The man who did more than any one, if not more than all of the members
of Congress from the free States, to procure the passage of the Bill of
Abominations, was _Daniel Webster_, who had represented Massachusetts
in the United States Senate for twenty-five years; who led her in
opposition to the Missouri Compromise in 1819, and for nearly twenty
years afterwards was regarded as a leader of the advanced guard of
liberty and humanity. But when, in 1838, he went into the Southern
States to make his bids for the presidency, he uttered words that
foretold his moral declension, though not to so deep a depth as he
descended in his advocacy of the Fugitive Slave Law. The infamy of his
speech on the 7th of March, 1850, can never be forgotten while he is
remembered. He then declared it to be his intention “to support the
Bill with all its provisions to the fullest extent.”
Another fact which adds a sting of bitterness to the shame of the North
was, that this Act, the baseness, meanness, cruelty of which no epithet
in my vocabulary can adequately express, became a law by the signature
of the President, subscribed by _Millard Fillmore_, a New York man and
a Unitarian withal.
Notwithstanding the general expressions of indignation and disgust at
Mr. Webster’s baseness and treachery in supporting the Fugitive Slave
Bill throughout the North, especially from all parts of his own State,
Massachusetts, he and other members of the Senate and the House of
Representatives persisted until, as we have seen, the Act became a law.
The arch-traitor was rewarded with the office of Secretary of State.
Such was his gratitude for this small compensation that, on taking
leave of the Senate, he pledged himself anew to the infamous principles
he had avowed on the 7th of March.[R]
No sooner was the deed done, the Fugitive Slave Act sent forth to be
the law of the land, than outcries of contempt and defiance came from
every free State, and pledges of protection were given to the colored
population. It is not within the scope of my plan to attempt an account
of the indignation-meetings that were held in places too numerous
to be even mentioned here. They will make a proud episode in the
history of our nation since 1830, whenever it shall be fully written.
Meanwhile, let me here refer my readers to the admirable Reports of
the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, especially those written by the
piquant pen, under the guidance of the astute mind, of Edmund Quincy,
for the last ten or fifteen years of our fiery conflict.
I must confine myself to my personal recollections, and in this
particular they are most grateful to me, and honorable to the city of
Syracuse, where I have resided since 1845.
The Fugitive Slave Act was signed by the President on the 18th of
September. Eight days afterwards, a call was issued through our
newspapers summoning the citizens of Syracuse and its vicinity, without
respect to party, to meet in our City Hall on the 4th of October
ensuing, to denounce and take measures to withstand this law. As the
time of the meeting approached the popular excitement increased, and
at an early hour the hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Hon. A.
H. Hovey, the Mayor of the city, was elected to preside, sustained
by eight vice-presidents of the two political parties, three of whom
had been then, or have been since, mayors of Syracuse, and the other
five, gentlemen of the highest respectability, though only one of them
had been active with the Abolitionists,--Hon. E. W. Leavenworth, Hon.
Horace Wheaton, John Woodruff, Esq., Captain Oliver Teall, Robert Gere,
Esq., Hon. L. Kingsley, Captain Hiram Putnam, Dr. Lyman Clary.
The President addressed the meeting very acceptably, declared himself
to be with us in opposition to the law, adding: “The colored man must
be protected,--he must be secure among us, come what will of political
organizations.” A series of thirteen resolutions was read, three of
which will make known sufficiently the spirit of them all. The second
was:--
1. “_Resolved_, That the Fugitive Slave Law, recently enacted by
the Congress of these United States, is a most flagrant outrage
upon the inalienable rights of man, and a daring assault upon the
palladium of American liberties.”
3. “That every intelligent man and woman throughout our country,
ought to read attentively, and understand the provisions of this
law, in all its details, so that they may be fully aware of its
diabolical spirit and cruel ingenuity, and prepare themselves to
_oppose_ all attempts to enforce it.”
13. “_Resolved_, That we recommend the appointment of a Vigilance
Committee of thirteen citizens, whose duty it shall be to see
that no person is deprived of his liberty without ‘due process of
law.’ And all good citizens are earnestly requested to aid and
sustain them in all needed efforts for the security of every person
claiming the protection of our laws.”
