Amasa Walker, a man peculiarly qualified to speak to such a question, being a zealous member of the same sect as the appellants, manifested, upon this occasion, rectitude and steadfastness worthy of a sect so nobly founded, and, until the present day, so nobly sustained. He explained the causes and developed the real character of the appeal, stripping it of its mask of love for the slave, and zeal for the church of God.
Dr. Osgood, of Springfield, was disposed to admit the justice of the charge of harsh language against prominent abolitionists, but he made an exception in favor of Mr. Birney. He thought himself as thorough as it was possible for any man to be in the cause. He had labored for its success wherever he went. “I have,” said he, “pleaded for it in stage-coaches and steam-boats. I have argued in its behalf in conversation. I have never yet introduced it into my pulpit:—if I had done so, I should have grieved away some of my best people.”
A condemnation was, notwithstanding, expressed against the idea that one man’s wishes or sense of propriety, are the proper measure of the rights and duties of another.
Being thus hindered in their attempt to change the nature and foundation principles of the Massachusetts Society, the appellants strove to destroy it by forming a new organization on the basis of sectarianism, to be auxiliary to the National Society. Mr. Phelps, though somewhat disappointed at the result of the whole campaign, in the utter discomfiture of clerical abolitionism, and vexed that the Massachusetts abolitionists insisted upon evidence of repentance from the clerical appellants, before again placing confidence in them, was still not quite prepared to relinquish his hold upon the old society.
This unwillingness was strengthened by the fact, that the strings of management of the new one were not proffered to his hands. When he learned that the call for a convention to form it was not a free and general one, but limited to those who were quite decided to quit the Massachusetts Society, and that the important arrangements were all to be settled beforehand, and only the trifling details left to the discretion of the Convention; then, and not till then, he publicly warned abolitionists against putting themselves to the trouble of “doing up Mr. Somebody’s details,” and expressed the hope that the few towns in the Commonwealth that had responded to the new movement, might remain as they were, a few. Orange Scott, one of the most conspicuous of the Methodist abolitionists, exclaimed against the narrow exclusive dividing spirit which was at work, and zealously defended the common cause from its attacks.
Their advice, with the indefatigable labors of Mr. Garrison, cast a damp upon the embryo mischief. But, excited, as Mr. Phelps’s sympathies had been, for his clerical brethren, and alarmed as he had felt at the outcry of heresy they had raised against Mr. Garrison, he could not go on in the work, as aforetime, with a free, untroubled soul. He had previously entered into a correspondence with Professor Smyth, of Maine, a friend of the clerical appeal, respecting the necessity of reforming the Massachusetts Society of its characteristic freedom, and the means by which that reform could be effected without alarming the sagacious watchfulness of Mr. Garrison;[1] and at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society, warmly opposed that part of the annual report which condemned the appeal as treacherous to the cause.
Events seldom pass for what they are worth, at the time they transpire; and these signs and tokens
“———————which denoted
A hot friend cooling,——”
seemed inconsequential to most of those who observed them. The abolitionists had reposed unbounded confidence in Mr. Phelps, and could not brook to have their souls darkened by suspicion of one so well beloved. In watching the train of human events, how often are we admonished to praise no man unreservedly while yet he lives;—to rest our hearts upon no human excellence that is not