Part 32

On my return from Europe, early in November, 1859, the steamer stopped as usual at Halifax. There we first received the tidings of John Brown’s raid, and the failure of his enterprise. I felt at once that it was “the beginning of the end” of our conflict with slavery. There were several Southern gentlemen and ladies among our fellow-passengers, and Northern sympathizers with them, as well as others of opposite opinions. During our short passage from Halifax to Boston there was evidently a deep excitement in many bosoms. Occasionally words of bitter execration escaped the lips of one and another of the proslavery party. But there was no dispute or general conversation upon the subject. The event, of which we had just heard, was a portent of too much magnitude to be hastily estimated, and the consequences thereof flippantly foretold.

On my arrival in Boston, and the next day in Syracuse, I found the public in a state of high excitement; and for two or three months the case of John Brown was the subject of continual debate in private circles as well as public meetings. The murmurs and threats that came daily from the South, intimated plainly enough that the slaveholding oligarchy were preparing for something harsher than a war of words. They were gathering themselves to rule or ruin our Republic. Under the imbecile administration of Mr. Buchanan, the Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, could do as he saw fit in his department. It was observed that the arms and ammunition of the nation, with the greater part of the small army needed in times of peace, were removed and disposed of in such places as would make them most available to the Southerners, if the emergency for which they were preparing should come. They awaited only the issue of the next presidential contest. The first ten months of the year 1860 were given to that contest. All the strength of the two political parties was put in requisition, drawn out, and fully tested and compared. And when victory crowned the friends of freedom and human rights,--when the election of Mr. Lincoln was proclaimed,--then came forth from the South the fierce cry of disunion, and the standard of a new Confederacy was set up. It is not my intention to enter upon the period of our Civil War. These Recollections will close with occurrences before the fall of Fort Sumter.

In pursuance of a plan adopted several years before, by the American Antislavery Society, arrangements were made early in December, 1860, to hold our annual conventions during the months of January and February, in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, and in a dozen other of the principal cities and villages between the two extremes. We who had devoted ourselves so assiduously for a quarter of a century or more to the subversion of the slavery in our land, of course had many thoughts and feelings upon the subject at that time, which pressed for utterance. We were the last persons who could be indifferent to the state of our country in 1860, or be silent in view of it. Nor had we any reason then to suppose that our counsels and admonitions would be particularly unacceptable to the people, as we were then frequently assured that the public sentiment of New York, as well as New England, had become quite antislavery.

We were not a little surprised, therefore, at the new outbreak of violent opposition in Boston, and afterwards in Buffalo and other places. About the middle of January I attended the convention at Rochester, where we were rudely treated and grossly insulted. I could no longer doubt that there was a concerted plan, among the Democrats everywhere, to evince a revival of their zeal in behalf of their Southern partisans by breaking up our meetings. And it appeared that the Republicans were afraid to take the responsibility, and incur the new odium of protecting our conventions in their constitutional rights. Still I hoped better things of Syracuse.

But a few days before the time appointed for our Convention, I was earnestly requested by the Mayor of the city to prevent the holding of such a meeting. I replied I would do so, if there was indeed so little respect for the liberty of speech in Syracuse that the assembly would be violently dispersed. In answer to this, his Honor assured me that, much as he wished we would forbear to exercise our undoubted right, still, if we felt it to be our duty to hold the convention, “he would fearlessly use every means at his command to secure order, and to prevent any interference with our proceedings.” Thus he took from me the only apology I could offer to our Committee of Arrangements for interposing to prevent the assembling of a meeting, which they had called in accordance with the duty assigned them.

A day or two afterwards I received a letter, written probably at the solicitation of the Mayor, and signed by twenty of the most respectable gentlemen of Syracuse (ten of them prominent members of my church), urging me to prevent the holding of the convention, as “they were credibly informed that an organized and forcible effort would be made to oppose us, and a collision might ensue between the police force of the city and a lawless mob.” Still, they assured me that they recognized our right to hold such a convention, and “that they should be in duty bound to aid in protecting us if we did assemble.” I felt obliged to answer them very much as I had answered the Mayor, and added what follows:--

“In common with my associates, I am very sincere in believing that the principles we inculcate, and the measures we advise, are the only ones that can (without war) extirpate from our country the root of that evil which now overshadows us, and threatens our ruin. We have much to say to the people, much that we deem it very important that they should hear and believe, lest they bow themselves to another compromise with the slaveholding oligarchy, which for many years has really ruled our Republic, and which nothing will satisfy but the entire subjugation of our liberties to their supposed interests.