The meeting was addressed in a very spirited strain by two colored
gentlemen,--Rev. S. R. Ward and Rev. J. W. Loguen. They each declared
that they and their colored fellow-citizens generally had determined to
make the most violent resistance to any attempt that might be made to
re-enslave them. They would have their liberty or die in its defence.
Mr. Charles A. Wheaton, Chairman of a Committee, then read an Address
to the citizens of the State of New York, setting very plainly
before them the degradation to which this law would reduce them. It
showed them how the law would nullify all the provisions made in the
Constitution for the protection of our dearest rights, as well as the
liberties of any amongst us who might have complexions shaded in any
measure. And it called upon the citizens of the Empire State to rise in
their majesty and put down all attempts to enforce this law.
Hon. Charles B. Sedgwick then rose and advocated the Resolutions and
Address in an admirable speech. He exposed the atrocious features of
the slave-catching law in detail, demonstrated its unconstitutionality
as well as cruelty, and awakened throughout his audience the keenest
indignation against it. He said it was the vilest law that tyranny
ever devised. He would resist it, and he called on all who heard him
to resist it everywhere, in every way, to the utmost of their power.
Rev. R. R. Raymond, of the Baptist Church, then spoke stirring words in
thrilling tones. “How can we do to others as we would that they should
do to us, if we do not resist this law? Citizens of Syracuse! shall
a live man ever be taken out of our city by force of this law?” “No!
No!!” was the response loud as thunder. “Let us tell the Southerners,
then, that it will not be safe for them to come or send their agents
here to attempt to take away a fugitive slave. [Great applause.] I will
take the hunted man to my own house, and he shall not be torn away, and
I be left alive. [Tremendous and long cheering.]”
I was then called up. But I shall leave my readers to imagine what I
said, if they will only let it be in very strong opposition to the law.
The Report of the Committee on Resolutions, and an Address, was then
put to vote, and adopted with only one dissenting voice. The Vigilance
Committee of thirteen was appointed, and the meeting was adjourned to
the evening of the 12th.
Our second meeting was, if possible, more enthusiastic than the first.
All the seats in the hall were filled, and the aisles crowded before
the hour to which the meeting was adjourned. The Mayor called to order
precisely at seven o’clock. It devolved upon me, as Chairman of the
Committee, to report Resolutions. There were too many of them to be
repeated here. Two or three must suffice.
1. “_Resolved_, That we solemnly reiterate our abhorrence of the
Fugitive Slave Law, which in effect is nothing less than a license
for _kidnapping_, under the protection and at the expense of our
Federal Government, which has become the tool of oppressors.”
6. “_Resolved_, That now is the day and now the hour to take our
stand for liberty and humanity. If we now refuse to assert our
independency of the tyrants who aspire to absolute power in our
Republic, we may hope for nothing better than entire subjugation
to their will, and shall leave our children in a condition little
better than that of the creatures of absolute despots.”
10. “_Resolved_, That as all of us are liable at any moment to
be summoned to assist in kidnapping such persons as anybody may
claim to be his slaves, and to be fined one thousand dollars if
we refuse to do the bidding of the land-pirates, whom this law
would encourage to prowl through our country, it is the dictate of
prudence as well as good fellowship in a righteous cause, that we
should unite ourselves in an Association, pledged to stand by its
members in opposing this law, and to share with any of them the
pecuniary losses they may incur, under the operation of this law.”
11. “_Resolved_, That such an Association be now formed, so that
Southern oppressors may know that the people of Syracuse and its
vicinity are prepared to sustain one another in resisting the
encroachments of despotism.”
William H. Burleigh first spoke in support of the resolutions. One of
the newspapers the next day said: “We can do no justice to the ability
and surpassing eloquence of Mr. Burleigh’s speech; the deep feelings
of his soul were poured out in terms of consuming oratory.” Judge Nye,
then of Madison County, was present, and being called to address the
meeting, said, among many other good things: “I am an officer of the
law. I am not sure that I am not one of those officers who are clothed
with anomalous and terrible powers by this Bill of Abominations. If I
am, I will tell my constituency that I will trample that law in the
dust, and they must find another man, if there be one who will degrade
himself, to do this dirty work.” “Be assured, Syracusians, there is
not a man among the hills and valleys of Madison County who would take
my office on condition of obedience to this statute.” These sentences,
and other good things that Judge Nye said, were received with great
applause.
