DEAR SIR:—You say in letter before me, "It must, therefore, be distinctly understood that if we embark in a missionary enterprise in Kansas, this question of slavery and anti-slavery must be ignored." I respond: This reformation is pledged before heaven and earth, and under covenants the most solemn and binding into which men can enter, to guarantee freedom of thought and speech to our brotherhood-i—not indeed on subjects purely abstract, speculative and inoperative, but on Bible questions—questions which involve the well-being of humanity. This matter of slavery is a Bible question—a question of justice between man and man—of mercy and humanity. It is what Jesus would call one of the weightier matters of the law, and demands, therefore, a large place in our investigations.
The brethren here in Kansas have made no such stipulations with me They have left me to my own discretion in preaching the gospel to sinners, and teaching the saints according to the Bible. They have shown themselves too magnanimous to impose on my conscience a restriction which their own manhood would forbid, under similar circumstances, that they should suffer to be imposed on themselves.
For myself, I will be no party, now or hereafter, to such an arrangement as that contemplated in your letter now before me. I would not make this "Reformation of the nineteenth century" a withered and blasted trunk, scattered by the lightnings of heaven, because it took part with the rich and powerful against the poor and oppressed, and because we have been recreant to those maxims of free discussion which we have so ostentatiously heralded to the world as our cherished principles.
In explanation of the first letter received by Bro. Butler from the corresponding secretary, a second one was sent, from which it is necessary to make the following extracts:
I reply, that nothing has been said against teaching a master his duties according to the Bible, nor (what is just as important) against teaching servants their duties to their masters, according to the Bible—according to the instructions given to evangelists—I. Tim. vi. 1-4. My remarks, as the whole letter will show, had reference to the question of slavery in Kansas. The forms it takes on there are very different from the duties masters owe their servants according to the Bible. It is whether a slaveholder is necessarily a sinner, unfit for membership in the Christian Church—a blood-thirsty oppressor, whose money is the "price of blood," and would "pollute" the treasury of the Lord, etc. etc. And, on the other hand, whether American slavery is a divine institution, the perfection of society for the African race, and essential to their happiness—while all Abolitionists are fit only for the madhouse or the penitentiary. These and such like are the forms the question of slavery assumes in Kansas, as well as in many of the free States, where there are no "masters and servants" in that sense to be taught their duties, in reference to which it was said the question must be entirely ignored. And we can not consent that on one side or the other such pleas shall be made under the sanction of the American Christian Missionary Society.
I did not then, nor do I now, suppose that if you were employed by the A. C. M. S. to preach the gospel in Kansas, it would fall to your lot to furnish instructions to many masters and servants. If in any churches you may raise up in Kansas—evidently destined to be free—you find masters and slaves, of course it will be your duty to instruct them both "according to the Bible." But to furnish such instruction, and to go through Kansas lecturing on anti-slavery, or mixing up any pro-slavery or any anti-slavery theories and dogmas with the gospel, or to plant churches with the express understanding that no "master" shall be allowed to have membership in it, are very different things. And I had this very matter in view when I wrote to you, for I had some-how heard that the church of which you were a member was about to take just such a stand, and I wanted to have it distinctly understood that so far as action under the direction of the A. C. M. S. was concerned, all such ultraisms must be ignored. . . . You felt anxious to have help to preach the gospel in Kansas. I felt anxious to assist you. I saw danger in the way, growing out of the fact that I represent a society whose membership is in the South as well as in the North, and that some factious ultraists are constantly on the watch to sow the seeds of discord. I knew the state of things in Kansas as bearing on the slavery question. I knew something, too, of your treatment there, and of your feelings. I saw that if you were employed to preach there, an effort would be made to herald it, as in Bro. Beardslee's Case, as an anti-slavery triumph. This would be unjust to us. And as the practical question of master and slave does not exist there to any extent, I spoke of ignoring the question altogether. If you still insist on the right to urge that question, and take part in the controversy raging in Kansas, under the patronage of the A. C. M. S., I have only to say it is outside the objects contemplated in our constitution. But if you wish simply to preach the gospel and instruct converts in a knowledge of Christian duties, "according to the Scriptures," there was certainly no occasion for your second letter to be written.
To the foregoing a rejoinder was written by Bro. Butler, which closed the correspondence with the A. C. M. S., and from which the following extracts are taken, that the readers may understand his position correctly:
I reply, 1. In your former letter I find no reference to the forms the agitation of this question assumes in Kansas. I presume you had not a copy of that letter before you when you wrote this one. But you do allude to "forms" the agitation of this question had assumed in Cincinnati, and in reference to Bro. Beardslee and the Jamaica mission. I was also instructed that "our missionaries" must not be ensnared into such utterances as the Luminary can publish to the world, to add fuel to the flame. The utterances against which I was guarded seemed to be in Cincinnati rather than in Kansas. I had already published a piece indicative of my views in the Northwestern Christian Magazine, and that appeared to be the obnoxious "utterance." 2. You are misinformed relative to the "forms" the agitation of this question assumes in Kansas. The question, Shall slaveholders be received as church members? has hardly been debated at all. 3. Neither myself nor any person associated with me has at time proposed to organize a church to exclude slaveholders. 4. Slaveholders have been members of our churches from the first day until now. How, then, could I understand you as referring to anything else than to my own published Cincinnati utterances?