William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

Concerning the constitutionality of the law, Judge Jay wrote to Josiah Quincy: "The fugitive-slave clause in the Constitution is of course obligatory, but there is a wide distinction between the fugitive-slave clause and the fugitive-slave law. The Constitution gives no power to Congress to legislate on the subject, but imposes on the States the obligation of rendition. Chief-Justice Hornblower, of New York, and Chancellor Walworth, of New York, long since pronounced the fugitive law of '93 unconstitutional on this very ground."

The demoralization caused by the execution of the law was described by Jay in a letter to Gerrit Smith: "It is scoundrelizing our people. Cruelty and injustice are cultivated as virtues, Christian love and sympathy with human suffering are treated as prejudices to be conquered, and zeal in hunting slaves is made the test of patriotism and of fitness for office. But the most diabolical effect of the law is the competition it has excited among our politicians to offer the blood of their fellow-citizens in exchange for Southern votes."

To a committee of free coloured men who asked Judge Jay's advice regarding the propriety of arming themselves to prevent being kidnapped under the law, he said: "Most deeply do I sympathize with you in your unhappy state. With your wives and children, you are now placed at the disposal of any villain who is ready to perjure himself for the price you will bring in the human shambles of the South. With less ceremony and trouble than a man can impound his neighbour's ox, you may be metamorphosed from a citizen of the State of New York into a beast of burden on a Southern plantation. On leaving your house in the morning you may be enticed into another, where one of the newly appointed commissioners, after reading one affidavit, made a thousand miles off, and another that you are the person named in the first, or on the bare oath of the kidnapper himself, may inform you, to your amazement and horror, that you are a slave. The fetters previously prepared are placed on your limbs, and in a few minutes you are travelling with railroad velocity to a Southern market. Never again will you behold your wife and children, nor will any tidings from them ever reach your ear. The remainder of your life is to be one of toil and stripes.... Yet," he continued, "leave, I beseech you, the pistol and the bowie-knife to Southern ruffians and their Northern mercenaries. That this law will lead to bloodshed I take for granted, but let it be the blood of the innocent, not of the guilty. If anything can arouse the torpid conscience of the North, it will be our streets stained with human blood shed by the slave-catchers."

The Fugitive-Slave Law, in Jay's opinion, was the natural sequence to the attempt to put down the antislavery movement by force: "For years, most strenuous efforts, prompted by commercial and political views, were made to deprive the opponents of slavery of their constitutional privileges by lawless violence. The right of petition was suspended, the freedom of debate interrupted, the sanctity of the post-office violated, public meetings dispersed, printing-presses destroyed, furious mobs excited, churches sacked, private houses gutted, and even murder perpetrated. All this violation of rights was regarded with complacency by many who had much at stake, so long as abolitionists alone were the victims. But the spirit of aggression thus raised and fostered is seeking new subjects on which to exercise its power. 'Gentlemen of property and standing' are now beginning to feel alarmed about socialism, anti-rentism, agrarianism, etc. Hence, of late we hear much of the importance of conservatism, as it is called. The political movements of the last few months seem to indicate that our landlords and cotton lords and merchant princes regard an alliance with the aristocracy of the South as at least in some degree a security against the violation of vested rights, sequestration of rents, oppressive taxation, unequal laws, etc. To the influence of gentlemen of this class the late slave law owes its passage.

"And is it indeed believed that the rights of the rich will be protected by familiarizing the populace with the practice of injustice and cruelty towards the poor? Will the sight of innocent men seized in our streets and sent in fetters to till the broad fields of great landowners increase the reverence felt for land titles? Is it wise to give the people practical lessons in the demolition of all the barriers raised by the common law for the protection of the weak against the strong? Is it true conservatism to obliterate in the masses the sense of justice, the feelings of humanity, the distinction between right and wrong?"

The tacit support given to slavery by the Episcopal Church at large and the active support given to it by many individual clergymen was a source of constant grief to Judge Jay and a frequent subject of his thoughts. "You well know," he wrote to Joseph Sturge, "what a mighty effort has been made by our Northern traders in Southern votes and merchandise, under the leadership of Daniel Webster, to roll back the antislavery tide. To a certain extent they have succeeded. The commercial interest in the great towns, through a rivalry for the Southern trade, has professed great alacrity in slave-catching, and political aspirants for office under the Federal Government find it expedient to make slave-hunting the test of patriotism. But the religious feeling of the commonalty—that is, of those who are not pre-eminently gentlemen of property and standing—is shocked by the enormous cruelty and injustice of the fugitive law. To overcome this feeling, which in its demonstrations is exceedingly inconvenient to our merchants and office-seekers, the clergy have been urged by the press and other agencies to come out in support of the law—in other words, to give the sanction of the gospel of Christ to the enslavement of innocent men. Some pastors who preach in fine churches to rich and fashionable city congregations have complied. You must understand that many of our brokers, merchants, lawyers, and editors were exceedingly scandalized by the opposition of religious people to this vile law, and they have trembled for the honour of our holy religion when some of its professors contended that an impious law was not binding on the conscience."

