EARLY POSITION OF REV. JAMES SMYLIE.

In proof of the point that the Church led the State, in the change of views on the merits of the system of slavery, may be cited an article from the New Orleans True Witness, a religious paper, edited by Rev. R. McInnis, a Presbyterian clergyman, a native Mississippian, who has the means of knowing whereof he affirms. It is under date of August 18, 1860. It may be added, also, that the Synod of Mississippi officially declare the same thing stated in this article, as to the leading responsibility for this change. The editor remarks as follows:

SMYLIE ON SLAVERY.-It is an interesting historical fact, that Rev. James Smylie, an Old School Presbyterian minister, was the first person in our country who took boldly the position that slavery was not inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible. He was one of the first Presbyterian ministers who came to the Southwest, and assisted in forming the Mississippi Presbytery, in 1816. The general view held at this time, and for many years after, South as well as North, was that slavery was an evil. The question had not been examined. All took it for granted that slavery was an evil, and inconsistent with the spirit and teachings of the word of God. Hence the sentiments expressed by our Church, in 1818-which, by the way, have been most shamefully garbled and misrepresented-were at the time the sentiments of the whole country, and were regarded as a pretty strong Southern document; hence all the South voted for it. In fact, so strong was the feeling for emancipation, that this act of 1818 discouraged it in our members, where the slaves were not prepared for it, while it condemned the "harsh censures and uncharitable reflection" of the more ultra men of the North. We have referred to this merely to call attention to the fact that the opinion of the whole country was that slavery was an evil. And we know of no man who took a different position, until Rev. James Smylie, in answer to a letter addressed to him as stated clerk of the above Presbytery, wrote a reply, in which he attempted to show that neither the Old nor the New Testament Scriptures declared slavery to be a sin, but both recognized it as an institution belonging to the great social system. This letter, which has long since been published, in a pamphlet of some

PAPER OF THE SYNOD OF MISSISSIPPI.

469

eighty pages, small type, was not only the first, but it is, in our view, the ablest and most convincing Scriptural argument ever published on the subject. It shows research, ability, honesty, and is unanswerable. When the substance of this letter was delivered, in 1835 and '36, in the Churches of Mississippi, in the form of a sermon, the people generally, large slaveholders too, did not sympathize with him in his views. We recollect hearing him, on one occasion, for some three hours, and every person, without exception, thought him somewhat fanatical. The idea that the Bible did sanction slavery was regarded as a new doctrine even in Mississippi. Yet Rev. James Smylie-and a more honest man never lived-was honestly sincere in his convictions and his views, and he went ahead against the tide of public opinion. His Scriptural argument has never been answered, nor can it be. This letter was the first thing that turned public attention in the South, and especially in the Southwest, to the investigation of the subject; and every Scriptural argument we have seen is but a reproduction of this, while none is so clear, full, and unanswerable. It ought to be republished.

SOME TWO YEARS AFTER the publication of this letter, George McDuffie, a senator of South Carolina, announced similar views in Congress, and was regarded there as taking a strange and untenable position-one which met with little sympathy in that body. The fact is, the South had never examined the subject, and were finally driven to it by the intolerant fanaticism of ultra men at the North.

We mention the above facts, not for the purpose of provoking discussion, but merely to show the state of public opinion at the time on the subject of slavery; and to show that the South is indebted to a minister of our Church for the first clear and unanswerable argument against the generally admitted view that slavery was a sin.

PAPER OF THE SYNOD OF MISSISSIPPI.

It will be seen from the official document which follows, that Mr. Smylie began to make public his views somewhat earlier than the time mentioned by Mr. McInnis; at least, before he received the letter from the Presbytery of Chillicothe. The following is an extract from an obituary notice of Rev. James Smylie, of Mississippi, which was reported in the Synod of which he was a member, and by that body unanimously adopted:

Extract from the Minutes of the Synod of Mississippi, at a Meeting held in the City of Jackson, Miss., in December, 1853.

