Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict

by Samuel J. May

It was a pamphlet of more than eighty octavo pages, ably written, very impassioned and well adapted to its purpose. The second and third editions of it were published in less than twelve months. And Mr. Walker devoted himself until his death, which happened soon after, to the distribution of copies of this Appeal to colored men who were able to read it in every State of the Union.

Just as I had written the above sentence, Dr. W. H. Irwin, of Louisiana, came in with an introduction to me. He is one of many Union men who have been stripped of their property and driven out of the State by President Johnson’s and Mayor Monroe’s partisans. Learning that he had been a resident many years in the Southern States, I inquired if he saw or heard of Walker’s Appeal in the time of it. He replied that he was living in Georgia in 1834, was acquainted with the Rev. Messrs. Worcester and Butler, missionaries to the Cherokees, and knew that they were maltreated and imprisoned in 1829 or 1830 for having one of Walker’s pamphlets, as well as for admitting some colored children into their Indian school.

So soon as this attempt to excite the slaves to insurrection came to the knowledge of Mr. Garrison, he earnestly deprecated it in his lectures, especially those addressed to colored people. And in his first number of the Liberator he repudiated the resort to violence, as wrong in principle and disastrous in policy. His opinions on this point were generally embraced by his followers, and explicitly declared by the American Antislavery Society in 1833.

But as we wished that our fellow-citizens South as well as North should be assured of our pacific principles, and as we hoped to abolish the institution of slavery by convincing slaveholders and their abettors of the exceeding wickedness of the system, we did send our reports, tracts, and papers to all white persons in the Southern States with whom we were any of us acquainted, and to distinguished individuals whom we knew by common fame, to ministers of religion, legislators, civilians, and editors. But in no case did we send our publications to slaves. This we forbore to do, because we knew that few of them could read; because our arguments and appeals were not addressed to them; and especially because we thought it probable that, if our publications should be found in their possession, they would be subjected to some harsher treatment.

Notwithstanding our precaution, the Southern “gentlemen of property and standing” denounced us as incendiaries, enemies, accused us of intending to excite their bondmen to insurrection, and to dissolve the Union. They would not themselves give any heed to our exposé of the sin and danger of slavery, nor would they suffer others so to do who seemed inclined to hear and consider. They assaulted, lynched, imprisoned any one in whose possession they found antislavery publications. They waylaid the mails, or broke into post-offices, and tore to pieces or burnt up all papers and pamphlets from the North that contained aught against their “peculiar institution,” and significantly admonished, if they did not summarily punish, those to whom such publications were addressed. Meetings were called in most, if not all, of the principal cities of the South, at which Abolitionists were denounced in unmeasured terms, and the friends of the Union, North and South, and East and West, were peremptorily summoned to suppress them. By the votes of such meetings, and still more by the acts of the Legislatures of several States, large rewards—$5,000, $10,000, $20,000—were offered for the abduction or assassination of Arthur Tappan, William Lloyd Garrison, Amos A. Phelps, and other prominent antislavery men. Moreover, letters of the most abusive character were sent to us individually, threatening us with all sorts of violence, arson, and murder.

Sad to relate, the corrupting, demoralizing influence of slavery was not confined to those who were directly enforcing the great wrong upon their fellow-beings. Those who had consented to such desecration of humanity were found to be almost as much contaminated as the slaveholders themselves. “The whole head of the nation was sick, and the whole heart was faint.” The “gentlemen of property and standing” at the North, yes, even in Massachusetts, espoused the cause of the slaveholders. The editors of most of the newspapers, religious as well as secular, and of some of the graver periodicals, nearly all of the popular orators, and very many of the ministers of religion, spoke and wrote against the doctrine of the Abolitionists. They extenuated the crime of denying to fellow-men the God-given, inalienable rights of humanity, apologized for those who had been born to an inheritance of slaves, and insisted that “slavery was an ordination of Providence, sanctioned by our sacred Scriptures, even the Christian Scriptures.” This last was the chief weapon with which the religionists throughout the Northern as well as Southern States combated the Abolitionists. Not a few sermons were preached in various parts of New England, as well as New York and other Middle States, in justification of slaveholding. The professors of Princeton Theological School published a pamphlet in defence of slavery, and Professor Stuart, of Andover, the great leader of New England orthodoxy, gave the abomination his sanction. The record of our Cambridge Divinity School is much more honorable. Dr. Henry Ware, Jr., evinced a deep interest in our enterprise, and incurred some censure for manifesting his interest. Dr. Follen identified himself with us at an early day, and, as I shall tell hereafter, was one of the sufferers in the cause; and Dr. Palfrey, though at the time of which I am writing rather privately, expressed an appreciation of our principles, which a few years afterwards impelled him to pecuniary sacrifice and a course of conduct in Congress which deservedly placed him high on the list of the antislavery worthies.[C] All the large, influential ecclesiastical bodies in our country—the Presbyterian, the Episcopal, the Methodist, the Baptist—threw over the churches of their sects throughout the Southern States the shield of their consent to, if not their approval of, slaveholding; and, I grieve to add, the American Unitarian Association could not be induced to pronounce its condemnation of the tremendous sin, the sum of all iniquities.

