CONTINUED EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT BY FORCE AND
INTIMIDATION.--FAVOURABLE EFFECT UPON THE PUBLIC MIND PRODUCED BY
JAY'S WRITINGS.
The second anniversary of the American Antislavery Society was held at
the Presbyterian Church at Houston and Thompson Streets in New York on
the 12th of May, 1835. James G. Birney, of Kentucky, George Thompson, of
England, and William Lloyd Garrison made addresses. Judge Jay was
appointed foreign corresponding secretary, and instructed to convey to
the Duc de Broglie, president of the French Society for the Abolition of
Slavery, the sympathy of American abolitionists.
The increasing activity and strength of the antislavery movement were
not unnoticed by the partisans of the Slave Power, both North and South,
and an incident occurred at Charleston, S. C., on the night of July
29th, which illustrated the temper and methods of the party. The
American Antislavery Society had directed their publishers to forward a
number of their periodical papers presenting facts and arguments on the
subject of slavery to various Southern gentlemen of distinction in the
hope of inspiring a spirit of inquiry among persons of influence and
character. "But it was precisely this spirit of inquiry," said Judge
Jay, "that the advocates of perpetual bondage feared might be fatal to
their favourite institution. Hence they affected to believe that the
papers sent to the masters were intended to incite the slaves to
insurrection." The fact that a considerable number of antislavery
publications had arrived at Charleston became known, and a mob broke
into the post-office and burned the mail in the streets. Arthur Tappan,
William L. Garrison, and Rev. Samuel H. Cox were burned in effigy. Mass
meetings were held at Charleston and Richmond to approve the action of
the mob, and aroused great excitement throughout the country. A
committee was appointed at Charleston to take charge of the Northern
mail on its arrival and to see that no antislavery papers should reach
their destinations. The postmaster advised the postmaster-general that
under existing circumstances he had determined to suppress all
antislavery publications, and asked for instructions. Amos Kendall,
Jackson's postmaster-general, whose sworn duty it was to preserve the
sanctity of the mails, was only too willing to act as the tool of the
Slave Power. "We owe," he replied, "an obligation to the laws, but a
higher one to the communities in which we live, and if the former be
perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.
Entertaining these views, I _cannot sanction and will not condemn the
step you have taken_." These novel and dangerous doctrines, by which the
laws of the republic were to be set aside by public officers for
political purposes, received the sanction of President Jackson.
The postmaster at New York, Samuel L. Gouverneur, proposed to the
American Antislavery Society that it voluntarily desist from sending its
publications by mail, but the Executive Committee properly refused to
yield the legal rights which they possessed in common with their
fellow-citizens. The postmaster announced that antislavery papers would
not be forwarded until further notice, and wrote to Washington for
instructions. Kendall replied that he was "deterred from giving an order
to exclude the whole series of antislavery publications from the
Southern mail only by a want of legal power." Such a power, he admitted,
vested in the head of the post-office department, would be fearfully
dangerous and had been withheld properly; but he added, with more regard
to the public opinion of the moment than to the principles of the
Constitution, "If I were situated as you are, I would do as you have
done." Some members of the Executive Committee wished to test the action
of the New York postmaster in the United States courts, but Judge Jay
opposed the plan for reasons which he gave in a letter to Elizur Wright,
Jr.: "The action must be brought and tried in the city of New York--in
that city in which this same gentleman, after his offence had been
publicly proclaimed by himself in the newspapers, addressed thousands of
the citizens in the Park and was received by their applause. Nor is this
all. His conduct is commended by his superior, who is a member of the
President's cabinet and probably acts with the approbation of General
Jackson. Under such circumstances, I think it improbable that a
prosecution would be attended with any result beneficial to our cause.
We have not surrendered our rights, but they have been violently wrested
from us.... _Festina lente_ is sometimes a safe maxim. Fidelity to our
principles and prudence in our conduct will, in time, through the
blessing of God, crown our labours with success. You think it is hardly
to be supposed that the people of the North are willing to give up the
right of the post-office. Certainly they are not willing to give up
their own, but they are willing _at present_ to give up _our_ right to
it."
