Part 27

In 1850 Mr. Smith called upon me and other friends to assist him in selecting five hundred poor white men, strictly temperate and honest, to each of whom he would give forty acres. And having learnt that some of his colored beneficiaries had been unable to raise means enough to remove with their families to the lands he had given them, he added ten dollars apiece to the portions that he gave to the white men.

Not satisfied with these bestowments, yearning over the poverty of the many who had little or nothing in a world where he had so much, and having given fifty dollars to each of a hundred and forty poor, worthy women, whose wants had been brought to his consideration, he again requested me and others to find out in our neighborhoods five hundred worthy widowed or single poor white women, to whom such a donation would be especially helpful, that he might have the pleasure of bestowing upon them also fifty dollars apiece. I need not say that these unasked, unexpected gifts carried great relief and joy wherever they were sent.

But such labors of love, although so grateful to his benevolent heart, were _labors_. Then Mr. Smith’s sympathy with his suffering fellow-beings, whom he could not immediately relieve, and his lively interest and hearty co-operation in all moral and social reforms, were unavoidably wearing. As might have been expected, his health was impaired and at length gave away. In the latter part of 1858 he had a serious attack of typhoid fever, which was followed by months of mental prostration. And after his recovery he was obliged for a long while to be sparing of himself, especially avoiding exciting scenes and subjects.

This incident in the life of my noble friend came upon him when he was planning a magnificent enterprise for the public good. His enlightened benevolence prompted him to devise an institution for the highest education of youths of both sexes, and all complexions and races. It was to be a university based upon the most advanced principles of intellectual and moral culture. He disclosed his intention to his intimate friend and legal adviser, the late Hon. Timothy Jenkins, of Oneida, and to myself, informing us that he meant to appropriate five hundred thousand dollars to its accomplishment. At his request I made known his purpose to the late Hon. Horace Mann, whom we regarded as the best adapted to develop the plan and preside over the execution of it, and who we thought would like to take charge of an educational institution that might from the beginning be ordered so much in accordance with his own enlarged ideas; but he promptly declined the invitation, being, as he said, too far committed to Antioch College.

Mr. Mann’s refusal deferred the undertaking, and no other one, who could be had, appearing to Mr. Smith to be just the person to whose conduct he should be willing to commit the university, it was postponed until his alarming sickness and protracted debility, and the threatening aspect of our national affairs, led him to dismiss the project altogether. So he distributed among his nephews and nieces the larger part of the money he had intended to expend as I have stated above.

Shortly after, our awful civil war broke out. Of this he could not be a silent or inactive spectator. He freely gave his money, his influence, himself, to the cause of his country in every way that a private citizen of infirm health could. He not only gave many thousand dollars to promote the enlistment of white soldiers in his town and county, but he offered to equip a whole regiment of _colored_ men, if the governor of the State would put one in commission. But, alas! the chief magistrate of New York was not another John A. Andrew.

Mr. Smith contributed largely to the funds of the Sanitary Commission, and not a little to the Christian Commission; and he kindly cared for many families at home that had been called to part with fathers, husbands, or sons, on whom they were dependent.

So soon as the grand project of establishing schools for the freedmen was started, Mr. Smith entered into it with his wonted zeal and generosity. I have heard often of his donations larger or smaller, and have not a doubt that he has contributed as much as any other person in our country.

I need not say that it has indeed been a great benefit, as well as joy, to me to have been brought to know so intimately, and to co-operate so much as I have done, for more than twenty years, with such a philanthropist as Gerrit Smith.

Not alone by his bountiful gifts of land and money has he mightily helped the cause of our cruelly oppressed and despised countrymen. He has spoken often, and written abundantly in their behalf,--always faithfully, sometimes with exceeding power. I am sure there is not an individual in Central New York, I doubt if there be one in our whole country, unless he has been an agent or appointed lecturer of some Antislavery Society, who has attended so many antislavery meetings, has made so many antislavery speeches, and written and published so many antislavery letters, as has our honored and beloved brother of Peterboro’, always excepting, of course, those devotees, Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips. I shall have occasion hereafter to tell of one or more of his timely and most effective speeches.

Mr. Smith has entertained and freely expressed some opinions that have been peculiar to himself, and has done some things that have appeared eccentric; but I believe that he has never consciously done or said anything unfriendly to an oppressed or despised fellow-being, white or black.

CONDUCT OF THE CLERGY AND CHURCHES.

