Part 9

There is one of whom I must speak now, because I have already passed the time, at which her inestimable services commenced. In July, 1833, when the number, the variety, and the malignity of our opponents had become manifest, we were not much more delighted than surprised by the publication of a thoroughgoing antislavery volume, from the pen of Mrs. Lydia Maria Child. She was at that time, perhaps, the most popular as well as useful of our female writers. None certainly, excepting Miss Sedgwick, rivalled her. The _North American Review_, then, if not now, the highest authority on matters of literary criticism, said at the time: “We are not sure that any woman in our country would outrank Mrs. Child. This lady has long been before the public as an author with much success. And she well deserves it, for in all her works we think that nothing can be found which does not commend itself by its tone of healthy morality and good sense. Few female writers, if any, have done more or better things for our literature, in its lighter or graver departments.” That such an author--ay, such an _authority_--should espouse our cause just at that crisis, I do assure you, was a matter of no small joy, yes, exultation. She was extensively known in the Southern as well as the Northern States, and her books commanded a ready sale there not less than here. We had seen her often at our meetings. We knew that she sympathized with her brave husband in his abhorrence of our American system of slavery; but we did not know that she had so carefully studied and thoroughly mastered the subject. Nor did we suspect that she possessed the power, if she had the courage, to strike so heavy a blow. Why, the very title-page was pregnant with the gist of the whole matters under dispute between us,--“Immediate Abolitionists,” and the slaveholders on the one hand, and the Colonizationists on the other,--“_An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans_ CALLED _Africans_.” The volume, still prominent in the literature of our conflict, is replete with facts showing, not only the horrible cruelties that had been perpetrated by individual slaveholders or their overseers, but the essential barbarity of the _system of slavery_, its dehumanizing influences upon those who enforced it scarcely less than upon those who were crushed under it. Her book did us an especially valuable service in showing, to those who had paid little attention to the subject, that the Africans are not by _nature_ inferior to other--even the _white_--races of men; but that “Ethiopia held a conspicuous place among the nations of ancient times. Her princes were wealthy and powerful, and her people distinguished for integrity and wisdom. Even the proud Grecians evinced respect for Ethiopia, almost amounting to reverence, and derived thence the sublimest portions of their mythology. And the popular belief, that all the gods made an annual visit to feast with the excellent Ethiopians, shows the high estimation in which they were then held, for we are not told that such an honor was bestowed on any other nation.” Mrs. Child’s exposure of the fallacy of the Colonization scheme, as well as the falsity of the pretensions put forth by its advocates, amply sustained all Mr. Garrison’s accusations. And her _exposé_ of the principles of the “Immediate Abolitionists” was clear, and her defence of them was impregnable.

This “Appeal” reached thousands who had given no heed to us before, and made many converts to the doctrines of Mr. Garrison.

Of course, what pleased and helped us so much gave proportionate offence to slaveholders, Colonizationists, and their Northern abettors. Mrs. Child was denounced. Her effeminate admirers, both male and female, said there were “some very indelicate things in her book,” though there was nothing narrated in it that had not been allowed, if not perpetrated, by “the refined, hospitable, chivalric gentlemen and ladies” on their Southern plantations. The politicians and statesmen scouted the woman who “presumed to criticise so freely the constitution and government of her country. Women had better let politics alone.” And certain ministers gravely foreboded “evil and ruin to our country, if the women generally should follow Mrs. Child’s bad example, and neglect their domestic duties to attend to the affairs of state.”

Mrs. Child’s popularity was reversed. Her writings on other subjects were no longer sought after with the avidity that was shown for them before the publication of her “Appeal.” Most of them were sent back to their publishers from the Southern bookstores, with the notice that the demand for her books had ceased. The sale of them at the North was also greatly diminished. It was said at the time that her income from the productions of her pen was lessened six or eight hundred dollars a year. But this did not daunt her. On the contrary, it roused her to greater exertion, as it revealed to her more fully the moral corruption which slavery had diffused throughout our country, and summoned her patriotism as well as her benevolence to more determined conflict with our nation’s deadliest enemy. Indeed, she consecrated herself to the cause of the enslaved. Many of her publications since then have related to the great subject, viz.: The Oasis, Antislavery Catechism, Authentic Anecdotes, Evils and Cure of Slavery, Other Tracts, Life of Isaac T. Hopper, and, more than all, her letters to Governor Wise, of Virginia, and to Mrs. Mason, respecting John Brown. Those letters had an immense circulation throughout the free States, and were blazoned by all manner of anathemas in the Southern papers. Her letter to Mrs. Mason especially was copied by hundreds of thousands, and was doubtless one of the efficient agencies that prepared the mind of the North for the final great crisis.

