Right and wrong in Massachusetts

by Maria Weston Chapman

The accusation of harsh language was robbed of its power by the heavily charged and indiscriminate epithets which some of the appellants themselves were accustomed to use. Having no standard within themselves by which to graduate their language, the quality of their labors was regulated by the market principle of demand and supply. The respective churches in Boston, to which two of them had been called from the country to minister, had more fame (or infamy, as the world counted it) on account of abolition, than they deserved. The appellants soon ascertained that the market was fluctuating, and they also fluctuated and fell. Ignorant of the general temperature of the abolition mind without, they fancied it in correspondence with that under their immediate observation, and took the ill-considered step of appealing before the world from the requisitions of their own acknowledged principles of action with regard to the preaching of acknowledged truth.

It must be remembered, in excuse of clergymen who in this stage of the cause put their hands to the plough and turned back, that the laudable desire of the National Society to have the field filled with agents had induced some to enter it whose preparation of heart was altogether unequal to the work. They yielded to circumstances and to entreaties, rather than to convictions of duty and love of the cause. Some too had been prematurely urged into the anti-slavery ranks by the anxiety of the women of their respective congregations to obtain the influence of their names for the cause. This practice of making those life members who are but slightly interested in the cause, however well calculated to swell the funds of popular societies, and secure the efforts of the ministry in their favor, has been productive of nothing but mischief in Anti-Slavery Societies, and it is to be hoped that no persons will hereafter be subjected to the painful alternative of accepting a testimony of regard of which they are unworthy, or of acknowledging enmity to the cause of Freedom. Let no one be constituted a life member, whose own heart has not so wrought upon his life as to make it clear that his membership is something more than a payment of fifteen dollars.

The clerical appeal was, in fact, an invitation to the leaders of the opposing host of clergymen, to come and take the direction of the Anti-Slavery cause. The former character of its signers as abolitionists—their confident tone, and the suddenness of the movement, drew general attention and remark. A lively sensation ensued throughout New England.

The appellants reported that they were cheered on by nine tenths of their brother clergymen. This increased the agitation; for the abolitionists had found, from the beginning, their most active opponents among this class of men. Coming, as it did, immediately after the claim of the Mass. General Association of Ministers, for more respect and for the exclusion of agitating topics, the appeal identified its originators with the opposing ministry, and disjoined them from abolitionists. It was already seen of all, that this new principle of suppressing the truth when the truth gives offence, would, if generally adopted, completely extinguish the Anti-Slavery cause. Merchants, who had received hints that they were to be hissed off ’Change, for bringing their principles into daily practice,—lawyers, whose clients had deserted them in disgust when the pictures of kneeling slaves found room in their places of business,—women, who had been proscribed from their respective social circles for making a morning call the medium of presenting a petition,—all perceived that this case was the parallel of their own, and demanded of a clergyman that he should resist his temptations to a sinful neglect of duty as well as themselves. They also exclaimed against the unworthy idea of yielding up, on demand, those whose very faithfulness was the origin of all the outcry. A whisper was circulated by the friends of the clerical appeal, that struggle was useless, that they were sustained not only without but within the camp, that the Executive Committee at New York did not disapprove of their doings, and that it had been decided at head quarters “to cast off Garrison.” This facilitated the general movement of every eye to New York. Societies and individuals loudly protested against the treachery to the cause, the treachery to their own religious principles of action, and the treachery to their comrades of which the appeal was the vehicle.—The religious world, through all its various organs of communication with the universal public, set up a shout of triumph. From Maine to the Potomac, and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, the “Appeal” was the subject of conversation with all to whom the name of abolition was familiar. The Anti-Slavery editors in every state, discerned the spiritual peril as clearly as if it had been a combat before the bodily eye, and all spoke out for the right, except the Emancipator, the organ of the Committee at New York, and James G. Birney, then editor of the Philanthropist in Cincinnati. His misapprehension of the case was excused by those whom he condemned, and accounted for by the fact of his great distance from the seat of the conflict. The appellants, however, triumphantly claimed him as their own. Mr. Garrison, and the editor pro tem. of the Liberator, Mr. Johnson, were forcible and conclusive in their treatment of the case. Mr. Phelps, whose services as general agent of the Massachusetts Society, some members of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society forseeing this emergency, had made great exertions to secure, came boldly up, to fill the breach where his presence was so needful and desirable. The vigor of his assault quickly dislodged the appellants from their new position “in a brother’s pulpit.” But he received no thanks for his good service, from the committee at New York. Every church, every Anti-Slavery Society, was convulsed by the struggle—still no voice came from the central citadel. The Clerical appellants meanwhile went on, as diverging lines ever will, widening the distance between themselves and rectitude. The Massachusetts Association of the Ministry had, two months previously, given currency to the idea that the abolition cause had wrought deterioration in the female character. The appellants made this idea, too, their own. Mr. Woodbury, now an agent of the American Society, the same who had thrown down the gauntlet to the pro-slavery church in 1836, chimed in with the appeal, and suggested in addition, that the opinions of Mr. Garrison on other subjects were just cause of offence in him, and that their incidental expression in the Liberator was a high misdemeanor. The appellants eagerly adopted this suggestion also; and explained to the public, and endeavored to convince abolitionists, that the toleration of women as free agents in the cause—the holding George Fox’s views of the Sabbath—or embracing the principles of non-resistance, afforded a just ground for excluding the offending individuals from the Societies. “Let them go out from among us,” they said, “for they are not of us; and the Massachusetts Society must have a new organ.” Mr. Phelps, at this time standing under a load of ignominy with the leaders of his denomination, and publicly threatened by the Recorder, their periodical, that Mr. Garrison’s “brother Phelps” would soon find his present position an unenviable one, succumbed to this new shape of an attack, which, under its first guise, he had met so boldly. Like the prince of Arabian story, he yielded to the insulting outcries which burst out around him,—turned his face from the ascent, and at that moment underwent the transformation to which the prince’s change into a little black stone by the way-side, is analogous.

