Qass. 
 
 tl^i±fL 
 
 4 
 
 Book a^JSUfidT 
 
 PRESENTED BY^ ""^^ P /' "Z, 
 
4 
 

 American Staitenr. i 
 
 5 
 
 DKMOXS riJATlOXS 
 
 I 
 
 FWOR OK 
 
 IJDR. CHEEVER, IN SCOTLAND. | 
 
 1^ LKTTKIi OF SVMI>3iTKV IKOM 1)ISTI.\«;CISI1EI) /J' 
 
 ^J <<! I'l.'C \ \1 l.'V \\1> (ri'lll'K' Cl'VTr l.'Mi'V 'V>. 
 
 i'\,\:\H,\ \\i:\ WD O'l'llKlv' CKNTI.KMIIX. 
 
 H 1* h: hi ( ' 1^ h: .s 
 
 AT MKKTINiJt* IN KrM MUlKJIl aM> r.r.ASOOW, BY 
 
 I. 
 
 y i)|;s cWKiisK (;i rilKIE. .\I,K\ v \ I'lK lUCKWAV l^ 
 
 \D SUVTll 
 
 , ........... jP 
 
 »/ l>U. niEKVKR'S <;ASE. HV RI:V. H. IiATC;HELOIi. V 
 
 KM ENT «r 
 
 h r.KTTKK OF DK. GI:TIIRIE to thk PRESBYTERIAN, (p 
 
 fes JOHN A. OICAV, PKINTFU k STKRKOTYPKR, Ifi .t I'i JACOB 8T. ,VJ 
 
DEMOXSTRATIOXS 
 
 IN KAVOB or 
 
 DR. CHEEVER, IN SCOTLAND. 
 
 LETTER OF SYMPATHY FROM DISTIXOUISHED 
 ChEKGYMEN' AND OTHER GENTLEMEN. 
 
 AT MEKT1XG3 IN KDISnrROII AND GLASGOW, BY 
 
 DRS. ('Wnn-K Gl'TIIUlE, ALEXANI'F;-' IuvhanaX, 
 AND t^MYTIL 
 
 A.N1> A STATKJIEXT OF 
 
 DR. CUEEVER'S CASE, BY REV. H. BATCH ELOR. 
 
 LETTER OF DR. GUTHRIE to thk PRESBYTEPJAX. 
 
 JOHN A. GRAY, PRINTER k STEREOTYPER, IG & 13 JACOB ST. 
 18G0. 
 
E4 + 9 
 
Edinburgh, 19 January, 1860. 
 Rev, Dn. Cukever: 
 
 Rev. Deah Sir: We, whose names are licreto adliibited, 
 Ministers of the Gospel, OfTice-Bcarers, and otliers belong- 
 ing to the evangelical denominations of tliis City, desire to 
 give expression to our Christian sympathy with you in the 
 unefiual contest in which you are engaged with the abettors 
 of Slavery. We have no doubt that you have been raised 
 uj) in the providence of God to witness for his truth, re- 
 garding tlie rights and privileges of our colored Ijrothren 
 held in crutl bondage. 
 
 The struggle you are honored to maintain, of "Right 
 against Miglit," is but a part of the prolonged conflict 
 which we and our fathers waged with the pro-.slavery party 
 of this country, and which closed, as you know, in the 
 glorious emancipation of our slaves, and the extinction of 
 the accursed tralTic in human beings throughout all the 
 colonies of Great Britain. 
 
 Our experience assures us that, whoever stands forward 
 as the a8.sertcr of universal freedom, must be prepared for 
 the most dt-termined opposition of all who are interested 
 in the trampling down this the most sacred and inalienable 
 birthright of the human family. But our experience also 
 assures th:it, until the ministers of Christianity courage- 
 ously assume the post of leaders on the side of freedom in 
 the contest, and fearlessly assert God's truth against the 
 supporters and apologists of Slavery, the great sin against 
 which you are contending will never be abolished. 
 
 You have been called to suffer shame and wrong for the 
 part you have acted in this good cause. We doubt not 
 you laid your account with this at the outset, and counted 
 the cost ere you plunged into the strife. We honor you 
 for your manliness ; we sympathize with you in tlic trials 
 
AMEraCAN SLAYEPtY. 
 
 DR. CIIEEVER'S POSITIOX AXD JOHN 
 BROWN'S EXECUTION. 
 
 PUBLIC MEETING IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 A large and innuential public meeting took 
 place on Thursday afternoon, in the Queen street 
 Hall, convened for the purpose of expressing sym- 
 pathy with the Rev. Dr. Cheever under the pain- 
 ful circumstances which that eminent divine has 
 lately been called on to occupy w^ith reference to 
 slavery. Among those on the platform were the 
 Lord Provost, Sir James Forrest, Sir John Mel- 
 ville, Rev. Dr. Candlish, Rev. Dr. Guthrie, Rev. 
 Dr. Alexander, Rev. Mr. Cullen, Rev. Jonathan 
 Watson, Kev. Mr. Graham of Newhaven, Rev. 
 Mr. Pulsford, Dr. Greville, Dr. Russell, Mr. J. 
 F. Macf irlan, Mr. H. D. Dickie, Counselor Fyfe, 
 Mr. Cruickshank, Mr. Burn Murdoch, Jr., Mr. 
 Snoedy, etc., etc. On the motion of Sir John 
 ^Iclville, the Lord Provost was called to the 
 chair. The meeting having been opened with 
 prayer by Mr. Pulsford, 
 
10 AMEBIC AX SLAVERY. 
 
 The Lord Provost briefly stated the object of 
 the meeting, which, he was happy to say, was not 
 of a very usual character in Edinburgh. They 
 were called together to express sympathy with a 
 Christian minister in very peculiar circumstances; 
 a man well known to the people of this country 
 by his writings, and by his admirable illustrations, 
 he believed the best of all others, of John Bun- 
 yan, and one who at the present time needed all 
 the sympathy and any encouragement that could 
 be given him. [Applause.] After remarking 
 that it was by no means uncommon or extraor- 
 dinary for the people of this country publicly to 
 express their approbation or disapprobation of 
 events in other lands, in proof of which he in- 
 stanced the case of the Jew boy, Mortara, and 
 the remonstrance they made in the case of those 
 who w^ere tried and imprisoned in foreign coun- 
 tries for reading the Bible, his lordship went on to 
 express his astonishment that, in the United States 
 of America, which vaunted so loudly of their free- 
 dom, civil, political, and religious, there should not 
 only be a toleration of the abominable system of 
 slavery, but that when Christian men opened their 
 mouths to condemn it, they were not only not 
 sympathized with, but were themselves condemned 
 by public opinion. 
 
 Dr. Candlish, who was received with loud 
 cheers, then addressed the meeting. After refer- 
 ring to the private manner in which the movement 
 in behalf of Dr. Cheever had been hitherto gone 
 about, and to the drawback necessarily incident to 
 this, he said, that if the cause with which that emi- 
 nent man was identified had been broujiht before 
 
AMEEICAX SLAVERY. 11 
 
 the community of Scotland in the way in which 
 such cases ordinarily were, it was his impression 
 that the steam would have been up long ago, 
 and a national enthusiasm would have been kin- 
 dled. It was, however, now made abundantly 
 plain that Dr. Cheever was suflVring for his faith- 
 fulness in advocating the cause of emancipation, 
 and that the movement now making on his behalf 
 on this side of the Atlantic had his thorough 
 ^■■anction, and that of the large and overwhelming 
 majority of his congregation. Having adverted 
 to the attempt made, during his absence on sick 
 leave, by some of the wealthier portion of Dr. 
 Cheever's congregation, to get him to resign in 
 consequence of his preaching on the subject of 
 slavery, and to the failure of this attempt. Dr. 
 Candlish next stated that these parties now with- 
 held all support from the congregation, and ob- 
 served that the tendency, if not the design, of all 
 their proceedings was, that Dr. Cheever should be 
 shut up to the necessity of abandoning the promi- 
 nent position which he held as pastor of the 
 Church of the Puritans in New-York. And it is 
 (continued Dr. Candlish) for the purpose of ena- 
 bling Dr. Cheever to continue in this position, and 
 to continue in it without the risk of being trou- 
 bled from year to year, that the movement is 
 made by his friends and his congregation, and that 
 we are asked to aid in it. The object of that 
 movement is not merely to provide for the pass- 
 ing year, but to provide such a sum as shall ena- 
 ble the Church of the Puritans to clear them- 
 selves of all encumbrances, and so to maintain its 
 position as a church, in whose pulpit Dr. Cheever 
 
12 AMEBICAX SLAVERY. 
 
 thunders his anathemas against all sin, and the sin 
 of slavery among others. [Cheers.] I do trust 
 that, now that this cause has been fairly brought 
 under our notice in this public way, we shall give 
 to it our most cordial sympathies, and 5«hal], with 
 one heart and one hand, combine to support Dr. 
 Cheever in his influential position. [Cheers.] 
 Among other questions, this has sometimes been 
 asked : Is it not strange that in such a city as 
 New-York, and in such a country as America, and 
 especially in the North, where, although public 
 sentiment is to a large extent, I fear I may say de- 
 bauched, by the political entanglements in which 
 the North is involved with the South — where, not- 
 withstanding this, there is notoriously a very large 
 and influential anti-slavery party — how comes it, 
 some say, that Dr. Cheever is not sustained by 
 the friends of the anti-slavery cause in the States 
 of America themselves 1 and how comes it that 
 when, as is alleged, there are a good many minis- 
 ters — not a very large proportion, for even those 
 most favorable to the clergy of America admit 
 that it is a very small proportion — but while there 
 is a considerable body of ministers in the North- 
 ern States of America who are avowedly anti- 
 slavery, and who make no hesitation about declar- 
 ing their sentiments — how comes it that Dr. 
 Cheever, in particular, should suffer more than 
 they do ? I confess I had some difficulty on this 
 very point myself when the matter was first 
 brought under my notice ; but on getting inform- 
 ation upon it from the American newspapers, not 
 from those favorable to Dr. Cheever, but chiefly 
 from one newspaper rather hostile to him, and more 
 
a:mericax slavery. 13 
 
 especially from reading Dr. Cheever's own book, 
 "God against Slavery," I got the enigma or rid- 
 dle thoroughly solved, fori found that the peculiar 
 offense of Dr. Cheever consists, not in holding 
 abstractly anti-slavery views, or in propounding 
 them, but that his peculiar offense is that he 
 launches f )rth, with an eloquence worthy of the 
 old masters of oratory in Greece — with an elo- 
 quence, I would almost say, rivaling the denun- 
 ciations of the prophets, in so far as uninspired 
 eloquence can rival that of inspiration — he sets 
 himself not merely to the general advocacy of 
 emancipation, but he sets himself tooth and nail 
 against the measures of the American Legislature 
 sanctioning, promoting, and extending slavery ; he 
 sets himself practically to work against the Kan- 
 sas atrocity, against the Fugitive Slave Law ; he 
 sets himself against every f jrm by which the Leg- 
 islature of America has been abetting and en- 
 couraging the evil ; and he does so in the way just 
 of strong and pointed appeal to the consciences of 
 all American citizens, calling upon them to exer- 
 cise their political franchise, as in the sight of God, 
 and against this abominable sin. [Loud cheers.] 
 This is his special offense ; and here, I believe, he 
 stands almost alone among the ministers of Ame- 
 rica. I believe he might have gone on denouncing 
 slavery in the abstract as long as he chose, and in 
 pronouncing anathemas against it, and preaching 
 up emancipation in the abstract; but here he 
 comes home to men's bosoms, to men's business, 
 and to men's purses — he comes home to them as 
 citizens, and he calls upon them to consider that 
 they are responsible for the enormous sin which 
 
14 AMERICAISr SLAVERY. 
 
 the Legislature of the States is committing, in not 
 merely tolerating slavery where it exists, but in 
 building for it bulwarks to preserve and perpetu- 
 ate the institution, and in opening up new fields, 
 through bloodshed and violence, for the entering 
 in and triumphing of it on the free soil of the 
 States of America. [Loud cheers.] This is the 
 head and front of Dr. Cheever's offending, and we 
 will at once see that this places him in a some- 
 what peculiar position. 
 
