"And now, fellow-citizens, you may ask, what is our object in
thus exhibiting to you the alarming influence of the slave
power? Do we wish to excite in your bosoms feelings of hatred
against citizens of a common country? Do we wish to array the
Free states against the Slave states in hostile strife? No,
fellow-citizens. But we wish to show you that, while the slave
states are inferior to us in free population, having not even
one half of ours; inferior in morals, being the region of bowie
knives and duels, of assassinations and lynch law; inferior in
mental attainments, having not one-fourth of the number that can
read and write; inferior in intelligence, having not one-fifth
of the number of literary and scientific periodicals; inferior
in the products of agriculture and manufactures, of mines, of
fisheries, and of the forest; inferior, in short, in everything
that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the
stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,--it is
wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an
influence in all the departments of government so entirely
disproportionate to our own. We would arouse you to your own
true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to
maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the
South,--if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which is
continually injuring and impoverishing you; that system which
reduces two millions and a half of native Americans in your
midst to the most abject condition of ignorance and vice,
withholding from them the very key of knowledge; that system
which is at war with every principle of justice, every feeling
of humanity; that system which makes man the property of man,
and perpetuates that relation from one generation to another;
that system which tramples, continually, upon a majority of the
commandments of the Decalogue; that system which could not live
a day if it did not give one party supreme control over the
persons, the health, the liberty, the happiness, the marriage
relations, the parental authority and filial obligations of the
other;--if you choose to cling to such a system, cling to it;
but you shall not cross our line; you shall not bring that foul
thing here. We know, and we here repeat it for the thousandth
time to meet, for the thousandth time, the calumnies of our
enemies, that while we may present to you every consideration of
duty, we have no right, as well as no power, to alter your State
laws. But remember, that slavery is the mere creature of local
or statute law, and cannot exist out of the region where such
law has force. 'It is so odious,' says Lord Mansfield, 'that
nothing can be suffered to support it but _positive_ law.'
"We would, therefore, say to you again, in the strength of that
Constitution under which we live, and which no where
countenances slavery, you shall not bring that foul thing here.
You shall not force the corrupted and corrupting blood of that
system into every vein and artery of our body politic. You shall
not have the controlling power in all the departments of our
government at home and abroad. You shall not so negotiate with
foreign powers, as to open markets for the products of slave
labor alone. You shall not so manage things at home, as every
few years to bring bankruptcy upon our country. You shall not,
in the apportionment of public moneys, have what you call your
'property' represented, and thus get that which, by no right,
belongs to you. You shall not have the power to bring your
slaves upon our free soil, and take them away at pleasure; nor
to reclaim them, when they, panting for liberty, have been able
to escape your grasp; for we would have it said of us, as the
eloquent Curran said of Britain, the moment the slave touches
our soil, 'The ground on which he stands is holy, and
consecrated to the Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.'
"Thus, fellow-citizens, we come to _the great object of the
Liberty Party_: ABSOLUTE AND UNQUALIFIED DIVORCE OF THE GENERAL
GOVERNMENT FROM ALL CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY. We would employ
every _constitutional_ means to eradicate it from our entire
country, because it would be for the highest welfare of our
entire country. We would have liberty established in the
District, and in all the Territories. * * We would have
liberty of speech and of the press, which the Constitution
guarantees to us. We would have the right of petition most
sacredly regarded. We would secure to every man what the
Constitution secures, 'The right of trial by jury.' We would do
what we can for the encouragement and improvement of the colored
race, and restore to them that inestimable right of which they
have been so meanly, as well as unjustly, deprived, the RIGHT OF
SUFFRAGE. We would look to the best interests of the country,
and the _whole_ country, and not legislate for the good of an
Oligarchy, the most arrogant that ever lorded it over an
insulted people. We would have our commercial treaties with
foreign nations regard the interests of the Free states. We
would provide safe, adequate, and permanent markets for the
produce of free labor. And, when reproached with slavery, we
would be able to say to the world, with an open front and a
clear conscience, our General Government has nothing to do with
it, either to promote, to sustain, to defend, to sanction, or to
approve.
"Thus, fellow-citizens, you see our objects. You may now ask, by
what means we hope to attain them. We answer, by POLITICAL
ACTION. What is political action? It is _acting in a manner
appropriate to those objects which we wish to secure through the
agency of the different departments of Government_. * * The
only way in which we can act _constitutionally_, is to go to the
ballot-box, and there, silently and unostentatiously, deposit a
vote for such men as will do what they can to carry out those
principles which we have so much at heart.
