The former was a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky, where, in 1825,
having heard that his brother, Mr. Thomas Rankin, of Virginia, had
become a slaveholder, he addressed to him a series of very earnest and
impressive letters in remonstrance. They were published first in a
periodical called the _Castigator_, and afterwards went through several
editions in pamphlet form. He denounced “slavery as a never-failing
fountain of the grossest immoralities, and one of the deepest sources
of human misery.” He insisted that “the safety of our government and
the happiness of its subjects depended upon the extermination of this
evil.” We New England Abolitionists, in the early days of our warfare,
made great use of Mr. Rankin’s volume as a depository of well-attested
facts, justifying the strongest condemnation, we could utter, of the
system of oppression that had become established in our country and
sanctioned by our government.
Mr. Paxton was the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Cumberland,
Virginia. He was a member of the Presbyterian General Assembly, which
in 1818 denounced “the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human
race as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of
human nature,--_utterly inconsistent with the law of God_.” Believing
what that grave body had declared, he set about endeavoring to convince
the church to which he ministered of the exceeding sinfulness of
slaveholding; and that “they ought to set their bondmen free so soon as
it could be done with advantage to them.” His preaching to this effect
gave offence to many of his parishioners, and led to his dismission. In
justice to himself, and to the cause of humanity, for espousing which
he had been persecuted, Mr. Paxton also published a volume of letters,
which were of great service to us. In these letters he faithfully
exposed the abject, debased, suffering condition of our American
slaves,--incomparably worse than that which was permitted under the
Mosaic dispensation,--and pretty effectually demolished the Bible
argument in support of the abomination. However, the labors of these
good men, and of those whom they roused, were erelong diverted into the
seductive channel of the Colonization scheme.
But there was another of the early antislavery reformers, of whom I may
write much more fully in accordance with my plan, which is to give,
for the most part, only my _personal recollections_ of the prominent
actors, and the most significant incidents, in our conflict with the
giant wrong of our nation and age.