experienced thieves were stationed at the door to prevent the
admission of any but thieves. Some four or five individuals, who were
not at first known, were subjected to examination, and only allowed to
remain on stating that they were, and being recognized as, members of the
dishonest fraternity; and before the proceedings of the evening commenced
the question was very carefully put, and repeated several times, whether
any one was in the room of whom others entertained doubts as to who he
was. The object of this care was, as so many of them were in danger of
'getting into trouble,' or, in other words, of being taken up for their
crimes, to ascertain if any who might betray them were present; and
another intention of this scrutiny was, to give those assembled, who
naturally would feel considerable fear, a fuller confidence in opening
their minds."
What a novel conference between the extremes of modern society! All that
is beautiful in refinement and education, moral symmetry and Christian
grace, contrasting with the squalor, the ignorance, the lifelong
depravity of men living "without God in the world,"--the pariahs of
civilization,--the moral lepers, at the sight of whom decency covers its
face, and cries out, "Unclean!" After a prayer had been offered, Lord
Ashley spoke at considerable length, making a profound impression on his
strange auditory as they listened to his plans of emigration, which
offered them an opportunity to escape from their miserable condition and
enter upon a respectable course of life. The hard heart melted and the
cold and cruel eye moistened. With one accord the wretched felons
responded to the language of Christian love and good-will, and declared
their readiness to follow the advice of their true friend. They looked
up to him as to an angel of mercy, and felt the malignant spirits which
had so long tormented them disarmed of all power of evil in the presence
of simple goodness. He stood in that felon audience like Spenser's Una
amidst the satyrs; unassailable and secure in the "unresistible might of
meekness," and panoplied in that "noble grace which dashed brute violence
with sudden adoration and mute awe."
Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth Fry ventured to visit those "spirits in
prison,"--the female tenants of Newgate,--her temerity was regarded with
astonishment, and her hope of effecting a reformation in the miserable
objects of her sympathy was held to be wholly visionary. Her personal
safety and the blessed fruits of her labors, nevertheless, confirmed the
language of her Divine Master to His disciples when He sent them forth as
lambs among wolves: "Behold, I give unto you power over all the power of
the enemy." The still more unpromising experiment of Lord Ashley, thus
far, has been equally successful; and we hail it as the introduction of a
new and more humane method of dealing with the victims of sin and
ignorance, and the temptations growing out of the inequalities and vices
of civilization.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Letter to the Newport Convention.
AMESBURY, MASS., 12th, 8th Month, 1869.
I HAVE received thy letter inviting me to attend the Convention in behalf
of Woman's Suffrage, at Newport, R. I., on the 25th inst. I do not see
how it is possible for me to accept the invitation; and, were I to do so,
the state of my health would prevent me from taking such a part in the
meeting as would relieve me from the responsibility of seeming to
sanction anything in its action which might conflict with my own views of
duty or policy. Yet I should do myself great injustice if I did not
embrace this occasion to express my general sympathy with the movement.
I have seen no good reason why mothers, wives, and daughters should not
have the same right of person, property, and citizenship which fathers,
husbands, and brothers have.
The sacred memory of mother and sister; the wisdom and dignity of women
of my own religious communion who have been accustomed to something like
equality in rights as well as duties; my experience as a co-worker with
noble and self-sacrificing women, as graceful and helpful in their
household duties as firm and courageous in their public advocacy of
unpopular truth; the steady friendships which have inspired and
strengthened me, and the reverence and respect which I feel for human
nature, irrespective of sex, compel me to look with something more than
acquiescence on the efforts you are making. I frankly confess that I am
not able to forsee all the consequences of the great social and political
change proposed, but of this I am, at least, sure, it is always safe to
do right, and the truest expediency is simple justice. I can understand,
without sharing, the misgivings of those who fear that, when the vote
drops from woman's hand into the ballot-box, the beauty and sentiment,
the bloom and sweetness, of womankind will go with it. But in this
matter it seems to me that we can trust Nature. Stronger than statutes
or conventions, she will be conservative of all that the true man loves
and honors in woman. Here and there may be found an equivocal, unsexed
Chevalier D'Eon, but the eternal order and fitness of things will remain.
I have no fear that man will be less manly or woman less womanly when
they meet on terms of equality before the law.
On the other hand, I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman
will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she justly complains. It
is her right as truly as mine, and when she asks for it, it is something
less than manhood to withhold it. But, unsupported by a more practical
education, higher aims, and a deeper sense of the responsibilities of
life and duty, it is not likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more
than in man's.
With great respect and hearty sympathy, I am very truly thy friend.
ITALIAN UNITY
AMESBURY, MASS., 1st Mo., 4th, 1871.
Read at the great meeting in New York, January, 1871, in celebration
of the freedom of Rome and complete unity of Italy.
IT would give me more than ordinary satisfaction to attend the meeting on
the 12th instant for the celebration of Italian Unity, the emancipation
of Rome, and its occupation as the permanent capital of the nation.
For many years I have watched with deep interest and sympathy the popular
movement on the Italian peninsula, and especially every effort for the
deliverance of Rome from a despotism counting its age by centuries. I
looked at these struggles of the people with little reference to their
ecclesiastical or sectarian bearings. Had I been a Catholic instead of a
Protestant, I should have hailed every symptom of Roman deliverance from
Papal rule, occupying, as I have, the standpoint of a republican radical,
desirous that all men, of all creeds, should enjoy the civil liberty
which I prized so highly for myself.
I lost all confidence in the French republic of 1849, when it forfeited
its own right to exist by crushing out the newly formed Roman republic
under Mazzini and Garibaldi. From that hour it was doomed, and the
expiation of its monstrous crime is still going on. My sympathies are
with Jules Favre and Leon Gambetta in their efforts to establish and
sustain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris
by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of
Rome by Oudinot. And is it not a significant fact that the terrible
chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed
Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of
French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was
said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized
the guillotine. The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.
It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been
effected so easily and bloodlessly. The despotism of a thousand years
fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness. The people of Rome, fifty to
one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth
upon its grave. Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general
acquiescence in its downfall. No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in
its behalf. No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger
for it. Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the
fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its
rescue. It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in
professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call
an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their
own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio
Nono.
The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to
the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned
and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a
change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer
be excused or tolerated. A century hence it will have as few apologists
as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
In this hour of congratulation let us not forget those whose suffering
and self-sacrifice, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared the
way for the triumph which we celebrate. As we call the long, illustrious
roll of Italian patriotism--the young, the brave, and beautiful; the
gray-haired, saintly confessors; the scholars, poets, artists, who, shut
out from human sympathy, gave their lives for God and country in the
slow, dumb agony of prison martyrdom--let us hope that they also rejoice
with us, and, inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our thanksgiving:
"Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! He hath avenged the
blood of his servants!"
In the belief that the unity of Italy and the overthrow of Papal rule
will strengthen the cause of liberty throughout the civilized' world, I
am very truly thy friend.
INDIAN CIVILIZATION.
THE present condition and future prospects of the remnants of the
aboriginal inhabitants of this continent can scarcely be a matter of
indifference to any class of the people of the United States. Apart from
all considerations of justice and duty, a purely selfish regard to our
own well-being would compel attention to the subject. The irreversible
laws of God's moral government, and the well-attested maxims of political
and social economy, leave us in no doubt that the suffering, neglect, and
wrong of one part of the community must affect all others. A common
responsibility rests upon each and all to relieve suffering, enlighten
ignorance, and redress wrong, and the penalty of neglect in this respect
no nation has ever escaped.
It is only within a comparatively recent period that the term Indian
Civilization could be appropriately used in this country. Very little
real progress bad been made in this direction, up to the time when
Commissioner Lang in 1844 visited the tribes now most advanced. So
little had been done, that public opinion had acquiesced in the
assumption that the Indians were not susceptible of civilization and
progress. The few experiments had not been calculated to assure a
superficial observer.
The unsupported efforts of Elliot in New England were counteracted by the
imprisonment, and in some instances the massacre of his "praying
Indians," by white men under the exasperation of war with hostile tribes.
The salutary influence of the Moravians and Friends in Pennsylvania was
greatly weakened by the dreadful massacre of the unarmed and blameless
converts of Gnadenhutten. But since the first visit of Commissioner
Lang, thirty-three years ago, the progress of education, civilization,
and conversion to Christianity, has been of a most encouraging nature,
and if Indian civilization was ever a doubtful problem, it has been
practically solved.
The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are
indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their
elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those
Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and
who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had
conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed
from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the
Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons
of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where
ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell
was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by
diligence in robbery and courage in murder. The descendants of these
human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing
influence of the gospel of Christ. The report of the Superintendent of
the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable
and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the
Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of
improvement.
It is scarcely necessary to say, what is universally conceded, that the
wars waged by the Indians against the whites have, in nearly every
instance, been provoked by violations of solemn treaties and systematic
disregard of their rights of person, property, and life. The letter of
Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to the New York Tribune of second month,
1877, calls attention to the emphatic language of Generals Sherman,
Harney, Terry, and Augur, written after a full and searching
investigation of the subject: "That the Indian goes to war is not
astonishing: he is often compelled to do so: wrongs are borne by him in
silence, which never fail to drive civilized men to deeds of violence.
The best possible way to avoid war is to do no injustice."
It is not difficult to understand the feelings of the unfortunate pioneer
settlers on the extreme borders of civilization, upon whom the blind
vengeance of the wronged and hunted Indians falls oftener than upon the
real wrong-doers. They point to terrible and revolting cruelties as
proof that nothing short of the absolute extermination of the race can
prevent their repetition. But a moment's consideration compels us to
admit that atrocious cruelty is not peculiar to the red man. "All wars
are cruel," said General Sherman, and for eighteen centuries Christendom
has been a great battle-field. What Indian raid has been more dreadful
than the sack of Magdeburg, the massacre of Glencoe, the nameless
atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the murders of St.
Bartholomew's day, the unspeakable agonies of the South of France under
the demoniac rule of revolution! All history, black with crime and red
with blood, is but an awful commentary upon "man's inhumanity to man,"
and it teaches us that there is nothing exceptional in the Indian's
ferocity and vindictiveness, and that the alleged reasons for his
extermination would, at one time or another, have applied with equal
force to the whole family of man.
A late lecture of my friend, Stanley Pumphrey, comprises more of valuable
information and pertinent suggestions on the Indian question than I have
found in any equal space; and I am glad of the opportunity to add to it
my hearty endorsement, and to express the conviction that its general
circulation could not fail to awaken a deeper and more kindly interest in
the condition of the red man, and greatly aid in leading the public mind
to a fuller appreciation of the responsibility which rests upon us as a
people to rectify, as far as possible, past abuses, and in our future
relations to the native owners of the soil to "deal justly and love
mercy."
READING FOR THE BLIND. (1880.)
To Mary C. Moore, teacher in the Perkins Asylum.
DEAR FRIEND,--It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy
class at the Institution for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them
to read through the sense of touch some of my writings, and thus hold
what I hope will prove a pleasant communion with me. Very glad I shall
be if the pen-pictures of nature, and homely country firesides, which I
have tried to make, are understood and appreciated by those who cannot
discern them by natural vision. I shall count it a great privilege to
see for them, or rather to let them see through my eyes. It is the mind
after all that really sees, shapes, and colors all things. What visions
of beauty and sublimity passed before the inward and spiritual sight of
blind Milton and Beethoven!
I have an esteemed friend, Morrison Hendy, of Kentucky, who is deaf and
blind; yet under these circumstances he has cultivated his mind to a high
degree, and has written poems of great beauty, and vivid descriptions of
scenes which have been witnessed only by the "light within."
I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that
I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer
is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear that they can
well dispense with the outward and material ones.
THE INDIAN QUESTION.
Read at the meeting in Boston, May, 1883, for the consideration of the
condition of the Indians in the United States.
AMESBURY, 4th mo., 1883.
I REGRET that I cannot be present at the meeting called in reference to
the pressing question of the day, the present condition and future
prospects of the Indian race in the United States. The old policy,
however well intended, of the government is no longer available. The
westward setting tide of immigration is everywhere sweeping over the
lines of the reservations. There would seem to be no power in the
government to prevent the practical abrogation of its solemn treaties and
the crowding out of the Indians from their guaranteed hunting grounds.
Outbreaks of Indian ferocity and revenge, incited by wrong and robbery on
the part of the whites, will increasingly be made the pretext of
indiscriminate massacres. The entire question will soon resolve itself
into the single alternative of education and civilization or
extermination.
The school experiments at Hampton, Carlisle, and Forest Grove in Oregon
have proved, if such proof were ever needed, that the roving Indian can
be enlightened and civilized, taught to work and take interest and
delight in the product of his industry, and settle down on his farm or in
his workshop, as an American citizen, protected by and subject to the
laws of the republic. What is needed is that not only these schools
should be more liberally supported, but that new ones should be opened
without delay. The matter does not admit of procrastination. The work
of education and civilization must be done. The money needed must be
contributed with no sparing hand. The laudable example set by the
Friends and the American Missionary Association should be followed by
other sects and philanthropic societies. Christianity, patriotism, and
enlightened self interest have a common stake in the matter. Great and
difficult as the work may be the country is strong enough, rich enough,
wise enough, and, I believe, humane and Christian enough to do it.
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
Read at a meeting of the Essex Club, in Boston,
November, 1885.
AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 10, 1885.
I AM sorry that I cannot accept thy invitation to attend the meeting of
the Essex Club on the 14th inst. I should be glad to meet my old
Republican friends and congratulate them on the results of the election
in Massachusetts, and especially in our good old county of Essex.
Some of our friends and neighbors, who have been with us heretofore, last
year saw fit to vote with the opposite party. I would be the last to
deny their perfect right to do so, or to impeach their motives, but I
think they were mistaken in expecting that party to reform the abuses and
evils which they complained of. President Cleveland has proved himself
better than his party, and has done and said some good things which I
give him full credit for, but the instincts of his party are against him,
and must eventually prove too strong for him, and, instead of his
carrying the party, it will be likely to carry him. It has already
compelled him to put his hands in his pockets for electioneering
purposes, and travel all the way from Washington to Buffalo to give his
vote for a spoilsman and anti-civil service machine politician. I would
not like to call it a case of "offensive partisanship," but it looks a
good deal like it.
As a Republican from the outset, I am proud of the noble record of the
party, but I should rejoice to see its beneficent work taken up by the
Democratic party and so faithfully carried on as to make our organization
no longer necessary. But, as far as we can see, the Republican party has
still its mission and its future. When labor shall everywhere have its
just reward, and the gains of it are made secure to the earners; when
education shall be universal, and, North and South, all men shall have
the free and full enjoyment of civil rights and privileges, irrespective
of color or former condition; when every vice which debases the community
shall be discouraged and prohibited, and every virtue which elevates it
fostered and strengthened; when merit and fitness shall be the conditions
of office; and when sectional distrust and prejudice shall give place to
well-merited confidence in the loyalty and patriotism of all, then will
the work of the Republican party, as a party, be ended, and all political
rivalries be merged in the one great party of the people, with no other
aim than the common welfare, and no other watchwords than peace, liberty,
and union. Then may the language which Milton addressed to his
countrymen two centuries ago be applied to the United States, "Go on,
hand in hand, O peoples, never to be disunited; be the praise and heroic
song of all posterity. Join your invincible might to do worthy and
godlike deeds; and then he who seeks to break your Union, a cleaving
curse be his inheritance."
OUR DUMB RELATIONS. (1886.)
IT was said of St. Francis of Assisi, that he had attained, through the
fervor of his love, the secret of that deep amity with God and His
creation which, in the language of inspiration, makes man to be in league
with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace
with him. The world has never been without tender souls, with whom the
golden rule has a broader application than its letter might seem to
warrant. The ancient Eastern seers recognized the rights of the brute
creation, and regarded the unnecessary taking of the life of the humblest
and meanest as a sin; and in almost all the old religions of the world
there are legends of saints, in the depth of whose peace with God and
nature all life was sacredly regarded as the priceless gift of heaven,
and who were thus enabled to dwell safely amidst lions and serpents.
It is creditable to human nature and its unperverted instincts that
stories and anecdotes of reciprocal kindness and affection between men
and animals are always listened to with interest and approval. How
pleasant to think of the Arab and his horse, whose friendship has been
celebrated in song and romance. Of Vogelwied, the Minnesinger, and his
bequest to the birds. Of the English Quaker, visited, wherever he went,
by flocks of birds, who with cries of joy alighted on his broad-brimmed
hat and his drab coat-sleeves. Of old Samuel Johnson, when half-blind
and infirm, groping abroad of an evening for oysters for his cat. Of
Walter Scott and John Brown, of Edinburgh, and their dogs. Of our own
Thoreau, instinctively recognized by bird and beast as a friend. Emerson
says of him: "His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller
records of Butler, the apologist, that either he had told the bees
things, or the bees had told him. Snakes coiled round his legs; the
fishes swam into his hand; he pulled the woodchuck out of his hole by his
tail, and took foxes under his protection from the hunters."
