Oberlin Thursday lectures, addresses and essays

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Contents

The Early Abolitionists.— I. Introductory. i

The Early Abolitionists.— II. Personal

Recollections 27

I. Introductory

A THURSDAY LECTURE.

Until nearly the close of the last century, and especially during what is known as the Revolutionary period, the prevailing opinion both North and South, in the colonies and States of this country, was favorable to the abolition of slavery. The testimony to this is so abundant and so familiar that it cannot be necessary to detain you by quoting any portion of it. It may be sufficient to say that the Ordinance of 1787, which made slavery forever impossible in all the territory northwest of the Ohio — which was all the territory that the United States then owned — was but the natural expression of the general feeling. Daniel Webster, in his celebrated speech of the 7th of March, 1850, says that this ordinance received the vote of every Southern member of the Confederate Congress, and that but one vote was given against it, and that by a Northern man. So ahnost universal was the anti-slavery sentiment of that time.

But during the first thirty years of the present century, a complete revolution of opinion took place upon this question. Slavery, from being a subject of condemnation and legal restriction, became so intrenched in the popular sympathy that it could not be freely discussed, even in the Northern States, without some risk of personal injury. It is interesting to inquire what caused this change, which is one of the most remarkable known in history. Mr. Webster, in the speech already referred to, tells us very truly that it was caused by the sudden and enormous development of cotton production. And this expansion of cotton culture was due, although he does not mention it, to the invention of a simple and inexpensive machine by Eli Whitney, a Connecticut school teacher, then residing in Savannah.

I am largely indebted to Horace Greeley's ^'American Conflict" and to Henry Wilson's "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power" for my summary of historical facts contained in these opening paragraphs.

Before the invention of the cotton gin, that product was hardly worth the cost of cultivation, on account of the difficulty of separating the seed from the fiber. A negro who had cleaned a pound of cotton was regarded as having done a fair day's work. But the same negro, with the aid of the gin, when instructed in its use, could clean three hundred pounds in a day — which was accomplishing in a day what had formerly been the work of a year. Thus was brought to pass by a single mind one of the most marvelous revolutions in production and trade the world has ever seen. The production of cotton advanced from about seven or eight thousand bales in 1793, the year of the invention, worth perhaps $700,000, to one million of bales in 1830, worth $45,000,000, 5,761,000 bales in 1880, worth $242,000,000, and 7,300,000 bales in 1890, of the value of $308,400,000. Cotton culture,which had been held in light esteem, soon became immensely profitable, and the cotton gin took its place among the {^\n great inventions that have changed the fortunes of mankind. Whitney obtained a patent for his invention, but he derived no benefit from it. His private workshop was broken into, and his machine, when nearly completed, was carried off. Machines closely resembling it soon appeared in different parts of the South. Of course he prosecuted for infringement of his patent; but witnesses were afraid to appear, or juries failed to convict, or the law's delays wore out his strength and exhausted his slender means, and when, in 1807, he finally obtained an effective judgment for his protection in the United States Court for the District of Georgia, his patent was already in the last year of its existence. An effort for its renewal, which he subsequently made, was defeated by the votes and influence of Southern members of Congress. When the account with his invention was balanced he was not a cent the richer for it. It has been stated by Horace Greeley that he conferred upon the slave States a benefit which, at a moderate estimate, was worth a thousand millions of dollars, and they gave him nothing but persecution in return. This need not surprise us. Why should those who had a traditional and long-cultivated indifference to men's claims to the ownership of themselves and to the society of their wives and children, hesitate to withhold from a Yankee mechanic the proper reward of his labor.?

Those of you who are curious in tracing remoter relations and results, will be interested to learn that after his failure in the South, Whitney returned to Connecticut, where he acquired a fortune by the invention and manufacture of an improved fire-arm. The Whitney gun with the subsequent improvements became, as Mr. Greeley tells us, one of the most effective weapons of war known to the world. As the American rifled musket, it was widely used during the late Civil conflict, and the dead inventor, through a thousand messages of fire, uttered his protest against the old ill-usage. His first invention the slaveholders took without his consent; his second they took without their own consent.

