Appendix VII.
The saddest, most astounding evidence of the demoralization of our Northern citizens in respect to slavery, and of Mr. Webster’s depraving influence upon them, is given in the following letter addressed to him soon after the delivery of his speech on the 7th of March,—signed by eight hundred of the prominent citizens of Massachusetts. I have given the names of a few as specimens of the whole.
From the Boston Daily Advertiser of April 2, 1850.
To the Hon. Daniel Webster:
Sir,—Impressed with the magnitude and importance of the service to the Constitution and the Union which you have rendered by your recent speech in the Senate of the United States on the subject of slavery, we desire to express to you our deep obligation for what this speech has done and is doing to enlighten the public mind, and to bring the present crisis in our national affairs to a fortunate and peaceful termination. As citizens of the United States, we wish to thank you for recalling us to our duties under the Constitution, and for the broad, national, and patriotic views which you have sent with the weight of your great authority, and with the power of your unanswerable reasoning into every corner of the Union.
It is, permit us to say, sir, no common good which you have thus done for the country. In a time of almost unprecedented excitement, when the minds of men have been bewildered by an apparent conflict of duties, and when multitudes have been unable to find solid ground on which to rest with security and peace, you have pointed out to a whole people the path of duty, have convinced the understanding and touched the conscience of a nation. You have met this great exigency as a patriot and a statesman, and although the debt of gratitude which the people of this country owe to you was large before, you have increased it by a peculiar service, which is felt throughout the land.
We desire, therefore, to express to you our entire concurrence in the sentiments of your speech, and our heartfelt thanks for the inestimable aid it has afforded towards the preservation and perpetuation of the Union. For this purpose, we respectfully present to you this, our Address of thanks and congratulation, in reference to this most interesting and important occasion in your public life.
We have the honor to be, with the highest respect,
Your obedient servants,
T. H. Perkins,
Charles C. Parsons,
Thomas B. Wales,
Caleb Loring,
Wm. Appleton,
James Savage,
Charles P. Curtis,
Charles Jackson,
George Ticknor,
Benj. R. Curtis,
Rufus Choate,
Josiah Bradlee,
Edward G. Loring,
Thomas B. Curtis,
Francis J. Oliver,
J. A. Lowell,
J. W. Page,
Thomas C. Amory,
Benj. Loring,
Giles Lodge,
Wm. P. Mason,
Wm. Sturgis,
W. H. Prescott,
Samuel T. Armstrong,
Samuel A. Eliot,
James Jackson,
Moses Stuart,[S]
Leonard Woods,[S]
Ralph Emerson,[S]
Jared Sparks,[T]
C. C. Felton,[U]
And over seven hundred others.
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
[FOOTNOTES]
[A] This chapter was written in June, 1867, and I give it here as it first came from my pen.
[B] Rev. Mr. Pierpont, who afterwards did good service, was absent in Europe during 1835.
[C] See Appendix.
[D] See Appendix.
[E] See “Right and Wrong in Boston,” by Mrs. M. W. Chapman.
[F] I have been told, and I record it here to his honor, that Hon. Joshua A. Spencer made an earnest, excellent speech, in behalf of free discussion.
[G] See Appendix.
[H] Of Leicester, England, who first demanded “immediate emancipation.”
[I] See Appendix.
[J] On that occasion, or another, I am not sure which, Mr. Adams announced another very pregnant opinion which he was ready to maintain; namely, that slaveholders had no right to bring or send their slaves into a free State, and keep them in slavery there; but that whenever slaves were brought into any State where all the people were free, they became partakers of that freedom, were slaves no longer.
[K] Elizabeth Heyrick, of Leicester, England.
[L] I am most happy to preserve and make known the fact that Dr. Henry Ware, Jr., then at the head of the Divinity School, and Professor Sidney Willard, of the college in Cambridge, were also members of that Convention.
[M] Would that justice would allow shame to wipe forever from the memory of man the disgraceful fact that, on the 27th of July, 1840, the Rev. John Pierpont was arraigned before an Ecclesiastical Council in Boston, by a committee of the parish of Hollis Street, as guilty of offences for which his connection with that parish ought to be dissolved,—and was dissolved. His offences were “his too busy interference with questions of legislation on the subject of prohibiting the sale of ardent spirits, his too busy interference with questions of legislation on the subject of imprisonment for debt, and his too busy interference with the popular controversy on the subject of the abolition of slavery.”
[N] The one of which Rev. Baron Stow, D. D., was pastor.
[O] See Appendix.
[P] I advertised my request in “Notes and Queries” for August, 1859.
[Q] See “The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery,” by J. G. Birney, “Slavery and Antislavery,” by W. Goodell, and “The Church and Slavery,” by Rev. Albert Barnes.
[R] See Appendix.
[S] Of the Theological Institution at Andover.
[T] President of Harvard University.
[U] Professor of Greek in Harvard University.
[Transcriber’s Notes]
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
The entries in the Table of Contents for pages 389 and 391 do not have corresponding sub-headings on the referenced pages, and the sub-heading on page 85 is not mentioned in the Table of Contents.
Page [28]: “de-gradation” was printed with the hyphen; in context, this appears to be intentional.
Page [40]: “through the school” was printed as “though the school”; changed here.
Page [111]: Extraneous opening quotation mark removed before “Here, too, the”.
Page [191]: Unmatched closing quotation mark retained after “national honor and prosperity.”
Page [237]: Unmatched opening quotation mark removed before “Pastoral Association of Massachusetts”.
Page [354]: The second line of poetry, beginning “And in my soul’s just estimation”, was printed as one very long line. In other books, those lines are in several different ways.