In the greatest of the ancient Hindu poems--the sacred book of the
Mahabharata--there is a passage of exceptional beauty and tenderness,
which records the reception of King Yudishthira at the gate of Paradise.
A pilgrim to the heavenly city, the king had travelled over vast spaces,
and, one by one, the loved ones, the companions of his journey, had all
fallen and left him alone, save his faithful dog, which still followed.
He was met by Indra, and invited to enter the holy city. But the king
thinks of his friends who have fallen on the way, and declines to go in
without them. The god tells him they are all within waiting for him.
Joyful, he is about to seek them, when he looks upon the poor dog, who,
weary and wasted, crouches at his feet, and asks that he, too, may enter
the gate. Indra refuses, and thereupon the king declares that to abandon
his faithful dumb friend would be as great a sin as to kill a Brahmin.
"Away with that felicity whose price is to abandon the faithful!
Never, come weal or woe, will I leave my faithful dog.
The poor creature, in fear and distress, has trusted in my power to
save him;
Not, therefore, for life itself, will I break my plighted word."
In full sight of heaven he chooses to go to hell with his dog, and
straightway descends, as he supposes, thither. But his virtue and
faithfulness change his destination to heaven, and he finds himself
surrounded by his old friends, and in the presence of the gods, who thus
honor and reward his humanity and unselfish love.
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
Read at the reception in Boston of the English delegation representing
more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor
international arbitration.
AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 9, 1887.
IT is a very serious disappointment to me not to be able to be present at
the welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than
two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international
arbitration. Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the
presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United
States. It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best
interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must
respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that of his
colleagues who represented the workingmen of England. We do not need to
be told that war is always cruel, barbarous, and brutal; whether used by
professed Christians with ball and bayonet, or by heathen with club and
boomerang. We cannot be blind to its waste of life and treasure and the
demoralization which follows in its train; nor cease to wonder at the
spectacle of Christian nations exhausting all their resources in
preparing to slaughter each other, with only here and there a voice, like
Count Tolstoi's in the Russian wilderness, crying in heedless ears that
the gospel of Christ is peace, not war, and love, not hatred.
The overture which comes to us from English advocates of arbitration is a
cheering assurance that the tide of sentiment is turning in favor of
peace among English speaking peoples. I cannot doubt that whatever stump
orators and newspapers may say for party purposes, the heart of America
will respond to the generous proposal of our kinsfolk across the water.
No two nations could be more favorably conditioned than England and the
United States for making the "holy experiment of arbitration."
In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common
claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are
essentially one people. Whatever other nations may do, we at least
should be friends. God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall
not be in vain! May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us
shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of
good.
"When closer strand shall lean to strand,
Till meet beneath saluting flags,
The eagle of our mountain crags,
The lion of our mother land!"
SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN.
Read at the Woman's Convention at Washington.
OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS., Third Mo., 8, 1888.
I THANK thee for thy kind letter. It would be a great satisfaction to be
able to be present at the fortieth anniversary of the Woman's Suffrage
Association. But, as that is not possible, I can only reiterate my
hearty sympathy with the object of the association, and bid it take heart
and assurance in view of all that has been accomplished. There is no
easy royal road to a reform of this kind, but if the progress has been
slow there has been no step backward. The barriers which at first seemed
impregnable in the shape of custom and prejudice have been undermined and
their fall is certain. A prophecy of your triumph at no distant day is
in the air; your opponents feel it and believe it. They know that yours
is a gaining and theirs a losing cause. The work still before you
demands on your part great patience, steady perseverance, a firm,
dignified, and self-respecting protest against the injustice of which you
have so much reason to complain, and of serene confidence which is not
discouraged by temporary checks, nor embittered by hostile criticism, nor
provoked to use any weapons of retort, which, like the boomerang, fall
back on the heads of those who use them. You can afford
in your consciousness of right to be as calm and courteous as the
archangel Michael, who, we are told in Scripture in his controversy with
Satan himself, did not bring a railing accusation against him. A wise
adaptation of means to ends is no yielding of principle, but care should
be taken to avoid all such methods as have disgraced political and
religious parties of the masculine sex. Continue to make it manifest
that all which is pure and lovely and of good repute in womanhood is
entirely compatible with the exercise of the rights of citizenship, and
the performance of the duties which we all owe to our homes and our
country. Confident that you will do this, and with no doubt or misgiving
as to your success, I bid you Godspeed. I find I have written to the
association rather than to thyself, but as one of the principal
originators and most faithful supporters, it was very natural that I
should identify thee with it.
THE INNER LIFE
THE AGENCY OF EVIL.
From the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for
1843.
IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so
written over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets
and inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future
state of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and
most difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of
evil,--the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and
suffering and discord,--the wrong which all men see in others and feel
in themselves,--the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery. A
superficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena of
man's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but the
thoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes. The
grossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dread
of an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from our
nature. Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passing
before its face, the form whereof is not discerned.
It is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atone
for the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniously
consigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, and
witchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detected
impostures,
"Over the backside of the world far off,
Into a limbo broad and large, and called
The paradise of fools,"--
that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine
of their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and
unbelievers among us. Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the
marvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others. In certain
states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional
garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us. Imagination
goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt. We
think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with
Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us. For what is the
priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the
supernatural and the reality of the unseen,--a man of mystery, walking in
the shadow of the ideal world,--by profession an expounder of spiritual
wonders? Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and
demoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his
faith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints
at, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and
speculations of the heathen world,--the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon
of the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew,
Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,--evil in the
universe of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,--in
itself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process
of imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed
of the spiritual world and supernatural agency? That fearful being with
his tributaries and agents,--"the Devil and his angels,"--how awfully he
rises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers! How
he glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," on the immortal canvas
of Milton and Dante! What a note of horror does his name throw into the
sweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches. What strange, dark fancies are
connected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand
juries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed
"at the instigation of the Devil"!
How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood! Even at this day,
at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with
which I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's
Progress. Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal
extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the
tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddled
over the whole breadth of the way." There was another print of the enemy
which made no slight impression upon me. It was the frontispiece of an
old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,
(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind
enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the
fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent
declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the
lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith
commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,
without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs
were worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demon
fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in
"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels." He would have answered very
well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.
To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we
are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and
possession. Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of
evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,--the antagonism of
good. Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves
constrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are
always associated with undefined power and the ability to harm. "The
Devil," says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat
faded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly."
The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and
existent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion.
The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided
sovereignty of the universe. The Divine Teacher, it is true, in
discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and
which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He
nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute
power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom
are all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. Evil,
therefore, has no eternity in the past. The fact of its present actual
existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand
the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord
become the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of
the Infinite Parent. Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark
mystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of
humble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity,
justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness at
all."
"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist
Robinson. "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"
Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devils
do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are,
ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded." Origen, in his Platonic
speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by
repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed
to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all. Justin Martyr was of
the opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the
Cabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded. One is
irresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the _Address to the
Deil_, by Burns:--
"But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben!
Gin ye wad take a thought and mend,
Ye aiblins might--I dinna ken--
Still has a stake
I'm was to think upon yon den
Fen for your sake."
The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his
ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and
liable to injury and pain. Origen has a curious notion that any evil
spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from
thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who
has lost his sting.
"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a
discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks."
Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious
consideration of all who "tarry long at the wine," that, in that state of
the drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in some
shape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, as
Winslow says of the Powahs, "he appeareth more familiarly to them than to
others." I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has had
bitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this time
devoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as the
editor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vivid
impression on my mind. He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, for
the sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up his
abode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on the
seaboard. Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself the
whole time in a state of semi-intoxication. One night he stood leaning
against a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; the
waves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vessels
vaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream. He was startled by
a voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, _"You have murdered a man; the
officers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!"_ Every
syllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something in
the hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribably
dreadful. He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clear
moonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victim
of illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentary
horror. Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glass
of brandy, and retired to his chamber. He had scarcely lain his head on
the pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper,
repeating the same words. He describes his sensations at this time as
inconceivably fearful. Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidst
the confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself. Had
he not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record,
actually murdered some one? And was not this a warning from Heaven?
Leaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated,
with the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, "Follow me!" He
walked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, to
the head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again he
heard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, "Follow me!"
Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found
himself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement,
or cellar, where he had never been before. The voice still beckoned him
onward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against
which he leaned for a moment. He heard it again, apparently only two or
three yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers are
close behind you; follow me!" Putting one foot forward while his hand
still grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty
recovered himself. Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found
himself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled
nearly to the top with water. The sudden shock of this discovery broke
the horrible enchantment. The whisperer was silent. He believed, at the
time, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a
diabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection
of that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal
tempter.
Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance
guard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel.
The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of
the Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's. They
stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the
gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer
and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of heretics, "before
the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of
perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend." In their grand old
wilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes,
hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of
mountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars
of a giant world,--with its early summer greenness and the many-colored
wonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower
had fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the
misty day of their cold island was as moonlight,--they saw no beauty,
they recognized no holy revelation. It was to them terrible as the
forest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain. Every
advance step they made was upon the enemy's territory. And one has only
to read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was
to them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment
of a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between
the sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean
mischief; now a "tricksy spirit," disturbing the good-wife's platters or
soiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing
its thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "how
else is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?" What
was it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips
of Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to their
wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion? Was not his evil
finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams? Who else
gave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such a
hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled
to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles? To
the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light
wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot
to the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied
gatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects," as Dr.
Moore calls them? Perilous and glorious was it, under these
circumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their
stout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror.
Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry. The heroes
of old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads,
and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention
in comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal
sword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spirits
that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,"--
encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual
armorer of Geneva. The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as
the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in
Amadis de Gaul. All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him
in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him;
while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and
spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle,
with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of
the enemy. No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against
him; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut
up the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the
presidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands
on his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girl
flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches. How edifying is his
account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the
purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate
Sadducees"! How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is
the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in
attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent
Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor
was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his
diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!
(The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period,
emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser
superstitions of their times. William Penn, indeed, had a law in
his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person
suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its
absurdity. George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his
journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the
subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that
the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died
there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all
the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the
power of God, and feared no such thing."
The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and
influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and
sorcery. "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he
does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked
slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people
drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black
horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,
and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off." In his
account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When
I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my
face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and
stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her
husband."
Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in
about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians. The first of the
sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher,--the latter a
young girl,--were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the
absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the
purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's
mark on them. In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two
venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by
Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey
into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and
wolves.)
All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his
demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem
Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with
planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his
life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a
whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick
dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie. We may
laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also
pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in
its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule,
their spell-bound generation,--the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone,
the English Scot, and the New England Calef,--deserve high honors as the
benefactors of their race. It is true they were branded through life as
infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered
lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine
commission and Godspeed.
"The oracles are dumb;
No voice nor hideous hum
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;
Apollo from his shrine
Can now no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphus leaving."
Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror,
this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of
motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination. The once
imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.
Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under
planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance. The heretic now
laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the
All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan. And for the sake of
abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we
consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed
Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and
temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a
despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance
with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of
terror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and
that torment the smoke of which rises forever. Through fear of a Satan
of the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and
ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling
brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert
God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness
of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual
terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of
Rhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest
degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the
accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth
of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the
necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the
soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the
many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,
to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in
return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have
gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Better
is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more
acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of
slavish terror. The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness," which
has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of
old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on
earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect
love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick
dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and
startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.
There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances,--_Die
Kohlerfamilie_. The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in its
bloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever
increasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thought
in the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patient
watchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle
visitation of soft light and meekest melody; "a beautiful radiance, at
times hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the
bushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely,
such as the soul may conceive, but no words express. He felt its power
in the depths of his being,--felt it like the mystic breathing of the
Spirit of God."
The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all
sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and
diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan
and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would
diverge into universal skepticism. It is one of the saddest of sights to
see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting
against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from
profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful
Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and
convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched
on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of
science. A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and
necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite
Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of
outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under
different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of
every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much
anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless
championship of error. The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of
Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of
sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in
its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds
and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still
over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the
inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy
deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises,
starlike, the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than
the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to
reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness,
and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy
of an overruling Providence,--walking by faith through the shadow and
mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his
apparent allotment,--
"God's greatness flows around our incompleteness;
Round our restlessness His rest."
It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and
its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and
credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if
possible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own time
regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and
professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a
godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as
cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism. Alas! in comparison with
such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still
feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom
God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Better
is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing
Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith,
than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon
ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,--barnacles on a
dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth
gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to
the worm, "Thou art my sister."
HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES. (1844.)
AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul
and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures
of Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-
spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and
eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous
melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like
every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite
principles,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our
immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A
tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first
presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of
everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of
a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and
stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a
virtuous character.
"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,
that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.
From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that
have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of
love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is that
we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of
an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we
are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to
repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason
of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no
need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the
more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They
produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather
than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with
the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the
country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very
lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to
flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that
grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;
it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with
all the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the
murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of
the night."
Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It
is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits
the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
foliage of the autumnal forest.
Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston
Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the
language of Wordsworth,--
"In youth we love the darkling lawn,
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then evening is preferred to dawn,
And autumn to the spring.
Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."
The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and
beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through
the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy
indifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met at
the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,
apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,
perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the
stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded
mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence
of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced
and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,
and involuntarily pays:
"The deep reverence taught of old,
The homage of man's heart to death."
Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind
me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves
and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened
to the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comes
the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that
these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall
upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and
the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed
forever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed to
look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems
strange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisite
metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this
sentiment:--
"Alas! though I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.
"Not less the bee will range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells."
"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of the
Idumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when
they can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestly
desireth the shadow." Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain,
to the long afflicted and the hopeless,--rest on the calm bosom of our
common mother. Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with
life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary
eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.
Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only
on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn
shadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown
state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the
mysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; and
where is he?"
Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an
answer to this momentous question. Over the blackness of darkness a
light is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land
of darkness and where the light is as darkness." The presence of a
serene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowded
burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him
who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at
Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." We
know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what
it is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that
dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps
lingers in the path. Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer
in His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow. He who
ordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit
when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I
have elsewhere used,
--when Time's veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know
No fearful change nor sudden wonder,
Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.
And all we shrink from now may seem
No new revealing;
Familiar as our childhood's stream,
Or pleasant memory of a dream,
The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.
Serene and mild the untried light
May have its dawning;
As meet in summer's northern night
The evening gray and dawning white,
The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.
SWEDENBORG (1844.)
THERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one is
almost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon,--the
Benares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-
places of disciples and "proselytes within the gate;" its warehouses,
stalls for the sale of relics. A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelieved
by awe and reverence,--a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the
"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise." I grow weary of seeing
man and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse,
answering to the same bell-call. A nightmare of materialism broods over
all. I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets like
that of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth,--that
the Lord alone is God.
Yet is there not another side to the picture? High over sounding
workshops spires glisten in the sun,--silent fingers pointing heavenward.
The workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processes
than cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving. Each human being who watches
beside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is a
solemn thing to live. Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace,
outgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch
beyond the horizon of time into eternity. Death is here. The graveyard
utters its warning. Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and
mystery. Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all.
Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt
rather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful
questions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,--"If a man
die, shall he live again?" "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing
inquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?" "Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?"
As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of
our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their
representatives in Lowell. The young city is dotted over with "steeple
houses," most of them of the Yankee order of architecture. The
Episcopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street,--a pile of dark
stone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows. A plat of grass lies
between it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-house
intended for the minister, built of the same material as the church and
surrounded by trees and shrubbery. The attention of the stranger is also
attracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope of
Belvidere,--one of Irving's a "shingle palaces," painted in imitation of
stone,--a great wooden sham, "whelked and horned" with pine spires and
turrets, a sort of whittled representation of the many-beaded beast of
the Apocalypse.
In addition to the established sects which have reared their visible
altars in the City of Spindles, there are many who have not yet marked
the boundaries or set up the pillars and stretched out the curtains of
their sectarian tabernacles; who, in halls and "upper chambers" and in
the solitude of their own homes, keep alive the spirit of devotion, and,
wrapping closely around them the mantles of their order, maintain the
integrity of its peculiarities in the midst of an unbelieving generation.
Not long since, in company with a friend who is a regular attendant, I
visited the little meeting of the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg.
