Neither would I, though I am quite a tomahawk sort of man myself." On the other hand, Abby Kelley, writing to G. W. Benson, censures Charles Burleigh for not wanting S. S. Foster sent to lecture in Connecticut, where the new-organized State Society was carrying on an active campaign and the old organization was doing nothing. "His [Burleigh's] manner will do much for a certain class, at certain times; but another class, and the same class, indeed, at other times, need Foster's preaching."1

Cf. ante, p. 5.

MS. Sept.

13, 1841.

So far as the preaching was directed against pro-slavery clericalism and denominationalism, the need of it cannot be doubted for the year 1841. Dr. Channing, in his work on West India Emancipation, sorrowfully admitted the Lib. 11:6. pro-slavery character of American "religion"; and Ger

rit Smith, speaking to this text, said: "I do not hesitate Lib. 11:7. to make the remark, infidel though it may seem in the eyes of many, that were all the religion of this land-the good, bad, and mixed-to be this day blotted out, there would remain as much ground as there now is to hope for the speedy termination of American slavery." The sooner, added Mr. Garrison, this truth is realized by abolitionists, Lib. 11:7. the better. "When we go into a place," said Wendell

1 See Cyrus Peirce's protests against Abby Kelley's and S. S. Foster's resolutions at Fall River, Nov. 23, 1841, and against their "style" generally (Lib. 12:3, 19), with Mrs. Chapman's comment (Lib. 12:23). Miss Kelley offered a resolution in these terms at the tenth anniversary meeting of the Mass. A. S. Society (Jan. 28, 1842): "Resolved, That the sectarian organizations called churches are combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers, and, as such, form the bulwark of American slavery"—this last phrase being probably suggested by James G. Birney's tract, 'The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery' (published first, anonymously, in London, Sept. 23, 1840; in a second and third [American] edition in Newburyport, Mass., in 1842; and again, in Boston, in May, 1843). Phoebe Jackson wrote from Providence, Nov. 18, 1842, to Mrs. Garrison, of the recently held annual meeting of the Rhode Island A. S. Society: "The strong ground taken by Rogers, Foster, and a few others occasions considerable feeling among our friends. By the way, Rogers is not a favorite speaker of mine, but Foster is deeply impressive. I do not always agree with him, but he has great power. I do not think it

wise in him to disturb the assemblies of others: it appears to me like an infringement on their rights. Neither do I sympathize in the Christian (?) course they pursue toward him and others" (MS.).

July 2, 1841; Lib. II: 123.

Lib. 11: 173.

Phillips at Weymouth, speaking as an anti-slavery lecturer, "we know, we feel instantly, whether the minister is for or against us. We judge instinctively." But that the presumption was that the minister would be adverse, is clear from such a report on the attitude of the clergy as was made for Middlesex, one of the largest counties in Massachusetts, yet within easy radius of Boston, the Liberator office, and the engine of the State anti-slavery machinery, and by no means a neglected field.1 As for the great representative religious bodies, they successfully pursued this year either the policy of silence and suppresAnte, p.27. sion on the subject of slavery—like the Presbyterian General Assembly; or of satisfying the South by the exclusion of anti-slavery officers from the Board of Missions-as in the case of the Baptist Triennial Convention. at Baltimore, under Southern threats of turning mission contributions into other channels. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, whose agents among the slaveholding Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws Lib. 11:158. were themselves slaveholders, met a ministerial petition Lib. 11:154. that they should not keep silent about slavery, by replying that they could neither approve nor condemn it, and that they could not scrutinize the source of money contributed to their funds. And this, too, satisfied the South.

Lib, 11:86, 87.97, 105,

109, 113.

Apr. 4, 1841.

The great political event of the year was the death of President Harrison and the succession of John Tyler. How much this change of Administration affected the destiny of slavery, either immediately or remotely, can only be matter of speculation. We can, however, affirm with certainty, that whatever legislation the Slave Power might have obtained from Congress, President Harrison

1 Collins, who, after his return from England, devoted all his spare time to lecturing and recruiting in Massachusetts and the neighboring States, delivering more than ninety addresses in upwards of sixty towns and parishes, and travelling some 3500 miles, reported on Jan. 18, 1842: “All the opposition I have met with in the prosecution of my mission has originated, with scarcely an exception, with clergymen." Still, in all the places above enumerated except two, he was able to obtain a meeting-house from some one of the religious denominations (Lib. 12: 11).

98, 102, 106, 125.

would have sanctioned with alacrity. His inaugural address, with its sophistical argument for the limitation Lib. 11:43of the powers of Congress over slavery in the District, had been preceded by a speech at Richmond repudiating, Lib. 11:46. as a native Virginian, the slightest sympathy with abolitionism. Tyler's message, on the other hand, made no Lib. 11:62. allusion to the subject. In the confusion caused by an extra session of Congress, the gag-rule was momentarily relaxed, and John Quincy Adams improved the opportu- Lib. 11:97, nity to reopen his inexhaustible budget of anti-slavery petitions. At the regular session in December a new Lib. 11:206. gag-rule was promptly applied. Meanwhile, two incidents showed unmistakably the Southern purpose to make "pro-slavery" and "national" (or Federal) synonymous terms. One was the reluctance of the Senate, till the North showed its teeth, to confirm Edward Everett's Lib. 11: nomination to the court of St. James, on account of his anti-slavery views.1 The other (for no game was too small for this inquisition) was the same body's refusal to confirm the postmaster of Philadelphia unless he discharged Joshua Coffin (newly appointed) from his lettercarriers; Coffin's alleged offence being that he had once assisted in ransoming a kidnapped free person of color. Lib. 11:146, The sacrifice demanded was made, and even letter-carriers were taught to know the hand that fed them.