The South, recognizing the growing strength of antislavery opinion,
began its appeals to the North to save the Union by suppressing the
abolitionists. A public meeting in Virginia requested that this might be
done "by strong yet lawful, by mild yet constitutional means"--terms
which recalled the inquisitor of the Holy Office handing over condemned
heretics to the executioner with the ironical request that he would
deal with them tenderly and without blood-letting. In deference to the
Slave Power the post-office had been made to nullify the freedom of the
press, and freedom of speech was now to be suppressed, if possible, by
mob violence. The situation of abolitionists in this year may be
inferred from letters written from Brooklyn during the summer by Mrs.
Lydia Maria Child: "I have not ventured into the city, nor does one of
us dare to go to church to-day, so great is the excitement here. You can
form no conception of it. 'Tis like the times of the French Revolution,
when no man dared trust his neighbour. Private assassins from New
Orleans are lurking at the corners of the streets to stab Arthur Tappan;
and very large sums are offered for any one who will get Mr. George
Thompson into the slave States. I tremble for him. He is almost a close
prisoner in his chamber, his friends deeming him in eminent peril the
moment it is ascertained where he is.... Five thousand dollars were
offered on the Exchange in New York for the head of Arthur Tappan on
Friday last. Elizur Wright is barricading his house with shutters, bars,
and bolts. Judge Jay has been with us two or three days. He is as firm
as the everlasting hills."
The popular feeling against the abolitionists was growing daily, and
from every quarter they were charged with "unconstitutional,
insurrectionary, and diabolical designs." To attempt to disabuse the
community of the false impressions received from pro-slavery speakers
and newspapers seemed the most important duty at this time. The
following anonymous letter, signed "A Returning Southerner," was
received by Arthur Tappan, and placed the necessity for such action in a
strong light:
"Though we are unknown to each other, yet the friendship I feel for
you induces me to address you. I have been where you have not, and
have heard what you have not, and believe that great prudence is
requisite on your part. I do not ask you to remit your philanthropic
efforts. Heaven and future ages, if not the present, will appreciate
them.
"I do not pretend to advise, but have often thought that you and
your friends do not take sufficient means to disabuse the public of
the ceaseless charges of a multitude of papers.
"A vast majority in this city have never seen one of your papers,
and countless multitudes, not only here but through our vast
republic, believe without a doubt, for they have seen it unceasingly
asserted and never contradicted, that you ardently wish your
incendiary publications to excite the slaves to rebellion and
bloodshed, massacre and rapine in their worst forms. While this
impression is so common, or rather so universal, I was glad to see
in circulation, as tending in some measure to your safety and the
safety of this association, that you address not the slave but his
master--a fact well enough known by your vengeance-seeking foes, but
not known by those whom they intend to use as instruments of
violence. I only presume further to suggest a card, to be inserted
at least a week in the _Courier and Inquirer_, stating in brief
terms that you do not advocate the violence imputed to you; that you
address the reason of white men, not the passions of slaves."
The Executive Committee of the American Antislavery Society resolved to
ask Judge Jay to prepare such a statement as the crisis called for. Jay
was on a tour through the White Mountains at the time, but immediately
on his return he prepared the following address, which was published in
September, 1835, and was widely circulated in America and Europe:
"_To the Public._
"In behalf of the American Antislavery Society we solicit the candid
attention of the public to the following declaration of our
principles and objects. Were the charges which are brought against
us made only by persons who are interested in the continuance of
slavery, and by such as are influenced solely by unworthy motives,
this address would be unnecessary; but there are those who merit and
possess our esteem, who would not voluntarily do us injustice, and
who have been led by gross misrepresentations to believe that we are
pursuing measures at variance not only with the constitutional
rights of the South but with the precepts of humanity and religion.
