THE ABOLITIONISTS--WHO AND WHAT THEY WERE
In selecting those who are to receive its remembrance and its honors,
the world has always given its preference to such as have battled for
freedom. It may have been with the sword; it may have been with the
pen; or it may have been with a tongue that was inflamed with holy
rage against tyranny and wrong; but whatever the instrumentality
employed; in whatever field the battle has been fought; and by
whatsoever race, or class, or kind of men; the champions of human
liberty have been hailed as the bravest of the brave and the most
worthy to receive the acclaims of their fellows.
Now, if that estimate be not altogether inaccurate, what place in the
scale of renown must be assigned to those pioneers in the successful
movement against African slavery in this country who have commonly
been known as "Abolitionists"--a name first given in derision by their
enemies? It should, in the opinion of the writer hereof, be the very
highest. He is not afraid to challenge the whole record of human
achievements by great and good men (always save and except that which
is credited to the Saviour of mankind) for exhibitions of heroism
superior to theirs. Nay, when it is remembered that mainly through
their efforts and sacrifices was accomplished a revolution by which
four million human beings (but for the Abolitionists the number to-day
in bondage would be eight millions) were lifted from the condition in
which American slaves existed but a few years ago, to freedom and
political equality with their former masters; and, at the same time
when it is considered what qualities of heart and brain were needed
for such a task, he does not believe that history, from its earliest
chapters, furnishes examples of gods or men, except in very rare and
isolated cases, who have shown themselves to be their equals.
In the matter of physical courage they were unsurpassed,
unsurpassable. A good many of them were Quakers and non-resistants,
and a good many of them were women, but they never shrank from danger
to life and limb, when employed in their humanitarian work. Some of
them achieved the martyr's crown.
In the matter of conscience they were indomitable. Life to them was
worth less than principle.
In the matter of money they were absolutely unselfish. Those of them
who were poor, as the most of them were, toiled on without the hope of
financial recompense. They did their work not only without the promise
or prospect of material reward of any kind, but with the certainty of
pains and penalties that included the ostracism and contempt of their
fellows, and even serious risks to property and life.
All these sacrifices were in the cause of human liberty; but of
liberty for whom? That is the crucial point. In all ages there have
been plenty of men who have honorably striven for liberty for
themselves. Some there have been who have risen to higher planes. We
have an example in Lafayette. He fought to liberate a people who were
foreign in language and blood; but they were of his own color and the
peers of his compatriots.
The Abolitionists, however, espoused the cause, and it was for that
that they endured so much, of creatures that were infinitely below
them; of beings who had ceased to be recognized as belonging to
humanity, and were classed with the cattle of the field and other
species of "property." So low were they that they could neither
appreciate nor return the services rendered in their behalf. For their
condition, the Abolitionists were in no sense responsible. They had no
necessary fellowship with the unfortunates. They were under no
especial obligation to them. They were not of the same family. It was
even doubted whether the races had a common origin. And yet, to the
end of securing release for these wretched victims of an intolerable
oppression, not a few of them dedicated all they possessed--life not
excepted.
True it is that they had no monopoly of benevolence. Many noble men
and women have gone as missionaries to the poor and benighted, and
have sought through numerous hardships and perils to raise up those
who have been trodden in the dust. But, as a rule, their services have
been rendered pursuant to a secular employment that carried financial
compensation, and behind their devotion to the poor and oppressed has
been the expectation of personal reward in another world, if not in
this. But such motives barely, if at all, influenced the
Abolitionists. No element of professionalism entered into their work.
They were not particularly religious. They neither very greatly
reverenced nor feared the Church, whose leaders they often accused of
a hankering for the "flesh-pots" that induced them to lead their
followers into Egypt, rather than out of it. They were partly moved by
a hatred of slavery and its long train of abuses that was
irrepressible, and which to most persons was incomprehensible, and
partly by a love for their fellows in distress that was so insistent
as to make them forget themselves. Their impulses seemed to be largely
intuitive, if not instinctive, and if called upon for a philosophical
explanation they could not have given it.
In such a struggle for freedom and natural human rights as was carried
on by the Abolitionists against tremendous odds and through a term
covering many long years, it does seem to the writer of this essay
that mortal heroism reached its height.
