_Dear Sir_:--You have recently published a tract:--"The Church and
Slavery."
"The opinion of each individual," you remark, "contributes to form public
sentiment, as the labor of the animalcule in the ocean contributes to the
coral reefs that rise above the waves."
True, sir, and beautifully expressed. But while, in harmony with your
intimation, I must regard you one of the animalcules, rearing the coral
reef of public opinion, I cannot admit your disclaimer of "special
influence" among them in their work. Doubtless, sir, you have "special
influence,"--and deserve to have. I make no apology for addressing you. I
am one of the animalcules.
I agree, and I disagree, with you. I harmonize in your words,--"The
present is eminently a time when the views of every man on the subject of
slavery should be uttered in unambiguous tones." I agree with you in this
affirmation; because the subject has yet to be fully understood; because,
when understood, if THE BIBLE does _not_ sanction the system, the MASTER
must cease to be the master. The SLAVE must cease to be the slave. He must
be _free_, AND EQUAL IN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE. _That_ is your
"_unambiguous tone_". Let it be heard, if _that_ is the word of God.
But if THE BIBLE _does_ sanction the system, then _that_ "unambiguous
tone" will silence abolitionists who admit the Scriptures; it will satisfy
all good men, and give peace to the country. That is the "_tone_" I want
men to hear. Listen to it in the past and present speech of providence.
The time was when _you_ had the very _public sentiment_ you are now trying
to form. From Maine to Louisiana, the American mind was softly yielding to
the impress of emancipation, in some hope, however vague and imaginary.
Southern as well as Northern men, in the church and out of it, not having
sufficiently studied the word of God, and, under our own and French
revolutionary excitement, looking only at the evils of slavery, wished it
away from the land. It was a _mistaken_ public sentiment. Yet, such as it
was, you had it, and it was doing your work. It was Quaker-like, mild and
affectionate. It did not, however, work fast enough for you. You thought
that the negro, with his superior attributes of body and mind and higher
advantages of the nineteenth century, might reach, in a day, the liberty
and equality which the Anglo-American had attained after the struggle of
his ancestors during a thousand years! You got up the agitation. You got
it up in the Church and State. You got it up over the length and breadth
of this whole land. Let me show you some things you have secured, as the
results of your work.
_First Result of Agitation_.
1. The most consistent abolitionists, affirming the sin of slavery, on the
maxim of created equality and unalienable right, after torturing the Bible
for a while, to make it give the same testimony, felt they could get
nothing from the book. They felt that the God of the Bible disregarded the
thumb-screw, the boot, and the wheel; that he would not speak for them,
but against them. These consistent men have now turned away from the
word, in despondency; and are seeking, somewhere, an abolition Bible, an
abolition Constitution for the United States, and an abolition God.
This, sir, is the _first result_ of your agitation:--the very van of your
attack repulsed, and driven into infidelity.
_A Second Result of Agitation_.
2. Many others, and you among them, are trying in exactly the same way
just mentioned to make the Bible speak against slave-holding. You get
nothing by torturing the English version. People understand English. Nay,
you get little by applying the rack to the Hebrew and Greek; even before a
tribunal of men like you, who proclaim beforehand that Moses, in Hebrew,
and Paul, in Greek, _must_ condemn slavery because "_it is a violation of
the first sentiments of the Declaration of Independence_." You find it
difficult to persuade men that Moses and Paul were moved by the Holy Ghost
to sanction the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson! You find it hard to make
men believe that Moses saw in the mount, and Paul had vision in heaven,
that this future _apostle of Liberty_ was inspired by Jesus Christ.
You torture very severely. But the muscles and bones of those old men are
tough and strong. They won't yield under your terrible wrenchings. You get
only groans and mutterings. You claim these voices, I know, as testimony
against slavery. But you cannot torture in secret as in olden times. When
putting the question, you have to let men be present,--who tell us that
Moses and Paul won't speak for you,--that they are silent, like Christ
before Pilate's scourging-men; or, in groans and mutterings,--the voices
of their sorrow and the tones of their indignation,--they rebuke your
pre-judgment of the Almighty when you say if the Bible sanctions slavery,
"it neither ought to be nor could be received by mankind as a divine
revelation."
