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ACTS 
 
 POST OFFICE DEF'T. 
 
 DEC 7 1891 
 LIBRARY, 
 
 Anti- Slavery Apostles. 
 
 PARKER PILLSBURY. 
 
 "And they went Everywhere Preaching the 
 Word." — Acts, viii : 4. 
 
 CONCORD, N. H. 
 
 1883 
 
, -y > s 4. t 
 
 
 1823 
 
 Clague, VVk.oman, Schlicht, & Co., 
 
 tJrintrrB, 
 
 ROCHESTER, N. ^ . 
 
WITHDRAW, i 
 
 MAY y 1919 
 
 PU ART 
 
 WASHJjN 3r*G NT, - D. C. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Some books, judged by their titles, are more remark- 
 able for what they do not contain, than for what they 
 do. This work is only Acts, not the Acts of the Anti- 
 Slavery Apostles. It is only a small portion of a very 
 small part of those apostles. 
 
 There were many in the great west, as well as not a 
 few in the east, whose labors, sacrifices and sufferings 
 entitle them to volumes of well-written biography, 
 who can scarcely be mentioned here, even by name. 
 
 'At this time of my life of nearly three score and 
 fourteen years, more than forty of which have been 
 spent in the field of moral, peaceful and religious agi- 
 tation for the rights of humanity, it seemed presump- 
 tion in me to attempt a labor of even this magnitude. 
 And it was only earnest, continued importunity on the 
 part of my very few surviving associates in the con- 
 flict, and their friends, that finally determined my 
 course. Truth only has been sought. Not the whole 
 truth ; for that were impossible. But strict truth and 
 exact justice, to the full extent of my time and space. 
 
 The present generation knows little of the terrible 
 mysteries and meanings of slavery or anti-slavery ; 
 the outrages and horrors of the former, or the desper- 
 ate and deadly encounters with tfie monster by the 
 latter, long before the cannonade of Fort Sumpter, or 
 the dreadful war chorus of the subsequent rebellion. 
 And all which is now attempted is some disclosure of 
 those mysteries. 
 
 By anti-slavery apostles are meant those only whose 
 work was in the lecturing field ; who literally " went 
 everywhere preaching the word ; " often as with their 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 lives in their hands. Nor will only few of them, how- 
 ever worthy and deserving, be mentioned even by 
 name. This work will be rather pictures and sketches 
 than history. It will hardly enter more than two 
 states, New Hampshire and Massachusetts ; never go 
 beyond New England. But in New England every 
 type and phase of anti-slavery experience, doing, 
 suffering and triumphing was represented to the 
 fullest possible extent. What was true there was true 
 everywhere in the country. And the truth on slavery 
 and anti-slavery can be presented on so small space, 
 and in time equally limited, as well as if the whole 
 country were included, and all the thirty years of the 
 moral and peaceful, and so, truly religious, agitation 
 of the mighty problem were covered and all the heroes 
 and martyrs named. The whole, as originally in- 
 tended, would have comprised acts and experiences 
 of some of those heroes, with brief personal sketches 
 of them, together with short biographical notices of 
 William Lloyd Garrison, of The Liberator, and Na- 
 thaniel Peabody Rogers, of the Herald of Freedom. 
 
 But, as the work of writing went on, articles began 
 to appear from our old opponents or their children, 
 not only declaring that they or their fathers abolished 
 the evil, but that it could have been sooner and more 
 easily done, "had Garrison and his small, but motley 
 following " been out of their way ! So some chapters 
 of acts of the //-^-slavery apostles, became necessary* 
 at cost of both extending the volume, and also ex- 
 cluding some worthy names and noble deeds that had 
 earned good right to grace these pages. These mis- 
 representations came mainly from the clergy, as did 
 most of our bitterest opposition while prosecuting our 
 anti-slavery labors, as will be hereafter shown beyond 
 all question or contradiction. 
 
INTRODUCTION. V. 
 
 So now the order of the book will be : A chapter 
 on Mr. Garrison ; a second, on Mr. Rogers ; a third 
 on slavery — as it was ; then one on anti-slavery, what 
 it was not, and what it was ; and then follow the acts 
 of the anti-slavery apostles ; with acts of the pro-sla- 
 very apostles subjoined ; the latter generally telling 
 their own story in their own words, works and ways, 
 no cross-questioning ever entering into their truly 
 judgment-day assizes, as will be made fully to appear 
 to a surrounding world. And it scarcely need be 
 added that the abundant testimony adduced, is only a 
 small part of what the churches and their ministers 
 have treasured up against themselves, to be hereafter 
 unfolded from their own archives, should occasion for 
 it ever arise. 
 
 Concord, N. H., 1883. P. P. 
 
 POS 
 
 rOFfiCEOEi 
 
 "T. 
 
 
 DEC 7 1891 
 
 
 LI 
 
 
 Y. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction, 3 
 
 Chapter I. 
 William Lloyd Garrison, -..----9 
 
 Chapter II. 
 Nathaniel Peabody Rogers. ------ 28 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 Slavery — As it Was, -.------47 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Anti-Slavery — What it Was Not, and What it Was, - 72 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 ■ 
 
 Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, with some Personal 
 
 Sketches and Experiences, - - - - - -85 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Conventions and Meetings with Rogers and Foster — 
 
 Digression on New Organization, - 102 
 
 Chap per VII. 
 Acts of the Apostles Continued, with Pwsonal Sketches 
 
 of Stephen Symonds Foster, - 123 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Acts of the Anostles Continued — Letter of Concord 
 Women — Clerical Usurpation — More Revelations of 
 New Organization — Riotous Proceedings at Dover — 
 By the Editor of the Herald of Freedom, - - - 156 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Meetings in West Chester — Riotous and Shameful Conduct 
 — Ride to Derry, and what came of it — Franklin Mob 
 Described in a Letter by Mr. Foster, ... 182 
 
(ON IT-.N I S. VII 
 
 » 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 Dartmouth College — Riotous Behavior of the Students — 
 Strafford County Anniversary — Eastern Railroad and 
 its Jim Crow Cars — Outrage on Colored Passengers, - 204 
 
 Chap iek XI. 
 
 Discussion on Church Organization by Rev. Mr. Putnam 
 and Rev. Mr. Sargent — Hillsborough County Con- 
 vention at Hancock — and Meeting at Nashua, by Mr. 
 Foster, and what came of it, .... 24*1 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 The Martyr Period — Imprisonment or Allen, Brown, 
 
 Beach, Harriman and Foster, ----- 283 
 
 Chapter XIII. 
 Conventions at Nantucket and New Bedford — Frederick 
 Douglass Discovered — Letter from Mr. Oarrison — 
 Meetings and Mob Demonstrations in Salem — Opera- 
 tions in Maine — Mobs in Portland and Harwich, - 324 
 
 ('II \PIER XIV. 
 
 Some Acts of the Pro-Slavery Apostles — Personal Encounter 
 with the Henni ker, N. IE, Church and Suffolk, Mass., 
 Association of Ministers — Rev. Dr. Bacon and Son on 
 Slavery and Who Abolished it — the Church and Clergy 
 in the Mexican War, ------- 364 
 
 Chapter XV. 
 Acts of Pro-Slavery Apostles — General Assembly of the 
 Presbyterian Church — American Board of Commis- 
 sioners for Foreign Missions — the Baptist Church — 
 Methodist-Episcopal Church — -Protestant Episcopal 
 Church — Campbellities — American Bible and Tract 
 Societies — Fugitive Slave Law, ... - 386 
 
 Chapter XVI. 
 Some Personal Sketches and Reminiscences — a Last Speech 
 
 in an Anti -Slavery Anniversary Gathering, - 479 
 
 dec 7 mi 
 
 LI ; ,y 
 
 twl 
 
ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 The Acts of the twelve apostles are not the history 
 of Christianity. Nor will the Acts of the Anti-Slavery 
 Apostles be a history of the anti-slavery movement in 
 the United States. My own beginning in that sublime 
 enterprise was in the year 1840, when, dating from the 
 establishment of The Liberator, in Boston, by William 
 Lloyd Garrison, it was about ten years old. At that 
 time, so far as can be shown, was first announced the 
 doctrine of immediate unconditional emancipation to 
 every slave, without compensation to master or expa- 
 triation to the slave. 
 
 Most of my anti-slavery work was of the missionary 
 character, as was that of the first Christian apostles, 
 who "went everywhere preaching the word." And 
 the purpose of this Scripture is to present a true 
 record, as far as practicable, of what passed under my 
 own immediate observation, and in which it was my 
 honor to bear some humble part. My earliest asso- 
 ciates, editors as well as lecturers, are mostly now no 
 more, and some personal account of a part of them 
 is also in my present contemplation. My first anti- 
 slavery newspapers were The Liberator, The Eman- 
 cipator, published in New York, organ and property 
 of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and Herald of 
 
IO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 Freedom, of Concord. New Hampshire. Through 
 some changes occurring in 1840, The Emancipator 
 passed out of the society's hands, but was immedi- 
 ately succeeded by the National Anti-Slavery Standard, 
 which continued with unswerving integrity till slavery 
 was abolished in the country by presidential proclama- 
 tion, and the male slave at least was made secure in 
 his right of suffrage and citizenship. The first issue 
 of his Liberator by Mr. Garrison was on January 1, 
 1831. It was a most humble, unpretentious little sheet 
 of four pages, about fourteen inches by nine in 
 size, but charged with the destiny of a race of human 
 beings whose'redemption from chattel, brutal bondage, 
 was one day to shake to its foundations the mightiest 
 republic ever yet existing on the globe. My first 
 introduction to Mr. Garrison was in the early spring 
 of 1839. I had just concluded to undertake a short 
 lecturing and financial agency for the Massachu- 
 setts Anti-Slavery Society, and was invited to a 
 meeting of its executive committee, to mature my 
 arrangements. It was an evening business session, in 
 West street, Boston, and at the close Mr. Garrison 
 invited me to his home, then of unassuming preten- 
 sions, in Seaver Place, to pass the night. The next 
 day was Saturday, and I went by stage to Fitchburg, 
 about fifty miles, and on Sunday evening delivered my 
 first address on slavery, as agent of my association. 
 And though I did in the course of that year, and the 
 beginning of 1840, accept and occupy the position of 
 a minister for a very small Congregational church and 
 society in an obscure New Hampshire town, it seems 
 on the whole more pertinent, proper and desirable, to 
 date the beginning of my life mission and labor from 
 that anti-slavery committee meeting in Boston and 
 introduction to Mr. Garrison, and first work as an anti- 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. II 
 
 slavery agent in Fitchburg and through the county of 
 Worcester in the spring of 1839. 
 
 Of the boyhood history of Mr. Garrison this may 
 not be the place to speak. Like many men of high 
 eminence, he commenced life among the lowly. Nor 
 was his native town, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 
 ever distinguished for any but most conservative ideas 
 in government, religion or social policy. His excellent 
 mother, a devout member of the Baptist church, early 
 sent him to learn the trade of a shoemaker. Fortu- 
 nately too early, for his knees could not support the 
 lap-stone, the anvil of the shoemaker of that day, and 
 he was soon discharged, and entered as an apprentice 
 to a cabinet maker. But neither was this a success. Nor 
 did he even approach nor tend to his future high call- 
 ing, until, while still a youth, he entered a printing office. 
 That, as has been truly said, was to him high school, 
 college and university, from which he graduated with 
 honors, after long and faithful apprenticeship. 
 
 His first business enterprise was to establish a little 
 newspaper in his native town, which he characteristic- 
 ally named the Free Press. He soon learned, how- 
 ever, that the time for a Free Press was not vet. But 
 the voice of his genius still said, Cry ! and he re- 
 sponded next in Boston, with the National Philan- 
 thropist, devoted doctrinally and practically to entire 
 abstinence from all intoxicating drinks. His motto 
 was, " Moderate drinking, the down-hill road to 
 drunkenness." This undertaking was in the vear 
 1827, when he was twenty-two years old. But the 
 Philanthropist, like the Free Press, proved a prema- 
 ture birth. In 1828, his powers of mind and heart 
 coming to be better appreciated, he had and accepted 
 a proposition to go to Bennington, Yerruont, and 
 establish a political paper to be known as The Journal 
 
12 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 of the Times, and to advocate the claims of John 
 Quincy Adams to the Presidency of the United States. 
 Here, again, was a failure, and this journal soon slept 
 with its predecessors. However, the valiant, perse- 
 vering young editor was still full of courage and hope, 
 and held on his way. He soon made acquaintance 
 with Benjamin Lundy, an early, brave and true- 
 hearted Quaker anti-slavery man, though hardly yet a 
 pronounced abolitionist. Of kindred spirit, in the 
 main, the two men formed a partnership in the 
 autumn of 1829, and together published the Genius of 
 Universal Emancipation. 
 
 But though of one spirit, there was in methods 
 between the two men a difference wide as earth and 
 heaven. Mr. Lundy, in common with the highest 
 humanities of the time, only demanded a gradual 
 removal of slavery. Mr. Garrison, instead of grad- 
 ual, almost stunned the nation with the new and 
 more excellent evangel: "Immediate and Uncon- 
 ditional Emancipation !" 
 
 Here, then, was a new problem to be solved, or 
 reconciled. An organized existence with one heart, 
 but two voices : one serene, quiet, such as men might 
 hear but not fear ; the other the seven unloosed 
 Apocalyptic thunders that men should hear, and hear- 
 ing, tremble, as had Thomas Jefferson already, even in 
 anticipation, almost half a century before the terrible 
 utterance was heard by mortal ear ! But Friend 
 Lundy's persuasion prevailed for the present. After 
 long, honest consideration and discussion, he finally 
 said to Mr. Garrison : " Well, thee may put thy 
 initials to thy editorial articles and I will put my 
 initials to mine." 
 
 But the stern logic of events soon showed that iron 
 and clay could never be so welded together. This 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 13 
 
 was in Baltimore, a slave-breeding, slave-trading, 
 slave-holding city ; indeed, had already become a 
 great shipping emporium of the domestic slave trade 
 of the United States! where, as has been said, slave 
 pens flaunted their signs in open day on the principal 
 streets, their rich owners the best city society and 
 most devout worshippers in Christian churches. The 
 wonder was that the gradualism of Lundy could be 
 tolerated. And he soon learned who had struck at 
 the great tap root of the deadly upas. Mr. Garrison 
 wrote : " My demand for immediate emancipation so 
 alarmed and excited the people everywhere, that 
 where Friend Lundy would get one new subscriber I 
 would knock off a dozen." And so the Genius of 
 Universal Emancipation would undoubtedly have soon 
 been buried in the tomb of its three predecessors who 
 owed their paternity to Mr. Garrison. But his intre- 
 pidity and fidelity in denouncing the domestic slave 
 trade and exposure of its great cruelty, in the action 
 of a ship captain engaged in it from his own native 
 town of Newburyport, led to his arrest on a charge of 
 libel, and conviction, fine, and imprisonment in a 
 Baltimore jail. Nor had he one friend in the city to 
 prevent it, if even to deplore his fate. 
 
 Released from prison, his fine and court expenses 
 being paid by Mr. Arthur Tappan of New York, and 
 his partnership with Friend Lundy dissolved by 
 mutual consent and in most cordial spirit, Mr. Garri- 
 son conceived the thought of establishing a paper at 
 Washington, where the slave power and the domestic 
 slave trade, in all their terrors, had established them- 
 selves under the sheltering wing and by direct 
 authority of the Federal Government. Having in 
 August, 1830, issued his prospectus, he visited the 
 principal cities between Baltimore and Boston to test 
 
14 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 the tone of the public feeling for such an enterprise. 
 But though he found Boston scarcely more friendly to 
 his doctrines and determinations against slavery than 
 even Baltimore itself, he finally concluded that it, 
 rather than Washington, was the ground whereon 
 The Liberator should be set up. 
 Writing, after his tour of observation, he said : 
 During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting 
 the minds of the people by a series of discourses on 
 the subject of slavery, every place I visited gave fresh 
 evidence of the fact that a greater revolution in pub- 
 lic sentiment was to be effected in the Free States, and 
 particularly in New England, than at the South. I 
 found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, 
 detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, 
 and apathy more frozen than among slave owners 
 themselves. Of course there were individual excep- 
 tions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted 
 but did not dishearten me. I determined at every 
 hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the 
 eyes of the nation within sight of Bunker Hill and in 
 the birth-place of liberty. That standard is now 
 unfurled, and long may it float, unhurt by the spolia- 
 tions of time or the missiles of a desperate foe, till 
 every chain be broken and every bondman set free ! 
 Let Southern oppressors tremble. Bet all the ene- 
 mies of the persecuted blacks tremble ! Assenting to 
 the self-evident truth maintained in the Declaration 
 of Independence, that "all men are created equal and 
 endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
 rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness," I shall strenuously contend for the 
 immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. 
 In Bark Street Church, on the fourth of July, 1829, in 
 an address on slavery, I unsuspectingly assented to 
 the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual aboli- 
 tion. I seize this opportunity to make a full and une- 
 quivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon 
 of my God, of my country, and of the poor slaves, 
 for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, 
 injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation from 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 15 
 
 my pen was published in the Genius of Universal 
 Emancipation, at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My 
 conscience is now satisfied. I am aware that many 
 object to the severity of my language. But is there 
 not cause for severity ? I will be as harsh as truth, 
 and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject 
 I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moder- 
 ation. No ! No ! Tell a man whose house is on fire 
 to give a moderate alarm ; tell him to moderately res- 
 cue his wife from the hands of the ravisher ; tell the 
 mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire 
 into which it has fallen ; but urge me not to use mod- 
 eration in a cause like the present ! I am in earnest 
 —I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not 
 retreat a single inch. And I will be heard. The 
 apathy of the people is enough to make every statue 
 leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection 
 of the dead !* 
 
 Thus, at last, had come the hour and the man. 
 The great clock of the eternities struck the hour. 
 And out of the dread silences came the prophetic 
 word which was to finish the work of Washington and 
 the Revolution, proclaiming " Liberty throughout all 
 the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." In a Balti- 
 more prison he had learned to "remember them that 
 are in bonds, as bound with them ;" and this was his 
 self-consecration, in the earnest strains of Thomas 
 Pringle : 
 
 11 Oppression ! I have seen thee face to face, 
 And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow ; 
 But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now— 
 For dread to prouder feelings doth give place 
 Of deep abhorrence ! Scorning the disgrace 
 Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow, 
 I also kneel ; but with far other vow 
 Do hail thee and thy herd of hirelings base ;— 
 I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins, 
 Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand. 
 Thy brutalizing sway — till Afric's chains 
 Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land — 
 Trampling Oppression and his iron rod : 
 Such is the vow I take : So help me God !" 
 
 * The Liberator, Vol. i, No. i : Saturday, January i, 1831. 
 
l6 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 This was the man in his sixth and twentieth year. 
 His work and word, if not his name, was The Libera- 
 tor. And to the end this was his motto : " My coun- 
 try is the world ; my countrymen are all mankind." 
 
 Of the philosophy and method of Mr. Garrison as 
 the acknowledged leader of the anti-slavery move- 
 ment, a few words cannot here be out of place. In 
 scripture phrase it might be sufficient to say, "the 
 weapons of his warfare were not carnal." He was 
 ever pre-eminently a man of peace. At this time he 
 was a devout believer in the truest, best interpretation 
 of the New Testament, especially of the Sermon on 
 the Mount and the story of the Good Samaritan. He 
 held his mission to be a completion of the work begun 
 in the Revolutionary War ; but in magnitude, sublim- 
 ity and solemnity, as well as in probable results on the 
 destiny of the world, as far transcending that, as 
 moral truth and right transcend physical force. All 
 war, he held to be inherently, intrinsically wrong. 
 And so he early declared all carnal weapons, even for 
 deliverance from bondage, contrary to the spirit of 
 Christ as well as of His teachings ; and even coun- 
 selled the slaves earnestly against any resort to them 
 in achieving their liberty. And the Constitution of 
 the American Anti-Slavery Society, work of his hand, 
 contained such a provision. 
 
 In a " Declaration of Principles adopted by a con- 
 vention assembled in Philadelphia to organize a 
 national anti - slavery association," are words like 
 these from the same brain, heart and hand : 
 
 The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable ; to invade 
 it is to usurp the prerogative of Jehovah. Every man 
 has a right to his own body, to the products of his 
 labor, to the protection of law, and to the common 
 advantages of society. It is piracy by our laws to 
 buy or steal a native African and subject him to servi- 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 1 7 
 
 tude : surely the sin is as great to enslave an American. 
 Every American citizen who detains a human being in 
 involuntary bondage is (according to Exodus 21 :i6,) 
 a man stealer. The slaves ought instantly to be set 
 free, and brought under the protection of law. 
 
 After much more in similar strain, follows this: 
 
 These are our views and principles — these our 
 designs and measures. With entire confidence in the 
 over-ruling justice of God, we plant ourselves upon 
 the Declaration of our Independence and the truths of 
 Divine Revelation as upon the Everlasting Rock. We 
 shall send forth agents to lift up everywhere the voice 
 of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty and of rebuke. 
 
 We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively, 
 anti-slavery tracts and periodicals. 
 
 We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause 
 of the suffering and the dumb. 
 
 We shall aim at a purification of the churches from 
 all participation in the guilt of slavery. 
 
 We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the 
 whole nation to speedy repentance. 
 
 Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be 
 personally defeated, but our principles, never ! Truth, 
 jnstice, reason, humanity, must and will gloriously 
 triumph ! 
 
 In youth, Garrison had been a pronounced politi- 
 cian of the conservative party, as were most of the 
 leading men of his native town. It was the sound of 
 the Greek revolution against Turkish despotism which 
 first filled his ear, and fired his young soul with the 
 spirit of freedom. The powerful appeals of Daniel 
 Webster and Henry Clay in the American Senate fed 
 the flame. Webster became to him the divinity of 
 the forum. He even contemplated at one time a 
 brief term at the West Point military school that he 
 might take the field in person in the cause of the 
 struggling Greeks. John Randolph had not yet told 
 him and Webster and Clay that "the Greeks were at 
 their own doors." 
 
iS WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 But as Mr. Garrison increased in wisdom and 
 spiritual stature, and it became evident that he was to 
 be the divinely constituted leader in the sublimest 
 movement in behalf of liberty and humanity of many 
 generations, his vision was so anointed that he saw 
 clearly that, though he was indeed to wrestle with 
 principalities and powers, and with spiritual wicked- 
 ness in high places also, his weapons were to be drawn 
 from no earthly magazines. The sword of the spirit 
 of Truth only, was to be made mighty in his hands, to 
 an extent such as had not been beheld before, from the 
 day when an apostate Christianity in the person of 
 Constantine the Great, mounted the throne of the 
 Caesars and most ingloriously proclaimed herself 
 mistress of the world ! 
 
 When the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed 
 in Philadelphia, in 1833, Garrison was a New Testa- 
 ment Christian, as he understood the word, in all the 
 word can rightly be made to mean. And most of all, 
 did he reverence the doctrines of freedom and peace. 
 Peace on earth, liberty and good-will to men, to all 
 men, and all women, were then his proclamation and 
 song. Human life he came to regard as sacred above 
 all other things. And so capital punishment and 
 war, as well as slavery, were to him an abhorrence. 
 Hence, logically, he renounced all allegiance to human 
 governments founded in military force, and openly 
 proclaimed himself disciple of the Prince of Peace, in 
 these memorable words : 
 
 O Jesus ! noblest of patriots, greatest of heroes, 
 most glorious of martyrs ! Thine is the spirit of 
 universal liberty and love, of uncompromising hostility 
 to every form of injustice and wrong. But not with 
 weapons of death dost thou assail thy enemies, that 
 they may be vanquished or destroyed. For thou dost 
 not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against prin- 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 19 
 
 cipalities and powers, against the rulers of the dark- 
 ness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in 
 high places. Therefore hast thou put on the whole 
 armor of God ; having thy loins girt about with truth, 
 and having on the breast-plate of righteousness, and 
 thy feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of 
 peace ; going forth to battle with the shield of faith, 
 the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit ! 
 WOrt In- of all imitation art thou, in overcoming the 
 evil that is in the world. For, by the shedding of thy 
 own blood, but not the blood of thy bitterest foes 
 even, shalt thou at last obtain a universal victory. 
 
 The Christian's victory alone 
 
 Hostility forever ends ; 
 Erects an undisputed throne 
 
 And turns his foes to friends. 
 
 Ye great, ye mighty of the earth ! 
 
 Ye conquerers, learn this secret true ! 
 
 A secret of celestial birth — 
 
 By suffering to subdue! 
 
 — Letter to Kossuth. 
 
 The New England Non-Resistance Society was 
 organized in 1838, and Mr. Garrison was elected cor- 
 responding secretary and member of the executive 
 -committee ; and many of its first official papers and 
 records, besides breathing his spirit, bear unmistak- 
 able imprint of his brain and hand. A portion of the 
 preamble to its constitution reads thus : 
 
 Whereas, The penal code of the first covenant 
 has been abrogated by Jesus Christ ; and whereas 
 our Savior has left man example that we should fol- 
 low his steps in forbearance, submission to injury and 
 non-resistance, even when life itself is at stake ; and 
 whereas the weapons of a true Christian are not car- 
 nal but spiritual, and therefore mighty through God 
 to the pulling down of strongholds ; and whereas we 
 profess to belong to a kingdom not of this world, 
 which is without local or geographical boundaries, in 
 which there is no division of caste, nor inequality of 
 .sex ; therefore, we, the undersigned, etc., etc. 
 
20 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 A part of Article II of the constitution reads: 
 The members of this society agree in the opinion 
 that no man nor body of men, however constituted 
 or by whatever name called, have right to take the 
 life of man as penalty for transgression ; that no one 
 who professes to have the spirit of Christ can consist- 
 ently sue a man at law for redress of injuries, or 
 thrust any evil-doer into prison ; or hold any office in 
 which he would come under obligation to execute any 
 penal enactments, or take any part in the military 
 service ; or acknowledge allegiance to any human 
 government. * * * 
 
 At this time it cannot be doubted that the belief of 
 Mr. Garrison in both the inspiration and authority of 
 the Bible, the Trinity and Atonement, but especially 
 in all the teachings and precepts of Christ, was 
 almost precisely such as was then, and still is pro- 
 fessed, by the whole Evangelical church. Among his 
 many devout poetical effusions this will be found : 
 
 SONNET TO THE BIBLE. 
 
 O Book of books ! Though skepticism flout 
 
 Thy sacred origin, thy worth decry ; 
 
 Though trancendental folly give the lie 
 
 To what thou teachest : though the critic doubt 
 
 This fact ; that miracle ; and raise a shout 
 
 Of triumph o'er each incongruity 
 
 He in thy pages may perchance espy ; 
 
 As in his strength, the effulgent sun shines out, 
 
 Hiding innumerous stars, so dost thou shine. 
 
 With heavenly light all human works excelling. 
 
 Thy oracles are holy and divine, 
 
 Of free salvation through a Savior telling. 
 
 All truth, all excellence dost thou enshrine; 
 
 The mists of sin and ignorance expelling. 
 
 Such was Mr. Garrison as a Christian, as a follower 
 of the Christ of the New Testament. And won- 
 drously consistent with his faith were his spirit, his 
 life, and his whole character. 
 
 At home or abroad ; in private or in public ; as 
 writer or as speaker ; as husband, father, friend, 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 2 1 
 
 neighbor, or in whatever relation ; after long, wide^ 
 and intimate acquaintance with men in pulpit, church, 
 politics, and the world at large ; for the constant 
 exercise of what we call the christian virtues and 
 graces, I surely have seen few the peer, none the 
 superior of William Lloyd Garrison. 
 
 And yet he was called an infidel by almost all the 
 universal church of the nation, from the university 
 and theological seminary down to the humblest village 
 pastors, churches, and Sundav-schools. With a life 
 pure and spotless as the white plumage of angels, his 
 whole character and conduct unsullied by the slight- 
 est breath of reproach, blessing many temporally and 
 spiritually with whom he had intercourse, gentle and 
 patient with ignorance, forbearing and long-suffering 
 with prejudice and perverseness, and yet bold and 
 brave, unconcealing and uncompromising where op- 
 pression and iniquity, injustice and cruelty were to be 
 exposed and rebuked, no matter in what high places 
 entrenched — yet was he branded, blasted as infidel, 
 even atheist, when those words were made to stand 
 for, were presumed to stand for all that is to be 
 dreaded, shunned, execrated and exterminated at 
 whatever cost ! 
 
 Revering the New Testament as law divine, he 
 studied and respected its teachings. Did he read 
 ' ; Resist Not Evil ?" He observed the sacred require- 
 ment, preached it in his journal, The Liberator, and 
 practiced it everywhere. Hence arose the Non-Re- 
 sistance Society, as well as a great national anti- 
 slavery movement, which, without proscription, rested 
 substantially and was largely sustained on a similar 
 foundation. 
 
 With him 'Move your enemies" never meant shoot 
 them in war, nor hang nor imprison them in peace. 
 
22 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 And so The Liberator, which was his own property 
 from first to last, was not only a proclamation of 
 peace, liberty and love on earth, but of general, uni- 
 versal unfolding, progressing and perfecting to all 
 man and womankind. 
 
 But, joining himself to no religious sect nor party, 
 chained down to no narrow, dogmatic ringbolt, he 
 had ever eye and ear, as well as heart and hospitality, 
 for whatever new truth might appear — in whatever 
 book, science or religion it might be found. And 
 what wonder if years of violent opposition and per- 
 secution from almost the whole American church and 
 clergy on account of his fidelity to the christian doc- 
 trines of peace, purity and liberty as they were taught 
 in the sermon on the mount, and the unswerving 
 example of its great Author, should have clarified and 
 quickened his vision mentally and spiritually ! At 
 any rate, he subsequently re-examined the faiths and 
 formulas of the professedly evangelical sects in reli- 
 gion, including their avowed belief in plenary inspira- 
 tion of Holy Scripture. 
 
 As one result of his farther investigations, he 
 attended a convention at Hartford, Connecticut, in 
 1853, called especially to consider the claim and char- 
 acter of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. The 
 meeting was very large, having representatives, men 
 and women, from east and west, continuing four days, 
 with three long sessions each. In one of them Mr. 
 Garrison offered and ably defended a series of reso- 
 lutions, the first of which was to this purport : 
 
 Resolved, That the doctrines of the American 
 church and priesthood, that the Bible is the word of 
 God ; that whatever it contains was given by divine 
 inspiration, and that it is the only rule of faith and 
 practice, is self-evidently absurd ; is exceedingly inju- 
 rious both to the intellect and the soul ; is highly per- 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 23 
 
 nicious in its application, and a stumbling block in 
 the way of human redemption. 
 