The most serious obstacle to the progress of the antislavery cause was the conduct of the clergy and churches in our country. Perhaps it would be more proper to say the churches and the clergy, for it was only too obvious that, in the wrong course which they took, the shepherds were driven by the sheep. The influential members of the churches,--“the gentlemen of property and standing,”--still more the politicians, who “of course understood better than ministers the Constitution of the United States, and the guaranties that were given to slaveholders by the framers of our Union,”--these gentlemen, too important to be alienated, were permitted to direct the action of the churches, and the preaching of their pastors on this “delicate question,” “this exciting topic.” Consequently the histories of the several religious denominations in our country (with very small exceptions) evince, from the time of our Revolution, a continual decline of respect for the rights of colored persons, and of disapproval of their enslavement. In the early days of our Republic--until after 1808--all the religious sects in the land, I believe, gave more or less emphatic testimonies against enslaving fellow-men, especially against the African slave-trade. But after that accursed traffic was nominally abolished, the zeal of its opponents subsided (not very slowly) to acquiescence in the condition of those who had long been enslaved and their descendants. “They are used to it”; “they seem happy enough”; “unconscious of their degradation”; it was said. Then “the labor of slaves is indispensable to their owners, especially on the rich, virgin soils of the Southern States.” “It is sad,” said the semi-apologists, “but so it is. The condition of laboring people everywhere is hard, and we are by no means sure that the condition of the slaves is worse, if so bad as, that of many laborers elsewhere who are nominally free.” “Many masters,” it was added, “are very kind to their slaves; feed them and clothe them well, and never overwork them, unless it is absolutely necessary.” But the consciences of the doubting were quieted more than all by the plea that “in one respect certainly the condition of the enslaved Africans has been immensely improved by their transportation to our country. Here they are introduced to the knowledge of ‘the way of salvation’; here many of them become Christians. As Joseph through his bondage in Egypt was led to the highest position in that empire, next only to the king, so these poor, benighted heathen, by being brought in slavery to our land, may be led to become children of the King of kings, so wonderful are the ways of Divine Providence.” By these and similar palliations and apologies, the people of almost every religious sect at the South, and their Methodist or Baptist or Presbyterian or Episcopalian brethren at the North, were led to overlook the _essential_ evil, the tremendous wrong of slavery, and to hope and trust that God would, in due time, by his inscrutable method, bring some inestimable good out of this great evil.

Accordingly, we find, on turning to the doings of the great ecclesiastical bodies of our country, that they have descended from their very distinct protests against the enslavement of men, in 1780, 1789, 1794, &c., to palliations of the “sum of all villanies,” as Wesley called it,--and apologies for it, and justifications of it, and explicit, biblical defences of it, until at length--after Mr. Garrison and his co-laborers arose, demanding for the slaves their inalienable right to liberty--the churches and ministers of all denominations (excepting the Freewill Baptists and Scotch Covenanters) gathered about the “Peculiar Institution” for its _protection_; and vehemently denounced as incendiaries, disunionists, infidels, all those who insisted upon its abolition.[Q]

This, I repeat, was the most serious obstacle to the progress of our antislavery reform. In 1830, and for several years afterwards, the influence of the clergy and the churches was paramount in our Northern, if not in the Southern communities; certainly it was second only to the love of money. The people generally, then, were wont to take for granted that what the ministers and church-members approved must be morally right, and what they so vehemently denounced must be morally wrong. Accordingly, the most violent conflicts we had, and the most outrageous mobs we encountered, were led on or instigated by persons professing to be religious.

If the clergy and churches have less influence over the people now than they had forty years ago, it must be in a great measure because the people find that they were wofully deceived by them as to the character of slavery, and misled to oppose its abolition, until the slaveholders, encouraged by their Northern abettors, dared to attempt the dissolution of our Union, and so brought on our late civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of the people were killed, and an immense debt imposed upon this and succeeding generations.

In justice, however, to the professing Christians of our country, it should be recorded that very much the larger portions of our antislavery host were recruited from the churches of all denominations, though some persons who made no pretensions to a religious character rendered us signal services. It ought also to be stated that more of the antislavery lecturers, agents, and devoted laborers had been of the _ministerial_ profession than of any other of the callings of men, in proportion to the numbers of each. Still, it cannot be denied that the most formidable opposition we had to contend against was that which was made by the ministers and churches and ecclesiastical authorities. When the true history of the antislavery conflict shall be fully written, and the sayings and doings of preachers, theological professors, editors of religious periodicals, and of Presbyteries, Associations, Conferences, and General Assemblies, shall be spread before the people in the light of our enlarged liberty, no one will fail to see that, practically, the worst enemies of truth, righteousness, and humanity were of those who professed to be the friends and followers of Christ. Had _they_ been generally faithful and fearless in behalf of the oppressed, no other opponents would have dared to withstand the just demand for their immediate emancipation.

