Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict

by Samuel J. May

After waiting more than a week for the promised manuscript I called upon the author again. In answer to my inquiry why he had not fulfilled his promise he said: “I have concluded not to allow the discourse to be published. Some of the most prominent members of our church have earnestly advised me not to give it to the press.” “Why,” said I, “have they convinced you that slaveholding is not as sinful as you represented it to be, or that you have been misinformed as to the condition of our enslaved countrymen?” “O no,” he replied, “but then this is a very complicated, difficult matter between our Northern and Southern States, and I have been admonished to let it alone.” “Do you believe,” I inquired, “that those who so admonished you were prompted to give you such advice by their sense of justice to the enslaved, their compassion for those millions to whom all rights are denied, and whose conjugal, parental, filial, and fraternal affections are trampled under foot? Or were they influenced by pecuniary, or by party political considerations?” “It is not for me, sir, to say what their motives were,” he replied, in a tone that intimated displeasure. “They are among my best friends, and the most respectable members of my parish. I am bound to give heed to their counsel. I mean so to do. I shall not allow my sermon to be published. I shall not commit myself to the antislavery cause.” “Let me only say,” I added, “if you do not commit yourself to the cause of the oppressed, you will probably, erelong, be found on the side of the oppressor.” So we parted. And my prediction was fulfilled.

Two or three years afterwards it was reported that the same gentleman, having visited the Southern States and enjoyed the hospitality of the slaveholders, returned and preached a discourse very like “The South Side View of Slavery,” by Dr. Adams, of Essex Street.

On Fast Day, 1852, it so happened that I was visiting a parishioner of this brother minister. I accompanied him to church, and heard from that very able and eloquent preacher the most unjust and cruel sermon against the Abolitionists that I had ever listened to or read.

This incident and my reception in Boston prepared me in a measure for the warning given me by the New York merchant, as related on page [127]. Still, I could not think so badly of my fellow-citizens, my fellow-Christians of the North, the New England States, as I was afterwards compelled to do.

That the cancer of slavery had eaten still deeper than I was willing to believe was soon after made too apparent to me.

THE QUAKERS.

We had always counted upon the aid and co-operation of the Quakers. We considered them “birthright” Abolitionists. And many of Mr. Garrison’s earliest supporters, most untiring co-laborers, and generous contributors were members of “the Society of Friends,” or had been. Besides John G. Whittier and James and Lucretia Mott, Evan Lewis, Thomas Shipley, and others, of whom I have already spoken, in my account of the Philadelphia Convention, there were the venerable Moses Brown, and the indefatigable Arnold Buffum, and that remarkable man, Isaac T. Hopper, and the large-hearted, open-handed Andrew Robeson and William Rotch, and Isaac and Nathan Winslow, and Nathaniel Barney, and Joseph and Anne Southwick,[D] and fifty more, whose praises I should delight to celebrate.

But we had received no expression of sympathy from any “Yearly” or “Monthly Meeting,” and we felt moved to seek a sign from them. Accordingly, at the suggestion of some of the Friends who were actively engaged with us, I went to Newport, R. I., in June, 1835, at the time of the great New England Yearly Meeting, to see if I could obtain from them any intimation of friendliness. My wife accompanied me. When we arrived at the principal hotel in the place, where I was told we should find “the weighty” as well as a large number of the lighter members of the Society, we were at a loss to account for the fluster of the landlord and his helpers, and the tardiness with which we were informed that we could be accommodated. After we had got established, I learned from one who had urged my coming, that there had been quite a commotion in consequence of the report that the General Agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society was about to visit the “Yearly Meeting.” William ——, and William ——, and Oliver ——, and Isaac ——, and Thomas ——, wealthy cotton manufacturers and merchants, had bestirred themselves to prevent such “an intrusion,” as they were pleased to term it. They had secured the public halls of Newport against me during the continuance of the “Yearly Meeting,” and had been trying, on the morning of the day that I arrived, to induce the landlord to refuse me any accommodation in his house. And they would have succeeded, had not forty of his boarders informed him that if he did not receive me they would quit his premises. These forty, though of less account in the meeting, which, I learned, was governed by the aristocracy that occupied the high seats, were more weighty in the receipts of the hotel-keeper. He therefore compromised with the dignitaries by agreeing to serve their meals in a private parlor, so that their eyes might not be offended at the sight of the antislavery agent in the common dining hall.

I sought, through several of their very respectable members, permission to attend their “Meeting on Sufferings” and present to their consideration the principles and plans of the American Antislavery Society and its auxiliaries. This request was peremptorily denied. I then besought them to give their “testimony on slavery,” as they had sometimes done in times past. This they also refused.

An arrangement was then made by the members who were Abolitionists, many of whom boarded with me at “Whitfield’s,” that I should address as many as saw fit to meet me in the large reception-room of the hotel, in the evening of the second day of my visit. So soon as this was known, it was asked of me if I would consent to let the meeting be conducted somewhat in the manner of “the Society of Friends” so that any who should be moved to speak might have the liberty. I acquiesced most cheerfully, not doubting that I should be moved, and should be expected to address the meeting first and give the direction to it.