For several years, assisted by her husband, Mrs. Child edited the _Antislavery Standard_, elevated its literary character, extended its circulation, and increased its efficiency.

But, in a more private way, this admirable woman rendered the early Abolitionists most important services. She, together with Mrs. Maria W. Chapman and Eliza Lee Follen, and others, of whom I shall write hereafter, were presiding geniuses in all our councils and more public meetings, often proposing the wisest measures, and suggesting to those who were “allowed to speak in the assembly” the most weighty thoughts, pertinent facts, apt illustrations, which they could not be persuaded to utter aloud. Repeatedly in those early days, before Angelina and Sarah Grimké had taught others besides Quaker women “to _speak_ in meeting,” if they had anything to say that was worth hearing,--repeatedly did I spring to the platform, crying, “Hear me as the mouthpiece of Mrs. Child, or Mrs. Chapman, or Mrs. Follen,” and convulsed the audience with a stroke of wit, or electrified them with a flash of eloquence, caught from the lips of one or the other of our antislavery prophetesses.

N. B.--That Mrs. Child, when she became an Abolitionist, did not become a woman “of one idea” is evinced, not only by her two volumes of enchanting “Letters from New York,” “Memoirs of Madame de Staël” and “Madame Roland,” “Biographies of Good Wives,” and several exquisite books for children, but still more by her three octavo volumes, entitled “Progress of Religious Ideas,” which must have been the result of a vast amount of reading and profound thought on all the subjects of theology and religion. Her later work, “Looking towards Sunset,” is full of beautiful ideas about that future life, for which her untiring devotion to all the humanities in this life must have so fully prepared her.

ERUPTION OF LANE SEMINARY.

Lane Seminary was an institution established by our orthodox fellow-Christians, mainly for the preparation of young men for the ministry. It attained so much importance in the estimation of its patrons, that, in 1832, they claimed for it the services and the reputation of Rev. Dr. Beecher, who left Boston at that time and became its president. There he found, or was soon after joined by, Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, another distinguished teacher of Calvinistic theology. This school of the prophets was placed on Walnut Hill, in the vicinity of Cincinnati, that it might be near to the Southwestern States, and was separated from Kentucky only by the river Ohio. It had attracted, by the reputation of its Faculty, from all parts of the country, quite a number of remarkably able, earnest, conscientious, and, as they proved to be, eloquent young men.

At the time when the signal event occurred of which I am now to give some account, there were in the literary and theological departments of Lane Seminary more than a hundred students. Eleven of these were from different slave States; seven of them sons of slaveholders, one himself a slaveholder when he entered the institution, and one of the number--James Bradley--had emancipated himself from the cruel bondage by the payment of a large sum, that he had earned by extra labor. Besides these, there were ten of the students who had resided more or less in the slave States, and were well acquainted with the condition of the people, and the influence of their “peculiar institution” of domestic servitude. Moreover, that you may appreciate fully the importance of the event I am going to narrate to you, and know that it was not (as some at the time represented it to be) a boyish prank, or mere college rebellion,--“a tempest in a teapot,”--let me tell you that the youngest student in the seminary was nineteen years of age, most of the students were more than twenty-six years old, and several of them were over thirty. They were sober, Christian men, who were preparing themselves, in good earnest, to preach the Gospel; and they believed that one of its proclamations was “liberty to the captives, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke.”

Soon after the seminary was opened, a Colonization Society was formed among the students. At the time of which I speak most of them were members of that Society, and were encouraged by the Faculty so to be. But the publication of Mr. Garrison’s “Thoughts on Colonization,” and the formation of the “American Antislavery Society,” attracted the attention of some of their number. Conversations arose on the subject between them and their fellows. An anxious inquiry was awakened as to the truth of the allegations brought against the Colonization scheme, and as to the justice of the new demand made by Mr. Garrison and his associates for the “immediate abolition of slavery.” At length, in February, 1834, it was proposed that there should be a thorough public discussion of two questions:--

1st. Whether the people of the slaveholding States ought to abolish slavery at once, and without prescribing, as a condition, that the emancipated should be sent to Liberia, or elsewhere, out of our country?

2d. Whether the doctrines, tendencies, measures, spirit of the Colonization Society were such as to render it worthy of the patronage of Christian people?