Passing over Chapel Hill and leaving the city behind us, we reached the
stream which winds through the beautiful woodlands at the Powder Mills
and mingles its waters with the Concord. The hall in which the followers
of the Gothland seer meet is small and plain, with unpainted seats, like
those of "the people called Quakers," and looks out upon the still woods
and that "willowy stream which turns a mill." An organ of small size,
yet, as it seemed to me, vastly out of proportion with the room, filled
the place usually occupied by the pulpit, which was here only a plain
desk, placed modestly by the side of it. The congregation have no
regular preacher, but the exercises of reading the Scriptures, prayers,
and selections from the Book of Worship were conducted by one of the lay
members. A manuscript sermon, by a clergyman of the order in Boston, was
read, and apparently listened to with much interest. It was well written
and deeply imbued with the doctrines of the church. I was impressed by
the gravity and serious earnestness of the little audience. There were
here no circumstances calculated to excite enthusiasm, nothing of the
pomp of religious rites and ceremonies; only a settled conviction of the
truth of the doctrines of their faith could have thus brought them
together. I could scarcely make the fact a reality, as I sat among them,
that here, in the midst of our bare and hard utilities, in the very
centre and heart of our mechanical civilization, were devoted and
undoubting believers in the mysterious and wonderful revelations of the
Swedish prophet,--revelations which look through all external and outward
manifestations to inward realities; which regard all objects in the world
of sense only as the types and symbols of the world of spirit; literally
unmasking the universe and laying bare the profoundest mysteries of life.
The character and writings of Emanuel Swedenborg constitute one of the
puzzles and marvels of metaphysics and psychology. A man remarkable for
his practical activities, an ardent scholar of the exact sciences, versed
in all the arcana of physics, a skilful and inventive mechanician, he has
evolved from the hard and gross materialism of his studies a system of
transcendent spiritualism. From his aggregation of cold and apparently
lifeless practical facts beautiful and wonderful abstractions start forth
like blossoms on the rod of the Levite. A politician and a courtier, a
man of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the
science, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural
language, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being:
detailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritual
world, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonder
at their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency.
These remarkable speculations--the workings of a mind in which a powerful
imagination allied itself with superior reasoning faculties, the
marvellous current of whose thought ran only in the diked and guarded
channels of mathematical demonstration--he uniformly speaks of as
"facts." His perceptions of abstractions were so intense that they seem
to have reached that point where thought became sensible to sight as well
as feeling. What he thought, that he saw.
He relates his visions of the spiritual world as he would the incidents
of a walk round his own city of Stockholm. One can almost see him in his
"brown coat and velvet breeches," lifting his "cocked hat" to an angel,
or keeping an unsavory spirit at arm's length with that "gold-headed
cane" which his London host describes as his inseparable companion in
walking. His graphic descriptions have always an air of naturalness and
probability; yet there is a minuteness of detail at times almost
bordering on the ludicrous. In his Memorable Relations he manifests
nothing of the imagination of Milton, overlooking the closed gates of
paradise, or following the "pained fiend" in his flight through chaos;
nothing of Dante's terrible imagery appalls us; we are led on from heaven
to heaven very much as Defoe leads us after his shipwrecked Crusoe. We
can scarcely credit the fact that we are not traversing our lower planet;
and the angels seem vastly like our common acquaintances. We seem to
recognize the "John Smiths," and "Mr. Browns," and "the old familiar
faces" of our mundane habitation. The evil principle in Swedenborg's
picture is, not the colossal and massive horror of the Inferno, nor that
stern wrestler with fate who darkens the canvas of Paradise Lost, but an
aggregation of poor, confused spirits, seeking rest and finding none save
in the unsavory atmosphere of the "falses." These small fry of devils
remind us only of certain unfortunate fellows whom we have known, who
seem incapable of living in good and wholesome society, and who are
manifestly given over to believe a lie. Thus it is that the very
"heavens" and "hells" of the Swedish mystic seem to be "of the earth,
earthy." He brings the spiritual world into close analogy with the
material one.
In this hurried paper I have neither space nor leisure to attempt an
analysis of the great doctrines which underlie the "revelations" of
Swedenborg. His remarkably suggestive books are becoming familiar to the
reading and reflecting portion of the community. They are not unworthy
of study; but, in the language of another, I would say, "Emulate
Swedenborg in his exemplary life, his learning, his virtues, his
independent thought, his desire for wisdom, his love of the good and
true; aim to be his equal, his superior, in these things; but call no man
your master."
THE BETTER LAND. (1844.)
"THE shapings of our heavens are the modifications of our constitution,"
said Charles Lamb, in his reply to Southey's attack upon him in the
Quarterly Review.
He who is infinite in love as well as wisdom has revealed to us the fact
of a future life, and the fearfully important relation in which the
present stands to it. The actual nature and conditions of that life He
has hidden from us,--no chart of the ocean of eternity is given us,--no
celestial guidebook or geography defines, localizes, and prepares us for
the wonders of the spiritual world. Hence imagination has a wide field
for its speculations, which, so long as they do not positively contradict
the revelation of the Scriptures, cannot be disproved.
We naturally enough transfer to our idea of heaven whatever we love and
reverence on earth. Thither the Catholic carries in his fancy the
imposing rites and time-honored solemnities of his worship. There the
Methodist sees his love-feasts and camp-meetings in the groves and by the
still waters and green pastures of the blessed abodes. The Quaker, in
the stillness of his self-communing, remembers that there was "silence in
heaven."
The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deep
tones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps
of the New Jerusalem.
The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual
reflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people.
The Indians of North America had a vague notion of a sunset land, a
beautiful paradise far in the west, mountains and forests filled with
deer and buffalo, lakes and streams swarming with fishes,--the happy
hunting-ground of souls. In a late letter from a devoted missionary
among the Western Indians (Paul Blohm, a converted Jew) we have noticed a
beautiful illustration of this belief. Near the Omaha mission-house, on
a high luff, was a solitary Indian grave. "One evening,"
says the missionary, "having come home with some cattle which I had been
seeking, I heard some one wailing; and, looking in the direction from
whence I proceeded, I found it to be from the grave near our house. In a
moment after a mourner rose up from a kneeling or lying posture, and,
turning to the setting sun, stretched forth his arms in prayer and
supplication with an intensity and earnestness as though he would detain
the splendid luminary from running his course. With his body leaning
forward and his arms stretched towards the sun, he presented a most
striking figure of sorrow and petition. It was solemnly awful. He
seemed to me to be one of the ancients come forth to teach me how to
pray."
A venerable and worthy New England clergyman, on his death-bed, just
before the close of his life, declared that he was only conscious of an
awfully solemn and intense curiosity to know the great secret of death
and eternity.
The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth,
seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite
purity and happiness. A friend once related an incident concerning him
which made a deep impression upon my mind. They had been travelling
through a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to rest
beneath a solitary tree. The Doctor lay for a long time, silently
looking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still
heavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if
communing with himself in view of the wonders he described:--
"O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen!
O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between!
O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses!
O brightness on brightness! the pearl gate uncloses!
O white wings of angels! O fields white with roses!
O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes
O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!"
The brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the better
land are inspiring and beautiful. Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard,
neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good in
store for the righteous. Heaven is described as a quiet habitation,--a
rest remaining for the people of God. Tears shall be wiped away from all
eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain. To how many death-beds have these words
spoken peace! How many failing hearts have gathered strength from them
to pass through the dark valley of shadows!
Yet we should not forget that "the kingdom of heaven is within;" that it
is the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience,
the sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of
eternity. What is really momentous and all-important with us is the
present, by which the future is shaped and colored. A mere change of
locality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul.
Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable
as the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence
would transform hell itself into heaven.
DORA GREEN WELL.
First published as an introduction to an American edition of that
author's _The Patience of Hope_.
THERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in
the Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of
Christendom. Our doors open of their own accord to receive them. For in
them we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, the
Divine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out of
them; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the
bloom of Paradise. So of books. There are volumes which perhaps contain
many things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our
reason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a
certain sweetness and savor of life. They have the Divine seal and
imprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic with
the leaves which are for the healing of the nations. The meditations of
the devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and
Protestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under
Numidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from his
bishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us in
the same language. The unknown author of that book which Luther loved
next to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home in
this present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as in
the heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century. For such
books know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetual
freshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience
heart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and
the inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them. The
bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this
or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,--
reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine
goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the
life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the
fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling
Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our
hearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or
the partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human
speculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able to
save unto the uttermost all who trust in Him. They insist upon simple
faith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they
leave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to
take care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the
necessary, and the permanent.
With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume
herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place. It assumes the
life and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bears
unmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the
truth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but
present and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its
branches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine
love; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be
repeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul,--the
perennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever
old and forever new. It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and
holy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian
experience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves
guidingly forward. It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those who
minister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the
vaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, too
much the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it will
feel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style,
the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied
learning which illustrates it.
("The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil,
and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
testify for God and holiness, than I once believed."--Baxter.)
To use the language of one of its reviewers in the Scottish press:--
"Beauty there is in the book; exquisite glimpses into the loveliness of
nature here and there shine out from its lines,--a charm wanting which
meditative writing always seems to have a defect; beautiful gleams, too,
there are of the choicest things of art, and frequent allusions by the
way to legend or picture of the religious past; so that, while you read,
you wander by a clear brook of thought, coining far from the beautiful
hills, and winding away from beneath the sunshine of gladness and beauty
into the dense, mysterious forest of human existence, that loves to sing,
amid the shadow of human darkness and anguish, its music of heavenborn
consolation; bringing, too, its pure waters of cleansing and healing, yet
evermore making its praise of holy affection and gladness; while it is
still haunted by the spirits of prophet, saint, and poet, repeating
snatches of their strains, and is led on, as by a spirit from above, to
join the great river of God's truth. . . .
"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude,
when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master.
The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for
refreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words.
To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the
patience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend this
little volume most heartily and earnestly."
_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication in
Edinburgh, some two years ago. I was at once impressed by its
extraordinary richness of language and imagery,--its deep and solemn tone
of meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency,--
philosophy warm and glowing with love. It will, perhaps, be less the
fault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to
eliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle
metaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to
express, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation,
many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague
possibilities of the highest life. All may not be able to find in some
of her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent
to her own mind. She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of
familiar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritual
intuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well. If the
rendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration
and comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying,
that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike
true in themselves considered. "When one saith, Moses meant as I do,'
and another saith, 'Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, 'Why not
rather as both, if both be true?"
Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certain
Scriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way
and the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly "delays,
withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him."
They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human
weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil
imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to
some disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily
infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father
to perplex and mislead His children. The sun does not shine the less
because one side of our planet is in darkness. To borrow the words of
Augustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made. Thou alone art
near to those even who remove far from thee. Let them turn and seek
thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy
creation." It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,
and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by
the light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the
dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in
dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through
miraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be
mystified by it to their eternal loss.
I might mention other points of probable divergence between reader and
writer, and indicate more particularly my own doubtful parse and
hesitancy over some of these pages. But it is impossible for me to make
one to whom I am so deeply indebted an offender for a word or a
Scriptural rendering. On the grave and awful themes which she discusses,
I have little to say in the way of controversy. I would listen, rather
than criticise. The utterances of pious souls, in all ages, are to me
often like fountains in a thirsty land, strengthening and refreshing, yet
not without an after-taste of human frailty and inadequateness, a slight
bitterness of disappointment and unsatisfied quest. Who has not felt at
times that the letter killeth, that prophecies fail, and tongues cease to
edify, and been ready to say, with the author of the Imitation of Christ:
"Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. Let not Moses nor the prophets
speak to me, but speak thou rather, who art the Inspirer and Enlightener
of all. I am weary with reading and hearing many things; let all
teachers hold their peace; let all creatures keep silence: speak thou
alone to me."
The writer of The Patience of Hope had, previous to its publication,
announced herself to a fit, if small, audience of earnest and thoughtful
Christians, in a little volume entitled, A Present Heaven. She has
recently published a collection of poems, of which so competent a judge
as Dr. Brown, the author of _Horae Subsecivae_ and _Rab and his Friends_,
thus speaks, in the _North British Review_:--
"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed
_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, through
such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still
deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be
surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a
poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own
Cowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless
speculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and all
but unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wander
through eternity,' which increases every time we take up that wonderful
little book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of
true poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand.
There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and
privacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these
remarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own. With no
effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost
thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as
gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the
central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel. The waters are
copious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid and
unforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimes
sad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that of
the deep sea.
"This is not a book to criticise or speak about, and we give no extracts
from the longer, and in this case, we think, the better poems. In
reading this Cardiphonia set to music, we have been often reminded, not
only of Herbert and Vaughan, but of Keble,--a likeness of the spirit, not
of the letter; for if there is any one poet who has given a bent to her
mind, it is Wordsworth,--the greatest of all our century's poets, both in
himself and in his power of making poets."
In the belief that whoever peruses the following pages will be
sufficiently interested in their author to be induced to turn back and
read over again, with renewed pleasure, extracts from her metrical
writings, I copy from the volume so warmly commended a few brief pieces
and extracts from the longer poems.
Here are three sonnets, each a sermon in itself:--
ASCENDING.
They who from mountain-peaks have gazed upon
The wide, illimitable heavens have said,
That, still receding as they climbed, outspread,
The blue vault deepens over them, and, one
By one drawn further back, each starry sun
Shoots down a feebler splendor overhead
So, Saviour, as our mounting spirits, led
Along Faith's living way to Thee, have won
A nearer access, up the difficult track
Still pressing, on that rarer atmosphere,
When low beneath us flits the cloudy rack,
We see Thee drawn within a widening sphere
Of glory, from us further, further back,--
Yet is it then because we are more near.
LIFE TAPESTRY.
Top long have I, methought, with tearful eye
Pored o'er this tangled work of mine, and mused
Above each stitch awry and thread confused;
Now will I think on what in years gone by
I heard of them that weave rare tapestry
At royal looms, and hew they constant use
To work on the rough side, and still peruse
The pictured pattern set above them high;
So will I set my copy high above,
And gaze and gaze till on my spirit grows
Its gracious impress; till some line of love,
Transferred upon my canvas, faintly glows;
Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide
He whom I work for sees their fairer side!
HOPE.
When I do think on thee, sweet Hope, and how
Thou followest on our steps, a coaxing child
Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled,
Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow,
And red, ripe lips for kisses: even now
Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild,
Who led God's chosen people through the wild,
And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou
That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread
Of angels strewing Earth for us! like him
Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim;
But still with milk and honey-droppings fed,
Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair,
Though thou, like Moses, may'st not enter there
There is something very weird and striking in the following lines:--
GONE.
Alone, at midnight as he knelt, his spirit was aware
Of Somewhat falling in between the silence and the prayer;
A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies
So soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;
And as he rose up from his knees, his spirit was aware
Of Somewhat, forceful and unseen, that sought to hold him there;
As of a Form that stood behind, and on his shoulders prest
Both hands to stay his rising up, and Somewhat in his breast,
In accents clearer far than words, spake, "Pray yet longer, pray,
For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;
"A soul, that climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair
That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; and there
"Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim,
(So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name
"She link'd--that none in earth or heaven might hinder it or stay--
One Other Name, so strong, that thine hath never missed its way.
"This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the
Gate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;
"And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy,
holy,' so that now I know not if she prays;
"But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone
From Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!"
The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-
playful strain of moralizing:--
SEEKING.
"And where, and among what pleasant places,
Have ye been, that ye come again
With your laps so full of flowers, and your faces
Like buds blown fresh after rain?"
"We have been," said the children, speaking
In their gladness, as the birds chime,
All together,--"we have been seeking
For the Fairies of olden time;
For we thought, they are only hidden,--
They would never surely go
From this green earth all unbidden,
And the children that love them so.
Though they come not around us leaping,
As they did when they and the world
Were young, we shall find them sleeping
Within some broad leaf curled;
For the lily its white doors closes
But only over the bee,
And we looked through the summer roses,
Leaf by leaf, so carefully.
But we thought, rolled up we shall find them
Among mosses old and dry;
From gossamer threads that bind them,
They will start like the butterfly,
All winged: so we went forth seeking,
Yet still they have kept unseen;
Though we think our feet have been keeping
The track where they have been,
For we saw where their dance went flying
O'er the pastures,--snowy white."
Their seats and their tables lying,
O'erthrown in their sudden flight.
