William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

The colonies had no sooner achieved their independence than they found themselves face to face with the great question, and on the threshold of their national life a great change was perceptible in the attitude of the people towards slavery. The old seventeenth century idea, that to drag a negro from his heathen wilds to labour unrequited in a Christian community tended to the benefit of his soul, had passed away. The slave-trade was generally recognized as indefensible. There were men who denounced slavery itself as an abominable evil. Even those most determined to maintain the institution took the ground that it was an unfortunate necessity, but that it must be preserved to avoid greater evils. In 1787, through the noble efforts of Thomas Jefferson, Timothy Pickering, Rufus King, Nathan Dane, William Grayson, and Richard Henry Lee, Congress passed the great ordinance which forbade slavery to cross the Ohio River into the Northwest Territory.

The struggle between right and wrong had begun, but the opposing forces were very unequal. On one side was humane sentiment; on the other was deeply rooted habit, pecuniary interest, the pressure of political questions of seemingly overriding importance. Among the great leaders of the time there are two whose opinions and practice give an excellent illustration of the prevailing antislavery feeling: John Jay of New York, Patrick Henry of Virginia. There is no disagreement as to the moral elevation of John Jay's character. Abroad and at home, officially and unofficially, he was always the opponent of slavery. Yet Jay purchased and held men as slaves. To obtain domestic servants otherwise was extremely difficult. After his slaves had served him sufficiently long and faithfully to return to him what he considered the value of his outlay, he gave them their freedom. He believed that slavery in principle was wrong, but he yielded so far to convenience and custom. Patrick Henry was an antislavery man and placed his position on record in the following words: "Is it not amazing that, at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country above all others fond of liberty, in such an age, we find men professing a religion the most humane, mild, meek, gentle, and generous adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive of liberty? Every thinking, honest man rejects it in speculation, but how few in practice, from conscientious motives! Would any one believe that I am a master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not, I cannot, justify it; however culpable my conduct, I will so far pay my devoirs to duty as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts and lament my want of conformity to them. I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil; everything we can do is to improve it, if it happens in our own day; if not, let us transmit to our own descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

Such being the character of antislavery sentiment, its chances of success seem hopeless enough when we hear the other side. When Congress was considering the Articles of Confederation, Wilson, of Pennsylvania, said: "Dismiss your slaves, freemen will take their places." The reply of Lynch, of South Carolina, showed the existence of men willing to sacrifice everything to the preservation of slavery. "Our slaves are our property," said he; "if that is debated, there is an end to confederation."

Thus, at this crisis in the national history, there first distinctively appeared that aggressive, uncompromising party, afterwards to be known as the Slave Power—an association of men then forming a minority even in the South, but determined to carry its point at all hazards; men who were willing to sacrifice every consideration of the public good to the permanence of a system profitable to themselves, but which reduced human beings to the level of beasts. Against a party so resolute, antislavery opinion of the Patrick Henry variety could not prevail. Moreover, the distracted state of the country, the imperative necessity for union, made every other question seem secondary to the majority of patriotic statesmen. In the Constitutional Convention, the Slave Power, then chiefly represented by South Carolina and Georgia, by threatening to defeat the establishment of a stable government and by making the preservation of slavery a sine qua non to the Union, obtained the concessions so big with future disaster.

The struggle over this subject in the days of the formation of the government was the beginning of the "irrepressible conflict." The Slave Power had come into being as a distinct force, aiming to dominate the rest of the community in the interest of property in man. On the other hand, the opposition began to organize. Several abolition and manumission societies were formed. The oldest of these was that of Pennsylvania, which in 1787 chose Franklin for its president. A society was formed in New York in 1785 with John Jay as president and Alexander Hamilton as secretary; in Rhode Island in 1789, under the lead of Dr. Hopkins. In 1791, before the Connecticut society, Jonathan Edwards the younger maintained the doctrine of immediate emancipation. Similar associations were at work in New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland. Antislavery men were thus uniting in their cause, but unfortunately they were, with rare exceptions, devoid of the earnestness which characterized their opponents. Their hostility to the system was a sentiment rather than a principle. It could hasten somewhat emancipation at the North; but it had no force to contend against the pecuniary interests which were daily binding tighter the bonds of the negro in the South. There, in the early years of the present century, the cotton-gin, which had been invented in 1793, gave an impetus to the production of cotton which nearly doubled the value of slaves. At the North the profits of the African trade which supplied this increased demand for negroes gave to the Slave Power allies almost as determined as themselves.