 And yet, to the end of life, no man more venerated 
 or made wiser use of the Bible than did Mr. Garrison. 
 A late testimonial of his reads thus : 
 
 1 have lost my traditional and educational notions 
 of the holiness of the Bible, but 1 have gained greatly, 
 I think, in my estimation of it. * * * I am fully 
 aware how grievously the priesthood have perverted 
 it and wielded it as an instrument of spiritual despot- 
 ism and in opposition to the sacred cause of human- 
 ity ; still to no other volume do I turn with so much 
 interest ; no other do I consult or turn to so fre- 
 quently ; to no other am I so indebted for light and 
 strength ; no other is so identified with the growth of 
 human freedom and progress. To no other have I 
 appealed so effectively in aid of the various reforma- 
 tory movements which I have espoused. And it 
 embodies an amount of excellence so great as to 
 make it, in my estimation, The Book of Books. 
 
 Garrison early learned to doubt nothing only 
 because it was new, and he accepted nothing unless 
 he saw on it more than the mold and moss of age and 
 time. He found the world, even its most enlightened 
 people, dead in the trespasses and sins of intemper- 
 ance, slavery, war, capital punishment, and woman's 
 enslavement. He lived to set on foot, or largely and 
 liberally co-operate in enterprises and instrumentali- 
 ties for correcting all these abuses, for righting all 
 these fearful wrongs. 
 
 But at last there came another stranger to his door. 
 With characteristic hospitality that door was again 
 opened. Francis Jackson, one of the noblest, bravest, 
 most steadfast supporters of Mr. Garrison and his life 
 work, once said with respect to sheltering and protect- 
 ing the fugitive slave : "When I unfeelingly shut my 
 door against a hunted, fleeing slave, may the God of 
 compassion close the door of his mercy against me !" 
 
24 WILLIAM LLOYD HARRISON. 
 
 So no slave, nor even stranger, ever appealed in 
 vain to Garrison. The new guest was Spiritualism. 
 That was a " sect everywhere spoken against " as fast 
 as it grew in numbers — as anti-slavery had been in the 
 generation preceding it. Even many of the best 
 abolitionists, men and women who had bravely suf- 
 fered persecution for and with the slave, treated it 
 with contempt and scorn. Not so, never so, with Mr. 
 Garrison. Many of his truest friends, some of them 
 Quakers, as well as of other religious denominations, 
 became early and devoted spiritualists, and that alone 
 would have forever prevented him from dismissing, 
 still less condemning, any stranger or defendant 
 uncondemned, or even unheard. 
 
 And in finally giving the new and mysterious idea 
 recognition, he found, and to the end of his life 
 believed, that he had literally entertained angels, and 
 angels not unawares. 
 
 Nor did he hesitate to make proclamation of the 
 new and sublime Evangel. In The Liberator of 
 March 3d, 1854, is an article from his pen, of which 
 the following are but the opening paragraphs, giving 
 a detailed account of a highly demonstrative seance 
 he had just attended in New York, where writing, 
 rapping, drumming, "drumming in admirable time 
 and most spiritual manner," and other wondrous phe- 
 nomena were witnessed. He wrote : 
 
 We are often privately asked what we think of the 
 "spiritual manifestations," so called, and whether we 
 have had any opportunities to investigate them. 
 
 When we first heard of the " Rochester knock- 
 ings" we supposed (not personally knowing the per- 
 sons implicated) that there might be some collusion in 
 that particular case, or if not, that the phenomena 
 would, ere long, elicit a satisfactory solution, indepen- 
 dent of any spiritual agency. As the manifestations 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 25 
 
 have spread from house to house, from city to city, 
 from one part of the country to the other, across the 
 Atlantic into Europe, till now the civilized world is 
 compelled to acknowledge their reality, however 
 diverse in accounting for them; as these manifestations 
 continue to increase in variety and power, so that all 
 suspicion of trick or imposture becomes simply absurd 
 and preposterous ; and as every attempt to find a 
 solution for them in some physical theory relating to 
 electricity, the odic force, clairvoyance, and the like, 
 has thus far proved abortive — it becomes every intelli- 
 gent mind to enter into an investigation of th'em with 
 candor and fairness, as opportunity may offer, and to 
 bear such testimony in regard to them as the facts 
 may warrant ; no matter what ridicule it may excite 
 on the part of the uninformed or sceptical. 
 
 As for ourselves, most assuredly we have been in no 
 haste to jump to a conclusion in regard to phenomena 
 so universally diffused, and of so extraordinary a 
 character. For the last three years, we have kept 
 pace with nearly all that has been published on the 
 subject ; and we have witnessed, at various times, 
 many surprising "manifestations;" and our con- 
 viction is that they cannot be accounted for on any 
 other theory than that of spiritual agency. This 
 theory, however is not unattended with discrepancies, 
 difficulties, and trials. It is certain that, if it be true, 
 there are many deceptive spirits, and that the apostolic 
 injunction to "believe not every spirit," but to try 
 them in every possible way, is specially to be regarded, 
 or the consequences may prove very disastrous. We 
 might write a long essay on what we have seen and 
 heard touching the matter, but this we reserve for 
 some other occasion. 
 
 At the burial of his friend Henry C. Wright, who 
 died on the 16th of August, 1870, he made one of 
 the most eloquent and impressive addresses of his 
 whole life. Mr. Wright had been for several years a 
 pronounced and active spiritualist, and this is the 
 
26 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 
 
 tribute, or a portion of it, which Mr. Garrison paid to 
 that part of his life work : 
 
 I see it reproachfully stated in one newspaper at 
 least, that he was a spiritualist. What if he was ? 
 That is simply a question of evidence. What has 
 been possible in any age of the world as to spiritual 
 phenomena, is possible in ours. And if we cannot 
 believe what transpires in our days, before our own 
 eyes, we certainly do not and cannot believe what is 
 merely reported to have taken place ages ago. What 
 shall be said of the intelligence or sincerity of those 
 who say they implicitly accept all the marvels and 
 miracles recorded as having taken place thousands of 
 years ago, with not a living witness to attest to any 
 one of them ; while they scout as arrant imposture 
 perfectly analogous wonders and revelations, though 
 these are confirmed by multitudes of living witnesses 
 whose faithfulness cannot be questioned, and whose 
 critical judgment and profound caution refute every 
 imputation of folly or ignorance. 
 
 When spiritualism was on trial at the bar of the 
 judgment of this world, some of Mr. Garrison's friends 
 saw with deep regret his hospitality and charity 
 towards it. There were those who even denied posi- 
 tively that he was, or was in any danger of becoming, 
 a spiritualist. So doutbtless his early political and 
 religious associates felt and reasoned, when they saw 
 his heart warmed, and his hand and voice were lifted 
 in behalf of the imbruted slave and his few devoted, 
 but despised and persecuted friends. With his shin- 
 ing talents and deep devotion to his then sincerely 
 cherished political and religious principles, both of 
 respectable and popular character, how could he ever 
 become an Abolitionist ? 
 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 27 
 
 But there's a Divinity that shapes our ends ; and 
 
 Garrison was a young man when he wrote : 
 
 " I am an Abolitionist, 
 
 Oppression's deadly foe ; 
 In God's great name will I resist 
 
 And lay the monster low. 
 In God's great name do I demand 
 
 To all be Freedom given, 
 That peace and joy may fill the earth 
 
 And songs go up to heaven." 
 
 And spiritualism he yoked to his chariot of salvation 
 so soon as he espoused it in its fullness and conscious 
 truth, as had already his friend Henry C. Wright, a 
 few years before, and doubtless in the full faith and 
 hope of Lord Brougham, when he wrote : "Even in 
 the most cloudless skies of Skepticism, I see a rain-cloud, 
 if it be no bigger than a man's hand, and its name is 
 Spiritualism." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS 
 
 When some discerning' Romans saw how many 
 statues were reared in their city to persons of only 
 indifferent merit, while Cato, one of their wisest and 
 best, had none, they wondered. But the great man 
 had answered the question beforehand : " Better that 
 posterity should ask why Cato has not a monument, 
 than why he has." 
 
 In the cemeteries of Concord, New Hampshire, are 
 many memorial stones. Some of great beauty and 
 cost, with proportionally elaborate and, perhaps, appro- 
 priate inscriptions. But situated among them is one 
 lot of the ordinary family size, protected by no iron 
 railing, no granite embankment, and whose dead level 
 surface would seem never to have been invaded for 
 burial, agricultural or any other human purpose. 
 
 And yet to that hallowed spot I have conducted 
 many devout pilgrims from east and west, both women 
 and men. For there, since Sunday, the iSth day of 
 October, 1846, exactly thirty-six years ago this very 
 day, and almost hour, have slumbered the mortal 
 remains of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, surely one of 
 the brightest, noblest, truest and every way most gifted 
 sons, not only of the Granite state, but of any state 
 of this union of states, departing at the early age of 
 only fifty-two years. 
 
 And no visitor from near or remote, ever fails to 
 ask, sometimes with almost stunning emphasis : 
 " Why has Rogers no monument ?" 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 29 
 
 Should that sacred spot speak out from its silence 
 of six and thirty years, doubtless its answer to the 
 eminently pertinent inquiry would be, as was that of 
 Cato, so well remembered, so much admired, so often 
 repeated now, after more than two thousand years. 
 
 Such as was Rogers, never die. They need no 
 monuments reared by other hands than their own. 
 Time mows down all marble and granite, tramples out 
 all inscriptions in bronze or brass. And so such reg- 
 isters are soon lost for evermore. It has been said of 
 the immortal Senator Sumner and his humble tomb- 
 stone at Mount Auburn, and lowly indeed it is : 
 
 " The grass may grow o'er the lowly bed 
 Where the noblest Roman hath laid his head ; 
 But mind and thought, a nation's mind 
 Embalm the lover of mankind." 
 
 And scarcely of any man departed or still visible to 
 mortal sight, could this be sung more appropriately 
 than of the subject of this chapter ; and for some 
 seven years editor of the Herald of Freedom, published 
 in Concord, New Hampshire, ten or twelve years. 
 
 Mr. Rogers was born at Plymouth, on the 3d of 
 June, 1794, and was one of the tenth generation from 
 him who is so well, widely and honorably known as 
 " Rev. John Rogers," the first in that blessed com- 
 pany of martyrs who suffered in the reign of the 
 bigoted and bloody Mary, in the year 1555. And 
 surely the blood of the martyr, literally and spiritually, 
 flowed in the veins of his remote descendant, answer- 
 ing "heart to heart," as well as " face to face." For 
 those who have been privileged to see both our 
 departed editor in the flesh and form, and a singularly 
 well preserved portrait of the martyr in the American 
 Antiquarian Society hall at Worcester, Massachusetts, 
 have wondered at the remarkable resemblance in the 
 
30 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 shape of head and face, in complexion, color of eye 
 and hair, and the whole general expression of the two 
 memorable men. He graduated with honors at Dart- 
 mouth college, in the year 18 16. He studied law with 
 the distinguished Richard Fletcher, and then settled 
 down to its practice in his native town, marrying a 
 daughter of Hon. Daniel Farrand, of Burlington, Ver- 
 mont. He conducted a flourishing and successful law 
 practice in Plymouth for about twenty years before 
 moving to Concord to take charge of the Herald of 
 Freedom. 
 
 As student in general literature, especially in his- 
 tory and poetry, none of his day were before him. 
 Few ever heard Shakespeare, Scott, Byron and Burns 
 read more beautifully, more thrillingly, than at his 
 fireside, surrounded by his estimable wife and seven 
 children, with sometimes a few invited friends. But 
 general reading and home delights never detracted 
 from the duties of his profession. When he died, an 
 intimate friend, who had known him long and well, 
 wrote that so accurate was his knowledge of law, and 
 so industrious was he in business, that the success of 
 a client was always confidently expected from the 
 moment his assistance was secured. His life mission, 
 however, was neither literature nor law. He was in 
 due time ordained, consecrated as a high priest in 
 the great fellowship of humanity, and wondrously, 
 divinely did he magnify his office in the ten or twelve 
 last years of his earthly life. 
 
 In the year 1835, he made acquaintance with 
 Garrison, and soon placed himself at his side as the 
 hated, hunted, persecuted champion of the American 
 slave, as by this time Garrison was known to be. And 
 from that time, too, Rogers was ever found the firm, 
 unshaken, uncompromising friend and advocate of not 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 31 
 
 only the anti-slavery enterprise, but of the causes of 
 temperance, peace, rights of woman, abolition of the 
 gallows and halter, and other social and moral reforms. 
 
 Here may be the place to say what certainly should 
 be said at some time and place, a few words on the 
 early religious character of Mr. Rogers. For it is 
 neither known to this generation nor presumed what 
 manner of men and women were most of those who 
 early espoused the cause of the American slave ; espe- 
 cially in their relations to the popular and prevailing 
 religion of their time. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers were 
 active and honored members in the Congregational 
 church at Plymouth, when they espoused the cause of 
 the slave. And they naturally looked, as did other 
 anti-slavery christians, to the church and pulpit as 
 the divinely appointed instrumentality for emancipat- 
 ing the bondmen, especially of their own country, 
 enslaved, too, by laws of their own enactment and 
 religious sanction and approval. 
 
 Perhaps a few excerpts from an early editorial in the 
 Herald of Freedom will illustrate the quality of the 
 religious sentiment and opinion of the editor, as well 
 as the tone and temper of his heart and spirit. The 
 whole article is in the Herald of August n, 1838, and 
 is a review of a contribution to the Christian Exam- 
 ine/-, entitled " The Presence of God." The Examiner 
 was a Unitarian journal, the sect at that time quite 
 alien to the more evangelical views of Mr. Rogers : 
 
 We wander a moment from our technical anti- 
 slavery sphere, to say, with permission of our readers, 
 a word or two on a beautiful article in the Christian 
 Examiner. It is from the pen of one of our gifted 
 fellow citizens, to whom the unhappy subjects of 
 insanity in this state owe so much for the public 
 charity now contemplated in their behalf. It is writ- 
 ten with great eloquence, perspicuity and force of 
 
32 NATHANIEL PEABQDY ROGERS. 
 
 style ; and what is more, it seems scarcely to want 
 that spirit of heart-broken Christianity so apt to bS> 
 missing- in the peaceful speculation of reviews, and 
 may we not say in the speculations of the elegant 
 corps among- whom the writer of the article is here 
 found. We will find briefly what fault we can with 
 the article. Its beauties need not be pointed put. 
 They lie scattered profusely over its face. It is an 
 article on " The Presence of God," and treats of our 
 relations to Him. But does it set forth that relation 
 as involving our need of the Lord jesus Christ, in 
 order that we may be able to stand in it ? For our- 
 selves we cannot contemplate God, and dare not look 
 towards Him unconnected with Christ. Our writer 
 seems boldly to look upon Him as the strong-eyed 
 eagle gazes into the sun. God is of purer eyes than to 
 behold iniquity. He cannot look upon sin but with 
 abhorrence. We have sinned ; therefore we fear to 
 behold him. In Christ alone is He our Father in 
 heaven, and we His reconciled children. In Christ we 
 dare take hold of His hand, and of the skirts of His 
 almighty garments. The Lord Jesus Christ and Him 
 crucified is the medium through whom alone we dare 
 look upon God, in His works, His providence, or His 
 grace. Sinless man might, without this medium. 
 Fallen man may not. * * * The writer con- 
 templated God in His works — but he seems, though 
 awed, elevated and delighted at their grandeur, beauty 
 and wisdom, to feel still baffled of the great end in their 
 contemplation. Does he not, we would ask him, feel 
 the absence of some link in the chain of communica- 
 tion with this ineffable being, which might, if not inter- 
 rupted, anchor his soul securely within the veil, which 
 after all continues to shroud him from communion and 
 sight ? Can he, in sight of the works of God, speak 
 out and sing in the strains of the Singer of Israel ? 
 * * * The writer speaks of the communion of 
 God with our minds. This he seems to regard with 
 chief interest. He speaks of " the need of having 
 attention," meaning intellectual attention, " waked up 
 to these old truths." " Listlessness of mind," he con- 
 tinues, " an inveterate habit of inattention to the exis- 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. $$ 
 
 tence of the Eternal Spirit, needs to be broken in 
 upon. We need to help each other to escape a fatuity 
 of mind on this subject that we may feel that God's 
 ark still rides o'er the world's waves, and that the 
 burning bush has not gone out." There is an "inat- 
 tention," it is true, but it is of the heart, not merely of 
 the mind, of the nature and not of "habit" merely ; a 
 spiritual inattention, or rather alienation from God, 
 which must be broken in upon. It is not the creature 
 of habit. Adam felt it in all its force on the very day 
 of his first transgression. He heard the voice of God, 
 which, in his innocency, he had hailed with joy, beyond 
 all he felt at the beauties of Paradise ; heard it walk- 
 ing in the garden in the cool of the day, and he hid 
 himself from the presence of the Lord God among the 
 trees of the garden. His wife also hid herself, for 
 she, too, had transgressed, and we, their moral heirs, 
 hide ourselves so to this day. They could walk in the 
 garden in sight of the beautiful works of God, per- 
 haps admire the splendors of Eden, but when they 
 heard His voice, they hid themselves. Not from habit 
 surely, that not being the creature of a day. There 
 was "inveteracy," not of habit, but of fallen nature. It 
 is that which must be "broken in upon" before we shall 
 incline to come out from among the trees to welcome 
 the presence of God. It may be there is a figurative 
 meaning in this hiding among the trees from the pres- 
 ence of Him who made those trees. And may we 
 not deceive ourselves in supposing we contemplate 
 Gqd in His works, when, in truth, we are seeking to 
 hide ourselves from His presence among the glorious 
 trees of this earth's garden ? * * * We 
 have revolted from God. We are born universally in 
 a state of alienation from Him. The Scriptures and 
 all experience teach this. We do not more certainly 
 inherit the transmitted form of our fallen first-parents, 
 than their descended nature. We are born with the 
 need of being " born again." Of this we are sure. 
 We cannot evade it. It is our fate in the wisdom of 
 God. We cannot escape it any more than the Old 
 World could the deluge. * * * We have 
 an ark of safety, to be sure, capacious enough to save 
 
34 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 the entire race of man. It will save only those who 
 will enter it. And the time of entering, as it was at 
 the flood, is before the sky of probation is overcast. 
 The door is that now, as then, before the falling of 
 the first great drops of the eternal thunder shower. 
 The ark of safety, we need not say, is Christ. He is 
 the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man can come 
 to the Father but by Him. Whoever hath seen Him 
 hath seen the Father. And by Him is the only mani- 
 festation of the presence of God. The presence of 
 His power may be seen in all objects around us. But 
 His strong love to the children of men, cannot be seen 
 but through Christ. 
 
 * * But we are forgetting that our Herald 
 
 is a small sheet. We have not space to notice the 
 exquisite beauties of our writer's production as a 
 composition merely ; or the argument it draws of 
 Cod's presence from his works ; and as it purports to 
 notice merely this evidence of his presence, we will 
 not here express our regret that the name of Christ is 
 not mentioned in the article. May the gifted writer, 
 if he be out of the ark of safety, not delay to enter in. 
 Let him not tarry without to gaze with the eye of 
 elegant curiosity on the scenery of this Sodom world 
 — but bow his neck, "and enter while there's room." 
 And as we bespeak his immediate heed to "the one 
 thing needful, " so we demand his pen, voice, influ- 
 ence, prayer and action and open cooperation in the 
 deliverance of his fellow countrymen from the Chain 
 of Slavery. 
 
 Thus loyal was the editor of the Herald to the 
 religious doctrine and teaching of his time in the 
 church of his choice. The church of his fathers 
 through nine generations. Thus diligently had he 
 studied and considered them; and thus eloquently and 
 faithfully, though tenderly and affectionately, did he 
 present, recommend and enforce them, whenever and 
 wherever he had opportunity. 
 
 In 1838 he removed from Plymouth to Concord, 
 and became sole editor of the Herald of Freedom. 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 35 
 
 He had, from its establishment in 1834, furnished 
 many most brilliant and trenchant articles for its 
 columns. To the readers of the paper, now alas ! 
 the most of them, with its editor, no more, nothing 
 need be said of his power with his pen. Only a 
 single duodecimo volume of three hundred and eighty 
 pages of his editorial writings has been reprinted and 
 preserved, and that long ago disappeared from the 
 market. Ten dollars, it is said, have been offered for 
 a single copy ; though that perhaps might have been 
 before most of the early readers had passed away. 
 Some of its descriptive articles have been pronounced 
 as unsurpassed in life and vigor, brilliancy and beauty, 
 as were their rebukes of slave holders and their 
 abettors and accomplices, scathing, withering, but 
 always eminently just. 
 
 His " Jaunt to the Y\ Trite Mountains " with Garrison 
 in the year 1841, was copied from the Herald columns 
 into a neat tract and was a capital contribution to 
 the tourist literature of that period. Its length pre- 
 cludes possibility of insertion here ; but one of less 
 volume and of scarcely less power entitled Ailsa 
 Craig, may not so reasonably be rejected. For the 
 world never knew the sublimely gifted writer as it 
 should have known him, and doubtless would, but for 
 his too early removal to higher spheres. Young 
 readers will surely pardon a page or two when they 
 have read them, introduced here for their profit as 
 well as pleasure, showing not only the power of the 
 writer, but also giving them a description of one of 
 the most remarkable as well as interesting spots in 
 the British realm. It is from the Herald of Freedom 
 of April 30, 1841: 
 
 AILSA CRAIG. 
 
 This famous rock in the Irish Sea, we meant to 
 ha^e said something about when we saw it, long 
 
36 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 before this time. But anti-slavery makes us omit 
 and forget the wonders of the Old World. We passed 
 it on a trip from Scotland to Ireland. We left Glas- 
 gow on the twenty-eighth of July, 1840, at ten in the 
 morning, for Dublin. William Lloyd Garrison in 
 company, our fellow passenger to the Irish Capital. 
 * * We went on board a steamer and 
 
 rode down the ship-thronged Clyde. Nothing can 
 exceed its beauty below the great city of Glasgow. 
 To be sure, they have robbed it of its native banks, — 
 and commerce has substituted for the green slope, a 
 sloping wall of neat and firm stone masonry on each 
 side, and straightened its once indented shores. But 
 the utility of the metamorphosis is so mighty, and so 
 palpable, making this narrow stream, far away 
 inland, the highway for the commerce of one of the 
 great ports of Britain ; of a city as large as New York 
 or Liverpool, where the largest ships may ride as 
 freely as in the ocean for depth of water, that it gives 
 it a most imposing, singular, and interesting appear- 
 ance. It is hardly broader than some of the widest 
 streets of London. Our little steamer elbowed its 
 way among the keels that thronged it like "the full 
 tide of human existence," along the slippery pave- 
 ments and broad side-walks of Cheapside, or Glas- 
 gow's Broadway, the swarming Irongate. It was 
 amusing to see the ploughed up water roll along the 
 stone banks, half way up their slopes, in waves that 
 coiled and convolved like the folds of the sea serpent. 
 The walls were a good deal higher than the natural 
 shores, which were wet and low. They had filled in 
 behind them with earth, and made high, wide and 
 level land on either side which was now covered with 
 old verdure, ami planted with stately trees : — and the 
 promenader might take his rural walk there, side by 
 side with the winged commerce of every quarter of 
 the globe : — the "white sail gliding by the tree," and 
 the smoky plumage of the steamers streaming off over 
 among the glorious woodlands. We made our way 
 steadily, though not rapidly down the widening chan- 
 nel, and came to where the " bonnie " Yale of Leven, 
 came upon the Clyde from Loch Lomond and its 
 
NATHANIEL PEAB0D\ ROGERS. 37 
 
 enclosing mountains which we could descry in the 
 misty distance, up the Vale. 
 
 All abolitionists have heard of the Vale of Leven, 
 and remember its Remonstrance to the Women of 
 America, sent over here some four years ago, and 
 unfurled over the heads of thousands in Broadway 
 Tabernacle at an anti-slavery anniversary. The 
 four thousand Scottish women who signed it, dwelt in 
 the Vale of Leven. We saw John Summerville, the 
 minister who obtained their signatures. What would 
 induce one of our clergy, with any "weight of influ- 
 ence " to be seen going about for ivomeris signatures 
 to an abolition petition ? Where Leven Vale meets 
 the Clyde rises a tremendous rock, in the clefts of 
 which lodges the grim old fortress of Dumbarton 
 Castle, famous in the history of Sir William Wallace. 
 
 The river soon broadened into a frith, as the 
 Scotch call their bays. The mountains retreated from 
 each other, and sails were to be seen here and there at 
 anchor in the coves and harbors of the wide waters 
 near their bases. We met a naval horse race on the 
 frith of eight beautiful little vessels at the very top of 
 their speed. They were running the heats, in a wide 
 circle, and leaning down hard to the sea close on 
 each other's heels ; all sail crowded they made the 
 water foam white about their prows. It was quite an 
 animating sight, with none of the painful sensations 
 at seeing poor quadruped horses scourged and pressed 
 beyond their powers. There was no distress, nor 
 faltering of wind, in these graceful little racers, as 
 they swept the frith of Clyde. 
 
 A Mr. McTear had come aboard the steamer at 
 Greenock for Dublin. He was a Greenock merchant. 
 We were talking with him on the deck when we spied 
 a conical rock, as it seemed, rising out of the water 
 some distance ahead. It appeared through the thin 
 mists like a hay stack, and about as large. We spoke 
 of it to Mr. McTear, and he told us it was Ailsa 
 Craig. We remembered mention of it by Scott, in the 
 Lord of the Isles, where he calls it rock instead of 
 eraig, in the mouth of Robert Bruce : 
 
 " Lord of the Isles, my trust in thee 
 Is tirrn as Ailsa rock ! " 
 
38 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 We had supposed it was in the Forth on the other 
 side of Scotland. As we were looking at it, 
 Mr. McTear asked us to guess the distance to it. 
 Strangers he said, were apt to greatly mistake the 
 distance. We looked at the rock along the interven- 
 ing water. We could get no aid from the shores 
 which were at great distance, quite out of sight on one 
 hand. We supposed of course, we should underrate 
 the distance. So we stretched it liberally, as we 
 thought, and guessed two miles, though it did not 
 look like that distance. You have made the common 
 mistake, he said ; it is over twenty. We could hardly 
 credit it ; but he told us we should see it was so, for 
 we would be over two hours getting to it and were 
 going at ten knots. And over two hours it was ; and 
 such was the deceptive character of the way, that 
 when we thought Ave were coming right upon it, and 
 wanting our friend Garrison, who was asleep below, 
 to see it, we went down and told him to hurry up and 
 see "Ailsa Rock." It proved, to the amazement of us 
 both, that we were then nearly ten miles from it. 
 And the little prominence, that looked so like a hay 
 stack, or a hay cock, when we descried it first, grew 
 as we neared it, a mighty mountain, nine hundred and 
 eighty feet high, rising abruptly out of the sea, and 
 two miles about the base. 
 
 He had been himself governor of the Craig some 
 years before, and had great sport and some danger in 
 killing the birds. His way of killing them was with a 
 club, and he told us how many thousands, we dare 
 not say how many he had killed' in a single day of a 
 famous kind of goose. He had let himself down to a 
 quarter of the cliffs where they hunted to get the 
 young and eggs, and the old ones attacked him and 
 he fought them with his club till he was covered with 
 blood, theirs and his own. He had a good mind, he 
 said, to give them one gun, just to let us see them fly, 
 as we were strangers. As he had been the Marquis's 
 governor, he said, he would venture that he would 
 overlook it in him. He ordered his boy to bring the 
 musket. The boy returned and said it was left 
 behind at Glasgow. " Load up the swivel then," said 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 39 
 
 the captain. " It will be all the better. It will make 
 quite a flight, ye'll Unci. Load her up pretty well." 
 The steamer meanwhile kept nearing the giant craig, 
 which was a bare rock from summit to sea, and all of 
 a dull, chalky whiteness, occasioned, as the captain 
 said, by the excrement of the birds. We saw caves in 
 the sides of the mountain and down by the water ; 
 the retreats, our informant told us, in former times, of 
 the smugglers who used to frequent the craig and 
 carry on an extensive trade from these places of 
 concealment. We had got so near as to see the white 
 birds flitting across the entrances to the caverns like 
 bees about the hive. With the spy-glass we could see 
 them distinctly and in very considerable numbers ; 
 and at length approached so that we could see them 
 on the ledges all over the sides of the mountain. We 
 had passed the skirt of the craig, and w^ere within a 
 half mile, or less, of its base. With the glass we could 
 now see the entire mountain side peopled with the 
 sea fowl, and could hear their whimpering, household 
 cry as they moved about, or nestled in domestic snug- 
 ness on the ten thousand ledges. The air, too, about 
 the precipices, seemed to be alive with them. Still 
 we had not the slightest conception of their frightful 
 multitude. We got about the center of the mountain, 
 when the swivel was fired. The shot went point 
 blank against it and struck the stupendous preci- 
 pice, as from top to bottom with a reverberation like 
 the discharge of a hundred cannon. 
 
 And what a sight followed ! They rose up from 
 that mountain, the countless myriads and millions of 
 sea birds, in a universal, overwhelming cloud that 
 covered the whole heavens, and their cry was like the 
 cry of an alarmed nation. Up they went, millions 
 upon millions, ascending like the smoke of a furnace ; 
 countless as the sands on the sea shore ; awful, 
 dreadful for multitude, as if the whole mountain were 
 dissolving into life and light, and with an unearthly 
 kind of lament, took up their line of march in every 
 direction off to sea. 
 
