CHAPTER VIII.
The Influence of Religion and Women—Ruptures in Churches and Church Organizations—Sentiments of Clergymen—“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”—The “Impending Crisis”—The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection.
One of the principal agencies by which this extraordinary revolution in the public sentiment of the North has been brought about is the Church. The history of anti-slavery in this connection, however, is too extended to admit of anything more than a narration of general facts. It is sufficient to say that the abolitionists have had the co-operation of a portion of the principal religious sects of the free States ever since the year 1820, since which time their conferences, sessions, assemblies and meetings have been the theatres of the most rancorous discussion, abusive debate and irremediable discord. They have ruptured the Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist churches, and divided into antagonistic parties the American Board of Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society, the American Tract Society, and every other benevolent organization which embraces within its scope of good the common country. They have thus prevented the dissemination of the Bible, the establishing of missionaries, the distribution of tracts, and interrupted all efforts that have been made for the Christian elevation of the slave or the welfare of the master. Instead of that feeling of attachment and devotion to the interests of religion which was formerly felt, they are now arrayed against each other, two hostile bodies, whose sole occupation is individual abuse, political harangues, and the profanation of the sacred desk. Personal holiness has given way to party spirit, and while men’s hearts around them are blazing with the carnalities of their own fallen nature, ministers have forgotten their vocation in preaching havoc, subverting the Scriptures and setting up as the God of worship the comfortable negroes of the South. Their sentiment is “If the Bible tolerates slavery for an instant, away with it. And God himself!—if he sanctions this hell-born monster, even he is unworthy of respect.” The black portrait of Southern slavery has been indelibly painted upon their imaginations until the pure, solid, consistent religion of our forefathers no longer exists. These reverend Pecksniffs can hardly bear to look upon a Southern man without a feeling of revenge; they seldom look at a Bible without muttering a blasphemy, and cannot speak of the South and its institutions without letting out their dream of blood and desire.
Witness some of their effusions. The Rev. Daniel Foster, one of the chaplains of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1855-6, referring to the Southern clergy, said:—
“He stood on that floor as an orthodox clergyman, but he would as soon exchange with the devil as one of those hireling priests—those traitors to humanity. The professed Church of Christ is false, and its hireling priesthood unworthy of confidence.”
The Rev. Mr. Griswold, of Stonington, said:—
“For the church which sustains slavery, wherever it be, I am ready to say I will welcome the bolt, whether it come from heaven or hell, which shall destroy it. Its pretensions to Christianity are the boldest effrontery and the vilest imposture.”
The Rev. Mr. Howell says, when speaking of the Bible arguments in behalf of slavery:—
“Give up my advocacy of abolition? Never! I will sooner, Jonas like, throw the Bible overboard, and execrate it as the Newgate calendar, denounce God as a slaveholder, and his angels and Apostles as turnkeys and slavedrivers.”