“We perceive that the ‘strong’ men of the Republican party are trembling, and concession and compromise are coming to be their policy. We deprecate their fears, their want of confidence in moral principle and in God. We therefore feel deeply urged to cry aloud, and warn the people of the snare into which politicians would lead them. We are bound at least to _offer_ to them the word of truth, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear.

“If, gentlemen, you had assured me that our proposed meeting will be violently assaulted; that those who may assemble peacefully to listen will not be allowed to hear us; that they will be dispersed with insult if not with personal injury; and that you, gentlemen of influence as you are, shall stand aside and let the violent have their way; then I should have felt it to be incumbent on me to advertise the friends of liberty and humanity that it would not be worth their while to convene here, as it would be only to be dispersed.

“But, gentlemen, as you generously ‘affirm,’ in the letter before me, ‘that your duties as citizens will require you to aid in extending protection to our convention, in case it shall be convened, in the exercise of all the rights which all deliberative bodies may claim,’ and as the Mayor of our city has assured me that ‘he shall fearlessly use every means at his command to secure order and to prevent any interference with our proceedings,’ I should not be justified in assuming the responsibility of postponing the convention. For, gentlemen, if you will do what you acknowledge to be your duty, and if the Mayor will fulfil his generous promise, I am confident the rioters will be overawed, the liberty of speech will be vindicated, and our city rescued from a deep disgrace.

“Yours, gentlemen, in great haste, but very respectfully,

“SAMUEL J. MAY.”

Just before the hour appointed for the opening of the convention, on the 29th of January, 1861, I went to the hall which I had hired for its accommodation. It was already fully occupied by the rioters. A meeting had been organized, and the chairman was making his introductory speech. So soon as he had finished it, I addressed him: “Mr. Chairman, there is some mistake here, or a greater wrong. More than a week ago I engaged this hall for our Annual Antislavery Convention to be held at this hour.” Immediately, several rough men turned violently upon me, touched my head and face with their doubled fists, and swore they would knock me down, and thrust me out of the hall, if I said another word. Meanwhile, the Rev. Mr. Strieby, of the Plymouth Church, had succeeded in getting upon the platform, and had commenced a remonstrance, when he was set upon in like manner, and threatened with being thrown down and put out, if he did not desist at once.

The only police officer that I saw in the hall soon after rose, addressed the chairman and said: “I came here, Sir, by order of the Mayor, who had heard that there was to be a disturbance, and that the liberty of speech would be outraged here. But I see no indications of such an intended wrong. The meeting seems to me to be an orderly one, properly organized. I approve the objects of the meeting as set forth in your introductory speech, and trust you will have a quiet time.”

Thus dispossessed, we of course retired, and, after consultation, agreed to gather as many of the members of the intended convention, as could be found, at the dwelling-house of Dr. R. W. Pease, who generously proffered us the use of it. A large number of ladies and gentlemen assembled there early in the evening, and were duly organized. Pertinent and impressive addresses were made by Beriah Green, Aaron M. Powell, Susan B. Anthony, C. D. B. Mills, and others, after which a series of resolutions was passed, of which the following were the most important:--

“_Resolved_, That the only escape for nations, as well as individuals, from sin and its consequences, is by the way of unfeigned repentance; and that our proud Republic must go down in ruin, unless the people shall be brought to repentance,--shall be persuaded to ‘cease to do evil, and learn to do well; to seek justice, relieve the oppressed.’ Compromises with the wrong-doers will only plunge us deeper in their iniquity. Civil war will not settle the difficulty, but complicate it all the more, and superadd rapine and murder to the sin of slaveholding. The dissolution of the Union, even, may not relieve us; for if slavery still remains in the land, it will be a perpetual trouble to the inhabitants thereof, whether they be separate or whether they be united; slavery must be abolished, or there can be no peace within these borders.

“_Resolved_, That our General Government ought to abolish all Fugitive Slave Laws; for, unless they can dethrone God, the people will ever be under higher obligations to obey him than to obey any laws, any constitutions that men may have framed and enacted. And the law of God requires us to befriend the friendless, to succor the distressed, to hide the outcast, to deliver the oppressed.

“_Resolved_, That as the people of the free States have from the beginning been partakers in the iniquity of slavery,--accomplices of the oppressors of the poor laborers at the South,--therefore we ought to join hands with them in any well-devised measures for the emancipation of their bondmen. Our wealth and the wealth of the nation ought to be put in requisition, to relieve those who may impoverish themselves by setting their captives free; to furnish the freed men with such comforts, conveniences, implements of labor as they may need; and to establish such educational and religious institutions as will be indispensable everywhere, to enable them, and, yet more, their children and children’s children, to become what the free people, the citizens of self-governing states, ought to be,--_intelligent_, _moral_, _religious_.