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, With exactness he grinds all."

Of course, as a result of the invention of the cotton gin, the market value of slaves and slave labor was greatly increased. A general change of opinion took place in the South as to the merits of slavery. Through commerce, manufactures, and political and ecclesiastical relations, the same change extended to the North. All ranks, all professions, all departments of business, were infected by this new poison. The warm heart of Christian philanthropy was chilled in this atmosphere of cruel and godless worldliness. By the year 1830, it had become the fashion to defend slavery on its merits. "There had always been slavery and there always would be. It was a part of the divine order. It was sustained by the Bible. Moses was a slaveholder and Paul had returned fugitives. It was a good thing for the slave, who would be worse off if he were set free. Above all, it was very profitable." We had, at length, a remedy for the unprofitableness of cotton culture, but where was the remedy for this fearful demoralization.^ Who could deliver us from this degrading and apparently hopeless bondage to Mammon.?

Mr. Webster said that he did not blame the South for this change of opinion — that all generations of men had been controlled by self-interest — that "all that had happened was natural." But Mr. Webster once remembered that some other things are natural — that conscience is natural — that hatred of oppression and sympathy with the oppressed are natural — that the fear of God and of his retribution is natural — that accumulated wrath over long-endured wrong is natural. In these forces, which Mr. Webster seemed to have forgotten, lay the remedy for the nation's debasement. God has provided, in the nature of things, an antidote for great evils — and the greater the evil, the greater the antidote. The more burdensome and audacious the evil becomes, the more indignant and emphatic is the protest which the soul makes against it. The outraged moral nature of man is the tireless enemy which a giant wrong must ever confront, and from which it is never safe. The indignation of all honest men against a great crime soon finds stern expression, and, in the case of slavery, it found such expression through the early abolitionists. These men were just as really raised up of God to commence the attack upon slavery, as was Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, as was Paul to carry the Gospel to the Gentiles, as was Luther to lead the Reformation in Germany, or Knox to lead it in Scotland. They were a noble company. If we find in them, with many things to commend, some things to condemn; if they committed blunders as well as achieved successes — it will only show us that they were human, and very much like other bodies of reformers who have appeared in successive generations. I purpose to speak of some of the general qualities, commendable or otherwise, by which these men were characterized, and then to give you my personal recollections of some of them. Among our British ancestors, it was a custom

S LECTURES AND ESSA VS.

that when a hero died, each member of the tribe brought a stone to the cairn that was to perpetuate his memory. We must each do our part- however humble, in the making of history. I. It would seem hardly necessary to say that the early abolitionists were men of deep earnestness. Indeed but for this quality there could not have been any early abolifionists. In them it was singularly strong and pure, and I well remember the fascination which it exerted upon the minds of many young men. The first thing which struck your attention, when you met them, was their honest and terrible indignation against slavery, and their unflagging purpose to use all means at command to accomplish its extinction. Nobody ever questioned their sincerity. They might be called "fanatics," "insane," "fools," "nuisances," but they were never suspected of any indirect motive — political, pecuniary, or social. Such a suspicion, under the circumstances, would have been absurd. It should be added that this earnestness had to a large extent, though I am sorry to say not always, the dignity and sweetness of Christian love. The early abolitionists had nearly all been trained in the church. Their idea of God's claims and of man's rights had come from their religious faith.