 Dr. Candlish then referred to three classes of 
 anti-slavery men in America ; first, those who 
 bear a milk-and-water testimony ; second, those 
 who, opposed as they may be to slavery, can not 
 be expected to enter very cordially into a measure 
 bearing even in the slightest degree on ecclesias- 
 tical organization, or upon the maintenance of a 
 minister belonging to another church ; and third, 
 those who, opposed to slavery out and out, and 
 more or less distinctly on Christian grounds, take 
 up the position that they ought to enlighten the 
 public mind on the subject, but ought not to inter- 
 fere either by force — as John Brown had been doing 
 — or by any thing approaching political agitation, 
 which unquestionably was the offense of Dr. Chee- 
 ver ; and said that none of these classes could be 
 expected to sympathize much with Dr. Cheever in 
 his present position, or in the effort now making 
 to secure his position in the Church of the Puri- 
 tans. Now, there can be no question (continued 
 Dr. Candlish) that Dr. Cheever stands out, I don't 
 say as the martyr John Brown, but as a confessor 
 of this great principle — and I hold it to be a great 
 principle — that the opponents of slavery in Ame- 
 
AMEEICAN SLAVERY. 15 
 
 rica are bound to make their opposition to it tell 
 on the hustings — [cheers] — that they are bound to 
 make their opposition to slavery tell through the 
 ballot-box — that they are bound to testify to their 
 fellow-citizens every where that those who hold the 
 reins of power, and those who, in the last resort, 
 rule their country, are responsible for the measures 
 that are drawing down upon America, if America 
 pause not, the righteous indignation of Him who 
 will have all men to be free. [Loud cheers.] 
 Having made this explanation as to Dr. Ciieever's 
 position, will you allow me just to advert for a little 
 to Dr. Cheever's way of advocating the anti- 
 slavery cause. I thoroLighly agree with Dr. Chee- 
 ver, that all men in America who hold the truth 
 on this subject are bound to be energetically ac- 
 tive, not merely testifying, but acting and calling 
 upon all their fellow-citizens to act too. Why, 
 some years ago, there might be some pretense for 
 saying that it was enough for anti-slavery men in 
 America to bear testimony against slavery, to cir- 
 culate information on the subject, and to endeavor, 
 through the press and otherwise, to leaven the pub- 
 lic mind with sound views ; there might be some 
 shadow of pretense for this some years ago, when, 
 as it seemed, the line was drawn, and slavery was 
 limited and pent up — pent up within a certain 
 space, within which there was some prospect that 
 it might die out in course of time — that enlight- 
 ened views might come to prevail, and that slave- 
 ry might expire under the influence of truth ; but 
 the course of things has been entirely and alto- 
 gether altered since slavery has taken the aggres- 
 sive — since slavery in America, not content with 
 
16 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 being tolerated in the places to which it was re- 
 stricted, became aggressive in the worst sense — 
 aggressive not merely in a lawful way, through 
 the Legislature, in procuring the passing of such 
 infamous acts as the Fugitive Skive Law — but ag- 
 gressive by the bowie-knife and the rifle, [cheers,] 
 as witness a senator shot on the floor of the Sen- 
 ate; aggressive, moreover, by force of arms, as 
 witness the atrocities and illegal proceedings that 
 have disgraced the province of Kansas. [Re- 
 newed cheers.] And, worst than all, these move- 
 ments of slavery, so far from having been checked 
 by the general Legislature of America, are getting 
 the countenance of that Legislature, so that such 
 enormities as those of Kansas, confessedly illegal 
 as tliey are, are really supported and upheld by 
 the whole force of the United States army. 
 [Cheers.] Now, in these circumstances, the case 
 has been altogether altered ; and as to any hope 
 which might have been entertained of the evil 
 being pent up in certain localities, and silently and 
 gradually disappearing under the progress of en- 
 lightened views, these must be given up ; for we 
 have here a hostile power — hostile to liberty, hos- 
 tile to God, and hostile to man — raising itself in 
 increased strength, drawn forth, not from above, 
 but from beneath, bursting the bounds within 
 which it was hoped it had been fettered, and com- 
 ing forth to pollute the free air of the North, 
 and to debauch men's minds all over America, 
 and by sheer force of arms, and by the sheer 
 force of importunity in the Legislature, threat- 
 ening to break up the Union, and to compel the 
 free soil of America to be stained by the curse 
 
AMEKICAX SLAVERY. 17 
 
 of slavery. [Cheers.] The time has now, there- 
 fore, fully come for Christian men and Christian 
 churches, acting upon this belief, and especially in 
 the whole of the Northern States, and for awaking 
 to a sense of their responsibility in connection 
 with the exercise of their political rif^hts. Dr. 
 Candlish here referred to Dr. Cheever's volume, 
 " God against Slavery," and stated that, after 
 having read it, he found that there was no ground 
 for the supposition that Dr. Cheever entertained 
 ultra or extreme views on the subject of slavery, 
 or advocated the cause in an injudicious spirit, but 
 heartily subscribed to every sentence and word in 
 this noble work, as he thought it was fitted to carry 
 conviction, and ultimately to enlist the enthusiasm 
 of every friend of the Gospel, as well as of every 
 friend of the slave. He further stated, that a 
 considerable portion of the volume was taken up 
 with Mr. Cheever's defense of himself against the 
 allegation of political preaching, because he de- 
 nounced slavery, pointed out the national sin of 
 which they were guilty, and declared that it would 
 bring down on the land that tolerated it the judg- 
 ments of heaven ; and showed, by an appeal to 
 the Old Testament prophets, and especially J ere- 
 miah, that the same charge could be brought 
 against them as had been brought against him ; 
 for Jeremiah, in the most emphatic and indignant 
 terms, denounced this very sin of man-stealing, 
 man-selling, and slaveholding, on its first entrance 
 systematically into the land of Israel and of Ju- 
 dah, as filling up the cup of Judah's iniquity. Dr. 
 Candlish quoted from Dr. Cheever's work in illus- 
 tration of this, and also for the purpose of show- 
 
18 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 ing that Dr. Cheever held no extreme views in 
 regard to the sin of slaveholding, in the sense that 
 he would make no allowance for any circumstances 
 that might hinder a man from getting rid of the 
 possession of slaves, but who, at the same time, 
 were not regarded or treated by him as such, but 
 that his statements in this respect were singularly 
 cautious, candid, and charitable. He also referred 
 to the address sent by the General Assembly of 
 the Free Church of Scotland to the Presbyterian 
 Church of America in 1846, on the subject of 
 slavery — the views of which, in substance, corres- 
 ponded with those of Dr. Cheever, said that the 
 reply of the American Presbyterian Church was 
 to the effect, that they would beg them not to 
 trouble them any more about this matter ; and 
 returning to Dr. Cheever's book, said he believed 
 they had in this book a conclusive proof that no 
 such a thing as slavery — nothing approaching to a 
 man stealing another and holding him as goods and 
 chattels — existed in the nation of Israel down to 
 the very eve of the Babylonish captivity, when 
 the institution of slavery filled up the measure of 
 Judah's iniquity. For that service ihey owed Dr. 
 Cheever inestimable thanks. The system that 
 prevailed among the Jews was not a system of 
 buying and selling men ; it was a system of a 
 man purchasing a man for himself, and for a lim- 
 ited time, and nothing more ; and there was no- 
 thing in the slightest degree analogous in it either 
 to man-stealing, or to man-selling, or to slave- 
 holding, the sin with which America was chargea- 
 ble at this moment ; and those who were standing 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 19 
 
 up to denounce this great national sin deserved 
 the sympathy of the community of Great Britain. 
 Evidently matters are coming (said Dr. Cand- 
 lish) to a crisis in America. Talk as they may 
 about the risk of the Union being dissolved, most 
 plain it is that the parties of the North and the 
 South, the free and the slave parties of America, 
 must now either come to an understanding, or 
 they will be met by an earthquake or volcano. 
 I do not find that Dr. Cheever advocates any very- 
 extreme views, even as regards abolition itself. 
 The stress of his book is against the iniquity of 
 those laws and proceedings that tend to defend 
 and extenuate slavery. So far as I recollect, he 
 refers to abolition much in this way — that if there 
 were proclaimed a law that after fifty years there 
 should be a jubilee, as there was in the land of 
 Israel, great good would be done. Of course, I 
 understand, that Dr. Cheever means this, that he 
 is clear for a law for proclaiming a jubilee at the 
 end of fifty years, when all should go forth free; 
 but he is for instant, immediate abolition, as 
 much as I or any man could be who advocates 
 immediate abolition. [Cheers.] He would in- 
 stantly abolish any thing like a right to sell or buy 
 men — any thing like a right to disqualify men 
 from entering into the domestic relations of life 
 — any thing like a restraint upon the education of 
 any man — any thing like interference with his civil 
 rights, or that reduced men to mere goods and 
 chattels. [Cheers.] All that, of course, must bo 
 instantly and immediately abolished ; but what I 
 undertand him to mean is, that if this were done 
 instantly and immediately, there would be time 
 
20 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 for such a gradual preparation as ^YOu^d make the 
 ultimate establishment of equal rights for all 
 Americans a safe and practicable thing. [Hear, 
 hear.] I don't for my own part think, and I don't 
 think Dr. Cheever believes, that any thing of that 
 sort is now practicable. 1 believe it has — as it 
 was in the case of our own West Indian colonies 
 — come to be a question of now or never. [Cheers.] 
 Instant and immediate abolition will be carried, 
 or America is gone. Events are thickening ; and 
 I believe that the event that has been announced 
 within these few days of the execution of John 
 Brown, is the first blow of the axe that is to be 
 laid to the root of the noxious tree of slavery. 
 [Cheers.] I believe that that event — I know it, 
 indeed, for I have evidence of it in the American 
 newspapers — is raising men in the North, even 
 those who were apt to be passive and quiescent 
 — even those who had great doubts about John 
 Brown's proceedings — is rousing them to a fer- 
 ment of indignation ; and in the very first meet- 
 ing of Congress the two parties met — the party 
 demanding inquiry of the North as to John 
 Brown's expedition, met by the party demanding 
 inquiry of the South as to the proceedings in 
 Kansas. Let them meet, and let them fight it 
 out ! [Loud cheers.] Of that expedition of John 
 Brown, which ended so fatally, I am not now to 
 speak. Let every one remember, however, that 
 that expedition is a fruit of the atrocities of Kan- 
 sas. [Cheers.] There, John Brown was exas- 
 perated, if ever man was. There, by the loss of 
 two noble sons, and by other inflictions too much 
 almost for humanity to bear, this man was roused 
 
A^tERICAX SLAVERY. 21 
 
 — 1 had almost said roused perhaps to madness ; 
 but no ! — all about his proceedings bear the aspect 
 of calm, deliberate, temperate judgment. There 
 is no bloodthirstiness, no desire for violence. There 
 is simply a desire to emancipate some, more or 
 less, of his poor oppressed fellow-men. [Cheers.] 
 In the expedition he played a high game ; and he 
 has lost and paid the forfeit in the loss of his two 
 sons and that of his own life. I am not here to 
 discuss the question as to the expedition. One 
 may ask of that terrible execution of John Brown : 
 What less could Virginia have done — Virginia, 
 backed as it was by the whole power of the 
 United States ? There is one thing I will state, 
 namely : surely that man was entitled to be tried 
 by the whole of the United States, and not by- 
 one particular province of it ; it may have been 
 law, but I spoak of justice. But supposing that 
 the State of Virginia could not do otherwise than 
 execute John Brown, I would just say that in the 
 same sense I would be called upon to admit of the 
 days of old that, with the power held by Lauderdale 
 and his crew, they could not do otherwise than 
 execute A.rgyle, Guthrie, and the men who fought 
 at the Pentlani.ls. [Cheers.] And, then, if I am 
 asked about the expedition, I would be very 
 much inclined to say, that if I am to shrink from 
 answering whether it was treason or not, whether 
 it was defensible or not for men to rise, I must 
 have shrunk in the days of old from the question 
 put, under the pressure perhaps of the " boots," 
 whether I condemned the rising of Both well Brig 
 as rebellion and treason — yea or nay. [Cheers.] 
 I am very much inclined to put the two in the 
 
22 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 same category, [renewed cheers ;] and I would 
 be as loath to condemn John Brown as I would 
 be loath to condemn the rising of Bothwell Brig, 
 [continued cheers ;] and, therefore, I hold that 
 just as the blood of these martyrs — martyrs for 
 Christ's Crown and Covenant in these days of old, 
 kept alive the spirit of liberty, even when the 
 dnys were getting darker and darker, and ulti- 
 mately insured the triumph of civil and religions 
 liberty — so it is my firm and deliberate conviction 
 that this first shedding of blood on the scaffold by 
 the slave power, in the person of such a man as 
 John Brown — a man of God, I say, sir, for all 
 the evidence proves him to have been so — a man 
 m^isled perhaps ; but if misled, which I don't ad- 
 mit he was, he was misled by his compassion for 
 poor, wretched, degraded men lying under the 
 lash of the master, [cheers;] I say the shedding 
 of this man's blood will rouse the spirit of liberty, 
 and will keep it alive until slavery shall lie pros- 
 trate, as Dagon did, a stump before the ark of 
 God, in the idol's temple. [Loud cheers.] And 
 now my own impression is, that in supporting 
 Dr. Cheever, we are supporting him in doing, in 
 a thoroughly legal way, very much what John 
 Brown attempted to do. If John Brown had suc- 
 ceeded in carrying off some 300,000 or 400,000 
 slaves to Canada, who would not have cheered 
 him, and called him patriot and philanthropist 1 
 who would not have been glad to fdl down at 
 his feet, and hail him as his country's deliverer ? 
 [Loud cheers.] He did not succeed ; but I will 
 not on that account consent to his being denounced 
 and slain as a murderer. [Loud and prolonged 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 23 
 
 cheers.] Dr. Cheever is doing practically very 
 much the same thing legally that John Brown at- 
 tempted by the hand of force. Dr. Cheever is 
 attempting, and attempting successfully, to rouse 
 the consciences of men practically, in immediate 
 connection with the discharge of their own duties 
 as citizens, in relation to this enormous sin of 
 American slavery. I trust Dr. Cheever's testi- 
 mony will rally round him a noble band who will 
 throw themselves into the same cause, and with 
 the same cordiality and enthusiasm which he has 
 manifested. If we had at this moment some 
 dozen Dr. Cheevers in the Northern States of 
 America — if we had some dozen ministers like- 
 minded with Dr. Cheever, and working with 
 equal energy in the cause — we might hope for a 
 settlement of this great question without anarchy, 
 division, or bloodshed ; but if there be not such 
 a body of men ready to rally round him, I really 
 fear that the sore must go on, getting more and 
 more exasperating, until nothing but the imme- 
 diate interposition of God, or God leaving the 
 nation to utter anarchy, and confusion, and bh^od- 
 shed, will solve the deepening difficulty of this 
 great question of slavery. [Clieers.] Dr. Cand- 
 lish concluded by moving a resolution to the 
 effect that the meeting concur in a resokition 
 adopted privately, that there was evidence enough 
 to show that Dr. Cheever had borne testimony 
 against the sin of slavery, which had involved 
 him in great pecuniary difficulties ; and resumed 
 his seat amid loud cheers. 
 
 The Rev. Jonatha^t Watsox, in seconding the 
 resolution, said, Dr. Candlish had done the work 
 
24 AOLERICAX SLAYERY. 
 
 SO clean, that he left nothing for him to say. A 
 nobler display of British eloquence and of manly 
 Christian sentiment than that to which they had 
 just listened, had not been heard since the days of 
 Dr. Andrew Thomson ; and the speech of Dr. 
 Candlish carried him back to his younger days, 
 when they listened to the eloquence of Brougham, 
 Buxton, Wilberforce, and others, in the British 
 Senate, on this very subject of slavery, as it ex- 
 isted in their colonies. 
 