Hon. C. B. Sedgwick then presented a petition to Congress for the
repeal of the Act, and called upon his fellow-citizens to sign it. He
enforced this call by a very impressive speech, declaring again and
again his fixed determination to oppose to the utmost any attempt to
carry back from Syracuse a fugitive slave. “A man (no, a dog) may come
here scenting blood on the track of our brother Loguen; shall we let
him drag him off to slavery again? No! never!! Loguen has been driven
and stricken from childhood to manhood. He has been literally a man of
sorrows. His soul was trodden upon by oppression. But he rose in the
might of his manhood, and made his way across rivers, through swamps,
over mountains, to our city. And it shall be a place of safety to him.
We will not give him up. He is a husband and a father on our free soil,
and will you give him back to the hell of slavery? No! never!!
‘Dear as freedom is,
And in my soul’s just estimation prized above all price, I had
rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.’”
I wish I could convey to the ears of my readers the hearty, deep-toned
notes of applause that welcomed these declarations.
I then presented a pledge, binding those who might sign it to stand by
one another, and share equally all pecuniary penalties they might be
made to suffer because of their opposition to this oppressive and cruel
Act.
Rev. Mr. Raymond was afterwards called up, and he spoke in a manner
that was very affecting. I have room for only a brief extract from the
report of it.
“Oh! the hardships this law has brought upon the fugitives from slavery
that have sought an asylum with us! I attended the other day a meeting
of Baptist ministers in Rochester. There was a colored brother there
in the depths of distress. He arose in our midst and gave voice to
the agonies of his soul. A few years since he escaped from one of the
richest slaveholders in Kentucky. With him, he had been brought up
in ignorance. Since coming among us he had learnt to read, and had
become so well educated as to be able to teach others. In the course
of two years he had gathered a church in a meeting-house that had been
built mainly by his instrumentality. He had a comfortable homestead in
Rochester, and a happy family about him. But now his master had sent
for him, declaring he would have him under this law. ‘Oh!’ he cried,
‘what have I done? what is my crime? All the power and cunning and
sagacity of this great nation are moving to drag me back again into
slavery,--worse than death.’ His head fell upon his bosom, he sobbed
aloud, and we wept with him, and a deep groan of execration went up
from the souls of us all to the God of mercy against this law.” This
recital awakened intense feeling throughout our meeting and murmurs
of indignation. “And now,” Mr. Raymond continued, “suppose that while
we were glowing with sympathy for that brother and abhorrence of the
law,--suppose the man-thief had come into that meeting and put his hand
upon that brother to bear him off to the South. What would have been
the result? I tell you we would have defended him, if we had had to
tear that man-thief in pieces.” This was received with great applause.
“What,” continued Mr. Raymond, “what if the officers should come here
and put their hand on me as one claimed to be the property of another
man, would you let me go?” “No! No!! No!!!” from every quarter was the
hearty response. “And yet why not me as readily as a man of darker
skin? If ever there was a law which it was right to trample upon, it is
this. You are counselling revolution, some may say. Revolution indeed!
O, my fellow-citizens, blood has been flowing, not in battle-fields,
but from the backs of our enslaved countrymen ever since 1776, and
is flowing now. [Deep sensation.] Yes, and that blood has gone up to
Heaven and provoked God against us. Yes, and blood will flow profusely
on the battle-fields of a civil war if we carry out this accursed
law,--if we do not proclaim freedom throughout the land.”
Several other gentlemen addressed the meeting in a similar strain;
among them, Colonel Titus, who said: “With all my heart I concur in
the sentiments and spirit of the resolutions and in the speech of Mr.
Raymond. I am for suspending the operation of the bill until it shall
be repealed. If the Southerners or their Northern minions undertake to
enforce its provisions, and attempt to carry off our friend Loguen,
or any other citizens, I am prepared to fight in their defence. I
would advise our colored neighbors not to remove to Canada, but to
rely on the patriotism of the citizens of Syracuse for protection. The
Assistant United States Marshal is in the hall, and it is well to have
him understand what are the real sentiments of his fellow-citizens,
which I trust will be found to be almost unanimous in favor of
resistance to this execrable law.”
