Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

“Hallowed, and guarded from all change by death.”

We must pause here, and settle in our memories the positions of individuals and societies at this period, if we would understand the times which come after. We must take the bearings and distances of the cause in 1837, if we would possess a chart for our safe guidance among the shoals and quicksands of 1839.

First, let us note the position of the Executive Committee at New York. Blind to the crisis or unequal to it, they labored to preserve neutrality in a case involving the preservation or the sacrifice of principle; and pronounced the whole affair to be “entirely local—a mere Boston controversy.” Of the three tests of fidelity, they stood firm under the application of but two. They were untrue to principles in keeping silence at such a moment, but they were not positively and openly faithless to men, and they vindicated the broad platform of the original Anti-Slavery agreement. They perceived the derangement that a hostile and proscriptive organization in Massachusetts would occasion in the whole Anti-Slavery system of organized action and did not recognize any such society as a part of the affiliation. But the feebleness that marked their course, at that trying crisis, deprived them of the perfect love and confidence that had till then been felt in them by all the abolitionists. This feebleness and neutrality was, however, a recommendation to those whose estimation is a dispraise. The opposer of the cause instinctively felt that, without any change in his own position, the distance between himself and the New York Committee was somewhat lessened: while the devoted friends were made aware that that committee, notwithstanding its activity in keeping in motion the smaller machinery of the cause, and its ability in conducting the tract and book department, was yet the weak point of the whole Anti-Slavery array. All attentive beholders, whether friends or foes, were taught, by the observation of this period, that the machinery of organization, with all its systematized and mechanical helps, must be utterly unequal to obtain emancipation, unless freedom be the moving “spirit within the wheels;”—that, however efficient may be the appliances and means that money can set in motion, there are moments when one trumpet-blast of victorious truth, were worth them all. The friends in Massachusetts in vain continued to “look southward with upbraiding eye;”—there was no voice nor any that answered to their condemnation of the base metal which could not stand the furnace of the times. They therefore made their own expression of opinion the more emphatic, and their own testimony the more clear.

The Boston Female Society bore faithful witness to the truth, notwithstanding the reluctance of its President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Recording Secretary. These officers ran well while they fancied the enterprise under the blessing and direction of a portion of the ministry. But, no sooner did it appear that they must advance alone and self-sustained, than they turned to flight, and from that moment became, in their measure, an obstacle to the cause, and a detriment to the society hitherto so active.

Let us give one more glance at the position of individuals at this period.

The appellants, recreant to the three grounds of fidelity in the Anti-Slavery cause, fidelity to the principles—to the platform—and to their comrades, were announcing their intention to weep in secret places. Mr. Phelps, faithful to the first ground, but treacherous to the two last, was endeavoring, unknown to his comrades of the Massachusetts Board, to change the original character of the Society, and at the same time to sustain the office of its General Agent. Mr. Stanton, the most prominent Agent of the New York Committee in Massachusetts, was wanting to the fundamental principle of immediateism, in keeping silence on the first ground of the appeal;—to the mutual agreement that all sects were, in the Anti-Slavery cause, on a common platform, in keeping silence on the second ground of the appeal; and to his brethren personally, in silently seeing them attacked without standing with them on the defensive. Instead of this three-fold fidelity, he was declaring it to be impossible to “screw every body up to this high notch;” and therefore it had better not be attempted, as the work would be done at last by men who had not this devoted love for the cause, from political and interested motives; and that the requisition of higher ones, would certainly occasion division. The faithful in the cause were earnestly urging him, and all who were thus wanting to the right, to insist on the most impregnable fidelity and the most unshaken constancy, as the only aid worth having, and the only means of holding the mastery over policy and selfishness; and solemnly warning him that, when that division, to which he alluded, should take place, the short-sighted, the weak, the faltering, the treacherous, the unprincipled, the base, would fall back together; while the deep-thinking, the strong, the resolute, the faithful, the well-grounded, the noble-souled, would close up and press onward.

The position of the Massachusetts Society only remains to be considered. It ceased to defray the expenses of the Liberator from its treasury, though most of the members would have rejoiced to continue to do so. But they respected the consciences of the minority, very few as they believed those to be who honestly opposed the paper, and determined, since freedom only could obtain freedom, at all events to avoid the absurdity of infringing on religious liberty.

They concurred with Mr. Garrison in the opinion that the efficacy of the paper and the consistency of the society would be best preserved by the cessation of the pecuniary connection, if it gave pain or embarrassment to the mind of a single contributor to the funds.

This did not greatly mend the matter to those who profaned the sacred name of conscience, by making it a cloak for malice and for weakness. Still Mordecai sat in the king’s gate—still it was the abolition of Massachusetts which sustained the Liberator.