Mr. Garrison, who was and is by nature and education an unfeignedly religious man, felt that he ought to look first to the clergy and the professing Christians for sympathy, and should confidently expect their co-operation. Indeed, he knew that if they would heartily espouse the cause of our enslaved countrymen, he might, without unfaithfulness to them, retire to some printing-office, and get his living as he had been trained to do. His disappointment and astonishment were unspeakable when he found how blind and deaf and dumb the preachers of the Gospel were in view of the unparalleled iniquity of our nation, and the inestimable wrongs that were allowed to be inflicted upon millions of the people. It was as painful to him and his associates as it was necessary, to expose to the people the infidelity of their religious teachers and guides; to show them that, not only had the statesmen and politicians of our country become fearfully corrupted by consenting with slaveholders, but also the bishops, priests, ministers of religion. All, with few exceptions, had lost faith in the true and the right, and in the God of truth and righteousness. They were afraid to obey the Divine Law, and bowed rather to the commandments of men. They respected a compromise more than a principle, and trusted to what seemed politic rather than to that which was self-evidently right. “The whole _head_ of our nation was sick, and the whole _heart_ was faint. From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there seemed to be no soundness in it.” “Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom; we should have been like unto Gomorrah.”

UNITARIAN AND UNIVERSALIST MINISTERS AND CHURCHES.

It must have been observed by my readers that, in speaking above of the sympathy and co-operation of the Northern ministers and churches with their slaveholding brethren in the Southern States, I did not name Universalists and Unitarians among the guilty sects. This was because I reserved them for a separate, and the Unitarians for a more particular notice. Of the course pursued by the Universalists I have known but little. There are very few churches of their denomination in any of the slaveholding States; in most of them, I believe, not one. They claimed the Rev. Theodore Clapp, of New Orleans, a preacher of distinguished ability, and in some respects a very estimable gentleman, but who was one of the most unblushing advocates of slavery in the country. In a sermon preached at New Orleans, April 15, 1838, he said: “The venerable patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others were all slaveholders. In all probability each possessed a greater number of bondmen and bondwomen than any planter now living in Louisiana or Mississippi.” “The same God who gave Abraham sunshine, air, rain, earth, flocks, herds, silver, and gold _blessed him with a donative of slaves_. Here we see God dealing in slaves, giving them to his favorite child,--a man of superlative worth, and as a reward for his eminent goodness.” These extracts are not an exaggerated specimen of the whole discourse. A few years afterwards, it was rumored that Mr. Clapp had essentially modified his opinions as above expressed. This rumor brought out an explanation in _The New Orleans Picayune_ (probably from himself), to the effect that, “Christian philanthropy does not require the immediate emancipation of slaves.” “Whilst one lives in a slave State, he is bound by Christianity to submit to its laws touching slavery.” “Christianity does not propose to release the obligations of slaves to their masters.” I am not informed that his Universalist brethren at the North ever passed any censure upon him for such misrepresentations of our Heavenly Father, and of the duty of men to their oppressed fellow-beings.

UNITARIANS.

In commencing the discreditable account I must give of the proslavery conduct of the Unitarian denomination, I may as well record the fact, of which the mention of Rev. Theodore Clapp reminds me. Notwithstanding the utterance of such sentiments as I have just now quoted, none of which had been retracted or apologized for, a few years afterwards Mr. Clapp was specially invited by a committee of Boston Unitarians to attend their religious anniversaries; and his letter in reply was read in their principal meeting, where, perhaps, a thousand persons were present, including a large number of ministers and prominent laymen, without any remonstrance or rebuke to those who had invited him.

But before I proceed further with the disagreeable narrative, let me state, to the honor of the sect, that though a very small one in comparison with those called Orthodox (having at this day not more than three hundred and sixty ministers, and in 1853 only two hundred and seven), we Unitarians have given to the antislavery cause more preachers, writers, lecturers, agents, poets, than any other denomination in proportion to our numbers, if not more without that comparison. Of those Unitarian ministers no longer on earth, we hold in most grateful remembrance Dr. N. Worcester, Dr. Follen, Dr. Channing, Dr. S. Willard, Theodore Parker, John Pierpont, Dr. H. Ware, Jr., and A. H. Conant. Others, though less outspoken, were always explicitly on the side of the oppressed,--Dr. Lowell, Dr. C. Francis, Dr. E. B. Hall, G. F. Simmons, E. Q. Sewall, B. Whitman, N. A. Staples, S. Judd, B. Frost. Of those who are still in the body, we gratefully claim as fellow-laborers in the antislavery cause Drs. J. G. Palfrey, W. H. Furness, J. F. Clarke, T. T. Stone, J. Allen, G. W. Briggs, R. P. Stebbins, O. Stearns, and Rev. Messrs. S. May, Jr., C. Stetson, W. H. Channing, M. D. Conway, O. B. Frothingham, J. Parkman, Jr., J. T. Sargent, N. Hall, A. A. Livermore, J. L. Russell, J. H. Heywood, T. W. Higginson, R. W. Emerson, S. Longfellow, S. Johnson, F. Frothingham, W. H. Knapp, R. F. Wallcut, R. Collyer, E. B. Willson, W. P. Tilden, W. H. Fish, C. G. Ames, John Weiss, R. C. Waterston, T. J. Mumford, C. C. Shackford, F. W. Holland, E. Buckingham, C. C. Sewall, F. Tiffany, R. R. Shippen. All these are or were Unitarian preachers, and did service in the conflict. Many of them suffered obloquy, persecution, loss, because of their fidelity to the principles of impartial liberty. I may have forgotten some whose names should stand in this honored list. I have mentioned all whose services I remember to have witnessed or to have heard of. How small a portion of the whole number of our ministers during the last forty years!