Such was the very general uprising of the people of Syracuse in
opposition to the rendition of fugitives from slavery.
My own sentiments and feelings were very fully declared, a few days
afterwards, from my own pulpit, and subsequently in Rochester and
Oswego. I trust my readers will bear with a somewhat extended abstract
of my sermon.
“If there be a God, almighty, perfectly wise, and impartially
just and good, his will ought to be supreme with all moral beings
throughout his universe. To teach otherwise,--to teach that we or
any of his moral offspring are bound or can be bound by any earthly
power to do what is contrary to _divine law_, is virtually Atheism;
it is to enthrone Baal or Mammon in the place of Jehovah. _And
this is just what the people of this country are now called upon
by our Federal Government to do._ The legislators of this Republic
have enacted a law which offends every feeling of humanity, sets
at naught every precept of the Christian religion, outrages our
highest sense of right. And now they and their political and
priestly abettors demand that we shall conform to the requirements
of this law, because it was enacted by the government under which
we live.
“Brethren, are any of you ready to bow and take this yoke upon
your necks, and do the biddings of these wicked men? I hope not.
You shall not be, if I can convince you that you ought not. The
iniquity of our country has culminated in the passage of this
infernal law. Fearful encroachments have successively been made
upon our liberties. This last is the worst, the most daring. If
we yield to it, all will be lost. Our country will be given up
to oppressors. There can be no insult, no outrage upon our moral
sense, which we shall be able to withstand; no spot on which we can
raise a barrier to the tide of political and personal pollution
that must ever follow in the wake of slavery. Our government will
become a despotism or a cruel oligarchy, and our religion will be
in effect, if not in name, the worship of Baal, which means ‘him
that subdues.’...
“This horrible law, which in the middle of the nineteenth century
of the Christian era the legislators of the most highly favored
nation on earth have had the effrontery to enact,--this law
peremptorily, under heavy fines and penalties, forbids us to give
assistance and comfort to a certain class of our fellow-men in
the utmost need of help,--those who have fled and are longing
to be saved from the greatest wrongs that can be inflicted upon
human beings,--_the wrongs of slavery_. And yet we are told
by many--many who profess to be Christians, even teachers of
Christianity, ah! Doctors of Divinity--that the pulpit may not
remonstrate against this tremendous iniquity, because, forsooth,
it has passed into a law. What, are we, then, to allow that there
is no authority higher than that of the earthly government under
which we live,--a government framed by our revered but fallible
fathers, and which we administer by agents of our own election,
who are by no means incorruptible? Has it come to this? Is this
the best lesson our Republican and Christian wisdom can teach the
suffering nations of earth? Nay, are we to submit to this human
authority without question? May we not so much as discuss the
justice of its demands upon us? Must even those men be silent who
were set in our midst for the defence of the Gospel,--the Gospel
of Him who was ‘anointed to preach to the poor, who was sent to
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to
set at liberty them that are bruised?’ Such is the doctrine of our
politicians and of our politico-religious ministers. But a more
heartless, demoralizing, base, antidemocrat, and antichristian
doctrine could not be preached. I repudiate it utterly.... _The
pulpit has no higher function than to expound, assert, and
maintain the rights of man._ The assumption of Mr. Webster and his
abettors--that there is no higher law than an enactment of our
Congress or the Constitution of the United States--is glaringly
_atheistical_, inasmuch as it denies the supremacy of the Divine
Author of the _moral constitution_ of man....
“It is a matter of great interest to me personally, that my
attention was first powerfully called to the subject of slavery,
and my resolution to do my duty regarding it, was first roused by
Daniel Webster, when he was a _man_, and not a mere selfseeking
politician. The first antislavery meeting I ever attended was
one in which Mr. Webster took a conspicuous part. It was on the
3d of December, 1819, in the State House at Boston, called to
oppose the Missouri Compromise. Then and there generous, humane,
Christian sentiments respecting slavery were uttered by him and
others that kindled in my bosom a warmth of interest in the cause
of the oppressed that has never cooled. But the next year, on the
22d of December, 1820, a few days before I entered the pulpit as
a preacher, Mr. Webster delivered his famous oration at Plymouth.
