William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

"2d. We hold that slavery cannot be lawfully abolished except by the Legislatures of the several States in which it prevails, and that the exercise of any other than moral influence to induce such abolition is unconstitutional.

"3d. We believe that Congress has the same right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia that the State governments have within their respective jurisdictions, and that it is their duty to efface so foul a spot from the national escutcheon.

"4th. We believe the American citizens have the right to express and publish their opinions of the constitutions, laws, and institutions of any and every State and nation under heaven; and we mean never to surrender the liberty of speech, of the press, or of conscience—blessings we have inherited from our fathers, and which we intend, so far as we are able, to transmit unimpaired to our children.

"5th. We have uniformly deprecated all forcible attempts on the part of the slaves to recover their liberty; and were it in our power to address them we would exhort them to observe a quiet and peaceful demeanour, and would assure them that no insurrectionary movement on their part would receive from us the slightest aid or countenance.

"6th. We would deplore any servile insurrection, both on account of the calamities which would attend it and on account of the occasion which it would furnish of increased severity and oppression.

"7th. We are charged with sending incendiary publications to the South. If by the term 'incendiary' is meant publications containing arguments and facts to prove slavery to be a moral and political evil, and that duty and policy require its immediate abolition, the charge is true. But if this term is used to imply publications encouraging insurrection and designed to excite the slaves to break their fetters, the charge is utterly and unequivocally false. We beg our fellow-citizens to notice that this charge is made without proof, and by many who confess that they have never read our publications, and that those who make it offer to the public no evidence from our writings in support of it.

"8th. We are accused of sending our publications to the slaves, and it is asserted that their tendency is to excite insurrections. Both the charges are false. These publications are not intended for the slaves, and were they able to read them, they would find in them no encouragement to insurrection.

"9th. We are accused of employing agents in the slave States to distribute our publications. We have never had one such agent. We have sent no packages of our papers to any person in those States for distribution, except to five respectable resident citizens at their own request. But we have sent by mail single papers addressed to public officers, editors of newspapers, and clergymen. If, therefore, our object is to excite the slaves to insurrection, the masters are our agents!

"10th. We believe slavery to be sinful, injurious to this and to every other country in which it prevails; we believe immediate emancipation to be the duty of every slaveholder, and that the immediate abolition of slavery, by those who have the right to abolish it, would be safe and wise. These opinions we have freely expressed, and we certainly have no intention to refrain from expressing them in future, and urging them upon the consciences and hearts of our fellow-citizens who hold slaves or apologize for slavery.

"11th. We believe that the education of the poor is required by duty, and by a regard for the permanency of our republican institutions. There are thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow-citizens, even in the free States, sunk in abject poverty, and who, on account of their complexion, are virtually kept in ignorance, and whose instruction in certain cases is actually prohibited by law. We are anxious to protect the rights and to promote the virtue and happiness of the coloured portion of our population, and on this account we have been charged with a design to encourage intermarriage between the whites and the blacks. This charge has been repeatedly and is now again denied; while we repeat that the tendency of our sentiments is to put an end to the criminal amalgamation that prevails wherever slavery exists.