And they, too, have had their losses,
For we found the goblets white
And red in the old spiked mosses,
That they drank from over-night;
And in the pale horn of the woodbine
Was some wine left, clear and bright;
"But we found," said the children, speaking
More quickly, "so many things,
That we soon forgot we were seeking,--
Forgot all the Fairy rings,
Forgot all the stories olden
That we hear round the fire at night,
Of their gifts and their favors golden,--
The sunshine was so bright;
And the flowers,--we found so many
That it almost made us grieve
To think there were some, sweet as any,
That we were forced to leave;
As we left, by the brook-side lying,
The balls of drifted foam,
And brought (after all our trying)
These Guelder-roses home."
"Then, oh!" I heard one speaking
Beside me soft and low,
"I have been, like the blessed children, seeking,
Still seeking, to and fro;
Yet not, like them, for the Fairies,--
They might pass unmourned away
For me, that had looked on angels,--
On angels that would not stay;
No! not though in haste before them
I spread all my heart's best cheer,
And made love my banner o'er them,
If it might but keep them here;
They stayed but a while to rest them;
Long, long before its close,
From my feast, though I mourned and prest them
The radiant guests arose;
And their flitting wings struck sadness
And silence; never more
Hath my soul won back the gladness,
That was its own before.
No; I mourned not for the Fairies
When I had seen hopes decay,
That were sweet unto my spirit
So long; I said, 'If they,
That through shade and sunny weather
Have twined about my heart,
Should fade, we must go together,
For we can never part!'
But my care was not availing;
I found their sweetness gone;
I saw their bright tints paling;--
They died; yet I lived on.
"Yet seeking, ever seeking,
Like the children, I have won
A guerdon all undreamt of
When first my quest begun,
And my thoughts come back like wanderers,
Out-wearied, to my breast;
What they sought for long they found not,
Yet was the Unsought best.
For I sought not out for crosses,
I did not seek for pain;
Yet I find the heart's sore losses
Were the spirit's surest gain."
In _A Meditation_, the writer ventures, not without awe and reverence,
upon that dim, unsounded ocean of mystery, the life beyond:--
"But is there prayer
Within your quiet homes, and is there care
For those ye leave behind? I would address
My spirit to this theme in humbleness
No tongue nor pen hath uttered or made known
This mystery, and thus I do but guess
At clearer types through lowlier patterns shown;
Yet when did Love on earth forsake its own?
Ye may not quit your sweetness; in the Vine
More firmly rooted than of old, your wine
Hath freer flow! ye have not changed, but grown
To fuller stature; though the shock was keen
That severed you from us, how oft below
Hath sorest parting smitten but to show
True hearts their hidden wealth that quickly grow
The closer for that anguish,--friend to friend
Revealed more clear,--and what is Death to rend
The ties of life and love, when He must fade
In light of very Life, when He must bend
To love, that, loving, loveth to the end?
"I do not deem ye look
Upon us now, for be it that your eyes
Are sealed or clear, a burden on them lies
Too deep and blissful for their gaze to brook
Our troubled strife; enough that once ye dwelt
Where now we dwell, enough that once ye felt
As now we feel, to bid you recognize
Our claim of kindred cherished though unseen;
And Love that is to you for eye and ear
Hath ways unknown to us to bring you near,--
To keep you near for all that comes between;
As pious souls that move in sleep to prayer,
As distant friends, that see not, and yet share
(I speak of what I know) each other's care,
So may your spirits blend with ours!
Above Ye know not haply of our state, yet
Love Acquaints you with our need, and through a way
More sure than that of knowledge--so ye pray!
"And even thus we meet,
And even thus we commune! spirits freed
And spirits fettered mingle, nor have need
To seek a common atmosphere, the air
Is meet for either in this olden, sweet,
Primeval breathing of Man's spirit,--Prayer!"
I give, in conclusion, a portion of one of her most characteristic poems,
_The Reconciler_:--
"Our dreams are reconciled,
Since Thou didst come to turn them all to Truth;
The World, the Heart, are dreamers in their youth
Of visions beautiful, and strange and wild;
And Thou, our Life's Interpreter, dost still
At once make clear these visions and fulfil;
Each dim sweet Orphic rhyme,
Each mythic tale sublime
Of strength to save, of sweetness to subdue,
Each morning dream the few,
Wisdom's first lovers told, if read in Thee comes true.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Thou, O Friend
From heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,
Dost pierce the broken language of its moan--
Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!
Each yearning deep and wide,
Each claim, is justified;
Our young illusions fail not, though they die
Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed
To happy death, like early clouds that lie
About the gates of Dawn,--a golden mist
Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.
"The World that puts Thee by,
That opens not to greet Thee with Thy train,
That sendeth after Thee the sullen cry,
'We will not have Thee over us to reign,'
Itself Both testify through searchings vain
Of Thee and of its need, and for the good
It will not, of some base similitude
Takes up a taunting witness, till its mood,
Grown fierce o'er failing hopes, doth rend and tear
Its own illusions grown too thin and bare
To wrap it longer; for within the gate
Where all must pass, a veiled and hooded Fate,
A dark Chimera, coiled and tangled lies,
And he who answers not its questions dies,--
Still changing form and speech, but with the same
Vexed riddles, Gordian-twisted, bringing shame
Upon the nations that with eager cry
Hail each new solver of the mystery;
Yet he, of these the best,
Bold guesser, hath but prest
Most nigh to Thee, our noisy plaudits wrong;
True Champion, that hast wrought
Our help of old, and brought
Meat from this eater, sweetness from this strong.
"O Bearer of the key
That shuts and opens with a sound so sweet
Its turning in the wards is melody,
All things we move among are incomplete
And vain until we fashion them in Thee!
We labor in the fire,
Thick smoke is round about us; through the din
Of words that darken counsel clamors dire
Ring from thought's beaten anvil, where within
Two Giants toil, that even from their birth
With travail-pangs have torn their mother Earth,
And wearied out her children with their keen
Upbraidings of the other, till between
Thou tamest, saying, 'Wherefore do ye wrong
Each other?--ye are Brethren.' Then these twain
Will own their kindred, and in Thee retain
Their claims in peace, because Thy land is wide
As it is goodly! here they pasture free,
This lion and this leopard, side by side,
A little child doth lead them with a song;
Now, Ephraim's envy ceaseth, and no more
Doth Judah anger Ephraim chiding sore,
For one did ask a Brother, one a King,
So dost Thou gather them in one, and bring--
Thou, King forevermore, forever Priest,
Thou, Brother of our own from bonds released
A Law of Liberty,
A Service making free,
A Commonweal where each has all in Thee.
"And not alone these wide,
Deep-planted yearnings, seeking with a cry
Their meat from God, in Thee are satisfied;
But all our instincts waking suddenly
Within the soul, like infants from their sleep
That stretch their arms into the dark and weep,
Thy voice can still. The stricken heart bereft
Of all its brood of singing hopes, and left
'Mid leafless boughs, a cold, forsaken nest
With snow-flakes in it, folded in Thy breast
Doth lose its deadly chill; and grief that creeps
Unto Thy side for shelter, finding there
The wound's deep cleft, forgets its moan, and weeps
Calm, quiet tears, and on Thy forehead Care
Hath looked until its thorns, no longer bare,
Put forth pale roses. Pain on Thee doth press
Its quivering cheek, and all the weariness,
The want that keep their silence, till from Thee
They hear the gracious summons, none beside
Hath spoken to the world-worn, 'Come to me,'
Tell forth their heavy secrets.
"Thou dost hide
These in Thy bosom, and not these alone,
But all our heart's fond treasure that had grown
A burden else: O Saviour, tears were weighed
To Thee in plenteous measure! none hath shown
That Thou didst smile! yet hast Thou surely made
All joy of ours Thine own.
"Thou madest us for Thine;
We seek amiss, we wander to and fro;
Yet are we ever on the track Divine;
The soul confesseth Thee, but sense is slow
To lean on aught but that which it may see;
So hath it crowded up these Courts below
With dark and broken images of Thee;
Lead Thou us forth upon Thy Mount, and show
Thy goodly patterns, whence these things of old
By Thee were fashioned; One though manifold.
Glass Thou Thy perfect likeness in the soul,
Show us Thy countenance, and we are whole!"
No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal
quotations. Apart from their literary merit, they have a special
interest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fully
illustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations.
It has been suggested by a friend that it is barely possible that an
objection may be urged against the following treatise, as against all
books of a like character, that its tendency is to isolate the individual
from his race, and to nourish an exclusive and purely selfish personal
solicitude; that its piety is self-absorbent, and that it does not take
sufficiently into account active duties and charities, and the love of
the neighbor so strikingly illustrated by the Divine Master in His life
and teachings. This objection, if valid, would be a fatal one. For, of
a truth, there can be no meaner type of human selfishness than that
afforded by him who, unmindful of the world of sin and suffering about
him, occupies himself in the pitiful business of saving his own soul, in
the very spirit of the miser, watching over his private hoard while his
neighbors starve for lack of bread. But surely the benevolent unrest,
the far-reaching sympathies and keen sensitiveness to the suffering of
others, which so nobly distinguish our present age, can have nothing to
fear from a plea for personal holiness, patience, hope, and resignation
to the Divine will. "The more piety, the more compassion," says Isaac
Taylor; and this is true, if we understand by piety, not self-concentred
asceticism, but the pure religion and undefiled which visits the widow
and the fatherless, and yet keeps itself unspotted from the world,--which
deals justly, loves mercy, and yet walks humbly before God. Self-
scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to
the reformer and philanthropist. The spiritual warrior, like the young
candidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory
ordeal of watching all night by his armor.
Tauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among the
most earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of
Christianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence.
They did not separate the two great commandments. Tauler strove with
equal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfare
of men. In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold
horrors of the "Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and
mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Woolman's whole life
was a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic
piety which bears the name.
How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes of
those who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the
poor? How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paid
laborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretches
blaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with the
dyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;
with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;
and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil! What a significance
there was in his vision of the "dull, gloomy mass" which appeared before
him, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beings
in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them,
and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate
being"! His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to have
thought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most
miserable sinner to whom his compassion extended. As he did not
live, so neither did he die to himself. His prayer upon his death-bed
was for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple
trust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden
streets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touching
concern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the
paternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterance
in ever-memorable words.
In view of the troubled state of the country and the intense
preoccupation of the public mind, I have had some hesitation in offering
this volume to its publishers. But, on further reflection, it has seemed
to me that it might supply a want felt by many among us; that, in the
chaos of civil strife and the shadow of mourning which rests over the
land, the contemplation of "things unseen which are eternal" might not be
unwelcome; that, when the foundations of human confidence are shaken, and
the trust in man proves vain, there might be glad listeners to a voice
calling from the outward and the temporal to the inward and the
spiritual; from the troubles and perplexities of time, to the eternal
quietness which God giveth. I cannot but believe that, in the heat and
glare through which we are passing, this book will not invite in vain to
the calm, sweet shadows of holy meditation, grateful as the green wings
of the bird to Thalaba in the desert; and thus afford something of
consolation to the bereaved, and of strength to the weary. For surely
never was the Patience of Hope more needed; never was the inner sanctuary
of prayer more desirable; never was a steadfast faith in the Divine
goodness more indispensable, nor lessons of self-sacrifice and
renunciation, and that cheerful acceptance of known duty which shifts not
its proper responsibility upon others, nor asks for "peace in its day" at
the expense of purity and justice, more timely than now, when the solemn
words of ancient prophecy are as applicable to our own country as to that
of the degenerate Jew,--"Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy
backsliding reprove thee; know, therefore, it is an evil thing, and
bitter, that thou bast forsaken the Lord, and that my fear is not in
thee,"--when "His way is in the deep, in clouds, and in thick darkness,"
and the hand heavy upon us which shall "turn and overturn until he whose
right it is shall reign,"--until, not without rending agony, the evil
plant which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have wound
themselves about altar and hearth-stone, and whose branches, like the
tree Al-Accoub in Moslem fable, bear the accursed fruit of oppression,
rebellion, and all imaginable crime, shall be torn up and destroyed
forever.
AMESBURY, 1st 6th mo., 1862.
THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
The following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Review
in Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle and
practice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which have
since more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude.
I.
AMESBURY, 2d mo., 1870.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE REVIEW.
ESTEEMED FRIEND,--If I have been hitherto a silent, I have not been an
indifferent, spectator of the movements now going on in our religious
Society. Perhaps from lack of faith, I have been quite too solicitous
concerning them, and too much afraid that in grasping after new things we
may let go of old things too precious to be lost. Hence I have been
pleased to see from time to time in thy paper very timely and fitting
articles upon a _Hired Ministry_ and _Silent Worship_.
The present age is one of sensation and excitement, of extreme measures
and opinions, of impatience of all slow results. The world about us
moves with accelerated impulse, and we move with it: the rest we have
enjoyed, whether true or false, is broken; the title-deeds of our
opinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded. Our very right to
exist as a distinct society is questioned. Our old literature--the
precious journals and biographies of early and later Friends--is
comparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications. We
bear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent
meetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will
and option. There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas
and expedients and practices of other sects. I speak only of admitted
facts, and not for the purpose of censure or complaint. No one has less
right than myself to indulge in heresy-hunting or impatience of minor
differences of opinion. If my dear friends can bear with me, I shall not
find it a hard task to bear with them.
But for myself I prefer the old ways. With the broadest possible
tolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society of
Friends. My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of other
sects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt like
quarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull with
me, side by side, at the rope of Reform. A very large proportion of my
dearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learned
with John Woolman to find "no narrowness respecting sects and opinions."
But after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own
Society, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;
and with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--
the Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity. I
cheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives of
those who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truer
types of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known and
still know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold the
doctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends. I am not
blind to the shortcomings of Friends. I know how much we have lost by
narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external
observances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as
conscience-keepers for others. We have not, as a society, been active
enough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-
creatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is never
out of place. Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have been
spared us if we had been less "at ease in Zion." It is in the decline of
practical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with each
other for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substance
and spirit. Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doing
good among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with the
Divine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, in
the true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really do
for ourselves. There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with an
eye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;
the great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;
the mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until this
world of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilant
thanksgiving, the song of the Advent: "Glory to God in the highest!
Peace on earth and good-will to men!"
It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in
which we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness
among us. I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects. But, if we
look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the
central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in
an attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great
law of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the
highest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy. If we did
but realize it, we are "set in a large place."
"We may do all we will save wickedness."
"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
Quakerism, in the light of its great original truth, is "exceeding
broad." As interpreted by Penn and Barclay it is the most liberal and
catholic of faiths. If we are not free, generous, tolerant, if we are
not up to or above the level of the age in good works, in culture and
love of beauty, order and fitness, if we are not the ready recipients of
the truths of science and philosophy,--in a word, if we are not full-
grown men and Christians, the fault is not in Quakerism, but in
ourselves. We shall gain nothing by aping the customs and trying to
adjust ourselves to the creeds of other sects. By so doing we make at
the best a very awkward combination, and just as far as it is successful,
it is at the expense of much that is vital in our old faith. If, for
instance, I could bring myself to believe a hired ministry and a written
creed essential to my moral and spiritual well-being, I think I should
prefer to sit down at once under such teachers as Bushnell and Beecher,
the like of whom in Biblical knowledge, ecclesiastical learning, and
intellectual power, we are not likely to manufacture by half a century of
theological manipulation in a Quaker "school of the prophets." If I must
go into the market and buy my preaching, I should naturally seek the best
article on sale, without regard to the label attached to it.
I am not insensible of the need of spiritual renovation in our Society.
I feel and confess my own deficiencies as an individual member. And I
bear a willing testimony to the zeal and devotion of some dear friends,
who, lamenting the low condition and worldliness too apparent among us,
seek to awaken a stronger religious life by the partial adoption of the
practices, forms, and creeds of more demonstrative sects. The great
apparent activity of these sects seems to them to contrast very strongly
with our quietness and reticence; and they do not always pause to inquire
whether the result of this activity is a truer type of practical
Christianity than is found in our select gatherings. I think I
understand these brethren; to some extent I have sympathized with them.
But it seems clear to me, that a remedy for the alleged evil lies not in
going back to the "beggarly elements" from which our worthy ancestors
called the people of their generation; not in will-worship; not in
setting the letter above the spirit; not in substituting type and symbol,
and oriental figure and hyperbole for the simple truths they were
intended to represent; not in schools of theology; not in much speaking
and noise and vehemence, nor in vain attempts to make the "plain
language" of Quakerism utter the Shibboleth of man-made creeds: but in
heeding more closely the Inward Guide and Teacher; in faith in Christ not
merely in His historical manifestation of the Divine Love to humanity,
but in His living presence in the hearts open to receive Him; in love for
Him manifested in denial of self, in charity and love to our neighbor;
and in a deeper realization of the truth of the apostle's declaration:
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit
the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world."
In conclusion, let me say that I have given this expression of my
opinions with some degree of hesitation, being very sensible that I have
neither the right nor the qualification to speak for a society whose
doctrines and testimonies commend themselves to my heart and head, whose
history is rich with the precious legacy of holy lives, and of whose
usefulness as a moral and spiritual Force in the world I am fully
assured.