* * * * *
"Come, then, men of Pennsylvania, come and join us in this good
work. Join us, to use such moral means as to correct public
sentiment throughout the region where slavery exists, and to
impress upon the people of the Free states a manly sense of
their own rights. Join us, to place "just men" in all our public
offices; men whose example a whole people may safely imitate.
Join us to free our General Government from the ignominious
reproach of slavery; to restore to our country those principles
which our fathers so labored to establish; and to hand these
principles down afresh to successive generations. It is the
cause of truth, of humanity, and of God, to which we invite your
aid. It is a cause of which you never need be ashamed. Living,
you may be thankful, and dying, you may be thankful, for having
labored in it. We have, as co-laborers with us, the noblest
allies that man can wish. Within, we have the deepest
convictions of conscience, the clearest deductions of reason;
and, all over the world, wherever man is found, the first, the
most ardent longings of the human soul. Without, we have the
happiness of nearly three millions of the human race; the honor,
as well as the best interests of our whole country; and the
universal consent of all good men whose moral vision is not
obscured by the mist of a low, misguided selfishness: while we
seem to hear, as it were, the voices of the great and the good,
the patriot and the philanthropist, of a past generation,
calling to us and cheering us on. But, above all these, and
beyond all these, we have with us the highest attributes of God,
Justice and Mercy. With such allies, and in such a cause, who
can doubt on which side the victory will ultimately rest.
"May He who guides the destinies of nations, and without whose
aid 'they labor in vain that build,' so incline your hearts to
exert your whole influence to place in all our public offices
just and good men, that our country may be preserved, her best
interests advanced, and her institutions, free in reality as in
name, handed down to the latest posterity."
Is not the love of God and man ingrained in every line of this writing?
Yet let us see how it was received by the most Christian (?) body in
this city.
I need hardly say that my father's mind had been largely impressed, from
earliest manhood, with the highest subject human thought can touch. His
library records his wide religious reading; but he could not see an
honest path towards the profession of any definite views till 1836. The
change wrought in him then, can best be gathered from his own simple
words (under date, 1842) written in a fly-leaf of "The Unitarian
Miscellany:" "Though I humbly trust that God made my trials in 1836 the
means of bringing me to true repentance, yet I have kept these books as
monuments of what I once was, and to remind me how grateful I should be
to Him for having snatched me as a 'brand from the burning,'" Such a
faith as this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it
always has for the heart that forms it! It tells not of a persuasion,
but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered
forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into
an attitude of positive vital faith. Its process is the only one that
gives real right to ultimate peace. In comparison with the method and
measure of such a conviction, what matters its specific form? Self-truth
is the point,--the fact for starting, the line for guiding; and as for
result, this lonely and solemn rally on the deepest within us, as it is
continuously unfolded, must lead to a glad and solemn union with the
Highest without us. Who can know unfailing inward energy except through
this new birth? It proved an ever-fresh spring of vigor to my father,
and because of it he was chosen, in 1839, president of "The Philadelphia
Bible Society." What changes were wrought in the policy of the Society,
what numerous plans were devised and executed for multiplying its
operations, how it was made a cordial alliance of all denominations,
will presently appear. This is now to be said: that, after filling his
office for five years, he found that his Anti-slavery testimony had
engendered in the managers a bitterness that would seize the address of
1844 for pretext, and make retaliation in his sacrifice. Thankful, for
the thousandth time, to be a sacrifice for the cause he loved, he sent
in his resignation in a letter full of Christian kindness and sorrow. A
short extract will show its tone:
"One whose great heart wishes the best for humanity calls to us
from the West: 'When your Society propose to put a Bible into
every family, and yet omit all reference to the slaves; and
when, giving an account of the destitution of the land, they
make no mention of two and a half millions of people perishing
in our midst without the Scriptures, can we help feeling that
something is dreadfully wrong?' This, brethren, is a most solemn
question. It is a question which I verily believe the American
Bible Society, so far as they may have yielded, directly or
indirectly, openly or silently, to a corrupt public sentiment on
this subject, will have to answer at the bar of Him who has
declared, that, 'If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin,'
and that 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of
these, ye did it not to me.' The spirit of Christianity is a
spirit of universal love and philanthropy. She looks down with
pity, and, if she could, she would look with scorn upon all the
petty distinctions that exist among men. She casts her benignant
eye abroad over the earth, and, wherever she sees man, she sees
him _as man,_ as a being made in the image of God, whether an
Indian, an African, or a Caucasian sun may shine upon him. She
stoops from heaven to raise the fallen, to bind up the
broken-hearted, to release the oppressed, to give liberty to the
captive, and to break the fetters of those that are bound. She
is marching onward with accelerated step, and, wherever she
leaves the true impress of her heavenly influence, the moral
wilderness is changed into the garden of the Lord. May it never
be ours to do what may seem to be even the slightest obstacle to
her universal sway.
