Report of the Twentieth National Anti-Slavery Bazaar

by A. W. Weston

After so long an absence from the scene of her early labors, as Mrs. Child’s residence in New York has occasioned, we hailed her presence as a helper with the liveliest satisfaction. We participated in the great pleasure she must have experienced in comparing our present Bazaar with the first Anti-Slavery Fair, held in the December of 1834, owing its origin entirely to the personal labors and contributions of herself and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring. In every point of view, the reminiscence is full of encouragement.

With very earnest and peculiar emotions of interest, the Committee welcomed the presence and sympathy of Mrs. Stowe. We are very grateful for the kindness with which she placed at our disposal the very beautiful plate, presented her by friends of the slave in Great Britain. Placed in the centre of the Hall, it attracted much attention, and, of course, admiration. The Letter of the Women of England, with its 576,000 signatures, was placed close by, bearing ample testimony to the universality of the Anti-Slavery spirit in that Kingdom. We trust its gentle and persuasive words may yet fulfil their holy mission.

One of Cumberworth’s exquisite statuettes in bronze, was included in the French collection. It represented a woman of color, with two white children on her lap. Nothing could be more striking and effective than the expression of the whole group. Its price was one hundred dollars. Various friends, visiting the Bazaar, combined in its purchase, and presented it, as “a mark of their respect and esteem,” to Wendell Phillips, Esq.,—​some of them not uniting in all his Anti-Slavery opinions, but highly appreciating his personal character and entire devotion to the service of that race, which Cumberworth has so charmingly idealized.

Here, with thanks and blessings for all who have lent us the help of their word, or deed, or silent sympathy, we would gladly stop. We know that any words of counsel or encouragement from us, are, on this side the Atlantic, not needed. The field of conflict and duty lies clearly before all other eyes as before ours, and on its perplexities or involvements, we have no light that may not be equally shared by all.

It is not exactly thus with our coadjutors in Great Britain. Private correspondence assures us that there, the position of the Society with which the Bazaar stands identified, is not wholly apprehended, or even when apprehended, accepted without much reservation and distrust. By incessant pains and promulgation, we have at length made men understand, partially, at least, the catholicity and breadth of our platform; that on it, men and women of all nations, and conditions, and creeds, and politics, can meet in harmonious action, ignoring, for the time, all other differences of opinion, and united, so far as their Anti-Slavery life is concerned, by the recognition of the sin of Slavery, under all circumstances, and the duty, consequently, of its immediate abolition. Charges, grossly injurious and untrue, have been alleged against us. It has been said that, on this platform, we have brought irrelevant and extraneous topics, and have endeavored to make use of the time and instrumentalities of the Society, for the inculcation of opinions foreign to the objects of our association. These charges have their foundation either in enmity to the great principles that we represent, or in the strangest misapprehension. The dominant sects of the country can hardly understand that certain great, and, in their eyes, all-important doctrines, are no more to be asserted as truths on our platform, except incidentally, than are the converse propositions. Their members can enforce and illustrate Anti-Slavery truth in whatever way they please; but if smaller and more heretical bodies, represented in our councils, choose to use the same liberty, by speaking in their own theological tongue, the Society holds itself responsible for neither. It does not forbid the believer in endless punishment to urge repentance on slaveholders and pro-slavery men, by all the motives drawn from his own tremendous creed; neither has it aught to object when the preacher of a universal salvation enforces the same repentance, by alluding to the mercies that will, as he thinks, be extended to all. It is vulgarly said, “It takes all sorts of people to make a world.” It takes all sorts of sects, and creeds, and parties, to make up a pro-slavery world; and hence, when we rally for the slave’s liberation, common sense calls on us to unite all sects, and creeds, and parties in an Anti-Slavery fellowship. To make their arguments and appeals effective, people must necessarily use such as are real and influential to their own convictions; but if the slave’s redemption be not their end, but simply the inculcation of their own theories on other subjects, be such theories right or wrong, then are the parties thus offending guilty of great and highly blameable dishonesty. Against such, the Society guards itself as effectually as a liberal interpretation of parliamentary rules will admit. We believe no Society, of so entirely popular a character, ever sinned less in respect to extraneous topics.