It was an admirable exposition of the rise, characteristics, and
spirit of our free political and religious institutions. Towards
the close, having alluded to slavery and the slave-trade, he said,
with deep solemnity: ‘_I invoke the ministers of our religion, that
they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes. If the pulpit be
silent wherever or whenever there may be a sin bloody with this
guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its
trust._’
“Thus solemnly charged by one whom I _then_ revered as a good man,
no less than as a great statesman, the following Sunday I commenced
preaching. Tremblingly alive to the weighty responsibilities I was
about to incur, I fully resolved that the pulpit which might be
committed to my charge should not be silent respecting slavery or
any other great public wrong....
“And now, that same Daniel Webster, who first roused me to feel
somewhat as I ought for the enslaved, has done more than any
other man to procure the enactment of a law, under the provisions
of which, if I do my duty, and by my preaching incite others to
do their duty, to those who are in danger of being enslaved, I
and they may be subjected to unusually heavy fines, or may be
thrown into prison as malefactors. Have I not, then, a personal
controversy with that distinguished man,--distinguished now, alas!
for something else than splendid talents and exalted virtues? If I
have gone wrong, did not Mr. Webster misdirect me? If I have done
no more than he solemnly charged all preachers to do, has he not
basely deserted and betrayed me? Verily, verily I say unto you, he
bound the burden of this antislavery reform, and laid it upon the
shoulders of others, but he himself has not helped to bear it,--no,
not with one of his fingers. Nay, worse, he has done all he could
to prepare the prison, and to whet the sword of vengeance for those
sons of New England who shall obey the injunction he gave them from
Plymouth Rock, that spot hallowed by all who truly love liberty and
hate oppression....
“Tell me, then, no more that the pulpit has nothing to do,--that
I as a Christian minister have nothing to do with politics, when
I see how politics have corrupted, yes, utterly spoiled the once
noble (we used in our admiration to say), godlike Daniel Webster!
If that man, with his surpassing strength of intellect and once
enlarged, generous views of the right and the good,--if he has not
been able to withstand the demoralizing influences of political
partyism, but has been shrivelled up into a mere aspirant for
office, basely consenting to any and every sacrifice of humanity
demanded by the oppressors of our country, and at last pledging
himself to sustain all the provisions of a law more ingeniously
wicked than the stimulated fears of the most cowardly tyrants ever
before devised,--I repeat, if such a man as Daniel Webster once was
has been corrupted and ruined by politics, shall I, a minister of
the Christian religion, fail to point out as plainly as I may, and
proclaim as earnestly as I can, the moral dangers that beset those
who engage in the strife for political preferment?...
“For one, I will not help to uphold our nation in its
iniquity,--no, not for an hour. If it cannot be reclaimed, let
it be dissolved. The declaration so often made by the professed
friends of our Union, that it cannot be preserved unless this
horrible law can be enforced, is unwittingly a declaration that
it is the implacable enemy of liberty,--an obstacle in the way of
human progress. If it really be so, it must be, it will be removed.
And he who attempts to prevent its dissolution will find himself
fighting against God. If such a law as this for the recapture of
fugitive slaves be essential to our Republic as now constituted,
let it be broken up, and some new form of government arise in its
stead. A better one would doubtless succeed. A worse one it could
not be, if the enslavement, continued degradation and outlawry of
more than three millions of our people, be indeed the bond of our
present Union....
“Suppose that a considerable proportion of the States in this Union
were, or should become, idolatrous heathen. Suppose that they
worshipped Moloch, or some other false deity who delighted in human
sacrifices. And suppose that, to propitiate the people of those
States, and to secure the pecuniary and political advantages of a
continued Union with them, Congress should enact that the people
of the Christian States should allow those idolaters to come here
when they pleased and offer human sacrifices in our midst, or carry
away our children to be burnt on their altars at the South; would
Mr. Webster or Mr. Clay, or the editors of _The New York Observer_,
or _The Journal of Commerce_, or the Doctors of Divinity who have
endeavored to array the public on the side of wrong,--would even
they call upon us to obey such a law? I am sure they would not. And
yet I fain would know wherein such a law as I have supposed would
be any worse than this law which they are laboring to enforce....
Why, then, if it would be reasonable and proper, in the view of Mr.