It is astonishing that these men should not have been aware that on the abolition platform their own sect stood but on a level with others, and that Sabbatarian or Anti-Sabbatarian, man or woman, clergyman or layman, voter or non-voter, warrior or non-resistant, must be measured by their consistency and energy in applying each his own religious views, to effect the abolition of slavery. But they had yielded to that fear of man that bringeth a snare, and suffered themselves to be overcome by pro-slavery influence, scantily disguised as sectarian zeal.

This pro-slavery influence was wielded by the leaders of the sect to which the appellants belonged, with a skill and industry which the Anti-Slavery party would have done well to imitate. This pretended zeal, stimulated as it was by the hope of securing the approbation of wealthy and influential men of business, who sustained the double character of panders of slavery and pillars of churches, was not without its reward. The leading commercial and religious journals played into each others’ hands, and, from the daily and weekly press of that period, it appears that great numbers of clergymen, of known hostility to the cause, had contrived to signify that some movement of this kind would afford them a pretence for joining it, while, at the same time, such a movement would operate as an assurance that the cause should no longer be urged forward with the speed and effect that rouses the spirit of persecution. Men who had dreaded suffering, and felt mortification at the idea of becoming followers (so they understood it) of the bold, plain, uncompromising, untitled Garrison, hoped, by means of this stepping-stone, to escape the reproach of their consciences, without sacrificing their parishes or their pride.

The active appellants were but two in number; but from time to time they kept the public informed of the encouragement they received. One, who entered into their feelings with the most ardent sympathy, was the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, then of Providence. He declared that “their appeal gave him unmingled satisfaction—that it would be sustained by others;”—and bade them “thank God and take courage, in view of the Liberator’s abuse.”

As weeks went on, it became evident, through the columns of the paper in which the clerical appeal first appeared, that the cloak of bigotry and intolerance was to be added to the garment of sectarian zeal, which had at first been employed to hide their want of attachment to the cause. There was talk of a “common ground,” which yet must not be profaned by the feet of those abolitionists who were not of one particular communion. Great preference of the National Society was expressed, (though it counted as many heretics among its numbers as did the Massachusetts Society;) because the members of the Executive Committee chanced to be members also of sects which the appellants considered Orthodox. Much exertion was made in the Theological Seminary, at Andover, to obtain recruits for this new, exclusive “common ground,” and thirty-nine young candidates for the ministerial office came up to its defence.

Meanwhile, the claims of this clerical exclusiveness were adjudged by the great body of abolitionists, to be in an attitude of antagonism with the principles of Freedom. How can he free the slave, they argued, who is occupied in imposing fetters upon the free? How can he love liberty, who is acting in defiance of her first principles? Are not things which are equal to the same things equal to one another?

The Massachusetts Society met at Worcester, to take action upon this attempt to destroy its broad foundation of religious freedom and toleration; and, disclaiming the exercise of judgment, in their associated capacity, upon any man’s private opinions, the members deemed it their duty to brand inconsistency with one’s own standard of action, as treachery to the cause.