It should be stated, however, that the excitement which had become
so general and so furious against the Abolitionists throughout the
slaveholding States was owing in no small measure to an individual
with whom Mr. Garrison and his associates had had no connection. David
Walker, a very intelligent colored man of Boston, having travelled
pretty extensively over the United States, and informed himself
thoroughly of the condition of the colored population, bond and free,
had become so exasperated that he set himself to the work of rousing
his fellow-sufferers to a due sense of “their degraded, wretched,
abject condition,” and preparing them for a general and organized
insurrection. In the course of the year 1828 Mr. Walker gathered about
him, in Boston and elsewhere, audiences of colored men, into whom he
strove to infuse his spirit of determined, self-sacrificing rebellion
against their too-long endured and unparalleled oppression. Little was
known of these meetings, excepting by those who had been specially
called to them. But in September, 1829, he published his “_Appeal to
the colored citizens of the world, in particular and very expressly to
those of the United States_.”
It was a pamphlet of more than eighty octavo pages, ably written, very
impassioned and well adapted to its purpose. The second and third
editions of it were published in less than twelve months. And Mr.
Walker devoted himself until his death, which happened soon after, to
the distribution of copies of this Appeal to colored men who were able
to read it in every State of the Union.
Just as I had written the above sentence, Dr. W. H. Irwin, of
Louisiana, came in with an introduction to me. He is one of many Union
men who have been stripped of their property and driven out of the
State by President Johnson’s and Mayor Monroe’s partisans. Learning
that he had been a resident many years in the Southern States, I
inquired if he saw or heard of Walker’s Appeal in the time of it. He
replied that he was living in Georgia in 1834, was acquainted with
the Rev. Messrs. Worcester and Butler, missionaries to the Cherokees,
and knew that they were maltreated and imprisoned in 1829 or 1830 for
having one of Walker’s pamphlets, as well as for admitting some colored
children into their Indian school.
So soon as this attempt to excite the slaves to insurrection came
to the knowledge of Mr. Garrison, he earnestly deprecated it in his
lectures, especially those addressed to colored people. And in his
first number of the _Liberator_ he repudiated the resort to violence,
as wrong in principle and disastrous in policy. His opinions on this
point were generally embraced by his followers, and explicitly declared
by the American Antislavery Society in 1833.
But as we wished that our fellow-citizens South as well as North should
be assured of our pacific principles, and as we hoped to abolish the
institution of slavery by convincing slaveholders and their abettors
of the exceeding wickedness of the system, we did send our reports,
tracts, and papers to all white persons in the Southern States with
whom we were any of us acquainted, and to distinguished individuals
whom we knew by common fame, to ministers of religion, legislators,
civilians, and editors. _But in no case did we send our publications to
slaves._ This we forbore to do, because we knew that few of them could
read; because our arguments and appeals were not addressed to them; and
especially because we thought it probable that, if our publications
should be found in their possession, they would be subjected to some
harsher treatment.
Notwithstanding our precaution, the Southern “gentlemen of property
and standing” denounced us as incendiaries, enemies, accused us of
intending to excite their bondmen to insurrection, and to dissolve
the Union. They would not themselves give any heed to our _exposé_
of the sin and danger of slavery, nor would they suffer others so
to do who seemed inclined to hear and consider. They assaulted,
lynched, imprisoned any one in whose possession they found antislavery
publications. They waylaid the mails, or broke into post-offices,
and tore to pieces or burnt up all papers and pamphlets from the
North that contained aught against their “peculiar institution,” and
significantly admonished, if they did not summarily punish, those to
whom such publications were addressed. Meetings were called in most, if
not all, of the principal cities of the South, at which Abolitionists
were denounced in unmeasured terms, and the friends of the Union, North
and South, and East and West, were peremptorily summoned to suppress
them. By the votes of such meetings, and still more by the acts of
the Legislatures of several States, large rewards--$5,000, $10,000,
$20,000--were offered for the abduction or assassination of Arthur
Tappan, William Lloyd Garrison, Amos A. Phelps, and other prominent
antislavery men. Moreover, letters of the most abusive character were
sent to us individually, threatening us with all sorts of violence,
arson, and murder.
