Part 3

The New York "Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves" was organized January 25, 1785, and John Jay was the first president. On being appointed Chief Justice of the United States, he resigned, and Alexander Hamilton was appointed to his place. This society circulated gratuitously Dr. Samuel Hopkins's Dialogue on Slavery, and Address to Slaveholders, and other documents. In 1787, the Society offered a gold medal for the best discourse, at the public commencement of Columbia College, on the injustice and cruelty of the slave-trade, and the fatal effects of slavery. The London Society was organized July 17, 1787; the Paris Society in February, 1788;[19] and the Delaware Society the same year.[20] The Maryland Society was formed September 8, 1789,[21] and the same year the Rhode Island Society was organized in the house of Dr. Hopkins, at Newport. In 1790, the Connecticut Society was formed, of which Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, and Judge Simeon Baldwin, were the president and secretary. The Virginia Society was formed in 1791; and the New Jersey Society in 1792.

The principal officers of these societies were not fanatics; they were most eminent men in the land--judges of the courts, members of the Constitutional Convention and of the Continental and United States Congress.

It is to be observed that there was no anti-slavery society in Massachusetts, which enjoys the reputation of originating all the radicalism of the land.[22] Slavery had come to an end there, about the year 1780; but when, or how, nobody is able to say definitely. Some even say that it was abolished there in 1776, by the Declaration of Independence declaring that "all men are created equal." Others claim that, substantially the same clause, "all men are born free and equal," incorporated into the declaration of rights in the State Constitution of 1780, abolished slavery. There was no action of the State Legislature on the subject, and no proclamation by the governor; yet it was as well settled in 1783, that there was no slavery in Massachusetts, as it is to-day. This came about by a decision of the Supreme Court that there was no slavery in the State, it being incompatible with the declaration of rights. "How, or by what act particularly," says Chief Justice Shaw, "slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, whether by the adoption of the opinion in Somerset's case as a declaration and modification of the common law, or by the Declaration of Independence, or by the constitution of 1780, it is not now very easy to determine; it is rather a matter of curiosity than utility, it being agreed on all hands that, if not abolished before, it was by the declaration of rights." 18 Pickering, 209.[23]

Mr. Sumner asserted, in a speech in the Senate, June 28, 1854, that "in all her annals, no person was ever born a slave on the soil of Massachusetts." Mr. Palfrey, in his History of New England,[24] says: "In fact, no person was ever born into legal slavery in Massachusetts;" and Prof. Emory Washburn, in his Lecture, January 22, 1869, on "Slavery as it once prevailed in Massachusetts,"[25] says: "Nor does the fact that they were held as slaves, where the question as to their being such was never raised, militate with the position already stated--that no child was ever born into _lawful_ bondage in Massachusetts, from the year 1641 to the present hour."

These statements, in substance the same, seem like a technical evasion. Thousands were born into actual slavery--whether it were legal or not was poor consolation to the slave--lived as slaves, were sold as slaves, and died as slaves in Massachusetts. They never knew they were freemen. The number of slaves in Massachusetts in 1776 was 5,249, about half of whom were owned in Boston, which had then a population of 17,500. The proportion of slaves to the whole population of Boston in 1776, was six times as great as the number of colored persons in Cincinnati to-day is to the whole population, and ten times as great as the present proportion of colored persons in Boston.[26]

The same declaration, that "all men are created equally free and independent," is found in the constitutions of New Hampshire and Virginia; but it did not in these states receive the same construction as in Massachusetts. In New Hampshire it was construed to mean that all persons _born_ after 1784--the date of the adoption of the Constitution--were equally free and independent. In other words, it brought about gradual emancipation. In Virginia, it was simply a glittering generality--it had no legal meaning.[27]

In addition to the State Societies already named, there were several local societies in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. All the abolition societies in the country were in correspondence and acted together. At the suggestion of the New York Society, a convention of delegates was called for the purpose of deliberating on the means of attaining their common object, and of uniting in a memorial to Congress. Delegates from ten of these societies, including the Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island State Societies, and two local societies on the eastern shore of Maryland, met on the first day of January, 1794, at the Select Council Chamber in Philadelphia,[28] and drew up a joint memorial to Congress, asking for a law making the use of vessels and men in the slave trade a penal offense. Such a law was passed by Congress without debate.[29] These societies held annual conventions for many years. The convention recommended that such meetings of delegates be annually convened; that annual or periodical discourses or orations be delivered in public on slavery and the means of its abolition, in order that, "by the frequent application of the force of reason and the persuasive power of eloquence, slaveholders and their abettors may be awakened to a sense of their injustice, and be startled with horror at the enormity of their conduct."

