ABOLITIONISM.
The word ABOLITIONIST in its true meaning comprehends every man who
feels himself bound to exert his influence for removing slavery. It is a
name of honorable import, and was worn, not long ago, by such men as
Franklin and Jay. Events, however, continually modify terms; and, of
late, the word ABOLITIONIST has been narrowed from its original import,
and restricted to the members of associations formed among us to promote
Immediate Emancipation. It is not without reluctance that I give up to a
small body a name which every good man ought to bear. But to make myself
intelligible and to avoid circumlocution, I shall use the word in what
is now its common acceptation.
I approach this subject unwillingly, because it will be my duty to
censure those whom at this moment I would on no account hold up to
public displeasure. The persecutions, which the abolitionists have
suffered and still suffer, awaken only my grief and indignation, and
incline me to defend them to the full extent which truth and justice
will admit. To the persecuted of whatever name my sympathies are
pledged, and especially to those who are persecuted in a cause
substantially good. I would not for worlds utter a word to justify the
violence recently offered to a party, composed very much of men
blameless in life, and holding the doctrine of nonresistance to
injuries; and of women, exemplary in their various relations, and
acting, however mistakenly, from benevolent and pious impulses.
Of the abolitionists I know very few; but I am bound to say of these,
that I honor them for their strength of principle, their sympathy with
their fellow-creatures, and their active goodness. As a party, they are
singularly free from political and religious sectarianism, and have been
distinguished by the absence of management, calculation, and worldly
wisdom. That they have ever proposed or desired insurrection or violence
among the slaves there is no reason to believe. All their principles
repel the supposition. It is a remarkable fact, that, though the South
and the North have been leagued to crush them, though they have been
watched by a million of eyes, and though prejudice has been prepared to
detect the slightest sign of corrupt communication with the slave, yet
this crime has not been fastened on a single member of this body. A few
individuals at the South have, indeed, been tortured or murdered by
enraged multitudes, on the charge of stirring up revolt; but their guilt
and their connexion with the abolitionists were not, and from the
circumstances and the nature of the case could not be, established by
those deliberate and regular modes of investigation, which are necessary
to an impartial judgment. Crimes, detected and hastily punished by the
multitude in a moment of feverish suspicion and wild alarm, are
generally creatures of fear and passion. The act which caused the
present explosion of popular feeling was the sending of pamphlets by the
Abolitionists into the slave-holding States. In so doing, they acted
weakly and without decorum; but they must have been insane, had they
intended to stir up a servile war; for the pamphlets were sent, not by
stealth, but by the public mail; and not to the slaves, but to the
masters; to men in public life, to men of the greatest influence and
distinction. Strange incendiaries these! They flourished their
firebrands about at noon-day; and, still more, put them into the hands
of the very men whom it is said they wished to destroy. They are
accused, indeed, of having sent some of the pamphlets to the free
colored people, and if so, they acted with great and culpable rashness.
But the publicity of the whole transaction absolves them of corrupt
design.
The charge of corrupt design, so vehemently brought against the
abolitionists, is groundless. The charge of fanaticism I have no desire
to repel. But in the present age it will not do to deal harshly with the
characters of fanatics. They form the mass of the people. Religion and
Politics, Philanthropy and Temperance, Nullification and Antimasonry,
the Levelling Spirit of the working man, and the Speculating Spirit of
the man of business, all run into fanaticism. This is the type of all
our epidemics. A sober man who can find? The abolitionists have but
caught the fever of the day. That they should have escaped it would have
been a moral miracle.--I offer these remarks simply from a sense of
justice. Had not a persecution, without parallel in our country, broken
forth against this society, I should not have spoken a word in their
defence. But whilst I have power I owe it to the Persecuted. If they
have laid themselves open to the laws, let them suffer. For all their
errors and sins let the tribunal of public opinion inflict the full
measure of rebuke which they deserve. I ask no favor for them. But they
shall not be stripped of the rights of man, of rights guaranteed by the
laws and Constitution, without one voice, at least, being raised in
their defence.
