SLAVERY,—BY WILLIAM E. CHANNING.
This was the title of Dr. Channing’s book. It rendered the antislavery cause services so important that I am impelled to give a further account of it. It seemed to me at the time, it seems to me now, one of the most inconsistent books I have ever read. It showed how, all unconsciously to himself, the judgment of that wise man had been warped and his prejudices influenced by the deference, which had come to be paid pretty generally throughout our country, to the Southern slaveholding oligarchy; and by the denunciations which their admirers, sympathizers, abettors, and minions in the free States, poured without measure upon Mr. Garrison and his comparatively few fellow-laborers.
Dr. Channing’s profound respect for human nature and the rights of man, and his heartfelt compassion for the oppressed, suffering, despised, were such that he could not but see clearly the essential, inevitable, terrible wrongs and evils of slavery to the master as well as to his subject. He portrayed these cruelties and vices so clearly and forcibly that the pages of his book contain as utter condemnations of the domestic servitude in our Southern States, and as awful exposures of the consequent corruption, pollution of families and the community in those States,—condemnations as utter and exposures as awful as could be found in The Liberator. To his chapters on “Property in Man,” “Rights,” and “Evils of Slavery,” we could take no exceptions. But his chapter entitled “Explanations” seems to us, as Mr. Garrison called it, a chapter in recantation,—a disastrous attempt to make it appear as if there could be sin without a sinner. He says that the character of the master and the wrong done to the slave are distinct points, having little or no relation to each other. He therefore did not “intend to pass sentence on the character of the slaveholder.” Jesus Christ taught that “by their fruits ye shall know men.” But the Doctor said in this chapter, “Men are not always to be interpreted by their acts or their institutions.” “Our ancestors,” he continued, “committed a deed now branded as piracy,” i. e. the slave-trade. “Were they, therefore, the offscouring of the earth?” No,—but they were pirates, their good qualities in other respects notwithstanding. They were guilty of kidnapping the Africans, and made themselves rich by selling their victims into slavery. Piracy was too mild a term for such atrocious acts. They were just as wicked before they were denounced by law as afterwards. And it was by bringing the people of England and of this country to see the enormity of the crimes inseparable from that trade in human beings, that they were persuaded to repent of it, to renounce and abhor it. Again Dr. Channing says under this head, “How many sects have persecuted and shed blood! Were their members, therefore, monsters of depravity?” I answer, their spirit was cruel and devilish, utterly unlike the spirit of Jesus. They were none of his, whatever may have been their professions. As well might we deny that David was a gross adulterer and mean murderer, because he wrote some very devotional psalms.
A more marvellous inconsistency in the book before us is this. The Doctor declares “that cruelty is not the habit of the slave States in this country.” “He might have affirmed just as truly,” said Mr. Garrison, “that idolatry is not the habit of pagan countries.” What is cruelty? The extremest is the reducing of a human being to the condition of a domesticated brute, a piece of mere property. The Doctor himself has said as much in another part of this volume, see the 26th page in his excellent chapter on “Property.” Having described what man is by nature, he adds, “The sacrifice of such a being to another’s will, to another’s present, outward, ill-comprehended good, is the greatest violence which can be offered to any creature of God. It is to cast him out from God’s spiritual family into the brutal herd.” “No robbery is so great as that to which the slave is habitually subjected.” “The slave must meet cruel treatment either inwardly or outwardly. Either the soul or the body must receive the blow. Either the flesh must be tortured or the spirit be struck down.” No Abolitionist, not even Mr. Garrison, has set forth more clearly the extreme cruelty, inseparable from holding a fellow-man in slavery one hour.