Their earnestness was that of prophets and apostles. They were not men of personal resentments. They fought a great crime and not individuals, although they doubtless made it uncomfortable enough for those who defended the crime. They shot their arrows at slavery, but the man who stood between it and them was likely enough to be hit. Mr. Garrison, after slavery was abolished, cordially welcomed to cooperation with himself in various reforms, all classes of worthy men, including those who had been his uncompromising antagonists. Saint George had killed the dragon, and the sword that had been weighted and sharpened only for it, was laid aside. The catholic spirit of his later years was often commended. George Thompson, when he was about to be discharged from prison, after a wearisome confinement of five years for the crime of trying to help his fellow-men to obtain their freedom — a crime of which he was doubtless guilty — sa)s in his journal: "For the last time 1 collected the lambs and had another prayer- meeting. It was a blessed reviving season." These are not men of malice; they are men of righteousness and love. There were many early abolitionists of speech so severe that men thought them bitter in spirit to whom, as well as to Mr. Garrilo LECTURES AND ESS A YS.

son, the words of Wliittier weie applicable:

Not for thyself but for the slave

Thy words of thunder shook the world; No selfish griefs or hatred gave

The strength wherewith thy bolts were hurled. From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew

We heard a tenderer undersong; Thy very wrath from pity grew,

From love of man thy hate of wrong.

2. The earnestness of the early abolitionists was accompain'ed, as we should expect it would be, by a gciudne courage. It has been said that any average man may be so trained that he will stand in the line of battle, and shoot and be shot at. But the highest courage requires in addition to this a cheerful and patient perseverance, and this comes only of consecration to a cause. Such a courage was that of the abolitionists. Most of them felt that it was of little cojisequence what happened to them so that the great object could be promoted. Cromwell, writing, after the battle of Marston-Moor, to Colonel Walton, says that, as young Waltqn, who was the Colonel's son, and Cromwell's nephew, lay dying on the battle-field from a wound by a cannon shot, he said to his uncle that he had a comfort which was above his pain, but that one thing lay upon his spirit, and that was, that God had not suffered him to do any more execution upon His enemies. What was life or death in comparison with putting to flight the enemies of a good cause ! This was the spirit of the earl}' abohtionists. Like Arthur Tappan, they were willing to endure loss of trade, attacks upon their homes, and the spoiling of their goods; like Weld and Goodell and Gerrit Smith and Phillips and Abby Kelley and Douglass and Charles Burleigh and Dresser, the}' were ready to encounter mobs, and face stones and brickbats and fouler missiles, and meet blows and other forms of personal violence; like Garrison, they were prepared to be dragged through the street by a frenzied mob, expecting every moment to be put to death; like Prudence Crandall, they submitted to many ingeniously varied forms of annoyance, insult and injury; like Thompson, Work, and Burr in Missouri, and the Oberlin rescuers here, they cheerfully went to prison when they felt it was the Master's will; like Torrey, they were content, on the chance of saving a fellow-creature, to step down into the very throat of the leviathan of slavery and hear the iron jaws close forever behind them; like Lovejoy, they chose to stand until they were shot dead in defense of the liberty of the press. Time would fail me to tell of all the faithful men who defied death, went to prison, suffered stripes, were hunted by mobs, were betrayed by friends, and endured the loss of all things because they remembered those in bonds as bound with them. In a word, there never was any nobler or purer courage than that of many of these men.

3. Again, it is abundantly implied in what has been said already, that the early abolitionists were men of self-denial. They could have acquired wealth or distinction in the different callings and professions, but they cheerfully sacrificed all that the world holds dear that they might open their mouths for the dumb, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. Mr. Garrison would, in my judgment, have been a more distinguished and influential political editor than Horace Greeley. Wendell Phillips, as a parliamentary orator, would have had as brillian.t a career as Henry Cla\' or the elder Pitt, both of wliom, in natural endowments, he strongl}' resembled. Charles Burleigh would have been at the head of his profession, that of the law, in almost any State of the Union. Edmund Quincy would, have been as subtle and accomplished an essayist as Jeffrey. But these men turned their backs on these alluring prospects that they might identify themselves

THE EARLY A B OUT ION IS TS. 1 3

with the cause of the despised slave. They felt that their powers belonged to God and humanity, and not to themselves.