 The sight startled the people on board the steamer, 
 who had often witnessed it before, and for some 
 
40 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS'. 
 
 minutes there ensued a general silence. For our own 
 part, we were quite amazed and overawed at the 
 spectacle. We had seen nothing like it before. We 
 had seen White Mountain Notches and Niagara Falls 
 in our own land, and the vastness of the wide and 
 deep ocean, which was separating us from it. We had 
 seen something of art's magnificence in the old world; 
 its cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces and solemn 
 temples, but we had never witnessed sublimity to be 
 compared to that rising of sea-birds from Ailsa Craig. 
 They were of countless varieties in kind and size, 
 from the largest goose to the smallest marsh bird, and 
 of every conceivable variety of dismal note. Off they 
 moved in wild and alarmed route, like a people going 
 into exile, filling the air far and wide, with their 
 reproachful lament at the wanton cruelty that had 
 broken them up and driven them into captivity. We 
 really felt remorse at it ; and the thought might have 
 occurred to us how easy it would have been for them, 
 if they had known that the little, smoking speck that 
 was laboring along the sea-surface beneath them had 
 been the cause of their banishment, to have settled 
 down upon it and engulfed it out of sight forever. 
 We felt astonished that we had never heard before 
 of this wonderful haunt of sea-fowl, and that no one 
 had ever written a book upon it. It struck us really 
 as one of the wonders of the world. And not us 
 alone. Others, not at all given to the marvellous, 
 declared it surpassed everything they had ever before 
 witnessed. We supposed the mountain must have 
 been quite deserted from the myriads that had flown 
 away ; but lifting the glass to it, as we were 
 leaving its border, we were appalled to find it 
 still alive with the myriads that were left behind. 
 They kept leaving and leaving until our steamer 
 got far beyond the Craig, and till we could no 
 longer discern their departure with the tele- 
 SCOpe. And it was miles off into the dusky Irish 
 Sea, before we saw the ebbing of their mighty move- 
 ment, and that they were beginning to return. We 
 felt relieved to see them going back. It had scarcely 
 occurred to us in our surprise, that they were not 
 
NATHANIKI. PEABODY ROGERS. 41 
 
 leaving their native cliffs forever. Slowly and sadly 
 they seemed to return, while the eye sought in vain 
 to ken the outskirts of their mighty caravan. And 
 Ailsa Craig' had sunk far into our rear, and quite 
 sensibly diminished in the distance, before the rear- 
 in* 1st of the feathered host had disappeared from our 
 sight. 
 
 The excitement occasioned us considerable depres- 
 sion of spirits, from which we were not entirely 
 relieved until night came down upon the St. George's 
 Channel, and the protracted northern twilight could 
 no longer disclose objects to our wearied vision. 
 Then after refreshing ourselves with some substantial 
 confectionery, with which dear George Thompson had 
 kindly stuffed our pockets from a shop at Greenock, 
 before leaving "the land of cakes," our beloved fellow- 
 passenger and ourself, after sundry fond remem- 
 brances of the other side of the ocean, some expecta- 
 tions of next day's greeting in Dublin, and some 
 grateful sense, as we trust, of the goodness that had 
 not forgotten us amid all our dangers by sea and 
 land, we forgot what we had seen, and whereabouts 
 we were, in the arms of oblivious sleep." 
 
 To do justice to the memory of Nathaniel Peabody 
 Rogers, to his character and work, would require 
 genius and inspiration like his own. Nor, perhaps, 
 would this cheap age even then understand nor com- 
 prehend it. It manufactures sham and shoddy at too 
 many of its mills, political, literary, social, moral and 
 religious. It quotes Pope and Burns about an 
 " honest man," but seems not to know him when he 
 comes. It celebrated the birthday of Robert Burns 
 with much pomp and demonstration in less than one 
 month after it hung John Brown for a heroism and 
 devotion to freedom and humanity, which began, 
 rekindled with divine fervor, where the zeal of 
 LaFayette for a white man's liberty paled out of 
 human sight. And socially, morally and religiously 
 it had hung Rogers long before, in the same 
 
42 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 persecuting spirit that burned his illustrious ancestor 
 in the Smithfield pyre. In the true spirit of martyr- 
 dom did Rogers, like John Brown, join the anti- 
 slavery movement in an hour of peril. Garrison had 
 been mobbed in Boston, as was said, " in broad day, 
 by Boston's best men in broadcloth, gentlemen of 
 property and standing ; " driven from a female 
 anti-slavery concert of prayer which he had been 
 invited to attend and address. Mr. Garrison said of 
 the spectacle when all the streets near the place of 
 meeting were thronged with a mob burning with 
 murderous intent : " It was an awful, sublime and 
 soul-thrilling scene — enough, one would suppose, to 
 melt adamantine hearts, and make even fiends of 
 darkness stagger and retreat. Indeed the clear, 
 untremulous voice of that christian heroine, Miss 
 Parker, in prayer occasionally awed the ruffians into 
 silence, and she was heard distinctly, even in the 
 midst of their hisses and yells and curses." Garri- 
 son withdrew from the prayer meeting and the mayor 
 entered in obedience to the wishes of the fiendish 
 crew, and dispersed it. Then the cry, the shriek, 
 the yell was, " we must have Garrison." " Out with 
 him ! Lynch him ! " Some of the rioters discovered 
 and seized him. They drew him furiously to a 
 window and were about to thrust him out, when one 
 of them relented and said, " Let us not kill him out- 
 right." But they coiled a rope about his body, nearly 
 stripped him of his clothing, then dragged him 
 through the streets till he was finally rescued by posse 
 comitatus and at frightful peril was at length got to 
 the mayor's office. There he was provided with 
 clothing and from thence sent to jail, as " a disturber 
 of the peace," the mayor and his advisers declaring 
 that "the only way to preserve his life" In Alton, 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 43 
 
 Rev. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, too, another anti- 
 slavery editor, had been shot and killed by a mob, 
 five bullets being taken from his body, three from his 
 breast, and that, too, in 1837, only a few months 
 before Mr. Rogers removed with his family to Con- 
 cord to conduct the Herald of Freedom. So that in 
 assuming such position, he also, as might be said, 
 " took his life in his hand." For Concord itself was 
 no stranger to the mob at that time and for years 
 afterward was the consecrated guardian of slavery. 
 
 As a member of the Plymouth Congregational 
 church, both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had cooperated 
 earnestly, faithfully in works of religious benevolence 
 and charity. But when they demanded that those in 
 bonds in their own country should be remembered 
 even ''as bound with them," they were repulsed as 
 disorderly, contumacious disturbers of the peace 
 of the church and its minister, who, at that 
 time, was among the most virulent opposers of the 
 whole anti-slavery enterprise. But they did not 
 withdraw from their church connection till they saw 
 that southern slaveholders were more welcome to the 
 pulpit and sacramental table, than were faithful, 
 devoted abolitionists, whose .moral and religious 
 integrity of character, as well as soundness of opin- 
 ion, were above reproach or suspicion. Rogers, 
 beyond most public men, ever had unshaken faith in 
 the people, though conservative while a politician, and 
 orthodox in his religious faith. When he left the 
 church he investigated its character anew and for 
 himself. The claims of the clergy to prerogative in 
 things temporal as well as spiritual, he soon learned 
 to hold in profound disesteem. To no one man then 
 living, or who has appeared since, does the world owe 
 more than to him for exposing and rebuking the 
 
44 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 arrogance and insolence, not to say down-right fraud 
 and dishonesty, of a ministry whose ruling, directing 
 power in all the great popular demonstrations of the 
 land, north as well as south, was exerted in support 
 and sanctification of slavery. The exceptions to this 
 charge were too few to change the result, as will 
 appear in the progress of this work. 
 
 Mr. Rogers never doubted for a moment that the 
 people, w T ell and wisely taught, would abolish slavery 
 and cease to oppress one another. And so like the 
 Great Emancipator of Nazareth, he directed all his 
 sternest strokes and rebukes at the priests and 
 rulers, who really " bound the heavy burdens and laid 
 them on men's shoulders," as in Judea, two thousand 
 years ago. He and his associates of the Garrison 
 school of abolitionists relied solely on the power of 
 moral and spiritual truth to rescue the slave as well 
 as to redeem and save the world. They formed, they 
 joined no political party. They abjured the ballot 
 altogether as a reforming or restoring agency, as 
 much as they did the bullet, the only specie redemp- 
 tion of the ballot, in every government of force. 
 Both Mr. and Mrs. Rogers were members and officers 
 of the New England Non-Resistance Society. And 
 none ever more highly adorned the doctrine of their 
 profession than they. 
 
 As one with vision anointed to perceive all moral 
 and spiritual truth, Rogers seemed to stand almost 
 alone. His editorial writings are witness to this, and 
 will be to more than the next generation. It were 
 well for man and womankind, if whole volumes of 
 them, judiciously selected, could be reproduced and 
 scattered everywhere, like the shining constellation 
 among the dimmer stars. His words to-day are, 
 many of them, wondrously fresh and new. 
 
NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 45 
 
 The temperance cause had no firmer or more con- 
 sistent friend. The peace societies had best of 
 reasons to be proud of his support, in word and deed. 
 To him human life was sacred as the life of God. 
 Once, at a grand Peace gathering, it was strenuously 
 argued by most of the members who spoke, that 
 human life could and should be taken by divine com- 
 mand. And the president of the society himself 
 made an argument in defence of all the slaughters 
 of the Canaanites and other tribes and peoples, men, 
 women and children, by Moses, Joshua and their 
 destroying hosts, because perpetrated by command of 
 God. It was at one of the last meetings Rogers ever 
 attended, and he was then too feeble to bear an 
 active part in the deliberations. But after listening a 
 good while to scripture text and learned logic under 
 Levitical law, he rose to his feet and in low voice 
 asked : " Does our brother yonder say that if God 
 commanded him, he would take a sword and use it in 
 slaying human beings, and innocent, helpless human 
 beings ? "Yes, if God commanded," was the answer. 
 "Well, I wouldn't," responded Rogers, and sank 
 back into his seat, amid loud cheers of evident 
 approval and admiration. 
 
 Woman, to him, was in all rights, privileges and 
 prerogatives, the full equal of man. He was a 
 christian in the divinest, sublimest sense of that still 
 mysterious and much abused word. And as such his 
 kingdom was not of this world. And so he could 
 neither vote in, nor ask others to vote in nor to fight 
 for any government based on military power. 
 
 As husband and father, none ever knew one in 
 whom his family were more supremely felicitated. 
 As companion and friend, blessed and happy were all 
 those who enjoyed his confidence and esteem. Gentle, 
 
46 NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS. 
 
 simple, tender, kind, ready to sacrifice his own com- 
 fort ; sharing on occasion, like General Washington, 
 his room and bed with a colored man, and yet always 
 discriminating in high degree ; with tastes most 
 refined ; ever ready to criticise, even censure a 
 friend, however dear, when he deemed it just and 
 demanded ; firm as his own Ailsa Craig, whenever or 
 wherever, or however a moral principal was in 
 jeopardy ; running over with music, poetry, and 
 culture of every kind, he was a man, the like of whom 
 the world has seldom seen — may not soon see again. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 SLAVERY— AS IT WAS. 
 
 Everybody now is anti-slavery. It is honorable 
 now to be a child of the man who "cast the first 
 anti-slavery vote in our town ;" or called "our first 
 anti-slavery meeting ;" or first entertained Garrison 
 as guest, or Abby Kelley, or Frederick Douglass ; or 
 rescued Stephen Foster or Lucy Stone from the hands 
 of a ferocious mob ; or raised, or commanded the 
 first company of colored troops in the war of Rebel- 
 lion, at the time when not a musical band could be 
 found in the whole city of New York to play for a 
 colored regiment, as it marched from the New Haven 
 Railway station to the steamer at the foot of Canal 
 street to embark for the seat of war ! " Paid pipers" 
 the venerable Dr. Tyng with withering scorn 
 called them all on the same evening in Cooper Insti- 
 tute, where he presided at a lecture by George William 
 Curtis. "Paid pipers," with wind too immaculate to 
 blow away in escort of a gallant battalion of our 
 country's saviors, when there was no other name under 
 heaven given among men," whereby the nationality 
 could be saved but the negro name ; despised as he 
 was and rejected of men; "a man of sorrows" and 
 acquainted all his dreary life with grief ! Everybody 
 now is an abolitionist, or son, or grandson of an anti- 
 slavery parentage, and so all seem to claim equal 
 honor, so far as honor is due, for ridding the world of 
 the sublimest scourge and curse that ever afflicted the 
 human race. 
 
48 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 Few now, however, have much conception of what 
 slavery was ; or what was genuine, effective anti- 
 slavery, when slavery sat supreme "on its throne of 
 skulls," and ruled the whole nation, state, church and 
 school, literature, trade, commerce, manufactures and 
 agriculture, as with rod of iron ! And its first 
 command, great command, only command was, 
 "Thou shalt have no god but me." Not, as from 
 Mount Sinai, "no other gods before me," but no other 
 god. Not " no other gods before me," but " no other 
 gods with, or above or below me !" So it was. Anti- 
 slavery then, was more than a name ; more than pro- 
 fession ; or denomination in religion ; or party in the 
 government. So Christianity had mighty meanings 
 when the great apostle to the Gentiles wrote : " I am 
 not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." And " I deter- 
 mined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ 
 and him crucified." It had fearful meanings when the 
 gardens of Nero were illumined with the burning 
 bodies of martyred saints, both men and women, young 
 and old ! When to name the Christ of God was 
 death in lingering torments — when crucifixions were 
 so multiplied that, as in grim epigram it was said, 
 " space was wanted for crosses, and crosses for chris- 
 tians." And yet so sublime was christian heroism at 
 that hour, that it could have well been added, but 
 christains are never wanting for crosses. * 
 
 But what was our slave system, that so many now 
 proudly claim to have aided to destroy ? And whose 
 fathers and mothers were those who really did bear 
 active, effective part in the thirty years moral and 
 peaceful conflict, inaugurated by Garrison with 
 "sword of the spirit ; " whose only weapons were 
 
 " The mild arms of truth and love, 
 Made mighty through the living God ? " 
 
SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 49 
 
 Or whose sons and brothers rushed at last to the 
 field of mortal combat, and fought the bloodiest, 
 mightiest, everyway, most frightful war, that has 
 shaken the earth and darkened the skies in all the 
 christian years ? Slavery! What is it ? What was it 
 on the American plantation ? " Peculiar Institution," 
 some called it. " Patriarchal Institution," others ! 
 But what was it? All language pales and is silent in 
 its dread presence. Slave-holding! "Deed without 
 a name ! " In cant phrase we said slavery degrades 
 man to the brute, sinks woman to the dead level of 
 the horse. And then who knows the height and 
 depth, the length and breadth of those stunning 
 words ; insulting blasphemies against the Holy Spirit 
 of Humanity ! Let one advertisement, distributed by 
 large handbills, as well as published in the daily news- 
 papers of New Orleans, aid the imagination : 
 
 RAFFLE. Mr. Joseph Jennings respectfully informs his friends and 
 the public that, at the request of many acquaintances, he has been 
 induced to purchase from Mr. Osborne, of Missouri, the celebrated DARK 
 BAY HOR>E, " STAR," aged five years, square trotter and warranted 
 sound ; with a new, light Trotting- Buggy and Harness: Also the dark, 
 stout Mulatto Girl, " Sarah," aged about twenty years, general house 
 servant, valued at nine hundred do//ars, and guaranteed : and will be 
 RAFFLED for at four o'clock p. m., February first, at the selection hotel 
 of the subscribers. The above is as represented, and those persons who 
 may wish to engage in the usual practice of raffling will, I assure them, be 
 perfectly satisfied with their destiny in this affair. 
 
 The whole is valued at its just worth, fifteen hundred dollars ; fifteen 
 hundred CHANCES at One Dollar each. The Raffle will be conducted 
 by gentlemen selected by the interested subscribers present. Five nights 
 will be allowed to complete the Raffle. Both of the above described can be 
 seen at my store, No. 78 Common street, second door from Camp, at from 
 nine o'clock, a. m., to two p. in. 
 
 Highest throw to take the first choice; the lowest throw the remaining 
 prize, and the fortunate winners will pay Twenty Dollars each for the 
 refreshments furnished on the occasion. 
 
 N. B. No chances recognized unless paid for previous to the commence- 
 ment. JOSEPH JENNINGS. 
 
 In the light of a spectacle like this, it is possible to 
 fancy slightly what should be understood when it is 
 said that slavery degrades human beings to the plane 
 of brute beasts. 
 
 Or reverse the order of illustration, if we dare, and 
 imagine a brute beast raised to the dignity and honor, 
 
5<0 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 the privilege and prerogative of a man, an immortal 
 being. History or fable tells us of a Roman Sovereign 
 who made a favorite horse first Consul of the Empire. 
 Such mockery might have been. But suppose in a 
 christian country, in a christian sanctuary, it were 
 proposed to admit, not a horse, but some dogs into 
 full fellowship and communion with the church. It is 
 on a delightful Sunday of early summer, in a pleasant 
 New England country town. The village gardens are 
 already abloom with early flowers, the orchards are 
 white with prophecy of abundant fruit, and every tree 
 is an orchestra of cheerful birds, whose worship-notes 
 almost charm the Sabbath silence into sweet accord 
 with the songs of paradise. All the village and the 
 districts around assemble at their, to them, " house of 
 God." At the appointed hour, the baptized commu- 
 nicants of the accepted faith are invited to seats at 
 the sacramental board. The unregenerate of the con- 
 gregation retire to the outer seats, paying silent but 
 respectful attention. The first scene in the solemn 
 service is admission of new members, who are invited 
 forward to the altar. There, in presence of the con- 
 gregation, they listen and bow silent assent to the 
 Articles of Faith and the Covenant Vows, and receive 
 the seal of baptism, in the name of the triune God. 
 Solemn and impressive as this may be, it may excite 
 no unusual emotions, being neither new nor infre- 
 quent. But slavery, we used to say with lip only, 
 " degrades man and woman to a level with the 
 brutes;" puts the "bay horse, Star," and the "Mu- 
 latto girl, Sarah," into the same raffle, or on the same 
 auction-block. Now change the order. Elevate the 
 brutes to the place of immortal beings at the baptismal 
 font and sacramental table. Whistle up two or three 
 doa:s and solemnlv read over to them the creed and 
 
SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 5 I 
 
 covenant, and sprinkle them with the holy drops of 
 baptism, calling them by their appropriate brute 
 names, " Lion, I baptize thee in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Tiger, 
 I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And let the third be a 
 female: "Topsy, I baptize thee in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 
 Amen." 
 
 Let such a spectacle be enacted on a delightful 
 summer Sunday afternoon, in a beautiful New Eng- 
 land village, in its pleasant white meeting-house, and 
 at the memorial supper of that crucified Redeemer in 
 whom the church and its pastor devoutly believed, 
 and through whom they humbly hoped for salvation. 
 Can the effect on the beholders of such a daring spec- 
 tacle be described, or even imagined ? As well, but 
 no better, attempt a description of that slavery which 
 truly did degrade human beings to a level with horses 
 and with dogs. This whole scene was once supposed 
 as illustration, in the days of slavery, in just such town 
 and house of worship as here described, and not only 
 that town, but the pulpit and religious press of both 
 the hemispheres almost shrieked as with holy horror at 
 what they called so audacious, so diabolical blasphemy. 
 And the cry came up from near and far for imme- 
 diate punishment of him who had so illumined slavery, 
 to the fullest demand of the statute, which was long 
 confinement, it was held, in the State prison ! But 
 one thing was made clear. The words, Slavery 
 degrades man to a level with beasts, were seen and 
 felt as perhaps never before. The congregation where 
 the illustration was presented saw and solemnly felt 
 that from beasts up to men — to men exalted to angelic 
 heights — was no farther than those deeps down which 
 
52 SALVERV AS IT WAS. 
 
 immortal man is plunged, to reach the level of the 
 beasts that perish. And that frightful pit was reached 
 by every chattel slave ever born. 
 
 But the question, What was American slavery ? is 
 not yet answered. To call it robbery, by only our dic- 
 tionary definition, would pay it high compliment. Its 
 fell work began where all ordinary robbery leaves off. 
 John Wesley saw it and pronounced it, " Sum of all 
 villainies." And if he did not pronounce the slave 
 holder sum of all villains, he did address him in words 
 like these : 
 
 What I have said to slave-traders, equally concerns 
 all slave-holders, of whatever rank and degree, seeing 
 man-buyers are exactly on a level with man-stealers. 
 You say, I pay honestly for my goods, and am not 
 concerned to know they are honestly come by. Nay, 
 but you are. * * * You know they are not 
 honestly come by ; you know they are procured by 
 means nothing near so innocent as picking pockets, 
 house-breaking, or robbery on the highway. You 
 know they are procured by a deliberate species of 
 more complicated villainy, of fraud, robbery and mur- 
 der, than was ever practiced by Mohammedans or 
 Pagans ; in particular, by murders of all kinds ; by the 
 blood of the innocent poured upon the ground like 
 water. Now it is your money that pays the African 
 butcher. You, therefore, are principally guilty of all 
 these frauds, robberies and murders. You are the 
 spring that puts all the rest in motion. They would 
 not stir a step without you : therefore the blood of all 
 these wretches who die before their time lies upon 
 your head. " The blood of thy brother crieth against 
 thee from the earth." O, whatever it costs, put a stop 
 to its cry before it be too late ; instantly, at any price, 
 were it the half of your goods, deliver thyself from 
 blood-guiltiness ! Thy hands, thy bed, thy furniture, 
 thy house, and thy lands, at present are stained with 
 blood. Surely it is enough ; accumulate no more 
 guilt; spill no more the blood of the innocent. Do 
 not hire another to shed blood ; do not pay him for 
 
SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 53 
 
 doing it. Whether you are a Christian or not, show 
 yourself a man ! Be not more savage than a lion or 
 a bear. 
 
 Slavery is not robbery therefore, because it is so 
 much more, and worse. Indeed, to rob man of man- 
 hood, and beastialize him down with not only animals, 
 but the dead matter on which brutes feed and tread, 
 makes any farther spoliation simply impossible. 
 
 Or shall we pronounce American slavery adultery, 
 wholesale, unblushing adultery? If not, it must be 
 because, as with robbery, it was something so much 
 worse. For, first, what is adultery but setting aside 
 all rights, privileges and responsibilities, human and 
 divine, of both the marriage and parental relations ? 
 Slavery knew no more of marriage and parentage 
 among slaves than among swine. Logically, as well 
 as legally, it could not. And the statutes and court 
 decisions so declared. 
 
 But such abomination had not only state sanction, 
 but church sanctification as well. Judge Birney, of 
 Kentucky, once a slavediolder, in his memorable tract 1 
 entitled : " The American Churches the Bulwarks of j 
 American Slavery," second edition, revised by the 
 author, cites this instance : 
 
 In J &35 the following query referring to slaves was 
 presented to the Savannah River Baptist Association i 
 of Ministers : " Whether in case of involuntary sepa- I 
 ration of such a character as to preclude all prospect 
 of future intercourse, the parties ought to be allowed 
 to marry again." 
 
 The following was the answer : 
 
 * * Such separation among persons situated as 
 are our slaves, is civilly a separation by death. And 
 we believe that in the sight of God, it would be so 
 viewed ! * * * The slaves are not free 
 agents, and a dissolution by death is not more entirely 
 without their consent and beyond their control than by 
 such separation. 
 
54 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 James G. Birney was at one time a slave-holder as 
 well as judge in the courts, and a ruling elder in 
 the Presbyterian church. He was induced to emanci- 
 pate his slaves, as well as to provide for their future 
 support, taking them over into the free state of Ohio 
 for that purpose, by the faithful and earnest argument 
 and appeal of Theodore D. Weld, an early, eloquent 
 and everyway most efficient apostle and laborer in the 
 anti-slavery field. Washing his own hands from the 
 blood and guilt of slave holding, Judge Birney set 
 himself to the work of abolishing the foul system. 
 Among his first endeavors was an attempt to purify 
 the churches, beginning with his own. But neither his 
 official standing in both state and church, nor his high 
 consequent social status availed to shield him from 
 every possible indignity and outrage at the hands of 
 infuriated mobs, composed largely sometimes of mem- 
 bers of the churches. Driven from Kentucky he 
 removed to Ohio. His descent on Cincinnati, where he 
 had now become known, was a signal to waken all the 
 vengeance of both church and state against him. 
 Meetings were at once called, " to see if the people 
 will permit abolition papers to be published in this 
 city." At the first meeting the postmaster, who was 
 also a minister, presided. A committee of thirteen, 
 all eminent citizens, and eight of them church mem- 
 bers, was appointed to wait on Mr. Birney and assure 
 him that his paper must stop, or the meeting would 
 not be responsible for the consequences of its continu- 
 ance. The chairman of the committee declared that 
 " if the paper were not promptly suspended, a mob, 
 unusual in numbers, determined in purpose, and deso- 
 lating in its ravages, would be inevitable !" All of 
 which proved true, for the paper did not stop. In the 
 darkness of midnight the mob entered and carried 
 
SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 55 
 
 press, types and all else of contents and sunk them in 
 the Ohio river. And twice afterwards was the same 
 outrage perpetrated. No wonder Mr. Burney enti- 
 tled his memorable tract, published at the time, " The 
 American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery." 
 For the title was more than justified on every subse- 
 quent page, as will hereafter be made to appear. And 
 the word of divine truth uttered by Mr. Weld, and the 
 baptism of fire and water three times administered by 
 the fiendish mob, with full approval of state, church and 
 pulpit, were sufficient consecration of the author of 
 the memorable tract to his subsequent anti-slavery 
 ministry and apostleship. 
 
 But returning to the argument. Not only was slavery 
 adultery, as sanctified and committed by the churches, 
 in thus sundering all marriage rights and responsibili- 
 ties ; it was legally and in solemn compact annihila- 
 tion of human marriage and parentage. The court 
 decisions contained sentiments such as these : " With 
 consent of their masters, slaves may marry ; but in a 
 state of slavery it can produce no civil effect, because 
 slaves are deprived of all civil rights." [Judge Mat- 
 thews, of Louisiana.] Attorney-General Delany, of 
 Maryland, held that slaves would not be admonished 
 for incontinence, or punished for adultery or forni- 
 cation ; or prosecuted for petty treason, or for killing 
 a husband, being a slave. The code of Louisiana 
 declared, "a slave could not contract matrimony. 
 The association which takes place among slaves, and 
 is called marriage, being properly designated contuber- 
 nium, a relation without sanctity, and to which no civil 
 rights adhere." So the plain, unquestionable fact was, 
 slavery was wholesale, legalized, sanctified concubin- 
 age, or adultery, from first to last. Our government 
 was based on the prostrate bodies, souls and civil, 
 
56 SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 
 
 social, marital, parental, educational, moral and relig- 
 ious rights of half a million of immortal beings. In 
 three-quarters of a century their numbers multiplied till 
 at the downfall of the institution there were four mil- 
 lions, and not one legal marriage ever existed in all 
 their generations ! And yet, compelled by law thus 
 to live and herd like brute beasts, hundreds of thou- 
 sands of them were admitted to baptism and sacramen- 
 tal communion and fellowship in all the great evan- 
 gelical denominations in the land ! 
 
 One other attribute of the dreadful system remains 
 to be exposed, and that was murder. Under the writ- 
 ten law of slavery, more than seventy offences, when 
 committed by slaves, were punishable with death. One 
 law read, " if any slave shall presume to strike any 
 white person, such slave may be lawfully killed." Of 
 course killed on the spot. A woman or girl would 
 have been killed (undoubtedly many were killed) for 
 defending her person against the lustful attack of her 
 overseer or other white assailant. 
 
 Special laws existed for recapturing escaped slaves 
 at any cost of life to the victims, by first proclaiming 
 them outlaws. The following legal instrument with 
 its accompaniments will suffice to show the way : 
 
 State of North Carolina, ) 
 Lenoir County. ) 
 
 Whereas, complaint hath been this day made to us, two of the Justices 
 of the Peace for the said county, by William D. Cobb, of Jones county, 
 that two negro slaves belonging to him, named Ben (commonly known by 
 the name of Ben Fox) and Rigdon, have absented themselves from their 
 said master's service, and are lurking about in the counties of Lenoir and 
 Jones, committing acts of felony ;— these are, in the name of the Stale, to 
 command the said slaves forthwith to surrender themselves, and return 
 home to their said master. And we do hereby, by virtue of an act of the 
 Assembly of this State, concerning servants and slaves, intimate and de- 
 clare, if the said slaves do not surrender themselves and return home to 
 their master immediately after the publication of these presents, that any 
 person may kill and destroy said slaves by such means as lie or they think 
 fit , without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offence for so 
 doing-, or without incurring any penalty or forfeiture thereby. 
 Given under our hands and seals, this 12th day of November, 1836. 
 
 B. COLEMAN, J. P. [Seal.] 
 JAMES JONES, J. P. [Seal.J 
 
SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 57 
 
 Two Hundred Dollars Reward. — Ran away from the subscriber, a 
 certain negro man named Ben, (commonly known by the name of Ben Fox). 
 Also, one other negro, by the name of Rigdon, who ran away on the 8th of 
 this month. 
 
 I will give the reward of one hundred dollars for each of the above 
 negroes, to be delivered to me or confined in the jail of Lenoir or Jones 
 county, or for the killing of them , so that I can see tlieiu. 
 
 November 12, 1836. W. D. COBB. 
 
 Another advertisement, from the Sumpter County 
 (Alabama) Whig, will illustrate the methods of slave 
 hunting in other States besides North Carolina : 
 
 ^TEGRO DOGS. — The undersigned having bought the entire pack of 
 \ NEGRO DOGS of the Hay & Allen stock, he now proposes to catch 
 runaway negroes. His charge will be three dollars a day for hunting, and 
 fifteen dollars for catching a runaway. He resides three and one-half 
 miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones' Bluff road. 
 
 November 6, 1845. WM. GAMBEL. 
 
 The New York Commercial- Advertiser of June 8th, 
 1827, contained the following item of news, not uncom- 
 mon at that time, as the irresponsibility of slave-holders 
 over the lives of their slaves had hardly been ques- 
 tioned : 
 
 Hunting Men with Dogs. — A negro who had 
 absconded from his master, and for whom a reward 
 of a hundred dollars was offered, has been appre- 
 hended and committed to prison in Savannah. 
 
 The editor who states the fact adds, with as much 
 coolness as though there were no barbarity in the 
 matter, that he did not surrender till he was consider- 
 ably maimed by the dogs that had been set on him — 
 desperately fighting them, and badly cutting one of 
 them with a sword. 
 