Still Dr. Channing objected to our primal doctrine,—“immediate emancipation.” But could there have been a more obvious inference than this, which an upright mind would unavoidably draw from a consideration of the rights of man, the evils of slavery, and the unparalleled iniquity of subjecting a human being to such degradation. I ask, could there have been a more obvious inference than that any, every human being held in such a condition ought to be immediately released from it? It is plain to me that Dr. Channing himself drew the same inference that Elizabeth Heyrick,[H] of England, and Mr. Garrison had drawn, although he rejected the trenchant phrase in which they declared that inference. Having exhibited so faithfully and feelingly the wrongs and the evils of slavery, he says, on the 119th page of this book: “What, then, is to be done for the removal of slavery? In the first place, the slaveholder should solemnly disclaim the right of property in human beings. The great principle that man cannot belong to man should be distinctly recognized. The slave should be acknowledged as a partaker of a common nature, as having the essential rights of humanity. This great truth lies at the foundation of every wise plan for his relief.” Would not any one suppose, if he had not been forbidden the supposition, that the writer of these lines intended to enjoin the immediate emancipation of the enslaved? Surely, he would have the first thing that is to be done for their relief done immediately. Surely, he would have the foot of the oppressor taken from their necks at once. He would have the heavy yoke that crushes them broken without delay. Surely, he would have the foundation of the plan for the removal of slavery laid immediately. He would not, could not counsel the slaveholder to postpone a day, nor an hour, the recognition of the right of his slave to be treated as a fellow-man. There is a remarkable resemblance between what Dr. Channing here says ought to be done in the first place, and what the Abolitionists had from the beginning insisted ought to be done immediately.
One of the Doctor’s objections to our chosen phrase was that it was liable to be misunderstood. But, as we said at the time, “if immediate emancipation expresses our leading doctrine exactly, it ought to be used and explanations of it be patiently given until the true doctrine has come to be generally understood, received, and obeyed.” Now, immediate emancipation was the comprehensive phrase that did best express the right of the slave and the duty of the master. In whatever sense we used the word immediate, whether in regard to time or order, the word expressed just what we Abolitionists meant. We insisted upon it in opposition to those who were teaching slaveholders to defer to another generation, or to some future time an act of common humanity that was due to their fellow-men at once; and would be due every minute until it should be done. We insisted upon it in opposition to the popular but deceptive, impracticable, and cruel scheme which proposed to liberate the slaves on condition of their removal to Africa.
Dr. Channing further objected that “the use of the phrase immediate emancipation had contributed much to spread far and wide the belief, that the Abolitionists wished immediately to free the slave from all his restraints.” But ought we to have been held responsible for such a senseless, wanton misconstruction of words that had been explained a thousand times by our appointed lecturers, in our tracts, and in the “Declaration of the Sentiments, Purposes, and Plans of the American Antislavery Society,” which was published three years before Dr. Channing’s book appeared? Freemen,—Republican freemen were, are, and ever ought to be subject to the restraints of civil government, equal and righteous laws. From the commencement of our enterprise, our only demand for our enslaved countrymen has been that they should forthwith be admitted to all the rights and privileges of freemen upon the same conditions as others, after they shall have acquired (those of them who do not now possess) the qualifications demanded of others.
Still further the Doctor accused us Abolitionists of having “fallen into the common error of enthusiasts,—that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if no evil existed but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be compared with that of countenancing or upholding it.” We grieved especially that he suffered this censure to drop from his pen, as, coming from him, it would repress in many bosoms the concern which was beginning to be felt more than ever before for the slaves and the slaveholders. There was no danger that we should esteem or lead others to esteem the evils of their condition to be greater than they were. All about us there was still an alarming insensibility or indifference to the subject. This could not have been made to appear more glaring than by the Doctor himself, on the 137th page of his book. “Suppose,” he there said, “suppose that millions of white men were enslaved, robbed of all their rights in a neighboring country, and enslaved by a black race who had torn their ancestors from the shores on which our fathers had lived. How deeply should we feel their wrongs!” Ay, how much more deeply would even the Abolitionists feel for them! Yet why should we not all feel as much, in the case that actually existed in our country as in the one supposed? We are unable to find a reason of which we ought not to be ashamed, because it must be one based upon a cruel prejudice, the offspring of the degradation into which we had forced the black men. I really wish if there are any who think with Dr. Channing that the Abolitionists did exaggerate the guilt of holding men in slavery, or consenting with slaveholders,—I really wish such persons would read Dr. Channing’s chapter on the “Evils of Slavery,” and then show us, if he can, wherein we exaggerated them.
