William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

The seventh annual meeting of the American Society was fixed for the 12th of May, 1840. It was generally realized that on this occasion a definitive settlement of the woman question would be made. The board of managers of the Massachusetts Society made strenuous efforts to insure a large attendance of members sharing their views. A large steamboat was chartered which conveyed Garrison and his party to New York, and it was soon manifest that they had mustered a majority sufficient to carry their point.

Arthur Tappan, the president of the society, anticipating "a recurrence of the scenes witnessed last year, and resolved not to be found contending with his abolition brethren," did not attend the meeting, and Francis Jackson presided in his place. Among the persons nominated by the chairman as a business committee was Miss Abby Kelley. After a long and exciting debate Miss Kelley was elected by a vote of 557 to 451. Immediately after the result was announced, Lewis Tappan, Charles W. Denison, and Amos Phelps, members of the business committee, asked to be excused from serving upon it.

After the meeting had adjourned those members who had voted against the admission of women met and organized a new society under the name of the "American and Foreign Antislavery Society." Arthur Tappan was chosen president, James G. Birney and Henry B. Stanton, secretaries, and Lewis Tappan, treasurer. The Executive Committee was composed of Gerrit Smith, Judge Jay, John G. Whittier, Joshua Leavitt, and other leading abolitionists.

On June 1st Judge Jay wrote a note to Mr. J. C. Jackson, the recording secretary of the American Antislavery Society, asking that his name be stricken from the roll as a member. In stating his reasons for resigning, he said that the proceedings at the late meeting of the society had convinced him that the institution was being used, by those who had recently acquired control of it, as an instrument for advancing the doctrine of the equality of the sexes in all the relations of life. "Married women without their husbands," he said, "were associated with men in the Executive Committee—a committee to which is confided the management of the society, and whose meetings have hitherto been, and will probably continue to be, both frequent and private."

The principle thus officially avowed by the society Judge Jay declared had not the remotest connection with the true objects for which the society was formed, nor was it sanctioned by the constitution. "However grievous some women may find the yoke imposed upon them by the opinions usually entertained on the subject," he continued, "that is not the yoke which abolitionists associated to break." The claims now set up by the society in regard to "the rights of women" appeared to him necessarily to involve their participation in the sacred ministry, their exercise of the elective franchise, and their entire independence in the conjugal relation. Irrespective of the soundness of these claims, it did not appear by what right the society called upon its members to support them. Judge Jay contended that "any association for the professed purpose of abolishing negro slavery may with as much propriety prescribe the form of baptism and the Lord's Supper as it may insist that women are authorized to administer these ordinances." Fully convinced that the society as thus managed was exerting an influence not only very injurious to the antislavery cause, but contrary to domestic order and happiness and inconsistent with the precepts of the Gospel, Judge Jay deemed it his duty to sever his connection with it.

In our time, when the admission of women to participation in nearly every form of activity is universally accepted, it may seem extraordinary that the American Antislavery Society should have divided upon such an issue. But what is now a familiar custom was then a strange doctrine, the consequences of which were unknown and were dreaded by conservative people. The abolitionists whose votes admitted women to equal rights with men contended that women were among the most useful and influential workers for the cause and that they should have a corresponding position in the councils of the party. It was denied that active participation in the meetings of the societies was inappropriate to their sex. On the other hand, it was believed by many persons earnestly and usefully engaged in the cause of emancipation that the antislavery society should pursue its end unimpeded and undisturbed by outside issues. The emancipation of woman might be a highly desirable reform, but it should be sought separately from the emancipation of the negro. An individual should be allowed to labour for the slave without being forced to support untried theories regarding woman's rights and the sinfulness of human government.

At this period Judge Jay was especially active with his pen. In 1839 was published his "View of the Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery." This work was the first effective exposure of the manner in which the United States Government had been used for many years by pro-slavery statesmen to carry out their own ends. Judge Jay showed the shameful position in which the National Government had been placed before the nations of the world when the President and his diplomatic representatives were forced by the Slave Power to demand the return of fugitive slaves and compensation for their loss when shipwreck had allowed them to attain liberty on a foreign shore; when the armies of the United States were sent to Florida at enormous expense to capture alleged runaway private property; when the power of the Government was strained to prevent abolition in Cuba and to introduce slavery into Texas. The efforts to suppress the right of petition and freedom of debate in Congress were thoroughly described. An account, humiliating to every American, was given of the condition of the national capital itself, converted by the fostering protection of the United States Government into the chief slave-market of the Union.

Judge Jay's next publication was entitled, "On the Condition of Free People of Colour in the United States." He showed that they were denied the right to the franchise, to liberty of locomotion, to the lowest employment in the public service; that their education was impeded almost to prohibition and that even their industry was hampered by cruel restrictions. Worst of all, they might at any time be seized and sold into slavery without recourse to law. In 1840 appeared his pamphlet on "The Violation by the House of Representatives of the Right of Petition." These writings had a wide circulation among persons not reached by the ordinary antislavery literature, and their influence was highly beneficial.

Although the woman question was the ostensible cause of the schism of 1840, there were several other differences which tended quite as much to divide the abolition camp. While the Garrison party continued to depend solely upon moral agitation and opposed all political effort, a numerous and powerful body in the antislavery ranks began to look to the ballot-box as the instrument of reform. In 1840, under the leadership of Gerrit Smith, Alvan Stewart, Myron Holley, Elizur Wright, Joshua Leavitt, and William Goodell, a convention at Albany organized the Liberty party by the nomination of James G. Birney, of Kentucky, for President, and of Thomas Earle, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President. Out of a total of about two and a half million votes cast at this election, the candidates of the Liberty party received a little over seven thousand. W. H. Harrison, the whig candidate, defeated his democratic opponent, Martin Van Buren. Although the abolition vote was not large, it gave the party great encouragement, and an address was issued congratulating the friends of the slave that a new power to overthrow slavery had been found in "the terse literature of the ballot-box."

Judge Jay's attitude towards the formation of the Liberty party appears in a correspondence which took place between him and Gerrit Smith in July, 1840. "I suppose you have come, as well as myself," wrote Smith, "to the conclusion that whilst American slavery exists our national political parties will be essentially and irrevocably pro-slavery parties, and that abolitionists cannot, therefore, vote consistently for the candidates of such parties. If you have come to this conclusion, you of course admit that we are under the necessity of designating our own candidates for law-makers and that the object of the Freeman's State Convention to be held in Syracuse the first Wednesday in August is proper. Now, when we come together in that convention there is one thing which, next to the blessing of Heaven, we shall need far more than any other. I mean your consent that we shall put you in nomination for governor. Will you enable me to insure the convention of that consent? If you will, you will in so doing render a very great service to our holy cause—a service which I see not how we can well dispense with. If there be anything selfish in your heart, we have, of course, nothing to address to it. We do not expect to elect you, and we are well aware that your nomination would expose you to pro-slavery ridicule and hatred. If you give your consent to the nomination, we know that such consent must proceed from your disinterested and self-sacrificing love for the antislavery cause. Do, my dear sir, give us your name; we can rally about it those who will be dead to the power of any other name."