This, sir, is the _second result_ you have gained by your agitation. You
have brought a thousand Northern ministers of the gospel, with yourself,
to the verge of the same denial of the word of God which they have made,
who are only a little ahead of you in the road you are travelling.
_A Third Result of Agitation._
3. Meanwhile, many of your most pious men, soundest scholars, and
sagacious observers of providence, have been led to study the Bible more
faithfully in the light of the times. And they are reading it more and
more in harmony with the views which have been reached by the highest
Southern minds, to wit:--That the relation of master and slave is
sanctioned by the Bible;--that it is a relation belonging to the same
category as those of husband and wife, parent and child, master and
apprentice, master and hireling;--that the relations of husband and wife,
parent and child, _were ordained in Eden for man, as man_, and _modified
after the fall_, while the relation of slavery, as a system of labor, is
_only one form of the government ordained of God over fallen and degraded
man_;--that the _evils_ in the system are _the same evils_ of OPPRESSION
we see in the relation of husband and wife, and all other forms of
government;--that slavery, as a relation, suited to the more degraded or
the more ignorant and helpless types of a sunken humanity, is, like all
government, intended _as the proof of the curse of such degradation, and
at the same time to elevate and bless_;--that the relation of husband and
wife, being for man, as man, _will ever be over him_, while slavery will
remain so long as God sees it best, as a controlling power over the
ignorant, the more degraded and helpless;--and that, when he sees it for
the good of the country, he will cause it to pass away, if the slave can
be elevated to liberty and equality, political and social, with his
master, _in_ that country; or _out of_ that country, if such elevation
cannot be given therein, but may be realized in some other land: all which
result must be left to the unfoldings of the divine will, _in harmony with
the Bible_, and not to a newly-discovered dispensation. These facts are
vindicated in the Bible and Providence. In the Old Testament, they stare
you in the face:--in the family of Abraham,--in his slaves, bought with
his money and born in his house,--in Hagar, running away under her
mistress's hard dealing with her, and yet sent back, as a fugitive slave,
by the angel,--in the law which authorized the Hebrews to hold their
brethren as slaves for a time,--in which parents might sell their children
into bondage,--in which the heathen were given to the Hebrews as their
slaves forever,--in which slaves were considered so much the money of
their master, that the master who killed one by an unguarded blow was,
under certain circumstances, sufficiently punished in his slave's death,
because he thereby lost his money,--in which the difference between
_man-stealing_ and _slave-holding_ is, by law, set forth,--in which the
runaway from heathen masters may not be restored, because God gave him
the benefits of an adopted Hebrew. In the New Testament:--wherein the
slavery of Greece and Rome was recognised,--in the obligations laid on
master and slave,--in the close connection of this obligation with the
duties of husband and wife, parent and child,--in the obligation to return
the fugitive slave to his master,--and _in the condemnation of every
abolition principle_, "AS DESTITUTE OF THE TRUTH." (1 Tim. vi. 1-5.)
This view of slavery is becoming more and more, not only the settled
decision of the Southern but of the best Northern mind, with a movement so
strong that you have been startled by it to write the pamphlet now lying
before me.
This is the _third result_ you have secured:--to make many of the best men
in the North see the infidelity of your philosophy, falsely so called, on
the subject of slavery, in the clearer and clearer light of the
Scriptures.
_Another Result of Agitation_.