 The resolution was put from the chair, and car- 
 ried with acclamation. 
 
 Dr. Alexander moved the next resolution, and 
 said it spoke for itself, and was to the effect that 
 the fact of such a man as Dr. Cheever being thus 
 situated, and for such a cause, was fitted to awaken 
 grief and alarm in the minds of all friends of lib- 
 erty, indicating, as it seemed too plainly to do, the 
 prevalence, even in the free States of America, and 
 throughout the religious community there, of views 
 on the subject of slavery, and the duty of Christ- 
 ian churches and Christian men in regard to it, 
 that are in opposition to the spirit of the Gospel, 
 and lead to palliate and perpetuate a system which 
 every right-thinking man must desire to see speed- 
 ily and thoroughly abolished. [Applause.] In 
 supporting this resolution, Dr. Alexander said, that 
 Dr. Candlish had, in his able and exhaustive speecn, 
 gone so fully into the matter, that he had left little 
 or nothing for succeeding speakers. What the 
 meeting was asked to do was, to consider whether 
 a man who was occupying the position of Dr. 
 Cheever was to receive their support, or to be left 
 to fall under the opposition to which he was ex- 
 
AMERICA^T SLAVERY. 25 
 
 posed, not so much for any acts of imprudence 
 which he might have committed — none such hav- 
 ing been proved against him — but because of the 
 position which he occupied in seeking to oppose 
 and to do away with that tremendous evil which 
 was now oppressing and burdening the United 
 States of America. Dr. Ciieever's position at this 
 moment was not merely that of protesting against 
 slavery, but it was the position of a man who had 
 armed himself and had gone down to the arena to 
 take slavery by the throat, and to fight it t:) the 
 death. [Cheers.] And in consequence of the 
 stand which be had taken, the attempt was made 
 deliberately to starve him out of the post he oc- 
 cupied, in order to silence his voice in the city 
 where he lived as the great opponent of slavery. 
 It was in these circumstances that they felt them- 
 selves bound to come forward, and not only to ex- 
 press their sympathy with him, but also to send 
 him such aid as they could, so that the pecuniary 
 difficulties of his position might be overcome, and 
 he might be enabled to maintain the post which he 
 had hitherto maintained so nobly and so well. He 
 (Dr. Alexander) entirely concurred with Dr. Cand- 
 lish in thinking that, if there were twelve men or 
 so taking the same position as Dr. Cheever took, 
 not merely theoretically but practically, and will- 
 ing to peril all upon the advocacy of this great 
 cause, and to fight the monster of slavery to the 
 very death, the anti-slavery question would assume 
 a totally different position from what it had ever 
 assumed in the United States, and that the grand 
 settlement of it in a satisfactory way would not be 
 far distant. [Cheers.] In the appeal which they 
 
26 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 were now making to the Christian public of this 
 city and country on behalf of Dr. Cheever, he 
 had a strong conviction that they were taking a 
 step in the right direction ; for in the post which 
 Dr. Cheever occupied he had opportunities of do- 
 ing immense good ; and they were also helping 
 forward a cause, the triumph of which would be 
 one of the greatest benefits which could happen to 
 the United States. He entirely concurred in the 
 sentiments that had been already uttered on this 
 subject; for he believed that slavery was the great 
 blot on the escutcheon of the American republic; 
 and that if that question were brought to a satis- 
 factory settlement now, a prodigious impulse would 
 be given to the great energies of that mighty peo- 
 ple. Her eagle, which was now partly chained, 
 would then proudly stand erect and free, and would 
 soar in the atmosphere of her noble destinies with- 
 out a fetter to retard her progress, and without a 
 cloud to settle on her wing. [Loud cheers,] 
 
 Dr. Guthrie, in seconding the motion, said that, 
 late as was the hour, he could not help saying that 
 he heartily concurred in every thing that had been 
 said by preceding speakers. I believe (he said) 
 slavery to be the sum of all villanies ; I believe 
 it to be the origin of the worst evils that afflict 
 humanity, [cheers;] and I entirely agree with 
 that old Englishman, Dr. Johnson, when he pro- 
 poses as one of his toasts — and although I am not 
 in the habit of drinking toasts, [laughter] — I 
 would be disposed to give this one, premising it 
 by saying, under circumstances that promise suc- 
 cess : " The next insurrection of the slaves !" 
 [Loud cheers.] I hold that, by the honor which I 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 27 
 
 render to Sir William Wallace, to William Tell, 
 to the men who broke the Stuart yoke ; by the 
 honor which I render to our Covenanting fathers, 
 who took to the field of battle rather than submit 
 to tyranny ; I am bound to render honor to 
 the slaves themselves, if they can work out and 
 fight out their freedom in America. [Cheers.] 
 No man under God's heaven has a right to sell 
 me, my wife, or my children ; and I say that if a 
 man seizes my wife or my children to sell them, 
 I hold myself justified in using any arms which 
 God may have given me to resist him to the very 
 death. I premise what I have said, by observing 
 that the rising against slavery is a matter of pru- 
 dence and of Christian judgment, and that it 
 should not be done if the end of it is only to rivet 
 more firmly the fetters of the slave ; but if there 
 is a fair prospect of the slaves asserting and mak- 
 ing good their freedom, they are as much entitled 
 to rise against slavery and to resist it as are the 
 Italians to resist the Pope of Rome. [Cheers.] I 
 won't blink that question. I would so act if I 
 were a slave ; and I would rather go from the 
 scafi'old of John Brown, and stand before my God 
 on the judgment day, than stand in the place of 
 those ministers of the Gospel who put the lock of 
 silence on their lips in regard to this matter in 
 their pulpits. [Cheers.] I have been often asked 
 to go to America; they've promised to frank me 
 back and fore. I have the highest opinion of the 
 United States of America. [ think that the peo- 
 ple of America are, next to our own, the noblest 
 people under the sun ; and it is because I love 
 them that I wish this foul blot removed from their 
 
28 AMERICAX SLAVERY. 
 
 escutcheon, and that they would break the chains 
 of the slave. I think, if that were done, it would 
 be a happy day for the world when they march 
 south to Cape Horn with their Protestant truth 
 and liberty ; but may God shut them up within 
 their territories — may he never allow them to set 
 a foot southward nor northward of the continent 
 which they occupy, if they are to carry with them 
 the accursed system of slavery. [Cheers.] I 
 have been, as I told you, asked to go to America ; 
 and I will tell you the reason plainly and publicly 
 why I will not go. If I went, I could not keep 
 my temper, [laughter] ; and I might have to 
 meet the fate of John Brown for any thing I know. 
 I could not go and see a fellow-creature — a little 
 child or a woman — set up to auction to be sold, 
 perhaps with a horse or a wheelbarrow ; it would 
 stir my blood, and I could not hold my tongue. 
 I could not stand the sight of such things in the 
 South ; and there are things also in the North 
 which I could not stand. I could not go into one 
 of their pulpits, and see a large sea of white faces, 
 and then behold some poor negro, in whose beam- 
 ing eye, in the tears rolling down whose cheeks I 
 see a loving heart towards my blessed Lord and 
 Saviour, and who perhaps is a believer passing 
 any in that house — I could not see that man stand- 
 ing in a corner, and professing Christians refusing 
 to sit down with him at the Lord's table — the 
 man who, perhaps, will go into the kingdom of 
 heaven in the front of them all — these are things 
 which I could not stand. Neither could I stand 
 this in a railway carriage ; some poor woman, 
 whose misfortune it is, if it is a misfortune, to be 
 
AMERICAX SLAYERY. 29 
 
 black, and who, because she is black, is turned out 
 of that carriajije, and dares not set foot amongst 
 her white-footed and proud oppressors. These 
 things I could not stand ; and, therefore, I have 
 never gone to America. They may think there is 
 little loss in that, [laughter ;] but I never will, 
 till they abolish slavery. [Loud Cheers.] I 
 love the Americans. In the months of August 
 and September I see the clerfiy of every denomi- 
 nation, and men of every profession. I throw 
 open my doors to them, and I am never- happier 
 to see any than Ame»'icans ; but I make it a moral 
 duty, when they are breakfasting with me, to dose 
 them on the subject of slavery. [Loud laughter.] 
 And it has always seemed to me that, the moment 
 I touch upon that subject, it is like getting near a 
 man or woman with corny toes. [Roars of laugh- 
 ter.] Dr. Guthrie then briefly noticed the re- 
 markable progress make by the United States 
 since its commencement sixty or seventy years 
 ago ; referred to its noble school system, its 
 churches, and its missionaries ; and said it was 
 his prayer that God in his providence might lead 
 that great people to break the yoke of their slaves. 
 The existence of slavery had led many to doubt 
 the work of the revival in the United States; and 
 the churches of America were at this moment upon 
 their trial before the world. He then stated that 
 his Kirk-Session and that of Dr. Candlish had re- 
 solved to have collections in behalf of Dr. Chee- 
 ver ; and he hoped that the other ministers and 
 congregations of Edinburgh would adopt the same 
 course, and thus let the Americans see they were 
 in earnest in this matter. 
 
30 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 The resolution was then unanimously agreed to. 
 
 The Rev. William Reid proposed the next re- 
 solution, to the effect that the present appeal in 
 behalf of Dr. Cheever afforded a seasonable op- 
 portunity for bearing an emphatic practical testi- 
 mony against American slavery, as well as for 
 expressing sympathy with those who, on Christian 
 grounds, denounced it, and suffer loss for so doing ; 
 and that it ought, therefore, to be promptly and lib- 
 erally met. [Applause.] Mr. Reid read several 
 extracts -from Dr. Cheever's work, to show the 
 testimony which he bore against slavery, and the 
 state of the American churches in relation to it ; 
 and concluded by saying that he trusted that, not 
 only in this city, but throughout the length and 
 breadth of Scotland, contributions from indivi- 
 duals and from churches would be freely given in 
 behalf of the cause which had brought them to- 
 gether. 
 
 Mr. Dickie, in seconding the resolution, said, 
 the addresses which they had heard to-day were 
 well fitted to stir up their feelings, and to call 
 forth a liberal response from the friends of the 
 anti-slavery cause in all parts of the country. 
 
 This resolution was also cordially agreed to. 
 
 On the motion of Mr. Burn Murdock, a vote 
 of thanks was passed to the Lord Provost, and 
 the benediction was pronounced by the Rev. Mr. 
 Cullen. 
 
MEETING U GLASGOW. 
 
 AMERICAN SLA.VERY. 
 
 A Public Meeting on behalf of the Rev. G. B. 
 Cheever, D.D., was held in the Merchants' Hall 
 on Monday afternoon, March 19. There was a 
 large and influential attendance. Bailie Blackie 
 presided, and on the platform we observed, among 
 others, the Rev. Dr. Buchanan, the Rev. Dr. 
 Smyth, the Rev. Dr. Robson, the Rev. Dr. 
 Robertson, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, the Rev. Dr. 
 Lorimer, the Rev. Mr. Russell, the Rev. ]\Ir. 
 Knox, the Rev. Duncan M'Gregor, the Rev. Mr. 
 Batchelor, the Rev. Alex. Fraser, the Rev. A. G. 
 Forbes, the Rev. D. M'Crae, the Rev. Mr. For- 
 rest, the Rev. Mr. Borland, the Rev. Mr. JM'Cal- 
 lum, the Rev. Mr. Jeffrey, the Rev. Mr. Clark, 
 Barrhead, the Rev. Mr. Blvth, Councillor M'Dow- 
 all, W. P. Paton, Esq., etc. The Rev. Dr. Eadie, 
 Rev. Dr. Jeffrey, and others, were in the body of 
 the Hall. 
 
 The Rev. David Russell opened the meeting 
 with prayer. 
 
 The Chairman then rose and said : 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : You are no doubt 
 aware that this meetinji has been called for the 
 
32 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 purpose of expressing our sympathy, and taking 
 steps to aid in his present position an eminent 
 minister of the United States — one who, though 
 personally unknown here, is well known by his 
 writings, and perhaps as well known here as in 
 his native land — I mean Dr. Cheever of New- 
 York. [Cheers.] This eminent man has been for 
 some time past lifting up his voice steadfastly and 
 firmly against the inactivity and complicity, to 
 some extent, of the American Churches, of their 
 Bible and Mission Board, and Tract Society. Be- 
 lieving that the system of slavery, as existing in 
 the United States, is contrary to the w-hole spirit 
 and tenor of both the dispensations of the Old and 
 New Testament, Dr. Cheever has been steadfastly 
 setting his flice against it ; and finding his argu- 
 ments not readily answered, attempts have been 
 made to silence him in another way — to place him 
 in difficulties from the position in which his con- 
 gregation may be, by the amount of debt that has 
 been upon it, by the expense of their church's site 
 in New-York. And to accomplish this end, many 
 of his leading people have withdrawn and refused 
 their contributions. He has appealed already to 
 the Christian men and women and abolitionists of 
 the United States, and not without success ; but 
 he feels that it is desirable that the weight should 
 not rest upon them alone, and that he may safely 
 come to the Christian men and women of this 
 country, and ask them to aid in this great effort to 
 continue his testimony against the system of slav- 
 ery in the United States. It would be trenching 
 on the ground of those who are to move the reso- 
 lutions, were I to go into any details on the ques- 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 33 
 
 tion. The speakers who are to follow are much 
 better able to state the position of the question 
 than I. I may just add, that while we are met to 
 express our sympathy with Dr. Cheev^er, an op- 
 portunity will be at the same time taken of calmly 
 but firmly lifting up our voice against that system 
 ourselves — [cheers] — a system that recognizes no 
 right whatever in the slave, ignores his evidence 
 altogether in any case, whether against hiniself or 
 others, that prevents his master setting him free 
 if he were willing to do so, unless he carries him 
 out of the State in which he has set him free. Al- 
 together the workings of the system are such as 
 that I can hardly conceive it possible that any 
 man, professing the name of Christian, should at 
 all subscribe to it or submit to it. [Cheers.] The 
 Chairman concluded by stating that he had letters 
 regretting their absence, from the Rsv. Dr. Sym- 
 ington, the Rev. Mr. Arnot, and the Rev. Mr. 
 Edmund. He called upon the Riv. Dr. Buchanan 
 to move the first resolution. [Cheers.] 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Buchanan, Free Church, then rose 
 and said : The resolution which I have been re- 
 quested to submit to this meeting is in the follow- 
 ing terms : 
 
 " This meeting is solemnly convinced that Amer- 
 ican slavery is contrary to the word of God, de- 
 grades the moral and religious principles of the 
 slaveholder, wrongs and corrupts the enslaved, 
 and is injurious to all the political, social, and 
 economical interests of the State." 
 