II.
Having received several letters from dear friends in various sections
suggested by a recent communication in thy paper, and not having time or
health to answer them in detail, will thou permit me in this way to
acknowledge them, and to say to the writers that I am deeply sensible of
the Christian love and personal good-will to myself, which, whether in
commendation or dissent, they manifest? I think I may say in truth that
my letter was written in no sectarian or party spirit, but simply to
express a solicitude, which, whether groundless or not, was nevertheless
real. I am, from principle, disinclined to doctrinal disputations and
so-called religious controversies, which only tend to separate and
disunite. We have had too many divisions already. I intended no censure
of dear brethren whose zeal and devotion command my sympathy,
notwithstanding I may not be able to see with them in all respects. The
domain of individual conscience is to me very sacred; and it seems the
part of Christian charity to make a large allowance for varying
experiences; mental characteristics, and temperaments, as well as for
that youthful enthusiasm which, if sometimes misdirected, has often been
instrumental in infusing a fresher life into the body of religious
profession. It is too much to expect that we can maintain an entire
uniformity in the expression of truths in which we substantially agree;
and we should be careful that a rightful concern for "the form of sound
words" does not become what William Penn calls "verbal orthodoxy." We
must consider that the same accepted truth looks somewhat differently
from different points of vision. Knowing our own weaknesses and
limitations, we must bear in mind that human creeds, speculations,
expositions, and interpretations of the Divine plan are but the faint and
feeble glimpses of finite creatures into the infinite mysteries of God.
"They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."
Differing, as we do, more or less as to means and methods, if we indeed
have the "mind of Christ," we shall rejoice in whatever of good is really
accomplished, although by somewhat different instrumentalities than those
which we feel ourselves free to make use of, remembering that our Lord
rebuked the narrowness and partisanship of His disciples by assuring them
that they that were not against Him were for Him.
It would, nevertheless, give me great satisfaction to know, as thy kindly
expressed editorial comments seem to intimate, that I have somewhat
overestimated the tendencies of things in our Society. I have no pride
of opinion which would prevent me from confessing with thankfulness my
error of judgment. In any event, it can, I think, do no harm to repeat
my deep conviction that we may all labor, in the ability given us, for
our own moral and spiritual well-being, and that of our fellow-creatures,
without laying aside the principles and practice of our religious
Society. I believe so much of liberty is our right as well as our
privilege, and that we need not really overstep our bounds for the
performance of any duty which may be required of us. When truly called
to contemplate broader fields of labor, we shall find the walls about us,
like the horizon seen from higher levels, expanding indeed, but nowhere
broken.
I believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony and
a standard. I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and most
thoughtful members of other Christian sects. I know that any serious
departure from the original foundation of our Society would give pain to
many who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of our
testimonies. They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do not
see that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophy
and the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidence
will not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon the
Light of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our own
souls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inward
experience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelation
shall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shall
be recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age of
restless inquiry. In this belief my letter was written. I am sorry it
did not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that no
consideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer may
lessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it.
AMESBURY, 3d mo., 1870.
P. S. I may mention that I have been somewhat encouraged by a perusal of
the Proceedings of the late First-day School Conference in Philadelphia,
where, with some things which I am compelled to pause over, and regret, I
find much with which I cordially unite, and which seems to indicate a
providential opening for good. I confess to a lively and tender sympathy
with my younger brethren and sisters who, in the name of Him who "went
about doing good," go forth into the highways and byways to gather up the
lost, feed the hungry, instruct the ignorant, and point the sinsick and
suffering to the hopes and consolations of Christian faith, even if, at
times, their zeal goes beyond "reasonable service," and although the
importance of a particular instrumentality may be exaggerated, and love
lose sight of its needful companion humility, and he that putteth on his
armor boast like him who layeth it off. Any movement, however irregular,
which indicates life, is better than the quiet of death. In the
overruling providence of God, the troubling may prepare the way for
healing. Some of us may have erred on one hand and some on the other,
and this shaking of the balance may adjust it.
JOHN WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL.
Originally published as an introduction to a reissue of the work.
To those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult
of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted by
obscure and uneventful lives. Some great reform which lifts the world to
a higher level, some mighty change for which the ages have waited in
anxious expectancy, takes place before our eyes, and, in seeking to trace
it back to its origin, we are often surprised to find the initial link in
the chain of causes to be some comparatively obscure individual, the
divine commission and significance of whose life were scarcely understood
by his contemporaries, and perhaps not even by himself. The little one
has become a thousand; the handful of corn shakes like Lebanon. "The
kingdom of God cometh not by observation;" and the only solution of the
mystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality
Divine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the
human one.
The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout
the world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth.
A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil
work of centuries, unquestionably owes much of its original impulse to
the life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose
very existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his
religious society.
It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and
ethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to
which they are manifestly entitled. In one of my last interviews with
William Ellery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they
were so little known. He had himself just read the book for the first
time, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he
pronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in
the language. He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes
of readers; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect.
Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard
Barton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his
letters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation. Edward
Irving pronounced it a godsend. Some idea of the lively interest which
the fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the
beautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of
Henry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and
varied culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.
In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a
sermon of his friend Irving, which he feared would deter rather than
promote belief:
"How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at
the same time! A perfect gem! His is a _schone Seele_, a beautiful
soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite
purity and grace. His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.
Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better
book; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which
he was a great actor. His religion was love. His whole existence and
all his passions were love. If one could venture to impute to his creed,
and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he
exhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert. His Christianity is
most inviting, it is fascinating! One of the leading British reviews a
few years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man
who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to
the Divine pattern. The author of The Patience of Hope, whose authority
in devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him: 'John Woolman's
gift was love, a charity of which it does not enter into the natural
heart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences,
even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow. Every now and then, in
the world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of
Humanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth
that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over
the whole of the visible creation; men who have entered, like Francis of
Assisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with His
creatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field,
and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In this pure,
universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that
comes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deep
and constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very
overflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it.'"
After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking
of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's
estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his
Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the
events in which he was an actor. A desire to supply in some sort this
deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory
paper.
It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of
individuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth; to
watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience to the
command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as
its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower; to go back to
the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its
hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it
moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertilizing and gladdening
our present humanity. To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as
possible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of
slave-holding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of
that act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout
the world.
At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it
emigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies.
The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II.
consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality,
temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a
blessing. Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some
of the sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily
described their condition:--
What shall we do but sing His praise
Who led us through the watery maze,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms and prelates' rage;
He gives us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels everything,
And sends the fowls to us in care,
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps, in a green night,
And doth in the pomegranate close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.
. . . . . . . . .
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound His name.
Oh! let our voice His praise exalt,
Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which then, perhaps rebounding, may
Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'
"So sang they in the English boat,
A holy and a cheerful note;
And all the way, to guide their chime,
With falling oars they kept the time."
Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, in imitation of the
colonists around them. No positive condemnation of the evil system had
then been heard in the British islands. Neither English prelates nor
expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it. Few
colonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian profession and
conduct. Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its
practice. Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor community, the
pietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing
ever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to bear a brother's or sister's
exhortation, and sandwiching prayers between the courses, were waited
upon by negro slaves. Everywhere men were contending with each other
upon matters of faith, while, so far as their slaves were concerned,
denying the ethics of Christianity itself.
Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.
He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists
of custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,
and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and
purer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine
Wisdom. He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his
intuitive sense of right condemned it. He solemnly admonished those who
held slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up
in the fear of God. "I desired, also," he says, "that they would cause
their overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use
cruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,
after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."
In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited
Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was
probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of
the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had
emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania,
addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the
Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. That
meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment
in the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in
any more negroes." In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it
expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or
selling slaves." The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher
and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to
adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.
The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and
power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could
be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
caution, and not censure."
In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same
question. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends
became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the
foreign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and
Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase
slaves and keep them during their term of life." Nothing was done in the
Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing
negroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding,
for many years afterwards, is certain. In 1758, a rule was adopted
prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from
engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made
the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the
Society of Friends. A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a
member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in
his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
(Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,
narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of
the Delaware. In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a
settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their
quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman
was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each
story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the
trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted,
but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest
hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and
commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and
woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the
shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the
great themes of life and duty.
When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very
"humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had
ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at
Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John
Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more
remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?"
asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward
all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
intends for them under our government.")
On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in
his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his
fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of
His image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer,
but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to
the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent
with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The
circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony
against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It
appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the
land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was
published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the
Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he
was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who
were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could
not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift
food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a
poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed
the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,
for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had
opportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled
in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger
and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.
He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the
same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since
been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and
Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally
in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,
and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them,
and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness,
and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of
dominion."
(The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his
journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in
America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most
distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a
minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in
imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be
more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much
that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves." That
this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the
following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a
friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I
should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving
money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and
desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of
their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and
at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked
clearest to me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number of
small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who
appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But
the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made
easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment
at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of
them.")
In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to
convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy
for the enslaved.
At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took
up his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of the
Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some
extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West
Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves.
His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the
anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He came
to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same
evil existing there. He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his
abode in the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a natural
cave, with some slight addition of his own making. His drink was the
spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone. He
persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the
expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave
labor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance
to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for
worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their
disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market Street
Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out. A
burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and
thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the
street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders
that he did not feel free to rise himself. "Let those who cast me here
raise me up. It is their business, not mine."
His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric
life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with
projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs; a
huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes
and a prominent nose; the rest of his face covered with a snowy
semicircle of beard falling low on his breast,--a figure to recall the
old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the irrepressible
prophet who troubled the Israel of slave-holding Quakerism, clinging like
a rough chestnut-bur to the skirts of its respectability, and settling
like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.
On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington,
N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the
unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in his long white overcoat,
was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, "You
slaveholders! Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine,
and show yourselves as you are?" Casting off as he spoke his outer
garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat
underneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a
large book, he drew his sword with the other. "In the sight of God," he
cried, "you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as
I do this book!" suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small
bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed (playtolacca decandra), which
he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood
those who sat near him. John Woolman makes no mention of this
circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it
must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit. The violence
and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with
the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except
the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.
(Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him.
Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting
all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three
witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.
Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the
three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of
doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been
an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each
other.)
Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony
Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and
speak against slavery. How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by the
example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found
in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the
slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren. The Marquis de
Chastellux, author of _De la Felicite Publique_, describes him as a
small, eager-faced man, full of zeal and activity, constantly engaged in
works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks.
Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits.
The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova
Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and
religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and
sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their
fellow-exiles in other colonies.
The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must
ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in
the history of the Christian church. The labors of Woolman and his few
but earnest associates had not been in vain. A deep and tender interest
had been awakened; and this meeting was looked forward to with varied
feelings of solicitude by all parties. All felt that the time had come
for some definite action; conservative and reformer stood face to face in
the Valley of Decision. John Woolman, of course, was present,--a man
humble and poor in outward appearance, his simple dress of undyed
homespun cloth contrasting strongly with the plain but rich apparel of
the representatives of the commerce of the city and of the large slave-
stocked plantations of the country. Bowed down by the weight of his
concern for the poor slaves and for the well-being and purity of the
Society, he sat silent during the whole meeting, while other matters were
under discussion. "My mind," he says, "was frequently clothed with
inward prayer; and I could say with David that 'tears were my meat and
drink, day and night.' The case of slave-keeping lay heavy upon me; nor
did I find any engagement, to speak directly to any other matter before
the meeting." When the important subject came up for consideration, many
faithful Friends spoke with weight and earnestness. No one openly
justified slavery as a system, although some expressed a concern lest the
meeting should go into measures calculated to cause uneasiness to many
members of the Society. It was also urged that Friends should wait
patiently until the Lord in His own time should open a way for the
deliverance of the slave. This was replied to by John Woolman. "My
mind," he said, "is led to consider the purity of the Divine Being, and
the justice of His judgments; and herein my soul is covered with
awfulness. I cannot forbear to hint of some cases where people have not
been treated with the purity of justice, and the event has been most
lamentable. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries
have entered into the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and
certainty of His judgments that He cannot be partial in our favor. In
infinite love and goodness He hath opened our understandings from one
time to another, concerning our duty towards this people; and it is not a
time for delay. Should we now be sensible of what He requires of us, and
through a respect to the private interest of some persons, or through a
regard to some friendships which do not stand upon an immutable
foundation, neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still
waiting for some extraordinary means to bring about their deliverance,
God may by terrible things in righteousness answer us in this matter."
This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,
in a spirit of sympathy and unity. Some of the slave-holding members
expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be
adopted against dealing in slaves for the future. To this it was
answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually
until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of
such as held slaves. At length the truth in a great measure triumphed
over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed
that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would
that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set
them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four
Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--
were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept
slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
This painful and difficult duty was faithfully performed. In that
meekness and humility of spirit which has nothing in common with the
"fear of man, which bringeth a snare," the self-denying followers of
their Divine Lord and Master "went about doing good." In the city of
Philadelphia, and among the wealthy planters of the country, they found
occasion often to exercise a great degree of patience, and to keep a
watchful guard over their feelings. In his Journal for this important
period of his life John Woolman says but little of his own services. How
arduous and delicate they were may be readily understood. The number of
slaves held by members of the Society was very large. Isaac Jackson, in
his report of his labors among slave-holders in a single Quarterly
Meeting, states that he visited the owners of more than eleven hundred
slaves. From the same report may be gleaned some hints of the
difficulties which presented themselves. One elderly man says he has
well brought up his eleven slaves, and "now they must work to maintain
him." Another owns it is all wrong, but "cannot release his slaves; his
tender wife under great concern of mind" on account of his refusal. A
third has fifty slaves; knows it to be wrong, but can't see his way clear
out of it. "Perhaps," the report says, "interest dims his vision." A
fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings." "Old Jos. Richison has
forty, and is determined to keep them." Another man has fifty, and
"means to keep them." Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his
wife and daughters hold back." Another "owns it is wrong, but says he
will not part with his negroes,--no, not while he lives." The far
greater number, however, confess the wrong of slavery, and agree to take
measures for freeing their slaves.
(An incident occurred during this visit of Isaac Jackson which
impressed him deeply. On the last evening, just as he was about to
turn homeward, he was told that a member of the Society whom he had
not seen owned a very old slave who was happy and well cared for.
It was a case which it was thought might well be left to take care
of itself. Isaac Jackson, sitting in silence, did not feel his mind
quite satisfied; and as the evening wore away, feeling more and more
exercised, he expressed his uneasiness, when a young son of his host
eagerly offered to go with him and show him the road to the place.
The proposal was gladly accepted. On introducing the object of
their visit, the Friend expressed much surprise that any uneasiness
should be felt in the case, but at length consented to sign the form
of emancipation, saying, at the same time, it would make no
difference in their relations, as the old man was perfectly happy.
At Isaac Jackson's request the slave was called in and seated before
them. His form was nearly double, his thin hands were propped on
his knees, his white head was thrust forward, and his keen,
restless, inquiring eyes gleamed alternately on the stranger and on
his master. At length he was informed of what had been done; that
he was no longer a slave, and that his master acknowledged his past
services entitled him to a maintenance so long as he lived. The old
man listened in almost breathless wonder, his head slowly sinking on
his breast. After a short pause, he clasped his hands; then
spreading them high over his hoary head, slowly and reverently
exclaimed, "Oh, goody Gody, oh!"--bringing his hands again down on
his knees. Then raising them as before, he twice repeated the
solemn exclamation, and with streaming eyes and a voice almost too
much choked for utterance, he continued, "I thought I should die a
slave, and now I shall die a free man!"
It is a striking evidence of the divine compensations which are
sometimes graciously vouchsafed to those who have been faithful to
duty, that on his death-bed this affecting scene was vividly revived
in the mind of Isaac Jackson. At that supreme moment, when all
other pictures of time were fading out, that old face, full of
solemn joy and devout thanksgiving, rose before him, and comforted
him as with the blessing of God.)
An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both
the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind
in which he accomplished it:--
"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,
John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves. Some,
whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of
our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult. I often saw
the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern
proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down
before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness
under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness
in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this
world."
"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more
active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend
John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the
city. We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their
families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting
such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to
the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the
influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of
this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we
found peace."
These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and
oppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who
held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing the
practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly
Meeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were
directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding
their fellow-men as property.
A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the
emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion
that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for
services rendered while in the condition of slavery. The following is an
extract from an epistle on this subject:
"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who
have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and
slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are
clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to
view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately
entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,
and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further
openings of duty.