To such we offer the following explanations and assurances:
"1st. We hold that Congress has no more right to abolish slavery in
the Southern States than in the French West India Islands. Of course
we desire no national legislation on the subject.
"2d. We hold that slavery cannot be lawfully abolished except by the
Legislatures of the several States in which it prevails, and that
the exercise of any other than moral influence to induce such
abolition is unconstitutional.
"3d. We believe that Congress has the same right to abolish slavery
in the District of Columbia that the State governments have within
their respective jurisdictions, and that it is their duty to efface
so foul a spot from the national escutcheon.
"4th. We believe the American citizens have the right to express and
publish their opinions of the constitutions, laws, and institutions
of any and every State and nation under heaven; and we mean
never to surrender the liberty of speech, of the press, or of
conscience--blessings we have inherited from our fathers, and which
we intend, so far as we are able, to transmit unimpaired to our
children.
"5th. We have uniformly deprecated all forcible attempts on the part
of the slaves to recover their liberty; and were it in our power to
address them we would exhort them to observe a quiet and peaceful
demeanour, and would assure them that no insurrectionary movement on
their part would receive from us the slightest aid or countenance.
"6th. We would deplore any servile insurrection, both on account of
the calamities which would attend it and on account of the occasion
which it would furnish of increased severity and oppression.
"7th. We are charged with sending incendiary publications to the
South. If by the term 'incendiary' is meant publications containing
arguments and facts to prove slavery to be a moral and political
evil, and that duty and policy require its immediate abolition, the
charge is true. But if this term is used to imply publications
encouraging insurrection and designed to excite the slaves to break
their fetters, the charge is utterly and unequivocally false. We beg
our fellow-citizens to notice that this charge is made without
proof, and by many who confess that they have never read our
publications, and that those who make it offer to the public no
evidence from our writings in support of it.
"8th. We are accused of sending our publications to the slaves, and
it is asserted that their tendency is to excite insurrections. Both
the charges are false. These publications are not intended for the
slaves, and were they able to read them, they would find in them no
encouragement to insurrection.
"9th. We are accused of employing agents in the slave States to
distribute our publications. We have never had one such agent. We
have sent no packages of our papers to any person in those States
for distribution, except to five respectable resident citizens at
their own request. But we have sent by mail single papers addressed
to public officers, editors of newspapers, and clergymen. If,
therefore, our object is to excite the slaves to insurrection, the
masters are our agents!
"10th. We believe slavery to be sinful, injurious to this and to
every other country in which it prevails; we believe immediate
emancipation to be the duty of every slaveholder, and that the
immediate abolition of slavery, by those who have the right to
abolish it, would be safe and wise. These opinions we have freely
expressed, and we certainly have no intention to refrain from
expressing them in future, and urging them upon the consciences and
hearts of our fellow-citizens who hold slaves or apologize for
slavery.
"11th. We believe that the education of the poor is required by
duty, and by a regard for the permanency of our republican
institutions. There are thousands and tens of thousands of our
fellow-citizens, even in the free States, sunk in abject poverty,
and who, on account of their complexion, are virtually kept in
ignorance, and whose instruction in certain cases is actually
prohibited by law. We are anxious to protect the rights and to
promote the virtue and happiness of the coloured portion of our
population, and on this account we have been charged with a design
to encourage intermarriage between the whites and the blacks. This
charge has been repeatedly and is now again denied; while we repeat
that the tendency of our sentiments is to put an end to the criminal
amalgamation that prevails wherever slavery exists.
"12th. We are accused of acts that tend to a dissolution of the
Union, and even of wishing to dissolve it. We have never 'calculated
the value of the Union,' because we believe it to be inestimable,
and that the abolition of slavery will remove the chief danger of
its dissolution; and one of the many reasons why we endeavour to
preserve the Constitution is that it restrains Congress from making
any law 'abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.'