 The St. Francisville (La.) Chronicle of February 
 1st, 1839, reports a slave-hunt after this sort : 
 
 Two or three days ago a gentleman of this parish, in 
 hunting runaway negroes, came upon a camp of them 
 in the swamp on Cat Island. He succeeded in arrest- 
 ing two of them, but the third made fight. On being 
 shot in the shoulder, he fled to a sluice, where the 
 dogs succeeded in drowning him before assistance 
 could arrive. 
 
 Had " assistance' arrived," would it have been ten- 
 dered to the dogs or their victim ? is a question, to 
 
 s 
 
58 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 this day. But calling off the dogs altogether, let the 
 subject be illumined a little farther with lights like 
 this, from the Charleston (S. C.) Courier, in 1825. 
 
 TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.— Ran away from the subscriber, on 
 the 14th instant, a negro girl named Molly. She is 16 or 17 years of age, 
 slim made, lately branded on her left cheek, thus, " R," and a piece 
 
 IS TAKEN OFF HER EAR ON THE SAME SIDE ; THE SAME LETTER IS BRANDED ON 
 THE INSIDE OF BOTH HER LEGS. 
 
 ABNER ROSS, Fairfield District, S. C. 
 
 True, the killing is here omitted, possibly by acci- 
 dent, but if such an atrocity does not involve murder, 
 sublimated, what shall be said of this from the Wil- 
 mington (N. C.) Advertiser of July 13th, 1838? 
 
 RANAWAY— MY NEGRO MAN, RICHARD.— A reward of twenty- 
 five dollars will be paid for his apprehension, dead or alive ! Satis- 
 factory proof will only be required of his being killed. He has with him, 
 in all probability, his wife, Eliza, who ran awav from Colonel Thompson, 
 now a resident of Alabama. 
 
 But no more such evidences of the murderous spirit 
 of slavery can be needed ; though the last advertise- 
 ment suggests an incident in South Carolina, so late 
 as 1844, which is too instructive and assuring not to 
 be given. 
 
 That "wife, Eliza, who ran away from Colonel 
 Thompson," possibly might have a tale unfolded, 
 whose lightest word would have harrowed up the soul. 
 There were many such tales. A young man in South 
 Carolina was seen walking with a young woman, a 
 slave, to whom it was known he was tenderly attached, 
 and whom, it was farther shown, he married and 
 aided to escape from slavery. That was his crime. 
 He was arrested, tried i and found guilty. Sentence 
 of death was pronounced upon him by Judge J. B. 
 O'Neale, in word and spirit as now reproduced : 
 
 John L. Brown — It is my duty to announce to you 
 the consequences of the conviction which you heard 
 at Winnsboro', and of the opinion you have just 
 heard read, refusing your two-fold motion in arrest 
 of judgment for a new trial. 
 
 You are to die ! To die an ignominious death — 
 the death on the gallows ! This announcement is, to 
 
SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 59 
 
 you, I know, most appalling. Little did you dream of 
 it when you stepped into the bar with an air as if you 
 thought it was a fine frolic. But the consequences of 
 crime are just such as you are realizing. Punishment 
 often comes when it is least expected. Let me 
 entreat you to take the present opportunity to com- 
 mence the work of reformation. Time will be fur- 
 nished you to prepare for the great change just before 
 you. Of your past life I know nothing, except what 
 your trial furnished. That told me that the crime for 
 which you are to suffer was the consequence of a 
 want of attention on your part to the duties of life. 
 The strange woman snared you. She flattered you 
 with her words, and you became her victim. The 
 consequence was, that, led on by a desire to serve her, ■ 
 you committed the offense of aiding a slave to run 
 away and depart from her master's service ; and now, 
 for it you are to die ! 
 
 You are a young man, and I fear you have been 
 dissolute ; and -if so, these kindred vices have con- 
 tributed a full measure to your ruin. Reflect on your 
 past life, and make the only useful devotion of the 
 remnant of your days in preparing for death. 
 
 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy 
 youth, is the language of inspired wisdom. This 
 comes home appropriately to you in this trying mo- 
 ment. 
 
 You are young ; quite too young to be where you 
 are. If you had remembered your Creator in your past 
 days, you would not now be in a felon's place, to receive 
 a felon's judgment. Still', it is not too late to remem- 
 ber your Creator. He calls early, and He calls late. 
 He stretches out the arms of a Father's love to you — ■ 
 to the vilest sinner — and says : " Come unto me and 
 be saved." You can perhaps, read. If so, read the 
 Scriptures ; read them without note, and without com- 
 ment ; and pray to God for His assistance ; and you 
 will be able to say when you pass from prison to exe- 
 cution, as a poor slave said under similar circum- 
 stances : "I am glad my Friday has come." If you 
 cannot read the Scriptures, the ministers of our holy 
 religion will be ready to aid you. They will read and 
 
60 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 explain to you until you will be able to understand ; 
 and understanding, to call upon the only One who 
 can help you and save you- — Jesus Christ, the Lamb 
 of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. To 
 Him I commend you. And through Him may you 
 have that opening of the Day-Spring of mercy from 
 on high, which shall bless you here, and crown you as 
 a saint in an everlasting world, forever and ever. 
 
 The sentence of the law is that you be taken hence 
 to the place from whence you came last ; thence to 
 the jail of Fairfield District ; and that there you be 
 closely and securely confined until Friday, the 26th 
 day of April next ; on which day, between the hours 
 of ten in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, you 
 will be taken to the place of public execution, and 
 there be hanged by the neck till your body be dead. 
 And may God have mercy on your soul ! 
 
 No event in anti-slavery history up to that time so 
 stirred the two hemispheres as did this frightful sen- 
 tence of Judge O'Neale. Even in the British House of 
 Lords, two illustrious members, Brougham and Den- 
 man, gave it pathetic and powerful consideration. 
 One London journal said: "The dreadful case of 
 John L. Brown has created throughout Great Britain, 
 a sensation of deepest and most painful character. 
 Addresses to the churches in South Carolina have 
 been extensively signed by the independent churches 
 in England and Scotland." 
 
 The Glasgow Argus, among the most important 
 journals of Scotland, twice published the Charge on 
 account of its fearful character, and said of it, "we 
 know of nothing more atrocious in the judicial annals 
 of modern times. * * And what are we 
 
 to think of a judge, who in passing sentence for what 
 in our country, our land of Freedom, would be looked 
 upon as a praiseworthy act, invokes the sacred name 
 of Deity and the Holy Book of Inspiration as lending 
 sanction to the atrocity about to be committed!" 
 
SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 6 1 
 
 But perhaps the most imposing movement in Great 
 Britain, on this terrible perversion of all justice, as 
 well as outrage on all decency, humanity and charity, 
 was a " Memorial addressed to the Churches of Christ 
 in South Carolina, as representing those of other states," 
 signed by more than thirteen hundred ministers 
 and office-holders in the churches and other benevo- 
 lent associations of London, and other portions of the 
 kingdom, in solemn protest against it. But it need 
 hardly be told, that all the sympathy felt, all the effort 
 made, all the appeals and memorials sent, eloquent, 
 tender, pathetic, devout as many, if not all of them 
 were, seemed almost wholly thrown away on the press, 
 pulpit, and vast majority of the people of the United 
 States, even though South Carolina did yield to 
 foreign pressure at last, and commuted the sentence to 
 fifty lashes on the bare back ; and even they were 
 said to have been remitted on condition that the 
 young man quit the state forever. 
 
 But this account though already extended, would* 
 not be complete unless the feelings excited in the 
 hearts of the American Abolitionists, in view of the 
 whole scene, could have utterance. Let then their 
 favorite and faithful poet, Whittier, be their oracle : 
 
 ON THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN. 
 
 Ho ! thou who seekest late and long 
 
 A License from the Holy Book 
 For brutal lust and hellish wrong, 
 
 Man of the Pulpit, look ! 
 Lift up those cold and atheist eyes, 
 
 This ripe fruit of thy teaching see ; 
 And tell us how to heaven will rise 
 
 The incense of this sacrifice — 
 This blossom of the gallows tree ' 
 
 Search out for slavery's hour of need 
 
 Some fitting text of sacred writ ; 
 Give heaven the credit of a deed 
 
 Which shames the nether pit. 
 
62 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 Kneel, smooth blasphemer, unto Him 
 
 Whose truth is on thy lips a lie- 
 Ask that His bright winged cherubim 
 May bend around that scaffold grim 
 To guard and bless and sanctify. 
 
 Ho ! champion of the people's cause- 
 Suspend thy loud and vain rebuke 
 
 Of foreign wrong and Old World's laws- 
 Man of the Senate, look ! 
 
 Was this the promise of the free. 
 The great hope of our early time — 
 
 That slavery's poison vine should be 
 
 Upborne by Freedom's prayer-nurs'd tree 
 
 O'erclustered with such fruits of crime? 
 
 Send out the summons East and West, 
 
 And South and North, let all be there 
 Where he who pitied the oppressed 
 
 Swings out in sun and air. 
 Let not a Democratic hand 
 
 The grisly hangman's task refuse ; 
 There let each loyal patriot stand, 
 
 Awaiting slavery's command, 
 To twist the rope and draw the noose ! 
 
 But vain is irony — unmeet 
 
 Its cold rebuke for deeds which start 
 In fiery and indignant beat 
 
 The pulses of the heart. 
 Leave studied wit and guarded phrase 
 
 For those who think but do not feel — 
 Let men speak out in words which raise 
 
 Where'er they fall, an answering biaze 
 Like flints which strike the fire from steel. 
 
 Still let a mousing priesthood ply 
 
 Their garbled text and gloss of sin, 
 And make the lettered scroll deny 
 
 Its living soul within : 
 Still let the place-fed, titled knave 
 
 Plead robbery's right with purchased lips, 
 And tell us that our fathers gave 
 
 For Freedom's pedestal, a slave, 
 The frieze and moulding, chains and whips ! 
 
 But ye who own that Higher Law 
 Whose tablets in the heart are set, 
 
 Speak out in words of power and awe 
 That God is living vet ! 
 
 Breathe forth once more those tones sublime 
 Which thrilled the burdened prophet's lyre, 
 
SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 63 
 
 And in a dark and evil time 
 
 Smote down on Israel's fast of crime 
 And gift of blood, a rain of fire ! 
 
 Oh, not for us the graceful lay 
 
 To whose soft measures lightly move 
 The Dryad and the woodland fay, 
 
 O'er-locked by mirth and love ! 
 But such a stern and startling strain 
 
 As Britain's hunted bards flung down 
 From Snowden to the conquered plain. 
 
 Where harshly clanked the Saxon chain, 
 On trampled field and smoking town. 
 
 By Liberty's dishonored name. 
 
 By man's lost hope and failing trust. 
 By words and deeds which bow with shame 
 
 Our foreheads to the dust ; 
 By the exulting Tyrant's sneer, 
 
 Borne to us from the Old World's thrones, 
 And by his victims' griefs who hear, 
 
 In sunless mines and dungeons drear. 
 How Freedom's land her faith disowns ! 
 
 Speak out in 'acts, the time for words 
 Has passed ; and deeds alone suffice ; 
 . In the loud clang of meeting swords 
 The softer music dies ! 
 Act — act in God's name, while ye may ! 
 
 Smite from the church, her leprous limb ! 
 Throw open to the light of day 
 
 The bondman's cell, and break away 
 The chains the state has bound on him ! 
 
 Ho ! every true and living soul, 
 
 To Freedom's perilled altar bear 
 The Freeman's and the Christian's whole 
 
 Tongue, pen, and vote, and prayer ! 
 One last, great battle for the right — 
 
 One short, sharp struggle to be free ! 
 To do is to succeed — our fight 
 
 Is waged in Heaven's approving sight ; 
 The smile of God is Victory." 
 
 Severity of punishments inflicted on slaves short of 
 death, were often a thousand times more cruel than 
 death by the halter ; not unfrequently terminating in 
 death, though only by whipping. But hanging was 
 not always severe enough, as witness a law of Mary- 
 land, enacted in 172^ : " The slave shall first have the 
 
64 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 right hand cut off, then be hanged in the usual man- 
 ner ; the head be severed from the body, the body 
 divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters 
 be set up in the most public places of the county where 
 such act was committed." And this horrible bar- 
 barity could be inflicted by a simple justice's court. 
 
 But it may be said this legislation was before the 
 foundations of this republic were laid. That is true. 
 But in the year 1836, in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, 
 an act was perpetrated, of which the following was the 
 accepted newspaper account, on the spot and over the 
 country : 
 
 On the 28th of April, 1836, in the city of St. Louis, 
 a black man named Mcintosh, who had stabbed an 
 officer who had arrested him, was seized by the mul- 
 titude, fastened to a tree in the midst of the city, wood 
 piled around him, in open day, and in the presence of 
 an immense throng of citizens, he was burned to 
 death. The Alton Telegraph thus describes a part of 
 the scene : 
 
 All was silent as death while the executioners were 
 piling the wood around the victim. He said not a 
 word till he felt that the flames had seized him. He 
 then uttered an awful howl, attempting to sing and 
 pray, then hung his head and suffered in silence. 
 After the flames had surrounded their prey, his eyes 
 burned out of his head, and his mouth apparently 
 parched to a cinder, some one in the crowd more com- 
 passionate than the rest, proposed to end his misery 
 by shooting him. But it was replied that he was 
 already out of his pain. " No, no," cried the wretch, 
 " I am not. I am suffering as much as ever. Shoot 
 me ! Shoot me !" " No," exclaimed one of the fiends 
 standing by the roasting sacrifice, " no, he shall not be 
 shot. I would sooner slack the fire if that would 
 increase his misery !" 
 
 A St. Louis correspondent of a New York paper 
 sent an account of the diabolical deed, of which this 
 is an excerpt : 
 
SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 65 
 
 The shrieks and groans of the victim were loud and 
 piercing, and to observe one limb after another drop 
 into the fire, was awful indeed. In dying, he was 
 about fifteen minutes. I visited the place this morn- 
 ing and saw the body, or the remains of it, burned 
 to a crump. The legs and arms were gone, and only 
 a part of the head and body was remaining. 
 
 A subsequent judicial decision by judge Luke E. 
 Lawless, of the Circuit Court of Missouri, made at a 
 session of court in St. Louis, was, that as the burning 
 of Mcintosh was the act, directly or indirectly, by 
 countenance of a majority of the citizens, it is a case 
 which transcends the jurisdiction of the grand jury ! 
 
 And so the dreadful sacrament was sanctified and 
 solemnized by high judicial decision. And as such 
 atrocities were common while slavery lasted, why need 
 the law of Maryland be shorn of its odium and terror 
 in the popular apprehension, only because it was 
 older than the Declaration of American Indepen- 
 dence ? 
 
 Assuming that nations are not better than their 
 laws, or that laws are never made till needed, what 
 shall be said of legislation like this? A law of North 
 Carolina provided that : 
 
 If any person shall wilfully kill his own slave, or 
 of any other person, every such offender shall, on con- 
 viction, forfeit and pay the sum of seven hundred 
 pounds, and shall forever be rendered incapable of 
 holding or exercising any office. 
 
 And this law was not repealed till the year 182 1, if 
 ever. Another section of the same act provided : 
 
 If any person shall, in sudden heat of passion, or 
 by undue correction, kill his own slave, or the slave of 
 any other person, he shall forfeit the sum of three 
 hundred and fifty pounds. 
 
 A still further provision of the same act read thus : 
 
 If any person shall wilfully cut out the tongue, put 
 out the eye, castrate, or cruelly scald or burn any 
 
66 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 slave, or deprive any slave of any limb or member, or 
 shall inflict any other cruel punishment, other than 
 by whipping or beating with a switch, horse-whip or 
 cow-skin, or by putting on irons, or imprisoning such 
 slave/such person, for every such offence, shall forfeit 
 and pay one hundred pounds. 
 
 Judge Stroud, in his carefully prepared " Sketch of 
 Laws Relating to Slavery," says in his latest edition, 
 (1856) : "This, so far as 7 can learn, has been suf- 
 fered to disgrace the statute book to the present hour. 
 Amid all the mutations which Christianity has effected 
 within the last century, she has not been able to con- 
 quer the spirit which dictated this law." 
 
 And not to speak of the shameful outrage, so 
 denounced in Deuteronomy, xxiii ; 1st, what must 
 be thought of the decency, humanity, not to say 
 religion, of a people that enacts, supports, sanctifies a 
 law which beats without limit, without mercy, with 
 horse-whip, cowskin or other missile, a human being, 
 man, woman, child, unrebuked, unless the last stroke 
 should produce immediate death ? 
 
 With one more well authenticated fact and one 
 other witness, and he none other than Thomas Jeffer- 
 son himself, the question as to the character of slavery 
 shall be submitted to readers, to history, to posterity. 
 The outrage to be described was witnessed by John 
 James Appleton, Esq., whom Hon. David Lee Child 
 and his illustrious wife, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, 
 endorse as "a gentleman of high attainments and 
 accomplishments," a secretary of legation at Rio 
 Janeiro, Madrid and the Hague, commissioner at 
 Naples and charge d'affaires at Stockholm. Mr. 
 Appleton was present at the burial of a female slave 
 in Mississippi, who had been whipped to death by her 
 master, for being gone longer on an errand than was 
 thought necessary. She protested under the terrible 
 
SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 67 
 
 torture that she was ill and had to rest in the fields. 
 To complete the climax of horror, she was delivered 
 of a dead child while undergoing the punishment!! Is 
 it strange that she had to rest by the way ? But we 
 will hasten to our last witness. 
 
 To-day as I write, the Democratic party, party of 
 Thomas Jefferson, is celebrating here in Massachu- 
 setts, a political success, almost unexampled under the 
 circumstances, in state elections, since the party was 
 first inaugurated. The tribes of Israel never claimed 
 Abraham as their father with more devout pride and 
 filial reverence, than have the Democrats of this nation 
 Thomas Jefferson as theirs, since their party first 
 learned to lisp his name. 
 
 And those tribes crying, " Crucify Him, crucify 
 Him," in the court-room of Pilate, or mocking their 
 victim as he climbed Mount Calvary, bearing his cross 
 in sweating agony, did not more dishonor their patri- 
 archal father and founder than did the Democratic 
 party and their Whig accomplices on the plains of 
 Texas, murdering the Mexicans in a bloody war to 
 reinstate slavery where the Mexican government, with 
 its Roman Catholic religion, had not many years 
 before, abolished it, as all humanity hoped, forever. 
 That was almost forty years ago. Undoubtedly, devo- 
 tion to slavery sent the old Whig party to a scarcely 
 too early grave. Worship of the same unclean and 
 bloody Moloch, stove down democratic rule, from the 
 kindled wrath of the Infinite Justice around Fort 
 Sumter, until the victories won yesterday in so many 
 States of this Union, and proudly celebrated to-day, 
 give sign almost unmistakable, of its probable return 
 at the next presidential election. 
 
 And now the next and last witness as to the whole 
 quality and character of slavery, even as he saw it 
 
68 SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 
 
 and himself embraced it, is the patriarchal American 
 Democrat, Thomas Jefferson himself. 
 
 His memorable " Notes on the State of Virginia," 
 so often cited in the past, so greatly disregarded 
 while slavery continued, were revised and published 
 in 1787, when the problem of slavery was shaking the 
 new republic to its foundation. 
 
 The section relating to slavery contains so many 
 general observations on human relations and obliga- 
 tions, individual as well as collective, social as well as 
 civil and governmental, with a profoundly reverent 
 recognition of higher authority than any man-made 
 institutions, or constitutions, that it surely is not too 
 much to declare that a return of the Democratic party 
 to power will be a blessing or scourge and curse, 
 exactly in proportion as it shall follow, or reject the 
 doctrines and counsels of its justly venerated founder 
 and progenitor, as laid down in the passage from his 
 " Notes on the State of Virginia," here reproduced : 
 
 There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on 
 the manners of our people, produced by the existence 
 of Slavery among us. The whole commerce between 
 master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most 
 boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism oh 
 the one part, and degrading submission on the other. 
 Our children see this and learn to imitate it ; for man 
 is an imitative animal. This quality in him is the 
 germ of all education. From his cradle to his grave, 
 he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a 
 parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy 
 or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of 
 passion toward his slave, it should always be a suffi- 
 cient one that his child is present. But generally it 
 is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks 
 on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same 
 airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the 
 worst of passions, and thus nursed and educated, and 
 daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by 
 
SLAVERY AS IT WAS. 69 
 
 it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a 
 prodigy who can retain his manners and morals unde- 
 praved by such circumstances. 
 
 And with what execration should the statesman be 
 loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to 
 trample on the rights of the other, transforms those 
 into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the 
 morals of one part and the amor patritz of the other! 
 For if a slave can have a country in this world, it 
 must be any other in preference to that in which he is 
 born to live and labor for another ; in which he must 
 lock up the faculties of his nature ; contribute, as far 
 as depends on his individual endeavors, to the evan- 
 ishment of the human race, or entail his own miser- 
 able condition on the' endless generations proceeding 
 from him. 
 
 With the morals of. the people, their industry also is 
 destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor 
 for himself who can make another labor for him. This 
 is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves, a very 
 small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And 
 can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when 
 we have removed their only firm basis — a conviction 
 in the minds of the people that these liberties are the 
 gift of God ? That they are not to be violated but 
 with his wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for my country 
 when I reflect that God is just : that his justice can- 
 not sleep forever : that considering numbers, and 
 natural means Tmly, a revolution of the wheel of For- 
 tune, an exchange of situation is among possible 
 events : that it may become probable by supernatural 
 interference ! The Almighty has no attribute which 
 can take sides with us in such a contest ! But it is 
 impossible to be temperate and pursue this subject 
 through the various considerations of policy, of mor- 
 als, of history, natural and civil. We must be con- 
 tented to hope they will force their way into every 
 mind. I think a change already perceptible since the 
 origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the 
 master is abating ; that of the slave rising from the 
 dust ; his condition molifying ; the way I hope pre- 
 paring, under the auspices of heaven, for a total 
 
70 SLAVERY — AS IT WAS. 
 
 emancipation. And that this is disposed, in the order 
 of events, to be with the consent of the masters, 
 rather than by their extirpation. 
 
 Such was American slavery. Jefferson proved its 
 historian as well as prophet, to wondrous extent. 
 Happy for the nation, had it heeded his wise and 
 timely counsels. Happy for it would it even now 
 learn to regard them. 
 
 When, before or since our slave system, did govern- 
 ments ever punish with death for seventy offences, 
 and then forbid, under penalties almost as severe as 
 death, to teach one of the victims of such tyranny to 
 read one law of man or God, in any book, the Bible 
 not excepted? It may have been. But when, or where ? 
 What but cold-blooded murder must such governing 
 have been ! To rid the land of such a plague, no 
 wonder it required an army on our side only, of more 
 than two million seven hundred thousand men, half a 
 million of whom never returned ! And then, as a 
 crowning, sealing sacrifice, an idolized president mas- 
 sacred, murdered, and his tall form stretched across 
 their premature graves, while not this nation only, but 
 foreign peoples stood aghast! All this, not to speak 
 of moneyed cost and loss ; nor counting the sighs 
 and tears, bereavements and mournings of mothers, 
 sisters, widows and orphans ! All this, not reckoning 
 moral and spiritual, as well as financial impoverish- 
 ment and desolation, not to be restored perhaps till 
 our third and fourth generations ! Such was part of 
 the price paid to redeem the land from its uncommon 
 curse. Men called the war of sword and bayonet, 
 Rebellion. It might have been rebellion on the part 
 of slavery and the South. But to the North it was 
 Retribution. The South claimed as property, the 
 slave. But the North, by the terms of the Federal 
 
SLAVERY— AS IT WAS. 7 I 
 
 Union, held him pinned down to the earth as with 
 the point of the bayonet. From the torture-chambers 
 of the imprisoned slave our guilt ascended, by silent 
 but sure evaporation, until it hung in threatening- 
 clouds over all the sky, waiting the dread hour when 
 the Infinite Patience could endure it no longer ! 
 
 At last the command was given, and the tempest 
 and thunder shook the very heavens, saying to the 
 North, "Give up ;" to the South, " Keep not back." 
 No lightning-rod shielded either ; and Slavery, with 
 all its reeking, shrieking altars, and ghastly parapher- 
 nalia of whips, fetters, blood-hounds and red-hot 
 branding-irons, was swept away in cataclysms of blood 
 and fire ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANTI-SLAVERY — WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
 AND WHAT IT WAS. 
 
 Such account could slavery give of itself, "Peculiar 
 Institution " it was often called. But it was not pecul- 
 iar to the southern states. Fortunes were made by the 
 African slave trade, even in little Rhode Island. The 
 history of slavery and slave trading in Massachusetts 
 is one of the most surprising volumes ever issued by 
 the American press. New Hampshire held slaves. 
 General Washington himself, while President of the 
 United States, hunted a slave woman and her child 
 all the wav into that then remote state. Vermont, had 
 a fugitive slave case in 1808. But the brave Judge 
 Harrington stunned the remorseless claimant with his 
 decision that " nothing less than a bill of sale from the 
 Almighty could establish ownership " in his victim. 
 And he, too, returned home despoiled and shamed. 
 
 Slavery was the sin and crime of north as well as 
 south. It was sustained by the government, it was 
 sanctified by almost the whole religion of the nation. 
 I have read that even the Quakers gravely considered 
 the question, not whether it was right to hold slaves, 
 but whether it was proper to brand them with red hot 
 marking irons. To the credit of that sect, however, 
 it should be told that it was among the first, if not the 
 very first, to cast the accursed thing forever out of 
 its fellowship. 
 
 Three clauses in the federal constitution were so 
 interpreted as to brand the whole nation as slave- 
 holders, slave-hunters and slave-traders ; and one of 
 
ANTI-SLAVERY — WHAT IT WAS NOT, ETC. 73 
 
 those clauses was in two words, " suppress insur- 
 rections." And another was in this apparently inno- 
 cent, inoffensive period : 
 
 No person held to service or labor in one state 
 under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, 
 in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
 discharged from such service or labor ; but shall be 
 delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
 service or labor may be due. 
 
 And under that guarantee, which, as president, he 
 was solemnly sworn to execute, did George Washing- 
 ton himself pursue a slave mother and her child from 
 the Potomac to the Piscatauqua as remorselessly as 
 though they had been a sheep and her lamb. For- 
 tunately, however, for the victims, they escaped and 
 lived and died in the old Granite State. 
 
 Our African slave trade was a piracy that paled all 
 ordinary buccaneering into innocence. That traffic, 
 with all its nameless terrors and tortures, was secured 
 to the United States and positively protected by this 
 specious and apparently inoffensive phrase in the 
 ninth section of Article I in the federal consti- 
 tution : 
 
 The migration or importation of such persons as 
 any of the states now existing shall think proper to 
 admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to 
 the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a 
 tax or duty may be imposed on such importations, 
 not exceeding ten dollars for each person. 
 
 And Mr. Madison, afterwards president, declared, 
 and it is part of our history, that "the southern states 
 would not have entered the union without the tem- 
 porary permission of that trade." 
 
 The first fugitive slave law was enacted in 1793. 
 But as anti-slavery sentiment increased, through the 
 faithful and persistent labors of the uncompromising 
 Abolitionists, " underground railroads," as they 
 
74 ANTI-SLAVERY — WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
 
 were called, multiplied, and Judge Harrington's 
 decisions became more frequent. Underground rail- 
 mads were only lines of travel through the northern 
 states to Canada, over which, under cover of night,, 
 great numbers of slaves were conveyed, sometimes 
 in whole families; one anti-slavery man hurrying them 
 from his town to the next, or farther, if necessary, and 
 then another taking them in charge, and. so on till 
 they were safely landed in Canada, beyond reach of 
 further pursuit or danger. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 
 has no more interesting chapter than that in which 
 "Senator Bird's" adventure is described with his 
 night express train over that memorable but dark and 
 dangerous highway out of democratic despotism to 
 freedom in a land of kings and queens. And large 
 numbers escaped with greater security, as their friends 
 multiplied along the way, by their own unaided 
 efforts. 
 
 So another and severer fugitive law was demanded, 
 and in 1850 -enacted. That law, in the first place, 
 made every inch of our country, and the deck of 
 every vessel, on sea, lake or river, hunting ground for 
 slave-holder and kidnapper. And whoever refused 
 to aid in the bloody, brutal business of chasing, 
 seizing and holding the human prey, when called into 
 the service, or harbored or concealed the victims so 
 that they escaped, was punished " by fine not exceed- 
 ing six thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceed- 
 ing six months." And, moreover, could be then held 
 in an action for damages to the slave claimant, for 
 one thousand dollars for every slave lost through 
 refusal to obey that most shameful as well as unright- 
 eous and inhuman edict. And many of the best 
 families in the land were beggared only for religiously 
 observing the Golden Rule and remembering and 
 
AND WHAT IT WAS. 75 
 
 regarding them who were in bonds as bound with 
 them. 
 
 As early as the year 1840, efforts began to be made 
 by some anti-slavery men, who had faith or hope 
 in political action against slavery, to change the inter- 
 pretations of the constitution and decisions of the 
 Supreme Court so as to make not only the clauses just 
 now cited, but the whole instrument a proclamation 
 and protection of universal liberty. Foremost among 
 these men was Mr. Gerrit Smith, of New York. A 
 third political party was inaugurated, and James G. 
 Birney, whose name has already had honorable men- 
 tion in these pages, was the first nominated anti- 
 slavery candidate for the presidency, and whose first 
 anti-slavery works, as a repentant slave-holder, entitled 
 him to such distinction. But his name was with- 
 drawn after his first vote was given in 1844, and John 
 P. Hale of New Hampshire, succeeded him. He also 
 was superseded in the candidacy for one who 
 undoubtedly might control a larger vote, Martin Van 
 Buren, but whose anti-slavery reputation was surely 
 of most questionable character. But the popular 
 sentiment, press, pulpit, everything, everywhere pre- 
 vailed over all such innovation till the election of 
 Abraham Lincoln, who in his inaugural address on 
 March 4th, 1861, declared for slave-holding and 
 slave-hunting in these strange, but surely ever memor- 
 able words : 
 
 I understand a proposed amendment, which amend- 
 ment I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the 
 effect that the federal government shall never inter- 
 fere with the domestic institutions of the states, 
 including that of persons held to service. To avoid 
 misconstruction of what I have said, I now depart 
 from my purpose not to speak of particular amend- 
 ments, so far as to say, that holding such a provision 
 
76 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
 
 to be now implied constitutional law, I have no 
 objection to its being made express and irrevocable. 
 