"A tender Christian sympathy appears to be awakened in the minds of many
who are not in religious profession with us, who have seriously
considered the oppressions and disadvantages under which those people
have long labored; and whether a pious care extended to their offspring
is not justly due from us to them is a consideration worthy our serious
and deep attention."
Committees to aid and advise the colored people were accordingly
appointed in the various Monthly Meetings. Many former owners of slaves
faithfully paid the latter for their services, submitting to the award
and judgment of arbitrators as to what justice required at their hands.
So deeply had the sense of the wrong of slavery sunk into the hearts of
Friends!
John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years
before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a
negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty
years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he
had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as
the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he
executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for
four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.
The appalling magnitude of the evil against which he felt himself
especially called to contend was painfully manifest to John Woolman. At
the outset, all about him, in every department of life and human
activity, in the state and the church, he saw evidences of its strength,
and of the depth and extent to which its roots had wound their way among
the foundations of society. Yet he seems never to have doubted for a
moment the power of simple truth to eradicate it, nor to have hesitated
as to his own duty in regard to it. There was no groping like Samson in
the gloom; no feeling in blind wrath and impatience for the pillars of
the temple of Dagon. "The candle of the Lord shone about him," and his
path lay clear and unmistakable before him. He believed in the goodness
of God that leadeth to repentance; and that love could reach the witness
for itself in the hearts of all men, through all entanglements of custom
and every barrier of pride and selfishness. No one could have a more
humble estimate of himself; but as he went forth on his errand of mercy
he felt the Infinite Power behind him, and the consciousness that he had
known a preparation from that Power "to stand as a trumpet through which
the Lord speaks." The event justified his confidence; wherever he went
hard hearts were softened, avarice and love of power and pride of opinion
gave way before his testimony of love.
The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on
Rhode Island. In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a
religious visit to New England, attended that meeting. He saw the
horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves
of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children
thronging the market-place. The same abhorrent scenes which a few years
after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-
trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at
Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual
convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the
shame and wickedness. "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of
slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale
by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,
and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly
trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in
the day of trouble.' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."
He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the
signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to
the importation of slaves. His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to
have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church. The London
Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,
and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and
the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate
meetings:--
"Are Friends clear of importing negroes, or buying them when imported;
and do they use those well, where they are possessed by inheritance or
otherwise, endeavoring to train them up in principles of religion?"
At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members
of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the
house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of
the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in
or holding them as property. His tender exhortations were not lost upon
his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving
spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.
In 1769, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, the
Yearly Meeting expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves,
and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were
implicated in the practice. The next year this committee reported that
they had completed their service, "and that their visits mostly seemed to
be kindly accepted. Some Friends manifested a disposition to set such at
liberty as were suitable; some others, not having so clear a sight of
such an unreasonable servitude as could be desired, were unwilling to
comply with the advice given them at present, yet seemed willing to take
it into consideration; a few others manifested a disposition to keep them
in continued bondage."
It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,
that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others
"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not
complying with the advice of this meeting."
In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment that
truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise
the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,
among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,
that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the
brutes that perish."
In 1782 no slaves were known to be held in the New England Yearly
Meeting. The next year it was recommended to the subordinate meetings to
appoint committees to effect a proper and just settlement between the
manumitted slaves and their former masters, for their past services. In
1784 it was concluded by the Yearly Meeting that any former slave-holder
who refused to comply with the award of these committees should, after
due care and labor with him, be disowned from the Society. This was
effectual; settlements without disownment were made to the satisfaction
of all parties, and every case was disposed of previous to the year 1787.
In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the
middle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those
who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In
1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon
any condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of
the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate
meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past
services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their
masters in all save three cases.
In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold. Its
members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were
necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation. I have
already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,
and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them. In 1757
the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade. In 1764
it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,
of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.
Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing
any more slaves. In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate
manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached
eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it was
advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of
instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and
religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.
I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate
meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--
"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation
are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
many among us are enjoying."
In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still
held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,
the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those
offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should
proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise
number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost
all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of
the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting
the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of
truth.
So ended slavery in the Society of Friends. For three quarters of a
century the advice put forth in the meetings of the Society at stated
intervals, that Friends should be "careful to maintain their testimony
against slavery," has been adhered to so far as owning, or even hiring, a
slave is concerned. Apart from its first-fruits of emancipation, there
is a perennial value in the example exhibited of the power of truth,
urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the
way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit,
entangled with all the complex relations of society, and closely allied
with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain.
The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be
traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
this country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of the
noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
sentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his
whole after life. He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"
and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery. To
his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by
the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent
uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free
government. The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated
his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life
the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of
himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in a degree, at least, the
influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with
the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle
had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the
importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the
accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,
left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,
Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country
evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting. In
1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid
before the first Congress of the United States. Not content with
clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an
active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Jacob Lindley, Elisha
Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were
known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom. One of
the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin
Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd
Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been
so faithfully and nobly devoted. Looking back to the humble workshop at
Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President
Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!
The larger portion of Woolman's writings is devoted to the subjects of
slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil and suffering of the
many to support the luxury of the few. The argument running through them
is searching, and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender love
for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer underlies all. They aim to
convince the judgment and reach the heart without awakening prejudice and
passion. To the slave-holders of his time they must have seemed like the
voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool of the day. One feels,
in reading them, the tenderness and humility of a nature redeemed from
all pride of opinion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight,
and intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human sorrow and sin by
drawing men nearer to God, and to each other. The style is that of a man
unlettered, but with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness,
the purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is no attempt
at fine writing, not a word or phrase for effect; it is the simple
unadorned diction of one to whom the temptations of the pen seem to have
been wholly unknown. He wrote, as he believed, from an inward spiritual
prompting; and with all his unaffected humility he evidently felt that
his work was done in the clear radiance of
"The light which never was on land or sea."
It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne
expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and
pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence." Very
wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this
world. They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and
competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of
parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--
"The haunt
Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
The wild to love tranquillity,"--
a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the
pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest
or activity conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have,
but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain
indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a
sweetness as of violets. "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said
Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated
his words."
Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of
rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of
epigram and antithesis. He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great
Task-master's eye." With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he
had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the
spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,
bear rule."
I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the
entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as
they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no
longer a question at issue. I content myself with throwing together a
few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.
"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it
from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of
unrighteousness."
"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of
the whole."
"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble
part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its
true happiness."
"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts
of men. He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which
are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the
desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a
little suffices."
"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and
clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times
beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings
of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use
of His benefits."
"The marks of famine in a land appear as humbling admonitions from God,
instructing us by gentle chastisements, that we may remember that the
outward supply of life is a gift from our Heavenly Father, and that we
should not venture to use or apply that gift in a way contrary to pure
reason."
"Oppression in the extreme appears terrible; but oppression in more
refined appearances remains to be oppression. To labor for a perfect
redemption from the spirit of it is the great business of the whole
family of Jesus Christ in this world."
"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being 'hid
with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;
but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light
of life and stumbled on the dark mountains. That purity of life which
proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that
state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are
bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of
retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated
from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may
have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."
"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
different places and ages bath had different names; it is, however, pure,
and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of
religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect
sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become
brethren."
"The necessity of an inward stillness hath appeared clear to my mind. In
true silence strength is renewed, and the mind is weaned from all things,
save as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will; and a lowliness in
outward living, opposite to worldly honor, becomes truly acceptable to
us. In the desire after outward gain the mind is prevented from a
perfect attention to the voice of Christ; yet being weaned from all
things, except as they may be enjoyed in the Divine will, the pure light
shines into the soul. Where the fruits of the spirit which is of this
world are brought forth by many who profess to be led by the Spirit of
truth, and cloudiness is felt to be gathering over the visible church,
the sincere in heart, who abide in true stillness, and are exercised
therein before the Lord for His name's sake, have knowledge of Christ in
the fellowship of His sufferings; and inward thankfulness is felt at
times, that through Divine love our own wisdom is cast out, and that
forward, active part in us is subjected, which would rise and do
something without the pure leadings of the spirit of Christ.
"While aught remains in us contrary to a perfect resignation of our
wills, it is like a seal to the book wherein is written 'that good and
acceptable and perfect will of God' concerning us. But when our minds
entirely yield to Christ, that silence is known which followeth the
opening of the last of the seals. In this silence we learn to abide in
the Divine will, and there feel that we have no cause to promote except
that alone in which the light of life directs us."
Occasionally, in Considerations on the Keeping of? Negroes, the intense
interest of his subject gives his language something of passionate
elevation, as in the following extract:--
"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer
by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not
laying their sufferings to heart. In procuring slaves on the coast of
Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the
negroes, but all is at a great distance. Many groans arise from dying
men which we hear not. Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless
children which reach not our ears. Many cheeks are wet with tears, and
faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not. Cruel tyranny is
encouraged. The hands of robbers are strengthened.
"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what
passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be
sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and
heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way
to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our
ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--
were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be
deeply affected with sorrow!"
"It is good for those who live in fulness to cultivate tenderness of
heart, and to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the
hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and thus to
think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced by true charity in
fixing all my demands? Have I no desire to support myself in expensive
customs, because my acquaintances live in such customs?
"If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own
conscience that he indulges himself in some expensive habits, which might
be omitted, consistently with the true design of living, and which, were
he to change places with those who occupy his estate, he would desire to
be discontinued by them,--whoever is thus awakened will necessarily find
the injunction binding, 'Do ye even so to them.' Divine Love imposeth no
rigorous or unreasonable commands, but graciously points out the spirit
of brotherhood and the way to happiness, in attaining which it is
necessary that we relinquish all that is selfish.
"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His
tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences
our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a
desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the
afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a
prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so
that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes
the business of our lives."
His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"
are manifest in the following passages:--
"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward
support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;
who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally
to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of
education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,
it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them. The
knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives
understanding to all men are superior to the various states and
circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.
Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which
is so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is
known to be due only to the true God.
"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son
Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and
friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand
faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while
the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established
in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may
be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."
Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating
the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in
these essays. His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too
are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences
of luxury and oppression:--
"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the
Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."
"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by means of the immoderate
labor of those who in some measure depend upon us, is doing evil at
present, without knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to
evil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause others to do so,
that we may live conformably to customs which our Redeemer
discountenanced by His example, and which are contrary to Divine order,
is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth."
"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is
no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by
bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from
universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany
their proceedings. As He who first founded the earth was then the true
proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the
children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance
from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but
His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their
possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way
which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being
justly chargeable with usurpation."
It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of
the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not
written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism. They might
have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as
they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself
in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology. The
underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the
soul. "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."
In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is
intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground
that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties. One may
easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by
the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may
still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,
attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and
who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the
Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred
attributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderly
sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.
His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every
wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to
the Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is
manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration
of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.
The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting
upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep
enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-
creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.
However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may
present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no
questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it. Shall we regret that
he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,
walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the
faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any
form of words, however sound? A true life is at once interpreter and
proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts
of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have
perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved. Shall we venture
to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding
sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in
gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a
deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never
allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than
threatening? Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the
manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,
revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings
after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs
under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land? And, looking at the
purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith
in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a
mistaken one? Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided
that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. "Without
the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and
soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe
good. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to
hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of
Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without this living
efficacious word within would be but an empty sound." "Thou Lord," says
Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou
teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate
sounds."
"However, I am sure that there is a common spirit that plays within
us, and that is the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale
and gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives; for
truly without this to me there is no heat under the tropic, nor any
light though I dwelt in the body of the sun."--Sir Thomas Browne's
Religio Medici.
Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;
and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world
is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes
down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.
It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong
testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,
its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of
sin. Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the
Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.
Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began
and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast
network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging
upon it in the underworld of causation. Hence the wrong and discord
which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation. The first
inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience. How far
am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this? Have none of my
fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?
Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed
in a way free from all unrighteousness? "Through abiding in the law of
Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and
a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of
strengthening them in error." He constantly recurs to the importance of
a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,
and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.
If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but
"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of
righteousness." His eyes were anointed to see the common point of
departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of
evil had their underlying root in human selfishness. He saw that every
sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose
lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and
avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of
evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of
self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all
its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with
Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of
Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of
possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire
of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine
Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of
all. "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish
spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the
Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."
At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-
creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of
righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in
regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and
lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide
wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and
has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been
affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous
at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the
humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;
expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,
and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,
and made thin through hard dealing.
"There is balm; there is a physician! and oh what longings do I feel that
we may embrace the means appointed for our healing; may know that removed
which now ministers cause for the cries of many to ascend to Heaven
against their oppressors; and that thus we may see the true harmony
restored!--a restoration of that which was lost at Babel, and which will
be, as the prophet expresses it, 'the returning of a pure language!'"
It is easy to conceive how unwelcome this clear spiritual insight must
have been to the superficial professors of his time busy in tithing mint,
anise, and cummin. There must have been something awful in the presence
of one endowed with the gift of looking through all the forms, shows, and
pretensions of society, and detecting with certainty the germs of evil
hidden beneath them; a man gentle and full of compassion, clothed in "the
irresistible might of meekness," and yet so wise in spiritual
discernment,
"Bearing a touchstone in his hand
And testing all things in the land
By his unerring spell.
"Quick births of transmutation smote
The fair to foul, the foul to fair;
Purple nor ermine did he spare,
Nor scorn the dusty coat."
In bringing to a close this paper, the preparation of which has been to
me a labor of love, I am not unmindful of the wide difference between the
appreciation of a pure and true life and the living of it, and am willing
to own that in delineating a character of such moral and spiritual
symmetry I have felt something like rebuke from my own words. I have
been awed and solemnized by the presence of a serene and beautiful spirit
redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, and I have been made thankful
for the ability to recognize and the disposition to love him. I leave
the book with its readers. They may possibly make large deductions from
my estimate of the author; they may not see the importance of all his
self-denying testimonies; they may question some of his scruples, and
smile over passages of childlike simplicity; but I believe they will all
agree in thanking me for introducing them to the Journal of John Woolman.
AMESBURY, 20th 1st mo.,1871.
HAVERFORD COLLEGE.
Letter to President Thomas Chase, LL. D.
AMESBURY, MASS., 9th mo., 1884.
THE Semi-Centennial of Haverford College is an event that no member of
the Society of Friends can regard without deep interest. It would give
me great pleasure to be with you on the 27th inst., but the years rest
heavily upon me, and I have scarcely health or strength for such a
journey.
It was my privilege to visit Haverford in 1838, in "the day of small
beginnings." The promise of usefulness which it then gave has been more
than fulfilled. It has grown to be a great and well-established
institution, and its influence in thorough education and moral training
has been widely felt. If the high educational standard presented in the
scholastic treatise of Barclay and the moral philosophy of Dymond has
been lowered or disowned by many who, still retaining the name of
Quakerism, have lost faith in the vital principle wherein precious
testimonials of practical righteousness have their root, and have gone
back to a dead literalness, and to those materialistic ceremonials for
leaving which our old confessors suffered bonds and death, Haverford, at
least, has been in a good degree faithful to the trust committed to it.
Under circumstances of more than ordinary difficulty, it has endeavored
to maintain the Great Testimony. The spirit of its culture has not been
a narrow one, nor could it be, if true to the broad and catholic
principles of the eminent worthies who founded the State of
Pennsylvania, Penn, Lloyd, Pastorius, Logan, and Story; men who were
masters of the scientific knowledge and culture of their age, hospitable
to all truth, and open to all light, and who in some instances
anticipated the result of modern research and critical inquiry.
It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of
Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,
wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of
Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age
of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could
only mean vast spaces of time.
May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ." Holding
fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
quarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shall
yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possible
investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.
CRITICISM: EVANGELINE
A review of Mr. Longfellow's poem.
EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last,--an American poem, with the lack
of which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting the
subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,--the expulsion of
the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around
the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic passages in the
history of the Colonies of the North,--the author has succeeded in
presenting a series of exquisite pictures of the striking and peculiar
features of life and nature in the New World. The range of these
delineations extends from Nova Scotia on the northeast to the spurs of
the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the south.
Nothing can be added to his pictures of quiet farm-life in Acadie, the
Indian summer of our northern latitudes, the scenery of the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers, the bayous and cypress forests of the South, the
mocking-bird, the prairie, the Ozark hills, the Catholic missions, and
the wild Arabs of the West, roaming with the buffalo along the banks of
the Nebraska. The hexameter measure he has chosen has the advantage of a
prosaic freedom of expression, exceedingly well adapted to a descriptive
and narrative poem; yet we are constrained to think that the story of
Evangeline would have been quite as acceptable to the public taste had it
been told in the poetic prose of the author's Hyperion.