4. The Southern slave-holder is now satisfied, as never before, that the
relation of master and slave is sanctioned by the Bible; and he feels, as
never before, the obligations of the word of God. He no longer, in his
ignorance of the Scriptures, and afraid of its teachings, will seek to
defend his common-sense opinions of slavery by arguments drawn from "Types
of Mankind," and other infidel theories; but he will look, in the light of
the Bible, on all the good and evil in the system. And when the North, as
it will, shall regard him holding from God this high power for great
good,--when the North shall no more curse, but bid him God-speed,--then he
will bless himself and his slave, in nobler benevolence. With no false
ideas of created equality and unalienable right, but with the Bible in his
heart and hand, he will do justice and love mercy in higher and higher
rule. Every evil will be removed, and the negro will be elevated to the
highest attainments he can make, and be prepared for whatever destiny God
intends. This, sir, is the _fourth result_ of your agitation:--to make the
Southern master _know_, from the Bible, his right to be a master, and his
duty to his slave.
These _four results_ are so fully before you, that I think you must see
and feel them. You have brought out, besides, tremendous political
consequences, giving astonishing growth and spread to the slave power: on
these I cannot dwell. Sir, are you satisfied with these consequences of
the agitation you have gotten up? I am. I thank God that the great deep
of the American mind has been blown upon by the wind of abolitionism. I
rejoice that the stagnant water of that American mind has been so greatly
purified. I rejoice that the infidelity and the semi-infidelity so long
latent have been set free. I rejoice that the sober sense North and
South, so strangely asleep and silent, has risen up to hear the word of
God and to speak it to the land. I rejoice that all the South now know
that God gives the right to hold slaves, and, with that right,
obligations they must fulfil. I rejoice that the day has dawned in which
the North and South will think and feel and act together on the subject
of slavery. I thank God for the agitation. May he forgive the folly and
wickedness of many who have gotten it up! May he reveal more and more,
that surely the wrath of man shall praise him, while the remainder of
wrath he will restrain!
_Declaration of Independence_.
I agree with you, sir, that _the second paragraph_ of the Declaration of
Independence contains _five affirmations_, declared to be self-evident
truths, which, if truths, do sustain you and all abolitionists in every
thing you say as to the right of the negro to liberty; and not only to
liberty,--to equality, political and social. But I disagree with you as to
their truth, and I say that not one of said affirmations is a self-evident
truth, or a truth at all. On the contrary, that each one is contrary to
the Bible; that each one, separately, is denied; and that all five,
collectively, are denied and upset by the Bible, by the natural history of
man, and by providence, in every age of the world. I say this now. In a
subsequent communication, I will prove what I affirm. For the present I
merely add, that the Declaration of Independence stands in no need of
these false affirmations. It was, and is, a beautiful whole without them.
It was, and is, without these imaginary maxims, the simple statement of
the grievances the colonies had borne from the mother-country, and their
right _as colonies_, when thus oppressed, to declare themselves
independent. That is to say, the right given of God to oppressed children
to seek protection in another family, or to set up for themselves somewhat
before _twenty-one_ or natural maturity; right belonging to them _in the
British family;_ right sanctioned of God; right blessed of God, in the
resistance of the colonies _as colonies_--not as individual men--to the
attempt of the mother-country to consummate her tyranny. But God gives no
sanction to the affirmation that he has _created all men equal_; that this
is _self-evident,_ and that he has given them _unalienable rights;_ that
he has made government to _derive its power solely from their consent_,
and that he has given them _the right to change that government in their
mere pleasure_. All this--every word of it, every jot and tittle--is the
liberty and equality claimed by infidelity. God has cursed it seven times
in France since 1793; and he will curse it there seventy times seven, if
Frenchmen prefer to be pestled so often in Solomon's mortar. He has cursed
it in Prussia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain. He will curse it as long as
time, whether it is affirmed by Jefferson, Paine, Robespierre, Ledru
Rollin, Kossuth, Greeley, Garrison, or Barnes.