 Mark the words, "express and irrevocable." 
 Express : not implied ; not doubtful. Irrevocable : 
 not to be revoked ; more than statute of Medes and 
 Persians. 
 
 Thus to slave-breeding as well as slave-working ; 
 to slave-buying, selling, holding and hunting, was the 
 whole nation and government committed under the 
 presidency, not of a southern, but a northern man ; 
 not of the Democratic, but the Republican party, and, 
 as was claimed, the very best of that party. And the 
 whole national domain was made human hunting 
 ground, from Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill, to the 
 wilds of Alaska, and the Golden Gate. And by the 
 fugitive slave law, every man and woman was held to 
 the bloodhound business of hunting slaves, when 
 required by the officers, under heavy fines and cruel 
 imprisonments. Such, in the Christian year one 
 thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, was the 
 culmination of all anti-slavery political parties. 
 
 The American Anti-Slavery Society had also a 
 constitution. Its declared aim was, " to convince all 
 our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to the 
 understanding and conscience, that slave-holding is a 
 heinous crime in the sight of God ; and that the duty, 
 safety and best interests of all concerned, require its 
 immediate abandonment, without expatriation." 
 Another declaration was this : " The society will 
 never in any way countenance the oppressed in 
 vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force." 
 
 A declaration of sentiment, issued at the inaugura- 
 tion of the society, spoke thus : 
 
 Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be 
 personally defeated, but our principles never. Truth, 
 justice, reason, humanity, must and will gloriously 
 
AND WHAT IT WAS. 77 
 
 triumph. * * * We shall send forth agents 
 to lift up the voice of remonstrance and warning. 
 We shall circulate unsparingly, anti-slavery tracts and 
 periodicals. We shall enlist the pulpit and the press. 
 
 And faithfully, consistently, persistently, without 
 concealment, without compromise, did the true aboli- 
 tionists continue so to act to the end. In an 
 enterprise solely moral and religious, as well as 
 philanthropic, the first, most earnest appeal was to the 
 church and pulpit. A more devoutly religious man 
 than was Mr. Garrison at the outset, or more soundly 
 orthodox and evangelical in sentiment, could not be 
 found. That has already been sufficiently shown. 
 And his strongest, kindest, most affectionate appeals 
 in behalf' of the enslaved were first made to the 
 ministers and churches of Boston, the then venerable 
 Dr. Beecher being most eminent among them. 
 
 I was a very humble unordained minister in a little 
 New Hampshire town, where I was preaching as a 
 candidate for settlement, when my first official testi- 
 mony was asked and cheerfully given in relation to 
 the crime and curse of slavery. The county anti- 
 slavery society where I was, issued, through a com- 
 mittee whose chairman was the afterwards well and 
 widely known Stephen S. Foster, a Circular to all the 
 ministers of the county, respectfully asking their 
 several answers to the following questions, relative to 
 the duty of the church and clergy of the country on 
 the subject of slavery : 
 
 i. Do you, or do you not believe that a man's right 
 to liberty is derived from God, and is therefore 
 inalienable ? 
 
 2. Do you regard slave-holding, under all circum- 
 stances, as a sin against God, and an immorality ? 
 
 3. Do you approve and support the principles and 
 measures of the American Anti-Slavery Society and 
 kindred organizations ? 
 
78 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
 
 4. Do you allow the claims of the Anti-Slavery 
 Society the same prominence in the pulpit exercises 
 of the Sabbath as those of other benevolent institu- 
 tions ? 
 
 5. Are the slave-owners excluded from the com- 
 munion of the church to which you minister, and 
 slave-owning ministers from the pulpit ? 
 
 6. Are you in favor of withdrawing all Christian 
 fellowship from slave-owners ? 
 
 7. Are you in favor of supporting such benevolent 
 institutions as admit slave-owners to participate in 
 their management, and knowingly receive into their 
 treasuries the avails of the unrequited toil of the slave, 
 and the human-flesh auctions of the south ? 
 
 Readers, young and old, can see by these crucial 
 questions what stern demands were made on the abo- 
 litionists at that day, who would keep their hands 
 clean, their garments unspotted from the guilt of 
 slavery, whose victims then numbered two and a half 
 millions. 
 
 Many ministers, to whom the letter of inquiry was 
 sent, paid no attention to it. Some answered cau- 
 tiously and prudently, having in their churches and soci- 
 eties influential men whose political party ties, if not 
 their own personal opinions, bound them as with iron 
 bands, to the accursed institution. A very few ven- 
 tured as far in testimony or protest against the system 
 as possible without periling their denominational 
 position and fellowship. Perhaps the only satisfac- 
 tory response in all respects to the questions pro- 
 pounded, was in part as given below : 
 
 Your sixth question is: "Are you in favor of 
 withdrawing all Christian fellowship from slave- 
 owners ?" 
 
 A step so important as this should not be rashly 
 taken. * * * And yet to those who would be sep- 
 arate from all sin, who would " have no fellowship 
 with the unfruitful works of darkness," what question 
 
AND WHAT IT WAS. 79 
 
 could be of easier solution ? With those fell demons 
 of darkness, whose awful cruelties are equalled only by 
 their shameless and unblushing licentiousness, none 
 should expect me to hold "Christian fellowship." But 
 shall 1 with the more humane and outwardly moral ? 
 For my part, I can conceive of no possible circum- 
 stances where one person can claim property in 
 another, under our slave system, without being guilty 
 of iniquity and oppression, and of giving countenance 
 and sanction to whatever abuses may result from that 
 system. I might own a slave, and so far as simple 
 treatment is concerned, do him no injustice. I might 
 feed, blanket, bed and house him as tenderly as I do 
 my horse. I might give him mental and moral instruc- 
 tion so far as the laws regulating slavery allowed ; 
 and, were it possible, make him as happy as the angels 
 before the heavenly throne. * * * But what then? 
 If 1 own him under the slave system of this nation, I 
 lend my influence, countenance, sanction and sancti- 
 fieation to all the atrocities connected with that svs- 
 tem. Not one pain nor pang could be inflicted on the 
 tortured slave, by cart-whip or cat-hauling ; the poison 
 tooth of blood-hound, the murderous rifle-bullet, or 
 red hot branding-iron, or the soul-crushing agonies of 
 the mother torn from her helpless babes and sold on 
 the auction block, forever from their sight, not one 
 of these, nor any other of the nameless and horrible 
 outrages and cruelties of the accursed plague, might 
 not be justly chargeable to my account ! My very 
 virtues as a slave-holder might do more to perpetuate 
 the system than all the vices which cluster around 
 it, till I might indeed be the most wicked slave-holder 
 in the land. What better palliation could the average 
 slave-holder plead than that such a man as I was a 
 breeder and holder of slaves ? * * * In my own 
 opinion, the most guilty of all among the slave-holders 
 are those whose professions are loudest and strongest 
 in favor of morality and religion ; the minister, the 
 elder, the deacon and private member of the church. 
 In one word, as Judge Birney, a ruling elder in the 
 Presbyterian church, has already proclaimed and 
 proved : " The American Churches are the Bulwarks 
 
So ANTI-SLAVERY — WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
 
 of American Slavery." Did not their influence, sanc- 
 tify slavery, its own odiousness would be its overthrow. 
 And must I commune in sacramental fellowship with 
 those who of all others are guiltiest in relation to the 
 most daring system of iniquity that ever cursed the 
 earth or scourged the inhabitants thereof? O, my 
 soul, come not thou into their secret ; unto their assem- 
 bly, mine honor, be not thou united ! 
 
 To-day, when everyone is, or would be thought an 
 abolitionist, or the descendant of an abolitionist, such 
 sentiments seem only reasonable and right ; only log- 
 ical and consistent ; slavery being everywhere and 
 always a heinous sin and crime. But in 1840, when 
 slavery had yet before it almost a quarter of a century 
 in which to plague us, it was not so. Slave-holders 
 were welcomed to the pulpits and sacramental suppers 
 of the churches in every state and county, if not in 
 every single town, where churches existed. And the 
 faithful and devout abolitionists, however evangelical 
 in sentiment, were as universally cast out. There 
 were exceptions, but so rare as rather to affirm and 
 confirm than impeach the rule. 
 
 And the political test of the time was not less stern 
 and severe. The great political parties vied with 
 each other in zeal and devotion to the demands of the 
 national idol. Louisiana and Florida had already 
 been purchased by the government, in obedience to 
 its behest, though in avowed violation of the federal 
 constitution. All the Indian tribes in the southern 
 seaboard states had been driven from their homes, 
 their churches and school-houses, their printing presses 
 and the graves of their ancestors, with unheard of 
 haste and cruelty, that their coveted lands might be 
 seized and doomed to slave-holding, the Seminoles in 
 Florida only excepted. And General Taylor, with 
 government troops, supplemented by imported Cuban 
 
AND WHAT IT WAS. 8 1 
 
 blood-hounds, was soon to complete the bloody busi- 
 ness by exterminating such as presumed to resist, and 
 capturing and banishing the rest to the western wilds, 
 then unexplored and almost unknown. Arrangements 
 were making, secret and open, to seize Texas from 
 Mexico, at whatever cost of national dishonor and 
 war, to reinstate slavery, which Roman Catholic Mex- 
 ico had abolished almost twenty years before, and 
 then annex it to the United States. Both the whig 
 and democratic parties were emulating each other in 
 their zeal and devotion to so vile an object by such 
 unhallowed means. And so the anti-slavery demand 
 on the parties, as well as on the churches, was to come 
 out of them. No religious or theological opinions 
 were questioned, no political party preferences were 
 challenged, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist or 
 Presbyterian might remain true to their chosen creed, 
 only treat slavery in the church as other robbery, adul- 
 tery, and murder. So whig and democrat, only let 
 the equalty of all men, as announced in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, be solemnly observed and 
 applied, might remain whig and democrat forever. 
 
 For themselves, the American Anti-Slavery Society 
 abolitionists, at their national anniversary in 1844, 
 adopted the resolution below, to which they adhered 
 till the slave-holders' rebellion made sure the end of 
 slavery : 
 
 Resolved, That secession from the present United 
 States government is the duty of every abolitionist ; 
 since no one can take office or cast a vote for another 
 to hold office under the United States constitution, 
 without violating his anti-slavery principles, and ren- 
 dering himself an abettor of the slave-holder in his sin. 
 
 To expect to find editors, missionaries and apostles 
 able, ready, willing to adopt, inculcate and defend doc- 
 trines and measures thus uncompromising and extreme. 
 
82 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, 
 
 was to pay high compliment to human nature, courage 
 and character. But such appeared, both women and 
 men. Indeed, long before this time, the slave power 
 had revealed itself in almost every possible way, both 
 in state and church, as ready to execute terrible ven- 
 geance on any who dared refuse quick obedience to 
 its behests, or even to question its right to reign 
 supreme. At the opening of the anti-slavery apoca- 
 lypse by Garrison in 1830, the whole nation — state, 
 church, government, religion, education, trade, com- 
 merce, — all were held subservient to its sovereign will 
 and pleasure. Every conceivable human interest, 
 nearly every distinguished clergyman, politician, office- 
 seeker as well as office-holder, bowed reverently in 
 our temple of Moloch, humbly exclaiming, "Not my 
 will, but thine be done." Already had Garrison been 
 heavily fined, and imprisoned in Baltimore, only for 
 exposing in a newspaper an atrocious instance of 
 cruelty in our coastwise slave trade. In Boston he had 
 been mobbed, stripped nearly naked, dragged by a 
 rope through the streets till rescued by the authorities 
 and shut in the strongest jail, to save his imperilled 
 life. A worthy minister in New Hampshire, engaged to 
 give an anti-slavery lecture, was arrested as a " com- 
 mon brawler," jerked from his knees and pulpit to 
 trial as he was offering his opening prayer. Churches, 
 school-houses, orphan asylums and dwellings of colored 
 people, in Providence, New York, Philadelphia and 
 Cincinnati, had been mobbed, sacked, burned down ; 
 twelve in New York and one church ; more than forty 
 in Philadelphia and two churches ; and one church 
 and many dwellings in Cincinnati. And many colored 
 men were severely injured in their persons, and girls 
 and women grossly outraged by their diabolical assail- 
 ants. So were they hated for their color ; and because 
 
AND WHAT IT WAS. 83 
 
 millions of their kindred were slaves to democratic, 
 republican and christian masters. Pennsylvania Hall, 
 in Philadelphia, was erected at cost of forty thousand 
 dollars, wholly for anti-slavery and other philanthro- 
 phic purposes. During an anti-slavery convention, in 
 1838, that spacious and beautiful structure was 
 mobbed, set on fire, and burned to ashes, with all its 
 contents. A valuable library and much other property 
 were consumed in the flames. Nor did the city 
 authorities, from mayor and aldermen to sheriff and 
 police, utter a protest ; still less proffer any protection, 
 or word of sympathy to the innocent and peaceful 
 sufferers. Rev. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, native of 
 Maine, graduate of Waterville College, and brother of 
 Owen Lovejoy, afterwards member of Congress, per- 
 ished in an attempt to protect his press and printing 
 office from the fate of Pennsylvania Hall. It was in 
 Alton, Illinois, north of St. Louis, on the opposite 
 bank of the Mississippi, that the most heart-rending 
 and horrible instance of burning a slave to death over 
 a slow fire in St. Louis in the year 1837, had just been 
 made public, as has been already described. The 
 St. Louis newspapers, though generally approving the 
 devilish deed, stirred the civilized world with their 
 account of it. Of course the editorial pen of Lovejoy 
 was hot with hallowed fire at the awful recital. His 
 office and life were soon threatened. He appealed to 
 the authorities for protection. He might as well have 
 looked to the murderers of the poor slave. His 
 friends counselled him to flee. He answered : " I 
 dare not flee away from Alton. The crisis has come 
 and I have counted the cost. Should I attempt to 
 flee I should feel that the Angel of the Lord was pur- 
 suing me with flaming sword, wherever I went. And 
 it is because I fear God, that I am not afraid of all 
 
04 ANTI-SLAVERY WHAT IT WAS NOT, ETC. 
 
 who oppose me in this wicked city ! " This was the 
 fourth printing press he had set up. All the others 
 had been ruthlessly destroyed by the same mob vio- 
 lence that now assailed this. Refused all municipal 
 protection, he and a few brave friends entered the 
 building alone. They fearlessly faced the mob till 
 the building was in flames. As they came out, Love- 
 joy received five bullets and fell dead. Three of the 
 bullets were taken out of his breast. He was but 
 thirty-two and left a young wife and babes. When 
 his mother read the account of his death, she said : 
 " It is well ; I had rather he died defending his prin- 
 ciples, than that he should have forsaken them ! " So 
 it became all who entered the conflict to count well 
 the cost. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, WITH SOME 
 PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 
 
 My first intimate acquaintance and companion in 
 travel in the missionary field, was Stephen Symonds 
 Foster. To him was largely due my first and best 
 lessons in anti-slavery work. My preparation for the 
 Congregational Ministry was all made in less than 
 four years from the reaper and the plough. The 
 three years regular theological course was at Gilman- 
 ton, New Hampshire, where attempt was made to 
 stretch the charter of an accademical institution to 
 cover an entire theological department. The enter- 
 prise failed, though in those years, the little, remote 
 hamlet of " Gilmanton Corner," aspired and strove 
 hard to become famous as the seat of Gilmanton Theo- 
 logical Seminary. I was first to enter the new depart- 
 ment, and for several days one professor, and he not 
 inaugurated nor installed, and one student, were all 
 that were visible of that "School of the Prophets." 
 But during my three years, the usual three regular 
 classes were formed, though with small numbers, and 
 two professors were elected and inaugurated. Some 
 good and useful men were graduated, but in a few 
 years, "Gilmanton Theological Seminary" ceased to 
 be, and was known no more. My own three years' 
 course seemed to me so short, preceded as it had 
 been by neither collegiate nor academical study, that 
 I determined on a year at Andover. It continued, 
 however, only through the long fall and winter term ; 
 
86 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 and then, after a short anti-slavery traveling agency,. 
 I commenced the work of a parish minister in a small 
 New Hampshire town, but without ordination. My 
 religious sentiments were of the true Gilmanton and 
 Andover complexion. The creed of both was the 
 same, though my printed copy was the Andover, a 
 pamphlet of thirty pages octavo. A few extracts may 
 be interesting to readers in these stirring theological 
 times : 
 
 Every person appointed or elected a professor in 
 this seminary shall, on the day of his inauguration into 
 office, and in presence of the trustees, publicly make 
 and subscribe the following declarations : 
 
 I believe that there is one, and but one, living and 
 true God ; that the word of God contained in the 
 scriptures of the Old and New Testament, is the only 
 perfect rule of faith and practice; * * 
 
 that in the Godhead are three Persons : The Father, 
 the Son and the Holy Ghost ; that these three are one 
 God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory ; 
 that Adam, the federal head and representative of the 
 human race, was placed in a state of probation, and 
 that, in consequence of his disobedience, all his 
 descendants were constituted sinners ; that by nature 
 every man is personally depraved, destitute of holi- 
 ness, unlike, and opposed to God, and that prev- 
 iously to the renewing agency of the Divine Spirit, all 
 his moral actions are adverse to the character of God ; 
 that being morally incapable of recovering the image 
 of his Creator which was lost in Adam, every man is 
 justly exposed to eternal damnation ; * * * 
 that God of his mere good pleasure elected some to 
 everlasting life ; and that he entered into a covenant 
 of grace to deliver them out of this state of sin and 
 misery by a Redeemer ; that the only Redeemer of 
 the elect is the eternal Son of God ; * * * 
 that the souls of believers are at their death made 
 perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into 
 glory ; that their bodies, being still united to Christ, 
 will at the resurrection, be raised up to glory ; and 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 87 
 
 that the saints will be made perfectly blessed in the 
 full enjoyment of God to all eternity; but that the 
 wicked will awake to shame and everlasting contempt, 
 and with devils, will be plunged into the lake that 
 burnetii with lire and brimstone forever and ever. 
 
 * * * I moreover believe that God, accord- 
 ing to the counsel of His own will, and for His own 
 glory, hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass ; 
 
 * * * that God's decrees perfectly consist 
 with human liberty, God's universal agency with the 
 agency of man, and man's dependence with his ac- 
 countability. * * * And, furthermore, I 
 do solemnly promise that I will open and explain the 
 Scriptures to my pupils with integrity and faithfulness ; 
 that I will maintain and inculcate the Christian faith 
 as expressed in the creed by me now repeated, together 
 with all the other doctrines and duties of our holy re- 
 ligion so far as may appertain to my office, according 
 to the best light God shall give me ; and in opposition 
 not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Mahom- 
 etans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, 
 Socinians, Unitarians and Universalists. * * * 
 The preceding declaration shall be repeated by every 
 professor in the seminary, in the presence of the trus- 
 tees, at the expiration of every successive period of 
 five years ; and no man shall be continued as presi- 
 dent or professor in this institution who shall not 
 continue to approve himself to the satisfaction of the 
 trustees, a man of sound and orthodox principles in 
 divinity, agreeably to the system of evangelical doc- 
 trines contained in the said Westminster Shorter 
 Catechism, and more concisely delineated in the afore- 
 said Creed. 
 
 These extracts are copied from the Laws of the 
 Theological Institution in Andover, printed at Andover 
 by Gould & Newman, in 1837, one year before my 
 entrance there. Nor had I openly dissented from any 
 of these doctrines, as I understood them, when I left 
 the Congregational church and its pulpit for the divine 
 ministry of freedom, humanity and holiness. 
 
88 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 My anti-slavery apostleship commenced as a life- 
 work in New Hampshire in 1840. In that year was 
 held in London the memorable World's anti-slavery 
 convention, made memorable most of all by its rejec- 
 tion of several American commissioned delegates, one 
 of them being Mrs. Lucretia Mott, because they were 
 women. " British usage," was the only plea in justifi- 
 cation, in a realm that had had women at the head of 
 state and church, parliament, army, navy, the whole 
 nation, many times, all down the centuries from Boa- 
 dicea to Queen Victoria. Mr. Garrison, of the Liber- 
 ator, and Mr. Rogers, of the Herald of Freedom, on 
 seeing the credentials of their associate delegates thus 
 dishonored, retired to the gallery and did not enroll 
 themselves as members of the convention ; a course 
 which was not only approved but admired by the great 
 body of their constituents. 
 
 My first work as an agent in New Hampshire was to 
 conduct the Herald of Freedom during the absence 
 of the editor abroad. When he returned to his edit- 
 orial post in autumn I entered the lecturing field, with 
 full resolve to see the overthrow of the Southern slave 
 system or perish in the conflict. The doctrine of the 
 American society was moral, peaceful, religious agita- 
 tion, in the strain of the poet Whittier : 
 
 " With the mild arms of truth and love, 
 Made mighty through the living God.'' 
 
 And as my leaders and teachers, Garrison and Rogers, 
 relied only on truth, reason and argument for success, 
 so not less did I. My first lecturing tour was in north- 
 ern New Hampshire, extending to but few towns and 
 occupying only a few days. I went as substitute for 
 Rev. John W. Lewis, a very large and unusually black 
 Baptist minister — my companion, John R. French, 
 afterward printer of the Herald of Freedom. He had 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 89 
 
 been advertised in the Herald \o accompany Mr. Lewis, 
 neither of them, nor myself either, ever having been 
 in that part of the State. Sudden illness kept Mr. 
 Lewis at home, and I was deputed by the Board of 
 Managers his substitute, perhaps as near to a colored 
 man as could then conveniently be found. This cir- 
 cumstance led to many amusing incidents, as most of 
 the towns we visited had never seen any person of 
 African descent ; and so curiosity to see a specimen 
 of the " connecting link " sometimes added many to 
 our audiences. Nor did we always, at the outset, dis- 
 abuse the people, and more than once I was introduced 
 with becoming grace as " Rev. John W. Lewis, who 
 will now address us." In one instance, we accompa- 
 nied an excellent old gentleman home to tea, be- 
 tween our afternoon and evening meetings. It was 
 quite dark when we arrived, and there was not time 
 for ceremony nor explanation, and I was immediately 
 introduced as Rev. Mr. Lewis, and my companion as 
 " our young brother, French." We had reached the 
 tea-table before we revealed our secret. The only un- 
 pleasant circumstance attending was that it was then 
 such reproach, almost crime, to wear a colored skin, 
 that the family felt called upon to make to me humble 
 apologies for the affront, if not outrage, they had put 
 upon me. But I justified them satisfactorily, on two 
 or three grounds. They had read and accepted the 
 advertisement in the Herald ; nor had we explained 
 to the contrary ; nor was my own color really so light 
 as to entitle me to any special respect on its account. 
 " No," said the good old man, quite earnestly, " nor so 
 dark as to be suspected as a negro ; for I told some 
 of my friends after the meeting that as you sat there 
 by Nat Allen, while brother French was speaking, I 
 looked at you both, and couldn't see but that Nat was 
 quite as black as you." 
 
90 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 Had I been Mr. Lewis, he would have noted a dif- 
 ference, as he was one of the tallest, largest and dark- 
 est of his race. 
 
 Nat Allen, while he lived, was one of the noblest, 
 truest of the anti-slavery host ; and as good at home 
 as abroad. A humble, hard-working harness maker, 
 and poor as well as radical and outspoken, he was still 
 everywhere respected. I drove at that time a small 
 but very pretty nag I bought of my father, and Mr. 
 Rogers had loaned me an old wagon and harness, the 
 latter much too large for my little mare. This, our 
 faithful friend Allen saw ; and before we had com- 
 pleted our work in Littleton and neighboring towns, 
 he had cut out and made a handsome harness which 
 exactly fitted my dapple Tunbridge — name I gave her 
 from her Morgan sire, and by which in after years she 
 became well known to New England Abolitionists. 
 Under the circumstances, a more generous gift was 
 never bestowed. And more than once was the gener- 
 ous giver cruelly imprisoned for his fidelity to the 
 cause of the more cruelly imprisoned slave. Readers 
 may hear from Nat Allen again. 
 
 At this time my severed connection with the church 
 and pulpit had not been formal ; so occasionally I 
 was asked to preach on Sunday, and especially where 
 a liberal heresy had begun to assert itself. This hap- 
 pened in Littleton, where some wealthy Unitarians had 
 aided in building a handsome Congregational church, 
 on one condition. There were only one or two fami- 
 lies, and they seldom or never asked for the house, 
 unless once or twice in summer, when a liberal^clergy- 
 man might chance to be at the White Mountains, per- 
 haps arriving late in the week. It need not be said 
 here that forty and more years ago the mountains 
 were no such resort as at present ; nor were bronchitis 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 01 
 
 and hay-fever such sore judgments of the pulpit as to- 
 day. So it was not difficult to obtain of those build- 
 ing the Littleton church a pledge that the Unitarians 
 should have an occasional use of it at the shortest 
 notice. 
 
 It chanced that the Unitarian families were not 
 hostile to anti-slavery, and when I arrived in town on 
 Saturday afternoon, my friend Allen and others asked 
 their Unitarian neighbors to invite me to preach for 
 them on the following day. There was no objection, 
 but it was questioned whether I, being a Congrega- 
 tionalism could properly ask to be admitted to the 
 pulpit as such. To this there could be but one 
 answer, and my friend Allen went with me to call on 
 the minister. For some reason we did not see him till 
 Sunday morning. When we called in the morning 
 we were shown into the library, and soon the minister 
 entered, attended by his father, also a clergy- 
 man, well and widely known, but retired from regular 
 service. We were coolly greeted and denied admis- 
 sion to the pulpit for any cause. My editorial con- 
 nection with the Herald of Freedom, then just termin- 
 ated, probably had not increased my ministerial pop- 
 ularity and any argument or appeal was only wasted. 
 We were simply reminded that we had our answer and 
 that it was getting late for church. I think we had 
 risen to our feet before friend Allen began his part 
 of our mission. In his usual serene and mild manner 
 he said : " I am very sorry Mr. Pillsbury is refused 
 access to the pulpit to-day in such an unchristian 
 manner ; but I am instructed to say by the Unitarian 
 trustees that, in case of such refusal, they shall 
 occupy the meeting-house to-day, and that Mr. Pills- 
 bury will be their preacher." Which at once 
 changed the whole face of affairs. Both father and 
 
92 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 son saw and felt that the failure was with them. But 
 the end of the interview was not quite come. I do 
 not remember what was said by, but only to our two 
 opponents. I told the minister he had not in the 
 least disappointed me, but that I should now prob- 
 ably, disappoint him. Your congregation, I said, are 
 already assembling ; they are coming to hear you ; 
 expect to hear you — have a right so to expect ; and it 
 is not in me nor my friend Allen to wish to disappoint 
 them. So go now and attend your morning service 
 as usual ; and only be so kind as to give notice that 
 I will preach this afternoon and lecture on slavery 
 this evening at seven o'clock. My proposal was 
 accepted, but by no means in the spirit with which it 
 was made. However, it resulted admirably. For 
 Littleton soon became one of our very best anti- 
 slavery towns, as the volumes of the Herald of Free- 
 dom of subsequent years most fully show, and so 
 remained till slavery was abolished. 
 
 Another incident of this campaign and with which 
 another congregational minister was connected, was 
 in Campton, one of the approaches to the now well 
 known " Franconia Notch " and rock-ribbed throne 
 of the "Old man of the Mountain." The minister was 
 Thomas Parnell Beach. His small but well instructed 
 congregation were most of them already abolitionists. 
 Arriving at his house by invitation, on Saturday 
 evening, my companion and myself found that 
 arrangements were made for us to occupy the church 
 next day, provided I would • give the morning and 
 afternoon sermons. The proposal was accepted and 
 with results, near and remote, of which none of us that 
 night dreamed. But an interest was awakened which, 
 in less than one year, led Mr. Beach to withdraw from 
 his sectarian pulpit and denomination, generally at 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 93 
 
 that time apparently indifferent, or incorrigibly pro- 
 slavery, and to reconsecrate himself unreservedly to 
 the ministry of the gospel of humanity. 
 
 On the pleasant August afternoon when Mr. Beach 
 delivered his formal and affecting valedictory dis- 
 course to his congregation, Mr. Rogers of the Herald 
 of Freedom was present and sent a brief report to his 
 readers in the next paper, as given below in his own 
 glowing words : 
 
 Not returning home so soon as I expected, I send 
 for editorial what I may throw off in a few minutes 
 before the departure of the Concord stage. I shall 
 attempt briefly a sketch of the most interesting and 
 important Sunday meeting I ever witnessed, yesterday 
 at Campton. I went up there to hear our persecuted 
 and hunted brother, Beach. * * * He 
 
 has set an example for the age. His yesterday's work 
 in the little meeting house at Campton will constitute, 
 I apprehend, an important point of remembrance — a 
 land-mark in the history of the mighty reformation 
 now going on for the deliverance of mankind and the 
 overthrow of the usurped dominion of the sectarian 
 clergy here and in other parts of Christendom. Fore- 
 noon, he preached from the text ; " The foxes have 
 holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son 
 of Man hath not where to lay his head." He illustra- 
 ted the character of the modern church and clergy in 
 the light of his text — set forth their love of the world, 
 of popularity, ease and comfort, and the poverty and 
 destitution of the Savior and his disciples * * 
 
 It was unmitigated, unadulterated gospel preaching — 
 a terrible sermon, and I thought while hearing it, that 
 it contained more of faithful, uncompromising gospel 
 preaching than I ever before heard. The auditory 
 was made up mostly of his warm friends and his per- 
 secuting, exasperated enemies. In relation to his stay 
 among them, they are divided. A porticjn of them, 
 including the new-organized abolitionists, are ransack- 
 ing the land to find petty faults on which to found his 
 expulsion by a pro-slavery council. They have had 
 
94 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 one, headed by Andrew Rankin, that found nothing in 
 him worthy of death or excommunication. Their 
 infamous partiality and hypocritical procedure went 
 far to complete the opening of the eyes of Brother 
 Beach to the anti-christian character of the whole 
 sectarian machinery. And on Sunday he came out in 
 all the confidence of simple faith in God and in the 
 majesty of truth, and renounced the whole of it to an 
 extent and in a manner, which, perfectly prepared as 
 I was to second, I was not prepared to witness, and 
 which was truly overwhelming. 
 