The abolitionists have done wrong, I believe; nor is their wrong to be
winked at, because done fanatically or with good intention; for how
much mischief may be wrought with good design! They have fallen into the
common error of enthusiasts, that of exaggerating their object, of
feeling as if no evil existed but that which they opposed, and as if no
guilt could be compared with that of countenancing or upholding it. The
tone of their newspapers, as far as I have seen them, has often been
fierce, bitter, and abusive. Their imaginations have fed on pictures of
the cruelty to which the slave is exposed, till they have seemed to
think that his abode was perpetually resounding with the lash, and
ringing with shrieks of agony; and accordingly, the slaveholder has been
held up to execration, as a monster of cruelty. I know that many of
their publications have been calm, well considered, and abounding in
strong reasoning. But those, which have been most widely scattered and
are most adapted to act on the common mind, have had a tone unfriendly
both to manners and to the spirit of our religion. I doubt not that the
majority of the abolitionists condemn the coarseness and violence of
which I complain. But in this, as in most associations, the many are
represented and controlled by the few, and are made to sanction and
become responsible for what they disapprove.
One of their errors has been the adoption of "Immediate Emancipation" as
their motto. To this they owe not a little of their unpopularity. This
phrase has contributed much to spread far and wide the belief, that they
wished immediately to free the slave from all his restraints. They made
explanations; but thousands heard the motto who never saw the
explanation; and it is certainly unwise for a party to choose a
watchword, which can be rescued from misapprehension only by labored
explication. It may also be doubted, whether they ever removed the
objection which their language so universally raised, whether they have
not always recommended a precipitate action, inconsistent with the
well-being of the slave and the order of the state.
Another objection to their movements is, that they have sought to
accomplish their objects by a system of Agitation; that is, by a system
of affiliated societies, gathered, and held together, and extended, by
passionate eloquence. This, in truth, is the common mode by which all
projects are now accomplished. The age of individual action is gone.
Truth cannot be heard unless shouted by a crowd. The weightiest argument
for a doctrine is the number which adopts it. Accordingly, to gather and
organize multitudes is the first care of him who would remove an abuse
or spread a reform. That the expedient is in some cases useful is not
denied. But generally it is a showy, noisy mode of action, appealing to
the passions, and driving men into exaggeration; and there are special
reasons why such a mode should not be employed in regard to slavery; for
slavery is so to be opposed as not to exasperate the slave, or endanger
the community in which he lives. The abolitionists might have formed an
association; but it should have been an elective one. Men of strong
principles, judiciousness, sobriety, should have been carefully sought
as members. Much good might have been accomplished by the coöperation of
such philanthropists. Instead of this, the abolitionists sent forth
their orators, some of them transported with fiery zeal, to sound the
alarm against slavery through the land, to gather together young and
old, pupils from schools, females hardly arrived at years of discretion,
the ignorant, the excitable, the impetuous, and to organize these into
associations for the battle against oppression. Very unhappily they
preached their doctrine to the colored people, and collected these into
their societies. To this mixed and excitable multitude, minute,
heartrending descriptions of slavery were given in the piercing tones of
passion; and slaveholders were held up as monsters of cruelty and crime.
Now to this procedure I must object as unwise, as unfriendly to the
spirit of Christianity, and as increasing, in a degree, the perils of
the slaveholding States. Among the unenlightened, whom they so
powerfully addressed, was there not reason to fear that some might feel
themselves called to subvert this system of wrong, by whatever means?
From the free colored people this danger was particularly to be
apprehended. It is easy for us to place ourselves in their situation.
Suppose that millions of white men were enslaved, robbed of all their
rights, in a neighbouring country, and enslaved by a black race, who had
torn their ancestors from the shores on which our fathers had lived. How
deeply should we feel their wrongs! And would it be wonderful, if, in a
moment of passionate excitement, some enthusiast should think it his
duty to use his communication with his injured brethren for stirring
them up to revolt?