Sad to relate, the corrupting, demoralizing influence of slavery was
not confined to those who were directly enforcing the great wrong
upon their fellow-beings. Those who had consented to such desecration
of humanity were found to be almost as much contaminated as the
slaveholders themselves. “The whole head of the nation was sick, and
the whole heart was faint.” The “gentlemen of property and standing”
at the North, yes, even in Massachusetts, espoused the cause of the
slaveholders. The editors of most of the newspapers, religious as well
as secular, and of some of the graver periodicals, nearly all of the
popular orators, and very many of the ministers of religion, spoke and
wrote against the doctrine of the Abolitionists. They extenuated the
crime of denying to fellow-men the God-given, inalienable rights of
humanity, apologized for those who had been born to an inheritance of
slaves, and insisted that “slavery was an ordination of Providence,
sanctioned by our sacred Scriptures, even the Christian Scriptures.”
This last was the chief weapon with which the religionists throughout
the Northern as well as Southern States combated the Abolitionists. Not
a few sermons were preached in various parts of New England, as well
as New York and other Middle States, in justification of slaveholding.
The professors of Princeton Theological School published a pamphlet in
defence of slavery, and Professor Stuart, of Andover, the great leader
of New England orthodoxy, gave the abomination his sanction. The record
of our Cambridge Divinity School is much more honorable. Dr. Henry
Ware, Jr., evinced a deep interest in our enterprise, and incurred some
censure for manifesting his interest. Dr. Follen identified himself
with us at an early day, and, as I shall tell hereafter, was one of
the sufferers in the cause; and Dr. Palfrey, though at the time of
which I am writing rather privately, expressed an appreciation of our
principles, which a few years afterwards impelled him to pecuniary
sacrifice and a course of conduct in Congress which deservedly placed
him high on the list of the antislavery worthies.[C] All the large,
influential ecclesiastical bodies in our country--the Presbyterian,
the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Baptist--threw over the churches of
their sects throughout the Southern States the shield of their consent
to, if not their approval of, slaveholding; and, I grieve to add, the
American Unitarian Association could not be induced to pronounce its
condemnation of the tremendous sin, the sum of all iniquities.
Most religionists of every name, our own not excepted, insisted that
slavery was a political institution, with which, as Christians,
it would be inexpedient for us to meddle; and the politicians and
merchants did all in their power to disseminate this view of the
matter, and close the doors of the churches and the lips of the
ministers against this “exciting subject.” I need not add they were too
successful.
Most of the prominent statesmen, and all the political demagogues
of both parties, took the ground that the great question as to the
enslavement of the colored population of the South was _settled_ by
the framers of the Constitution; that it was a matter to be left
exclusively to the States in which slavery existed; that to meddle
with it was to violate the provisions of the fundamental law of the
land and loosen the bands of the Union. Therefore the Abolitionists
were to be regarded as disturbers of the public peace, incendiaries,
enemies of their country, traitors. And it was proclaimed by many in
high authority, and shouted everywhere by the baser sort, “that the
Abolitionists ought to be abolished,” by any means that should be found
necessary. Thus outlawed, given up to the fury of the populace, we were
subjected to abuses and outrages, of which I can give only a brief
account.
We were slow to believe that our fellow-citizens of the New England
States could be so besotted by the influence of the institution of
slavery, that they would _outrage our persons_ in its defence. We had
had proofs enough that “the gentlemen of property and standing,” “the
wise and prudent,” with their dependants, had shut their ears against
the truth, and turned away their eyes from the grievous wrongs we were
imploring our country to redress. This treatment we had experienced,
with increasing frequency, ever since the formation of the American
Antislavery Society, in December, 1833. But we were unwilling to
apprehend anything worse, certainly in Massachusetts. We trusted that
our persons would be sacred, though we had learned that the liberty of
speech and of the press was not.
Late in the fall of 1833 I delivered, in Boylston Hall, at the request
of the New England Antislavery Society, a discourse “On the Principles
and Purposes of the Abolitionists, and the Means by which they intended
to subvert the Institution of Slavery.” The audience was large, and
among my hearers I was delighted to see my good friend (afterwards
Dr.) F. W. P. Greenwood, then one of the editors of the _Christian
Examiner_. He remained after the meeting was over, and to my great joy
said to me, “I have liked your discourse much. I wish everybody who is
opposed to the antislavery reform could hear or read it. If you will
prepare it as an article for the _Examiner_, I will publish it there.”