 Afternoon he took his stand on the floor of the 
 house, in front of the poor little abdicated pulpit, 
 which looked utterly insignificant and heathenish when 
 thus pointedly abandoned. He held a memorandum 
 in his hand, and his text was, " Have faith in God." 
 He spoke of the character of faith, not like a hired 
 clergyman writing on his contract to preach, but as a 
 man experiencing what he was saying. It was brief, 
 full, clear, convincing, convicting. No sound mind 
 could doubt his meaning or its truth. He said if a man 
 had faith he would know it, and that if he had it not 
 he would know it ; and that if he had it he would act 
 upon it, and if he did not act upon it he was not a 
 Christian. He denied that the gospel could be preached 
 in faith on a contract for a salary. He said the preacher 
 who relied on his contract for support, did not rely on 
 God, and had not faith. He renounced his own con- 
 tract with the people to whom he was preaching, and 
 released them from it. He declared himself bound 
 to preach to them at the calling and mission of Christ ; 
 and his obligation to rely on God for support. He 
 released the people from all obligation they were under 
 to pay him or sustain him for future preaching during 
 the year, or for what they owed him for past preach- 
 ing. He released them from a two hundred dollar 
 obligation and a forty dollar promissory note which 
 they owed him, and declared them null and void, 
 leaving the people to act on their consciences in re- 
 gard to the whole of it. He renounced his human 
 license to preach and his ordination by men. He re- 
 nounced sectarian organization, and expressed his 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 95 
 
 regret that he ever entered into any covenant with a 
 ■church corporation, or added anything to his covenant 
 made with Christ at the surrender of his heart to Him. 
 He renounced all profession of religion but that of 
 Christian life and conversation — renounced the pulpit 
 as a consecrated elevation, and planted himself on a 
 level with his hearers ; renounced his titled minister- 
 ship, and declared he should henceforth go on his 
 mission from Christ among his equal fellow men and 
 women. He declared he should hold no more meet- 
 ings which were not open to all to speak freely as him- 
 self. He renounced all sermon writing as a mode of 
 preaching the gospel. * * * In short, he 
 swept the board of all the mummeries of human in- 
 vention which had crept in upon the simplicity of 
 Christ, and he did it all with a calmness, order and 
 ability which filled me with admiration. I can give no 
 account of it. To be appreciated it must have been 
 witnessed. Thomas Farnell Beach stands now " re- 
 deemed, regenerated and disenthralled," a plain and 
 simple preacher of Christ. 
 
 The subsequent labors of Mr. Beach were of most 
 devoted and heroic, and sometimes suffering, descrip- 
 tion, but not of long continuance, for he survived less 
 than five years after his withdrawal from the sectarian 
 ministry. He died in Sharon, Ohio, on the thirtieth 
 of May, 1 846. He was born in Canada, Vermont, in 1808, 
 graduated at Bowdoin Collge, married in 1837 Miss 
 Sarah Barker, of Bethel, Maine, and settled soon after 
 in Wolfboro', N. H., as Congregational minister and 
 Preceptor of the Academy, from which he afterwards 
 removed to Campton, where the anti-slavery cause dis- 
 covered him in the autumn of 1840. 
 
 Not very much was ever written concerning him, and 
 few at this day probably remember him. But before 
 this anti-slavery scripture is finished, he may be re- 
 curred to again in manner, it is hoped, not unbecom- 
 ing his memory. 
 
96 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 In Whitefield, one of my Gilmanton classmates was- 
 the Congregational minister. He received us cordially, 
 invited me to his pulpit on Sunday morning, and to 
 his sacramental supper afterwards, and we held our 
 subsequent anti-slavery meetings in his meeting-house. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Fleming, of Haverhill, asked me to preach 
 for him, he having been absent the past week and not 
 being prepared to preach himself. But at the close 
 of the morning service, he told the congregation 
 what he had done, and then, turning to me, he said if 
 the afternoon discourse was to be like this just 
 heard, he must decline it. I assured him it could not 
 be less objectionable, in plain speaking, and he then 
 announced that he should preach in the afternoon 
 himself. Which he did, and gave a very feeble dis- 
 course to a small and not interested audience. My 
 companion, Mr. French, and myself sat directly be- 
 fore him and near the pulpit, evidently much to his 
 embarrassment. Undoubtedly his refusal to permit 
 my preaching in the afternoon was both damage to 
 himself and advantage to me. The small, uninter- 
 ested audience who heard him was surely a happy 
 contrast, and most significant, too, measured by our 
 large and quite spirited and attentive house in the 
 evening. 
 
 At that period the anti-slavery agents were accus- 
 tomed to call early on the ministers when they entered 
 a town, particularly in all country towns and parishes, 
 to confer with them and solicit their cooperation in 
 anti-slavery work. It soon became apparent, however, 
 that very little aid was to be expected in that quarter. 
 A formal division in the ranks of professed abolition- 
 ists had already been made, and the evangelical 
 churches and their ministers had, with wondrous 
 unanimity, so far as they were anti-slavery at all. 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 97 
 
 joined themselves to the "new organization." Griev- 
 ous charges were preferred against Mr. Garrison for 
 heresy and infidelity, and the American anti-slavery 
 societv, at its anniversary in 1840, committed the un- 
 pardonable sin of insisting that on their platform, 
 however it might be in the church or elsewhere, there 
 should be no high nor low, rich nor poor, great nor 
 small, male nor female. It was solemnly asked : 
 
 " Shall we behold, unheeding, 
 
 Life's holiest feelings crushed ? 
 When woman's heart is bleeding, 
 Shall woman's voice be hushed ?" 
 
 Already had the eloquence of Sarah and Angelina 
 Grimke, Abby Kelley, and other noble women begun 
 to thrill the hearts of women and men, even ministers, 
 all over the land, as they tenderly but fearlessly 
 pleaded the cause of the slave woman under the lash 
 and red-hot branding-iron or on the auction-block with 
 her children, she sold one way, they in other ways, 
 sundered forever, but all exposed alike to the cruel 
 and merciless outrages of the slave system ! At the 
 final separation the woman question was urged most 
 vehemently as reason for breaking with the original 
 American society, especially by the clergy. In New 
 Hampshire the Methodists and Free Will Baptists 
 were quite numerous, and had always encouraged, if 
 not even demanded that their church members should 
 bear active, equal part, men and women, in all social 
 if not more public meetings for worship. But the 
 more dignified denominations there, and not more 
 there than in every state, deemed such usage a pro- 
 fanation and abomination. The Hopkinton Associa- 
 tion of Congregational divines doubtless spoke the 
 general sentiment of Congregationalism, Presbyterian- 
 ism, and all the sects held in highest esteem in all the 
 
98 ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 states, as well as New Hampshire, in a solemn decree 
 unanimously and promptly enacted, the declarative 
 portion of which was to this effect : 
 
 Not that women may not bear a part in the songs 
 of the church, because this is an established part of 
 public worship, and is not prohibited to women as 
 public teaching and praying are ; publicly to sing 
 God's praise, under men as leaders, is, by implication, 
 enjoined upon women, as is the celebration of the 
 holy supper, and of the Savior's resurrection, by 
 keeping the first day of the week as holy time. Nor 
 does the prohibition deprive females of any of the 
 privileges of the Bible class, or religious conference, 
 in which they are indulged with perfect freedom of 
 speech, in answering the questions which their pastors, 
 leaders, or catechists put to them. But, as to leading 
 men, either in instruction, or devotion, and as to any 
 interruption, or disorder, in religious meetings, "Let 
 your women keep silence in the churches ;" not merely 
 let them be silent, but let them keep or preserve 
 silence. Not, that they may not preach, or pray, or 
 exhort merely, but they may not open their lips, to 
 utter any sounds audibly. Let not your women, in 
 promiscuous religious meetings, preach or pray, audi- 
 bly, or exhort audibly, or sigh, or groan, or say Amen, 
 or utter the precious words, " Bless the Lord ; " or the 
 enchanting sounds, " Glory ! Glory ! " 
 
 The resolution to sustain the equal right of women 
 on the anti-slavery platform with man, was adopted in 
 the American Society at the annual meeting in New 
 York in 1840, by majority of 557 to 440 ; the test 
 question at the time being simply the placing of a 
 woman on one of the committees. But the new organi- 
 zation forthwith sprang out of it, known for a time as 
 the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. 
 
 The annual meeting of the New Hampshire Anti- 
 Slavery Society was held in Concord, less than a 
 month afterward and with result much the same, only 
 that the opposition was less in numbers, though by 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. 99 
 
 no means in spirit. The test vote, admitting or 
 excluding women as members of the convention, was 
 on an amendment substituting the word gentlemen for 
 persons as originally submitted. The amendment was 
 lost, 197 to 58 ; and the original resolution was adopted 
 nearly unanimously, and with much enthusiasm. But 
 a new organization society was immediately attempted, 
 though with but indifferent success, excepting for 
 political purposes, though carrying with it nearly all 
 the ministers and most of the church members who 
 made any pretentions to anti-slavery in the state. 
 
 The Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society went over to 
 the new organization almost in a body, with maledic- 
 tions on the doctrine of woman's equality anywhere. 
 The Hartford Cqngregationalist also declared that the 
 women's anti-slavery Fair had to be taken from 
 New Haven because no place in that city could be 
 obtained in which to hold it. The meeting at which » 
 the society set its terrible ban on women was held ( 
 there and would have been held in a Congregational | 
 church, but both minister and church, the //nni part of 
 it, declared it should not be opened without a pledge 
 given that women should neither speak nor vote in \ 
 the meetings! That same minister presided at the 
 opening of the meeting, when and where it was held i 
 and declared with indignant warmth : "I will not sit . 
 m a chair where women bear rule ; I will not sit 
 in a meeting where the sorcery of woman's tongue is 
 thrown around my heart ; Women shall not speak in . 
 our meetings. I will not submit to petticoat govern- 
 ment, here, nor anywhere else. I had enough of that 
 in my childhood. Now I am a man, I will not sub- 
 mit to it even in my own house. No woman shall 
 lord it over me. I am major-domo in my own house." 
 Some one responded in the audience: "A strange spirit 
 
IOO ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 
 
 has risen up among us ; " and he immediately called 
 him to order ; adding, " I think I have the spirit of God. 
 I am a Christian ! " This, and the Haverhill and 
 Littleton ministers already described, with the Hop- 
 kinton association of divines, were only true repre- 
 sentatives of the great majority of the popular New 
 England clergy of that day. Their plainness of 
 speech well accorded with the rest. And besides, 
 much larger bodies than the Hopkinton association,, 
 were alike audacious in utterance, as well. 
 
 That campaign in northern New Hampshire, made 
 in the autumn after the society secessions, separations 
 and new organizations, fully convinced me, had other 
 hopes been entertained before, that the church and 
 its ministry would be found in very deed the ""bul- 
 warks," if not at last "the forlorn hope of slavery," 
 in complete confirmation of the declarations of 
 Hon. James G. Birney. 
 
 It was no less plain, too, that very few of the aboli- 
 tionists themselves were aware of the terrible contest 
 before them ; as many later withdrawals from their 
 always scanty ranks proved. In a subsequent account 
 rendered to the society through their paper, the Her- 
 ald, I hazarded the prediction, that "before the fell 
 demon of slavery should be cast out, there would be 
 contortions, foamings and wallowings to rend our 
 civil, social, and ecclesiastical organizations, in so 
 much that many would say, 'They are dead.' For it 
 is of a kind that goeth not out but by prayer and 
 fasting. Other foul spirits, too, will be discovered ; 
 their very name, legion. All the foundations of the 
 great deep will be broken up. On earth must be per- 
 plexity and distress of nations ; the sea and the waves 
 roaring, and the hearts of men failing them for fear, 
 
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND EXPERIENCES. IOI 
 
 and for looking at the things that are coming on the 
 earth ; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken." 
 
 If our thirty years war of moral and peaceful agita- 
 tion failed to fulfill all these prophecies, what shall be 
 said of the subsequent four years war of rebellion, 
 with all their frightful costs of blood and treasure ? 
 War, whose thunders shook the land, the sea, the 
 skies ! Whose reverberations still go sounding down 
 towards the night of the nineteenth century ! 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS WITH MR. ROGERS 
 
 AND MR. FOSTER— DIGRESSION ON 
 
 NEW ORGANIZATION. 
 
 New Hampshire continued my field of operations 
 through 1840. Following the Grafton county cam- 
 paign were two or three quite notable anti-slavery 
 conventions, the best everyway, perhaps, at Milford, 
 when all parts of Hillsboro' county had representa- 
 tion. Mr. Garrison, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Foster, and 
 some others were present to assist in the proceedings. 
 
 The genius and spirit of our movement at that time 
 may be gathered somewhat from the Resolutions gen- 
 erally, most thoroughly considered and usually adopt- 
 ed with few, if any, dissenting voices. At Milford the 
 following passed after a searching and able discussion: 
 
 Resolved, That slavery is a national, not a local, in- 
 stitution, and the whole people are involved in all its 
 guilt, evils and dangers. 
 
 3 Resolved, That the churches, rebuked by anti-slavery 
 and pronounced unworthy the name of christian, and 
 the clergymen whom it declares unworthy of support 
 as religious teachers, are those, and only those, who 
 connive at the existence of American slavery, or re- 
 fuse to bear faithful, public testimony against it. 
 
 Resolved, That the anti-slavery society was originally 
 constituted on principles of perfect equality and jus- 
 tice, and any attempt to change that construction, and 
 to new organize it, is a departure from those principles 
 and a practical betraval of the cause of the slave. 
 
 Milford was early an anti-slavery town. With such 
 resolutions most ably discussed, and almost unanim- 
 
CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS. 103 
 
 ously adopted by a large congregation, the meeting 
 was everyway a success. It commenced on Thanks- 
 giving evening, with an opening address by Mr. Gar- 
 rison, in the spacious and then new Congregational 
 meeting-house, the minister, Mr. Warner, another 
 Gilmanton classmate of mine. Himself and church, 
 however, were already far on the road to new organi- 
 zation. Those who remained faithful to the anti- 
 slavery cause soon after withdrew from the church, 
 and were henceforth known as come-outers, infidels, 
 non-resistants, Garrisonians, or whatever other name, 
 honorable or opprobrious, was fastened upon them 
 and others like them. 
 
 It may be worthy of mention that the Concord at- 
 tendants drove over to Milford in two open carriages, 
 leaving home early on Thanksgiving morning, in a 
 cold November rain, from which umbrellas were a 
 poor protection. But the joyous greeting and recep- 
 tion which awaited us at our half-way house, the 
 hospitable and sumptuous home of the farmers, 
 Luther and Lucinda Melendy, on Chestnut hill, in 
 Amherst, very soon dispelled all memory of outside 
 storms, or other exposure or inconvenience. Rogers, in 
 his Herald account of the convention, said of this 
 incident: 
 
 We were received at the Melendys with the wel- 
 come which compensates for months of pro-slavery 
 scowling round about our path of life. Cordiality and 
 brotherly love adorned the face of the household — 
 the bounties of the season, the hospitable board ; and 
 the Bible, the Liberator, Herald of Freedom, and Na- 
 tional Anti-Slavery Standard the reading table. Here 
 were the circumstances and conditions of genuine 
 anti-slavery. * * * We were obliged to 
 leave the interesting spot too soon. We reached Mil- 
 ford, brother and sister Melendy in company, just as 
 friend Warner's meeting-house was lighted up for a 
 
104 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 lecture from Garrison. It rained with all the dismal- 
 ness of a November night. 
 
 But our Milford reception cleared the sky of every 
 cloud, and hung rainbows of beauty and joy in every 
 direction. Those early anti-slavery friendships surely 
 were akin to heaven itself, growing brighter, too, and 
 more beautiful, as the subsequent tempests of pro- 
 scription, ostracism and persecution rose in all their 
 terrors over us. The triple power of society, the 
 state and the church, conspired against the rising tide 
 of humanity and liberty ; determined, apparently, to 
 rivet on, fast and forever, the fetters of the slave, in 
 the name of, and with sanction of our democratic re- 
 publicanism and Protestant Christian religion. At 
 that hour all our hearts seemed to beat as one — all 
 anointed vision to see eye to eye. Garrison and 
 Rogers had not met before since their arrival in Bos- 
 ton from their foreign tour, not many weeks previously, 
 and they greeted each other as David and Jonathan, 
 when their loves " passed the love of women ! " At 
 that convention, almost all exclaimed, " It is good for 
 us to be here." We reached Concord from the Mil- 
 ford convention on Saturday night, glad and thankful 
 for one day of change, if not of rest, after our Thanks- 
 giving week's work. 
 
 On Monday, Stephen Foster and myself had en- 
 gagements in Canterbury. Our valiant friend Rogers, 
 desirous to extend his acquaintance among the abo- 
 litionists of the state, volunteered to accompany us 
 and to continue with us another week. Canterbury 
 and last of November continued for us cold and 
 most inhospitable receptions. The meeting-house was 
 closed altogether, and the town-hall was as dirty and 
 disagreeable, everyway, as it was dilapidated and cold. 
 But we got into it. Pretty soon the meeting-house 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 105 
 
 was unlocked, and a few came, among others the 
 Congregational minister, Rev. Mr. Patrick. Our friend 
 Foster, and most of his quite numerous family con- 
 nections, were, or had been, members of his church ; 
 and as Foster reasoned of righteousness, temperance 
 and judgment to come, his minister trembled. In 
 great excitement he rose to his feet as if to speak. 
 He stood a moment, as though deliberating whether to 
 speak or retire. But for some reason he did neither, 
 and soon sat down, though much agitated at what he 
 had to hear, and the truth of which he well knew 
 could not be questioned. The evening meeting was 
 better attended, and excellent work was done, with. 
 results not yet wholly effaced ; as the generous and 
 high moral and progressive sentiment of the thriving 
 little town has always shown. 
 
 Our next gathering was at Sanbornton Bridge, and 
 in the very meeting-house out of whose pulpit, a few 
 years before, Rev. George Storrs had been violently 
 jerked, as, on his knees, he was preceding an anti^slav- 
 ery address with prayer. He was arraigned as a com- 
 mon braider before a magistrate, and tried as such. 
 
 How we and our mission might be estimated in such 
 society, was shown in the fact that as it was presumed 
 we should occupy the pulpit, the cushions were thor- 
 oughly plastered over with well crushed but most de- 
 plorably ////-merchantable eggs. Had the young priests 
 of such an unholy anointing only known us a very 
 little better, they might have been spared such an 
 offering to their idol. We had a good while before 
 proved most of the pulpits to be but cowards' castles, 
 or despots' thrones, even without the baptism of bad 
 eggs, and shunned the whole of them accordingly. 
 The afternoon meeting was small, numerically, but 
 not so the evening, for the heroes of the pulpit- 
 
106 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 cushion and addled eggs attended in person, and ren- 
 dered speaking most difficult by their boys-trous pro- 
 ceedings. Still, our work resulted beyond expectation. 
 We were handsomely and hospitably entertained by 
 Dr. Ladd and others ; and as we were then raising the 
 means to discharge a debt of two thousand dollars 
 owed by our society, we were much cheered by our 
 success in that direction. 
 
 From the valley of Sanbornton Bridge we ascended 
 next day to the heights of Sanbornton Square. We 
 had not heard that even new organization had dared 
 invade it, so well and widely was its hostility to the 
 anti-slavery, temperance, and other reforms under- 
 stood. At the Bridge we did discover tracks of a new 
 organized agent, a minister who had done his best and 
 worst, there and elsewhere, to blast the fair fame of 
 the old society and all its instrumentalities, though, 
 as we saw, more to his own harm than ours. But how we 
 sped at the Square can best be told by the editor of 
 the Herald of Freedom himself. In the number of 
 December 4th, 1840, some editorial correspondence 
 read as below : 
 
 After dinner, Wednesday, we rode to Sanbornton 
 Square, calling on Richard Lane. Mrs. Lane seemed 
 an abolitionist. Her husband was absent, but they 
 had received no notice of an anti-slavery meeting. 
 Came soon to the sightly and commanding Square, 
 superb with prospect. Tavern kept by Mr. Lane. It 
 is the Lane that leads to the chambers of death — a 
 broad one, and numbers throng it. Had occasion to 
 go into it. Many smoking their pipes in the bar-room. 
 One respectable looking elderly gentleman at the end 
 of a cigar. All smoking away, and the air three- 
 quarters tobacco. Asked the landlord if any appoint- 
 ments had been given out Sunday before of an anti- 
 slavery meeting, taking for granted if there had he 
 would have heard of it, the rum tavern being in some 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 107 
 
 places on good terms with the meeting-house. None 
 that he knew of. Brother Pillsbury had gone up to 
 the neighborhood of the academy to find a Mr. 
 Webster, said to be an abolitionist. Resolved to go 
 there ; felt utterly desolate in the smoky rum tavern 
 and the heartless pro-slavery square. Homesick to 
 find one anti-slavery house. Went to Mr. Webster's ; 
 told Mrs. W. (husband not in) that she must, if con- 
 venient, receive us as travelers at their temperance 
 tavern. Our request was readily granted. Called out 
 with brother Pillsbury to see about a meeting. Met 
 the Rev. Mr. Bodwell, Congregational minister, in 
 company with a distinguished Colonizationist, Dr. 
 Webster, of Hill. Rev. Mr. Bodwell said he had 
 received no notice of the meeting. Ascertained of 
 him there was to be a prayer meeting at the academy 
 that evening. Proposed to him, if perfectly agreeable 
 to him, to have our anti-slavery meeting instead, and 
 at the academy, if he thought best ; not otherwise, he 
 having remarked just before that if we had an anti- 
 slavery meeting in the neighborhood there would be 
 probably few at the prayer meeting. He was not 
 opposed to us, he was not in favor of us ; he stood 
 neutral, and he wished to be so considered. He did 
 not wish to be considered as having been called on in 
 relation to the meeting ; could not say whether he 
 would be present or not : told us Esquire Lane, 
 Colonel Sanborn and himself were the committee in 
 charge of the academy ; did not wish himself to give 
 permission to use the academy for a meeting : wished 
 us to consult Esquire L. and Colonel S., and did not 
 wish to be considered as having been consulted at all 
 in relation to the academy. We remarked to him that 
 it did not seem to us he could possibly take a neutral 
 position, but he must judge for himself. In the course 
 of our talk, Dr. Webster remarked that he objected to 
 the abolitionists for their opposition to colonization ; 
 that he did not see as they need quarrel with that, or 
 why both could not go on harmoniously together. 
 Mr. Bodwell said he could not, and that he had no 
 objection to abolition if it did not oppose colonization, 
 and he thought both might go on together. We told 
 
'ioS CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 him if that were possible he might, for aught we could 
 see, be an abolitionist, whether we liked colonizing the 
 colored people or not. He need not oppose abolishing 
 slavery because we opposed colonizing the free colored 
 people. It was bleak talking on the cold hill side, 
 and we parted, Mr. Bodwell to his snug parsonage 
 and we down to find Esquire Lane. We found him 
 accidently at the bar room of the tavern, and asked 
 him for the academy, telling him of the non entity 
 position of Rev. Mr. Bodwell, not assenting nor deny- 
 ing, nor doing neither, neither doing anything nor 
 nothing at all. Esquire L. said at once he had no 
 objection, though he did not countenance the meeting. 
 He said we were all slaves here. We told him we were 
 afraid so. He said he was opposed to using force 
 against us — force had been used but he never coun- 
 tenanced it ; thought it only promoted our object, the 
 way was to keep away from us. The subject he thought 
 ought not to be agitated here where we had no slaves. 
 We told him men differed as to the propriety of agi- 
 tating here, and that that was a fair matter of discus- 
 sion, and asked him if it were not. He admitted that 
 it was, and that we had the right to discuss, but he 
 should not come near us. We told him we should be 
 glad to have him attend, and if we were wrong put us 
 right. Barroom by this time pretty full. Esquire 
 Caleb Kimball, among others, considerably excited by 
 opposition to anti-slavery, or some other cause, said he 
 knew us and was a friend, but had no opinion of this 
 nigger question ; we had no right to be stirring it up 
 here ; if anybody wanted a black wife, he might 
 have one for' all him. (A laugh.) He had as lief we 
 should get pelted with rotten eggs as anyway, though 
 he did not approve of mobs. He was far from approv- 
 ing mobs ; he would not be catched in one. The 
 constitution, he thought, guaranteed slavery to the 
 states, and the north no business to interfere ; had no 
 business with it any way ; we had no more right to 
 take away their property than they had to come and 
 take away our cattle. The company gathered around 
 and we carried on the talk under a thick cloud of 
 tobacco smoke mixed with the breath of the tavern 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 109 
 
 bar. We did not deny Esquire Kimball's opinion, 
 but contended that we and he had the right of discus 
 
 n^T 1 w b6rty ° f SpeCCh ab0ut ™V subject we 
 pleased We were one of the people as much as he 
 
 was, and had a right to our opinions, and meant to 
 
 have just what opinions we pleased, and to speak our 
 
 sentiments out anywhere and everywhere and at all 
 
 imes, and for all of anybody, and everybody else had 
 
 the same right, and we did not believe there was a 
 
 man in the room who would deny it. We were eoine 
 
 f,P J!% a T ee V ns " if we could * et a p Iace > a ^i should 
 
 be glad to have every friend present attend it 
 
 ff thev t S r nd fredy ' and we believed tha 
 if they could hear us every man would say that 
 
 we were right. We said slavery was an abomin- 
 able , thing ; !t was in the country and we had a right 
 to talk about it, to talk against it, and we meant to 
 and had got to ; and if we did not and run it down it 
 would run us down, and eat us out of house and home ;' 
 had nearly done it already ; had made us nearly all 
 slaves here, as Esquire Lane had just said ; that it had 
 got us so low that we did not dare to speak about it 
 or alow our neighbors to ; that Esquire Kimball had 
 eat f he ; h , ou g ht we ought to be pelted with rotten 
 eggs if we did not keep still about it. The 'squire 
 said he was no friend to mobs. Yes, but said we you 
 said yo U had as lief we should be pelted with rotten 
 eggs as not if we stirred up this slavery question here ; 
 and if we did you would have to mob us. Slavery 
 we said, would demand it of you, and you would ha/e 
 
 «rfn I 6 SqU ' re Said hiS fatherwas on e that helped to 
 adopt the constitution, and he remembered all about 
 it and about slavery; it was in the constitution, he 
 said. We contended that the constitution was a free 
 
 and' the IT™ IT CallCd S °' and a - l0ri ° US free °» e > 
 and the like. And so we went on discussing, and the 
 
 h!27' Um ~ dl ? nkers . and tobacco-eaters and smokers 
 heard us with a patience the Rev. Mr. Bodwell could 
 not in his meeting-house; reminding us, as we thought 
 w\ , S 1 avi0 1 rs comparison of the publicans and 
 
 harlots with the clergy of Jerusalem. We could con- 
 vince the tavern haunters, by the way, if the property 
 
IIO CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 and standing would only allow us a chance, we could 
 make abolitionists of them much easier than of the 
 better classes, civil, military or ecclesiastical. * * * 
 * * * A tall substantial-looking farmer came in 
 and listened awhile to our discussion as we were talk- 
 ing of slavery's effect on the north. He said emphat- 
 ically that it was as bad to enslave black people as 
 white ; and that if you enslave any it enslaves every- 
 body else ; and if you allow slavery in the country 
 you can't keep liberty. Give us the blue-frocked 
 "farmers for anti-slavery. * * * On' the whole, we 
 had a grand meeting, and wish we had continued it 
 there in the evening ; we should have had an atten- 
 tive auditory, and we don't believe Mr. Lane would 
 have sold a drop the whole evening. We went out 
 with brother Pillsbury,. after getting leave to have the 
 academy, and called at every house and notified the 
 people of our meeting, and brother Foster drove in his 
 sulky out of the neighborhood to do the same. The 
 hour arrived ; we resorted to the literary institution. 
 It was a steeple 'edifice — meeting-house and town- 
 house (church and state) hard by all in a row ; all 
 steepled and painted as white as so many " whited 
 sepulchres." No light gleamed from the academy 
 windows ; all dark as " the people covered with gross 
 darkness." We entered it ; not a spark of fire nor a 
 soul there. We consulted what to do. Four little 
 boys came in, then one man, Deacon Lane, and a 
 woman, then two young women, academy scholars, 
 boarders at our friend Webster's, one more man, and 
 lastly, friend Webster himself, the abolitionist of San- 
 bornton Square, and our assembly was complete. 
 Brother Pillsbury found the bell rope and pulled it 
 till the sound rang clear and loud all over Sanbornton 
 hills. It agitated the cold night air, but not the colder 
 hearts of the people. Brother Bodwell must have 
 heard it like a knell in his study. Nobody else came 
 near. Brother Pillsbury went to a store and bought a 
 candle and ligh ted the house, wrapping a bit of news- 
 paper round it and setting it in a corner of the desk. 
 It threw its beams round upon the empty seats and 
 the " darkness visible" of the " Woodman Sanbornton 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. Ill 
 
 Academy," the title, we believe, of this Liberal insti- 
 tution. We held a season of prayer, not with the full 
 formalities of a meeting. We felt the desolate condi- 
 tion of the unfortunate people and their minister, and 
 we prayed for them. Brother Foster followed. When 
 we rose from our knees he opened his mouth to 
 the handful present in a most impressive and striking- 
 exhortation, addressing them as " the entire humanity 
 of the place," told them that on them, in the provi- 
 dence of God, had devolved the responsibility of 
 awakening that people and minister ; told them the 
 slave's case and of the judgment, and bore an appal- 
 ling testimony against the place. Brother Pillsbury 
 and myself followed with similar appeal and testimony. 
 Friend Webster spoke with feeling for the cause and 
 sorrow for the state of the people, and we separated, 
 chilled by sitting without fire. Brothers Foster and 
 Pillsbury went to see Mr. Bodwell, and from what 
 they said, did their duty to him faithfully. 
 
 Could the editor of the Herald of Freedom have ac- 
 companied Mr. Foster and myself through the state, 
 during that cold and dreary winter, he would have 
 found many Sanbornton Squares, and some even more 
 benighted and morally .desolate. Even at the tavern 
 there, we met several persons who, spite of rum, tobacco, 
 blasphemy and negro hate, spoke marly kindly words, 
 and thought we were honest in our belief and work, 
 and entitled to better treatment than we were receiv- 
 ing. And the generous, even heroic, hospitality of 
 Mr. Josiah Webster and his excellent wife (father and 
 mother of our Concord fellow-citizen, Calvin Webster, 
 then a boy of thirteen) won our admiration, as well as 
 gratitude, for in those days it was often perilous to 
 harbor and entertain an abolitionist. Mr. Webster 
 had a brother, Rev. John Calvin Webster, who was 
 also well known as an abolitionist, and, for a clergy- 
 man, of best and truest type, away beyond and above 
 most of his clerical brethren. 
 