 Before addressing myself to the subject of the 
 resolution, I wish it to be distinctly understood 
 that I am not here to vilify America. If it were 
 
34 AMERICAN SLAVEEY. 
 
 the design of this meeting to turn the question 
 which has brought us together into a mere occa- 
 sion for casting stones at a great and noble coun- 
 try, I could have taken no part in such proceed- 
 ings. [Cheers.] I love America. I admire the 
 amazing energy of its people. Instead of grudg- 
 ing, I heartily rejoice at the distinguished position 
 which its intelligence and enterprise and bound- 
 less activity have made for it among the nations 
 of the earth. [Renewed cheers.] As a Christian 
 minister, I feel deeply grateful for the invaluable 
 services which its press has rendered to almost 
 every branch of theological literature, and which 
 its missions have rendered, in almost every part 
 of the world, to the cause of the Gospel. Nay, as 
 one of the Anglo-Saxon race — as being of the 
 same lineage and language of the American peo- 
 ple — I have ever been accustomed to identify their 
 interests and their honor with our own. [Cheers.] 
 Nothing, therefore, could be more strongly op- 
 posed to all the impulses of my heart than to utter 
 a single word fitted to excite harsh thoughts or un- 
 kindly feelings towards America. It is my deeply 
 solemn conviction, that whatever breeds discord 
 between Britain and America, breeds danger not 
 only to the best interests of these two mighty em- 
 pires themselves, but to the best interests of free- 
 dom, of humanity, of religion, all over the world. 
 What I have thus presumed to say in the outset 
 of this meeting for myself, I am well assured that 
 I may with equal confidence venture to say for 
 every individual within these walls. [Cheers.] 
 Instead of its being because we love not America, 
 it is, on the very contrary, because we do love it, 
 
AilERICAX SLAVERY. 35 
 
 that we are this day to lift up our most earnest 
 protest and remonstrance against American slav- 
 ery. In using that sad expression, "American 
 slavery," I have specified the subject of my reso- 
 lution. It is upon that dark and distressing sub- 
 ject that I have now to speak. With this resolu- 
 tion in my hand, I am here in the character of an 
 accuser of American slavery. The resolution 
 constitutes the indictment which the callers of this 
 public meeting have deliberately framed against 
 that revolting system of human oppression. It^ I 
 have had any difiiculty in undertaking to plead the 
 case which this indictment raises, it has not been 
 from any doubt as to the truth of its averments, 
 but solely from the sense I have of my incompe- 
 tency to do justice, and especially within the limits 
 to which I must confine myself, to questions of 
 such weight and magnitude as those which my 
 resolutiou embraces. Four separate and specific 
 charges are here brought against American slav- 
 ery — .charges, any one of which were enough con- 
 clusively to condemn it, but which, taken together, 
 can not be made good without branding it, in the 
 judgment of every dispassionate mii.d, with in- 
 famy and abhorrence. My resolution afllnns of 
 American slavery, first, that it " is contrary to the 
 Word of God;" second, that "it degrades the 
 moral and religious principles of the slaveholder ;" 
 third, that " it wrongs and corrupts the enslaved ;" 
 and last, that "it is injurious to all the political, 
 social, and economical interests of the State." I 
 believe it will need little argument or evidence to 
 satisfy this meeting that the first of these charges 
 is really the fundamental one. Whatever is con- 
 
36 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 trary to God's Word — contrary, that is, to the 
 mind and will of that righteous Lord who loveth 
 righteousness and hateth iniquity, must needs be 
 contrary to all the best interests of man. The 
 question is, Does American slavery violate that 
 law 1 In other words, is American slavery in op- 
 position to the great essential principles of the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ *? I feel almost ashamed at 
 the very putting of such a question. [Hear, hear.] 
 It is surely both a startling and a humbling fact 
 that it should have to be put in this nineteenth 
 century of the Christian era. [Cheers.] What 
 is the law of American slavery ? and what, on 
 the other hand, is the law of the Gospel of God 
 our Saviour ? Place these two laws side by side. 
 Look now at the one and now at the other, and 
 say whether reason, conscience, all the instincts of 
 humanity, do not cry aloud that not more opposed 
 is light to darkness — that not more opposed is 
 Christ to Belial, than the law of the Gospel, w^hich 
 is the law of love, is opposed to the law of Amer- 
 ican slavery, which is the law of the basest selfish- 
 ness, of the grossest injustice, of the most intoler- 
 able tyranny. The law of God says : " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And if any 
 one, ill the spirit of the proud and supercilious 
 Pharisees of old, shall think to except the negro 
 race from the sweep and range of this Divine 
 statute, let him remember that " God hath made 
 of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the 
 face of the earth." The negro is a man, and, 
 therefore, does God's law bind the white man to 
 love him as he loves himself. Is it to keep this 
 law to treat him, not as a man but as a thing, as ?. 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 37 
 
 mere chattel, as a piece of property to be bought 
 and sold in the market like a brute beast, and all 
 this without even the allegation of his having com- 
 mitted any crime 1 Ilis color is his only crime. 
 He has the same material form as the white man, 
 the same bodily frame as fearfully and wonderfuly 
 made as his, the same bodily senses and powers. 
 He is possessed of the same spiritual and im- 
 mortal nature as the white man, of a mind capable 
 of the same high thoughts, of a heart full of the 
 same moral sensibilities, of a soul which, redeemed 
 and renewed by grace, may reflect as brightly as 
 that of any white man that breathes the holy and 
 blessed image of God. If American slavery were 
 chargeable with nothing more than taking one man 
 and treating him as I have described, the fact 
 might well arouse the most indignant outcries 
 against it. Have we not seen recently all Europe 
 joining in one loud and vehement protest against 
 the iniquity of the Church of Rome, in seizing and 
 separating from his parents the boy Mortara ? 
 But what is such an iniquity to that of a system 
 which robs of their liberty nearly four millions of 
 our fellow-men, which drags children every day 
 from the arms of their parents, and sells them 
 like sheep or cattle before their parents' eyes, 
 which tramples all domestic ties and all domestic 
 affection, whether conjugal or parental, lu the dustl 
 [Cheers.] It is an insult equally to reason and to 
 religion to affirm that such a system is, or can be 
 otherwise than eternally and irreconcilably op- 
 posed to the word of God. For my part, I have 
 no patience to argue, at this time of day, with any 
 man who has the hardihood to maintain the con- 
 
38 AJIERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 trary proposition. It is doing gross injustice even 
 to tiie imperfect economy of Judaism, to allege 
 that because it contained laws to mitigate the op- 
 pressions, and to restrict the limits of servitude, it 
 is, therefore, to be held as approving and counte- 
 nancing slavery. And as regards the fuller and 
 more perfect dispensation of the Gospel, under 
 which it is our privilege to live, one knows not 
 how to deal with those who dare to drag it into 
 the witness-box for the purpose of making it speak 
 approvingly of a system which its whole genius 
 and spirit emphaticiilly reprobate and condemn. 
 It is mere trifling with the question to split hairs 
 about the meaning of a Greek word, or to twist 
 and distort the counsels of apostles or evangelists, 
 addressed to those primitive disciples who might 
 be under the yoke of heathen slavery, into a Di- 
 vine sanction for that iniquitous system itself. It 
 was not the method of the Gospel directly to as- 
 sail political institutions, however unjust or op- 
 pressive. That would have been only to create a 
 state of things under which it would have been 
 impossible, in such an age, for Christianity to live. 
 Tha infinitely wiser and more efficacious method 
 which it pursued was that of inculcating principles 
 which, in proportion as they were understood and 
 embraced, would inevitably reform those institu- 
 tions, and introduce, in all the relations of human 
 life, whether political, social, or domestic, the 
 reign of that blessed kingdom which is " not meat 
 and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in 
 the Holy Ghost." Christ, the Divine founder of 
 the Gospel, taught us the golden rule of his king- 
 dom, that whatsoever we would that others should 
 
AilEKICAN SLAVERY. ' 39 
 
 do unto us, we must do the same unto them. Is it 
 compatible with that rule to establish and enforce 
 the law of American slavery ? Would the Amer- 
 ican slaveholder wish to be treated as he treats 
 his slave '? to be deprived of his civil and personal 
 liberty ; to be driven to his work by the pleasant 
 persuasion of the cart-whip ; to be denied the 
 wages of his own industry ; to be led out to the 
 market, stripped, handled, and turned round by 
 even the most brutal purchaser, in the flice of the 
 crowd, like a bullock or a swine ; to have his wife 
 or daughter subjected to the same degradation be- 
 fore his eyes ; to be subject any day to cruelties 
 and indignities of the most galling kind, without 
 the possibility of redress — would any slaveholder, 
 I ask, venture to affirm that in upholding a system 
 which allows all this to be done to his slave, he is 
 only doing to others as he would wish that others 
 should do unto him ] The very supposition is 
 monstrous. It is an infamous libel upon the reli- 
 gion of Christ to allege, or even to insinuate, that 
 it has any voice but one of the loudest and sternest 
 condemnation for a system so outrageously wicked. 
 [Loud applause.] Those who maintain such a 
 line of argument are doing their best, however 
 blindly, to put shame upon the Gospel, and to 
 play the game of its bitterest foes. If Popery, by 
 corrupting and caricaturing the Christian religion, 
 has made myriads of infidels in the Old World, it 
 is not less certain that the same deadly evil is ex- 
 tensively wrought in the New World, by putting 
 upon that religion the cruel odium of abetting 
 American slavery. [Hear, hear.] It concerns 
 our common Christianity that the American 
 
40 * AMEEICAX SLAVERY. 
 
 churches should break up at once and forever even 
 the very appearance of that shameful and unnatural 
 alliance, by proclaiming fearlessly before all the 
 world that, wherever else American slavery may 
 find support or palliation, it finds none in the 
 Word of God. [Cheers.] But not only does my 
 resolution say this, but it says a great deal more. 
 It goes on to affirm that American slavery ope- 
 rates alike injuriously on the slaveholder and on 
 the slave. It has been truly and beautifully said 
 of mercy, that it is twice blessed — " blessing both 
 him that gives and him that takes." And not less 
 true is it to say of slavery — which is another name 
 for selfishness and cruelty — that it is twice cursed 
 — cursing, as it does, both the oppressor and the 
 oppressed. To be a slaveholder is to be invested 
 with irresponsible power ; and he must be igno- 
 rant, indeed, alike of human history and of human 
 nature, who does not know how fatal such power 
 is both to its possessors and to its victims. In 
 the case of its possessors, its tendency is to cherish 
 all the worst feelings and basest passions of the 
 human heart. To 'conceive or sketch the character 
 which it seldom fails to produce, needs no aid 
 from fancy. Examine the state of society in any 
 slaveholding country, whether of ancient or mod- 
 ern times, and you will find the picture drawn to 
 your hand — and that too often in colors so dark, 
 and in form so hideous, that they will not bear to 
 be described. The slave States of America pre- 
 sent, as all the world knows, no exception to this 
 rule. It is impossible it should be otherwise. 
 Human nature being every where radically the 
 same, like influences will sive birth to like results 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 41 
 
 all over the world. Indolence, improvidence, im- 
 periousness, cruelty, impurity, are some of the 
 rank growths which the system fosters in the heart 
 and life of the slaveholder, ft blunts all the better 
 feelings of his nature ; it vitiates his moral sense ; 
 it drives him to tamper even with the integrity of 
 the Word of God. Of the truth of this painful 
 statement, what could be a more convincing or 
 more humbling proof than the fact that it has 
 driven its advocates and upholders in America to 
 have recourse to theories, both in morals and reli- 
 jrion, of the wildest and most extravagant kind ? 
 What has given such power and currency there to 
 speculations denying the unity of the human race, 
 and thereby subverting the authority of Scripture, 
 and the whole scheme of redemption, but just the 
 dire necessity of fmding some plea, however des- 
 perate, to excuse the enormity of the slaveholding 
 system 1 What but the blinding and corrupting 
 influence of that system is it which tempts even 
 the free States of America to go on, from year to 
 year, staining all the glory of their noble struggle 
 for national independence, by enacting and enforc- 
 ing fugitive slave-laws which would not be toler- 
 ated in the most despotic nationsof Europe ? And 
 if in these and in many other ways the system 
 works such fatal effects on the slaveholders them- 
 selves, and on the nation at large, in as far as it 
 makes itself a partaker in their sin — it needs not 
 to tell how it wrongs and corrupts the poor un- 
 happy slaves. We ara told, indeed, that the slaves 
 are contented and happy. If so, whence arise 
 these gloomy suspicions and fears which haunt the 
 minds of their masters ? Why are insurrectionary 
 
42 AilERICAX SLAVERY. 
 
 movements among the slaves of such frequent oc- 
 currence ? Why does the white population of the 
 Southern States ever and anon feel itself to be liv- 
 ing, as it were, in the crater of a volcano ? These 
 horrible panics, and the cruel coercive measures 
 to which they continually lead, tell a tale not to 
 be misunderstood as to the sense which the slaves 
 themselves have of their deep and bitter wrongs. 
 But even if it were otherwise — even if they were 
 as satisfied with their condition as the friends of 
 the slave system would have it believed that they 
 are, what would it prove but this, that slavery had 
 at length succeeded, by its debasing and brutaliz- 
 ing power, in rooting out of them that deepest, 
 noblest instinct of humanity, the sense of right, 
 the spirit of independence, the love of liberty ? 
 