4. And here I would speak more fully of the intellcctjial foj^ce that characterized these abolitionists. Regarded simply from this point of view, they were a remarkable company of men and women. It may well be doubted whether any cause was ever better equipped, as regards the intelligence and ability of its advocates, than the anti-slavery reform. Upon its list of prose writers such names as the imperial Garrison, the clear and earnest Goodell, the just and spirited Birney, Rogers, sententious and racy, the candid and statesmanlike Jay, the elegant and elevated Channing, the witty and pointed Quincy, the capable and effective managing editors, Oliver Johnson, Joshua Leavitt, Sidney Howard Gay, William H. Burleigh and Dr. Bailey, the Shakespearian Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Chapman, the biographer of Harriet Martineau, and the classical Mrs. Child, of whom Lowell said, that though her heart, like the Nile, sometimes flooded her brain, it always left the region it had invaded the more fruitful. The poets of this cause were Whittier, Pierpont, and Lowell, with a strong claim to Longfellow. Some of its orators w^ere Phillips, Weld,

Stanton, l^radburn, Charles C. Burleigh, Gerrit Smith, William Goodell, Cassius Clay, Alvan Stewart, Samuel Lewis, Cyrus M. Burleigh, Douglass, Kemond, Garnet, Abby Kelley and Angelina Grimke — names which even now sound in our ears like the blast of a bugle. Were it not for a rule, which, in my embarrassment of riches, I have tried to observe, not to introduce into this paper men who were not in some sense professional abolitionists, I should have been glad to include in the last list the names of such Oberlin teachers as Finney, Thome, and Hudson. Those of you who remember the thunderstorm of wrath with which President Finney sometimes broke forth, for a few moments, against slavery; or who heard such an address from Professor Thome as that on ''Learning and Liberty," or have read his description of the midnight scene among the colored people of Antigua when emancipation took place there; or who were present at any public debate where Professor Hudson engaged in the work of vivisection upon a pro-slavery politician — will appreciate what it cost me not to place these names on my roll of anti-slavery orators. But for the same rule, which I am in so much danger of breaking, I should add to this list the names of such men in public life as

THE EA RL V A B OLIl IGNIS IS. 15

Sumner, Chase, Giddings,Wade, Hale, and John Quincy Adams. It is but justice to a people still suffering from the effects of unchristian prejudice, to add that in the great anti-slavery conventions the colored orators I have named, and some others, took their full share of the work, and appeared to no disadvantage in comparison with the speakers of another race.

But the early abolitionists made mistakes, and had marked faults, and our attention will now be directed to some of these. It should be remembered, however, that these faults did not belong to the whole body of earnest abolitionists, perhaps not even to a majority of them. They did not exist in all of even the early abolitionists, but were perhaps sufficiently prevalent among them, especially among their leaders, to be somewhat characteristic. It may be further added, in the way of apology for these faults, that you will discover in them a family resemblance to the faults of all sturdy and aggressive reformers, which suggests the possibility of a common explanation of them all. It would, no doubt, be an excellent thing, if, when you have a tough piece of reformatory work to do, you could find a set of men with all possible qualifications for it, both positive and negative, and without any defects whatever.

But there may be some insuperable difficulty in the way of this. It may be, with the limitations upon our human nature, that when \ou have found men with the pluck, I may say the audacity, with the earnestness, with the absolute consecration to the work, witli the stalwart force, with the strength of muscle and the weight of blow which the cause demands, this will turn out to be about all that they can furnish, and they will naturally be found to be somewhat deficient in the graces, the courtesies, the amenities, the sweetness, even the charities that we so much love. Nevertheless, defects or no defects, we must have these men. When fortresses, that have grown hoary in sheltering oppression, are to be torn down — when the light of day is to be let in on the dungeons of some Bastile, we must have men, first of all, who can poise and hurl battering-rams — who can plant explosives, who can wield battleaxes and smite with claymores; and if we find them deficient in the gentler qualities, or even, at times, in candor and fairness, we must look with some indulgence upon these defects, for the sake of the valor and the force which they bring to the aid of a good cause. I am indebted to President Fairchild for the defense made by an anti-slavery editor for harshness in his methods: " I have a rough road to travel," he said, "and silk slippers wouldn't last me an hour." Who would blot from the page of history the influence of Martin Luther? and yet even that revered reformer is not heated much beyond his wont in controversy, when he shouts to some monkish antagonist, "I will break in pieces your heart of brass, and pulverize your iron brains." With the charitable consideration which this view of the case naturally begets, we will now discuss the faults of the early abolitionists.