Nor am I by any means alone in the opinion just expressed. As far back
as 1844, when the Abolitionists were few in number and the objects of
almost savage persecution in every part of our country, the Earl of
Carlisle, who, in his day was one of the most capable leaders of
British public opinion, declared that they were engaged "in fighting a
battle without a parallel in the history of ancient or modern
heroism."
I am moved to write the story of the Abolitionists, partly because it
is full of romantic interest, and partly because justice demands it.
Those doughty file leaders in the Anti-Slavery fight do not to-day
have an adequate acknowledgment of the obligations that the country
and humanity should recognize as belonging to them, and they never
have had it. Much of the credit that is fairly theirs has been
mis-applied. Writers of history--so called, although much of it is
simple eulogy--have been more and more inclined to attribute the
overthrow of slavery to the efforts of a few men, and particularly one
man, who, after long opposition to, or neglect of, the freedom
movement, came to its help in the closing scenes of a great conflict,
while the earlier, and certainly equally meritorious, workers and
fighters have been quite left out of the account. The writer does not
object to laborers who entered the field at the eleventh hour, sharing
with those who bore the heat and burden of the day; but when there is
a disposition to give to them all the earnings he does feel like
protesting.
The case of the Abolitionists is not overstated when it is said that,
but for their labors and struggles, this country, instead of being all
free, would to-day be all slaveholding. The relative importance of
their work in creating, by means of a persistent agitation, an
opposition to human slavery that was powerful enough to compel the
attention of the public and force the machine politicians, after long
opposition, to admit the question into practical politics, cannot well
be overestimated.
They alone and single-handed fought the opening battles of a great
war, which, although overshadowed and obscured by later and more
dramatic events, were none the less gallantly waged and nobly won. It
is customary to speak of our Civil War as a four years' conflict. It
was really a thirty years' war, beginning when the pioneer
Abolitionists entered the field and declared for a life-and-death
struggle. It was then that the hardest battles were fought.
I write the more willingly because comparatively few now living
remember the mad excitement of the slavery controversy in ante-bellum
days. The majority--the living and the working masses of to-day--will,
doubtless, be gratified to have accurate pictures of scenes and events
of which they have heard their seniors speak, that distinguished the
most tempestuous period in our national history--the one in which the
wildest passions were aroused and indulged. Then it was that the
fiercest and bitterest agitation prevailed. The war that followed did
not increase this. It rather modified it--sobered it in view of the
crisis at hand--and served as a safety-valve for its escape.
For the same reason, the general public has now but slight
comprehension of the trials endured by the Abolitionists for
principle's sake. In many ways were they persecuted. In society they
were tabooed; in business shunned. By the rabble they were hooted and
pelted. Clowns in the circus made them the subjects of their jokes.
Newspaper scribblers lampooned and libelled them. Politicians
denounced them. By the Church they were regarded as very black sheep,
and sometimes excluded from the fold. And this state of things lasted
for years, during which they kept up a steady agitation with the help
of platform lecturers, and regularly threw away their votes--so it
was charged--in a "third party" movement that seemed to be a hopeless
venture.
Another inducement to the writer to take up the cause of the
Abolitionists is the fact that he has always been proud to class
himself as one of them. He came into the world before Abolitionism, by
that name, had been heard of; before the first Abolition Society was
organized; before William Lloyd Garrison founded his _Liberator_, and
before (not the least important circumstance) John Quincy Adams
entered Congress. He cannot remember when the slavery question was not
discussed. His sympathies at an early day went out to the slave. He
informed himself on the subject as well as a farmer boy might be
expected to do in a household that received the most of its knowledge
of current events from the columns of one weekly newspaper. He cast
his first vote for the ticket of the Abolitionists while they were yet
a "third party."
The community in which he then lived, although in the free State of
Ohio, was strongly pro-slavery, being not far from the Southern
border. The population was principally from Virginia and Kentucky.
There were a few Abolitionists, and they occasionally tried to hold
public meetings, but the gatherings were always broken up by mobs.