Such is the danger from abolitionism to the slaveholding States. I know
no other. It is but justice to add, that the principle of nonresistance,
which the abolitionists have connected with their passionate appeals,
seems to have counteracted the peril. I know not a case in which a
member of an anti-slavery society has been proved by legal investigation
to have tampered with the slaves; and after the strongly pronounced and
unanimous opinion of the free States on the subject, this danger may be
considered as having passed away. Still a mode of action, requiring
these checks, is open to strong objections, and ought to be abandoned.
Happy will it be, if the disapprobation of friends, as well as of foes,
should give to abolitionists a caution and moderation, which would
secure the acquiescence of the judicious, and the sympathies of the
friends of mankind! Let not a good cause find its chief obstruction in
its defenders. Let the truth, and the whole truth, be spoken without
paltering or fear; but so spoken as to convince, not inflame, as to give
no alarm to the wise, and no needless exasperation to the selfish and
passionate.
I know it is said, that nothing can be done but by excitement and
vehemence; that the zeal which dares every thing is the only power to
oppose to long rooted abuses. But it is not true that God has committed
the great work of reforming the world to passion. Love is a minister of
good only when it gives energy to the intellect, and allies itself with
wisdom. The abolitionists often speak of Luther's vehemence as a model
to future reformers. But who, that has read history, does not know that
Luther's reformation was accompanied by tremendous miseries and crimes,
and that its progress was soon arrested? and is there not reason to
fear, that the fierce, bitter, persecuting spirit, which he breathed
into the work, not only tarnished its glory, but limited its power? One
great principle, which we should lay down as immovably true, is, that if
a good work cannot be carried on by the calm, self-controlled,
benevolent spirit of Christianity, then the time for doing it has not
come. God asks not the aid of our vices. He can overrule them for good,
but they are not the chosen instruments of human happiness.
We, indeed, need zeal, fervent zeal, such as will fear no man's power,
and shrink before no man's frown, such as will sacrifice life to truth
and freedom. But this energy of will ought to be joined with deliberate
wisdom and universal charity. It ought to regard the whole, in its
strenuous efforts for a part. Above all, it ought to ask first, not what
means are most effectual, but what means are sanctioned by the Moral Law
and by Christian Love. We ought to think much more of walking in the
right path than of reaching our end. We should desire virtue more than
success. If by one wrong deed we could accomplish the liberation of
millions, and in no other way, we ought to feel that this good, for
which, perhaps, we had prayed with an agony of desire, was denied us by
God, was reserved for other times and other hands. The first object of a
true zeal is, not that we may prosper, but that we may do right, that we
may keep ourselves unspotted from every evil thought, word, and deed.
Under the inspiration of such a zeal, we shall not find in the greatness
of an enterprise an apology for intrigue or for violence. We shall not
need immediate success to spur us to exertion. We shall not distrust
God, because he does not yield to the cry of human impatience. We shall
not forsake a good work, because it does not advance with a rapid step.
Faith in truth, virtue, and Almighty Goodness, will save us alike from
rashness and despair.
In lamenting the adoption by the abolitionists of the system of
agitation or extensive excitement, I do not mean to condemn this mode of
action as only evil. There are cases to which it is adapted; and, in
general, the impulse which it gives is better than the selfish, sluggish
indifference to good objects, into which the multitude so generally
fall. But it must not supersede or be compared with Individual action.
The enthusiasm of the Individual in a good cause is a mighty power. The
forced, artificially excited enthusiasm of a multitude, kept together by
an organization which makes them the instruments of a few leading minds,
works superficially, and often injuriously. I fear that the native,
noble-minded enthusiast often loses that single-heartedness which is his
greatest power, when once he strives to avail himself of the machinery
of associations. The true power of a Reformer lies in speaking truth
purely from his own soul, without changing one tone for the purpose of
managing or enlarging a party. Truth, to be powerful, must speak in her
own words, and in no other's, must come forth with the authority and
spontaneous energy of inspiration from the depths of the soul. It is the
voice of the Individual giving utterance to the irrepressible
conviction of his own thoroughly moved spirit, and not the shout of a
crowd, which carries truth far into other souls, and insures it a stable
empire on earth. For want of this, most which is now done is done
superficially. The progress of society depends chiefly on the honest
inquiry of the Individual into the particular work ordained him by God,
and on his simplicity in following out his convictions. This moral
independence is mightier, as well as holier, than the practice of
getting warm in crowds, and of waiting for an impulse from multitudes.