Webster and his reverend abettors, to nullify a law requiring us to
permit human beings to be offered as burnt sacrifices,--why is it
not equally reasonable and proper for us to set at naught this law
which commands us to do something worse,--that is, to assist in
reducing human beings to the condition of domesticated brutes?...
Nay, further, I insisted that the Fugitive Slave Law violates
the religious liberty, interferes with the faith and worship of
Christians, just as much as the law I have supposed would do....
A law of the land requiring you, as this Fugitive Slave Law
does, to disobey the Golden Rule is, indeed, a far more grievous
encroachment upon your liberty of conscience than a law prescribing
to your faith any creed, or any rites and ceremonies by which you
must worship God....
“Fellow-citizens! Christian brethren! the time has come that is to
test our principles, to try our souls. I would not that any one
in this emergency should trust to his own unaided strength. Let
us fervently pray for wisdom to direct us, and for fortitude to
do whatever may be demanded at our hands, by the Royal Law,--the
Golden Rule....
“I would counsel prudence, although this evil day demands of us
courage and self-sacrifice.... We should spare no pains through the
press, by conversation, and by public addresses, particularly by
faithful discourses from the pulpits, to cherish and quicken the
sense of right and the love of liberty in the hearts of the people.
A correct public sentiment is our surest safeguard....
“Do you inquire of me by what means you ought to withstand the
execution of this diabolical law? It is not for me to determine
the action of any one but myself. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself,’ is the second great command which all should faithfully
try to obey. Every man and woman among you is bound, as I am, to do
for the protection or rescue of a fugitive from slavery what, in
your hearts before God, you believe it would be right for you to do
in behalf of your own life or liberty, or that of a member of your
family. If you are fully persuaded that it would be right for you
to maim or kill the kidnapper who had laid hands upon your wife,
son, or daughter, or should be attempting to drag yourself away to
be enslaved, I see not how you can excuse yourself from helping, by
the same degree of violence, to rescue the fugitive slave from the
like outrage....
“Before all men, I declare that you are, every one of you, under
the highest obligation to disobey this law,--nay, oppose to the
utmost the execution of it. If you know of no better way to do this
than by force and arms, then are you bound to use force and arms
to prevent a fellow-being from being enslaved. There never was,
there cannot be, a more righteous cause for revolution than the
demands made upon us by this law. It would make you kidnappers,
men-stealers, bloodhounds....
“It is known that I have been and am a preacher of the ‘doctrine
of non-resistance.’ I believe it to be one of the distinctive
doctrines of Christianity. But I have never presumed to affirm that
I possessed enough of the spirit of Christ,--enough confidence
in God and man,--enough moral courage and self-command to act in
accordance with the Gospel precept in the treatment of enemies.
But there is not a doubt in my heart that, if I should be enabled
to speak and act as Jesus would, I should produce a far greater
and better effect than could be wrought by clubs, or swords, or
any deadly weapons.... I shall go to the rescue of any one I may
hear is in danger, not intending to harm the cruel men who may
be attempting to kidnap him. I shall take no weapon of violence
along with me, not even the cane that I usually wear. I shall go,
praying that I may say and do what will smite the hearts rather
than the bodies of the impious claimants of property in human
beings,--pierce their consciences rather than their flesh....
“Fellow-citizens, fellow-men, fellow-Christians! the hour is
come! A stand must be taken against the ruthless oppressors of
our country. Resistants and non-resistants have now a work to do
that may task to the utmost the energies of their souls. We owe it
to the millions who are wearing out a miserable existence under
the yoke of slavery; we owe it to the memory of our fathers who
solemnly pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor to the cause of liberty; We owe it to the expectations, the
claims of oppressed and suffering men the world over; we owe it to
ourselves, if we would be true men and not the menials of tyrants,
to trample this Fugitive Slave Law under foot, and throw it
indignantly back at the wicked legislators who had the hardihood to
enact it.”
It was obvious enough that some parts of the discourse were not
relished by quite a number of my auditors. Several seemed to be
seriously offended. It is therefore to be cherished among my many
grateful recollections that, as I was coming down from the pulpit the
late Major James E. Heron, of the United States Army, then one of the
prominent members of our society, came up to me glowing with emotion,
gave me his hand, and said, quite audibly: “Mr. May, I thank you. I was
once a slaveholder. I know all about the Southern system of domestic
servitude. I am intimately acquainted with the principles of the
slaveholders, and the condition of their bondmen. You have never in my
hearing exaggerated the wrongs and the vices inherent in the system.