"But I have already written more than I intended. In bringing
this communication to a close, allow me to express to you
individually, and as a Board, my most sincere Christian
attachment. Whatever course any members may have taken in
relation to this matter, I must believe that they have acted
from what has seemed to them a sense of duty. Far be it from me
to impeach their motives. Time, the great test of truth, may
show them their course in a very different light from that in
which they now view it. I may, as a Christian, lament that their
views of duty are not more in unison with my own. I may, as a
man, feel heart-sickened at the diseased, the deplorably
diseased state of the public mind, in relation to two and a half
millions of my fellow-men in bondage. I may, as a citizen of a
Free state, blush at the humiliating fact, that not only the
tyranny, but the ubiquity of the slave power is everywhere so
manifest; that it has insinuated itself into our free domain to
such a degree that there seems to be as much mental Slavery in
the Free states, as there is personal in the Slave states. I may
feel all this, but I must not impeach the motives by which
others have been governed."
There were twenty-one managers present at the reading of this letter,
and, at its conclusion, a noble friend of the slave moved that the
resignation be not accepted; the motion was lost by a vote of fourteen
against seven. It was then moved that it be accepted 'with regret:' this
was carried by the same vote! But 'with regret' was not an empty form
for easing this action to its recipient; how much it meant is seen in
the resolution that was added by unanimous acceptance:
"_Resolved_,--That this Board are mainly indebted to Professor C.D.
Cleveland for the prominent and influential position it has attained in
the regards of this Christian community, and that they bear an earnest
testimony to the sound judgment and unwearied zeal which have ever
characterized the discharge of his duties in his responsible office."
Let this tribute, coming from the bitterest personal opposition that
ever man encountered, measure the work that extorted it. Looking at it,
it will be difficult for the reader to believe that a sacrifice was made
of the man to whom it refers by a representative Christian body, and
merely to sate for a time the inhuman slave-greed; yet it is only one
fact out of many that might be adduced, and I have brought it forward
because it is, in my father's words, "a fair exponent of the position of
the Christian Church at that time upon the subject of Slavery."
Henceforward, he ceased not to rain blows, not only at his own (the
Presbyterian) denomination, but at all the organized expressions of
Christian purpose,--the Sunday-School Union, the Tract Society, etc.
While working thus by voice and pen, he was incessantly busy in personal
rescue of the slave. Especially was this the case when it became the
duty of every lover of his kind to defy the Fugitive Slave Law. How
eagerly he then sprang to aid the escape of those against whom a law of
the land impotently tried to bar the law of our common humanity! During
the years that followed the passage of this infamous bill, the position
he had attained here was of particular service. Recognized as one, who,
being a sort of standing sacrifice, might as well continue to battle in
the front; trusted implicitly even by his bitterest foes; with such a
broad philanthropy to back his appeals; pushing straight into every
breach where work was needed; blind to everything but his one light of
moral instinct;--he became an organ for the charities of those whose
softer natures longingly whispered the cry, but could not do the cut and
thrust work, of deliverance. Dr. Furness held the same position, and
others who, like him, refused to be enrolled in the 'Underground
Committee,' or in any definite Anti-Slavery organization. These men knew
that they were of greater service to the cause by being its body-guard,
by standing between it and the public, by making the appeals and taking
the blows, and by affording access, pecuniary and other, of each to
each.
Thus the times moved on--growing hotter, more difficult and dangerous,
but always working these two results: redoubling the labors of this
noble band, and shaking the city from lethargy into ferment. Men were
compelled to take sides, and but one result could follow, (the result
which always follows when human nature is stung and quickened to find
its highest instincts,) the Party of Right steadily moved to triumph.