The Unitarians as a body dealt with the question of slavery in any but an impartial, courageous, and Christian way. Continually in their public meetings the question was staved off and driven out, because of technical, formal, verbal difficulties which were of no real importance, and ought not to have caused a moment’s hesitation. Avowing among their distinctive doctrines, “The _fatherly character_ of God as reflected in his Son Jesus Christ,” and “_The brotherhood of man with man everywhere_,” we had a right to expect from Unitarians a steadfast and unqualified protest against so unjust, tyrannical, and cruel a system as that of American slavery. And considering their position as a body, not entangled with any proslavery alliances, not hampered by any ecclesiastical organization, it does seem to me that they were _pre-eminently guilty_ in reference to the enslavement of the millions in our land with its attendant wrongs, cruelties, horrors. They, of all other sects, ought to have spoken boldly, as one man, for _God our Father_, for _Jesus the all-loving Saviour and Elder Brother_, and for _Humanity_, especially where it was outraged _in the least of the brethren_. But they did not. They refused to speak as a body, and censured, condemned, execrated their members who did speak faithfully for the down-trodden, and who co-operated with him whom a merciful Providence sent as the prophet of the reform, which alone could have saved our country from our late awful civil war. Let no honor be withheld from the individuals who were so prominent and noble exceptions to the general policy of the denomination,--the ministers whom I have named above, together with those faithful laymen, Samuel E. Sewall, Francis Jackson, David L. Child, Ellis Gray Loring, Edmund Quincy, A. Bronson Alcott, Dr. H. I. Bowditch, William I. Bowditch, with others; and those excellent women, Mrs. L. M. Child, Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, Mrs. Follen, Miss Cabot, Mrs. Mary May, Misses Weston, Misses Chapman, Miss Sargent, and more who should be named; let no honor be withheld from these and such as they were. But let the sad truth be plainly told, as a solemn warning to all coming generations, that even the Unitarians, as a body, were corrupted and morally paralyzed by our national consenting with slaveholders, even the Unitarians to whose avowed faith in the paternity of God, the brotherhood of all mankind, and the divinity of human nature, the enslavement of men should have been especially abhorrent. On a subsequent page I shall have occasion to tell of their most glaring dereliction of duty to the enslaved, and those who were ready to help them out of bondage. Meanwhile I must state some facts in support of my allegations against the sect to which I belong and with which I shall labor for the dissemination of our _most precious faith_ so long as life and strength remain.

In 1843 the subject of the slavery of millions in our land was brought before the American Unitarian Association by Rev. John Parkman, Jr. But it was not discussed. It was put aside as a matter about which there were serious differences of opinion among the members, and with which that body, therefore, had better not meddle.

Early in 1844 an address on the subject was sent from British Unitarians to their brethren in America. It was an able, affectionate, respectful appeal to us, signed by one hundred and eighty-five ministers. A meeting of the Unitarian clergy was held in Boston to consider and reply to it. But it seemed to be regarded by many, and was spoken of by some, as an _impertinence_. “Our British brethren,” it was said, “are interfering in a matter which is beset with peculiar difficulties in this country, about which they know little or nothing.” And my cousin, Rev. Samuel May, Jr., of Leicester, who had visited England the year before, was severely censured for having encouraged our brethren there thus to meddle. Here let me say, few have labored so diligently, faithfully, disinterestedly, as Mr. May has in the cause of the slaves. And no one of our denomination has taken so much pains to prevent the Unitarians from committing themselves to the wrong side, or failing to do their duty on the right side, of every question relating to slavery. For this fidelity he has received anything but the thanks of most of the brethren. Here and elsewhere I am bound to tell what I know of him, for owing to the similarity of our names, and the sameness of our connections with the Antislavery Societies, many of _his_ good words and deeds have been attributed to _me_ by those who do not know both of us.