The moment a man parts with moral independence; the moment he judges of
duty, not from the inward voice, but from the interests and will of a
party; the moment he commits himself to a leader or a body, and winks at
evil, because division would hurt the cause; the moment he shakes off
his particular responsibility, because he is but one of a thousand or
million by whom the evil is done; that moment he parts with his moral
power. He is shorn of the energy of singlehearted faith in the Right and
the True. He hopes from man's policy what nothing but loyalty to God can
accomplish. He substitutes coarse weapons forged by man's wisdom for
celestial power.
The adoption of the common system of agitation by the abolitionists has
proved signally unsuccessful. From the beginning it created alarm in the
considerate, and strengthened the sympathies of the free States with
the slaveholder. It made converts of a few individuals, but alienated
multitudes. Its influence at the South has been evil without mixture. It
has stirred up bitter passions and a fierce fanaticism, which have shut
every ear and every heart against its arguments and persuasions. These
effects are the more to be deplored, because the hope of freedom to the
slave lies chiefly in the dispositions of his master. The abolitionist
proposed, indeed, to convert the slaveholders; and for this end he
approached them with vituperation, and exhausted on them the vocabulary
of abuse! And he has reaped as he sowed. His vehement pleadings for the
slaves have been answered by wilder ones from the slaveholder; and, what
is worse, deliberate defences of slavery have been sent forth, in the
spirit of the dark ages, and in defiance of the moral convictions and
feelings of the Christian and civilized world. Thus, with good purposes,
nothing seems to have been gained. Perhaps (though I am anxious to repel
the thought) something has been lost to the cause of freedom and
humanity.
I earnestly desire that abolitionism may lay aside the form of public
agitation, and seek its end by wiser and milder means. I desire as
earnestly, and more earnestly, that it may not be put down by lawless
force. There is a worse evil than abolitionism, and that is the
suppression of it by lawless force. No evil greater than this can exist
in the State, and this is never needed. Be it granted, that it is the
design, or direct, palpable, tendency of abolitionism, to stir up
insurrection at the South, and that no existing laws can meet the
exigency. It is the solemn duty of the Chief Magistrate of the State to
assemble immediately the legislative bodies, and their duty immediately
to apply the remedy of Law. Let every friend of freedom, let every good
man lift up his voice against mobs. Through these lies our road to
tyranny. It is these which have spread the opinion, so common at the
South, that the free States cannot long sustain republican institutions.
No man seems awake to their inconsistency with liberty. Our whole
phraseology is in fault. Mobs call themselves, and are called, the
People, when in truth they assail immediately the sovereignty of the
People, involve the guilt of usurpation and rebellion against the
People. It is the fundamental principle of our institutions, that the
People is Sovereign. But by the People we mean not an individual here
and there, not a knot of twenty or a hundred or a thousand individuals
in this or that spot, but the Community formed into a body politic, and
expressing and executing its will through regularly appointed organs.
There is but one expression of the will or Sovereignty of the People,
and this is Law. Law is the voice, the living act of the People. It has
no other. When an individual suspends the operation of Law, resists its
established ministers, and forcibly substitutes for it his own will, he
is a usurper and rebel. The same guilt attaches to a combination of
individuals. These, whether many or few, in forcibly superseding public
law and establishing their own, rise up against the People, as truly as
a single usurper. The People should assert its insulted majesty, its
menaced sovereignty, in one case as decidedly as in the other. The
difference between the mob and the individual is, that the usurpation of
the latter has a permanence not easily given to the tumultuary movements
of the former. The distinction is a weighty one. Little importance is
due to sudden bursts of the populace, because they so soon pass away.
But when mobs are organized, as in the French Revolution, or when they
are deliberately resolved on and systematically resorted to, as the
means of putting down an odious party, they lose this apology. A
conspiracy exists against the Sovereignty of the People, and ought to be
suppressed, as among the chief evils of the state.