Most religionists of every name, our own not excepted, insisted that slavery was a political institution, with which, as Christians, it would be inexpedient for us to meddle; and the politicians and merchants did all in their power to disseminate this view of the matter, and close the doors of the churches and the lips of the ministers against this “exciting subject.” I need not add they were too successful.

Most of the prominent statesmen, and all the political demagogues of both parties, took the ground that the great question as to the enslavement of the colored population of the South was settled by the framers of the Constitution; that it was a matter to be left exclusively to the States in which slavery existed; that to meddle with it was to violate the provisions of the fundamental law of the land and loosen the bands of the Union. Therefore the Abolitionists were to be regarded as disturbers of the public peace, incendiaries, enemies of their country, traitors. And it was proclaimed by many in high authority, and shouted everywhere by the baser sort, “that the Abolitionists ought to be abolished,” by any means that should be found necessary. Thus outlawed, given up to the fury of the populace, we were subjected to abuses and outrages, of which I can give only a brief account.

We were slow to believe that our fellow-citizens of the New England States could be so besotted by the influence of the institution of slavery, that they would outrage our persons in its defence. We had had proofs enough that “the gentlemen of property and standing,” “the wise and prudent,” with their dependants, had shut their ears against the truth, and turned away their eyes from the grievous wrongs we were imploring our country to redress. This treatment we had experienced, with increasing frequency, ever since the formation of the American Antislavery Society, in December, 1833. But we were unwilling to apprehend anything worse, certainly in Massachusetts. We trusted that our persons would be sacred, though we had learned that the liberty of speech and of the press was not.

Late in the fall of 1833 I delivered, in Boylston Hall, at the request of the New England Antislavery Society, a discourse “On the Principles and Purposes of the Abolitionists, and the Means by which they intended to subvert the Institution of Slavery.” The audience was large, and among my hearers I was delighted to see my good friend (afterwards Dr.) F. W. P. Greenwood, then one of the editors of the Christian Examiner. He remained after the meeting was over, and to my great joy said to me, “I have liked your discourse much. I wish everybody who is opposed to the antislavery reform could hear or read it. If you will prepare it as an article for the Examiner, I will publish it there.” Glad of this avenue to the minds and hearts of so many who I especially wished should understand and appreciate the work to which I had wholly committed myself, I set about converting my discourse into a review of our best antislavery publications, and making it, as a literary production, more worthy of a place in the chief periodical of our denomination. It was too late for the January number, 1834, so I aimed to have it in readiness for the March number. In due time I called at the office and inquired how soon my manuscript would be wanted. The publisher asked what was the subject of my article; and on learning that it was to be an explanation of the sentiments and purposes of the Abolitionists, he said, to my astonishment, with much emphasis, “We do not want it; it cannot be published.” “Why,” I said, “is not Mr. Greenwood one of the editors, and do not he and his colleague decide what shall be put into the Examiner?” “Generally they do,” he replied; “indeed, I never interfered before. But in this case I must and shall. The Examiner is my property. It would be seriously damaged if an article favoring Abolition should appear in it. I should lose most of my subscribers in the slave, and many in the free States. And I cannot afford to make such a sacrifice.” But I rejoined, “Mr. Greenwood has heard all the essential parts of the article. He approved of it, thought it would do good, and requested me to prepare it for publication.” Mr. B. replied, with more earnestness than before, “Mr. May, it shall not be published. If I should find it all printed on the pages of the Examiner, just ready to be issued, I would suppress the number and publish another, with some other article in the place of yours.”