There were many noble confessors of the antislavery gospel, and
many self-sacrificing sufferers in the cause, in various parts of
our country, to whom I should be doing great injustice not to speak
particularly of their services, if I were writing a complete history
of our protracted conflict for impartial liberty. But I must confine
myself, for the most part, to my personal recollections of prominent
events and the individuals who were most conspicuous within my own
limited view.
It is to be hoped that a complete history of this second American
Revolution will, erelong, be written by Mr. Garrison, the man of all
others best qualified to write it,--except that he will not give that
prominence to himself in his narrative which he took in the beginning
and occupied until emancipation was proclaimed for all in bondage
throughout our borders. He has been the coryphæus of our antislavery
band. He uttered the first note that thrilled the heart of the nation.
He, more than any one, has corrected the national discord. And he has
led the grand symphony in which so many millions of our countrymen at
last have gladly, exultingly joined.
But so many have, at different periods and in various ways, contributed
to the glorious result that it will not be possible even for Mr.
Garrison to do ample justice to all his fellow-laborers. Indeed, many
of them cannot be known to him, or to any one but the Omniscient.
As in every other war, the fate of many a battle was decided by the
indomitable will and heroic self-sacrifice of some nameless private
soldier, who happened to be at the point of imminent peril, so,
no doubt, has a favorable turn sometimes been given to our great
enterprise by the undaunted moral courage and persistent fidelity of
one and another, who are unknown but to Him who seeth in secret.
In my last article I gave an account of the bitter persecution of Mr.
Thompson. The fact that he was a foreigner was used with great effect
to exasperate the mobocratic spirit against him; but the real gist of
his offence was the same that every one was guilty of, who insisted
upon the abolition of slavery.
At the annual meeting of the American Antislavery Society in May, 1835,
I was sitting upon the platform of the Houston Street Presbyterian
Church in New York, when I was surprised to see a gentleman enter
and take his seat who, I knew, was a partner in one of the most
prominent mercantile houses in the city. He had not been seated long
before he beckoned me to meet him at the door. I did so. “Please walk
out with me, sir,” said he; “I have something of great importance
to communicate.” When we had reached the sidewalk he said, with
considerable emotion and emphasis, “Mr. May, we are not such fools
as not to know that slavery is a great evil, a great wrong. But it
was consented to by the founders of our Republic. It was provided for
in the Constitution of our Union. A great portion of the property of
the Southerners is invested under its sanction; and the business of
the North, as well as the South, has become adjusted to it. There are
millions upon millions of dollars due from Southerners to the merchants
and mechanics of this city alone, the payment of which would be
jeopardized by any rupture between the North and the South. We cannot
afford, sir, to let you and your associates succeed in your endeavor
to overthrow slavery. It is not a matter of principle with us. It is a
matter of business necessity. We cannot afford to let you succeed. And
I have called you out to let you know, and to let your fellow-laborers
know, that we do not mean to allow you to succeed. We mean, sir,” said
he, with increased emphasis,--“we mean, sir, to put you Abolitionists
down,--by fair means if we can, by foul means if we must.”
After a minute’s pause I replied: “Then, sir, the gain of gold
must be better than that of godliness. Error must be mightier than
truth; wrong stronger than right. The Devil must preside over the
affairs of the universe, and not God. Now, sir, I believe neither of
these propositions. If holding men in slavery be wrong, it will be
abolished. We shall succeed, your pecuniary interests to the contrary
notwithstanding.” He turned hastily away; but he has lived long enough
to find that he was mistaken, and to rejoice in the abolition of
slavery.
We were soon made to realize that the words of the New York merchant
were not an unmeaning threat. He had not spoken for himself, or any
number of the moving spirits of that commercial metropolis alone. He
was warranted in saying what he did by the pretty general intention
of the “gentlemen of property and standing” throughout the country to
put a stop to the antislavery reform. The storm-clouds of persecution
had gathered heavily upon our Southern horizon. Fiery flashes of
wrath had often darted thence towards us. But we were slow to believe
that our Northern sky would ever become so surcharged with hatred for
those, who were only contending for “the inalienable rights of man,”
as to break upon us in any serious harm. The summer and fall of 1835
dispelled our misplaced confidence. We found, to our shame and dismay,
that even New England had leagued with the slaveholding oligarchy to
quench the spirit of impartial liberty, and uphold in our country the
most cruel system of domestic servitude the world has ever known. The
denunciations of the South were reverberated throughout the North. The
public ear was filled with most wanton, cruel misrepresentations of our
sentiments and purposes, and closed, as far as possible, against all
our replies in contradiction, explanation, or defence. The political
newspapers, with scarcely an exception, teemed with false accusations,
the grossest abuse, and the most alarming predictions of the ultimate
effects of our measures. The religious papers and periodicals were
no better. The churches in Boston, not less than elsewhere, were
closed against us. Not a minister[B]--excepting Dr. Channing, and
the one in Pine Street Church--would even venture to read a notice
of an antislavery meeting. Dr. Henry Ware, Jr., was denounced and
vilified for having done so from Dr. Channing’s pulpit. All the public
halls, too, of any tolerable size, were one after the other refused
us. Even Faneuil Hall, the so-called cradle of American liberty, was
denied to our use, though asked for in a respectful petition signed
by the names of a hundred and twenty-five gentlemen of Boston, whose
characters were as irreproachable as any in the city. But a few weeks
afterwards, on the 21st of August, at the request of fifteen hundred
of the “gentlemen of property and standing,” that hall, in which had
been cradled the independence of the United States, was turned into the
Refuge of Slavery. There as large a multitude as could crowd within its
spacious walls, with feelings of alarm for the safety of our country,
and of indignation at the Abolitionists as disturbers of the peace,
already excited by the grossest misrepresentations of our sentiments,
purposes, and acts, industriously disseminated by newspapers and in
reports of public speeches throughout the Southern States,--there, in
Faneuil Hall, thousands of our fellow-citizens were infuriated yet
more against us by harangues from no less distinguished civilians than
the Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, Peleg Sprague, and Richard Fletcher.
These gentlemen reiterated all the common unproved charges against
us, and solemnly, eloquently, passionately argued and urged that the
enslavement of millions of the people in our country was a matter
with which we of the Northern States had no right to meddle. It was a
concern, they insisted, of the Southern States alone, found there when
these portions of our Republic were about to emerge from their colonial
dependence upon Great Britain, and left there by the framers of the
Constitution, which was meant to be the fundamental law of our glorious
Union. They harped upon the guaranties given to the slaveholders,
that they should be sustained and undisturbed in _enforcing_ their
claim of _property_ in the persons and services of their laborers.
And those gentlemen insisted that the endeavors of Abolitionists to
convince their fellow-citizens of the heinous wickedness of holding
human beings in slavery gave just offence to those who were guilty of
the sin; violated the compact by which these United States were held
together, and, if they were permitted to be prosecuted, would cause the
dissolution of the Union.
Meetings of a similar character, in the same or a more violent spirit
of denunciation, were held in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
most of the cities of the nation. What were the immediate effects of
this general outcry against us I shall narrate as briefly as I may.