I. In the first place, then, many of them had a defective philosophy of morals. They were honest to the core. Their sympathies were sound and manly. They loved righteousness and hated iniquity. But when they undertook to give us definitions, they threw us into confusion. They judged moral character by mechanical rules, and definitions derived from men's external acts and relations. For example, the holding of a slave is, in all possible circumstances — in its very nature — sinful. Did not John Wesley say that American slavery is the sum of all villainies.? Did not Thomas Jefferson write that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God is just.? Hence, to continue one hour voluntarily in the i8 LECTURES AND ESSA VS.

relation of slaveholder, is in itself a deadly sin. Is it not so? Nay, more, is it not self-evidently so ? This being the case, is not the man who apologizes for the slaveholder, though not himself one, plainly, and of necessity a sinner? If this be true, then the apologist for this man is also wicked, and so on, indefinitely. Let us dwell a moment upon this. A is a slaveholder, and therefore a criminal. B knows this, but apologizes for A; therefore B is a criminal. C admits that A is morally depraved, but thinks that B may be an honest man. As this is plainly wrong, C also is a sinner. Now comes D who condemns A and B, but as C is his neighbor, and he approves what he has seen of his spirit, he thinks that C may be upright. Now we must condemn D; and this process goes on to the end of the alphabet. So reasoned many of the early abolitionists. Of course this alphabet included all the world but themselves. Nay more, if one of themselves, in a moment of weakness, ventured to suggest that some man in the neighborhood of S or T might be virtuous, he was denounced and virtually excommunicated. It used to be said that no true abolitionist would think well of a man that would think well of a man that would think well of a man that would think well of a slaveholder. Now this rule was, in some respects, a very convenient one. It was simple and easily applied. It saved much trouble in thinking and investigating. When you met a man you were under no necessity of observing his conduct, studying his spirit, or listening to the testimony of his neighbors. You only needed to know that lie stood somewhere in the line from A to Z. But while this rule saved time and trouble, it had its disadvantages. In the first place, it made the righteous too few in number for cheerful labor among themselves. It was bad in itself, being founded neither in good sense, right leason, nor experience. It produced unnecessary friction, divided true men, and weakened their power for good. There can be no doubt that this error did much to retard the success of the cause, and success which would have come in the best way, by the wide diffusion and candid reception of truth.

2. But I have been anticipating another fault of many of these reformers which was that of intolerance. They could not bear a difference of opinion. It did seem to them so perverse and unreasonable that their opinions upon moral questions should not at once be accepted by all ! This fault was in part intellectual, resulting from that lack of a philosophy of morals of which I have spoken, and in part moral, the fruit of bitterness which had been produced by the long contest. It must be admitted that the early abolitionists had much to try their patience. When they started out with the inspiration of a new cause, they expected large help from the political parties and the church. A ^&\y public men gave them a little indirect countenance. A considerable number of Christian people did join them. But the church, as a whole, like the parties, stood aloof, honestly in doubt, let us hope, as to the wisdom and usefulness of the movement. This cold reception was a great disappointment to the reformers, and when to this was added the social ostracism, the abuse, and the cruel persecutions of subsequent years, it does not surprise us to find that they became harsh and embittered. I put it to your candor, whether an abolitionist of the proper temperament could be expected to control his feelings when one of the most powerful ecclesiastical bodies in the country refused to consider his petition on the subject of slavery, declined to adopt vigorous testimonies against it, repealed old testimonies because they were too vigorous, and took an apologetic attitude generally towards that iniquity, and then proceeded to discuss and condemn tlie sin of dancing and the evil of marrying a deceased wife's sister. Is it surprising that aboHtionists went about saying in their bitterness that, according to the canons of this church, if you dance with a woman, or marry a woman who is your sister-inlaw, you will be under censure, but if you sell a woman into perpetual slavery, you will escape it? I always thought it a grave error in the church to give the new reform so inhospitable a reception, and it was wrong in the abolitionists to permit themselves, in consequence of this rebuff, to become denunciatory and uncharitable.