You cannot overstate them. And the bold attempt which is now making to
subjugate the people of the Northern States to the will and service of
the slaveholders ought to be resisted to the last.” He must have been
heard by many. His words were repeated about the city, and his full
indorsement of my antislavery fanaticism helped to make it much more
tolerable, in the regards of some who were ready to revolt from it.
The Vigilance Committee appointed on the 4th of October, and the
Association we formed on the 12th, to co-operate with that committee,
and to bear mutually the expenses that might be incurred in resisting
the law, kept the attention of our citizens alive to the subject. And
their interest was quickened and their determination confirmed by the
reports that came to us from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and many
other places, of the preparations that were making to protect the
colored people, and set at defiance the plan for their re-enslavement.
The historian of our country, if he be one worthy of the task, will
linger with delight over the pages on which he shall narrate the
uprising of the people generally, in 1850 and 1851, throughout the
Northern States, in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. There were
not wanting fearless preachers who took up the arms of the Gospel
and faithfully fought against the great unrighteousness. Only a few
days after the infamous speech of Mr. Webster on the 7th of March,
Theodore Parker addressed a crowded audience in Faneuil Hall, and
exposed to their deeper abhorrence the atrocious provisions of the Bill
which the Massachusetts senator had had the effrontery to advocate
and pledge himself to maintain. On the 22d of September following he
preached to his hearers in the Melodeon a thrilling discourse on “The
Function and Place of Conscience in Relation to the Laws of Men,”
which must have fired them all the more to stand to the death in
defence of any human being who had sought, or should seek, an asylum
in Massachusetts. And again on the 28th of November, 1850, the day of
annual Thanksgiving, he delivered his comprehensive, deep-searching
discourse on “The State of the Nation,” showing the reckless impiety
of rulers who could frame such unrighteousness into law, and the
folly of the people who could suppose themselves bound to obey such
a law. Oh! if the ministers of religion generally, throughout our
country, had said and done, before and after that date, a tithe as
much as Mr. Parker said and did against the “great iniquity” of our
nation, the slaveholders could never have gained such an ascendency
in our Government, nor have become so inflated with the idea of their
power, as to have attempted the dissolution of the Union, which it
cost all the blood and treasure expended in our awful civil war to
preserve. Mr. Parker was not indeed left alone to fight the battle of
the Lord. Rev. Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, N. Y., Rev. G. W. Perkins,
of Guilford, Conn., Rev. J. G. Forman, of West Bridgewater, Rev.
Charles Beecher, Rev. William C. Whitcomb, of Stoneham, Rev. Nathaniel
West, of Pittsburg, each spoke and wrote words of sound truth and
great power, as well as those whose services I have acknowledged in
another place, and others no doubt whose names have escaped my memory.
But of the thirty thousand ministers of all the denominations in the
United States, I believe not one in a hundred ever raised his voice
against the enslavement of millions of our countrymen, nor lifted a
finger to protect one who had escaped from bondage. And many, very
many of the clergy openly and vehemently espoused the cause of the
oppressors. Not only did the preachers in the slaveholding States, with
scarcely an exception, justify and defend the institution of slavery,
but there were many ministers in the free States who took sides with
them. The most distinguished in this bad company were Professor
Stuart, of Andover, Dr. Lord, President of Dartmouth College, New
Hampshire, Bishop Hopkins, of Burlington, Vt., and Rev. Dr. Nehemiah
Adams, of Boston. But I must refer my readers to the books mentioned
at the bottom of page 349, if they would know how “the orthodox and
evangelical” ministers of the free States contributed their influence
to uphold “the peculiar institution of the South.” And it must be left
for the future historian of our Republic in the nineteenth century to
tell to posterity how fearfully the American Church and ninety-nine
hundredths of the ministers were subjugated to the will and behest of
our slaveholding oligarchy. My purpose is to give, for the most part,
only my personal recollections. And on this point, I am sorry to say,
they are numerous and mortifying enough.