Dr. Channing repelled with great emphasis the charge often brought against Abolitionists, that we were endeavoring to incite the slaves to violence, bloodshed, insurrection. He said, page 131: “It is a remarkable fact, that though the South and the North have been leagued to crush them, though they have been watched by a million of eyes, and though prejudice has been prepared to detect the slightest sign of corrupt communication with the slave, yet this crime has not been fastened on a single member of this body.” No, not one of our number, that I was acquainted with, ever suggested the resort to insurrection and murder by the enslaved as the means of delivering them from bondage. And in our Declaration at Philadelphia we solemnly disclaimed any such intention.
We knew that slavery could be peaceably abolished only by the consent of the slaveholders and the legislators of their States. We knew that they could not fail to be affected, moved by the right action of our Federal Government, touching the enslavement of the colored population in the District of Columbia, and in the territories that were entirely under the jurisdiction of Congress. And we knew that the members of Congress could not be reached and impelled to act as we wished them to, but by the known sentiments and expressed wishes of their constituents,—the people of the nation North and South. It was needful, therefore, to press the subject upon the consideration of the people throughout the land. Accordingly, we did all in our power to awaken the public attention, to agitate the public mind, to touch the public heart. We sent able lecturers to speak wherever there were ears to hear them, and we sent newspapers and tracts wherever the mails would carry them.
Dr. Channing reproached us for this, especially for sending our publications to the slaveholders. But we know not how else we could have made them sensible of the horror with which their system of domestic servitude was viewed by thousands in the Northern States; and inform them correctly of our determination to effect the liberation of their bondmen; and the peaceful means and legal measures by which we intended, if possible, to accomplish our purpose. We wondered greatly at the Doctor’s objection to our course in this direction. To whom should we have sent our publications, if not to those whose cherished institution we were aiming by them to undermine and overthrow? Would it have been open, manly, honorable not to have done so?
One more objection Dr. Channing made, which seemed to us as unreasonable as the last. It was to our manner of forming our Antislavery Associations. He said: “The Abolitionists might have formed an association, but it should have been an elective one. Men of strong principles, judiciousness, sobriety, should have been carefully sought as members. Much good might have been accomplished by the co-operation of such philanthropists.” Alas! such philanthropists, the wise and prudent men, to whom he probably alluded, seemed to have made up their minds to acquiesce in the continuance of slavery, so long as our white brethren at the South saw fit to retain the institution; or to help them take it down very gradually, by removing the victims of it to the shores of Africa. Nearly fifty years had passed, and such philanthropists as he indicated had done little or nothing for the enslaved, and seemed to be growing more indifferent to their wrongs. If we had elected them, would they have associated with us? Are they the men to bear the brunt of a moral conflict? “Not many wise,”—as this world counts wisdom,—“not many rich, not many mighty,” were ever found among the leaders of reform. God has always chosen the foolish to confound the wise. It is left for imprudent men, enthusiasts, fanatics, to begin all difficult enterprises. They have usually been the pioneers of reform. Else why was not the abolition of slavery attempted and accomplished long before by that “better class”?
I have not dwelt so long upon this book, and criticised parts of it so seriously, in order to throw any shade upon the memory of that great man, whom I have so much reason to revere and love. But I have done this in order to reveal more fully to the present generation, and to those who may come after us, the sad state of the public mind and heart in New England thirty-five years ago. All the objections Dr. Channing alleged against us in this book were the common current objections of that day, hurled at us in less seemly phrases from the press, the platform, and the pulpit. They would not have been thought of, if we had been laboring for the emancipation of white men. It was sad that a man of such a mind and heart as Dr. Channing’s could have thought them of sufficient importance to press them upon us as he did. Nevertheless, his book contained so many of the vital principles for which we were contesting, set forth so luminously and urged so fervently, that it proved to be, as I have already said, a far greater help to our cause than we at first expected. And we look back with no little admiration upon one who, enjoying as he did, in the utmost serenity, the highest reputation as a writer and a divine, put at hazard the repose of the rest of his life, and sacrificed hundreds of the admirers of his genius, eloquence, and piety, by espousing the cause of the oppressed, which most of the eminent men in the land would not touch with one of their fingers.