Here, then, is another point in which we are entirely at variance, though the principles of abolitionism are ‘generally adopted by our opposers.’ What shall I say to these things, but that I am glad thou hast afforded me an opportunity of explaining to thee what our principles really are? for I apprehend that thou ‘hast not been sufficiently informed in regard to the feelings and opinions’ of abolitionists.
It matters not to me what meaning ‘Dictionaries or standard writers’ may give to immediate emancipation. My Dictionary is the Bible; my standard authors, prophets and apostles. When Jehovah commanded Pharaoh to ‘let the people go,’ he meant that they should be immediately emancipated. I read his meaning in the judgments which terribly rebuked Pharaoh’s repeated and obstinate refusal to ‘let the people go.’ I read it in the universal emancipation of near 3,000,000 of Israelites in one awful night. When the prophet Isaiah commanded the Jews ‘to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke,’ he taught no gradual or partial emancipation, but immediate, universal emancipation. When Jeremiah said, ‘Execute judgment in the MORNING, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor,’ he commanded immediate deliverance. And so also with Paul, when he exhorted masters to render unto their servants that which is just and equal. Obedience to this command would immediately overturn the whole system of American Slavery; for liberty is justly due to every American citizen, according to the laws of God and the Constitution of our country; and a fair recompense for his labor is the right of every man. Slaveholders know this is just as well as we do. John C. Calhoun said in Congress, in 1833—‘He who earns the money—who digs it out of the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against the Universe. No one has a right to touch it without his consent, except his government, and it only to the extent of its legitimate wants: to take more is robbery.’
If our fundamental principle is right, that no man can rightfully hold his fellow man as property, then it follows, of course, that he is bound immediately to cease holding him as such, and that, too, in violation of the immoral and unconstitutional laws which have been framed for the express purpose of ‘turning aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of the people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless.’ Every slaveholder is bound to cease to do evil now, to emancipate his slaves now.
Dost thou ask what I mean by emancipation? I will explain myself in a few words. 1. It is ‘to reject with indignation, the wild and guilty phantasy, that man can hold property in man.’ 2. To pay the laborer his hire, for he is worthy of it. 3. No longer to deny him the right of marriage, but to ‘let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband,’ as saith the apostle. 4. To let parents have their own children, for they are the gift of the Lord to them, and no one else has any right to them. 5. No longer to withhold the advantages of education and the privilege of reading the Bible. 6. To put the slave under the protection of equitable laws.
Now, why should not all this be done immediately? Which of these things is to be done next year, and which the year after? and so on. Our immediate emancipation means, doing justice and loving mercy to-day—and this is what we call upon every slaveholder to do.
I have seen too much of slavery to be a gradualist. I dare not, in view of such a system, tell the slaveholder, that ‘he is physically unable to emancipate his slaves.’ I say he is able to let the oppressed go free, and that such heaven-daring atrocities ought to cease now, henceforth and forever. Oh, my very soul is grieved to find a northern woman thus ‘sewing pillows under all arm-holes,’ framing and fitting soft excuses for the slaveholder’s conscience, whilst with the same pen she is professing to regard slavery as a sin. ‘An open enemy is better than such a secret friend.’
Hoping that thou mayest soon be emancipated from such inconsistency, I remain until then,
Thine out of the bonds of Christian Abolitionism,
A. E. GRIMKÉ.