We were informed at the time, by several who were cognizant of the fact, that the Faculty, fearing the effect of such a discussion upon the prosperity of the seminary, officially and earnestly advised that it should be indefinitely postponed. But many of the students had become too deeply interested in these questions to consent that they should remain unsettled. They were therefore discussed,--each one through nine evenings,--in the presence of the President and most of the Faculty, fully, faithfully, earnestly, but courteously debated. The results were, on the first question, an almost unanimous vote to this effect: that “Immediate emancipation from slavery was the right of every slave and the duty of every slaveholder.” And on the second question it was voted, by a large majority, “That the American Colonization Society and its scheme were not deserving of the approbation and aid of Christians.” This was the purport, if not the exact language, of the resolutions at the close of the debate of eighteen evenings.

The report of the proceeding and the result went speedily through the land; and, as speedily, there came back, from certain quarters, no stinted measure of condemnation, warning, threats. These so alarmed the Faculty that, as soon as was practicable, they formally prohibited the continued existence of an Antislavery Society among the students of Lane Seminary; and required that the Colonization Society, which they had cherished hitherto, should be also disbanded and abolished.

At the next meeting of the Overseers, or Corporation of the Seminary, this high-handed measure of the Faculty was approved and confirmed. The remonstrance of the students (all but one of them adult men, thirty of them more than twenty-six years of age) availed not to procure a reconsideration of this oppressive decree. Accordingly, nearly all of them--seventy or eighty in number--withdrew from the Seminary, refusing to be the pupils of theological professors who showed so plainly that their sympathies were with the oppressors, rather than with the oppressed; or that they had not courage enough to denounce so egregious a wrong, so tremendous a sin, as the enslavement of millions of human beings.

Like the disciples after the martyrdom of Stephen, these faithful young men were scattered abroad throughout the land, and went everywhere, preaching the word which they were forbidden to utter within the enclosure of a school, dedicated to the promulgation of the religion of Jesus of Nazareth.

Antislavery truth was disseminated far and wide by their agency. Those who were the sons of slaveholders returned to the homes of their parents, and besought them and their neighbors to repent of their great unrighteousness and flee from the wrath to come. These entreaties were not all lost. Several slaveholders were converted, and gave liberty to their bondmen. If I mistake not, the attention of that admirable man, Hon. James G. Birney, of Kentucky, was fixed by the discussions in Lane Seminary, and by conversations with the students upon the really evil tendency of the Colonization plan, which, with the best intentions, he had done so much to promote. At any rate, his conversion about that time to the doctrine of “immediate emancipation” was an event of signal importance, as I hope to show you in a future article.

It was not my privilege to become personally acquainted with many of these young men, whose conscientious, courteous, dignified, yet determined course of conduct awakened our admiration, and whose subsequent labors helped mightily the great work projected by the American Antislavery Society. Several of them were called to announce and advocate their principles in communities where it was especially dangerous “to speak those truths which tyrants dread.” We were delighted from time to time by the accounts that came to us of their unflinching fidelity. And undoubtedly there were some cases of peculiar trial and suffering endured by them, which are treasured among the secret things that are to be made known, when He “who seeth in secret will reward men openly.”

Amos Dresser, eager to raise the funds he needed to enable him to pursue his studies and complete his preparation for the ministry, took of the publishers an agency for the sale of the “Cottage Bible” in Tennessee. For the transportation of himself and his load he procured a horse and barouche. He had proceeded without molestation as far as Nashville. There it was discovered that he was an Abolitionist,--one of the students that had left Lane Seminary on account of his principles. He was arrested by order of the Mayor, and brought before the Committee of Vigilance. By them his trunk was searched, his journal, private papers, and letters were examined. These showed plainly enough, and he promptly acknowledged, that he was opposed to slavery; that he pitied his fellow-men who were in bondage, and regarded those who held them in chains as guilty of great wickedness.

Therefore, although there was not the slightest proofs that, thus far, he had done or said anything that did not pertain to his business, he was condemned by the Committee to be taken out immediately, to receive twenty lashes upon his bare back, and to depart from the city within twenty-four hours. Accordingly, that American citizen, for the crime of believing “the Declaration of Independence,” was taken by the excited populace to a public square in Nashville, and there on his knees received upon his naked back twenty lashes, laid on by a city officer with a heavy cowhide. He was then hurried away, leaving behind him five hundred dollars’ worth of property, which was never restored.

