William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery

by Bayard Tuckerman

In February, 1854, Judge Jay received an invitation to address the Anti-Nebraska Convention of the Free Democracy of Massachusetts. His age and health prevented a journey to Boston, but he wrote to the committee of invitation as follows:

"It is meet and right that the stupendous iniquity now about to be perpetrated should be resisted by the true-hearted citizens of that State which, more than any other in the confederacy, has debauched the moral sentiment of the nation and prepared the community for submission to the most insolent usurpation yet attempted by the Slave Power. The present effort to extend the dominion of the whip to the northern limits of the United States is the legitimate consequence of the disastrous and disgraceful concessions of 1850. Those concessions were effected more through the ability and labours of the late distinguished senator from Massachusetts than of any of his coadjutors. Mr. Webster, avowing the entire constitutionality of the Wilmot Proviso and having voted for it in relation to Oregon, objected to its application to the newly conquered territories on the ground that their Asiatic scenery and geographical conformation rendered it physically impossible for negro slavery ever to exist in them. Unhappily for his novel and extraordinary theory, numerous slaves were at the time he spoke held in California.... Slaves are at this day held in New Mexico.

"Mr. Webster, in giving his earnest and cordial support to the atrocious Fugitive-Slave Act, candidly acknowledged on the floor of the Senate that in 'his judgment' Congress had no constitutional power to legislate on the subject, the obligation of surrendering fugitives resting on the States. Yet he scrupled not in his subsequent addresses to speak in terms of unmeasured obloquy of every lawyer who presumed to deny the constitutionality of that horrible law. He admitted the right of Congress to grant the fugitive a trial by jury, yet was unwearied in his advocacy of a law denying to the most helpless of mortals that important safeguard of personal liberty....

"The course of this gentleman at a moment when the dearest principles of liberty, justice, and humanity were vehemently assailed was rapturously applauded by the monied, the literary, and the ecclesiastical aristocracy of Massachusetts, and the New England Church has to a great extent canonized his memory.

"The ardour evinced by the city of Boston in the surrender of Simms, and the intense servility and degradation accompanying that surrender, together with the emphatic endorsement of Mr. Webster's conduct, have exerted an influence in behalf of human bondage and in derogation of Christian obligation far beyond the bounds of Massachusetts. The moral bulwark raised at the North against slavery in times past by the religious sentiment and the respect for the rights of man is nearly demolished.

"The Slave Power, taking advantage of the present paralysis of the Northern conscience and the frantic cupidity of our demagogues and merchants for Southern votes and Southern trade, is about placing its yoke on willing and bending necks.

"Think not that Nebraska is to be the terminus of slaveholding encroachments. New slave States are from time to time to be carved out of Mexico. Cuba is to be wrested from Spain and St. Domingo re-enslaved and annexed. As the field for slave labour widens and widens, the supply will be found inadequate to the demand. The discovery will then be made that both religion and policy require the repeal of the prohibition of the African slave-trade. We shall be told of the Christian duty of bringing the pagans of Africa to our own civilized shores and of preparing them for heaven by the discipline of the whip and the teachings of slave-drivers, while politicans and political economists will insist on the removal of the restriction as essential to the development of our national wealth and enterprise. In vain will Virginia and the other breeding States strive to retain their present lucrative monopoly of the human shambles. The cotton and sugar States, together with the newly acquired slave States, aided by Northern politicians, will establish free trade in the bodies and souls of men.

"The Southern Church is almost without exception the unblushing champion of slavery, while the Northern Church, adopting a time-serving, heartless, and often hypocritical neutrality, and holding in its fraternal embrace slave-breeders and slave-traders, has virtually taught that the vilest outrages on both the civil and religious rights of the black man are perfectly compatible with the highest sanctity in his white oppressor. Some of our religious journals are sadly grieved and scandalized by the alleged discovery that certain opponents of slavery are infidels. For my own part, I know of no form of infidelity so hideous as that which impiously claims the authority of Almighty God for abrogating all His laws in behalf of justice and mercy in reference to our conduct towards millions of our countrymen not of the same colour as ourselves. This cutaneous Christianity, so insulting to the Deity, so disastrous to man, is fast becoming the national religion.

"The present crisis is indeed an awful one. While various causes have aided in producing it, its immediate origin is to be traced to the lamentable defection, in 1850, of so many of the rich and influential from truth and justice, liberty and humanity, under the fallacious plea of saving the Union. Well may the Free Democracy of Massachusetts, with their hands and consciences undefiled by oblations on the altar of the American Moloch, now strive to avert the calamity impending over the country. May a long-suffering God bless their efforts and rescue a guilty nation from the punishment it seems anxious to inflict upon itself."

"As to the wickedness of the whole Kansas business," Jay wrote to Charles Sumner, in March, 1856, "I most fully agree with you, and I do not wonder that amid such abounding iniquity you are at a loss what atrocity to assail first. I am very much inclined to look upon every Northern member of Congress who voted for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as a rascal. This may seem harsh—it is certainly not polite—and yet I am utterly unable to assign a good, honest, religious motive for the vote, or to reconcile it with the fear of God or with love to man.... Let us fight on, with all our heart and mind and soul. God is with us, approves our efforts, and whether He shall crown them with success or not, He will not forget our work of faith and labour of love. I have full faith in an ultimate triumph, although you and I may not live to enjoy it. My belief is, that as soon as the North ceases to tremble before the slave-drivers, the non-slaveholders of the South will proclaim their independence and insist upon free speech and a free press, and as soon as these are obtained the doom of slavery is sealed."