Sir, that paragraph is an _excrescence_ on the tree of our liberty. I pray
you take it away. Worship it if you will, and in a manner imitate the
Druid. He gave reverence to the _mistletoe_, but first he removed the
_parasite_ from the noble tree. Do you the same. Cut away _this mistletoe_
with golden knife, as did the Druid; enshrine its imaginary divinity in a
grove or cave; then retire there, and leave our oak to stand in its glory
in the light of heaven. Men have been afraid to say all this for years,
just as they have been timid to assert that God has placed master and
slave in the same relation as husband and wife. Public sentiment, which
you once had and have lost, suppressed this utterance as the other. But
now, men speak out; and I, for one, will tell you what the Bible reveals
as to that part of the Declaration of Independence, as fearlessly as I
tell you what it says of the system of slavery.
_How Men are made Infidels_.
I agree with you that some men have been, are, and will be, made infidels
by hearing that God has ordained slavery as one form of his government
over depraved mankind. But how does this fact prove that the Bible does
not sanction slavery? Why, sir, you have been all your life teaching that
some men are made infidels by hearing any truth of the Bible;--that some
men are made infidels by hearing the Trinity, Depravity, Atonement,
Divinity of Christ, Resurrection, Eternal Punishment. True: and these men
find "_great laws of their nature,--instinctive feelings_"--just such as
you find against slavery, and not more perverted in them than in you,
condemning all this Bible. And they hold now, with your sanction, that a
book affirming such facts "_cannot be from God_."
Sir, some men are made infidels by hearing the Ten Commandments, and they
find "_great laws of their nature_," as strong in them as yours in you
against slavery, warring against every one of these commandments. And
they declare now, with your authority, that a book imposing such
restraints upon human nature, "_cannot be from God_" Sir, what is it
makes infidels? You have been wont to answer, "They _will not_ have God
_to rule over them_. They _will not_ have the BIBLE _to control the great
laws of their nature."_ Sir, that is the true answer. And you know that
_the great instinct of liberty_ is only one of _three great laws_,
needing special teaching and government:--that is to say, _the instinct
to rule; the instinct to submit to be ruled; and the instinct for
liberty._ You know, too, that the instinct _to submit_ is the strongest,
the instinct _to rule_ is next, and that the _aspiration for liberty_ is
the weakest. Hence you know the overwhelming majority of men have ever
been willing to be slaves; masters have been next in number; while the
few have struggled for freedom.
The Bible, then, in proclaiming God's will _as to these three great
impulses_, will be rejected by men, exactly as they have yielded forbidden
control to the one or the other of them. The Bible will make infidels of
_masters_, when God calls to them to rule right, or to give up rule, if
they have allowed _the instinct of power_ to make them hate God's
authority. Pharaoh spoke for all infidel rulers when he said, "_Who is the
Lord that I should obey his voice?_"
The Bible will make infidels of _slaves_, when God calls to them to aspire
to be free, if they have permitted _the instinct of submission to_ make
them hate his commands. The Israelites in the wilderness revealed ten
times, in their murmuring, _the slave-instinct_ in all ages:--"_Would to
God we had died in the wilderness!_"
You know all this, and you condemn these infidels. Good.
But, sir, you know equally well that the Bible will make infidels of men
_affirming the instinct of liberty,_ when God calls them to learn of him
how _much liberty_ he gives, and _how_ he gives it, and _when_ he gives
it, if they have so yielded to this law of their nature as to make them
despise the word of the Lord. Sir, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram spoke out
just what the liberty-and-equality men have said in all time:--"_Ye, Moses
and Aaron, take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy,
every one of them: wherefore, then, lift ye up yourselves above the
congregation?"_ Verily, sir, these men were intensely excited by "_the
great law of our nature,--the great instinct of freedom."_ Yea, they told
God to his face they had looked within, and found the _higher law of
liberty and equality--the eternal right--in their intuitional
consciousness_; and that they would not submit to his will in the
elevation of Moses and Aaron _above them_.
Verily, sir, you, in the spirit of Korah, now proclaim and say, "Ye
masters, and ye white men who are not masters, North and South, ye take
too much upon you, seeing the negro is created your equal, and, by
unalienable right, is as free as you, and entitled to all your political
and social life. Ye take, then, too much upon you in excluding him from
your positions of wealth and honor, from your halls of legislation, and
from your palace of the nation, and from your splendid couch, and from
your fair women with long hair on that couch and in that gilded chariot:
wherefore, then, lift ye up yourselves above the negro?"
