Nineteenth Century Questions

by James Freeman Clarke

"Thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exaltations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind."

The best poets of America, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, were in full sympathy with this cause, and their best poetry was their songs for freedom. Shall we ever forget the caustic humor of "Hosea Biglow" and "Birdofredum Sawin"? And how lofty a flight of inspiration did the same bard take, when he chanted in verses nobler, as it seems to us, than anything since Wordsworth's "Ode to Immortality," the Return of the Heroes who had wrought salvation for the dear land "bright beyond compare" among the nations! What heroism, what tenderness, what stern rebuke, what noble satire, have attended every event in this long struggle, from the lyre of Whittier! Nothing in Campbell excels the ring of some of his trumpet-calls, nothing in Cowper the pathos of his elegies over the martyrs of freedom. The best men and the best women were always to be found at the meetings of the Antislavery Society. There were to be seen such upright lawyers as Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel E. Sewall and John A. Andrew, such eminent writers as Emerson, such great preachers as Theodore Parker and Beecher, such editors as Bryant and Greeley. To this cause did William Ellery Channing devote his last years and best thoughts. If the churches as organizations stood aloof, being only "timidly good," as organizations are apt to be, the purest of their body were sure to be found in this great company of latter-day saints.

Antislavery men had their faults. They were often unjust to their opponents, though unintentionally so. They were sometimes narrow and bitter; and with them, as with all very earnest people, any difference of opinion as to methods seemed to involve moral obliquity. But they were doing the great work of the age,—the most necessary work of all,—and much might be pardoned to their passionate love of justice and humanity. In their meetings could be heard many of the ablest speakers of the time, and one, the best of all. He held the silver bow of Apollo, and dreadful was its clangor when he launched its shafts against spiritual wickedness in high places. Those deadly arrows were sometimes misdirected, and occasionally they struck the good men who were meaning to do their duty. Such errors, we suppose, are incident to all who are speaking and acting in such terrible earnest; in the great day of accounts many mistakes will have to be rectified. But surely among the goodly company of apostles and prophets, and in the noble army of martyrs there assembled, few will be found more free from the sins of selfish interest and personal ambition than those who in Congress, in the pulpit, on the platform, or with the pen, fought the great battle of American freedom.

One great moral must be drawn from this story before we close. It demonstrates, by a great historical proof, that no evil however mighty, no abuse however deeply rooted, can resist the power of truth faithfully uttered and steadily applied. If this great institution of slavery, resting on such a foundation of enormous pecuniary interest, buttressed by such powerful supports, fell in the life of a single generation before the unaided power of truth, why should we ever despair? Henceforth, whenever a mighty evil is to be assailed, or a cruel despotism overthrown, men will look to this history of the greatness and decadence of slavery; and, so encouraged, will believe that God is on the side of justice, and that truth will always prevail against error.

But to this we must add, that it is only where free institutions exist that truth has full power in such a conflict. We need free speech, a free press, free schools, and free churches, in order that truth may have a free course. The great advantage of a republic like ours is, that it gives to truth a fair chance in its conflict with error. The Southern States would long ago have abolished slavery if it had possessed such institutions. But, though republican in form, the Southern States were in reality an oligarchy, in which five millions of whites and three millions of slaves were governed by the absolute and irresponsible power of less than half a million of slaveholders. Freedom was permitted by them except when this institution was concerned, then it was absolutely forbidden. No book written against their peculiar institution could be printed on any Southern press or sold in any Southern bookstore. No newspaper attacking slavery was allowed to be circulated through Southern mails. No public meeting could be held to discuss the right and wrong of slavery. No minister could preach against the system. No man could express, even in conversation, his hostility to it, without risk of personal injury. An espionage as sharp, and an inquisition as relentless as those of Venice or Spain, governed society, at least in the cotton and sugar States of the Union. But at the North opinion was free, and therefore slavery fell. Fisher Ames compressed in an epigram the evil and good of republican institutions. "In a monarchy," said he, "we are in a ship, very comfortable while things go well; but strike a rock, and we go to the bottom. In a republic, we are on a raft; our feet are wet, and it is not always agreeable, but we are safe." It is a lasting proof of the conservative power of free institutions, that they were able to uproot such a system as slavery by creating a moral force capable of putting it down; that they could carry us through a civil war, still leaving the press and speech free: that they stood the strain of a presidential election without taking from the voters a single right; and so, at last, conquered a rebellion on so vast a scale that every European monarchy, with its immense standing army, would have been powerless in its presence. Let those Americans who are disposed to disparage their own institutions bear this history in mind. We have evils here, and great ones; but they come at once to the surface, and therefore can be met and overcome by the power of intelligent opinion. So it has always been in the past; so it will be, God aiding us, in the future. We are about to meet the Centennial Anniversary of our national life; and on that day we can look back to our fathers, the founders of the Republic, and say to them,—"You gave us the inestimable blessing of free institutions; we have used those institutions to destroy the only great evil which you transmitted to us untouched. We now can send down the Republic to our children, pure from this stain, and capable of enduring IN SECULA SECULORUM."

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.

[FOOTNOTES]

[1] See the argument to prove that it would not be difficult to climb to heaven.