The year 1808, fixed by the Constitution as the limit of the duration of the slave-trade, witnessed the next contest. The result was a definite prohibition of the trade by law. But it was a barren victory for the cause of humanity. The interests involved in both Northern and Southern States had grown so large and influential as to make the law a dead letter. The trade continued with unabated vigour, and marked by even greater cruelties to the wretched cargoes. The Slave Power was growing in strength and determination, bent on controlling the national government, influencing our foreign relations, reaching out already to grasp new slave territory.

From 1818 to 1821 continued the great contest over the admission of Missouri as a slave State, in which was involved the question whether the extension and encouragement of slavery was to be the permanent policy of the United States government. Men and words were not wanting to expose and condemn the contemplated evil. But the Slave Power had grown to too great proportions. Henry Clay, who had believed "slavery to be a wrong, a grievous wrong, which no contingency can make right," now, at the behest of slaveholders, threw his great influence against the cause of humanity. As in the days of the Constitutional Convention the Slave Power had secured the perpetuation of its system by threats of preventing a union of the States, so in 1821 it obtained the principle of the extension of slavery by threats of dissolving the Union. Thomas Jefferson, so faithful an advocate of freedom, was now appalled by the sound of a strife which, "like the fire-bell at midnight," announced disaster, and he counselled concession. Even John Quincy Adams was on the same side, "from extreme unwillingness to put the Union in hazard." So passed the so-called Compromise, which allowed slavery to break its bounds and to spread over Arkansas and Missouri. The Slave Power had won a great victory and had shown immense growth. The old apologetic position that the system, although wrong, could not be abolished without entailing greater evils, was now exchanged for the bold doctrine that slavery was a good thing, to be extended and strengthened.

The struggle was growing fiercer and was becoming more clearly an issue between North and South, but the bone of contention was yet the extension, not the abolition, of slavery. The Slave Power, warned by the opposition it had met with in Congress, that a new spirit was arising in the North, instinctively felt that its position could be maintained only by further aggression. None but slaveholders were allowed to represent the South in Congress, where every public measure was considered first in the light of its effect upon the institution of slavery. At home, such humane laws regarding the blacks as still existed were repealed, new and more cruel enactments were passed, the manumission of slaves by grateful or repentant masters was prohibited.

While at the South opinion tended towards united and vigorous action, the sentiments of the people at the North were divided. The majority, although disliking slavery "in the abstract," were so fearful of the outcome of the contention, were so anxious to see some settlement which would put an end to agitation, that they were disposed to accept the line drawn by the Missouri Compromise as the best solution possible, and to resent any further antislavery expression as an element of profitless disturbance. In this class there grew up a dislike of the negroes, a hatred of the questions involved in their existence among us, a general prejudice against colour, which tended greatly to the support of the Slave Power. Many persons who preserved abolition views were lulled into repose of conscience by support of the Colonization Society, an organization formed in the South to get rid of free coloured persons by shipping them to Africa, but skilfully made to appear as a philanthropic scheme to solve the slavery problem. Men of the highest character and with the best intentions had joined this society in the belief that therein might be found the means of uprooting slavery. The ten years following the Missouri Compromise were unpromising for the cause of the slave. The Southern States were ceaselessly strengthening themselves. Race prejudice, the fear of business disturbance, apathy, made the North acquiescent. Cotton was king, and to that authority conscience submitted.

Still there were signs of light and materials for improvement. In 1822 the exciting struggle for the establishment of slavery in Illinois resulted in favour of freedom. There existed in the country one hundred and forty antislavery societies, of which one hundred and six were in the South. In 1826 was held in Baltimore a convention at which eighty-one of these societies were represented. There was not enough "fight" among these antislavery men to make much impression. Their views were directed towards preventing the extension of slavery, towards its abolition in the District of Columbia (where its existence involved recognition by the United States government) and its "gradual" cessation elsewhere. The fact of their holding the convention in Baltimore indicates the still lingering sympathy of a considerable party in the South, and it shows also that the Slave Power did not look upon them with much concern. It is not until antislavery stands upon the platform of abolition as an immediate duty that it is swept from the face of the Southern States.