The writer very well remembers the satisfaction with which he, as a
schoolboy, was accustomed to hear that there was to be another
Abolition "turn-out." The occasion was certain to afford considerable
excitement that was dear to the heart of a boy, and it had another
recommendation. The only room in the village--"town" we called
it--for such affairs, except the churches, which were barred against
"fanatics," was the district schoolhouse, which, by common consent,
was open to all comers, and as the windows and doors, through which
missiles were hurled during Anti-Slavery gatherings, were always more
or less damaged, "we boys" usually got a holiday or two while the
building was undergoing necessary repairs.
As might be surmised, the lessons I learned at school were not all
such as are usually acquired at such institutions. My companions were
like other children, full of spirit and mischief, and not without
their prejudices. They hated Abolitionists because they--the
Abolitionists--wanted to compel all white people to marry "niggers."
Although not naturally unkind, they did not always spare the feelings
of "the son of an old Abolitionist." We had our arguments. Some of
them were of the knock-down kind. In more than one shindy, growing out
of the discussion of the great question of the day, I suffered the
penalty of a bloody nose or a blackened eye for standing up for my
side.
The feeling against the negroes' friends--the Abolitionists--was not
confined to children in years. It was present in all classes. It
entered State and Church alike, and dominated both of them. The
Congressional Representative from the district in which I lived in
those days was an able man and generally held in high esteem. He made
a speech in our village when a candidate for re-election. In
discussing the slavery question--everybody discussed it then--he spoke
of the negroes as being "on the same footing with other cattle." I
remember the expression very well because it shocked me, boy that I
was. It did not disturb the great majority of those present, however.
They cheered the sentiment and gave their votes for the speaker, who
was re-elected by a large majority.
About the same time I happened to be present where a General Assembly
of one of our largest religious denominations was in session, and
listened to part of an address by a noted divine--the most
distinguished man in the body--which was intended to prove that
slavery was an institution existing by biblical authority. He spent
two days in a talk that was mostly made up of scriptural texts and his
commentaries upon them. This was in Ohio, and there was not a
slave-owner in the assembly, and yet a resolution commendatory of the
views that had just been declared by the learned doctor, was adopted
by an almost unanimous vote.
In the neighborhood in which I lived was an old and much respected
clergyman who was called upon to preach a sermon on a day of some
national significance. He made it the occasion for a florid panegyric
upon American institutions, which, he declared, assured freedom to all
men. Here he paused, "When I spoke of all men enjoying freedom under
our flag," he resumed, "I did not, of course, include the Ethiopians
whom Providence has brought to our shores for their own good as well
as ours. They are slaves by a divine decree. As descendants of Ham,
they are under a curse that makes them the servants of their more
fortunate white brethren." Having thus put himself right on the
record, he proceeded with his sermon. No one seemed to take exception
to what he said.
In the same neighborhood was a young preacher who had shortly before
come into it from somewhere farther North. In the course of one of his
regular services he offered up a prayer in which he expressed the hope
that the good Lord would find a way to break the bands of all who were
in bondage. That smacked of Abolitionism and at once there was a
commotion. The minister was asked to explain. This he declined to do,
saying that his petition was a matter between him and his God, and he
denied the right of others to question him. That only increased the
opposition, and in a short time the spunky young man was compelled to
resign his charge.
About that time there appeared a lecturer on slavery--which meant
against slavery--who carried credentials showing that he was a
clergyman in good standing in one of the leading Protestant
denominations. In our village was a church of that persuasion, whose
pastor was not an Abolitionist. As in duty bound, the visiting brother
called on his local fellow-laborer, and informed him that on the
following day, which happened to be Sunday, he would be pleased to
attend service at his church. On the morrow he was on hand and
occupied a seat directly in front of the pulpit; but, notwithstanding
his conspicuousness, the home minister, who should, out of courtesy,
have invited him to a seat in the pulpit, if to no other part in the
services, never saw him. He looked completely over his head, keeping
his eyes, all through the exercises, fixed upon the back pews, which
happened, on that occasion, to be chiefly unoccupied.
Such incidents, of themselves, were of no great importance. Their
significance was in the fact that they all occurred on the soil of a
free State. They showed the state of feeling that then and there
existed.