The position of the church was strongly stated by Jay in a letter to Rev. Hiram Jelliff: "It is one of the most melancholy circumstances of the condition of the coloured people that so many of the ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ are among their most influential enemies. The church of the living God is the great buttress of slavery and caste in the United States. If any plea can be urged in behalf of infidelity, it is that Christianity as represented by multitudes of its official teachers authorizes the abrogation of all its precepts of humility, justice, and benevolence in the treatment of persons to whom God has given a coloured skin. Look at the conventions of New York and Pennsylvania excluding ministers and disciples of the crucified Redeemer merely because they are poor and despised! I confess, my dear sir, that were I a young man, with no early religious impressions and about to decide on the truth or falsehood of revelation, I fear I should be strongly tempted to believe that a religion such as it is practically exhibited by your cotton-parsons could not and did not proceed from a just and benevolent being. I have had great opportunities of knowing the effect produced by the countenance given to slavery and caste by the church on the faith of many kind-hearted and conscientious people, and in all sincerity I declare that our pro-slavery clergy, our negro-hating clergy, our slave-catching clergy, are the most successful apostles of infidelity in the country. I write thus freely to you because your course is in direct opposition to those I condemn. The Saviour eat, drank, and lodged with the Samaritans, who were the negroes of Judea, a despised, degraded caste, from whom a Jew disdained to receive even a cup of water.... May God bless and reward your labours."

Occupying, as Judge Jay did, a position of leadership in both the Episcopal Church and the antislavery movement, it was to him that men most frequently turned for advice on subjects relating to the connection between the church and slavery. From mature minds, such as that of Senator Salmon P. Chase, from divinity students and young men contemplating connection with a religious body, came inquiries regarding the duty of joining the church or of remaining a member. To a young man Jay wrote in 1854: "I shall say nothing of the claims of the Episcopal Church as arising from her doctrines, forms, and government, except that I know of no church which, judged by its authorized standards, is more scriptural and more conducive to holiness in this life and to salvation in the next. You desire to enter this church but have not been able to overcome the objection arising from its connection with slavery, and would like to know, for your information, how I reconcile my continuance in this church with my antislavery opinions. Assuredly I could not belong to a church which exacted of its members an admission of the lawfulness of human bondage. Of such a sin and folly the Episcopal Church is guiltless. No sanction of slavery can be found in any of her standards, and hence I can very consistently hold the doctrines of the church and join in its prayers and rites and at the same time regard American slavery as the sum of all villainies. There are in the church slaveholding bishops, clergymen, and communicants, plenty of them. But I am not responsible for their presence.... There never has been, and I suppose there never will be, a widely extended church without unworthy pastors and members. A pure church composed of fallible and sinful men is a figment of the imagination.... Many popish doctrines and practices are occasionally advocated by our Puseyites. But I, as a private member of the church, am in no degree responsible for the heresies of Puseyism nor the more disgusting heresies of cotton-divinity.... In my opinion, in nine cases out of ten an antislavery Christian can do more good to his own soul, to the cause of Christ, and to the interests of the slave by remaining in his church and there battling for truth and justice, than by going in search of a pure church. It often happens when an abolitionist abandons an alleged pro-slavery church he finds no other that suits him. Hence the public worship of God and the Sacraments are neglected. Gradually he and his family learn to live without God in the world, and finally enter upon that broad road which leads to destruction."

The position assumed by the Episcopal Church towards the rights and elevation of the blacks was indicated by the refusal of the Diocesan Council of New York to admit the coloured church of St. Philip, although the parish was constitutionally entitled to be represented and her minister and delegates were entitled to seats and votes. Judge Jay opposed earnestly a majority report from a committee on the question of their admission, which contended that the applicants belonged to a race "socially degraded, and improper associates for the class of persons who attend our conventions." Such an apology for the violation of the constitutional rights ordained by the State, and such a presentation of the theological views entertained by the committee on the unity of the church and the catholic brotherhood of its members, was not calculated to strengthen the opposition to St. Philip's; and the Christian world breathed more freely when, after a nine years' struggle to obtain a vote on the question maintained by Judge Jay and his son, the coloured parish was admitted by a large majority of both orders.

In 1854 Southern aggression had nearly reached its culminating point. The Missouri Compromise was abrogated; the Kansas-Nebraska Bill threw open to slavery an immense territory hitherto free, under the subterfuge invented by General Cass and Senator Douglas of "popular sovereignty." Slavery was thus to extend over the vast regions in the centre of the continent. An indefinite number of new slave States were to be admitted into the Union, which would give the control of the Senate, and consequently of all legislation, forever to the Slave Power.