Another and a most auspicious event signalizes in my memory the year 1835. It was the publication of Dr. Channing’s book on Slavery. He had for many years been the most distinguished minister of religion in New England, certainly in the estimation of the Unitarian denomination; and his fame as a Christian moralist, a philosopher, and finished writer had been spread far and wide throughout England, France, and Germany by a large volume of his Discourses, Essays, and Reviews published in 1830.
A few weeks after his graduation from Harvard College in 1798, when about nineteen years of age, determined to be no longer dependent upon his mother and friends for a living, he gladly accepted the situation of a tutor in the family of Mr. Randolph, of Richmond, Virginia. Here he often met many of the most distinguished gentlemen and ladies of the city and the State, and visited them freely at their city homes and on their plantations. He was delighted with their cordial and elegant courtesy. But he saw also their slaves and the sensuality which abounded amongst them. These made an impression upon his heart which was never effaced.
In the fall of 1830 he went to the West Indies for his health, and passed the winter in St. Croix. There he witnessed again the inherent wrongs of slavery and the vices which it engenders. On his return in May, 1831, he spoke freely and with the deepest feeling from his pulpit of the inhuman system, and its debasing effects upon the oppressors as well as the oppressed. At that time the public mind in New England had begun to be agitated upon the subject of slavery, as it never had been before by the scathing denunciations that were every week poured from The Liberator upon slaveholders and their abettors and apologists. Dr. Channing’s sensitive nature shrank from the severity of Mr. Garrison’s blows, and yet he acknowledged that the gigantic system of domestic servitude in our country ought to be exposed, condemned, and subverted. He found his highly esteemed friend, Dr. Follen, with his excellent wife and several others of the best women in Boston, and Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel E. Sewall and others, whom he highly esteemed, giving countenance and aid to the “young fanatic.” This drew his attention still more to the subject of slavery. Soon after his return from the West Indies I visited Dr. Channing, and found his mind very much exercised. He sympathized with the Abolitionists in their abhorrence of the domestic servitude in our Southern States, and their apprehension of its corrupting influence upon the government of our Republic, and the political as well as moral ruin to which it tended. But he distrusted our measures, and was particularly annoyed, as I have already stated, by Mr. Garrison’s “scorching and stinging invectives.” Whenever I was in the city and called upon the Doctor, he would make particular inquiries respecting our doctrines, purposes, measures, and progress. Repeatedly he invited me to his house for the express purpose, as he said, of learning more about our antislavery enterprise. He always spoke as if he were deeply interested in it, but he was afraid of what he supposed to be some of our opinions and measures. I was surprised that he was so slow to accept our vital doctrine, “immediate emancipation.” But owing, I suppose, to his great aversion to excited speeches and exaggerated statements, and his peculiar distrust of associations, he had never attended any of our antislavery meetings, where the doctrine of immediate emancipation was always explained. The Doctor, therefore, as well as the people generally, misunderstood it, and had been misinformed in several other respects as to the purposes, measures, and spirit of the Abolitionists. Still he persisted in abstaining from our meetings until after the alarming course taken by the Governor and Legislature of Massachusetts, in the spring of 1836, of which I shall give an account in the proper place.