“_Resolved_, That the abolition of slavery is the great concern of the American people,--‘the one thing needful’ for them,--without which there can be no union, no peace, no political virtue, no real, lasting prosperity in all these once United States.

“_Resolved_, That, so far from its being untimely or inappropriate to stand forth for unpopular truths, in seasons of great popular excitement, apprehension, and wide passionate denial of them, it is then pre-eminently timely, appropriate, and all vitally important, whether regarded in view of the paramount obligations of fealty to the Supreme King, or the sacred considerations of the redemption and welfare of mankind; and as it behooved then most of all to speak for Jesus, when Jesus was arraigned for condemnation and crucifixion, as it has ever been the bounden and, sooner or later, the well-acknowledged duty of every friend of the truth in past history to stand firm, and ever firmer in its behalf, amid whatever wave of passion, malignity, and madness, even though the multitude all shout, Crucify! and devils be gathered thick as tiles on the house-tops of Worms to devour; so at the present hour it sacredly behooves Abolitionists to abide fast by their principles, and in the very midst of the present storm of passion and insane folly, in face of every assault, whether of threat or infliction, to speak for the slave and for man; and, with an earnestness and pointed emphasis unknown before, to press home upon their countrymen the question daily becoming more imminent and vital, whether the few vestiges of freedom yet remaining shall be blotted out, and this entire land overswept with tyranny, violence, and blood.”

The members of the Convention refused to make any further attempt to hold a public meeting, but the citizens who were present at Dr. Pease’s house resolved to attempt a meeting the next forenoon in the hall from which the convention had been expelled, for the express purpose of testing the faithfulness of the city authorities, and manifesting a just indignation at the outrage which had been perpetrated in our midst upon some of the fundamental rights of a free people. But the attempt was frustrated by the same rioters that had ruled the day before.

And the following night the mob celebrated their too successful onslaught upon popular liberty by a procession led by a band of music, with transparent banners, bearing these inscriptions:--

“FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BUT NOT TREASON.”

“THE RIGHTS OF THE SOUTH MUST BE PROTECTED.”

“ABOLITIONISM NO LONGER IN SYRACUSE.”

“THE JERRY RESCUERS PLAYED OUT.”

Prominently in the procession there were carried two large-sized effigies,--one of a man the other of a woman,--the former bearing my name, the latter Miss Anthony’s. After parading through some of the principal streets, the procession repaired to Hanover Square, the centre of the business part of our city, and there amid shouts, hootings, mingled with disgusting profanity and ribaldry, the effigies were burned up; but not the great realities for which we were contending.

* * * * *

For more than thirty years the Abolitionists had been endeavoring to rouse the people to exterminate slavery by moral, ecclesiastical, and political instrumentalities, urging them to their duty by every religious consideration, and by reiterating the solemn admonition of Thomas Jefferson, that “If they would not liberate the enslaved in the land by the generous energies of their own minds and hearts, the slaves would be liberated by the awful processes of civil and servile war.” But the counsels of the Abolitionists were spurned, their sentiments and purposes were shamelessly misrepresented, their characters traduced, their property destroyed, their persons maltreated. And lo! our country, favored of Heaven above all others, was given up to fratricidal, parricidal, and for a while we feared it would be suicidal war.

God be praised! the threatened dissolution of our Union was averted. But discord still reigns in the land. Our country is not surely saved. It was right that our Federal Government should be forbearing in their treatment of the Southern Rebels, because the people of the North had been, to so great an extent, their partners in the enslavement of our fellow-men, that it would have ill become us to have punished them condignly. But our Government has been guilty of great injustice to the colored population of the South, who were all loyal throughout the war. These should not have been left as they have been, in a great measure, at the mercy of their former masters. Homes and adequate portions of the land (they so long had cultivated without compensation) ought to have been secured to every family of the Freedmen, and some provision for their education should have been made. With these and the elective franchise conferred upon them, the Freedmen might safely have been left to maintain themselves in their new condition, and work themselves out of the evils that were enforced upon them by their long enslavement.

May the sad experience of the past prompt and impel our nation, before it be too late, to do all for the colored population of our country, South and North, that righteousness demands at our hands.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX I.

On page 137 I have alluded to Hon. J. G. Palfrey. He evinced his respect for the rights of man by an act which was incomparably more significant and convincing than the most eloquent words could have been. On the death of his father, who was a slaveholder in Louisiana, he became heir to one third of the estate, comprising about fifty slaves. His co-heirs would readily have taken his share of these chattels and have given him an equivalent in land or money. But he was too conscientious to consent to such a bargain. If his portion of his father’s bondmen should thereafter continue in slavery, it must be by an act of his own will, and involve him in the crime of making merchandise of men. From this his whole soul revolted. Accordingly, he requested that such a division of the slaves might be made as would put the largest number of them into his share. The money value of the women, children, and old men being much less than that of the able-bodied men, twenty-two of the slaves were assigned to him. I presume their market value could not have been less than nine thousand dollars. All of them were brought on, at Mr. Palfrey’s expense, from Louisiana to Massachusetts.