The convention also adopted an address "To the citizens of the United States," which was drawn up by Dr. Benjamin Rush.[30]

Similar societies were formed in London and Paris, with whom these societies were in constant correspondence. Pennsylvania passed an act of gradual emancipation in 1780, and Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1784. A similar act, making all children born thereafter free, did not pass the Legislature of New York till 1799. In the meantime these societies were pouring in their memorials to State Legislatures and Congress, holding meetings, distributing documents, and rousing public sentiment to the enormities of the slave system.

The Connecticut petitioners say: "From a sober conviction of the unrighteousness of slavery, your petitioners have long beheld with grief our fellow-men doomed to perpetual bondage in a country which boasts of her freedom. Your petitioners are fully of opinion that calm reflection will at last convince the world that the whole system of American slavery is unjust in its nature, impolitic in its principles, and in its consequences ruinous to the industry and enterprise of the citizens of these states."

The Virginia Society, petitioning Congress, says: "Your memorialists, fully aware that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that slavery is not only an odious degradation, but an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human nature, and utterly repugnant to the precepts of the gospel, which breathes 'peace on earth and good will to men,' lament that a practice so inconsistent with true policy and the inalienable rights of men should subsist in so enlightened an age, and among a people professing that all mankind are, by nature, equally entitled to freedom."

The Pennsylvania Society memorialized Congress thus: "The memorial respectfully showeth: That from a regard for the happiness of mankind, an association was formed several years since in this state, by a number of her citizens of various religious denominations, for promoting the abolition of slavery, and for the relief of those unlawfully held in bondage. A just and acute conception of the true principles of liberty, as it spread through the land, produced accessories to their numbers, many friends to their cause, and a legislative co-operation with their views, which, by the blessing of Divine Providence, have been successfully directed to the relieving from bondage a large number of their fellow-creatures of the African race. They have also the satisfaction to observe that in consequence of that spirit of philanthropy and genuine liberty, which is generally diffusing its beneficial influence, similar institutions are forming at home and abroad.

"That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty Being, alike objects of his care and equally designed for the enjoyment of happiness, the Christian religion teaches us to believe, and the political creed of Americans fully coincides with the position.

"Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attending to the distresses arising from slavery, believe it their indispensable duty to present the subject to your notice. They have observed with real satisfaction, that many important and salutary powers are vested in you for 'promoting the welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the people of the United States;' and as they conceive that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered without distinction of color to all descriptions of people, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation that nothing which can be done for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care will be either omitted or delayed."

"From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the portion, and is still the birthright of all men, and influenced by the strong ties of humanity and the principles of their institution, your memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavors to loosen the bands of slavery, and promote a general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these impressions they earnestly entreat your serious attention to the subject of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, who, alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage; and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men," Annals of Congress, i, p. 1239.

This memorial was drawn up and signed by "BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, _President_, Feb. 3, 1790." It was the last public act of that eminent man. He died on the 17th day of the April following. It will be observed that the memorial strikes at slavery itself, on the ground that the institution is unjust, and a national disgrace. It was so understood in Congress, and ruffled the equanimity of the representatives of South Carolina and Georgia. Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, distinguished himself in the debate by an elaborate defense of the institution. He was especially annoyed that Dr. Franklin's name should be attached to the memorial, "a man," he said, "who ought to have known the constitution better."[31]

Dr. Franklin, though confined to his chamber, and suffering under a most painful disease, could not allow the occasion to pass without indulging his humor at the expense of Mr. Jackson. He wrote to the editor of the _Federal Gazette_, March 23, 1790, as follows: "Reading, last night, in your excellent paper, the speech of Mr. Jackson, in Congress, against their meddling with the affair of slavery, or attempting to mend the condition of the slaves, it put me in mind of a similar one made about one hundred years since by Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, which may be seen in Martin's Account of his Consulship, anno 1687. It was against granting the petition of a sect called _Erika_, or Purists, who prayed for the abolition of piracy and slavery as being unjust. Mr. Jackson does not quote it; perhaps he has not seen it. If, therefore, some of its reasonings are to be found in his eloquent speech, it may only show that men's interests and intellects operate, and are operated on, with surprising similarity, in all countries and climates, whenever they are under similar circumstances. The African's speech, as translated, is as follows." He then goes on to make an ingenious parody of Mr. Jackson's speech, making this African Mussulman give the same religious, and other reasons, for not releasing the white Christian slaves, whom they had captured by piracy, that Mr. Jackson had made for not releasing African slaves.[32] There were inquiries in the libraries for "Martin's Account of his Consulship," but it was never found. The paper may be read in the second volume of Franklin's Works, Sparks' edition, p. 518. None of Dr. Franklin's writings are more felicitous than this _jeu d' esprit_; and it was written only twenty-four days before his death.

