CHAP. XIII. H. Wright is not an infidel, what is he? I inquire honestly, for 1853. if anybody had asked me if he was one, I should have answered yes without a moment's hesitation, in the same manner as I S. J.May. should have said that May was a Unitarian. I find the following numbers missing from the Liberator of this year, and should like to have them sent me: 27, 28, 29, 30, 39, 41, 49. MS. no date. Lib. 23:202, Dec. 23, 1853. Harriet Beecher Stowe to W. L. Garrison. [ANDOVER, December, 1853 (?).] I see you have published your letter to me in the Liberator. I did not reply to that letter immediately because I did not wish to speak on so important a subject unadvisedly and without proper thought and reflection. The course I pursued was to make up my file of the Liberator, and give it a general investigation as to its drift and course of thought for the past summer. I have also read through with attention Theodore Parker's works on religion, which I suppose give me somewhat of a fair view of the modern form of what people have generally denominated "infidelity." I use the word here for convenience' sake, without the slightest invidious intention. I also suppose that these works may not present the subject exactly as you view it, since no two persons of independent minds ever view a subject precisely alike; but yet by the two together I can perhaps form a general estimate, sufficiently accurate, of how your mind lies. I do not answer this letter in the paper, because I think a more private discussion of the matter likely to prove more useful. Briefly, then, my objection to the Liberator is not its free discussion-for that I approve; not the fact of its inquiring into the Bible and the Sabbath and other things of that kind—but the manner of it. . . . I notice [among] Mr. Parker's sermons one which contains some very excellent thoughts on the uses of the Sabbath. Considered merely as a human institution, Ante, p. 226. according to him, its preservation is exceedingly desirable, and its obliteration would be a great calamity. I notice also a very eloquent passage on the uses and influence of the Bible. He considers it to embody absolute and perfect religion, and that no better mode for securing present and eternal happiness can be found than the obedience to certain religious precepts therein recorded. He would have it read, circulated; and considers it, as I infer, a Christian duty to send it to the heathen, the slave, CHAP. XIII. etc. I presume you agree with him. 1853. These things being supposed about the Bible and the Sabbath certainly would make it appear, that if any man deems it his duty to lessen their standing in the eyes of the community, he ought at least to do it in a cautious and reverential spirit, with humility and prayer. My objection to the mode in which these matters are handled in the Liberator is, that the general tone and spirit seems to me the reverse of this. In place of calm, serious inquiry, I see hasty assertions, appeals to passion and prejudice, and a very general absence of proof of many of the things stated. Is this the way the image of eternal truth can be discovered? Can the stars mirror themselves in stormy and troubled water? As an instance of appeal to the passion, I notice your assertion with regard to the American clergy, that if public sentiment required it they would burn the Ante, p. 387. Bible to-morrow, etc. This includes all the clergy, without an exception, and accuses them of being unprincipled men, not fit to be trusted in any relation of life. Are assertions like these, which, in the nature of the case, cannot be proved, calculated to lead your hearers, on either side of the question, to that serious and dispassionate frame necessary for the examination of vital religious truth? H. C. Wright's pieces, some of them, contain reflections and assertions on the Jewish Scriptures which no benevolent and just man ought to make without great research and care, and without proper proof. Your name and benevolent labors have given your paper a circulation among many of the poor and lowly. They have no means of investigation, no habits of reasoning. The Bible, as they at present understand it, is doing them great good, and the Sabbath is a blessing to them and their families. The whole tendency of this mode of proceeding is to lessen their respect and reverence for the Bible while you give them nothing in its place. It is true that Uncle Tom, having the witness in himself, cannot be shaken; but he has a family whom he is trying to restrain and guide by the motives drawn from this book; and when your paper breaks the bands of reverence and belief - when his sons learn that it (the Old Testament) is a mass of Jewish fables, of absurd and bloody stories, mingled with some good and excellent things, and that the New Testament is a history, of a very low degree of credibility, of a man just as fallible as themselves, and who was mistaken and has misled the whole 1853. CHAP. XIII. Christian world on many important points, and that he is himself as good a judge of religious truth as Christ-I say, when a Christian father and mother find their children believing such things, of what use will the Bible be to them in education? I moreover regret these things on account of their inevitable influence on the cause of Human Liberty. It is impossible, while men are what they are, that this course of things should not operate injuriously on the cause. People will connect the sentiments and expressions of your paper with the cause, and we all feel continually this difficulty. I have no fear of discussion as to its final results on the Bible: my only regrets are for