* * * * *
For a lesson to us in courage, it is worth while to ask, how these
Apostles of Freedom stood the terrible strain put upon them for so many
years. I can answer for the two of whom I write, and do not doubt that
the answer is true of the rest: This self-forgetfulness was made easy by
a love that filled and overfilled all their moral energies--the simple
love of man, as God's highest creation, and of his natural rights, as
God's best gift. Their work was not a mere result of will, not an
outcome of faculty, not an unsupported impulse of heart. It was
character living itself out, an utterance of its entire unity, something
drawn from the solemn depths of those life-convictions which all the
personal and impersonal powers of a man, aglow and welded, unite in
producing. Hence, their work was not apart from them, even so far as to
be called ahead of them; nor parallel with them; it was _one_ with them
by a necessary spiritual inclusion. Will and Duty ceased to be separate
powers; they were transfused through the whole breadth of their human
sympathies, adding to their warmth a fixity of purpose that bore them
without a falter, through thirty years of such bitter obloquy, as, in
these latter days, only the early Anti-Slavery disciples have had to
endure. These men never said, in reference to the Anti-slavery cause, _I
ought_ or _I will_, because they never needed to say them. The sun
shines without them, and life expands without them; and here were souls
as unconsciously beneficent as the one, as spontaneous in growth and
shaping as the other. Theirs was not a force that moved mechanically in
right lines, with limited objects before it. It did, indeed, sweep with
arrowy swiftness of assail on every point that offered; but when I
remember that it more often pleaded than stormed, that it penetrated
into every secret recess that mercy casually opened, and gently stirred
into fuller life those roots of human feeling that can be numbed by
apathy but not killed even by hate, I know that it was persuasive,
diffusive, inbreathing force, an influence vital in others because an
effluence vitalized from themselves.
So they stood, self-consecrated, enveloped by the love of God, permeated
by the love of man,--twin Perfect Loves that cast out all dream of fear.
And so they walked, calm as if a thousand stabs of personal insult never
brought them one of personal pain, passing through all as if nothing but
the serenest skies were above them. And, as I have said, right there is
one explanation of the anomaly; there _were_ the serenest skies above
them--heaven's love perpetually shining. Why should it not shine? all
the powers of the men were dedicated to rescuing the image of God on
this earth,--not man as he suffered physically, but the moral instinct
threatened with annihilation. It was sacred to them, this soul so sacred
to redeeming love, but too brutalized to find its way to it. Nor merely
the slave. Their love embraced, with yet more pitying fervor, the master
compelling his spiritual nature into death, and the northern apologist
letting his die; and this overmastering love of saving spiritual
integrity, was one power that made them and heart-ease hold unfailing
friends through the obloquy of those days; the other must be found in
the fact mentioned,--that neither resolve nor impulse was their spur,
but personal character moving from its depths.
From such a motive-power as this can come no parade of results. The
nature that works, proceeds from the necessary laws and forces of its
being, and is as simple and unconscious as any other natural law or
force. Hence there are no startling epochs to record in my father's
history, no supreme efforts; in filling the measure of daily opportunity
lay his chief work. I cannot measure it by our ten fingers' counting. I
can only show a life unfolding, and, by the essential laws of its
growth, embracing the noblest cause of its time. But if action means
vivifying public sentiment decaying under insidious poison; if it
includes the doing of this amid a storm of odium that would quickly have
shattered any soul irresolute for an instant; if it means incessant toil
quietly performed, vast sums collected and disbursed, time sacrificed,
strength spent; if it means holding up a great iniquity to loathing by a
powerful pen, and nailing moral cowardice where-ever it showed; if it be
risking livelihood by introducing the cause of the slave into every
literary work, and by mingling the school-culture of fifty future
mothers, year by year, with hatred of the sin; if it means one's life in
one's hand, friendships yielded, society defied, and position in it
cheerfully renounced; above all, if action means a wealth of goodness
overliving all scorns, compelling respect from a community rebuked,
fellowship from a Church charged with ungodliness, and acknowledgment of
unstained repute from a public eager to blacken with scandal; if to do
thus, and bear thus, and live thus, is action, then my father did act to
the full purpose of life in the struggle that freed the slave.