 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower 
 Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, 
 And we are weeds without it. 
 
 [Much applause.] Thank God that even x\meri- 
 can slavery has not been able to eradicate this 
 sentiment from the bosom of the negro. [Re- 
 newed applause.] Much as it has done to darken 
 his intellect and to deprave his heart, he still 
 knows and feels that he is a man, and in the very 
 recoil of his nature from the yoke that weighs him 
 down, there is the hope and the earnest of that 
 nobler condition to which he shall yet rise, when 
 the day of his deliverance shall come, and 
 when God shall undo his heavy burdens and bid 
 the oppressed go free. [Cheers.] There is still 
 another charge against American slavery cm- 
 braced in my resolution. It proclaims that sys- 
 
AilERICAX SLAVERY. 43 
 
 tern to be " injurious to all the political, social, 
 and economical interests of the state." On this 
 branch of the subject, ho^yever, important and 
 interesting though it be, it is not my intention to 
 enlarge. I most firmly believe that in every one 
 of the departments no^Y specified slavery is work- 
 ing deep and deadly mischief to the American 
 nation and people. At the same time, what con- 
 cerns their political, social, and economical inter- 
 ests may reasonably enough be considered as 
 belonging mainly to themselves. Having already, 
 however, dealt v;ith this question, on the higher 
 grounds of morality and religion, I am not dis- 
 posed to take up the controversy on the lower 
 platform of those considerations which are of a 
 merely material, social, or political kind. This 
 only will I say — and no intelligent American who 
 is not himself personally interested in the slave 
 S3'stem will deny it — that slavery is not merely 
 the reproach, but the peril of the American na- 
 tion. It is emphatically the sore place of their 
 body politic. It endangers, and will continue un- 
 ceasingly to endanger, so long as it is upheld, 
 every great interest of the State. It disturbs the 
 peace of families, it agitates and inflames the pub- 
 lic mind, it keeps one half of the country in fierce 
 conflict with the other, it unsettles the very found- 
 ations of the Republic ; it is the most formidable 
 hindrance to the nation's prosperity in peace, and 
 could not fiil to prove its deadliest enemy in war. 
 If we wished ill to America, we should wish 
 nothing so much as that it should cling to this 
 atrocious institution. Slavery is the wedge of 
 guld and the Babylonish garment that is troubling 
 
44 AMERICAN SLATEET. 
 
 the whole camp of the United States ; for verily 
 there is a God that judgeth in the earth. " If thou 
 seest the oppression of the poor and violent per- 
 verting of justice and judgment in a province, 
 marvel not at this, for he that is higher than the 
 highest regardeth, and there be higher than they." 
 Those Americans are the best and truest friends 
 of their country who spare no arrows on this mo- 
 mentous subject ; who will neither be bribed nor 
 coerced into silence regarding it. I believe Dr. 
 Cheever to be one of these intrepid and faithful 
 men. I have read his book, God against Shvery^ 
 and if the powerful and eloquent discourses which 
 it contains be a specimen of his mode of handling 
 this great subject, I can say nothing less than bid 
 him God speed. They are full of" thoughts that 
 breathe and words that burn." He deserves the 
 sympathy of every lover of truth and freedom. 
 May the day soon come when he shall cease to 
 have his present painful though honorable pre- 
 eminence, by reason of his being lost in the crowd 
 of like-minded men ! [Great applause.] 
 
 The Dr. Robertson, United Presbyterian Church, 
 said : Dr. Buchanan is entitled to a double vote 
 of thanks from the friends of spiritual independ- 
 ence on this side of the Atlantic and on the other. 
 [Applause.] I am very happy to see a meeting 
 like this at the present moment, because I believe 
 that the principles of civil and religious liberty 
 were never so extensively diffused among our 
 people as now. It is, however, as Dr. Buchanan 
 remarked, rather disagreeable in connection with 
 a movement of this kind, to find that we arc 
 brouscht into collision with those brethren we wish 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 45 
 
 to conciliate, and then we must remember our 
 position on a platform like this. Were I an 
 American minister I do not say that I would have 
 the boldness I have now assumed, and if the sys- 
 tem of American slavery prevailed in this country, 
 I do not know that I would be up to the m.ark. 
 I would remind you of this that we may do justice 
 to brethren there, though we must never forget 
 that truth is truth and sin is sin, and must be con- 
 demned ; and slavery, though it be supported by 
 able and eloquent ministers of the Gospel, is a 
 bitter draught, and is none the less bitter on that 
 account. [Cheers.] The fact is, that when we 
 look at the history of the world we discover that 
 when man alienated himself from his Maker, he 
 lost the very idea of the unity of the race, and 
 soon after the conqueror and the powerful began 
 to tyrannize over the conquered and the weak. 
 Hence servitude commenced at an early period ; 
 and if you look into the subject, you will find that 
 when God interposed under the ]\Iosaic economy, 
 he did so to ameliorate the condition of the slave, 
 and gradually work out the abolition of the sys- 
 tem. Dr. Robertson proceeded to show that the 
 Jews, under the old economy, were required to 
 instruct their slaves morally and religiously — to 
 invite thom to their national religious festivals. 
 They were at liberty to claim protection against 
 their masters ; and they were set free at the end 
 of every six years, unless they voluntarily entered 
 into fresii engagements. Dr. Robertson then 
 went on to show that even in regard to heathen 
 slaves owner! by the ancient Jews, their condition 
 was very diiferent from that of slaves in America,. 
 
46 AMEKICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 and there was a general emancipation in the year 
 of jubilee. How different from American slavery ; 
 and how strange that we should find Christian 
 ministers advocating the infamy ! It is remark- 
 able that when the Christian dispensation is intro- 
 duced, the true idea of the unity of the race is 
 restored to its proper place. Who can forget 
 that most sublime of all scenes almost — apart 
 from those in which the Saviour himself was per- 
 sonally interested — when Paul addressed the 
 Athenians from ]\fars Hill ! Athens never con- 
 tained more than 30,000 free citizens, and is gen- 
 erally computed to have contained in the day of 
 its glory 400,000 slaves. And here you find the 
 apostle on that most interesting occasion, lifting 
 up the idea of the unity of the race before these 
 slaveholders, and telling them that God had made 
 of one blood all nations of men on the face of the 
 earth. [Cheers.] There was a stroke at the 
 principle of the thing, at the very root of the 
 system. For the sake of the three or four mil- 
 lions in slavery, for the sake of the planters them- 
 selves, their wives and children, for the sake of 
 that great country, the United States, in all its 
 interests, I desire that the present state of things 
 may be speedily abolished. Let the Americans re- 
 member that it is righteousness alone that exalteth 
 a nation. May the time soon come when the 
 shackles of the slave shall be snapped asunder, 
 when the red dragons of war shall be unyoked, 
 when thrones shall be established on justice and 
 encircled by freedom, when men every where 
 shall live under free equitable laws, and the whole 
 habitable s;lobe will be enli";htened and free ! 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 47 
 
 [Much applause.] The resolution was then put 
 to the meeting by the Chairman, and carried by 
 acclamation. 
 
 STATEMENT OF DR. CHEEVER'S CASE BY 
 REV. HENRY BATCHELOR. 
 
 The Rev. Henry Batchelor, Independent Church, 
 moved the second resolution, which Avas to the 
 following effect : " While appreciating the great 
 service rendered by the American churches to the 
 common cause of the Gospel, this meeting deeply 
 laments their complicity with slavery, and un- 
 feigncdly deplores the connivance of the churches 
 in the Free States at this direful evil ; very sin- 
 cerely sympathizes with any ministers or churches 
 who may be resolutely protesting against this 
 national sin, and especially rejoices in the Christ- 
 ian, manly, and faithful testimony presented by 
 the Rev. G. B. Cheever, D.D,, and most earnestly 
 commends the appeal for pecuniary help during 
 the struggle to the warm and generous liberality 
 of the churches in Great Britain." The speech on 
 the resolution was to the following effect : 
 
 With a resolution like this in my hand, it would 
 be highly improper to pronounce an oration. I 
 confess that the first impulse of every unblinded 
 and uncorrupted heart is to pour a torrent of 
 wrath on the whole iniquitious system of slavery. 
 Indeed it is impossible to speak in a direct address 
 on this subject, without rising to the eloquence of 
 pity, and indignation, and shame. I rejoice in the 
 manly and nervous eloquence to which you have 
 listened from my reverend predecessors to-day. 
 
48 AMEEICAX SLAVEEY. 
 
 But my resolution chains me to a speech of facts. 
 The resolution expresses appreciation of the great 
 service rendered by the American churches to the 
 common cause of the Gospel. After -what has 
 fallen from Dr. Buchanan, it will not be necessary 
 to enlarge on this portion of the resolution, ex- 
 cept to say that this statement was framed in good 
 faith, and is now reiterated with cordial sincerity. 
 The resolution next deeply laments the complicity 
 of the American churches with slavery. The 
 following facts are the evidence : Amongst the 
 Protestant Episcopalians there are 88.000 slaves; 
 amongst the Presbyterians, 77,000 slaves; amongst 
 the Baptists, 226,000 slaves ; amongst the Method- 
 ists, 219,563 slaves ; amongst other denominations, 
 50,000 slaves. Here you have a grand total of 
 660,503 slaves, owned as goods and chattels by 
 the ministers and members of the professing 
 church. Here should be mentioned the fact, that 
 the following great religious societies refuse to 
 treat slaveholding as a sin : the American Board 
 of Commissioners for Foreign Missions ; Ameri- 
 can Home Missionary Society ; American Bible 
 Society ; American Baptist Missionary Union ; 
 American Baptist Home Missionary Society ; 
 American Baptist Publication Society ; American 
 Bible Union; American and Foreign Bible Society; 
 American Tract Society; American Sunday-School 
 Union; the missionary societies of the Protestant 
 Methodist, Episcopal Methodist, and Moravian 
 bodies, respectively. The American slave system 
 steals, sells, and barters human beings, separates 
 husbands and wives, parents and children ; com- 
 pels adultery, polyandry, and polygamy ; declares 
 
 A 
 
AMERICAN SLAVEPwY. 49 
 
 all is sanctioned by the Word of God, and admits 
 slaveholders and adulterers to tlie fellowship of 
 the church. The Rev. II. W. Beecher, in his 
 Harper-Ferry sermon, preached on Oct. 30, 1859, 
 asserts : '• There is no church, that I have ever 
 known, in the South that bears testimony against 
 these thini^s. If ministers," he continues, " will 
 not preach liberty to the captive, they ougrht at 
 least to preach the indispensable necessity of house- 
 hold virtue ! If they will not call upon the masters 
 to set their slaves free, they should at least pro- 
 claim a Christianity that protects women, child- 
 hood, and household." The religious bodies in 
 the South, in conferences, presbyteries, and asso- 
 ciations have, in different places, established the 
 follov/ing conclusions: " 1. That slavery is an in- 
 nocent and lawful relation, as much as that of 
 parent and child, husband and wife, or any other 
 lawful relation of society. 2. That it is consist- 
 ent with the most fraternal regard for the good of 
 the slave. 3. That masters ought not to be dis- 
 ciplined for selling slaves without (the slaves') 
 consent. 4. That the right to buy, sell, and hold 
 men for purposes of gnin was given by express 
 permission of God. 5. That the laws which forbid 
 the education of the slave are right, and meet the 
 approbation of the reflecting part of the Christian 
 community. 6. That the fact of slavery is not a 
 question of morals at all, but is purely one of 
 political economy. 7. The right of masters to 
 dispose of the time of their slaves, has been dis- 
 tinctly recognized by the Creator of all things. 
 8. That slavery, as it exists in the United States, 
 is not a moral evil. 9. That, without a new reve- 
 
50 AMERICAX SLATERY. 
 
 lation from heaven, no man is entitled to pronounce 
 slavery wrong. 10. That the separation of slaves 
 by sale should be regarded as separation by death, 
 and the parties allowed to marry again. 11. That 
 the testimony of colored members of the church 
 should not be taken against a white person — the 
 church imitating the crimes of the legislature. 
 Finally, it is practically admitted to be "right and 
 proper to put down all inquiry upon this subject 
 by Lynch Law.*' A minister of the Gospel has 
 been known to exclaim : " Serve him right." 
 These facts are surely sufficient to justify that very 
 gentle word in the resolution, " complicity" with 
 slavery. The resolution " unfeignedly deplores 
 the connivance of the churches in the Free States 
 at this direful evil." The history of the American 
 churches presents a lamentable spectacle of pro- 
 gressive submission to the power of slavery. The 
 connivance of the Free States is sufficiently ex- 
 emplified in the cowering unfliithfulness of the 
 great religious societies. For years the clergy in 
 high places have been silenced by popular inti- 
 midation, and in some cases have become the 
 apologists of slavery. The venerable Dr. Samuel 
 Hanson Cox, whose face I well remember seeing 
 in this country some years ago, is a notable ex- 
 ample. Between the years 1833-38 Nevr-York 
 was agitated by slavery riots. Dr. Cox and H. 
 G. Ludlovv honorably distinguished themselves by 
 giving the weight of their public position to the 
 side of freedom. But the pro-slavery mobs 
 smashed their church-windows, and dragged out 
 the church-furniture, and flung it into the gutter. 
 Dr. Cox has been dumb ever since, except as the 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 51 
 
 apologist of the strong against the weak. The 
 passing of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 — one 
 of the most daring enactments of slave policy — 
 has anew stung the friends of liberty to exertion. 
 This nef^irious measure, which I need not stay to 
 describe, was received by the majority of the 
 clergy in guilty silence, and by not a few with still 
 more guilty acquiescence. Hear the opinion of 
 Judge Jay, one of the few of uncorrupted con- 
 science, on this piece of pro-slavery legislation : 
 " If you ask my opinion of the ' bindinjr force' of 
 this iaw, in a moral sense, I answer that its binding 
 force is precisely the same as was that of the law 
 of Nebuchadnezzar, commanding the multitudes 
 the plain of Dura to fall down and worship the 
 golden imajre — of the decree of Darius, forbidding 
 prayer to God for thirty days — of the order of the 
 Jewish magistrates to Peter and Paul not to speak 
 at all, nor to teach in the name of Jesus — of the 
 commands of the Roman Emperors, that Christ- 
 ians should cast incense on the altars of idols — of 
 the edicts of Louis XIV., requiring the Huguenots 
 to embrace the faith and practice of the Church of 
 Rome. This accursed statute requires us to be- 
 come active instruments of treachery, cruelty, and 
 oppression, to the persecuted but innocent fugi- 
 tive — to set at naught the law of Jehovah, to do 
 justice and love mercy — to trample under foot the 
 great commandment of our blessed Redeemer, to 
 love our neighbor — and, regardless of His authori- 
 ty, to do to others what would fill our souls with 
 anguish if done to ourselves. Let us, with our 
 families, enter the dungeons which Northern poli- 
 ticians have prepared, rather than hazard our souls 
 