Glad of this avenue to the minds and hearts of so many who I especially
wished should understand and appreciate the work to which I had wholly
committed myself, I set about converting my discourse into a review
of our best antislavery publications, and making it, as a literary
production, more worthy of a place in the chief periodical of our
denomination. It was too late for the January number, 1834, so I aimed
to have it in readiness for the March number. In due time I called at
the office and inquired how soon my manuscript would be wanted. The
publisher asked what was the subject of my article; and on learning
that it was to be an explanation of the sentiments and purposes of
the Abolitionists, he said, to my astonishment, with much emphasis,
“We do not want it; it cannot be published.” “Why,” I said, “is not
Mr. Greenwood one of the editors, and do not he and his colleague
decide what shall be put into the _Examiner_?” “Generally they do,”
he replied; “indeed, I never interfered before. But in this case I
must and shall. The _Examiner_ is my property. It would be seriously
damaged if an article favoring Abolition should appear in it. I should
lose most of my subscribers in the slave, and many in the free States.
And I cannot afford to make such a sacrifice.” But I rejoined, “Mr.
Greenwood has heard all the essential parts of the article. He approved
of it, thought it would do good, and requested me to prepare it for
publication.” Mr. B. replied, with more earnestness than before, “Mr.
May, it shall not be published. If I should find it all printed on the
pages of the _Examiner_, just ready to be issued, I would suppress the
number and publish another, with some other article in the place of
yours.”
I hastened to Mr. Greenwood for redress. With evident mortification
and sorrow he confessed his inability to do me justice. Nevertheless,
in the July number, 1834, there was allowed to be published, on the
397th page, a paragraph, written by one of the Boston ministers, “for
the special instruction of such ardent, but mistaken philanthropists
among us as think they are justified, from their abhorrence of
slavery, and their zeal for universal emancipation, to interfere with
the constitutions of civil governments, or the personal rights of
individuals.”
Having permitted such an assault to be made upon us in their pages,
I could not doubt that the editors of the _Examiner_ would suffer me
to be heard in defence. I therefore prepared carefully a respectful
“letter” to them, trusting it would appear in their next number. But,
to my surprise and serious displeasure, it was excluded. The letter was
accordingly published in the _Liberator_, which, here let me say to
its distinctive honor, always allowed the foes as well as the friends
of freedom and humanity a place in its columns. And the editors of the
_Examiner_, unsolicited, did me the favor, in their November number,
1834, page 282, to refer to my letter, commending its “eloquence
and its good spirit, although circumstances obliged them to decline
publishing it, and advising their readers to procure it and read it,
and the documents to which it refers.” This evinced the willingness of
those gentlemen to deal fairly, but showed that they were _in bondage_.
Immediately after the first New England Antislavery Convention,
which closed on the 29th of May, 1834, I devoted four or five weeks
to lecturing on the Abolition of Slavery in most of the principal
towns between Boston and Portland. In several places there were
strong expressions of hostility to our undertaking. But nothing like
personal violence was offered me. I stopped over Sunday, 8th of June,
at Portsmouth, to supply brother A. P. Peabody’s pulpit, that he
might preach in a neighboring town. I consented to do this, on the
condition that I might deliver an antislavery lecture from his pulpit
on Sunday evening. This he gladly agreed to, and took pains to publish
my intention. But, greatly to my surprise, after the forenoon service,
the Trustees of the church waited upon me, and informed me that, at the
earnest demand of many prominent members, I should not be allowed to
speak on slavery from their pulpit; that the meeting-house would not
be opened that evening. My remonstrance with them was of no avail. So
at the close of my afternoon services I said to the congregation: “You
are all doubtless aware that I had arranged with your excellent pastor
to deliver a lecture on American slavery from this desk this evening.