Verily, sir, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram said all we have ever heard from
abolition-platforms or now listen to from you. But the Lord made the
earth swallow up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram!
I agree with you then, sir, fully, that some men have been, are, and will
be, made infidels by hearing that God, in the Bible, has ordained slavery.
But I hold this to be no argument against the fact that the Bible does so
teach, because men are made infidels by any other doctrine or precept they
hate to believe.
Sir, no man has said all this better than you. And I cannot express my
grief that you--in the principle now avowed, _that every man must
interpret the Bible as he chooses to reason and feel_--sanction all the
infidelity in the world, obliterate your "_Notes_" on the Bible, and deny
the preaching of your whole life, so far as God may, in his wrath, permit
you to expunge or recall the words of the wisdom of your better day.
_Testimonies of General Assemblies_.
I agree with you that the Presbyterian Church, both before and since its
division, has testified, after a fashion, against slavery. But some of its
action has been very curious testimony. I know not how the anti-slavery
resolutions of 1818 were gotten up; nor how in some Assemblies since. I
can guess, however, from what I do know, as to how such resolutions passed
in Buffalo in 1853, and in New York in 1856. I know that in Buffalo they
were at first voted down by a large majority. Then they were reconsidered
in mere courtesy to men who said they wanted to speak. So the resolutions
were passed after some days, in which the _screws_ were applied and
turned, in part, _by female hands_, to save the chairman of the committee
from _the effects_ of the resolutions being finally voted down!
I know that, in New York, the decision of the Assembly to spread the
minority report on the minutes was considered, in the body and out of it,
as a Southern victory; for it revealed, however glossed over, that many in
the house, who could not vote directly for the minority report, did in
fact prefer it to the other.
I was not in Detroit in 1850; but I think it was established in New York
last May that that Detroit testimony was so admirably worded that both
Southern and Northern men might vote for it with clear consciences!
I need not pursue the investigation. I admit that, after this sort, you
have the stultified abstractions of the New School Presbyterian
Church,--while I have its common sense; you have its Delphic words,--I
have its actions; you have the traditions of the elders making void the
word of God,--I have the providence of God restraining the church from
destroying itself and our social organization under folly, fanaticism, and
infidelity.
You, sir, seem to acknowledge this; for, while you appear pleased with the
testimony of the New School Presbyterian Church, such as it is, you lament
that the Old School have not been true to the resolutions of 1818,--that,
in that branch of the church, it is questionable whether those resolutions
could now be adopted. You lament the silence of the Episcopal, the
Southern Methodist, and the Baptist denominations; you might add the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church. And you know that in New England, in New
York, and in the Northwest, many testify against _us_ as a pro-slavery
body. You lament that so many members of the church, ministers of the
gospel, and editors of religious papers, defend the system; you lament
that so large a part of the religious literature of the land, though
having its seat North and sustained chiefly by Northern funds, shows a
perpetual deference to the slave-holder; you lament that, after fifty
years, nothing has been done to arrest slavery; you lament and ask, "Why
should this be so?" In saying this, you acknowledge that, while you have
been laboring to get and have reached the abstract testimony of the
church, all diluted as it is, the common-sense fact has been and is more
and more brought out, in the providence of God, that _the slave-power has
been and is gaining ground in the United States_. In one word, you have
contrived to get, in confused utterance, the voice of the Sanhedrim; while
Christ himself has been preaching in the streets of our Jerusalem the true
meaning of slavery as one form of his government over fallen men.
