The coming of George Thompson to our country in the fall of
1834, and his thrilling eloquence respecting our great national
iniquity, awakened general attention to the subject, and caused more
excitement about it than before. He came, as it were, a missionary
from the philanthropists of Great Britain to show our people their
transgression. The politicians tried to get up the public indignation
against him as “a foreign emissary interfering with our political
affairs.” The religionists resented his coming as an impertinence,
though _they_ were much engaged in sending missionaries to the heathen
to reclaim them from sins no more heinous than ours. Nevertheless,
the people flocked to hear him, and many were converted. The demand
for antislavery lectures came from all parts of New England, and from
many parts of the Middle and Western States. A great work was to be
done. The fields were whitening to the harvest, but the laborers were
few. I therefore accepted the renewed invitation of the Massachusetts
Antislavery Society to become its General Agent and Corresponding
Secretary, and removed to Boston early in the spring of 1835. Many
of my nearest relatives and dearest friends received me kindly, but
with sadness. They feared I should lose my standing in the ministry
and become an outcast from the churches. For a while it seemed as if
their apprehensions were not groundless. None of the Boston ministers,
excepting Dr. Channing, welcomed me. Dr. Follen, Dr. Ware, Jr., and
Dr. Palfrey were then resident in Cambridge; Mr. Pierpont was in
Europe. James Freeman Clarke had not left Louisville, and Theodore
Parker was a student in the Divinity School. I was indeed soon made to
feel that I was not in good repute. Dr. Ware, who had charge of the
Hollis Street pulpit in the absence of the pastor, invited me to supply
it, if I found I could do so consistently with my new duties. I engaged
for two Sundays. But at the close of the first, one of the chief
officers of the church waited upon me, by direction of the principal
members, and requested me not to enter their pulpit again, assuring me,
if I should do so, that a dozen or more of the prominent men with their
families would leave the house. Of course I yielded that, and I was not
invited into any other pulpit in the city, excepting Dr. Channing’s,
during the fifteen months that I resided there.
Soon after my removal to Boston I was informed that a young and very
popular minister in a neighboring town had preached an antislavery
sermon on the Fast Day then just past. I hurried to see him, and
requested him to read to me the sermon. He did so. It was an admirable
_exposé_ of the wickedness of holding men in slavery, and of the
duty incumbent upon all Christian and humane persons to do what they
could to break such a yoke. It was the outpouring of an ingenuous,
benevolent, generous heart, that deeply felt for the wrongs of the
outraged millions in our country.
I begged a copy of the discourse for the press, assuring him it would
be a most valuable contribution to the cause of the oppressed. He
consented to let me have it, promising that, after retouching and
fitting it for the press, he would send it to me. I returned to the
Antislavery office and made arrangements to publish a large edition of
that, which would then have been a remarkable sermon.
After waiting more than a week for the promised manuscript I called
upon the author again. In answer to my inquiry why he had not fulfilled
his promise he said: “I have concluded not to allow the discourse to
be published. Some of the most prominent members of our church have
earnestly advised me not to give it to the press.” “Why,” said I,
“have they convinced you that slaveholding is not as sinful as you
represented it to be, or that you have been misinformed as to the
condition of our enslaved countrymen?” “O no,” he replied, “but then
this is a very complicated, difficult matter between our Northern and
Southern States, and I have been admonished to let it alone.” “Do you
believe,” I inquired, “that those who so admonished you were prompted
to give you such advice by their sense of justice to the enslaved,
their compassion for those millions to whom all rights are denied,
and whose conjugal, parental, filial, and fraternal affections are
trampled under foot? Or were they influenced by pecuniary, or by party
political considerations?” “It is not for me, sir, to say what their
motives were,” he replied, in a tone that intimated displeasure. “They
are among my best friends, and the most respectable members of my
parish. I am bound to give heed to their counsel. I mean so to do. I
shall not allow my sermon to be published. I shall not commit myself
to the antislavery cause.” “Let me only say,” I added, “if you do not
commit yourself to the cause of the _oppressed_, you will probably,
erelong, be found on the side of the _oppressor_.” So we parted. And my
prediction was fulfilled.
Two or three years afterwards it was reported that the same gentleman,
having visited the Southern States and enjoyed the hospitality of the
slaveholders, returned and preached a discourse very like “The South
Side View of Slavery,” by Dr. Adams, of Essex Street.
On Fast Day, 1852, it so happened that I was visiting a parishioner
of this brother minister. I accompanied him to church, and heard from
that very able and eloquent preacher the most unjust and cruel sermon
against the Abolitionists that I had ever listened to or read.
This incident and my reception in Boston prepared me in a measure
for the warning given me by the New York merchant, as related on
page 127. Still, I could not think so badly of my fellow-citizens,
my fellow-Christians of the North, the New England States, as I was
afterwards compelled to do.
That the cancer of slavery had eaten still deeper than I was willing to
believe was soon after made too apparent to me.