In this part of the country our abhorrence of mobs is lessened by the
fact, that they were thought to do good service in the beginning of the
Revolution. They probably were useful then; and why? The work of that
day was Revolution. To subvert a government was the fearful task to
which our fathers thought themselves summoned. Their duty they believed
was Insurrection. In such a work mobs had their place. The government of
the State was in the hands of its foes. The People could not use the
regular organs of administration, for these were held and employed by
the power which they wished to crush. Violent, irregular efforts
belonged to that day of convulsion. To resist and subvert institutions
is the very work of mobs; and when these institutions are popular, when
their sole end is to express and execute the will of the People, then
mobs are rebellion against the People, and as such should be understood
and suppressed. A people is never more insulted than when a mob takes
its name. Abolition must not be put down by lawless force. The attempt
so to destroy it ought to fail. Such attempts place abolitionism on a
new ground. They make it, not the cause of a few enthusiasts, but the
cause of freedom. They identify it with all our rights and popular
institutions. If the Constitution and the laws cannot put it down, it
must stand; and he who attempts its overthrow by lawless force is a
rebel and usurper. The Supremacy of Law and the Sovereignty of the
People are one and indivisible. To touch the one is to violate the
other. This should be laid down as a first principle, an axiom, a
fundamental article of faith which it must be heresy to question. A
newspaper, which openly or by inuendoes excites a mob, should be
regarded as sounding the tocsin of insurrection. On this subject the
public mind slumbers, and needs to be awakened, lest it sleep the sleep
of death.
How obvious is it, that pretexts for mobs will never be wanting, if this
disorganizing mode of redressing evils be in any case allowed! We all
recollect, that when a recent attempt was made on the life of the
President of the United States, the cry broke forth from his friends,
"that the assassin was instigated by the continual abuse poured forth on
this distinguished man, and especially by the violent speeches uttered
daily in the Senate of the United States." Suppose, now, that his
adherents, to save the Chief Magistrate from murder, and to guard his
constitutional advisers, had formed themselves into mobs, to scatter the
meetings of his opponents. And suppose that they had resolved to put to
silence the legislators, who, it was said, had abused their freedom of
speech to blacken the character and put in peril the life of the Chief
Magistrate. Would they not have had a better pretext than mobs against
abolition? Was not assassination attempted? Had not the President
received letters threatening his life unless he would change his
measures? Can a year or a month pass, which will not afford equally
grave reasons for insurrections of the populace? A system of mobs and a
free government cannot stand together. The men who incite the former,
and especially those who organize them, are among the worst enemies of
the state. Of their motives I do not speak. They may think themselves
doing service to their country, for there is no limit to the delusions
of the times. I speak only of the nature and tendency of their actions.
They should be suppressed at once by law, and by the moral sentiment of
an insulted people.
In addition to all other reasons, the honor of our nation, and the cause
of free institutions should plead with us to defend the laws from
insult, and social order from subversion. The moral influence and
reputation of our country are fast declining abroad. A letter, recently
received from one of the most distinguished men of the continent of
Europe, expresses the universal feeling on the other side of the ocean.
After speaking of the late encroachments on liberty in France, he says,
"On your side of the Atlantic, you contribute, also, to put in peril the
cause of liberty. We did take pleasure in thinking that there was at
least in the New World a country, where liberty was well understood,
where all rights were guarantied, where the people was proving itself
wise and virtuous. For some time past, the news we receive from America
is discouraging. In all your large cities we see mobs after mobs, and
all directed to an odious purpose. When we speak of liberty, its enemies
reply to us by _pointing to America_." The persecuted abolitionists have
the sympathies of the civilized world. The country which persecutes them
is covering itself with disgrace, and filling the hearts of the friends
of freedom with fear and gloom. Already despotism is beginning to
rejoice in the fulfilment of its prophecies, in our prostrated laws and
dying liberties. Liberty is, indeed, threatened with death in a country,
where any class of men are stripped with impunity of their
constitutional rights. All rights feel the blow. A community, giving up
any of its citizens to oppression and violence, invites the chains which
it suffers others to wear.