In reading it and admiring its strange melody we were not without fears
that the success of Professor Longfellow in this novel experiment might
prove the occasion of calling out a host of awkward imitators, leading us
over weary wastes of hexameters, enlivened neither by dew, rain, nor
fields of offering.
Apart from its Americanism, the poem has merits of a higher and universal
character. It is not merely a work of art; the pulse of humanity throbs
warmly through it. The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the old
notary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glow
with life. The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, is
a heroine worthy of any poet of the present century.
The editor of the Boston Chronotype, in the course of an appreciative
review of this poem, urges with some force a single objection, which we
are induced to notice, as it is one not unlikely to present itself to the
minds of other readers:--
"We think Mr. Longfellow ought to have expressed a much deeper
indignation at the base, knavish, and heartless conduct of the English
and Colonial persecutors than he has done. He should have put far bolder
and deeper tints in the picture of suffering. One great, if not the
greatest, end of poetry is rhadamanthine justice. The poet should mete
out their deserts to all his heroes; honor to whom honor, and infamy to
whom infamy, is due.
"It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered
upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that
pollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather musty
proverb. All the worse. Of not a more contemptible vice is what is
called American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self-
laudation. If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether too
small for the business. It seems that no period of our history has been
exempt from materials for patriotic humiliation and national self-
reproach; and surely the present epoch is laying in a large store of that
sort. Had our poets always told us the truth of ourselves, perhaps it
would now be otherwise. National self-flattery and concealment of faults
must of course have their natural results."
We must confess that we read the first part of Evangeline with something
of the feeling so forcibly expressed by Professor Wright. The natural
and honest indignation with which, many years ago, we read for the first
time that dark page of our Colonial history--the expulsion of the French
neutrals--was reawakened by the simple pathos of the poem; and we longed
to find an adequate expression of it in the burning language of the poet.
We marvelled that he who could so touch the heart by his description of
the sad suffering of the Acadian peasants should have permitted the
authors of that suffering to escape without censure. The outburst of the
stout Basil, in the church of Grand Pre, was, we are fain to acknowledge,
a great relief to us. But, before reaching the close of the volume, we
were quite reconciled to the author's forbearance. The design of the
poem is manifestly incompatible with stern "rhadamanthine justice" and
indignant denunciation of wrong. It is a simple story of quiet pastoral
happiness, of great sorrow and painful bereavement, and of the endurance
of a love which, hoping and seeking always, wanders evermore up and down
the wilderness of the world, baffled at every turn, yet still retaining
faith in God and in the object of its lifelong quest. It was no part of
the writer's object to investigate the merits of the question at issue
between the poor Acadians and their Puritan neighbors. Looking at the
materials before him with the eye of an artist simply, he has arranged
them to suit his idea of the beautiful and pathetic, leaving to some
future historian the duty of sitting in judgment upon the actors in the
atrocious outrage which furnished them. With this we are content. The
poem now has unity and sweetness which might have been destroyed by
attempting to avenge the wrongs it so vividly depicts. It is a psalm of
love and forgiveness: the gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and
forbearance breathe through it. Not a word of censure is directly
applied to the marauding workers of the mighty sorrow which it describes
just as it would a calamity from the elements,--a visitation of God. The
reader, however, cannot fail to award justice to the wrong-doers. The
unresisting acquiescence of the Acadians only deepens his detestation of
the cupidity and religious bigotry of their spoilers. Even in the
language of the good Father Felician, beseeching his flock to submit to
the strong hand which had been laid upon them, we see and feel the
magnitude of the crime to be forgiven:--
"Lo, where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!
See in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion!
Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, O Father, forgive
them!
Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us;
Let us repeat it now, and say, O Father, forgive them!"
How does this simple prayer of the Acadians contrast with the "deep
damnation of their taking off!"
The true history of the Puritans of New England is yet to be written.
Somewhere midway between the caricatures of the Church party and the
self-laudations of their own writers the point may doubtless be found
from whence an impartial estimate of their character may be formed. They
had noble qualities: the firmness and energy which they displayed in the
colonization of New England must always command admiration. We would not
rob them, were it in our power to do so, of one jot or tittle of their
rightful honor. But, with all the lights which we at present possess, we
cannot allow their claim of saintship without some degree of
qualification. How they seemed to their Dutch neighbors at New
Netherlands, and their French ones at Nova Scotia, and to the poor
Indians, hunted from their fisheries and game-grounds, we can very well
conjecture. It may be safely taken for granted that their gospel claim
to the inheritance of the earth was not a little questionable to the
Catholic fleeing for his life from their jurisdiction, to the banished
Baptist shaking off the dust of his feet against them, and to the
martyred Quaker denouncing woe and judgment upon them from the steps of
the gallows. Most of them were, beyond a doubt, pious and sincere; but
we are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore the
livery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community where
church-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesame
before which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy or
ambitious aspirants. Mere adventurers, men of desperate fortunes,
bankrupts in character and purse, contrived to make gain of godliness
under the church and state government of New England, put on the austere
exterior of sanctity, quoted Scripture, anathematized heretics, whipped
Quakers, exterminated Indians, burned and spoiled the villages of their
Catholic neighbors, and hewed down their graven images and "houses of
Rimmon." It is curious to observe how a fierce religious zeal against
heathen and idolaters went hand in hand with the old Anglo-Saxon love of
land and plunder. Every crusade undertaken against the Papists of the
French colonies had its Puritan Peter the Hermit to summon the saints to
the wars of the Lord. At the siege of Louisburg, ten years before the
onslaught upon the Acadian settlers, one minister marched with the
Colonial troops, axe in hand, to hew down the images in the French
churches; while another officiated in the double capacity of drummer and
chaplain,--a "drum ecclesiastic," as Hudibras has it.
At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, the
orator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge of
intolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfounded
in fact. The banishment of the Catholics was very sagaciously passed
over in silence, inasmuch as the Catholic Bishop of New York was one of
the invited guests, and (hear it, shade of Cotton Mather!) one of the
regular toasts was a compliment to the Pope. The expulsion of Roger
Williams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-
cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as the
only effectual method of dealing with such devil-driven heretics, as
Mather calls them. The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur
Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters,
foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and the
crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast,
named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy," took it into
his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch
breeches "in singing time,"--a circumstance, by the way, which took place
in Old England,--as a justification of the atrocious laws of the
Massachusetts Colony. We have not the slightest disposition to deny the
fanaticism and folly of some few professed Quakers in that day; and had
the Puritans treated them as the Pope did one of their number whom he
found crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consigned
them to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane man
could have blamed them. Every sect, in its origin, and especially in its
time of persecution, has had its fanatics. The early Christians, if we
may credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightest
credence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt from
reproach and scandal in this respect. Were the Puritans themselves the
men to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists? Had they not, in the
view at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside down
with their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct? How
look they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pages
of Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the times
of the second Charles? With their own backs scored and their ears
cropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and state
in England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doing
the same thing in Massachusetts?
Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincere
admirers. The generous and self-denying apostleship of Eliot is, of
itself, a beautiful page in their history. The physical daring and
hardihood with which, amidst the times of savage warfare, they laid the
foundations of mighty states, and subdued the rugged soil, and made the
wilderness blossom; their steadfast adherence to their religious
principles, even when the Restoration had made apostasy easy and
profitable; and the vigilance and firmness with which, under all
circumstances, they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted new
rights and privileges from the reluctant home government,--justly entitle
them to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruits
of their toils and sacrifices. But, in expressing our gratitude to the
founders of New England, we should not forget what is due to truth and
justice; nor, for the sake of vindicating them from the charge of that
religious intolerance which, at the time, they shared with nearly all
Christendom, undertake to defend, in the light of the nineteenth century,
opinions and practices hostile to the benignant spirit of the gospel and
subversive of the inherent rights of man.
MIRTH AND MEDICINE
A review of Poems by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
IF any of our readers (and at times we fear it is the case with all) need
amusement and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend
them, not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the
wit, and the humorist; not to the scientific medical professor's
barbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice old
Saxon. We have tried them, and are ready to give the Doctor certificates
of their efficacy.
Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a
physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why,
one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head,--the cachinnation of a
monk's _memento mori_. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best
estate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast"
of the future or the past. But it is the special vocation of the doctor
to look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting and
go down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere of
wretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanity
disrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments,
--weak, helpless, naked,--and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis
from its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined
divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. Of what ghastly
secrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary! There is woe
before him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery by
prescription,--the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to.
He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, the
splenetic, the sick, and the dying. He sits down to carve his turkey,
and is summoned off to a post-mortem examination of another sort. All
the diseases which Milton's imagination embodied in the lazar-house dog
his footsteps and pluck at his doorbell. Hurrying from one place to
another at their beck, he knows nothing of the quiet comfort of the
"sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights." His wife, if he has one, has an
undoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board." His
ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his
heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his
luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth,
earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only
delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek
of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism,
nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud," of
the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon the
spear of a janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, of
tightlacing, and slippers in winter. Sheridan seems to have understood
all this, if we may judge from the lament of his Doctor, in St.
Patrick's Day, over his deceased helpmate. "Poor dear Dolly," says he.
"I shall never see her like again; such an arm for a bandage! veins that
seemed to invite the lancet! Then her skin,--smooth and white as a
gallipot; her mouth as round and not larger than that of a penny vial;
and her teeth,--none of your sturdy fixtures,--ache as they would, it was
only a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half a
score of her dear pearls. (Weeps.) But what avails her beauty? She has
gone, and left no little babe to hang like a label on papa's neck!"
So much for speculation and theory. In practice it is not so bad after
all. The grave-digger in Hamlet has his jokes and grim jests. We have
known many a jovial sexton; and we have heard clergymen laugh heartily at
small provocation close on the heel of a cool calculation that the great
majority of their fellow-creatures were certain of going straight to
perdition. Why, then, should not even the doctor have his fun? Nay, is
it not his duty to be merry, by main force if necessary? Solomon, who,
from his great knowledge of herbs, must have been no mean practitioner
for his day, tells us that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine;"
and universal experience has confirmed the truth of his maxim. Hence it
is, doubtless, that we have so many anecdotes of facetious doctors,
distributing their pills and jokes together, shaking at the same time the
contents of their vials and the sides of their patients. It is merely
professional, a trick of the practice, unquestionably, in most cases; but
sometimes it is a "natural gift," like that of the "bonesetters," and
"scrofula strokers," and "cancer curers," who carry on a sort of guerilla
war with human maladies. Such we know to be the case with Dr. Holmes.
He was born for the "laughter cure," as certainly as Priessnitz was for
the "water cure," and has been quite as successful in his way, while his
prescriptions are infinitely more agreeable.
The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics
contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the
later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the
brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were
noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, _Urania_, is perhaps
the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and
humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witness
the following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The whole
compass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody and
beauty.
"Down the chill street, which winds in gloomiest shade,
What marks betray yon solitary maid?
The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air,
The Celtic blackness of her braided hair;
The gilded missal in her kerchief tied;
Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side!
Sister in toil, though born of colder skies,
That left their azure in her downcast eyes,
See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child,
Scarce weaned from home, a nursling of the wild,
Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines,
And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines;
Still, as she hastes, her careful fingers hold
The unfailing hymn-book in its cambric fold:
Six days at Drudgery's heavy wheel she stands,
The seventh sweet morning folds her weary hands.
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor."
This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable of
moving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy. There is no straining
for effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple and
perfectly transparent language.
_Terpsichore_, read at an annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at
Cambridge, sparkles throughout with keen wit, quaint conceits, and satire
so good-natured that the subjects of it can enjoy it as heartily as their
neighbors. Witness this thrust at our German-English writers:--
"Essays so dark, Champollion might despair
To guess what mummy of a thought was there,
Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase, Looks like a
zebra in a parson's chaise."
Or this at our transcendental friends:--
"Deluded infants! will they never know
Some doubts must darken o'er the world below
Though all the Platos of the nursery trail
Their clouds of glory at the go-cart's tail?"
The lines _On Lending a Punch-Bowl_ are highly characteristic. Nobody
but Holmes could have conjured up so many rare fancies in connection with
such a matter. Hear him:--
"This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.
"A Spanish galleon brought the bar; so runs the ancient tale;
'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,
He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.
"'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame,
Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,
'T was filled with candle spiced and hot and handed smoking round.
"But, changing hands, it reached at length a Puritan divine,
Who used to follow Timothy, and take a little wine,
But hated punch and prelacy; and so it was, perhaps,
He went to Leyden, where he found conventicles and schnaps.
"And then, of course, you know what's next,--it left the Dutchman's shore
With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,--
Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,--
To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.
"'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
"He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,--
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--
All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
"That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"
In his _Nux Postcoenatica_ he gives us his reflections on being invited
to a dinner-party, where he was expected to "set the table in a roar" by
reading funny verses. He submits it to the judgment and common sense of
the importunate bearer of the invitation, that this dinner-going, ballad-
making, mirth-provoking habit is not likely to benefit his reputation as
a medical professor.
"Besides, my prospects. Don't you know that people won't employ
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy,
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot,
As if Wisdom's oldpotato could not flourish at its root?
"It's a very fine reflection, when you're etching out a smile
On a copperplate of faces that would stretch into a mile.
That, what with sneers from enemies and cheapening shrugs from friends,
It will cost you all the earnings that a month of labor lends."
There are, as might be expected, some commonplace pieces in the volume,--
a few failures in the line of humor. The _Spectre Pig_, the _Dorchester
Giant_, the _Height of the Ridiculous_, and one or two others might be
omitted in the next edition without detriment. They would do well enough
for an amateur humorist, but are scarcely worthy of one who stands at the
head of the profession.
It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had
not been a witty man, he would have been a great man." Hood's humor and
drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober
productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a
large class of readers than he now does had he never written his _Ballad
of the Oysterman_, his _Comet_, and his _September Gale_. Such lyrics as
_La Grisette_, the _Puritan's Vision_, and that unique compound of humor
and pathos, _The Last Leaf_; show that he possesses the power of touching
the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well as
smiles. Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the old
man in the last-mentioned poem?
"But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
'They are gone.'
"The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb."
Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in common
between them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment with
grotesque drollery and humor. Hood, under all his whims and oddities,
conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of the world's
wrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in his
lyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at times
betrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung. Holmes
writes simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals only
with the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, good
naturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the folly
which he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule. In this respect he
differs widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen wit
and scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes of
Parson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with the
rank offences of church and state. Hosea Biglow, in his way, is as
earnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings-
in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron. His verse smacks of the
old Puritan flavor. Holmes has a gentler mission. His careless, genial
humor reminds us of James Smith in his _Rejected Addresses_ and of Horace
in _London_. Long may he live to make broader the face of our care-
ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man's
declaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast."
FAME AND GLORY.
Notice of an Address before the Literary Society of Amherst College, by
Charles Sumner.
THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with the
above title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country,
who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the social
and political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen,
orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popular
impulses for evil far oftener than for good. His first production, the
_True Grandeur of Nations_, written for the anniversary of American
Independence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highly
cultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation of
a high morality,--the demand for practical Christianity in nations as
well as individuals. It burned no incense under the nostrils of an
already inflated and vain people. It gratified them by no rhetorical
falsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It
did not apostrophize military heroes, nor strut "red wat shod" over the
plains of battle, nor call up, like another Ezekiel, from the valley of
vision the dry bones thereof. It uttered none of the precious scoundrel
cant, so much in vogue after the annexation of Texas was determined upon,
about the destiny of the United States to enter in and possess the lands
of all whose destiny it is to live next us, and to plant everywhere the
"peculiar institutions" of a peculiarly Christian and chosen people, the
landstealing propensity of whose progressive republicanism is declared to
be in accordance with the will and by the grace of God, and who, like the
Scotch freebooter,--
"Pattering an Ave Mary
When he rode on a border forray,"--
while trampling on the rights of a sister republic, and re-creating
slavery where that republic had abolished it, talk piously of "the
designs of Providence" and the Anglo-Saxon instrumentalities thereof in
"extending the area of freedom." On the contrary, the author portrayed
the evils of war and proved its incompatibility with Christianity,--
contrasting with its ghastly triumphs the mild victories of peace and
love. Our true mission, he taught, was not to act over in the New World
the barbarous game which has desolated the Old; but to offer to the
nations of the earth, warring and discordant, oppressed and oppressing,
the beautiful example of a free and happy people studying the things
which make for peace,--Democracy and Christianity walking hand in hand,
blessing and being blessed.