112 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 Leaving Sanbornton we crossed over to Gilmanton, 
 then seat of the Theological seminary from which I 
 emerged a licensed Congregational minister two years 
 before, one of a class of eleven, the first graduating 
 class, most of us professing to be earnest, outspoken 
 abolitionists. Our reception at Gilmanton, but for 
 one family, must have been as dreary and cheerless as 
 Sanbornton Square would have been without its 
 Websters. And we had begun to say that every Sodom 
 seemed to have a Lot, and every Sahara at least one 
 oasis. And in the spacious, hospitable home of Mr. 
 Clark, we were like Banyan's pilgrims on the " Delec- 
 table mountains." 
 
 But alas for our cause ! The Congregational meet- 
 ing-house was opened, warmed and lighted for us, 
 afternoon and evening, and the minister had given 
 notice of our coming from the pulpit. The Theolog- 
 ical seminary and academy were close at hand, the 
 latter with its preceptor and pupils ; the former with 
 its three professors and as many classes. In the vil- 
 lage were a Methodist and Quaker, as well as Con- 
 gregational meeting-house, and all open on Sunday for 
 worship. The day was not unfavorable, the traveling 
 for the season was remarkably good. At the appointed 
 hour we entered the meeting-house. It was empty 
 and void as chaos before the eternal fiat had gone 
 forth, " Let there be light." The Clarks came in good 
 time. Next three women, then two theological stu- 
 dents and one other man. The Baptist minister, Rev. 
 Mr. Boswell, had ridden over some miles of Gilman- 
 ton hills to be present, and remained through the 
 evening, giving friendly and approving testimony, and 
 late and last Mr. Lancaster, Congregational minister. 
 He came to both meetings, but spoke no word. In 
 the evening the numbers were less by two or three, 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 113 
 
 the only woman present, Mrs. Lancaster, wife of the 
 minister. Nor was there but one theological student. 
 Three years before had the like of Rogers and Foster 
 come there to speak on slavery, my whole class of eleven 
 would surely have attended, with possibly one or two 
 exceptions, and though most of us were working our 
 passage into the pulpit, the dollar or half dollar of 
 each would have helped on the collection. But at 
 that time the torpedo touch of new organization had 
 not done its fell work ; and many of the younger min- 
 isters, as well as theological students, were earnest and 
 devoted abolitionists. While slavery was regarded 
 only as an evil, and at the distant south, no tell-tale 
 telegraph nor lightning express trains, nor even 
 " under-ground railroad" between, discussion of it 
 might be tolerated. But when Garrison proclaimed it 
 a sin and crime, always and everywhere, the pulpit 
 began to be alarmed. And when next we began to 
 resolve and re-resolve that no slave-holder could be a 
 christian ; and later that his northern abettor and 
 apologist was as bad as himself ; and that a slave- 
 holding religion was essentially anti-Christ ; a slave- 
 holding church a synagogue of Satan, and a slave- 
 holding ministry and all the fellow communicants a 
 brotherhood of thieves, of man-stealers, the battle was 
 joined in deadly earnest. 
 
 Our next encounter was Pittsfield. The Congrega- 
 tionalist minister, Mr. Curtis, was a pioneer in the new 
 organization, and in various ways we felt his baneful 
 influence. The Free-will Baptist minister and one or 
 two of his congregation showed us some hospitality, 
 especially Mr. and Mrs. McCrillis of his church. 
 We had an audience of a dozen, but two young men 
 of them had come with us all the ten hilly miles from 
 Gilmanton. Pittsfield was a flourishing cotton factory 
 
114 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 village, and Mr. Curtis had at one time been an able 
 anti-slavery apostle ; nor did he apostatize till the axe 
 was laid at the root of the deadly tree of slavery, the 
 church and its pulpit. He was president of the New 
 Hampshire anti-slavery society at the time of secession, 
 but he had been conspiring with his clerical brethren 
 all the previous year, 1839, to seize the helm of the 
 society and bring it under clerical and congregational 
 control. At the anniversary of that year, he exhibited 
 much sectarian bitterness and new organization 
 predilection, more than once ruling Stephen Foster 
 out of order while speaking, and once even calling our 
 invited guest, Mr. Garrison, down for what he termed 
 irrelevancy. .Still he was next day re-elected presi- 
 dent, the society wishing to avoid the very appearance 
 of proscription. 
 
 In the following autumn, the Deerfield Association 
 of Ministers, Mr. Curtis a leading member, issued a 
 call for a convention of Congregational and Presby- 
 terian ministers and churches, for the purpose as was 
 declared, of correcting a mistake existing at the south, 
 relative to the position of the New Hampshire 
 churches on the subject of slavery. The convention 
 met in Concord and sat two days and then quite por- 
 tentously adjourned to meet in Concord on the day 
 preceding the next anniversary day of the state society. 
 The motive for such adjournment could not be mis- 
 taken ; Mr. Curtis was president of that convention, 
 and as such, was careful and prompt to have season- 
 able notice given of the adjourned meeting. At the 
 same time he sent to the congregational organ of New 
 Hampshire, then The Panoply, a call over his own 
 name, addressed " to the sound, judicious and enlight- 
 ened abolitionists of New Hampshire," summoning 
 them to attend the meeting of the state anti-slavery 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 115 
 
 society, and save it from being perverted to unworthy 
 purposes. And a request accompanied this call, that 
 when the Panoply had copied it, it be sent to the 
 Herald of Freedom. 
 
 The call to the Concord convention of ministers and 
 churches, issued by the Deerfield Association, included 
 the editor of the Herald, and Stephen Foster, both of 
 whom were still church members. Early in the 
 second session, Mr. Rogers offered this resolution : 
 
 Resolved, That this convention cordially approve 
 of the American Anti-Slavery Society and kindred 
 organizations ; and the direct and proper way of 
 assuring our southern brethren that we are not in 
 favor of slavery, is to unite with these organizations 
 for its overthrow. 
 
 That resolution was laid on the table The resolu- 
 tion limiting membership to the convention to minis- 
 ters and male church members, excluding women, was 
 adopted. Mr. Foster asked for the yeas and nays, 
 and the vote stood forty to twenty-six against women 
 membership. So when the roll was called, the names 
 of women were passed over. Late on the second day 
 of the convention, the resolution of Mr. Rogers was 
 taken from the table, amended and passed. 
 
 But the editor of the Panoply, Rev. David Kimball, 
 himself a member of the convention, in his leading 
 editorial, published with the convention proceedings, 
 declared that more than half the members were gone 
 when the resolution of Mr. Rogers was taken up, and 
 so there was not a fair expression of the minds of the 
 convention. Which was doubtless true. And an- 
 other thing was also true. Only a very small num- 
 ber of the Congregational and Presbyterian ministers 
 of the state oared enough about the anti-slavery cause 
 to attend the convention as friends or foes. Less 
 than forty-five of the two hundred and thirty towns in 
 
Il6 CONVENTIONS AM) MEETINGS, 
 
 the state bad any representation, and more than half 
 of them, probably, were represented only by laymen, 
 though several sent women, only to be rejected. And 
 another fact is as patent as, and more significant than, 
 the rest. Only the very best of the clergy, those who 
 had shown most friendliness toward the anti-slavery 
 movement, were present at all. And some of them 
 soon became, and so continued, our most inveterate 
 enemies. The last resolution which the convention 
 adopted unanimously read: 
 
 Resolved, That as long as ministers and church 
 members continue in the sin of slave-holding, we feel 
 it our duty to withhold from them christian fellowship 
 and commuion. 
 
 What that resolution implied shall be referred to 
 Rev. Mr. Curtis, who was president of that conven- 
 tion, and at that time of the New Hampshire anti- 
 slavery society, to explain and declare. He had for 
 some years been active in measures for a pretended 
 severance of church fellowship between the north and 
 south, through the missionary, Bible and other simi- 
 lar cooperating organizations, including also the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of the Presbyterian church, and the 
 Congregational churches of New England. What 
 kind of separation he intended is seen by an extract 
 of a letter of his own in the Congregational Journal 
 at the time, to this effect: 
 
 My advice was, to dissolve all connection with the 
 General Assembly, as a body, while they, as a body, 
 sanction slavery. I do not perceive that such a meas- 
 ure need at all decide the question, or make it doubtful, 
 whether individual Congregational and Presbyterian 
 churches should continue in the kindest fellowship 
 towards one another, when neither professes any sym- 
 pathy for slavery. Let the individual fellowship of 
 the churches be left to their own regulation, as it must 
 be left. 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 117 
 
 That was the kind of excision contemplated by Mr. 
 Curtis, who represented the most radical anti-slavery 
 winy of the New Hamsphire and of the New Eng- 
 land Congregational pulpit and church. Cut off the 
 General assembly as such, refuse cooperation with 
 Bible and missionary societies as such, but retain sac- 
 ramental and other communion with the " individual 
 Congregational and Presbyterian churches " composing 
 them as before ! A surgical operation never con- 
 templated at the school of Salerno, nor any other med- 
 ical institution since. But even such action was not 
 taken. The advice of Mr. Curtis was never accepted 
 nor respected to any observable extent. The fellow- 
 ship continued as before. 
 
 But readers may have forgotten that this episode of 
 explanatory history commenced back in the town of 
 Pittsfield, where the anti-slavery lecturers and the 
 editor of the Herald encountered in an unusual degree 
 the baneful influence of a professing anti-slavery minis- 
 ter. Mr. Bodwell, of Sanbornton Square, made no anti- 
 slavery pretentions ; nor did Mr. Corser at the Bridge, 
 where the pulpit cushions were " daubed with such 
 untempered mortar," as if typifying the quality of the 
 gospel preached there. But the sacramental fellow- 
 ship was as real and constant with them as with the 
 most radical anti-slavery church members and minis- 
 ters in the land And the same christian embrace was 
 extended to all the individual churches and clergy 
 composing the General assembly of the Presbyterian 
 church as well. 
 
 Our Pittsfield meeting was held in the basement 
 vestry of the Free Will Baptist church, the only build- 
 ing in the town to which uncompromising anti-slavery 
 could be admitted. The Free Will minister, Rev. Mr. 
 Cilley, attended, as did a very few members of his 
 
Il8 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 church : Mr. and Mrs. McCrillis, who kindly enter- 
 tained us while in town, of course among them. Rev. 
 Mr. Curtis and his new organized church and society 
 kept carefully aloof. The account given of our recep- 
 tion and experiences there by the editor of the Herald, 
 might be too long to reproduce here, but a few 
 excerpts can hardly be spared. And the more because 
 Bittsfield was pre-eminently a representative town, 
 anti-slaverywise, under the newly organized type of 
 the doctrine, and Mr. Curtis and his church and people 
 of the very best membership, as well in New York 
 and New England as New Hampshire. So in what 
 follows, Mr. Rogers spoke really of the whole Congre- 
 gational and Presbyterian churches of the northern 
 states : 
 
 We groped our way to the underground meeting, 
 where we found assembled anti-slavery's accustomed 
 numbers — a full dozen of the surviving heart of Pitts- 
 field. Brother Cilley was among them. Brother 
 Curtis came not also among us. He was said to have 
 been at a school exhibition in the town, and in uncom- 
 mon flow of spirits ; as merry, according to the 
 account, he must have been as Herod the night of 
 John's beheading, and as regardless of the despised 
 and infidel meeting going on in the little Free Will 
 vestry as that festive monarch was of the scenes in the 
 prison of the Baptist. * * * We wondered if 
 brother Curtis did not now and then think of our 
 anti-slavery meeting, amid the gay festivities of his 
 exhibition/ And when he went home to his evening 
 devotions, did not that meeting intrude into his solemn 
 fancy ? And when he laid his head upon his pillow 
 that night, did not that meeting occur again to his 
 unquiet remembrance ? Nay, in his night visions did 
 it not usurp the place of that joyous exhibition ? And 
 in the morning when he went through his reverend 
 services at the altar, did not that intrusive meeting 
 interrupt the even tenor of his solemnities, and more 
 than once occur during his "long prayer?" He 
 
DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 119 
 
 knows. Sundry women were in our meeting, and some 
 others of brethren. We could scarcely have fallen 
 short of a dozen. We took up the comparative- claims 
 of the anti-slavery and new organization societies, 
 mainly for the sake of brother Cilley (not yet quite new 
 organized) ; read over the creed of new organization, 
 as set forth in the New Hampshire Abolition Society 
 constitution, and found it extremely extraneous. We 
 were astonished at its impudent charges against anti- 
 slavery, and its open and shameless commission of the 
 very offences it had falsely charged upon us. Brother 
 Cilley seemed hardly satisfied after all on " the woman 
 question." The propriety of woman's acting on com- 
 mittees seemed to worry his mind. We had supposed 
 that in the Free Will church woman's sphere was as 
 broad as man's, and that that order thought it no 
 shame for a woman to speak in a meeting, but an 
 honor rather and a duty. Brother Cilley had scruples, 
 however, as to the propriety. * * * Anti-slavery 
 leaves woman and man and child free to equal action. 
 Freewillism obliges woman to speak, while it only 
 expects man, thus maintaining" the darling masculine 
 prerogative and superiority. Sister McCrillis rose at 
 length, after the evening was well nigh spent, and she 
 had not once opened her lips, and very significantly 
 asked permission to go home. Her question seemed a 
 poser to brother Cilley's queries as to the proprieties, 
 and we thought at once relieved him of them all. The 
 noble woman and her female fellow-attendants went 
 out, leaving us quite ashamed of the idea of question- 
 ing the right or the propriety of woman's doing in an 
 anti-slavery meeting as she thinks best. 
 
 What is exactly true of the connection of the north- 
 ern Congregational, Presbyterian, and other large 
 evangelical christian bodies, acting together as Bible, 
 missionary and tract societies and associations, is, there 
 never was any real separation ; in the large bodies 
 they all acted together. Individual churches some- 
 times for themselves, made protest and even a feeble 
 form of separation. But Mr. Curtis, one of the most 
 
120 CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS, 
 
 anti-slavery ministers among them all, told us to what 
 purpose. " Let the individual fellowship of the 
 churches be left to themselves," he said after cutting- 
 connexion with the larger ecclesiastical bodies. But 
 even that to any effective extent, was never done. 
 
 In 1842, Judge Birney revised and made more con- 
 clusive the argument in his work entitled " The Ameri- 
 can Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery;" 
 himself a leading member and ruling elder of the 
 Presbyterian church when the book was written. In 
 1844, appeared, "The Brotherhood of Thieves; or a 
 True Picture of the American Church and Clergy," 
 taking up the argument where Mr. Birney had left off, 
 besides greatly strengthening his, by multiplied proofs 
 from the same sources. 
 
 In 1847, " The Church as It Is ; the Forlorn Hope of 
 Slavery," appeared, bringing the action of the churches 
 and clergy on the slavery question down to that time. 
 A peculiarity of all these books was, the churches and 
 ministers furnished the testimony, so that they w r ere 
 judged by their own words and works. A division 
 occurred in the general conference of the Methodist 
 church. But the south, not the north, separated. 
 And there still remained seven or eight annual con- 
 ferences in the northern division, the boundaries dis- 
 tinctly discribed in the Book of Discipline. And on 
 slavery the books of north and south read exactly 
 alike, and it was shown clearly by Methodist testi- 
 mony that there were still thousands of slave-holders 
 and many thousand slaves in the northern general 
 conference. The one unquestionable fact was, that 
 though there were exceptions to the fearful charge, 
 the system of slavery was supported by the govern- 
 ment and sanctified by the religion of the nation, till 
 the Infinite Patience could bear it no longer. The 
 
CONVENTIONS AND MEETINGS. 121 
 
 trump of the avenging angel first sounded at Fort 
 Sumter, summoning north and south to their judgment 
 day. Nor could the dread call be resisted. At the 
 memorable field of Bull Run the two armies met face 
 to face. It was on a beautiful summer Sunday morn- 
 ing. The northern and the southern states, regiments 
 of Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Presby- 
 terians, Episcopalians, from Maine to Michigan ; regi- 
 ments of the same denominations were up to meet 
 them from the shores of the Mexican gulf to Mason 
 and Dixon's line. Many of both armies must have 
 sometime sat together at the sacramental supper-tables 
 of the same denominational faith. But now their 
 hour had come. Now the warnings, entreaties and 
 expostulations of the faithful abolitionists were ended, 
 and their terrible predictions were to be fulfilled. On 
 that bright Sunday the two armies met in battle array. 
 Avenging Justice beheld them, and seizing the one in 
 His right hand the other in His left, dashed them to- 
 gether, dashed them in pieces, and gave frightful 
 multitudes of them their last sacrament ; not anymore 
 in the blood of slaves sold for wine of communion, 
 but in the steaming battle blood of each other ! 
 
 For days both sides claimed a victory. The rebel 
 commander-in-chief sent to his congress at Richmond 
 forthwith dispatches dated Sunday night, and com- 
 mencing thus : "The night has closed upon a hard 
 fought field. The enemy were routed, and precipi- 
 tately fled, abandoning a large amount of arms, knap- 
 sacks and baggage. The ground was strewn for miles 
 with those killed, and the farm-houses and grounds 
 around were filled with the wounded. Pursuit was 
 continued along several routes till darkness covered 
 the fugitives." 
 
122 DIGRESSION ON NEW ORGANIZATION. 
 
 Let readers mark those words, "the fugitives." New 
 England, Boston even, had many noble sons in that 
 fight ; and only a little while before New England, 
 and even Boston, was returning fugitive slaves to their 
 masters. Who was He who once said, " With what 
 measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again?" 
 And what the Boston pulpit, what Andover Theologi- 
 cal Seminary said, what nearly every evangelical doc- 
 tor of divinity taught on the duty of returning fugi- 
 tive slaves, shall be shown in some future chapter of 
 these fearful chronicles. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ACTS CONTINUED, WITH PERSONAL SKETCH OF STEPHEN 
 SYMONDS FOSTER. 
 
 The last chapter contained an account of a sally 
 into the lecturing field in which Mr. Foster and myself 
 were accompanied by our inestimable coadjutor, Mr. 
 Rogers, of the Herald of Freedom. My next cam- 
 paign was with Foster alone, and as some account of 
 Mr. Garrison and Mr. Rogers has been given, it may 
 be proper to advert briefly to some of the more general 
 incidents in the early life of Stephen S. Foster. It 
 has been already intimated that in this work only the 
 acts of a small number of the anti-slavery apostles can 
 be even named. There were many, both men and 
 women, whose separate faithful labors, patient endur- 
 ance of privations, perils, sacrifices and sufferings, 
 earned for each one a volume larger and abler than 
 this can possibly be. Men and women whose very 
 names should only be spoken by those of cleanest lips 
 and purest hearts. 
 
 Mr. Foster was born in Canterbury, New Hamp- 
 shire, in November, 1809, son of Colonel Asa Foster, 
 of revolutionary days. He was the ninth child of a 
 family of thirteen. 
 
 The old Foster homestead is in the north part of 
 Canterbury, on a beautiful hillside, overlooking a long 
 stretch of the Merrimack river valley, including Con- 
 cord, and a wide view east and west, as well as south. 
 It includes several hundred acres, and is still owned 
 by one of the Foster brothers. 
 
124 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 Stephen left it early and learned the trade of a car- 
 penter and builder. In that, however, he did not come 
 to his life occupation. His parents were most devout 
 and exemplary members of the Congregational church, 
 to which he also was joined in youthful years. At 
 that time the call for ministers and missionaries, espe- 
 cially to occupy the new opening field at the west, 
 called then " the great valley of the Mississippi," was 
 loud and earnest. At twenty-two he heard and heeded 
 it, and immediately entered on a course of collegiate 
 study to that end, and it is only just to say that a more 
 consistent, conscientious, divinely consecrated spirit 
 never set itself to prepare for that then counted holiest 
 of callings. Though assenting to the creed and cov- 
 enant of his denomination, his whole rule of practical 
 life and work was the " Sermon on the Mount," as 
 interpreted and illustrated in the life and death of its 
 author. 
 
 With him " Love your enemies" was more than 
 words, and " Resist not evil" was not returning evil, 
 nor inflicting penalties under human enactments. And 
 he went early to prison for non-appearance at military 
 parade, armed with weapons of death. 
 
 In Dartmouth College he was called to perform mil- 
 itary service. On christian principles he declined, 
 and was arrested and dragged away to jail. So bad 
 were the roads that a part of the way the sheriff was 
 compelled to ask him to leave the carriage and walk. 
 He would cheerfully have walked all the way, as once 
 did George Fox, good naturedly telling the officer, 
 " Thee need not go thyself ; send thy boy, I know 
 the way ;" for Foster feared no prison cells. He had 
 earnest work in hand which led through many of them 
 in subsequent years. 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 1 25 
 
 Eternal Goodness might have had objects in view 
 in sending him to Haverhill, for he found the jail in a 
 condition to demand the hand of a Hercules, as in the 
 " Augsean " stables for its cleansing. His companions 
 there were poor debtors, as well as thieves, murderers, 
 and lesser felons. One man so gained his confidence 
 as to whisper in his ear that on his hands was the blood 
 of murder, though none knew it but himself. Another 
 poor wretch had been so long confined by illness to 
 his miserable bed, that it literally swarmed with vermin, 
 crawling from his putrid sores. 
 
 Foster wrote and sent to the world such a letter as 
 few but he could write, awakening general horror 
 and indignation wherever it was read, and a cleansing 
 operation was forthwith instituted. The filth on 
 the floor was found so deep and so hard trodden, that 
 strong men had to come with pick-axes and dig it up. 
 And that jail was not only revolutionized, but the 
 whole prison system of the state from that time began 
 to be reformed ; and imprisonment for debt was soon 
 heard of here no more. 
 
 His college studies closed, he entered, for a theo- 
 logical course, the Union Seminary in New York. 
 Soon afterward there was threatened war between our 
 country and Great Britain, over a short stretch of the 
 northeastern boundary line, about which the two 
 nations had disputed for half a century. Wholly 
 opposed to war as was he, for any cause, he and a 
 few of his friends proposed a meeting for prayer and 
 conference, in relation to it as then menaced. Foster 
 asked for the use of a lecture room for their purpose, 
 but was surprised as much as grieved to find the sem- 
 inary faculty not only opposed to granting the use of 
 the room, but sternly against the holding of any such 
 meeting-. 
 
126 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 That refusal, probably more than any other one 
 event, determined his whole future course. For while 
 in college he had had many serious doubts and mis- 
 givings as to the claim of the great body of the Ameri- 
 can church and clergy to the christian name and 
 character ; not only because of their supporting war 
 and approval of his incarceration for peace principles, 
 but also for their persistent countenance of slave- 
 holding and fellowship of even slave-breeders and 
 slave-holders, as christians and christian ministers. 
 • In 1839, Mr. Foster abandoned all hope of the Con- 
 gregational ministry, and entered the anti-slavery 
 service, side by side with Garrison, of the Boston Lib- 
 erator, and Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, of the New 
 Hampshire Herald of Freedom. And from that time 
 onward till slavery was abolished, and indeed to the 
 day of his death, the cause of freedom and humanity, 
 justice and truth, had no more faithful, few if any 
 more able champions. 
 
 In the autumn of 1845, he married Miss Abby 
 Kelley, of Worcester, Massachusetts, then a well and 
 widely - known lecturer on anti-slavery, temperance, 
 peace, and other subjects pertaining to the rights and 
 the welfare of man and womankind. She and a 
 daughter, their only child, survive him. The daughter 
 graduated first at Vassar College, then entered Cor- 
 nell University, which she left at the end of the year, 
 with the degree of Master of Arts. 
 
 I first saw Stephen Foster in the autumn of 1S34. 
 We were commencing teaching schools in adjoining 
 districts of a small country town. A " revival of 
 religion" soon appeared in the town, and was emi- 
 nently powerful in his school, if, indeed, it did not 
 commence there. His school was much larger than 
 mine, and many of the parents were members, and 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 1 27 
 
 some of them officers, of the Congregational church. 
 They found in Mr. Foster a teacher, or at any rate a 
 leader in religion, as well as in the literature of their 
 school. And though most satisfactory progress was 
 made in all the branches, and the discipline of the 
 school was deemed throughout of the very best, nearly 
 every scholar of or above fifteen years old was con- 
 verted and joined the Congregational church ; and then 
 their teacher and some of themselves came over as 
 missionaries into my more remote and benighted dis- 
 trict, and quite a work was accomplished there. The 
 venerable minister of the town thought, and from the 
 standpoint, and in the light of that day, thought truly, 
 that, " with young Mr. Foster, evidently, was 'the 
 secret of the Lord !' " And that same characteristic 
 faithfulness he brought with him into the anti-slavery 
 cause. And soon learning where was the great, deep, 
 tap-root of the deadly upas, he laid the axe at the root 
 of the tree. 
 
 His encounters with the church and ministry, the 
 frequency with which his meetings had been and were 
 still broken up by brutal mobs, not unfrequently jus- 
 tified by the pulpit and religious press, had made him 
 a disciple to the Birney doctrine, " The American 
 Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery," long 
 before this startling tract had come before the public. 
 
 Mr. Birney's experiences with the same power sug- 
 gested his title ; but a few years later, another pam- 
 phlet appeared from Foster's own pen, entitled, " The 
 Brotherhood of Thieves ; or a True Picture of the 
 American Church and Clergy." Mr. Birney had 
 already proved the pertinence and propriety of such a 
 title in his little work ; but in a ringing book, of more 
 than seventy pages, Foster showed, by super-abundant 
 testimony, and every single witness furnished by the 
 
128 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 church itself, that if slavery were man stealing, as the 
 Presbyterian church had declared it forty years before, 
 and "the highest kind of theft," then surely the whole 
 southern church was indeed a vast "Brotherhood of 
 Thieves!" with their northern baptized brethren, who 
 fellowshiped them as christians, their not less guilty 
 accomplices ! 
 
 Mr. Foster therefore made the' popular, prevailing 
 religions his main point of attack. What could he 
 have done otherwise ? The churches of the north 
 were opened to southern slave-breeders, slave-traders, 
 slave-hunters, and slave-holders, if members of the 
 same, and often even of widely different denomina- 
 tions, both for preaching, baptizing and sacramental 
 supper occasions and purposes. There were a few 
 exceptions ; but not enough to affect the general 
 charge. Northern academies, colleges, universities, 
 and theological seminaries, toned down their whole 
 curriculum of moral and religious training and teach- 
 ing to suit the depraved demand and taste of the 
 whole brotherhood of southern slave-holders. And 
 with most rare exceptions, the northern press attuned 
 itself to the same key. 
 
 The religious public soon learned to dread Mr. Fos- 
 ter's presence or approach. Convicted of the most 
 malignant pro-slaveryism, and by its own public records 
 and reports of proceedings of ecclesiastical bodies and 
 associations, from general assemblies, general confer- 
 ences, and American Bible, missionary and tract 
 societies, to state and county conferences and conso- 
 ciations, they had good reason to fear such a judg- 
 ment-day before the time. 
 
 So there was a conspiracy among all classes of the 
 people to conquer the abolitionists, "by letting them 
 severely atone." And in some states the clergy went 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 120 
 
 so far as to issue pastoral letters to the churches, 
 declaring that anti-slavery lecturers had no right to 
 invade a people who had chosen a pastor and regularly 
 inducted him into office ; nor had such a people any 
 right to permit it. A Massachusetts clerical mandate, 
 duly published in the religious papers, signed by two 
 congregational ministers, contained this paragraph : 
 
 When a people have chosen a pastor, and he has 
 been regularly inducted into office, they have so far 
 surrendered up to him the right to discharge the 
 appropriate duties of his office in the parish over which 
 he is settled, that they themselves can not send another 
 to discharge those duties, all or any part of them, 
 against his wishes, without an evident invasion of his 
 territory. Whoever comes before a parish under these 
 circumstances is an intruder. And equally so is he 
 who, after being admitted by the pastor, sets up his 
 judgment in matter that falls properly under the pas- 
 tor's control. These are both acts of trespass, and 
 the perpetrators of them are or should be liable to 
 ecclesiastical censure. The unfaithfulness or incapac- 
 ity of the pastor is no apology for the offence. 
 
 Nor was this law a dead letter in any place where it 
 could possibly be enforced, whether in Massachusetts 
 or anywhere in the north or west. 
 
 But the brave faithfulness of Mr. Foster to the 
 enslaved and to his own solemn convictions, soon tri- 
 umphed over such religious despotism. He conceived 
 the idea of entering the meeting houses on Sunday, 
 and at the hour of sermon, respectfully rising and 
 claiming the right to be heard then and there, on the 
 duties and obligations of the church to those who were 
 in bonds at the south. 
 
 This measure he first adopted in the old North 
 church, at Concord, in September, 1841. He was 
 immediately seized by "three young gentlemen, one 
 a southerner from Alabama, and the other tw r o, guards 
 
130 M IS CONTINUED, 
 
 at the state prison, thrust along the broad aisle and 
 violently pushed out of the house." A full account of 
 the transaction was published in the Herald of Freedom 
 on the following Friday, 17th of the same month. 
 But Mr. Foster could not be deterred from his pur- 
 pose. And the measure proved so effective as a 
 means of awakening the public attention to the 
 importance of the anti-slavery enterprise, that others 
 were led to adopt it. Of course it led to persecution, 
 and some were imprisoned for the offence — Mr. Foster 
 as many as ten or twelve times, in New Hampshire 
 and Massachusetts. Perhaps his most memorable 
 experience at the hands of the civil law, at the time, 
 was in Concord, in June, 1842. On Sunday, the 
 twelfth of that month, being in Concord, he went to 
 the South church, and at the time for sermon he rose 
 in a pew at the side of the pulpit, and commenced 
 speaking in his usual solemn and deeply impressive 
 manner. He evidently would have been heard, and 
 with deep attention, too, for many in the house not 
 only knew him well, but knew that this was a course 
 not unusual with him, and one in the rightfulness of 
 which he conscientiously believed, and, besides, was 
 sometimes able to make most useful and effective. 
 Even the Concord Unitarian society, one Sunday, gave 
 respectful hearing ; the minister, Rev. Mr. Tilden, 
 inviting him to speak. 
 
