This leads me to examine a side of the American question upon which, attention is, naturally fixed at the present time; how is it that the iniquities of slavery are maintained among this charitable and liberal people? how is it that such iniquities have subsisted under the influence of so powerful a Christian sentiment? Can it be true that Christians have deserted the cause of justice? Has the Gospel had the place which belongs to it, in the great struggle that is going on between the North and the South? yes; or no. This is perhaps the point of all others most important to clear up; first, because it is the one on which the most errors have accumulated; next, because it is the one most closely connected with the final solution; for this solution will not be happy, if the Gospel has no hand in it.
To judge rightly, let us approach and endeavor to comprehend the true position of those whose conduct we seek to appreciate. See the South, for example, where the almost universal opinion is favorable to slavery, where governors write dithyrambics on its benefits, where many Christians have succeeded in discovering that it is sanctioned by the Gospel, where men of sincerity are now placing their impious crusades in behalf of its extension under the protection of God, where numerous preachers expound in their own way the celebrated text "Cursed be Canaan!" Do not these sentiments of the South, detestable as they are, find, to a certain point, their explanation and excuse in the circumstances in which the South is placed?
The power of surroundings is incalculable. If we ourselves, who condemn slavery, and are right in so doing, had been reared in Charleston; if we had led a planter's life from our earliest infancy; if we had nourished our minds with their ideas; if we considered our monetary interests menaced by Abolitionism; if the image of more fearful perils, of violent destructions and massacres, appeared to haunt our thoughts; if the political antagonism between the North and the South came to add its venom to the passions already excited within us, is it certain that we ourselves should no be figuring at the present time among the desperadoes who are firing upon the ships of the Union, and attempting the foundation of a Southern Confederacy?
It is well to ask this of ourselves, in order to learn to respect, to love, and consequently to aid those whose conduct we blame the most strongly. For my part, whenever I am tempted to set myself up as a judge or an accuser of the South, I ask myself what I should do if I belonged to the South, and this brings me back to the true position. I remember, too, what I saw, with my own eyes, at the time when the discussion on slavery was carried on in France; the colonial passions, the blindest and most violent of all, broke out in Martinique and the isle of Bourbon, as they had broken out before in Jamaica, where the circulars of Mr. Canning, the proposition, for example, to suppress the flagellation of women, had excited a veritable explosion. There were some very honorable men among those who were indignant at this measure; and, among us, likewise, the planters who determined to combat all modification of the negro system, were good men. Severity is almost always a defect of memory; we blame others without pity, only when we begin by forgetting our own history. We Frenchmen, who had so much difficulty in emancipating our own slaves, and who would not, perhaps, have succeeded in it, had it not been for the bold decision of M. Schoelcher; we, who have sought to take back, in part, through our colonial regulations, the liberty accorded the blacks; we, who suffered recruitals by purchase to be made on the African coast; who formerly organized the expedition charged with re-establishing slavery and the slave trade at St. Domingo; who suppressed the slave trade at the Congress of Vienna only in stipulating its continuance for some years; who carried into our discussions on the right of search, a very meagre interest for the victims of the slavers; we, whose consciences are burdened with these misdeeds, are bound to use indulgence towards the States of the South.
This remark was necessary: it is from the South that the Biblical theories in favor of slavery proceed; it is on account of the South that these theories have been adopted by certain Christians of the North, desirous, above every thing, of avoiding both the dismemberment of the United States, and that of the churches and religious societies. Take away the South, and no one in America, any more than in Europe, will dream of discovering in the Gospel the divine approbation of the atrocities of slavery.