In the midst of this period, when anti-slavery opinions were so generally held by leading statesmen, the Constitution of the United States was formed. It is due to the framers of that instrument to state that the entire delegations from the Northern and Middle States, and a majority of those from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware were inspired to a greater or less extent with these sentiments, and would have supported any practical measures that would, in a reasonable time, have put an end to slavery. South Carolina and Georgia positively refused to come into the Union unless the clause, denying to Congress the power to prohibit the importation of slaves prior to 1808, was inserted. The Northern States were not so strenuous in opposition to this clause as Virginia and Maryland.[33] State after state was abolishing the institution; anti-slavery opinions were becoming universal; and it was generally supposed at the North that slavery would soon die out. The financial and business interests of the country were prostrated. Union at any cost must be had. The words _slave_ and _slavery_ were carefully avoided in the draft, and the best terms possible were made for South Carolina and Georgia. The Constitution, as finally adopted, suited nobody; and by the narrowest margins it escaped being rejected in all the States. The vote in the Massachusetts Convention was 187 yeas to 168 nays; and in the Virginia Convention, 89 yeas to 78 nays.

From this examination of the subject, we see that the popular idea, that the political anti-slavery agitation was forced upon the South by the North, and especially by Massachusetts, is not a correct one. In the second period of excited controversy, from 1820 to 1830, the South again took the lead. In 1827, there were one hundred and thirty abolition societies in the United States. Of these one hundred and six were in the slaveholding States, and only four in New England and New York. Of these societies eight were in Virginia, eleven in Maryland, two in Delaware, two in the District of Columbia, eight in Kentucky, twenty-five in Tennessee, with a membership of one thousand, and fifty in North Carolina, with a membership of three thousand persons.[34] Many of these societies were the result of the personal labors of Benjamin Lundy.

The Southampton insurrection of 1830, and indications of insurrection in North Carolina the same year, swept away these societies and their visible results. The fifteen years from 1830 to 1845 were the darkest period the American slave ever saw. It was the reign of violence and mob law at the North. This was the second great reaction. The first commenced with the invention of the cotton-gin, by Eli Whitney, in 1793, and continued till the question of the admission of Missouri came up in 1820. The third reaction was a failure; it commenced in 1861, and resulted in the overthrow of the institution.

In the year 1791, the date that Dr. Buchanan delivered his oration at Baltimore, the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, conferred upon Granville Sharp, the great abolition agitator of England, the degree of LL. D. Granville Sharp had no other reputation than his anti-slavery record. This slender straw shows significantly the current of public opinion in Virginia at that time. If Granville Sharp had come over some years later to visit the President and Fellows of the College which had conferred upon him so distinguished a honor, it might have been at the risk of personal liberty, if not of life.

Colleges are naturally conservative, both from principle and from policy. Harvard College has never conferred upon Wm. Lloyd Garrison the least of its academic honors. Wendell Phillips, its own alumnus, the most eloquent of its living orators, and having in his veins a strain of the best blood of Boston, has always been snubbed at the literary and festive gatherings of the College. Southern gentlemen, however, agitators of the divine and biblical origin of slavery, have ever found a welcome on those occasions, for which latter courtesy the College should be honored.

If the visitor who records his name in the register of the Massachusetts Historical Society, will turn to the first leaf, he will find standing at the head the autograph of Jefferson Davis. Whether this position of honor was assigned by intention, or occurred accidentally, I can not state. But there it is, and if you forget to look for yourself, it will probably be shown to you by the attendant.

Mr. Davis, with his family, visited Boston in 1858, and was received with marked attention by all. During this visit he was introduced, and frequently came to the Athenæum, where I made his acquaintance. Among other objects of interest in the institution, I showed him Washington's library and this oration of Dr. Buchanan. Nothing so fixed his attention as this; he read it and expressed himself amazed. He had heard that such sentiments were expressed at the South, but had never seen them.