those human beings whose present and immortal interests I think compromised by this manner of discussion. Discussion of the Evidences and of [the] Authenticity and Inspiration of the Bible, and of all theology, will come more and more, and I rejoice that they will. Once more in regard to the use of the term Infidel. I think every class of men have a right to choose the designation by which they will be called. When a term which has been used as descriptive of their opinions has become a term of odium, they have a right to repudiate it as not fairly expressing their Theodore position. The sentiments which Mr. Parker, yourself, and H. C. Wright hold, are what have generally been considered infidel; but as that word, as applied to men formerly, implied a certain degree of contempt and defiance towards the Bible and its teachings which you do not feel, you have a right to choose your own name on fairly stating what it is, and what is implied by it. Parker. As to you, my dear friend, you must own that my frankness to you is the best expression of my confidence in your honor and nobleness. Did I not believe that in many respects "an excellent spirit is in you," I would not take the trouble to write all this. One word more. As to your views of the Bible: Do you examine both sides? Do you take pains to seek and to find the most able arguments against your views as well as for them? I take pains to read and study all upon your side - do you do the same as to mine? If in any points in this note I appear to have misapprehended or done you injustice, I hope you will candidly let me know where and how. The letter to which the last of the above-quoted series is a rejoinder, may be read in full in the Liberator. We select one passage to which Mrs. Stowe offers no CHAP. XIII. reply: 1853. 66 You say it is on the Bible you ground all your hopes of the Lib. 23:202. liberties, not only of the slave, but of the whole human race. How does it happen, then, that, in a nation professing to place as high an estimate upon that volume as yourself, and denouncing as infidels all who do not hold it equally sacred, there are three millions and a half of chattel slaves, who are denied its possession, under severe penalties? Is not slavery sanctioned by the Bible, according to the interpretation of it by the clergy generally, its recognized expounders? What, then, does the cause of bleeding humanity gain by all this veneration for the book? "My reliance for the deliverance of the oppressed universally is upon the nature of man, the inherent wrongfulness of oppression, the power of truth, and the omnipotence of Godusing every rightful instrumentality to hasten the jubilee." Mrs. Stowe's line of argument will seem, to the readers of the present narrative from the beginning, somewhat anachronistic, as if (which was the truth) proceeding from one who knew nothing of Mr. Garrison's theological evolution, either in its hyperorthodox source or in the causes which led to his spiritual emancipation—such, for example, as are implied in the passage just reproduced. This was not to be learned by a single summer's study of the Liberator. The friendly meeting at Andover cannot be exactly dated, but it probably took place in the second week of December. "I was dreadfully afraid of your father," Mrs. Stowe has since said to one of Garrison's children; 1 but the conference under her roof dispelled that feeling forever. His spirit captivated her as it had done many another of like prejudices. "You have," she wrote to him on December 12, 1853, "a remarkable tact at conversation." 2 1 To F. J. G., at the Garden Party given her by her publishers in 1882. 2 On Aug. 7, 1854, Wendell Phillips wrote to Elizabeth Pease Nichol (Miss Pease had married Prof. John Nichol of the Glasgow Observatory on July 6, 1853): "Mrs. Stowe has been so intimate, confidential and closely allied with us all here, visiting W. L. G. often, and sending for him still oftener, ." (MS.) VOL. III.-26 MS. Lib. 24: 82. THE CHAPTER XIV. THE NEBRASKA BILL.-1854. HE Civil War began in 1854 with the passage of the Nebraska Bill. By this measure a tract embracing upwards of 400,000 square miles, bounded on the north by the British dominions, and on the south by the Indian Territory, and lying between the Missouri River and the Lib. 24:33. Rocky Mountains,-larger than the original thirteen States, comparable in size to the then existing free States, or to Italy, Spain, and France, was thrown open to slavery, though expressly dedicated to freedom by the Missouri Compromise, as lying wholly north of 36° 30′. Lib. 24:23. This revolutionary proceeding threatened to divide by a great wedge the free States of the Pacific Coast from those of the interior and the East, and to give to the Slave Power the exclusive control of the Mississippi Valley. Greeley's tension, P. 47. The Compromise of 1850 had left the Missouri Compromise untouched and unquestioned. Calhoun - grant him Southern California and New Mexico for slavery was Ante, p. 217. ready, if reluctant, to protract the dividing parallel to the Pacific. Lewis Cass, in his famous letter to A. O. P. Struggle for Slavery Ex- Nicholson, December 24, 1847, laid down a principle of "squatter sovereignty" broad enough, indeed, for all the Territories of the United States, yet intended for immediate application only to the imminent acquisitions from Lib. 18:105. Mexico. Stephen A. Douglas, speaking at New Orleans in the summer of 1848, had also the Wilmot Proviso expressly in view when echoing Cass's doctrine, viz., that it was for "the people inhabiting them [the Territories] to regulate their internal concerns in their own way [i. e., |