I comprehend better than most, the sentiment of indignation that is caused by these deplorable teachings, in which slavery is sometimes excused, sometimes exalted; I comprehend, that, under the impulse of a sentiment so justifiable, one may be led on to anathematize preachers and churches in a mass, that he may even come to the point of representing to himself the Christian faith as the true obstacle to the progress of liberty. This is a great perversion of the truth, but we can easily understand how it has succeeded in gaining the assent of generous and sincere minds. I myself have read a sermon which was listened to with sympathy in a certain Presbyterian church in New York, in which slavery, declares right until the return of Jesus Christ, ceases to be so, I know not why, during the millennium? I know the nature of that theology, too truly styled cottony, which is displayed in the clerical columns of the New York Observer. Notwithstanding, I hasten to say that these revolting excesses seldom appear except in seaports, and especially in New York. The interests of this great city are bound up to such a degree with those of the cotton States, that, until very lately, New York might have been considered as a prolongation of the South. We need not be surprised, therefore, to find some congregations there which are ruled by the prejudices of the South. Besides, even in New York, other churches protest with holy zeal, and other journals, among which I will cite the Independent, the organ of the Congregationalists, combat slavery unceasingly in the name of the Gospel.
Then people persist in seeing only New York, in taking notice only of what passes in New York; but they forget that New York is ordinarily an exception in the North, as much by its commercial position as by its opinions and votes. Let us go ever so short a distance from the city into the surrounding country, and we will encounter a different spirit—a spirit thoroughly impregnated with Christian faith, and little disposed to covenant with slavery. There we begin to see that race of Puritan farmers, but lately represented by John Brown. Has not the attempt been made to transform him also into a free thinker, a philosophic enemy of the Bible, and, from this very cause, an enemy to slavery? We need nothing more than his last letter to his wife, to show from what source he had drawn that courage, so misdirected but so indomitable, which he displayed at Harper's Ferry; the Christian, the Biblical and orthodox Christian, comes to explain the liberal and the hero.
That Christians in general condemned the enterprise of John Brown, while sympathizing with him, I hasten to acknowledge; and I am far from blaming them. That many have committed the real wrong of recoiling before the consequences of an open and decided conduct, I am forced to admit. Yes, without even mentioning the South, where, as every one knows, the reign of terror prevails, there are numerous Protestant and Catholic churches in the remainder of the Confederation, which have refused to declare themselves, as they should have done, in opposition to the crime of slavery. Let us not hasten, however, to cry out against falsehood and hypocrisy; most honorable and sincere men have believed that they would do more harm than good by bringing on a rupture with the South. Let us not forget that political rupture is complicated here with religious rupture. Now, all the churches extend over both North and South; all the charitable societies number committees and subscribers in both North and South. The point in question then, (let us weigh the immensity of the sacrifice,) the point in question is to rend in twain all the churches, to break in pieces all the societies, to expose to perilous risks all the great works that do honor to the United States.
Doubtless, to have gone their way, to have done their duty, and not to have troubled themselves about the consequences, was the great rule of action. I grant it; yet, notwithstanding, I refuse to stigmatize, as many have done, those men who have committed the fault of hesitating; I feel that to rank them among the champions of slavery is to pervert facts, and to fall into a blamable exaggeration. Again, to-day, after the election of Mr. Lincoln, cannot citizens be cited in the North who are devoted to the cause of the negroes, but who refuse to participate in abolitionist demonstrations, because they fear (and the sentiments does them honor) to encourage the impending insurrections?
This said, I wish to prove by some too well-known facts, what has been this forbearance, or even this pretended hesitation of orthodox Christianity. On regarding the churches, I see two, and the most considerable, which have openly declared themselves: the Congregationalists and the Methodists. About six months since, the General Conference of Methodists resolutely plunged into the current without suffering itself to be trammelled by the protests which came to it from the South. I read in a report presented to one of the great divisions of this church: "We believe that to sell or to hold in bondage human beings under the name of chattels, is in contradiction to the divine laws and to humanity; and that it conflicts with the golden rule and with the rule of our discipline." Last year, a numerous assemblage of delegates of the Congregational churches adopted the following resolution: "Slaveholding is immoral, and slaveholders should not be admitted as members of Christian churches. We ought to protest against it without ceasing, in the name of the Gospel, until it shall have entirely disappeared." And this resolution has not remained a dead letter: a Congregational church of Ohio has expelled from its bosom one of its deacons, who had contributed in the capacity of magistrate to the extradition of a fugitive slave.