I am conscious that while I have taxed your patience, I have given but an imperfect presentation of the subject. If this endeavor shall serve to incite members of the Club to investigate the subject for themselves, my object will have been attained.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The questionable morality of Gen. Washington's motto might suggest that it was not originally adopted by him. The sentiment, that "the end justifies the means," has been charged, as a reproach, upon the Jesuits. It was the motto of the Northamptonshire family from which Gen. Washington descended, and was used by him, probably without a thought of its Jesuitical association, or its meaning.

[2] On one of the fly-leaves, written in a boy's hand, is "Mary Washington and George Washington." Beneath is this memorandum: "The above is in General Washington's handwriting when nine years of age. [Signed,] G. W. Parke Custis," who was the grandson of Mrs. Washington, and the last surviver of the family. He was born in 1781, and died at the Arlington House in 1857.

In the appraisement of General Washington's estate, after his death, this book was valued at twenty-five cents, and the Miscellaneous Works of Col. Humphreys, at three dollars. The boy's scribbling, in the one case, and the gorgeous binding in the other, probably determined these values. In the appendix of Mr. Everett's Life of Washington, is printed the appraisers' inventory of Washington's library. Tracts on Slavery was valued at $1.00; Life of John Buncle, 2 vols., $3.00; Peregrine Pickle, 3 vols., $1.50; Humphrey Clinker, 25c., Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, $1.50, Tom Jones, or the History of a Foundling, 3 vols., (third vol. wanting) $1.50; Gulliver's Travels, 2 vols., $1.50; Pike's Arithmetic, $2.00.

[3] The first of these tracts is "A Serious Address to the Rulers of America, on the Inconsistency of their Conduct respecting Slavery: forming a contest between the encroachments of England on American liberty, and American injustice in tolerating slavery. By a Farmer, London," 1783. 24 pages. 8vo. The author compared, in opposite columns, the speeches and resolutions of the members of Congress in behalf of their own liberty, with their conduct in continuing the slavery of others. I have never seen the name of the author of this tract. It was extensively circulated at the time, and had much influence in forming the anti-slavery sentiment which later existed. Another is "An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade. In two Parts. By the Rev. T. Clarkson, M. A. To which is added an Oration upon the Necessity of Establishing at Paris a Society for Promoting the Abolition of the Trade and Slavery of the Negroes. By J. P. Brissot de Warville. Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Bailey, for 'the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage.' 1789." 155 pp. 8vo.

[4] These facts may also be found in Steadman's Narrative of an Expedition to Surinam, vol. 2. p. 160; in Bishop Grégoire's "Enquiry into the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes," p. 153; in Edw. Needles' "Historical Memoir of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery," p. 32; and in Brissot de Warville's New Travels in the United States, p. 287, ed. 1792.

[5] Mr. Needles says: "He was visited by William Hartshorn and Samuel Coates of this city (Philadelphia), and gave correct answers to all their questions--such as how many seconds there are in a year and a half. In two minutes he answered 47,304,000. How many seconds in seventy years, seventeen days, twelve hours. In one minute and a half, 2,110,500,800. He multiplied nine figures by nine," etc., etc.

[6] Accounts of these two black men were prepared by Dr. Rush, for the information of the London Society.

[7] Works, iii, p. 291.

[8] In a letter to M. de Meusnier, dated January 24, 1786, Mr. Jefferson says: "I conjecture there are six hundred and fifty thousand negroes in the five southermost states, and not fifty thousand in the rest. In most of the latter, effectual measures have been taken for their future emancipation. In the former nothing is done toward that. The disposition to emancipate them is strongest in Virginia. Those who desire it, form, as yet, the minority of the whole state, but it bears a respectable proportion to the whole, in numbers and weight of character; and it is constantly recruiting by the addition of nearly the whole of the young men as fast as they come into public life. I flatter myself that it will take place there at some period of time not very distant. In Maryland and North Carolina, a very few are disposed to emancipate. In South Carolina and Georgia, not the smallest symptom of it; but, on the contrary, these two states and North Carolina continue importations of slaves. These have long been prohibited in all the other states." Works, ix, p. 290.

[9] "De la Littérature des Nègres; ou Recherches aur leurs Facultès Intellectuelles, leurs Qualités Morales et leur Littérature, Paris, 1808." 8vo. The work was translated by D. B. Warden, Secretary of the American Legation at Paris, and printed at Brooklyn, New York, in 1810.

[10] Gen. Washington, although a slaveholder, put on record throughout his voluminous correspondence his detestation of the system of slavery, as practiced at the South.