In some instances this practice of denunciation degenerated into a mere habit of scolding. I recall an example of this which had an unexpected result. As it introduces a name even more distinguished than that of the principal actor, it may be of some interest to you. It was probably in the winter of i860, when two gentlemen, known as Mr. Cox and Mr. Garfield, were, like myself, members of the Ohio Senate, that a lady who had been a prominent anti-slavery lecturer of an extreme school, came to Columbus, as it was understood, to reprove the members of the General Assembly, in personal interviews, for their shortcominors in the work of reform. She sat with some friends upon the floor of tlie Senate, in a part reserved for ladies, and sent for Senators, one by one, to exhort them. Cox and myself, as I remember, had both responded to her summons, had received our reproofs with due meekness, and had returned to our seats with something, no doubt, of that humbled look which a man always has, owing, of course, to his false education, when he is put down by a woman. Garfield's turn came next. He had a keen relish for fun, and some curiosity was expressed to learn the result ot the encounter. As he approached our critic, and before she could fairly begin, he broke out with much emphasis somehow as follows: — *'Oh, madam! [ hail this opportunity. I have long wished to see you in order to rebuke you ; and I do now rebuke you for your horrible treason to humanity. How can you look us in the face, after all the harm you have done to the cause of reform } Oh, madam ! I've seen hard-hearted people, I've seen cruel people, I've seen malicious people — but of all the hard-hearted people, all the cruel people, all the malicious people that I ever saw, you are the most incorrigible. I denounce you in the name of bleeding humanity for your abominable course." This jocose tirade had the intended effect. The lady felt herself outscolded and declined the contest. Mr. Garfield, like the skillful military man which he afterwards showed himself to be, drew off his forces without loss. Having given this ludicrous incident, it is but justice to add that the lady in question was one of the most laborious, faithful, and self-denying of the group of workers to which she belonged. I knew her well, and often heard her. She was a thorough student of her subject, and was one of the best furnished of all the anti-slavery speakers with facts, illustrations, and arguments. Her public addresses were often very able, and, in the early period, wholly unobjectionable. But as the years passed, she became impatient with the slow progress which the world was making. She felt that the case had been made so plain that farther argument was a waste of strength, and the time had come for denunciation and the application of the severest epithets. Henceforth her speeches were composed largely, and I have no doubt conscientiously, of material of this kind.

3. I must speak of one more fault of a portion of the early anti-slavery men', and one which was a great obstacle to their success. ' They were protie to attack the wrong thing. When they assaulted slavery, or those who upheld slavery, they were in their legitimate sphere, and commended themselves strongly to men's conscience and judgment. But they could not limit themselves to this. For example, in discussing national questions, they began by showing that the government of the United States, although founded, at great cost, for the establishment of liberty, had been administered in the interest of slavery. They turned a strong light upon all the dark places of our history, exposing the malign schemes by which slaveholders and their allies, for thirty years, had managed to subordinate the welfare of the whole people to the aggrandizement of a despotic oligarchy. This was excellent and wholesome work, and it secured for them a multitude of sympathizers. But this policy in time lost its interest for tiiem, as being too elementary and common-place. It was time for advanced opinions. Hence they announced the doctrine that the Constitution, which all the great jurists are now agreed is a law, and is to be interpreted as such, was a mere treaty between independent States, and as they thought there were some things in it favorable to slavery, they demanded its abrogation, or became disunionists. By this step alone they lost a large portion of their followers. But a few of them went still furtlier.