"Such, fellow-citizens, are our principles. Are they unworthy of
Christians and of republicans? Or are they in truth so atrocious
that in order to prevent their diffusion you are yourselves willing
to surrender at the dictation of others the invaluable privilege of
free discussion, the very birthright of Americans? Will you, in
order that the abominations of slavery may be concealed from public
view, and that the capital of your republic may continue to be as it
now is, under the sanction of Congress, the great slave-mart of the
American continent, consent that the general government, in
acknowledged defiance of the Constitution and laws, shall appoint
throughout the length and breadth of your land ten thousand censors
of the press, each of whom shall have the right to inspect every
document you may commit to the post-office, and to suppress every
pamphlet and newspaper, whether religious or political, which in his
sovereign pleasure he may adjudge to contain an incendiary article?
Surely we need not remind you that if you submit to such an
encroachment on your liberties the days of our republic are
numbered, and that although abolitionists may be the first, they
will not be the last victims offered at the shrine of arbitrary
power.
"(Signed)
"ARTHUR TAPPAN,
"JOHN RANKIN,
"WILLIAM JAY,
"ELIZUR WRIGHT, JR.,
"ABRAHAM L. COX,
"LEWIS TAPPAN,
"JOSHUA LEAVITT,
"SAMUEL E. CORNISH,
"SIMEON S. JOCELIN,
"THEODORE S. WRIGHT.
"NEW YORK, September 3d, 1835."
The effect of Jay's address to the public was thus described by Elizur
Wright, Jr.: "The Southern papers are copying it extensively, and most
of them charge us with having disclaimed in it our real motives--a proof
that our real sentiments were before misunderstood. In a large number of
Northern papers it is copied with more or less approbation. Indeed, none
but the determined pro-slavery presses fail to speak of it as a candid,
firm, and honourable if not convincing document." "It has had a most
beneficial effect," wrote Lewis Tappan. "What a contrast to the
ebullition of public meetings!"
A movement was begun in the year 1835, on the part of the Southern press
and Southern Legislatures to induce penal legislation in the North
against the expression of antislavery sentiments. The _Richmond Whig_
revealed its opinion of its Northern allies when it said: "Depend upon
it, the Northern people will never sacrifice their lucrative trade with
the South so long as the hanging of a few thousands will prevent it." In
obedience to these demands, pro-slavery men in the North were actually
to be found proposing legislation intended to destroy the freedom of the
press and to make antislavery expression a criminal offence. Judge Jay
took occasion to meet this movement in a charge which he delivered to
the Westchester Grand Jury, in which he said: "Any law which might be
passed to abridge in the slightest degree the freedom of speech or of
the press, or to shield any one subject from discussion, would be
utterly null and void; and it would be the duty of every genuine
republican to resist with energy and decision so palpable an outrage on
the declared will of the people." These remarks were widely published
and did much to discourage the pro-slavery agitators.