These, then, are some of the things I promised to show as the results of
your agitation. This is the "_tone_" of the past and present speech of
Providence on the subject of slavery. You seem disturbed. I feel sure
things are going on well as to that subject. Speak on, then, "in
unambiguous tones." But, sir, when you desire to go from words to
actions,--when you intimate that the constitution of the Presbyterian
Church may be altered to permit such action, or that, without its
alteration, the church can detach itself from slavery by its existing laws
or the modification of them,--then I understand you to mean that you
desire to deal, in fact, with slave-holders as _offenders_. Then, sir,
_you mean to exscind the South_; for it is absurd to imagine that you
suppose the South will submit to such action. You mean, then, to _exscind
the South, or to exscind yourself and others_, or to _compel the South to
withdraw_. Your tract, just published, is, I suppose, intended by you to
prepare the next General Assembly for such movement? What then? Will you
make your "American Presbyterian," and your Presbyterian House, effect
that great change in the religious literature of the land whereby the
subject of slave-holding shall be approached _precisely_ as you deal with
"theft, highway-robbery, or piracy?" Will you, then, by act of Assembly,
Synod, Presbytery, Session, deny your pulpits, and communion-bread and
wine, to slave-holding ministers, elders, and members? Will you, then,
tell New England, and especially little Rhoda, We have purified our skirts
from the blood: forgive us, and take us again to your love? What then?
Will you then ostracize the South and compel the abolition of slavery?
Sir, do you bid us fear these coming events, thus casting their shadow
before from the leaves of your book?
Sir, you may destroy the integrity of the New School Presbyterian Church.
So much evil you may do; but you will hereby only add immensely to the
great power and good of the Old School; and you will make disclosures of
Providence, unfolding a consummation of things very different from the end
you wish to accomplish for your country and the world.
I write as one of the animalcules contributing to the coral reef of
public opinion.
F. A. Ross.
No. II.
Government Over Man a Divine Institute.
This letter is the examination and refutation of the infidel theory of
human government foisted into the Declaration of Independence.
I had written this criticism in different form for publication, before Mr.
Barnes's had appeared. I wrote it to vindicate my affirmation in the
General Assembly which met in New York, May last, on this part of the
Declaration. My views were maturely formed, after years of reflection, and
weeks--nay months--of carefully-penned writing.
And thus these truths, from the Bible, Providence, and common sense, were
like rich freight, in goodly ship, waiting for the wind to sail; when lo,
Mr. Barnes's abolition-breath filled the canvas, and carried it out of
port into the wide, the free, the open sea of American public thought.
There it sails. If pirate or other hostile craft comes alongside, the good
ship has guns.
I ask that this paper be carefully read more than once, twice, or three
times. Mr. Barnes, I presume, will not so read it. He is committed.
Greeley may notice it with his sparkling wit, albeit he has too much sense
to grapple with its argument. The Evangelist-man will say of it, what he
would say if Christ were casting out devils in New York,--"He casteth
out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils." Yea, this
Evangelist-man says that my version of the golden rule is "diabolical;"
when truly that version is the _word_ of the Spirit, as Christ's casting
out devils was the _work_ of the Holy Ghost.
Gerrett Smith, Garrison, Giddings, do already agree with me, that they are
right if Jefferson spoke the truth. Yea, whether the Bible be true, is no
question with them no more than with him. Yea, they hold, as he did, that
whether there be one God or twenty, it matters not: the fact either way,
in men's minds, neither breaks the leg nor picks the pocket. (See
Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.) Messrs. Beecher and Cheever will find
nothing in me to aid them in speaking to the mobs of Ephesus and Antioch.
They are making shrines, and crying, Great is Diana. Mrs. Stowe is on the
Dismal Swamp, with Dred for her Charon, to paddle her light canoe, by the
fire-fly lamps, to the Limbo of Vanity, of which she is the queen. None of
these will read with attention or honesty, if at all, this examination of
what Randolph long ago said was a _fanfaronade of nonsense_. These are all
wiser "than seven men that can render a reason."
But there are thousands, North and South, who will read this refutation,
and will feel and acknowledge that in the light of God's truth the notion
of created equality and unalienable right is falsehood and infidelity.