His next public effort, an Address before the Literary Society of his
Alma Mater, was in the same vein. He improved the occasion of the recent
death of four distinguished members of that fraternity to delineate his
beautiful ideal of the jurist, the scholar, the artist, and the
philanthropist, aided by the models furnished by the lives of such men as
Pickering, Story, Allston, and Channing. Here, also, he makes greatness
to consist of goodness: war and slavery and all their offspring of evil
are surveyed in the light of the morality of the New Testament. He looks
hopefully forward to the coming of that day when the sword shall devour
no longer, when labor shall grind no longer in the prison-house, and the
peace and freedom of a realized and acted-out Christianity shall
overspread the earth, and the golden age predicted by the seers and poets
alike of Paganism and Christianity shall become a reality.
The Address now before us, with the same general object in view, is more
direct and practical. We can scarcely conceive of a discourse better
adapted to prepare the young American, just issuing from his collegiate
retirement, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. It
treats the desire of fame and honor as one native to the human heart,
felt to a certain extent by all as a part of our common being,--a motive,
although by no means the most exalted, of human conduct; and the lesson
it would inculcate is, that no true and permanent fame can be founded
except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. To use the
language of Dr. South, "God is the fountain of honor; the conduit by
which He conveys it to the sons of men are virtuous and generous
practices." The author presents the beautiful examples of St. Pierre,
Milton, Howard, and Clarkson,--men whose fame rests on the firm
foundation of goodness,--for the study and imitation of the young
candidate for that true glory which belongs to those who live, not for
themselves, but for their race. "Neither present fame, nor war, nor
power, nor wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an entrance to the
true and noble Valhalla. There shall be gathered only those who have
toiled each in his vocation for the welfare of others." "Justice and
benevolence are higher than knowledge and power It is by His goodness
that God is most truly known; so also is the great man. When Moses said
to the Lord, Show me Thy glory, the Lord said, I will make all my
goodness pass before thee."
We copy the closing paragraph of the Address, the inspiring sentiment of
which will find a response in all generous and hopeful hearts:--
"Let us reverse the very poles of the worship of past ages. Men have
thus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden
calves,--graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought with
Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods. Let
them worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven and
in the beneficent labors of His children on earth. Then farewell to the
siren song of a worldly ambition! Farewell to the vain desire of mere
literary success or oratorical display! Farewell to the distempered
longings for office! Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of
martial renown! Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, the
reflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast,
without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christian
truth,--love to God and love to man. From the serene illumination of
these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spirits
at the dawn of day. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly and
the education of the ignorant have uncounted friends. The cause of those
who are in prison shall find fresh voices; the majesty of peace other
vindicators; the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods of
sympathy. Then, at last, shall the brotherhood of man stand confessed;
ever filling the souls of all with a more generous life; ever prompting
to deeds of beneficence; conquering the heathen prejudices of country,
color, and race; guiding the judgment of the historian; animating the
verse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator; ennobling human
thought and conduct; and inspiring those good works by which alone we may
attain to the heights of true glory. Good works! Such even now is the
heavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while weary
humanity, on pillows of storfe, slumbers heavily at its feet."
We know how easy it is to sneer at such anticipations of a better future
as baseless and visionary. The shrewd but narrow-eyed man of the world
laughs at the suggestion that there car: be any stronger motive than
selfishness, any higher morality than that of the broker's board. The
man who relies for salvation from the consequences of an evil and selfish
life upon the verbal orthodoxy of a creed presents the depravity and
weakness of human nature as insuperable obstacles in the way of the
general amelioration of the condition of a world lying in wickedness. He
counts it heretical and dangerous to act upon the supposition that the
same human nature which, in his own case and that of his associates, can
confront all perils, overcome all obstacles, and outstrip the whirlwind
in the pursuit of gain,--which makes the strong elements its servants,
taming and subjugating the very lightnings of heaven to work out its own
purposes of self-aggrandizement,--must necessarily, and by an ordination
of Providence, become weak as water, when engaged in works of love and
goodwill, looking for the coming of a better day for humanity, with faith
in the promises of the Gospel, and relying upon Him, who, in calling man
to the great task-field of duty, has not mocked him with the mournful
necessity of laboring in vain. We have been pained more than words can
express to see young, generous hearts, yearning with strong desires to
consecrate themselves to the cause of their fellow-men, checked and
chilled by the ridicule of worldly-wise conservatism, and the solemn
rebukes of practical infidelity in the guise of a piety which professes
to love the unseen Father, while disregarding the claims of His visible
children. Visionary! Were not the good St. Pierre, and Fenelon, and
Howard, and Clarkson visionaries also?
What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable
enthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as
Dorothea Dix? Who will not, in view of the labors of such
philanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these things
be enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be
evermore possessed with this happy distemper"?
It must, however, be confessed that there is a cant of philanthropy too
general and abstract for any practical purpose,--a morbid
sentimentalism,--which contents itself with whining over real or
imaginary present evil, and predicting a better state somewhere in the
future, but really doing nothing to remove the one or hasten the coming
of the other. To its view the present condition of things is all wrong;
no green hillock or twig rises over the waste deluge; the heaven above is
utterly dark and starless: yet, somehow, out of this darkness which may
be felt, the light is to burst forth miraculously; wrong, sin, pain, and
sorrow are to be banished from the renovated world, and earth become a
vast epicurean garden or Mahometan heaven.
"The land, unploughed, shall yield her crop;
Pure honey from the oak shall drop;
The fountain shall run milk;
The thistle shall the lily bear;
And every bramble roses wear,
And every worm make silk."
(Ben Jenson's Golden Age Restored.)
There are, in short, perfectionist reformers as well as religionists, who
wait to see the salvation which it is the task of humanity itself to work
out, and who look down from a region of ineffable self-complacence on
their dusty and toiling brethren who are resolutely doing whatsoever
their hands find to do for the removal of the evils around them.
The emblem of practical Christianity is the Samaritan stooping over the
wounded Jew. No fastidious hand can lift from the dust fallen humanity
and bind up its unsightly gashes. Sentimental lamentation over evil and
suffering may be indulged in until it becomes a sort of melancholy
luxury, like the "weeping for Thammuz" by the apostate daughters of
Jerusalem. Our faith in a better day for the race is strong; but we feel
quite sure it will come in spite of such abstract reformers, and not by
reason of them. The evils which possess humanity are of a kind which go
not out by their delicate appliances.
The author of the Address under consideration is not of this class. He
has boldly, and at no small cost, grappled with the great social and
political wrong of our country,--chattel slavery. Looking, as we have
seen, hopefully to the future, he is nevertheless one of those who can
respond to the words of a true poet and true man:--
"He is a coward who would borrow
A charm against the present sorrow
From the vague future's promise of delight
As life's alarums nearer roll,
The ancestral buckler calls,
Self-clanging, from the walls
In the high temple of the soul!"
(James Russell Lowell.)
FANATICISM.
THERE are occasionally deeds committed almost too horrible and revolting
for publication. The tongue falters in giving them utterance; the pen
trembles that records them. Such is the ghastly horror of a late tragedy
in Edgecomb, in the State of Maine. A respectable and thriving citizen
and his wife had been for some years very unprofitably engaged in
brooding over the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and in speculations upon
the personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints on
earth,--a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant in
Scripture as in reason. Their minds of necessity became unsettled; they
meditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind in
the handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband should
first kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to his
own existence. This was literally executed,--the miserable man striking
off the heads of his wife and children with his axe, and then cutting his
own throat.
Alas for man when he turns from the light of reason and from the simple
and clearly defined duties of the present life, and undertakes to pry
into the mysteries of the future, bewildering himself with uncertain and
vague prophecies, Oriental imagery, and obscure Hebrew texts! Simple,
cheerful faith in God as our great and good Father, and love of His
children as our brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, is
certainly best for this world, and we believe also the best preparation
for that to come. Once possessed by the falsity that God's design is
that man should be wretched and gloomy here in order to obtain rest and
happiness hereafter; that the mental agonies and bodily tortures of His
creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for
our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory
revelations and arbitrary commands,--there is nothing to prevent one of a
melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost
to justify the old belief in demoniac obsession.
Charles Brockden Brown, a writer whose merits have not yet been
sufficiently acknowledged, has given a powerful and philosophical
analysis of this morbid state of mind--this diseased conscientiousness,
obeying the mad suggestions of a disordered brain as the injunctions of
Divinity--in his remarkable story of Wieland. The hero of this strange
and solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mental
constitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquil
because deep, fanaticism. A demon in human form, perceiving his state of
mind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by a
fearful series of illusions of sight and sound. Tricks of jugglery and
ventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens--the eye
and the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernatural
mystery in which he has long dwelt. He believes that he is called upon
to sacrifice the beloved wife of his bosom as a testimony of the entire
subjugation of his carnal reason and earthly affections to the Divine
will. In the entire range of English literature there is no more
thrilling passage than that which describes the execution of this baleful
suggestion. The coloring of the picture is an intermingling of the
lights of heaven and hell,--soft shades of tenderest pity and warm tints
of unextinguishable love contrasting with the terrible outlines of an
insane and cruel purpose, traced with the blood of murder. The masters
of the old Greek tragedy have scarcely exceeded the sublime horror of
this scene from the American novelist. The murderer confronted with his
gentle and loving victim in her chamber; her anxious solicitude for his
health and quiet; her affectionate caress of welcome; his own relentings
and natural shrinking from his dreadful purpose; and the terrible
strength which he supposes is lent him of Heaven, by which he puts down
the promptings and yearnings of his human heart, and is enabled to
execute the mandate of an inexorable Being,--are described with an
intensity which almost stops the heart of the reader. When the deed is
done a frightful conflict of passions takes place, which can only be told
in the words of the author:--
"I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it
with delight. Such was my elation that I even broke out into laughter.
I clapped my hands, and exclaimed, 'It is done! My sacred duty is
fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O God, Thy last and best gift, my
wife!'
"For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself
forever beyond the reach of selfishness. But my imaginations were false.
This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous
ebullitions vanished. I asked myself who it was whom I saw. Methought
it could not be my Catharine; it could not be the woman who had lodged
for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had borne
in her womb and fostered at her breast the beings who called me father;
whom I had watched over with delight and cherished with a fondness ever
new and perpetually growing. It could not be the same!
"The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into
mere man. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I
uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire
and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a
bed of roses.
"I thank my God that this was transient; that He designed once more to
raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty,
and was calm. My wife was dead; but I reflected that, although this
source of human consolation was closed, others were still open. If the
transports of the husband were no more, the feelings of
the father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their
mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon my children and
be comforted.
"While I revolved these things new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I was
wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not
aware; and, to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new light
and a new mandate were necessary.
"From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray which was shot into the
room. A voice spoke like that I had before heard: 'Thou hast done well;
but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be
offered--they must perish with their mother!'"
The misguided man obeys the voice; his children are destroyed in their
bloom and innocent beauty. He is arrested, tried for murder, and
acquitted as insane. The light breaks in upon him at last; he discovers
the imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the full
consciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama by suicide.
Wieland is not a pleasant book. In one respect it resembles the modern
tale of Wuthering Heights: it has great strength and power, but no
beauty. Unlike that, however, it has an important and salutary moral. It
is a warning to all who tamper with the mind and rashly experiment upon
its religious element. As such, its perusal by the sectarian zealots of
all classes would perhaps be quite as profitable as much of their present
studies.
THE POETRY OF THE NORTH.
THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild and
spirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appears
to have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathen
saga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization.
The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and full
of a rude, untamed energy. It was inspired by exhibitions of power
rather than of beauty. Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel and
ferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliest
tricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge,--very
dangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-
eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers. Significant of a
religion which reverenced the strong rather than the good, and which
regarded as meritorious the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, it
delighted to sing the praises of some coarse debauch or pitiless
slaughter. The voice of its scalds was often but the scream of the
carrion-bird, or the howl of the wolf, scenting human blood:--
"Unlike to human sounds it came;
Unmixed, unmelodized with breath;
But grinding through some scrannel frame,
Creaked from the bony lungs of Death."
Its gods were brutal giant forces, patrons of war, robbery, and drunken
revelry; its heaven a vast cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors
drank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror of
desolation and darkness,--all that the gloomy Northern imagination could
superadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:
volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost,
boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and huge
jokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies,
crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life,--a
region of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery
and courage in murder.
What a work had Christianity to perform upon such a people as the
Icelanders, for instance, of the tenth century!--to substitute in rude,
savage minds the idea of its benign and gentle Founder for that of the
Thor and Woden of Norse mythology; the forgiveness, charity, and humility
of the Gospel for the revenge, hatred, and pride inculcated by the Eddas.
And is it not one of the strongest proofs of the divine life and power of
that Gospel, that, under its influence, the hard and cruel Norse heart
has been so softened and humanized that at this moment one of the best
illustrations of the peaceful and gentle virtues which it inculcates is
afforded by the descendants of the sea-kings and robbers of the middle
centuries? No one can read the accounts which such travellers as Sir
George Mackenzie and Dr. Henderson have given us of the peaceful
disposition, social equality, hospitality, industry, intellectual
cultivation, morality, and habitual piety of the Icelanders, without a
grateful sense of the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of our
race, and of its ability to purify, elevate, and transform the worst
elements of human character. In Iceland Christianity has performed its
work of civilization, unobstructed by that commercial cupidity which has
caused nations more favored in respect to soil and climate to lapse into
an idolatry scarcely less debasing and cruel than that which preceded the
introduction of the Gospel. Trial by combat was abolished in 1001, and
the penalty of the imaginary crime of witchcraft was blotted from the
statutes of the island nearly half a century before it ceased to disgrace
those of Great Britain. So entire has been the change wrought in the
sanguinary and cruel Norse character that at the present day no Icelander
can be found who, for any reward, will undertake the office of
executioner. The scalds, who went forth to battle, cleaving the skulls
of their enemies with the same skilful hands which struck the harp at the
feast, have given place to Christian bards and teachers, who, like
Thorlakson, whom Dr. Henderson found toiling cheerfully with his beloved
parishioners in the hay-harvest of the brief arctic summer, combine with
the vigorous diction and robust thought of their predecessors the warm
and genial humanity of a religion of love and the graces and amenities of
a high civilization.
But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to
introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and
vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and
other rhymed sagas of Motherwell.
THE NORSEMAN'S RIDE. BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
The frosty fires of northern starlight
Gleamed on the glittering snow,
And through the forest's frozen branches
The shrieking winds did blow;
A floor of blue and icy marble
Kept Ocean's pulses still,
When, in the depths of dreary midnight,
Opened the burial hill.
Then, while the low and creeping shudder
Thrilled upward through the ground,
The Norseman came, as armed for battle,
In silence from his mound,--
He who was mourned in solemn sorrow
By many a swordsman bold,
And harps that wailed along the ocean,
Struck by the scalds of old.
Sudden a swift and silver shadow
Came up from out the gloom,--
A charger that, with hoof impatient,
Stamped noiseless by the tomb.
"Ha! Surtur,!* let me hear thy tramping,
My fiery Northern steed,
That, sounding through the stormy forest,
Bade the bold Viking heed!"
He mounted; like a northlight streaking
The sky with flaming bars,
They, on the winds so wildly shrieking,
Shot up before the stars.
"Is this thy mane, my fearless Surtur,
That streams against my breast?
(*The name of the Scandinavian god of fire.)
Is this thy neck, that curve of moonlight
Which Helva's hand caressed?
"No misty breathing strains thy nostril;
Thine eye shines blue and cold;
Yet mounting up our airy pathway
I see thy hoofs of gold.
Not lighter o'er the springing rainbow
Walhalla's gods repair
Than we in sweeping journey over
The bending bridge of air.
"Far, far around star-gleams are sparkling
Amid the twilight space;
And Earth, that lay so cold and darkling,
Has veiled her dusky face.
Are those the Normes that beckon onward
As if to Odin's board,
Where by the hands of warriors nightly
The sparkling mead is poured?
"'T is Skuld:* I her star-eye speaks the glory
That wraps the mighty soul,
When on its hinge of music opens
The gateway of the pole;
When Odin's warder leads the hero
To banquets never o'er,
And Freya's** glances fill the bosom
With sweetness evermore.
"On! on! the northern lights are streaming
In brightness like the morn,
And pealing far amid the vastness
I hear the gyallarhorn ***
The heart of starry space is throbbing
With songs of minstrels old;
And now on high Walhalla's portal
Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold."
* The Norne of the future.
** Freya, the Northern goddess of love.
*** The horn blown by the watchers on the rainbow, the bridge over which
the gods pass in Northern mythology.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Whittier, Volume VII (of
VII), by John Greenleaf Whittier
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF WHITTIER ***
***** This file should be named 9599.txt or 9599.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/9/5/9/9599/
Produced by David Widger
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