Assisted by his Abolitionist friends, especially Mrs. L. M. Child, Mrs. E. G. Loring, and the Hathaways of Farmington, N. Y., and their Quaker friends, he succeeded after a while in getting them all well situated in good families, where the old were kindly cared for, the able-bodied adults were employed and duly remunerated for their labors, and the young were brought up to be worthy and useful. It has been my happiness to be personally acquainted with some of them and their friends, and to know that what I have stated above is true. Their transportation from Louisiana to Massachusetts; their maintenance here until places were found for them; and their removal to their several homes, must have cost Mr. Palfrey several hundred dollars,--I suppose eight or ten hundred. If so, he nobly sacrificed ten thousand dollars’ worth of his patrimony to his sense of right and his love of liberty.

In 1847 this excellent man was elected a Representative of Massachusetts in the Congress of the United States. As those who knew him best confidently expected, he early took high antislavery ground there.

The following are extracts from his first speech in Congress: “The question is not at all between North and South, but between the many millions of non-slaveholding Americans, North, South, East, and West, and the very few hundreds of thousands of their fellow-citizens who hold slaves. It is time that this idea of a geographical distinction of parties, with relation to this subject, was abandoned. It has no substantial foundation. Freedom, with its fair train of boundless blessings for white and black,--slavery, with its untold miseries for both,--these are the two parties in the field.... I will now only express my deliberate and undoubting conviction, that the time has quite gone by when the friends of slavery might hope anything from an attempt to move the South to disunion for its defence.... I do not believe it is good policy for the slaveholders to let their neighbors hear them talk of disunion. Unless I read very stupidly the signs of the times, _it will not be the Union they will thus endanger, but the interest to which they would sacrifice it_. If they insist that the Union and slavery cannot live together, they may be taken at their word, but IT IS THE UNION THAT MUST STAND.”

At its close, the Hon. J. Q. Adams is reported to have exclaimed: “Thank God the seal is broken! Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” And “the old man eloquent” died at his post a month afterwards.

APPENDIX II.

On page 147 I have named, among other members of the Society of Friends who gave us efficient support in the day when we most needed help, Nathaniel Barney, then of Nantucket. He was one of the earliest of the immediate Abolitionists, was most explicit and fearless in the avowal of his sentiments, most consistent and conscientious in acting accordingly with them. He denounced “the prejudice against color as opposed to every precept and principle of the Gospel,” and said, “It betrays a littleness of soul to which, when it is rightly considered, an honorable mind can never descend.” Therefore, he would not ride in a stage-coach or other public conveyance, from which an applicant for a seat was excluded _because of his complexion_.

He was a stockholder in the New Bedford and Taunton Railroad. In 1842 he learned that _colored_ persons were excluded from the cars on that road. Immediately he sent an admirable letter, dated April 14, 1842, to the New Bedford _Mercury_ for publication, condemning such proscription. It was refused. He then offered it to the _Bulletin_, where it was likewise rejected. At length it appeared in the New Bedford _Morning Register_, and was worthy of being republished in every respectable newspaper in our country. In it he said: “The thought never entered my mind, when I advocated a liberal subscription to that railroad among our citizens, that I was contributing to a structure where, in coming years, should be exhibited a cowardice and despotism which I know the better feelings of the proprietors would, on reflection, repudiate.... I cannot conscientiously withdraw the little I invested, neither can I sell my share of the stock of this road, while the existing prescriptive character attaches to it; and with my present views and feelings, so long as the privileges of the traveller are suspended on one of the accidents of humanity, I should be recreant to every principle of propriety and justice, _were I to receive aught of the price_ which the directors attach to them. In the exclusion, therefore, by the established rules of one equally entitled with myself to a seat, _I am excluded from any share of the money_,--the profit of said infraction of right.”

Surely, the name of such a man ought to be handed down to our posterity to be duly honored, when the great and mean iniquity of our nation shall be abhorred.

APPENDIX III.

Speech of Gerrit Smith, referred to on page 169. I have omitted a few passages for want of room.

“On returning home from Utica last night, my mind was so much excited with the horrid scenes of the day, and the frightful encroachments made on the right of free discussion, that I could not sleep, and at three o’clock I left my bed and drafted this resolution:--