But another objection is presented, where the difficulty, intrinsic in the nature of the case, is, of course, more perplexing, and far less easy of solution. The enemies of the American Anti-Slavery Society have changed their ground. “It is not an Infidel Society, but a Society that has a great many Infidels in it.” To look at this matter fairly, requires a wider view than many of our British friends are able to take. Their own agitation for the abolition of West India Slavery offers nothing analogous to the state of things that has obtained for the last twenty years in this country. No institutions, either civil or ecclesiastical, were the least affected in Great Britain by the abolition of West India Slavery. Half a dozen other questions—​questions, too, religious rather than political—​have involved important modifications of what may be called the institutions of the country. The Tractarian controversy, the Papal aggression, (so called,) the disruption of the National Church of Scotland, afford instances of our meaning. But West India emancipation did not go down to the very marrow of things, as do these questions. It was a noble struggle with a mighty moneyed interest, and too great credit cannot be awarded to British Abolitionists. But, we repeat, their situation differed very widely from ours. The Constitution of our country, as expounded by its authorized interpreters, has provided, by the most careful and astute arrangements, for the continuance and perpetuity of Slavery. All our civil institutions are, therefore, in some sense, based upon it. Having no national ecclesiastical establishment, we cannot affirm the same of the American Church, in the same absolute and positive sense, that we do of the State; and yet it is virtually and actually so. The voters and the church members are the same persons. The men who vote for the Fugitive Slave Bill on a week day, and avow themselves ready to carry out its requirements, are the same men who sit down at the Lord’s table on Sunday.

To abolish Slavery, under such circumstances, is tantamount to a revolution. True, the Abolitionists pray and labor that it may be a bloodless one; but just so far as their weapons are spiritual, just in proportion as their warfare lies in the realm of ideas, will be the amount of the evil with which our foreign friends find fault, and which we are called upon to correct. This, it is out of our power, in any direct way, to accomplish. Inwoven as Slavery is with every institution of the country, the earnest discussion of its abolition must almost of necessity connect itself with a parallel discussion of the great doctrines underlying the whole civil and ecclesiastical fabric. We repeat, that this is not the fault of the Anti-Slavery Society, but something inherent in the nature of the case. Hence it is that the Abolitionists have looked so carefully to their foundation principles, the sinfulness of Slavery under all circumstances, the duty of its abolition at all hazards. It is in no rash or thoughtless spirit that they have initiated opinions that have convulsed, and are destined still more mightily to shake this whole nation. True, they began in ignorance whither their path might lead, ignorant of almost every thing but that it is safe to do right,—​safe for the State, safe for the Church, safe for one’s own soul.

We apprehend that now is the very time to have faith in God; to say that, having him for our refuge, “we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.”

It has been the every-day prayer of the churches of Puritan Christendom, that the Lord “would overturn, and overturn, and overturn,” preparatory to the coming of His kingdom. To such of their members as offered this prayer in sincerity and truth, and not as mere idle words, it should not come with an overwhelming terror and astonishment, when the salt that has lost its savour is being cast out and trodden under foot. If, with a few insignificant exceptions, the churches of America are the strongholds of oppression, slaveholding and slave-hunting forming no bar to communion with any sect, the revelation of such facts, and the recognition of the real character that they imply, must almost of necessity involve a parallel theological warfare.

If any evils pertain to such discussion, wo be to them by whom the offence cometh! Read the earlier remonstrances of the Abolitionists with the American Church. They contained no denial that she was “the very pillar and ground of the truth,” till her own inhuman and profligate declarations made it a duty to Christianity for us to declare her no longer in our eyes its exponent. This naturally leads to wider discussions, with which we, as Abolitionists, have nothing to do.