52 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 by i-endering obedience to the requirements of this 
 wicked law." But what said the clergy of the 
 Free States'? A few uttered indignant truth. 
 The great majority were silent. But some pro- 
 claimed what one can not read without grief, and 
 mortification, and t^hame. Bishop Hopkins, of 
 Vermont, asserted that slavery is " w;irraiited by 
 the Old Testament," and inquired, " What effect 
 had the Gospel in doing away vviih slavery? 
 None whatever." Dr. Taylor, an Episcop?il cler- 
 gyman of New-IIaven, asks: "Is that article in 
 the Constitution contrary to the law of nature, of 
 nations, or to the will of God ? Is it so 1 Is there 
 a shadow of reason f)r saying it? I have not 
 been able to discover it. Have I not shown you 
 it is lawful to deliver up, in compliance with their 
 laws, fugitive slaves, for the high, the great, the 
 momentous interests of those [Southern] States?" 
 Do you wonder that infidel organizatior;s against 
 slavery denounce slavery and the Gospel in the 
 same iDreath ? Nothing bat miracle could prevent 
 it. llev. W. M. Rogers, an orthodox minister of 
 Boston, says : " When the slave asks me to stand 
 between him and his master, what does he ask ? 
 He asks me to murder a nation's life ; and I will 
 not do it, because I have a conscience — because 
 there is a God." A C(^nscience ! Delicate creature ! 
 Pie continues to affirm, that if resistance to the 
 "Fugitive Slave Law" should lead the magistracy 
 to call the citizens to arms, their duty is to obey ; 
 and, "if ordered to take human life," to maintain 
 this unnatural enactment, " in the ?iame of God to 
 take it.'''' The Rev. Dr. Spencer, of Brooklyn, 
 New-York, published a sermon in defense of the 
 
A^IERICAX SLxVVERY. 53 
 
 " Fugitive Slave Law," which Dr. S. H. Cox highly 
 lauded. Dr. Joel Parker, of Philadelphia, asks: 
 " What are the evils inseparable from slavery ? 
 There is not one that is not equally inseparable 
 from depraved human nature in otJier Imvful rela- 
 tions." Dr. Gardner Sprinnr, the eminent Pres- 
 byterian clergyman of New-York, protested in the 
 pulpit : '• If by one prayer he could liberate every 
 slave in the world, he would not dare to offer it." 
 Exquisite conscientiousness ! A gentleman in 
 Edinburgh was in New-York some time since, and 
 attended the church of Dr. Spring. The portion 
 of the word of God read was Isaiah, chap. 58. 
 When the Dr. came to verse G, " Is not this the 
 fast which I have chosen? to loose the bands of wick- 
 ednes-4, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the 
 oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ?" 
 he skipped over it, and did not read it. The sensi- 
 tive piety which restrained his prayer expurgated 
 the inspired word of God. Last, and not least — I 
 can not tell you with what lamentation I announce 
 it — the illustrious Closes Stuart, of Andover Col lege, 
 declared that, " though we may pity the fugitive, 
 yet the Mosaic law does not authorize the rejection 
 of the claims of the slaveholders to their stolen or 
 strayed 'proiurtyT How came the great Hebraist 
 to confound voluntary, rewarded servitude amongst 
 the Ilchrews with American slavery ? And how 
 came he to forget, that the runaway servant was 
 forbidden to be delivered to his master by the 
 Mosaic Lawl Rightly averred Albert Barnes, 
 the commentator, one of the very few fliithful 
 ones, " There is no power out of the Church that 
 could sustain slavery an hour^ if it were not sus- 
 
54 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 tained in it." I think that this gentle word " con- 
 nivance" requires to be strengthened to guilty 
 complicity. The resolution "very sincerely sym- 
 pathizes with any ministers or churches who may 
 he resolutely protesting against this national sin." 
 We know that there are such. All honor to 
 them. The resolution " especially rejoices in the 
 Christian, manly ^ imd/aithful testimony presented 
 by the Rev. G. B. Cheever, D.D." The first 
 thing to be done is to define Dr. Cheever's posi- 
 tion. He takes this ground, that slaveholding is 
 contrary to the word of God. This is the conclu- 
 sion of all British anti-slavery advocates who are 
 unmistified by the direct or indirect influences of 
 slavery. I yield my hearty concurrence to the 
 noble and stirring sentiments uttered on this 
 platform. Dr. Cheever, simple man, requires 
 that sin should be treated as sin. And why not? 
 Why should commercial dishonesty, drunken- 
 ness, unchastity, etc., be treated as sins, and not 
 slaveholding, which is worse than any, and often 
 includes and provokes all ? Dr. Cheever demands 
 honest, straightforward, church-action regarding 
 this sin. He insists that political action should be 
 as direct and sincere. If we want a Reform Bill, 
 or the Repeal of the Corn Laws, we have an out- 
 spoken and hearty constitutional agitation about 
 it. Plenty of ministers and churches call them- 
 selves anti-slavery people, but all they do is to re- 
 main silent, 01 very occasionally blow off a little 
 pent-up talk which is not at all intended to be fol- 
 lowed by practical action either in Church or State. 
 Dr. Cheever is simply consistent. In the second 
 place, I must sketch Dr. Cheever's course. In 
 
AilERICAN SLAVERY. 55 
 
 1850, when the " Fugitive Slave Law" was passed, 
 Dr. Cheever assailed and denounced it. When 
 the Kansas atrocities occurred about 1854, and the 
 slave party were bent on obliterating the land- 
 marks of freedom by revolutionary violence, he, 
 in like manner, invoked the condemnation of the 
 Word of God. When the Dred Scott decision was 
 pronounced, which excluded the testimony of a 
 man of color from every Court of Justice in the 
 land, and placed 4,000,000 of human beinj^s under 
 the heel of the dominant population, he lifted up 
 his voice with the same energetic consistency. As 
 you would expect, great dissatisfaction was felt in 
 1850. As the pastor "fulfilled his course," the 
 grumble of opposition grew louder and louder. 
 In 1855 the discontent broke out in open rebellion, 
 and ever since the usual means have been plied to 
 induce Dr. Cheever to resign his charge, or to 
 eject him from his pulpit. I must, in the third 
 place, show that Dr. Cheever's uprightness is the 
 reason why he stands alone in Nevv^-York. I am 
 not unaware that there are brethren in New- 
 York whose hands are clean, and who are not im- 
 plicated in the sin of slavery, even by connivance. 
 But there is no man in any position of public influ- 
 ence who has made the thorough-going stand of 
 Dr. Cheever. [Cheers.] In many large and 
 fashionable churches* in New-York the wrongs and 
 the rights of the slave have no mention in prayer 
 from year to year. Conniving clergy w^ould not 
 pray, and conniving communions would not hear. 
 T^Iinisters can scarcely retain their charges when 
 they make a thorough stand against slavery. Nine 
 clergymen, in one way or other, have been turned 
 
56 AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 out of their pulpits since 1856. for uttering an 
 honest testimony asjainst slavery. They are 
 these — the Rev. M. D. Conway, Washington, Co- 
 lumbia ; the Rev. Dudley Tyng, Episcopal Church, 
 Philadelphia, for one sermon against slavery, 
 1856; the Rev. T. B. M'Cormick, Presbyterian 
 Church, Indiana, Presbytery of Cumberland, for 
 aiding fugitive slaves, the prosecution beino; set on 
 foot by his clerical brethren, 1856; the Rev. W. 
 Sellers, tarred and expelled the State ; the Rev. 
 Samuel Sawyer, of Rogersville, for giving evidence 
 against Colonel Netherland's brutal outrage on his 
 slave, 1857 ; the Rev. J. D. Long, Episcopal Phil- 
 adelphia Conference, 1857; the Rev. Moses M. 
 Longley ; the Rev. J. B. Board man, for the utter- 
 ance of free speech, 1856; a young Presbyterian 
 clergyman, last summer, for preaching two ser- 
 mons on slavery in New-York. The last would 
 have stayed and braved opposition, but his church 
 session, who admitted the righteousness of his 
 course, advised him to resign. To these must be 
 added — the Rev. Chas. H. Malcolm, Baptist 
 Church, Wheeling, for refusing his name to a 
 commendation of the ruffian who attacked Senator 
 Sumner in 1856. [Loud cheers.] You will ob- 
 serve that a large number of these cases evidently 
 occurred in the Free States. To further illustrate 
 the difficulty of Dr. Cheever's position, you will 
 find it asserted in an official document, lately is- 
 sued by Dr. Cheever's church, that one or more 
 of the Board of Trustees affirmed, " that the church 
 must go down, and further remarked that, in hia 
 opinion, no thorough anti-slavery ministry could 
 be sustained in the city of New-York." Henry 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 57 
 
 Ward Beecher confesses, in his Harper Ferry ser- 
 mon, Oct. 80, 1859, t}iat"the churches in the 
 north," that is, the Free Stages, '• will not, a« a body, 
 take upon themselves the responsibility of be^iring 
 witness against the enormities of slavery." While 
 the Cheever demonstration was being held in 
 Edinburgh, Dr. Cheever was being burnt in effigy 
 near his own church, by a pro-slavery mob. 
 [Cheers.] In the fourth place, I can not pass by 
 the question which is so often proposed : " Flow is 
 it that Dr. Cheever is so assailed, and Henry Ward 
 Beecher is so popular?" It is an ungracious task 
 to compare the merits of two anti slavery advo- 
 cates in my own denomination, and attempt to 
 strike the balance between their claims. My feel- 
 ings shrink from the duty, but my conscience de- 
 mands that it be done. These ministers differ in 
 opinion. I do not find in Mr. Beecher's opinions 
 the thorough going anti-scripturalness of slavery, 
 and the radical sinfulness of any such relation 
 amongst human beings. [Loud applause] Next, 
 these gentlemen differ in their public teaching on 
 this question. Mr. Beecher blazes out now and 
 then in indignant paragraphs, and at irregular in- 
 tervals, as in the Harper Ferry sermon, preaches 
 a whole discourse against it. Dr. Cheever has 
 systematically elicited the revealed mind of God 
 on the whole length and breadth of the immense 
 iniquity. Moreover, Dr. Cheever watches and 
 criticises the course of public events, and tries 
 every new legislative evil in the balance of in- 
 spired truth. The " Ftigitive ^lave Law," Kansas 
 monstrosities, Dred Soi»tt decision, etc., each in 
 consistent succession has been examined and re- 
 
58 AMERICA:?^ SLAVERY. 
 
 buked. I saw in a New -York paper that Mr. 
 Beecher had not preached on slavery for some fif- 
 teen months before October 30, 1859. He ex- 
 posed, like Dr. Cheever, the criminal Fugitive 
 Slave Law, Kansas, etc. After the passing of that 
 ruthless statute, the Southern planters resorted to 
 the most unscrupulous measures to silence all op- 
 position. About 1852-53 a document was sent 
 from slave-masters requiring the principal firms in 
 New- York to sign an agreement to abstain from 
 anti-slavery agitation, on pain of losing their pa- 
 tronage. I am. informed that only a few houses 
 withheld their signature. The terms of the stipu- 
 lation, so far as f know, have never cfot into print. 
 The establishment of Bowen & McNamee is hon- 
 orably mentioned as having spurned the indigni- 
 ty, retorting : " No, gentlemen ; we sell our goods, 
 not our principles." Whether the dissatisfaction 
 which was experienced in 1850 by Dr. Cheever 
 was shared by Mr. Beecher, I know not, but clear 
 it is, Dr. Cheever holds on his consistent though 
 troubled way. Mr. Beecher is thought to be not 
 as much given to out-spoken denunciation as in 
 1850, etc. I have not been able to ascertain that 
 Mr. Beecher canvassed the Dred Scott decision, 
 but have been assured that he did not.* Whether 
 he is unconsciously yielding to the pressure of the 
 slave-power time will not be long in telling. Fur- 
 ther, these clergymen differ radically in their lines 
 of practical action. Mr. Beecher demands no tho- 
 rough, direct, and immediate action either in 
 
 * Since the meeting, I have been informed that Mr. 
 Beecher did preach against the Dred Scott Decision. 
 