James A. Thome, the son of a Kentucky slaveholder, was so thoroughly converted to Abolitionism that, during the pendency of the infamous decree of the Faculty and Trustees of the Seminary, he was sent as a delegate from the Antislavery Society which the students had formed to attend the annual meetings of the Abolitionists in May, 1834. He came and addressed the public in New York, Boston, and elsewhere. His heartfelt sincerity, his tender, fervid eloquence, made a peculiarly deep impression upon his audiences. And having been born and brought up in the midst of slavery, his testimony to its cruelties, its licentiousness, and its depraving influences was received without distrust, though it sustained the worst allegations that had ever been brought against the domestic servitude in our Southern States.

Henry B. Stanton came with Mr. Thome as another delegate from the Lane Seminary Antislavery Society to the May meetings of 1834. This then young man also evinced so much zeal in the cause, so much power as a speaker and skill in debate, that soon after the dissolution of his connection with the seminary, in the month of October of that year, he was appointed an agent of the American Antislavery Society, and, for ten years or more afterwards, Mr. Stanton continued to do us most valuable service by his eloquent lectures, his pertinent contributions to our antislavery papers, and his diligence and fidelity as one of the secretaries of the National Society.

But Theodore D. Weld was the master-spirit among the Lane Seminary students. Indeed, he was accused by the Trustees of being the instigator of all the fanaticism and incendiary movements that had given them so much trouble and threatened the ruin of the institution. Accordingly, it was moved that Mr. Weld be expelled. No breach of law was charged upon this gentleman; no disrespect to the Faculty, nor anything implicating in the least his moral character, only that he was the leader of the Abolitionists. Still, the proposition to expel him was favored by the majority of the Trustees. When, therefore, the final action of the Board had determined the students to ask for a dismission from the seminary, Theodore D. Weld, with becoming self-respect, chose to remain until he should be cleared by the Faculty of all charges of misconduct. As soon as the Board had had a meeting and withdrawn their accusation, he applied for and received an honorable dismission.

Then he accepted an appointment as an agent of the Antislavery Society, at a salary less by half than was offered him by another benevolent association. And throughout the Western and Middle States, and occasionally in New England, he lectured with a frequency, a fervor, and an effect that justify me in saying that no one, excepting only Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips, has done more than Mr. Weld for the abolition of American slavery.

What a loss it would have been to the cause of liberty, if the Faculty and Trustees of Lane Seminary had been wiser men!

GEORGE THOMPSON, M.P., LL.D.

I am careful to affix his _titles_ to the name of this distinguished friend of humanity, because they indicate, in some measure, the estimation to which George Thompson has risen both in England and in the United States. The former title was conferred upon him in his own country, the latter in ours. But both nations owe him much more than _titles_. By each he should be placed high on the list of its public benefactors, and the two should unite to give him every comfort that he may need in his old age, and enable him to provide well for all who are dependent upon him.

George Thompson was born in 1804, the same year that gave birth to William Lloyd Garrison, and, like our illustrious countryman, has risen to his high elevation from a lowly estate of life. His native place was Liverpool, not far from the residence of William Roscoe, his father being, at the time of his birth, in the service of that distinguished scholar and philanthropist. He never attended school a day, but, like Garrison, was indebted to his mother for all elementary instruction. For the rest of his acquisitions he was left to depend upon himself.

While he was quite young his parents removed to London, and so soon as he could be made serviceable he was employed as an errand-boy. Quickened and guided by his excellent mother’s love of knowledge, he early acquired the habit of reading, and greedily devoured all books adapted to his age that she could procure for him.

He was so fortunate as to attract the kind regard of the Rev. Richard Watson, the distinguished writer and preacher in defence of the doctrines of Methodism. He was taken as a chore-boy into that good man’s family, and was with him, as his humble assistant in indoor and outdoor work, during most of the time that Mr. Watson was preparing his most famous publications. Owing to the influence of this divine, but more to his mother, at the age of fifteen George Thompson became the subject of deep, religious convictions, and consecrated himself, by public profession, to the service of God and the redemption of man. When sixteen years old he was appointed a Tract distributor, and joined a society for visiting and nursing the destitute sick. About the same time he was apprenticed to a grocer, and continued in his employment a number of years, having in due time become his accountant.

At the age of twenty George Thompson was admitted a member of a large debating-club. In this connection, he soon disclosed to those about him the value of the acquisitions he had made by reading, under the direction of his mother and Mr. Watson; and sometimes gave off more than sparks of that eloquence which since then has so often electrified and fired his large audiences, throughout Great Britain and our Northern and Western States.