But during the intermission your Trustees called and peremptorily
forbade my doing so. Has our consenting with the oppressors of the poor
indeed brought us to this? That I, who am striving to be a minister of
Him “who came to break every yoke” am forbidden to plead with you who
are reputed to be an eminently Christian church the cause of millions
of our countrymen who are suffering the most abject bondage ever
enforced upon human beings? I know not, I do not wish to know, who
those prominent members of your church are that have presumed to close
this pulpit, and deny to others the right to manifest their sympathy
for the down-trodden, and to hear what may and should be done for their
relief. The time shall come when those prominent ones will be brought
down, and their children and children’s children will be ashamed to
hear of their act.”
With this exception, and an unsuccessful attempt to disturb a meeting
that I was addressing in Worcester, I met with no serious molestation
in any of the towns of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Maine, where
I lectured during the summer and autumn of 1834. The faces of many of
the rich and fashionable were averted from me; but “the common people”
seemed to hear me gladly. Politicians and would-be statesmen often
encountered me in the stage-coaches and at the hotels where I stopped.
Many of our conflicts were amusing rather than terrible. They always
based themselves upon “the provisions of the Constitution,” about
which it was soon made to appear, that they knew little or nothing.
They took it for granted that the fathers of our Republic agreed that
slavery should exist in any of the States where the white citizens
chose to have it; and that the Constitution of our Union gave certain
guarantees for the protection of their “peculiar institution” to the
States in which it was maintained. Moreover, these political savans
insisted that the Constitution provided that this matter should be
left wholly to the slaveholders themselves; and that all condemnation
of it as a wicked system, and the exposure of its evils and its
horrors, was a violation of State comity, if not of the _rights_ of our
fellow-citizens of the South.
Perceiving how little most of such friends of the Union knew about the
fundamental law of our Republic, and finding, on inquiry, that copies
of the Constitution were in that day very scarce, I not unfrequently
shut up my opponents almost as soon as they opened their mouths upon
the subject. When they ventured to say, “The Constitution, sir, settled
this question in the beginning,” I would inquire, “My friend, have you
ever read the Constitution?” “Everybody knows, sir, that slavery--”
“Have you, yourself, read that document to which you appeal?” “Why,
sir, do you presume to deny that guarantees--” “My friend, I ask again,
have you yourself ever read the Constitution of the United States? I
do not care to go into an argument with you until I know whether you
are acquainted with our great national charter.” In this way, time
and again, I drew from my would-be opponents (sometimes justices of
the peace), the acknowledgment that they had never themselves seen a
copy of the Constitution, but supposed that what everybody, except
the Abolitionists, said of its provisions must be true. Occurrences
of this sort I reported to the managers of the Antislavery Society so
frequently, that they caused a large edition of the United States
Constitution to be printed, so that copies of it might be distributed
with our tracts, wherever the agents and lecturers saw fit. This was
one of the _naughty_ things we did, so inimical to the peace and
well-being of our country.
The discussions which I had with sundry individuals who were acquainted
with the subject led me to study the Constitution with greater care
and deeper interest than ever before. It seemed to me that we owed it
to the memory of those venerated men whose names are conspicuous in
the early history of our Republic--those men who so solemnly pledged
“their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to the cause
of freedom and the inalienable rights of man--to exonerate them, if
we fairly could, from the awful responsibility that was laid upon
them by those who insisted that they _guaranteed_ to the Southern
States the unquestioned exercise of their assumed right to enforce the
_enslavement_ of one sixth part of the population of the land, many
of whom had shared with them in all the hardships and perils of their
struggles for independence. It seemed to me that every article of
the Constitution usually quoted as intended to favor the assumptions
of slaveholders admitted of an opposite interpretation, and that we
were bound by every honorable and humane consideration to prefer
that interpretation. The conclusions to which I was brought on this
subject I gave some time afterwards in the _Antislavery Magazine_
for 1836. But the publication of the “Madison Papers,” in which was
given the minutes, debates, etc., of the convention which framed the
Constitution, I confess, disconcerted me somewhat. I could not so
easily maintain my ground in the discussions which afterwards agitated
so seriously the Abolitionists themselves,--some maintaining that
the Constitution was, and was intended to be, proslavery; others
maintaining that it was antislavery. It seemed to me that it might be
whichever the people pleased to make it. I rejoice, therefore, with joy
unspeakable that the question is at length practically settled, though
by the issue of our late awful war.