But other illegitimate and violent schemes to reduce to silence
antislavery men were soon brought into play. South Carolina having
inaugurated the assault upon the constitutional rights of the North
through the post-office, Alabama followed in a yet bolder step against
the personal security of abolitionists. Governor Gayle, of that State,
demanded of the Governor of New York that Ransom G. Williams, the
publishing agent of the Antislavery Society, should be surrendered to
him to be tried under the laws of Alabama on an indictment found
against him by the Grand Jury for publishing in the _Emancipator_, in
the city of New York, the following sentiment: "God commands and all
nature cries out that man should not be held as property. The system of
making men property has plunged two and a quarter millions of our
fellow-countrymen into the deepest physical and moral degradation, and
they are every moment sinking deeper." This expression was the most
offensive which the Alabama Grand Jury could discover in the documents
of the society on which to base the indictment and demand, and as the
one which came nearest to anything resembling an attempt to incite the
slaves to insurrection. Williams had never been in the State of Alabama,
was never subject to its laws, had never fled from its jurisdiction, and
these facts were admitted by the Governor when he made requisition for
Williams as a "fugitive from justice." While the American Antislavery
Society was considering what action it should take for the protection of
its agent, Lewis Tappan wrote to Judge Jay (8th September) suggesting
that he should get the opinion of two or three eminent lawyers on the
subject to be circulated by the society. Jay replied: "The Southern
papers have intimated that Northern abolitionists may be indicted in the
courts and then demanded of the State executives, and you request my
opinion whether it would be advisable to obtain and publish the legal
opinion of eminent counsel on this novel doctrine. The doctrine is so
monstrous, so utterly at variance with all our ideas of constitutional
and State rights, that it shocks the understanding and moral sense of
the community, and I verily believe that there is not one Northern
governor who would dare to arrest a citizen on such a demand. But if we
manifest alarm at this doctrine and get lawyers to controvert it, there
will be found rival presses, venal lawyers, and corrupt politicians to
support the other side of the question; the community will begin to
discuss the subject, passion and interest and prejudice will believe
whatever they want to believe. My opinion, therefore, is that the less
we say on this subject the better, and that we should not give a
factitious importance to the doctrine." Jay's advice was followed and
proved to be wise. Governor Marcy could do nothing but refuse the
request of Governor Gayle, although he softened his refusal by abuse of
the abolitionists.
Under the leadership of Alvan Stewart a convention was called to meet at
Utica on October 21, 1835, to form a New York State Antislavery Society.
About six hundred delegates were present. The spirit of mob violence,
which was being encouraged by pro-slavery orators and presses throughout
the country to suppress the abolitionists by force, was relied upon to
prevent the meeting of the convention. The mob having occupied in
advance the room in the court-house prepared for the meeting, the
delegates repaired to a Presbyterian Church, where they had barely
enough time to organize and elect officers before the riotous
supporters of slavery broke into the church and violently dispersed the
convention. The lawless tyranny to which the delegates were subjected
and their courageous conduct attracted to their cause many persons who
had held aloof hitherto. Chief among these was Gerrit Smith, who from
this time gave to the antislavery movement unstinted contributions of
money and intelligent labour. Judge Jay, notwithstanding his unavoidable
absence from the convention, was elected president of the society then
formed.
At about the same time as the Utica riots occurred the mobbing of
William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, by "gentlemen of property and
standing." And all over the North were enacted scenes of violence,
encouraged by a large portion of the press, which were intended to
gratify the Southern demand that abolitionism should be put down at all
hazards. The sanctity of the mails, the constitutional right of free
speech and of lawful assemblage, were forgotten by a large portion of
the people. And they were forgotten by the President of the United
States himself. In December, 1835, Andrew Jackson, in his message to
Congress, gave a tacit approval to mob rule, to the suppression of the
freedom of the press, and to the oft-exposed falsehood that the
abolitionists distributed documents among the slaves intended to incite
them to insurrection; and he recommended the closing of the mails to
antislavery people.
The position taken by President Jackson was so unjust, so
unconstitutional, and so calculated to aggravate the situation, that the
American Antislavery Society determined to make an official reply to it.
Judge Jay was chosen to answer the President on behalf of the society,
and he prepared an address which was signed by all the officers. This
document was a complete exposure of the falsity of the charges made and
of the unlawfulness of the restrictive measures which Jackson proposed
to Congress.