AMERICAN SLAYERY. 59 
 
 Church or State for the overthrow of slavery. The 
 Harper Ferry sermon is entitled " The right and 
 the wrong way about slavery." I should be sorry 
 to breathe a word against the many wise and no- 
 ble sentiments, and just and indignant rebukes, 
 which may be culled from the discourse. But its 
 deficiencies are immense. Mr. Beecher discour- 
 ages, as " a wrong way," the introduction of dis- 
 content among the slaves from without. How can 
 we agitate for their freedom, and not awaken inte- 
 rior discontent ? If we could, what could be more 
 undesirable 1 If no discontent could be excited 
 among the Negroes, then we had better let them 
 alone. [Cheers.] They must be brutes, not men, 
 and all anti-slavery effort is nugatory. Our duty 
 is to tell slaveholders and slaves the right and the 
 wrong of the whole business, and leave the truth 
 to carry out God's laws to all their Divine issues. 
 Mr. Beecher has six points on the " right way," 
 neither of which attempts to plan or organize any 
 practical action against slavery. His terrible fifch 
 topic, on the "right of chastity in the woman, the 
 unblemished household love, the right of parents 
 in their children," I daresay has not been followed 
 up by any urging of ecclesiastic or political action. 
 Dr. Cheever is not content to deliver his con- 
 science by firing off one well-primed topic on a 
 theme so fearful, and then let the audience forget 
 the flash of righteous anger and the thunder of 
 righteous denunciation. [Hear, hear.] Once 
 more. Dr. Cheever and Mr. Beecher differ in the 
 societies to which they give support. Permit me 
 to give you some account of the American Tract 
 Society at Boston. Its principles are announced 
 
60 AMERICAlSr SLAYERY. 
 
 in official addresses, resolutions, reports, and pub- 
 lications. " We are not an anti-slavery society." 
 " Not to be an abolition society." " Eesolved, that 
 the political aspects of slavery lie entirely without 
 the proper sphere of this Society, and can not be 
 discussed in its publications ; but those moral du- 
 ties which grow out of the existence of slavery, as 
 well as those moral evils which it is known to pro- 
 mote, and which are condemned in Scripture, and 
 so much deplored by Evangelical Christians, do 
 undoubtedly fall within the province of this Soci- 
 ety, and can and ought to be discussed in ^frater- 
 nal and Christian spirit." The poisonous root of 
 all the evil is not to be touched., but some of the 
 pernicious issues are to be discussed m a fraternal 
 and Christian spirit. Imagine a grave committee, 
 lay and clerical, discussing the rending asunder of 
 all divine and human bonds, and the anguish of 
 bleeding human hearts ; husbands, and wives, and 
 parents, and children ; the shameless violation of 
 wedded love; »churcli membership and adultery ; 
 in a, fraternal and Christian spirit. What in the 
 world is the work of a Christian Tract Society if 
 slavery is to be excluded from its rebukes 1 This 
 trimming and treacherous society is sanctioned by 
 the eloquence of Henry Ward Beecher. Now, let 
 me place before you some account of the " Church 
 Anti-Slavery Society" at Worcester. Its pream- 
 ble, constitution, and declaration of principles 
 avow its nature and objects. "The utter destruc- 
 tion of that atrocious system of Chattel Slavery 
 wdiich is maintained in the United States." " The 
 duties of the officers and committees shall be . 
 . . . to induce action by the Churches with 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 61 
 
 reference to slavery, and to inculcate the duties of 
 civil government, of civil ru]«*rs, and of citizens, in 
 respect of lis overthrow.'''' The word of God our 
 charter to freedom, and our armory against 
 slavery. " The system of American slavery, and 
 the praclice of slaveholding is essentially sinful 
 and Anti-Christian, and to he dealt ivith therefore as 
 such hij Christian churches and ministers.'''' "No 
 compromise ^vith slavery allowable, but its total 
 extinction to be demanded at once, in the name of 
 God.'''' Dr. Cheever is a prominent advocate of 
 this Society ; Henry Ward Beecher has refused to 
 speak at its meeting. Suflfer me to direct your at- 
 tention to one more society. I mentioned just 
 now amongst the conniving organizations, " The 
 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
 Missions." The Cherokee and Choctaw Mission 
 stations, it is well known, are in gross complicity 
 with shivery. You can readily believe that the 
 most revolting features of the slave system will 
 be visii)le amongst such half civilized tribes, and 
 the guilt of the Board is the greater which toler- 
 ates it in its list. Now, the missionaries of these 
 stations, as well as their church-members, are 
 slaveholders. Just lately the Choctaw station 
 has been separated from the Board, but the Chero- 
 kee mission is still supported by its funds, and 
 shielded by its countenance. At the beginning of 
 the present year, 18G0, a discussion took place in 
 Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, of which Mr. Beecher 
 is the pastor. The debate created great excite- 
 ment, which extended over five nights. The dis- 
 cussion was raised by some who held sounder 
 views on the question of slavery than the pastor, 
 
62 AISIERICAX SLAVERY. 
 
 and the resolution of the thoroi.i<];h-going Anti- 
 Slavery advocate was to the effect, " That this 
 church contribute no naore money to the Ameri- 
 can Board, etc." On the fourth night of the de- 
 bate, with all his influence, as the pastor of the 
 church; and his unquestioned ability as a debater, 
 Mr. Beecher supported the following positions, in 
 a speech, more than two hours long : " That the 
 American Board was the proper depository of the 
 contributions of Plymouth Church for Foreign 
 Missions ; that the Board had, to an unparalleled 
 degree, kept pace with public sentiment on the 
 subject of slavery ; that it now held Anti-Slavery 
 doctrines, and had faithfully and consistently ap- 
 plied these doctrines to missionary work ; and 
 that its record on this whole subject was clean, 
 clear, and pure." Mr. Til ton, one of the members 
 of the church, replied in a masterly address, which 
 must have occupied two or three hours in the 
 delivery, to the positions of the pastor. I recom- 
 mend you all to read it. I must confess that I 
 think the disciple is above his master. The speech 
 of Mr. Tilton is a good set-off to the timid and 
 compromising policy of the clerical editors of the 
 New-York Independent. Mr. Tilton, I believe, is 
 connected with the editorial department. Mr. 
 Beecher is a warm defender of the American 
 Board ; Dr. Cheever, with characteristic consis- 
 tency, moved, at the last meeting of the Board in 
 Philadelphia, the following temperate resolution: 
 "That, in the opinion of the Board, the holding of 
 slaves be pronounced an immorality, inconsistent 
 with membership in any Christian church ; and 
 that it ought to be required that these Missionary 
 
AMERICAN SLAYERY. 63 
 
 churches sliould immediately put away from 
 themselves this sin, and should cease to sanction 
 it even in appearance." Of course, Dr. Cheever's 
 resolution was lost at the Board, and Mr. Tilton's 
 in Plymouth Church. The pro-slavery journals, 
 such as the New-York Observe?- and others, are ex- 
 ultin;rr in the evidence which they think the tone of 
 Mr. Beecher's speech betrays of growing conserv- 
 atism on the question of slavery, and the friends 
 of the slave are lamenting that his anti-slavery 
 position is not more clear, unswerving, and 
 strong. Fifthly. It is alleged that Dr. Cheever 
 is intemperate and violent. It is all nonsense. 
 [Hear.] Dr. Cheever does not hurl the scathing 
 wrath of the Hebrew prophets, except when he 
 quotes their Divine indignation, and is only as 
 extreme and impracticable as the Sermon on the 
 Mount. Henry Ward Beecher is as fierce as Dr. 
 Cheever when he is in the mood. Only his is just 
 an explosion and done with it. I have read Dr. 
 Clieever's God against Slavery, his last thanks- 
 giving sermon, and his lecture on John Brown, 
 etc., and I defy any body to select invective as ver 
 naciilar as the following in Mr. Beecher's Harper- 
 Ferry Sermon : '' Get timid priests out of the 
 way, and lying societies, whose cowardice slanders 
 the Gospel which they pretend to difluse." The 
 gentle Wesley called slavery the " sum of all vil- 
 lainies." Dr. Adam Clarke, in the coolness of 
 the study, writing his commentary, penned : 
 '• How can any nation pretend to fast and worship 
 God at all, or dare profess that they believe in the 
 existence of such a Being, while they carry on what 
 IS called the slave-trade, and traffic in the souls, 
 
64 ^ AMERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 and blood, and bodies of men? O ye most 
 flagitious of knaves, and worst of hypocrites ! 
 Cast off at once the mask of religion, and deepen 
 not your endless perdition by professing the faith 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ while ye continue in this 
 traffic !" I remember no passage in Dr. Cheever 
 like that. No, no ; the hostility to Dr. Cheever 
 is not to be explained by the charge of rash 
 words. Slaveholding and conniving churches do 
 not mind so much a few burning sentences. 
 When they know that they need expect nothing 
 more, they wince at the time, and all is over. It 
 is when they dread action that they are aroused. 
 Deep religious convictions, and calm, resolute, 
 persistent exertion are the secret of retaliation. 
 Society never troubles itself about hair-brained 
 fanatics. They are always their own cure. The 
 anger of Dr. Cheever's opponents is the proof that 
 they know he is not mad. It is the impregnable 
 force of his position, and the resistless grip of his 
 argument which make them writhe. Dr. Cheever 
 can not get a publisher for his last work in New- 
 York. Nay worse, the Carters, who have pub- 
 lished several of his books, dare not issue a neu- 
 tral work on the sanctity of the Sabbath, which he 
 has prepared for the press. Men are not thus 
 frightened out of their propriety by the ill-temper 
 of the insane. I have not much patience with this 
 talk about hard words. For what is human lan- 
 guage permitted to develop its keenest utterances, 
 if not to strike down wicked things 1 There is no 
 surer sign of benumbed sensibility, and of national 
 declension in any special or general evil, than the 
 prevalence of that squeamish euphemism which puts 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. Go 
 
 '''' sweet for bitter.'' Velvet adjectives must not 
 clothe villainies. Every epithet for enormous in- 
 iquity ought to blister lilie a burning coal, and 
 every sentence ought to be armed with the tail of 
 a scorpion— all its startling pungency, but steeped 
 in love instead of venom. There are some things 
 so good, and some so bad, that they never ought 
 to appear except in superlatives. To this latter 
 class belongs slavery. 
 
 ye cold-hearted, frozen formalists ! 
 
 Oa such a theme, 'tis impious to be calm ; 
 
 Passion is reasoa, and transport temper here." 
 
 Sixthly, it is said that Dr. Cheever preaches per- 
 petually about slavery, and nothing else. It is not 
 so. I have seen it affirmed in his own church, 
 that the ordinary range of Evangelical doctrine, 
 instruction, exhortation, and comfort presented in 
 Dr. Checver's pulpit, has been quite equal in 
 amount to that of any pulpit in New-York, during 
 the period of Dr. Cheever's Anti-Slavery advocacy. 
 [Loud cheers.] His set discourse on slavery are 
 usually, if not always, announced before hand. 
 Seventhly, it has been objected that Dr. Cheever's 
 own denomination has done little or nothing for 
 him. I believe there are some Western churches 
 that have the disposition but not the ability to help 
 him. The Western churches generally, which are 
 the soundest on the question of slavery, are com- 
 paratively weak churches and largely dependent 
 on the Northern and Eastern churches, and the 
 latter are mainly conniving or pro slavery 
 churches. Besides, it is not to be questioned, that 
 my own denomination is more deeply infected 
 
66 AilERICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 tlian it has ever been with the spirit of compro- 
 mise. 1 am afraid that their honorable distinc- 
 tion in anti-slavery earnestness and consistency is 
 being tarnished. Eighthly, I have heard it asked, 
 '• Why did Dr. Cheever build such an expensive 
 church, and in such a position, to be burdened in 
 this manner f This is a difficulty very easily 
 discussed in Glasgow. We are all fond of hand- 
 some and expensive churches. Gentlemen of 
 wealth do well in raising noble structures for the 
 service of God. Many of us have heavy ground- 
 rent debts, etc., on our Glasgow churches. Sup- 
 pose some twenty of the most opulent supporters 
 of any Glasgow church, with their wives and fami- 
 lies, were to withdraw, who amongst us, even if 
 we had a good congregation remaining, would not 
 be on the brink of churcli insolvency'? If any of 
 us were to drive away such a number of our people 
 by pro-slavery preaching w^c should have to ap- 
 peal to New-York to save us from bankruptcy. 
 Ninthly, some have been perplexed how a church 
 which lately sent $3000 to the Congregational 
 Union for denominational purposes should be so 
 easily embarrassed by debt. The explanation is 
 easy. The conspirators would not give a fraction 
 to the debt in most cases, because that would re- 
 lieve the difficulties of the pastor, but they freely 
 contributed to the Congregational Union. Several 
 gentlemen gave $250 each for denominational 
 objects, but would do nothing for the debt. Other 
 difficulties might be stated and answered, but I 
 have occupied for too much time. Permit me to 
 say before I sit down, that I do not see, in looking 
 over the field of the world, that we can do a 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 67 
 
 greater or better work thcan to support Dr. 
 Cheever in his po>jition in New- York. We ought 
 to raise £500 or £1000 for this object in Ghisgow. 
 It was nevermore important than now that we 
 shouh;! make ourselves heard across the water on 
 this question. People living in a great city can 
 scarcely see the smoke which they are inhaling; 
 but when you get a little way out into the coun- 
 try and look back, the dingy yellow stain dyes the 
 blue sky with the sharpest distinctness. It will be of 
 some service for Americans to know that we, who 
 live out of the slave system, see as they do not the 
 foul blot against God's clear heavens. When the ol- 
 factory organs are saturated with an ill odor, which 
 breathed from day to day and year to year, we 
 become totally unconscious of its presence. But 
 our untainted senses rev^olt at the shocking evils 
 of slavery. I fear — but I hope that I am wrong — 
 I fear that the time for gaining a hearing on this 
 question in the United States has gone by. In 
 consequence of a long course of silence, and com- 
 promise, and apology, truth has lost its power to 
 penetrate, vitalize and illumine. Unless I am 
 totally ignorant of American affiiirs in Church and 
 State, tliey have arrived at that terrible crisis 
 when truth has become only a scorching and ex- 
 asperating glare of condemnation. The history of 
 a thousand nations proclaims that nothing remains 
 to rectify the insulted laws of God and the in- 
 jured rights of men, but judgment, desolation, and 
 blood. [Hear.] The Americans are bone of our 
 bone, flesh of our flesh, and blood of our blood, 
 and surely are bound at least to hear us. Nay, 
 we bought, at an enormous cost, the right to be 
 
68 AMERICAN SLAYER Y. 
 
 heard by washing our hands from the terrible in- 
 iquity. [Cheers.] Let it go forth as the calm, 
 deliberate, and solemn conviction of this meeting 
 to-day that America can not flourish while slavery 
 is gnawing away its moral strength, and marring 
 its spiritual beauty. [Applause.] Let it be the 
 prayer of every one that that country may yield 
 to the quickening influence of the inspired truth 
 of God, open like a flower to the light, and fling 
 the hidden and pernicious worm forever from its 
 bosom ! The Rev. gentleman sat down amidst 
 great cheering. 
 