There is one production from his pen which produced a strong sensation in various parts of the United States. When the abolition excitement arose in the North, he resolved, as many others ought to have done, to give the Sacred Scriptures a thorough searching, to ascertain the doctrines and duties there inculcated in relation to slavery. He determined to investigate the subject in the most candid manner, and to receive whatever was taught with the most fearless and implicit faith. The result surprised himself. He found that the teachings of Scripture were greatly at variance with the popular belief. He wished to communicate his discoveries to others. He wrote a sermon on the subject and preached it at Port Gibson. It gave great offence not only to the Church, but also to his brethren in the ministry, who seriously advised him to preach that sermon no more. In the mean time, the Presbytery of Chillicothe (in Ohio) assumed the lofty position of instructors of their brethren of the South on the subject of slavery, exhorting them to abandon it as a heinous sin. They addressed a letter to the Presbytery of Mississippi on the subject. This letter was received by Mr. Smylie as stated Clerk. He wrote a reply, to be laid before the Presbytery for their adoption. He read this reply to one of his brethren before the meeting. As he had entered into the teachings of Scripture in relation to slavery, the reply was long; and many of his views differed from those of his brethren. On these two accounts he was told that his reply would not, in all probability, be adopted by the Presbytery. It was then agreed that the brother whom he had consulted should write another reply, in a different style and manner, and more concise, and that this should be offered if his was not adopted. The concise reply was adopted by the Presbytery, and the Chillicothe letter and the reply were published together in a religious newspaper at Cincinnati, and there was no further annoyance from the Presbytery of Chillicothe. Mr. Smylie then determined that he would publish his views in a pamphlet form. Such was the variation of his sentiments from those of his brethren, that all whom he consulted, with but one or two exceptions, attempted to dissuade him from this step. With that honest inflexibility of purpose and confidence in the correctness of his own conclusions which ever distinguished the man, he published his pamphlet. For a while he was covered with odium, and honored with a large amount of abuse from the abolitionists of the North, for teaching that the Bible did not forbid the holding of slaves, and that it was tolerated

CONFIRMATORY TESTIMONY.

471

in the primitive Church. These doctrines are now received as true both North and South, and they constitute the basis of action of the most respectable religious bodies even in the North itself; so that Mr. Smylie has the high honor of giving the true exposition of the doctrines of the Bible in relation to slavery, in the commencement of the Abolition excitement, and of giving instruction to others far more learned and talented than himself.

In Dr. Baird's "Southern Rights and Northern Duties," before referred to, we find incidental evidence confirmatory of the point that certain of the Southern clergy were earlier than Southern statesmen in announcing the new doctrines on slavery. John C. Calhoun has been deemed, along with Mr. McDuffie, named above, one of the earliest among Southern Statesmen to take extreme proslavery ground. But Dr. Baird places him in the rear of Mr. Smylie, in point of time. Speaking of the Anti-Slavery Society, he says: "This society was but three years old, when, in 1835, it acquired an illustrious ally in the business of slavery agitation in the person of Mr. Calhoun, who then, as he afterward avowed, began to act upon the policy which ruled his subsequent life."

Mr. Smylie began the work somewhat earlier. Nor is it supposed that he was impelled by any agitation at that time at the North. Even Dr. Baird says that "in 1835," "the antislavery party was an insignificant faction." And from that day forward it was but a small fraction of the people. We have heard Mr. Smylie, from his own lips, state what led him at first to examine the subject more fully, and finally to repudiate the views then universal at the South. We were a member of the Synod of Mississippi, and present, when the obituary concerning him was adopted; and from our personal knowledge, we know it was the common

belief among all classes in the Church at the South, that he and other clergymen, chiefly in the Presbyterian Church, were the first to take open and broad ground on that platform which maintains the extreme proslavery views,-that Slavery is a divine system, an ordinance of God, on a par with the parental and matrimonial relations,-views which, at length, in the demands which were made in their name, plunged the country into treason, rebellion, and war.

It is, therefore, no slander upon the Southern Church and Southern Clergy to say that THEY LED THE WAY in the revolution in Southern opinion upon slavery. They claim to have done this; they deem it an honor; they glory in it; they will not divide the honor with politicians; but, as in regard to the rebellion, as we have shown elsewhere, they claim to have led both politicians and people. As a suitable reward for this noble work, they embalm the memory of those who took the lead in it, in solemn obituaries adopted in ecclesiastical bodies; and that these deeds may not perish from among men, they send these memorials for sacred deposit in the Archives of the Presbyterian Historical Society, that all men to the end of time may know wherefore they were thus highly honored!