[191]To the Same.
SHEFFIELD, Sept. 30, 1847.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I should have answered your letter of the 6th before,
but sermons have been in hand or the first and second Sundays of
October in New York, and my hand is commonly too weary, when engaged in
such tasks, to turn to anything else.
I sent the late edition of my--things (works, they call 'em) to the
Harvard College Library, and if you will take the second volume, you
will see, in a sermon "On the Slavery Question," how entirely I agree
with you hat this is the great trial question of the country. And I
think it will press upon the country this coming winter is it never
has before. It certainly will if the Californias are ceded to us, and
the Wilmot Proviso is brought before Congress, not for hypothetical,
but for practical, actual decision. If it should be, I entertain the
most painful apprehensions for the result. We have lost a host by the
death of Silas Wright. A sagacious politician said to a friend of mine
the other day, "It is a special providence, for it has saved us from a
dissolution of the Union." His opinion was that Silas Wright, if he lad
lived, would have been President; and you know that he would have taken
his stand on the Proviso.
The judgment of the individual to whom I have just referred presents
the true issue. It is Policy against Right. I suppose there is not a
man in New England who does not wish for the extinction of Slavery. I
suppose there is hardly a man at the North who does not feel that the
system is wrong, that it ought to be abolished, and must eventually be
abolished; and that the only question about its abolition is a question
of time. [192] But here is the peril,--that a good many persons in
Congress and out of Congress will falter in their conviction before the
determined stand of the South,--the determination, that is to say, to
break off from the Union rather than submit to the Wilmot Proviso. And
I do most seriously fear, for my part, that they would hold to that
determination. But I am prepared, for myself, to say that, rather than
yield the national sanction to this huge and monstrous wrong, I would
take the risk of any consequences whatever. I reason for the nation
as I would for myself. I say, rather than tell a lie, I would die.
I cannot deliberately do wrong, and I cannot consent that my people
shall. I would rather consent to the dismemberment of my right hand
than to lay it in solemn mockery on the altar of injustice. As I have
said in the sermon to which I have referred you, suppose that we were
called upon to legalize polygamy or no marriage in California; would we
do it? Certainly we would not, though all the Southern States should
threaten to break off from us for our refusal, and should actually do
it. I asked a similar question with regard to legalizing theft, in my
sermon on the Annexation of Texas; and one of the stanchest opposers of
the Wilmot Proviso once told me that that was the hardest instance he
had ever been called upon to answer.
But though he felt the force of the moral parallel, still policy was
carrying it with him over the right; or rather I should say, perhaps,
that he resolved the right' of the matter into temporary expediency. He
did not mean to cross the line of conscience, but he thought it should
sway to this great emergency.
This, I say, is the great peril; and he who would raise up this nation
to the height of this great argument, must [193] lift it to the
determination to do no wrong,--must lift it high enough, in fact, to
see that the right is the only true policy.
Who shall do it? You exhort me to write. I shall do so as I am able,
and see occasion, as I have done. I shall scarcely refrain, I suppose,
from writing this winter. But alas! I am broken in health, and am
totally unable fairly and fully to grapple with any great subject. I
have more than I can well, or, I fear, safely do to meet the ordinary
calls of my pulpit.
In fact I am a good deal discouraged about my ability to do good in any
way, unless it be by quiet study, and such fruits as may come of it. I
have encountered so much misconstruction within a year past, or rather
have come to the knowledge of so much, that I am seriously tempted, at
times, to retire from the pulpit, from the church, from the open field
of controversy in every form, and to spend the remainder of my days in
studies, which, if they last long enough, may produce a book or two
that will not subject me to that sort of personal inquisition which I
find has beset me hitherto.
You may be surprised at my saying this, and may ask if I have not had
as much honor and praise as I deserve. I do not deny it. But still
there is, unless I am mistaken, a sort of question about me as a
professional person,--about my professional sanctity, or strictness, or
peculiarity, that moves my indignation, I must say, but (what is more
serious) that makes me doubt whether, as a clergyman, I am doing any
good that is proportionate to my endeavors, and inclines me to retreat
from this ground altogether. How, for instance, if I have any desirable
place in one denomination, could the "Christian World" venture to say
that I had done more hurt [194] by my observation about teetotalism
in my Washington discourse than all the grog-shops in the land! How
could a clerical brother of mine seriously propose, as if he spoke the
sense of many, to have me admonished about my habits of living,--of
eating, he said, but perhaps he meant drinking, too,--my habits, who am
a remarkably simple and small eater; and, as to wine, do not taste it
one day in twenty! Yet this person actually attributed my ill-health
to luxurious living. I live as list; I feast as other men feast, when
I am at a feast, which is very rarely; I laugh as other men laugh; I
will not have any clerical peculiarity in my manners; and if his cannot
be understood, I will retire from the profession, for I will be a man
more than a minister. I came unto the profession from the simplest
possible impulse,--from a religious impulse; I have spoken in it as I
would,--with earnestness, if nothing else,--and I cannot throw away
this earnestness upon a distrusting community. Besides, I confess that
I am peculiarly sensitive to personal wrong. I do not suppose that this
blackguardism of the Abolition press would have found anywhere a more
sensitive subject than I am. It fills me with horror,--as if I had been
struck with a blow and beaten into the mire and dust in the very street.
I must have some great faults,--that is my conclusion,--and such
faults, perhaps, as unfit me for doing much good. I open my heart to
you. God bless you and yours.
Your assured friend,