"You have accused," said Jay, "an indefinite number of your
fellow-citizens, without designation of name or residence, of making
unconstitutional and wicked efforts, and of harbouring intentions
which could be entertained only by the most depraved and abandoned
of mankind; and yet you carefully abstain from averring _which_
article of the Constitution they have transgressed; you omit stating
when, where, and by whom these wicked attempts were made; you give
no specification of the inflammatory appeals which you assert have
been addressed to the passions of the slaves. You well know that
the 'moral influence' of your charges will affect thousands and
tens of thousands of your countrymen, many of them your
political friends--some of them heretofore honoured with your
confidence--most, if not all of them, of irreproachable character;
and yet, by the very vagueness of your charges, you incapacitate
each one of this multitude from proving his innocence.... It is
deserving of notice that the _attempt_ to circulate our papers is
alone charged upon us. It is not pretended that we have put our
appeals into the hands of a single slave, or that in any instance
our endeavours to excite a servile war have been crowned with
success. And in what way was our most execrable attempt made? By
secret agents, traversing the slave country in disguise, stealing by
night into the hut of the slave, and reading to him our inflammatory
appeals? You, sir, answer this question by declaring that we
attempted the mighty mischief by circulating our appeals _through
the mails_! And are the Southern slaves, sir, accustomed to receive
periodicals by mail? Of the thousands of publications mailed from
the antislavery office for the South, did you ever hear, sir, of one
solitary paper being addressed to a slave? Would you know to whom
they were directed, consult the Southern newspapers, and you will
find them complaining that they were sent to public officers,
clergymen, and other influential citizens. Thus, it seems, we are
incendiaries who place the torch in the hands of him whose dwelling
we would fire! We are conspiring to incite a servile war, and
announce our design to the masters and commit to their care and
disposal the very instruments by which we expect to effect our
purpose!... To repel your charges and to disabuse the public was a
duty we owed to ourselves, to our children, and, above all, to the
great and holy cause in which we are engaged. That cause we believe
is approved by our Maker; and while we retain this belief, it is our
intention, trusting to His direction and protection, to persevere in
our endeavours to impress upon the minds and hearts of our
countrymen the sinfulness of claiming property in human beings, and
the duty and wisdom of immediately relinquishing it. When convinced
that our endeavours are wrong, we shall abandon them, but such
conviction must be produced by other arguments than vituperation,
popular violence, or penal enactments."
In 1836 Judge Jay resigned the presidency of the New York State
Antislavery Society. The distance of his home from the headquarters of
the society made the office nearly nominal, and he thought that it
should be filled by a person more favourably situated for usefulness.
"We commenced the present struggle," he wrote in his letter of
resignation, "to obtain the freedom of the slave; we are compelled to
continue it to preserve our own. We are now contending, not so much with
the slaveholders of the South about human rights, as with the political
and commercial aristocracy of the North, for the liberty of speech, of
the press, and of conscience. Our politicians are selling our
constitutions and laws for Southern votes. Our great capitalists are
speculating, not merely in land and banks, but in the liberties of the
people. We are called to contemplate a spectacle never, I believe,
before witnessed--the wealthy portion of the community striving to
introduce anarchy and violence on a calculation of profit; making
merchandise of peace and good order! In Boston we have seen the editor
of a newspaper led through the streets with a halter by gentlemen 'of
property and standing.' The New York mobs were excited, not by the
humble penny press, but by the malignant falsehood and insurrectionary
appeals of certain commercial journals. Rich and honourable men in
Cincinnati have recently at a public meeting proclaimed lynch law, and
through their influence a printing-press devoted to freedom has been
destroyed, and the whole affair, we are coolly and most truly told,
was a _business transaction_.
[Illustration: William Jay]
"... It cannot be, it is not in human nature that judges and lawyers and
rich merchants will long enjoy the exclusive privileges of trampling on
the laws. These men are sowing the wind and they will reap the
whirlwind. They may see the buddings of their harvest in the recent
assaults upon the Holland Land Company. When the tempest of anarchy they
are now raising shall sweep over the land it will not be the humble
abolitionist, but the lofty possessor of power and fortune, who will
first be levelled by the blast.... The obligations of religion and of
patriotism; the duties we owe to ourselves, to our children, the cause
of freedom, and the cause of humanity--all require us to be faithful to
our principles, to persevere in our exertions, and to surrender our
rights only with our breath. Duties are ours and consequences are God's,
and while we discharge the first we may be confident that the latter
will be entirely consistent with our true welfare."