: 146, 149, 150, 154.

211.

Lib. 10:1, 5,

9; 11:14, 54, 57, 183.

More significant of the nominal character of the socalled Union were the efforts of Georgia and Virginia, on account of the refusal of Northern governors to surrender as felons citizens charged with aiding slaves to escape, to establish quarantine against the ships of Maine and New York. More desperately unconstitutional was the proposal of Governor McDonald of Georgia, that even Lib. 11:183. packages from New York or any like offending State

1 In response to the abolition catechism of 1837, Gov. Everett had professed his conviction that slavery was an evil, and should be abolished as soon as this could be done peacefully. He asserted the power of Congress over slavery and the slave trade in the District, and opposed the admission of any new slave State. Finally, such progress had he made within two years (ante, 2:76), he maintained the right of free discussion (Lib. 7: 182).

1841.

Lib. 11:54.

Lib. 12:10.
Lib. 12:32,

a

CHAP. I. should be subjected to inspection, and suspicious persons therefrom be obliged to give security for good behavior— in the midst of a contented slave population. The Governor of Virginia declined to honor Governor Seward's demand for the extradition of a New York forger piece of retaliation too dangerous to escape the censure of his own Legislature, though it subsequently passed an "inspection law" for vessels destined for New York, as did South Carolina.1 Referring to McDonald's "bluster," Mr. Garrison said that the South had "long threatened a dissolution of the Union; and she may yet be taken at her word, in an hour when she is least prepared for such an event. The alternative is ultimately to be presented to her, either to put away her diabolical slave system, or to be put beyond the pale of a free republic." Already he had exclaimed, in view of the revived prospect of the annexaLib. 11:179. tion of Texas, "Sooner let the Union be dashed in pieces"

33.

Lib. 11:183.

Lib. 11:191.

than that the Northern States should submit to this infamy. A little later, forecasting the doings of Congress at the first regular session

"We expect," he said, "the sacred right of petition to be maintained impartially, and vindicated at all hazards. If this should be done, we are willing to risk all the consequences. The desperadoes from the South, in Congress, will fume and swagger, and threaten to blow up the Union, as a matter of course. Let them retire whenever they choose, if they wish to be alone. We would sooner trust the honor of the country and the liberties of the people in the hands of the inmates of our penitentiaries and prisons, than in their hands, for safe keeping. All that appertains to burlesque, paradox, imposture, effrontery, is embraced in the fact that they are allowed to represent a people professing to believe in the Declaration

1 These laws could be suspended by the Executive when New York surrendered the alleged fugitives from justice to Virginia, and its Legislature repealed the act of 1840 extending the right of trial by jury to citizens whose freedom was called in question by kidnappers or Southern slaveowners (Lib. 12:32, 33). Noteworthy is the making of common cause with Virginia on the part of South Carolina in seeking to coerce New York, and the justification of the means, viz., a "regulation of commerce concurrently with that exercised by Congress under the Constitution. For a typical instance of the operation of the Virginia law, see Lib. 12: 118.

of Independence! They ought not to be allowed seats in Congress. No political, no religious co-partnership should be had with them, for they are the meanest of thieves and the worst of robbers. We should as soon think of entering into a 'compact' with the convicts at Botany Bay and New Zealand. So far as we are concerned, we 'dissolved the Union' with them, as slaveholders, the first blow we aimed at their nefarious slave system. We do not acknowledge them to be within the pale of Christianity, of republicanism, of humanity. This we say dispassionately, and not for the sake of using strong language. With us, their threats, clamors, broils, contortions, avail nothing; and with the entire North they are fast growing less and less formidable."

Cf. Lib. 12:31.

Like sentiments began to be heard from others at anti- Lib. 11: 189. slavery meetings in Massachusetts, but as yet disunion

1

formed no part of the official creed or programme of the

State Society, which did, however, include, as an object Lib. 11:166. to be striven for, an amendment to the Constitution either abolishing slavery, or exonerating the people of each free State from assisting in sustaining it.2 So far, indeed, the Liberty Party might have gone, though not free, as being a party, to advocate disunion pure and simple. Towards this organization Mr. Garrison maintained a dignified attitude, not denying to his personal friends like Mr. Sewall, or to bitter enemies like Torrey, the moderate use Lib. 11:31, 38, 155, 159, of his columns for Liberty Party notices and reports. He still held, with Channing, that, by such a conversion of Lib. 11:1. their anti-slavery energies, abolitionists would "lose the reputation of honest enthusiasts, and come to be consid

1 Thus, at Hingham, Nov. 4, 1841, Edmund Quincy showed that slavery had already destroyed the Union; and Frederick Douglass, that the Union pledged the North to return fugitives—wherefore, "He is no true abolitionist who does not go against this Union” (Lib. 11: 189).

2 Noteworthy is the appearance of a book (midsummer madness, one might think it, considering the time of year, the deranged author, and the vain doctrine) by G. W. F. Mellen (ante, 2: 428), entitled, ‘An Argument on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery.' Mr. Garrison, on a hasty reading, judged it to deserve attention (Lib. 11: 123); but when, at the Millbury quarterly meeting of the Mass. A. S. Society, in August, Mellen, in conjunction with S. S. Foster, attempted to embody this argument in a resolution, they were defeated (Lib. 11:139). It will be seen hereafter how the doctrine was forced upon the Third Party.

VOL. III.-3

179.