Late in the year 1834, being on a visit in Boston, I spent several hours with Dr. Channing in earnest conversation upon Abolitionism and the Abolitionists. My habitual reverence for him was such that I had always been apt to defer perhaps too readily to his opinions, or not to make a very stout defence of my own when they differed from his. But at the time to which I refer I had become so thoroughly convinced of the truth of the essential doctrines of the American Antislavery Society, and so earnestly engaged in the dissemination of them, that our conversation assumed, more than it had ever done, the character of a debate. He acknowledged the inestimable importance of the object we had in view. The evils of Slavery he assented could not be overstated. He allowed that removal to Africa ought not to be made a condition of the liberation of the enslaved. But he hesitated still to accept the doctrine of immediate emancipation. His principal objections, however, were alleged against the severity of our denunciations, the harshness of our epithets, the vehemence, heat, and excitement caused by the harangues at our meetings, and still more by Mr. Garrison’s Liberator. The Doctor dwelt upon these objections, which, if they were as well founded as he assumed them to be, lay against what was only incidental, not an essential part of our movement. He dwelt upon them until I became impatient, and, forgetting for the moment my wonted deference, I broke out with not a little warmth of expression and manner:—
“Dr. Channing,” I said, “I am tired of these complaints. The cause of suffering humanity, the cause of our oppressed, crushed colored countrymen, has called as loudly upon others as upon us Abolitionists. It was just as incumbent upon others as upon us to espouse it. We are not to blame that wiser and better men did not espouse it long ago. The cry of millions, suffering the most cruel bondage in our land, had been heard for half a century and disregarded. ‘The wise and prudent’ saw the terrible wrong, but thought it not wise and prudent to lift a finger for its correction. The priests and Levites beheld their robbed and wounded countrymen, but passed by on the other side. The children of Abraham held their peace, and at last ‘the very stones have cried out’ in abhorrence of this tremendous iniquity; and you must expect them to cry out like ‘the stones.’ You must not wonder if many of those who have been left to take up this great cause, do not plead it in all that seemliness of phrase which the scholars and practised rhetoricians of our country might use. You must not expect them to manage with all the calmness and discretion that clergymen and statesmen might exhibit. But the scholars, the statesmen, the clergy had done nothing,—did not seem about to do anything, and for my part I thank God that at last any persons, be they who they may, have earnestly engaged in this cause; for no movement can be in vain. We Abolitionists are what we are,—babes, sucklings, obscure men, silly women, publicans, sinners, and we shall manage this matter just as might be expected of such persons as we are. It is unbecoming in abler men who stood by and would do nothing to complain of us because we do no better.
“Dr. Channing,” I continued with increased earnestness, “it is not our fault that those who might have conducted this great reform more prudently have left it to us to manage as we may. It is not our fault that those who might have pleaded for the enslaved so much more wisely and eloquently, both with the pen and the living voice than we can, have been silent. We are not to blame, sir, that you, who, more perhaps than any other man, might have so raised the voice of remonstrance that it should have been heard throughout the length and breadth of the land,—we are not to blame, sir, that you have not so spoken. And now that inferior men have been impelled to speak and act against what you acknowledge to be an awful system of iniquity, it is not becoming in you to complain of us because we do it in an inferior style. Why, sir, have you not taken this matter in hand yourself? Why have you not spoken to the nation long ago, as you, better than any other one, could have spoken?”
At this point I bethought me to whom I was administering this rebuke,—the man who stood among the highest of the great and good in our land,—the man whose reputation for wisdom and sanctity had become world-wide,—the man, too, who had ever treated me with the kindness of a father, and whom, from my childhood, I had been accustomed to revere more than any one living. I was almost overwhelmed with a sense of my temerity. His countenance showed that he was much moved. I could not suppose he would receive all I had said very graciously. I awaited his reply in painful expectation. The minutes seemed very long that elapsed before the silence was broken. Then in a very subdued manner and in the kindliest tones of his voice he said, “Brother May, I acknowledge the justice of your reproof. I have been silent too long.” Never shall I forget his words, look, whole appearance. I then and there saw the beauty, the magnanimity, the humility of a truly great Christian soul. He was exalted in my esteem more even than before.
The next spring, when I removed to Boston and became the General Agent of the Antislavery Society, Dr. Channing was the first of the ministers there to call upon me, and express any sympathy with me in the great work to which I had come to devote myself. And during the whole fourteen months that I continued in that office he treated me with uniform kindness, and often made anxious inquiries about the phases of our attempted reform of the nation.
Early in December, 1835, Dr. Channing’s volume on Slavery issued from the press. A few days after its publication, he invited Samuel E. Sewall and myself to dine with him, that he might learn how we liked his book. Both of us had been delighted with some parts of it, but neither of us was satisfied with other parts; much dissatisfied with some. He requested and insisted on the utmost freedom in our comments. He listened to our objections very patiently, and seemed disposed to give them their due weight.
As was to be expected, the appearance of a work on Slavery, by Dr. Channing, caused a great sensation throughout the land. It was sought for with avidity. It found its way into many parlors from which a copy of The Liberator would have been spurned. Most of the statesmen of our country read it, and many slaveholders.