 Mr. M'Dowell seconded the motion, which was 
 carried with applause. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Smyth, Free St. George's Church, 
 moved that a committee be appointed of the 
 movers and seconders of the resolutions, to raise 
 subscriptions. He cordially sympathized with the 
 movement in favor of Dr. Cheever. In common 
 with others, he had felt difficulties in consequence 
 of rumors from New- York, and from quarters 
 nearer home. But these had been removed by 
 full explanation. He had been much gratified by 
 the stand that Henry Ward Beecher formerly 
 took, but he was sorry to find that he was retiring 
 from that position, and leaving Dr. Cheever to 
 fight the battle alone, on the sure ground which he 
 had taken up. He could not trust himself to ex- 
 press the indignation he felt in regard to the com- 
 plicity of the American churches in the matter of 
 slavery. It was not humiliating that men who, in 
 every other department of Christian service had 
 approved themselves to God and their fellow-men, 
 should, for any considerations whatever, occupy 
 
, AilERICAT^- SLxlVERY. 69 
 
 the position they still held in regard to American 
 slavery. Dr. Smyth then referred to the unpleas- 
 antness of the duty he had himself to perform 
 when, in company with the late Dr. Macfarlane, 
 he denounced slavery thirty years ago, when a 
 number of influential slaveholders belonged to his 
 church, then St. George's Established, and added : 
 Let us be charitable then to our brethren in 
 America, and pray that God will give them grace 
 to see how they are dishonoring him by tlieir 
 complicity with slavery. Dr. Smyth, before con- 
 cluding, strongly recommended for perusal an 
 Appeal to the Wesleyans on the subject of slave- 
 ry, which had just been published. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Knox seconded the third resolution, 
 which, like the rest, was carried by acclamation. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Robinson, in moving a vote of thanks 
 to the chairman, which was heartily responded to, 
 expressed in a sentence his sympathy with all that 
 had been stated in course of the proceedings. 
 
 The Chairman, in acknowledging the vote of 
 thanks, expressed his gratification at witnessing so 
 large a meeting of the citizens at this time of day. 
 
 Rev. A. Fraser, of Ewing Place Church, then 
 pronounced the benediction. 
 
DR. GUTHRIE'S REPLY, 
 
 To the Editor of "THE PKESBYTEKIAN," 
 Philadelphia, U. S. 
 
 Edinburgh, 27th February, 1860. 
 
 Sir : — In your paper of the 28th of January you 
 have an article headed : " Drs. Candlish and Guth- 
 rie." Had that article appeared in any other than 
 a religious journal, professing the highest ortho- 
 doxy, I would not have thought of noticing it, or 
 of asking, as an act of simple justice, that you in- 
 sert this reply. And, indeed, I am not so anxious 
 to defend myself, as to seize the opportunity of 
 lifting up my voice on behalf of the poor slaves, 
 and of vindicating religion from the scandal to 
 which it is exposed by your silence and that of 
 others on the shame and sin of your otherwise 
 noble country. 
 
 You say that "for my sentiments, temper, and 
 language," at the meeting convened here to pro- 
 test against American slavery, and to sympathize 
 with Dr. Cheever, " there can be no apology." 1 
 will relieve you at once from any hesitation about 
 accepting and inserting an apology by saying, 
 that I do not write to oifer one. Bad as, accord- 
 to your account, my temper is, and capable as I 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. ^1 
 
 am, in your opinion, of taking " leave of both ot 
 my senses and piety," it so happens that, much as 
 I have been engaged in keen public controversies 
 daring the last thirty years, I have never yet had 
 to apologize to any one ; and I thank God from the 
 bottom of my heart that I have not now to go 
 down upon my knees to any slave-breeder, slave- 
 dealer, slaveholder, or to one I reckon more guilty 
 than many slaveholders, one who, called to watch 
 and ixive warninfj aijainst crimes and sins, is, in re- 
 gard to slavery, "a dumb dog that can not bark." 
 
 I write, not to inake an apology, but to ask one. 
 There are small charges in your article which are 
 as untrue as they are contemptible — they are be- 
 neath my notice. So I pass on to statements 
 equally false, but of a graver kind. You seem to 
 have proceeded in -this attack on Dr. Caudlish and 
 me upon " private information from an American 
 gentleman." I presume your informer, the spy 
 in our camp, is the person who was pointed out to 
 me as a minister from the slave States. I beg his 
 pardon if I am mistaken ; but if I have hit the nail 
 on the head, let me tell him that it would have 
 been more worthy of a gentleman and of a minis- 
 ter had he, instead of sneaking away to write a 
 letter you have been too ready to believe, come 
 f )rward to the platform like a man, and met us 
 fice to flice. However that be, in your anxiety to 
 damage, I do not say us, but any influence which 
 our protest against slavery and its abettors might 
 have, you have lent him a too willing ear, as I now 
 proceed to show. 
 
 You state that I " spoke of the American eagle as 
 polluted with blood." Now, that may or may not 
 
72 AMERICAN SLAYEEY. 
 
 be the case ; but I never used these words; nor 
 said, mdeed, a word, good or bad, about your 
 eagle. 
 
 You state, also, that I wished the next negro in- 
 surrection to succeed, " though they might have 
 to fight to the knees in the blood of the white man." 
 How can I deny that? for in your article are not 
 the offensive words, " fight to the knees in the blood 
 of the white man," set within inverted commas, 
 the usual sign of a quotation, and the pledge of ac- 
 curacy 1 Alas for the credit of inverted commas 
 and certain religious newspapers ! There is not a 
 word of truth in your statement. The wronged 
 and down-trodden negro may or may not be jus 
 tified in doing for his personal freedom what youi 
 own fithers did for their national liberty ; though 
 a man, he is black, and notwithstanding that an 
 old-flishioned Book called the Bible says that God 
 made of one blood all the families of the earth, he 
 may no more have rights than the cow he is sold 
 with ; yet I never used the words, nor spoke of 
 blood either on black men's knees or on American 
 eagles. I felt confident, on reading your paper, 
 that I had not employed the expressions you put 
 into my mouth. Still, having a deep abhorrence 
 of slavery, and feeling profound grief that such a 
 system is allowed to live in such a country as 
 yours, and that churches of Christ and ministers of 
 the gospel have in so many instances failed to tes- 
 tify against it as they should, and God's old pro- 
 phets would certainly have done, I thought it pos-/ 
 sible that my indignation might have exploded ii^ / 
 some such terms. So I have appealed to the re- 
 collections of parties who were present, and I hav/ ► 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY. 73 
 
 carefully examined the report of the meeting in 
 the three principal Edinburgh newspapers ; and I 
 have the satisfaction of iuforniino; you that neither 
 the one nor the other give the shadow of a founda- 
 tion for your charge. So, in the hope that hence- 
 forth you will be less ready to take up an evil re- 
 port against your neighbor, and more slow in 
 trusting to "the private information" of such "an 
 American gentleman" as attended our meeting, J 
 pass on to other matters. 
 
 You say that I was " blood-thirsty." A horrid 
 charge to bring against any minister of the Gos- 
 pel ! If you mean, by applying this abusive lan- 
 guage to me, that I delight in the shedding of 
 human blood, or would have recourse to arms 
 rather than suffer any wrong, I deny your charge ; 
 and appeal for my veracity to those who know 
 me, and know how I abhor the cruelties insepara- 
 ble from war. Perhaps you mean something 
 else. Perhaps you mean that I would regard the 
 slaves, if they had a fair prospect of success, as 
 justified in rising to recover their freedom, and, 
 as a last resource, meeting arms with arms in the 
 battle for liberty. If so, I plead guilty to the 
 charge; guilty, I must add, as were our Wallace 
 and your Washington. Washington and his com- 
 patriots thought not liberty only, but independ- 
 ence even worth fighting for. In the days of the 
 struggle which you yearly commemorate, minis- 
 ters preached up resistance ; pulpits as well as 
 drums sounded to arms. You laud the men who 
 did fight, and were ready " to fight to the knees 
 in the blood of the white man," merely for the 
 right to tax themselves, and have you the assur 
 
74 AMEKICAN SLAVERY. 
 
 ance to hold up your hands in horror at the bare 
 idea of poor Africans, ground to the dust, doing 
 the same to save themselves, their wives, their 
 children, from bleeding under the brutal lash, and 
 being' sold like cattle to the highest bidder ? 
 What were the wrongs your fixthers suffered from 
 Britain compared with the untold wrongs your 
 slaves suffer on the same soil "? Let the great 
 Jonathan Edwards answer that question. He 
 says: "We all dread political slavery, or sub- 
 jection to the arbitrary power of a king, or of any 
 man or men not deriving their authority from 
 the people. Yet such a state is inconceivably 
 preferable to the slavery of the negroes. Suppose 
 that in the late war we had been subdued by Great 
 Britain, we should have been taxed without our 
 consent. But these taxes would have amounted 
 to but a small part of our property. Whereas 
 the negroes are deprived of all their property ; 
 no part of their earnings is their own ; the whole 
 is their master's. In a conquered state we should 
 have been at liberty to dispose of ourselves and 
 of our property, in most cases, as we should 
 choose. We should have been free to live in 
 this or that town or place ; in any part of the 
 country, or to remove out of the country ; to 
 apply to this or that business ; to labor or not ; 
 and, excepting a sufficiency for taxes, to dispose 
 of the fruit of our labor to our own benefit. But 
 the unhappy negroes in slavery can do none of 
 these things. They must do what they are com- 
 manded, and as much as they are commanded, on 
 pain of the lash. They must live wherever they 
 are placed, ana must coniine themselves to that 
 
AMERICAN SLAYERY. 76 
 
 spot on pain of death. So that Great Britain, in 
 her hite attempt to enslave Annerica, committed 
 a very small crime indeed in comparison with 
 the crime of those who enslave the Africans." 
 Your great Jefferson also speaks out his mind as 
 strongly and as truly. " One hour," said he, " of 
 American slavery outweighs whole ages of the 
 oppression we rose against England to shake off!" 
 You can not deny that ; and though a violent ter- 
 mination to slavery is not one that any reflecting 
 and right-thinking man would wish, the system, 
 as one of cruelty, of immorality, of robbery, and 
 of murder, is accursed both of God and man. It 
 is the plague-spot of your State ; the plague-spot 
 of your churches ; and should its end, which God 
 forbid, be one of violence, on the heads of those 
 who are not straining every nerve to bring it to 
 a speedy and bloodless termination, will lie the 
 guilt of all the fearful crimes that shall accompany 
 its dying struggles. When these come, and the 
 slaves are fighting for their rights, your disasters 
 may recall the fearful words of Jefferson : " What 
 attribute of Jehovah would allow him to take part 
 with us ■?" 
 
 You sneeringly represent many of us as being 
 " much more concerned for the slaves in the 
 United States than for the degraded and wretched 
 in their own land." Those who know us know 
 that this is not true. Let me tell you that our 
 concern extends to others besides the slaves in 
 your country. Your informant: concealed, or you 
 have omitted in your article, all reference to the 
 hearty admiration which I expressed for your 
 countrymen and country — its greatness, its noble 
 
76 AMEI»1CAX SLAVERY. 
 
 missions, its net-work of schools, its evangelical 
 churches ; but this ungenerous treatment shall not 
 prevent me from expressing the deep interest we 
 feel in the prosperity and character of your nation. 
 Because of that, we are grieved to see the contrast 
 between what is now passing in Russia and pass- 
 ing in the United States. Looking across Europe, 
 we see a mighty despot, the head of a Church 
 where the light of the Gospel shines dimly through 
 many an error, bending his giant strength to 
 break the chains of serfdom ; while in free, in 
 Protestant America, States are driving — shame 
 to see it — innocent and free men of color from 
 their territories ; a man is sentenced to the gal- 
 lows for no other crime than aiding, in obedience 
 to the dictates of religion and humanity, a poor 
 enslaved brother in his flight; and many, calling 
 themselves free men and Christians, are seeking 
 to restore the accursed slave-trade, and rivet the 
 chains of bondage. The very report of these 
 things makes our blood to boil. And when such 
 things are done, many of you keep silence who 
 ought to " cry aloud, and spare not," while some 
 wickedly and profanely attempt to justify them 
 from the word of God. No wonder, when Scrip-- 
 ture is perverted to such horrid purposes, that 
 some abolitionists have been sent by the recoil 
 over into infidelity. 
 
 Let me say, in conclusion, that no lasting peace 
 nor true prosperity can be yours till the evil 
 thing is put away. I believe that God will not 
 continue to bless a nation which continues to 
 maintain a system that is opposed to the religion 
 of Christ, and tramples in the dust its golden pre- 
 
AMERICAX SLAVERY. 77 
 
 cept : " Po unto others as you would have others 
 do unto you." Without this spot, how bright 
 your sun would shine ! What a noble ancestry 
 you had, and, rid of slavery, what a noble people 
 you would he ! Little did the Pilgrim Fathers 
 who fled for liberty to your soil, expect the day 
 when others for liberty would flee from it — in 
 holds of ships, or by journeys in the dead of 
 night, with the North star for their guide, and 
 God for their protector, and bloodhounds on their 
 track, glad to escape from a land that prayer and 
 piety once consecrated to freedom. But we cher- 
 ish the hope that, in the very confusion into which 
 the question of slavery has now plunged your 
 country, we see the " beginning of the end." We 
 rejoice iu the bold front, the onward movement, 
 the increasing numbers, the growing power of the 
 anti-slavery party. May God bless their banners, 
 and speed on their cause, till, dark skin and white, 
 your whole nation, amid universal rejoicings, hold 
 a fast, even the fast that God hath chosen, the 
 best evidence of a true religious revival, " to 
 loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy 
 burdens, and to let the oppressed go free " 
 
 I am yours truly, 
 
 Thomas Guthrie. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 011 898 764