 But at the South church, it was not so. There he 
 was seized by the then Secretary of State, others 
 assisting, and forthwith carried by main force out of 
 the house. The editor of the Herald of Freedom was 
 present and saw the whole transaction, and in his next 
 paper, gave a remarkably clear and full report of it. 
 It is well worth reading and even study, by any who 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 13I 
 
 would understand the spirit and temper of those tur- 
 bulent times. 
 
 As the whole affair was conducted, and as it finally 
 resulted, it was not inappropriately called in the 
 Herald, a mob. "A mob in the sanctuary called the 
 South church. House ostentatiously dedicated to the 
 worship of God. A mob begun in the pulpit by the 
 anointed embassador of 'the prince of peace,' in 
 midst of professed christian worship !" 
 
 At the close of the long prayer of morning service, 
 during which, in those days, the congregation all rev- 
 erently rose and stood, Foster remained standing and 
 when the people were seated, he commenced in low, 
 solemn and devout manner to say that he wished to 
 speak a few words in behalf of two and a half millions 
 of our kidnapped and enslaved countrymen. Nearly 
 all appeared deeply attentive, and the scene was pro- 
 foundly serious and impressive, as became the hour, 
 the place and the theme. 
 
 But instantly, the minister from the pulpit called 
 out with much anger, "Mr. Foster, we must not be 
 disturbed in our worship ! " At the same time a man 
 high in authority, stalked across the house in front of 
 the pulpit and seized him by the arm. But he had 
 laid violent hand on no brawling disturber of the 
 peace, nor of worship, but the equal in every way of 
 the minister, and morally and spiritually, vastly his 
 superior, as every moment demonstrated more and 
 more. He was perfectly serene, gentle, orderly and 
 respectful ; and that seemed the more to waken the 
 pulpit indignation. He mildly asked the officer, who 
 as yet confronted him alone, if such conduct as his 
 became a christian, and if Jesus Christ ever interrupted 
 respectful speaking in such a way, or forced anybody 
 out of the house only for speaking ? But the people 
 
132 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 must not be permitted to hear him ; and as no one yet 
 had come to the rescue with the officer, he called up to 
 the choir to set the music going to silence him. Fos- 
 ter responded that he hoped the choir would not resort 
 to such means to silence his voice ; or if they should, 
 they could not repress the truth. But before this was 
 all uttered, the music was set going in full diapason 
 with all the spite of the vilest mob. 
 
 The music, of course, blasphemously silenced Fos- 
 ter ; but while it was performing, the officer, in true 
 posse comitates manner and spirit, ordered up the sex- 
 ton and several others, chiefly church members, if not 
 wholly, and some of them new organized abolitionists, 
 and seizing hold of him, carried him by main brute 
 force out of the house, he making no resistance nor 
 proffering any resistance by using his own strength or 
 limbs. 
 
 It was said in defense of the infamous act : 
 " They carried him gently out !" To that Mr. Rogers 
 responded the same week in the Herald of Freedom to 
 this effect : 
 
 Yes, very gently. They did not use a particle of 
 brute force, beyond what was necessary to effect their 
 brute purpose. But remember they laid hands on a 
 man and put him out of a house before all of the con- 
 gregation, against his will, in contempt of his right of 
 speech, and in the deepest intended dishonor of his 
 person. The officer would have struck any man dead 
 who had thus profaned his official person. So would 
 that reverend minister. I thought the officer might 
 refrain from Foster while he remained silent. All was 
 hush, save the devout music ; that had restored the 
 interrupted worship and it was solemnly going on. 
 But they feared Foster might speak by and by, and so 
 thought they would put him out by anticipation. 
 * * * They laid hold of Foster when he was stand- 
 ing perfectly still (whether he had a right to speak or 
 no right), when all was hushed but the clamor in the 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. I 33 
 
 gallery, and lawlessly conveyed him out of the house 
 of God. He meekly submitted to the infamous indig- 
 nity. The minister looked on with all clerical com- 
 placency, from his curtained' elevation. Nero would 
 hardly have looked on with more when he fiddled at 
 the burning of Rome. They laid their sacrilegious 
 hands on Foster. I care not that they handled him 
 gently. The outrage is that they handled him at all. 
 It was an outrage most abhorrent to human feelings. 
 The very law abhors it, sprung, as it was, from the 
 dark ages of feudal England, and punishes its slight- 
 est touch of a man. But ecclesiastical supremacy 
 knows no law. They trampled law under foot ; and 
 had they been outraging a man wicked as themselves, 
 he would visit it upon them. But Foster is a chris- 
 tian, and they are safe. It was a flagrant breach of 
 the peace, and a highly gross assault and battery, 
 aggravated by outrage of the right of speech. * * * 
 I saw Foster in their hands. It was an unusual sight. 
 It was an abhorrent, unnatural sight. It was as a 
 lamb in the hands of wolves. His countenance beamed 
 with magnanimous christian expression. Several of 
 the congregation indignantly left the house ; I was 
 among the number. At the bottom of the entrance 
 stairs I found the abductors in a state of guilty agita- 
 tion, on the verge of furious excitement. The officers 
 hard breathing and most vivaciously at work shutting 
 the folding doors and fastening them. * * * I 
 could not help exclaiming, shame on you friends ; 
 shame on you for your conduct ! " Do you want to 
 go out or stay in, Mr. Rogers," said the excited officer. 
 Go out, of course, said I, out of such a house as this. 
 They shut all the doors and bolted them behind them 
 with most cowardly care. We walked away pondering 
 on the spirit of the worship we had left. Some women 
 who came out after us found the doors locked, and 
 had to go out through a round-about-way to a postern 
 which was also locked from terror of Foster. 
 
 All this transpired at the morning service. In the 
 afternoon, Mr. Foster felt constrained to enter the 
 church again and attempt to speak a few words before 
 
134 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 the services commenced. All of his friends discour- 
 aged the attempt ; even Mr. Rogers counselled against 
 it. He said he would no more go into that South 
 church with those murderous stone stairs at the out- 
 let, than he would walk into the Spanish inquisi- 
 tion. But Foster answered in the very spirit of the 
 heroic apostle, Paul, when he asked his less brave 
 brethren, " What mean ye to weep and to break my 
 heart, for I am ready not to be bound only, but also 
 to die for the name of the Lord Jesus." And he went 
 again in the afternoon up those same " murderous 
 stone stairs." 
 
 He commenced speaking as soon as he entered, and 
 before the performances had begun. Immediately 
 some young men, without order or authority even from 
 the pulpit, most ferociously seized him, dragged him 
 down the aisle and cast him down as far as the broad 
 stairs of the ascent, from which he was forthwith, in 
 the very spirit of most malignant murder, hurled down 
 the entire stairway ; and then with kicks, hair-pulling 
 and other indignities, thrown out on the ground. By 
 this time the whole entrance was thronged with a 
 violent vociferating mob, furiously, and some pro- 
 fanely, defending the sacredness of the meeting-house. 
 Foster, pale, faint and disabled, lay on the ground, 
 still at the mercy of the mob. Some of us took him 
 up and tenderly assisted him to the then hospitable 
 home near by, of Amos and Louisa Wood. Mr. Wood 
 soon arrived and told us that after the outrage on 
 Mr. Foster, he had risen in his pew to protest against 
 such proceedings, and that the same officer who con- 
 ducted the attack in the morning rushed upon him, 
 and with others thrust him also, although a member 
 of the church, out of the house. 
 
 Mr. Foster appeared so seriously injured that we 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 1 35 
 
 deemed it advisable to summon a physician. So it 
 fell on me to return and venture up the broad aisle of 
 that same perilous sanctuary, and call a doctor from 
 the base of the pulpit itself. No bones were broken 
 nor dislocated ; but bruises and sprains rendered 
 walking difficult and painful for several weeks. 
 
 But only the tragic portion of this wondrous spec- 
 tacle has yet been told. A farce followed more re- 
 markable still, for the church and pulpit counted their 
 grievance so great as even to appeal to the civil courts 
 for redress. They well knew their victims were non- 
 resistants, both Mr. Wood and Mr. Foster, whose 
 rights they had so atrociously infringed, not to speak 
 of bodily ills inflicted, especially on Foster. Both 
 were christians in the sense and meaning of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. Both suffered imprisonment in 
 our then loathsome jails, rather than perform military 
 service or pay fines in money for non-appearance on 
 the murder-meaning, murder-breeding muster field. 
 So a suit at law would be perfectly safe at the worst. 
 And a suit was commenced on Monday afternoon. 
 Foster, only able to move about on a cane, was 
 arrested at the house of Mr. Amos Wood, where we 
 had taken him after his injury at the hands of the pul- 
 pit, the church and their then only too willing outside 
 defenders. Several of us had been informed that the 
 arrest was to be made, and had gathered there to wit- 
 ness the doing of it. 
 
 The sheriff was a most kind hearted man, and 
 appeared to appreciate properly the quality of the 
 business then in hand. Entering the room where we 
 were sitting, Mr. Foster in an invalid chair, he ap- 
 proached him, warrant in hand, and said : " Mr. Fos- 
 ter, I have authority here to take you before Judge 
 Badger, to answer to a charge of disturbing public 
 
136 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 worship." Probably these are not the exact words 
 spoken, but Foster, in the mildest manner possible, 
 responded : " I do not know of any business between 
 me and friend Badger requiring my attendance to-day, 
 and must decline to answer to your call." Of course 
 the sheriff insisted, as in duty bound, but in manner 
 and spirit that contrasted strangely with the truly mob 
 demeanor of the meeting-house on the day before. 
 When he saw that if Foster went he must be carried, 
 literally, he asked some of us present if we would be 
 kind enough to assist him in bearing him out to his 
 carriage, which we naturally declined. Then he said 
 he should have to call in other aid. Foster good 
 naturedly suggested that the minister and his aids of 
 yesterday would be the proper persons on whom to 
 call. The news of what was transpiring by this time 
 was on many tongues and in many ears, and the ex- 
 citement on the street was not small. It did not prove 
 an easy matter to summon the posse comitatus. But 
 finally one member of the church, and a working man 
 not of the church, came in with the officer, and taking 
 Foster gently in their hands and arms bore him bare 
 headed to the door and placed him on the carriage 
 seat. Foster, Rogers and others asked the non- 
 church member why he didn't let the church do her 
 own dirty work ? And the sheriff himself instead of 
 arresting us, some of us being women, too, for thus 
 attempting to obstruct the purposes of justice, only 
 answered that it was " a very unpleasant duty to per- 
 form," which, knowing the man as we did, we well 
 understood before. A crowd followed the prisoner to 
 the judgment hall. It was on the second story, and 
 the stairway being narrow it was truly a ludicrous 
 operation for the officer and his posse to climb it with 
 so unseemly a burden. Foster said afterwards him- 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 137 
 
 self that he felt rather serious than otherwise, till 
 ascending the stairs, feet foremost high above his 
 head, and yet handled with utmost caution, he could 
 not help laughing outright, and did not recover his 
 gravity again through the whole farcical trial. 
 
 As the editor of the Herald of Freedom was a law- 
 yer and witnessed the court proceedings, probably 
 readers would prefer his account in his own words. 
 And in this they shall be gratified, copied literally, a 
 few names omitted, from his columns of the same 
 week : 
 
 The court room was thronged. Esquire Badger 
 took his seat and read over the complaint in the hear- 
 ing of Foster, charging him with " rude and indecent 
 behavior," etc., -"force and arms," etc., in the usual 
 rigmarole of a criminal process, and asked him : 
 " What say you, Mr. Foster, are you guilty or not 
 guilty ?" Foster replied : " Friend Badger, I do not 
 recognize you as my judge, nor shall I answer before 
 you as a culprit. I am not your subject, and owe you 
 no allegiance. As a brother man and equal I am 
 willing to talk with you, on this or any other subject, 
 but not as a magistrate." Friend Badger said the 
 answer was not such as he wished. He wished him 
 to say whether he was guilty or not guilty. Foster 
 replied that he had his answer, and must put such con- 
 struction on it as he saw fit. 
 
 The first witness was called and put on oath to tell 
 the truth. It did not use to strike me so absurdly to 
 hear a man sworn to tell the truth. He, the witness, 
 said he was in the meeting house, saw Mr. Foster 
 rise to speak, and Esquire S. immediately go to him 
 and stop him, and take him out of the house. When 
 asked if he did not interrupt the meeting by rude and 
 indecent behavior, etc., he replied that he did not hear 
 what he said. This was the substance, as I remember, 
 of his testimony. 
 
 Capt. A. M. next presented himself as a witness. 
 He is a member of the church that dragged Stephen 
 out, and the same captain who shut Amos Wood up 
 
138 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 in the Black Hole at Hopkington, winter before last, 
 for not being willing to train. Captain M. S.'s testi- 
 mony was in effect the same as Captain S., who pre- 
 ceded. He didn't hear a word Foster said in the meet- 
 ing. I think he gave it as his opinion that he inter- 
 rupted, or disturbed the meeting by speaking, but 
 did not tell what he said. When Captain M. retired, 
 Captain W. came forward. Captain W. was also of 
 the South church. He was sworn. He seemed com- 
 petent to give all necessary testimony, within his 
 knowledge, and not unreasonably backward to furnish 
 it. He sat close by Foster, he said, in the meeting 
 house, saw him stand up, and heard him speak, and 
 thought what he said was a great disturbance of the 
 meeting, etc., could not tell, however, what he said ; 
 not a single word of it. Fie was asked if Foster 
 behaved in a rude and indecent manner. Captain W. 
 thought he disturbed the meeting very much, and that 
 his speaking was contrary to the regulations of the 
 South church. Foster asked him if speaking itself 
 was contrary to the regulations, and when he said not, 
 asked him who had a right to speak there ? The cap- 
 tain answered, nobody but the minister. Foster 
 asked him if it would be contrary to the regulations of 
 the South church if he should come in during service 
 time and give an alarm of fire ? The captain replied 
 in a grave manner that he did not choose to enter into 
 that kind of conversation. But you are a witness, 
 said Foster, and must answer all proper questions. 
 He, however, did not answer. I will ask another 
 question, said Foster : If your child should be kid- 
 napped and carried off to the south, and I should learn 
 of it in service time of the South church, and should 
 come in and give the alarm, would you think that an 
 interruption ? The captain appealed to the court, and 
 1 think he was told he must answer ; for he did, and 
 as I understood him said he should not think that an 
 interruption. Suppose then, continued Foster, that 
 two and a half millions of my countrymen should be 
 kidnapped and sold into slavery, and I should come 
 in in time of service and give the alarm, would that be 
 violating the reuulations of the South church? The 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 1 39 
 
 audience manifested great satisfaction at Foster's 
 questions. The captain said thereupon, " These ques- 
 tions are asked for sport." The testimony here closed 
 — not a word being sworn to of what Foster said, nor 
 any evidence given of rude or indecent behavior on 
 the part of anybody but the minister and the officer 
 who first laid hands on Foster. One spectator said, 
 " Discharge him ; " another, as he left the room, said, 
 " This is a farcical piece of business ; " a third said, 
 "There isn't a particle of evidence against Foster ; " 
 still another asked me, " What will the court do ? " 
 Convict, I answered. "On what ground ? " he asked : 
 I said : I cannot tell on what ground, I only think he 
 will convict him. 
 
 Early in the trial Esquire Whipple, ( the prosecutor ) 
 read the law on which the complaint was founded. 
 Toward the close of the examination, Foster glanced 
 his eye over it and discovered that it was not in force, 
 that it had been repealed. He observed to the court 
 pleasantly, that he did not wish to interfere in their 
 proceedings, but he believed they were trying him 
 upon a statute that was not in fofce. He did not wish 
 them to be at the trouble of going over the business 
 twice, he said, and he had not the time to spare him- 
 self. He had had occasion in his dealings with other 
 churches to look at the law, and told them what it was 
 and where they would find it. Hereupon a burst of 
 applause broke from all parts of the audience, which 
 lasted considerable time. Esquire Whipple looked 
 amused and Esquire Badger a little //// to it. How- 
 ever, Foster set them on the right track as to the law, 
 and after awhile all went on again. Come to read the 
 law through, it was plain as noon-day to every one 
 that it contemplated no such case as Foster's. So 
 they had no law against him, and no facts. 
 
 Friend Badger then went out and was gone some 
 minutes. I thought it might be to consult higher 
 authorities as to the course to be taken with a criminal 
 against whom there was neither law nor proof. Still, 
 I had a presentiment he would convict. He returned 
 and resumed his seat. He asked Mr. Foster if he had 
 anything to say in his defense. Foster replied, 
 
140 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 he made no defense, that what he said was not 
 said to the court, but to the audience. I am in 
 your power I know — you can fine me or imprison 
 me. You know I have done no wrong. No one has 
 said aught against me. One witness gave his opinion 
 that I had interrupted the meeting.; but he had no 
 right to give opinions, he was a witness, he should 
 give facts. You know I have done nothing amiss. If 
 I had, why was not Daniel Noyes, the minister, here to 
 testify against me ? He sat where he could see all 
 that I did. I have done no wrong. He and Stevens 
 and those who violated my rights of speech and of 
 person, why do you not prosecute them instead of 
 me ? It is not my duty said Friend Badger. It is your 
 duty upon your own principles, replied Foster. I can- 
 not prosecute. It is contrary to my principles. You can, 
 and are bound to. The injury is not against me. It 
 is against the State, and you know their guilt and are 
 bound to prosecute them. But do with me as you 
 please. 
 
 Esquire Badger then gave sentence. He would 
 protect an anti-slavery meeting, he said, as soon as any 
 other meeting, if it was disturbed. He would do 
 justice to Mr. Foster as soon as to anybody else. 
 ( Thought I, Friend Badger, you had better not give 
 reasons, but convict and say nothing. ) He went on to 
 say " The complaint was broad enough to cover the 
 case." Sure enough ; but then, there was no evi- 
 dence to sustain it. He said nothing about any evi- 
 dence. The complaint is broad enough he said to 
 cover the case, and he declared Foster guilty, and 
 fined him five dollars and the costs ! ! An expression 
 of disapprobation, amounting pretty near to sovereign 
 contempt, manifested itself throughout the court 
 room ! The champions of the church had already 
 sneaked off. A man like Nathan Stickney must have 
 been ashamed of the decision. T. C, who was about, 
 ( looking sheepishly enough, ) hither and thither dur- 
 ing the trial, exerting what malign influence he could 
 covertly, would not be so scrupulous as to the kind of 
 victory, or mode of obtaining it. He looked as though 
 he would enjoy a sentence against Stephen Foster to 
 
 j 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 141 
 
 that pestilential dungeon at Hopkinton for twenty 
 years, for the quiet of the South church. And he is 
 an anti-slavery man! He is, I believe, secretary of 
 New Hampshire new organization. 
 
 As soon as the magnificent sentence was pronounced, 
 the friends of humanity present ( not abolitionists 
 neither, professedly, though nearer being so than they 
 are aware of ) rushed to the table and threw down the 
 money to pay it. I would give their honored names, 
 but it adds nothing, yet, to any man's reputation with 
 the world to be commended in the Herald of Freedom. 
 They are well known here. They make no sectarian 
 profession, but if not in the kingdom of heaven, they 
 are nearer to it infinitely, than the miserable pro- 
 slavery devotees of the meeting-house. Foster thanked 
 them in the fullness of a grateful heart, but protested 
 respectfully against their paying. It will be better for 
 the cause, said he, that I suffer. I can go to their jail, 
 seeing they have unlawfully doomed me there. Others 
 are there now. But no heed was paid to his 
 remonstrance. Everybody felt deeply that he was a 
 persecuted, injured, innocent and faithful man ; and 
 entertained the profoundest contempt and indignation 
 at the hypocritical priest and the mobocratic official 
 of the State, who had outraged and injured him. 
 
 The tide of humanity ran too strong for the legal 
 opinions of friend Badger. He seemed to find he had 
 mistaken the current. He had fined an innocent man, 
 prosecuted by the church, five dollars, and the people 
 were against it. He had not anticipated that. The 
 church minions had slunk away. The table was covered 
 with more money than was wanted. Friend Badger 
 caught the general feeling and remitted The fine. The 
 friends immediately passed the money over to Foster, 
 who told them he would spend it in the anti-slavery 
 cause. 
 
 The whole article, from which this account is but 
 an extract, fills more than seven solid columns of the 
 Herald of Freedom, and the names and titles of per- 
 sons are given in full, and especially those most prom- 
 inent in the shameful transaction. Perhaps it were 
 
l_p ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 better that they had been all given in the same man- 
 ner and continued in this extract. Almost all the 
 parties, official and unofficial, are now dead ; many of 
 them died long ago, even those who led the mob out- 
 rages at the church door where Foster received his 
 bodily injuries. The court room during the trial, 
 which lasted through the most of an afternoon, was 
 crowded with an audience whose sympathies at the 
 beginning were doubtless quite evenly divided, for 
 Concord was at that time by no means an anti-slavery 
 town. But when the complaint was read, solemnly 
 charging the accused, who was a well-known, con- 
 sistent peace man and non-resistant, with " force and 
 arms," and " rude and indecent behavior," the whole 
 scene assumed a ludicrous aspect only. As the trial 
 proceeded, however, it soon became manifest that 
 malice and spite instigated the arrest, and that sum- 
 mary vengeance was to be inflicted, however unjust. 
 Then when Foster so serenely corrected the court in 
 its knowledge of law, telling just when the law was 
 repealed, and where, and at whose desire, and exactly 
 for what purpose the law then existing to protect 
 public religious meetings was enacted, all of which he 
 showed to the full satisfaction of the court, the burst 
 of admiring applause was as general and hearty as it 
 was long continued. Nor was there any attempt to 
 suppress it. That was the verdict of humanity and 
 justice, instinctively rendered, with voice and power 
 irresistible. 
 
 And when Judge Badger remitted the fine, which 
 doubtless gave him great pleasure, though he trans- 
 cended his authority in doing so, there was another 
 demonstration of delight, at which Sheriff Pettingill 
 stepped forward and told him he would remit his fees 
 with the fine, and take nothing for his services. To 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 143 
 
 which the judge good naturedly responded that he 
 would not be outdone in magnanimity, and would 
 throw in his charges with the rest, and Mr. Foster 
 might be discharged. The demonstration which suc- 
 ceeded needs no description, no report. 
 
 But there was yet one more incident worthy of men- 
 tion. Judge Badger beholding the generous pile 
 of silver which had been tossed on his table, asked, 
 " What shall be done with all this money ?" " Give 
 it to Foster, give it to Foster," was shouted out from 
 all over the yet crowded room. Carried by acclama- 
 tion. It was done. Sheriff Pettingill then gave Fos- 
 ter his hand and said, " Now if you will step into my 
 carriage I will be very happy to take you back to your 
 lodgings." The offer was cordially and gratefully 
 accepted by our weary and suffering friend, and thus 
 ended the day with its strange and wondrous disclo- 
 sures and deeds. 
 
 But perhaps narration should not close without a 
 brief mention of two or three meetings held immedi- 
 ately, to consider the right and propriety of so lib- 
 eral construction of the rights of speech and worship, 
 as were attempted by Mr. Foster and countenanced by 
 Mr. Wood. Both being members -of the state anti- 
 slavery executive committee, that committee united 
 with them in a formal call for such expression. And 
 a committee was appointed to extend a special invita- 
 tion to the clergy of the town to attend and partici- 
 pate in the deliberations. But the clergy did not 
 come, though the people did, in number and quality, 
 too, much to their surprise. Mr. Foster vindicated 
 himself in the course he pursued, by the example of 
 Jesus Christ and his apostles, who were both dragged 
 out of the synagogues by the church and clergy of 
 their time. He showed that Christ enjoined on his 
 
144 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 disciples to enter those places, and assured them that 
 they would be scourged in the synagogues and dragged 
 out, and that there would come a time when whoso- 
 ever should kill them, would think he did God service. 
 He showed that the modern synagogue was even more 
 intolerant and persecuting than the ancient Jewish. 
 For there Christ and His apostles were even invited 
 to speak, and never were disturbed for speaking, but 
 only for what they spoke. But he said you drag me out 
 of your christian houses of worship only for attempting 
 in a respectful and christian manner, to be heard, not 
 knowing what I would say. And you haul me before 
 the magistrates and thrust me into prisons, and may 
 yet kill me for only attempting to do what Christ and 
 His apostles could and did do, unmolested, in all the 
 places for worship of their time. It was only when 
 they rebuked the hypocrisy and wickedness of the 
 worshippers, that they were accused of disturbing the 
 worship, and thrust out accordingly. Mr. Foster was 
 just recovering from the severe injuries he had suffered 
 at the hands of the South church, and perhaps never 
 in his life spoke with more pathos and power. And 
 the whole sympathy, if not sentiment, of his crowded 
 audience was with him. The following resolution was 
 on the table for discussion : 
 
 Resolved, That the conduct of Stephen S. Foster 
 and Amos Wood, in attempting to speak in behalf of 
 our enslaved countrymen, in the South church on 
 Sunday last, without leave of the minister, was a gross 
 and flagrant outrage on the prerogatives of the clergy 
 and the rights of the people, and should be most un- 
 equivocally condemned by every friend of good order 
 and lover of liberty. 
 
 The editor of the Herald 'in his report, said : " Only 
 one voice answered in favor of the resolution, and that 
 was an abortive, faint remanded yea, taken back in its 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 145 
 
 very birth and sounding ludicrously with the thun- 
 dering no, which followed upon it. This must have 
 been gratifying to our lame and suffering brother 
 Foster, who was still undergoing great pain from the 
 christian handling of the church. Though it would 
 not have shaken his faith, his own firm faith, had the 
 response or the responses of all men, been the other 
 way." 
 
 Most of the leading abolitionists, including Mr. 
 Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and others in Massachu- 
 setts, doubted the wisdom of Mr. Foster's course in 
 thus entering the Sunday congregations, where only 
 the stated minister was expected to speak. But none 
 who knew him intimately ever doubted his entire hon- 
 esty, indeed deep, solemn conviction of religious duty, 
 in what he did, and in all that he did. The clergy 
 were not behind the most depraved politicians in their 
 determination to prevent the people, both in and out- 
 side the churches, from learning the truth on a problem 
 which every abolitionist knew full well involved the 
 national preservation or destruction, accordingly as it 
 might be solved. The whole nation came to under- 
 stand it rightly at last ; but not till its eyesight had 
 been washed and clarified in blood and tears. 
 
 Mr. Foster, having adopted and proved the great 
 utility of his new method, persisted in it until it was 
 demonstrated that no other had ever subserved so 
 good a purpose in arousing the whole nation to its 
 duty and danger. Nothing like or unlike it, before or 
 afterward, so stirred the whole people, until John 
 Brown, with his twenty heroes, marched on Harper's 
 Ferry and challenged the supporters of slavery to 
 mortal combat. 
 
 One reason that Foster often gave for his extreme 
 action, as well as utterance, was, that ends sometimes 
 
146 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 justified any means, He would say, "should I see 
 your house on fire, and yourselves and families in 
 danger of instant death 'in the flames, must I go and 
 gently knock and wait till you come and unlock the 
 door before notifying you of your peril ? Or, suppose 
 I saw a church full of worshipers, with the roof all 
 ablaze, would they be likely to drag me out should I 
 rush in, unbidden, and shout, fire, fire, at the top of 
 my voice?" And then he would say, "your whole 
 country is in extremest peril. Your whole country is 
 on fire. Every one of you should tremble, like 
 Thomas Jefferson, 'remembering' that God is just, and 
 that His justice cannot sleep forever /' " But as we now 
 know, he was not believed ; though his words could 
 not have been more true, had they been in very deed 
 inspired by flic Holy G/iost. 
 
 Another argument he often urged with great per- 
 tinency and force, based on christian scripture, too, 
 and the practice of the Apostolic church : 
 
 The great apostle, Paul, gave direction for conduct- 
 ing worship ; and at this time neither Paul nor Jesus 
 had a more devout disciple than Foster ; nor the Con- 
 gregational church a more holy, conscientious and 
 consistent member. The apostolic injunction simply 
 was, that order be preserved, though every one, hav- 
 ing psalm, doctrine, interpretation or revelation, should 
 be heard, each in turn. And then, to close, is 
 added, "For ye may all prophesy one by one ; that all 
 may learn and all be comforted." So, too, the exam- 
 ple and practice of Jesus Christ in the Jewish syna- 
 gogues, he would cite, as already shown, with much 
 point and power. "True," he would say, "the people 
 sometimes dragged him out as you do me. But it was 
 not because he spoke ; it was for what he said." It 
 was always his claim, as with both Christ and Paul, 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 147 
 
 that, "where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," 
 and liberty of speech preeminently. 
 
 When the people came to his meetings he never 
 went to theirs. If the ministry kept away, and, as they 
 generally did in those days, endeavored to keep the 
 people away, he went to them as frequently as possi- 
 ble, at whatever cost. If imprisoned, as many times 
 he was, he comforted himself that he not only " re- 
 membered them that were in bonds as bound with 
 them," but that he actually was bound with them, and 
 for their sake ; and verily, he had in it great reward. 
 
 Whoever attended his meetings always had the 
 largest liberty of speech, no matter how widely they 
 differed from him. He asked only two things of an 
 opponent : first, that good temper and spirit be kept, 
 and second, that both parties keep strictly to the ques- 
 tion in hand. And sometimes he would hold his audi- 
 ences till midnight. 
 
 Probably he encountered more mob opposition and 
 violence than any other agent ever in the anti-slavery 
 lecturing field. But almost always he would in some 
 way obtain control of his opponents. There were ex- 
 ceptions. Once he had four meetings broken up in a 
 single week. Though in Portland he suffered more 
 by violent hands than in the South church at Concord, 
 he was finally rescued and borne off in triumph by a 
 band of noble and heroic women. Not, however, till 
 he had suffered much bodily harm and the loss of his 
 hat and other parts of his clothing. His traveling 
 companion, Rev. John Murray Spear, was worse han- 
 dled than he. He was carried to his home at the hos- 
 pitable house of an anti-slavery family, and confined 
 to his chamber for a number of weeks. There was 
 suffering as well as heroism, in those days. 
 
148 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 On the island of Nantucket, mob violence became 
 such that a course of lectures Foster had com- 
 menced was cut short, and he was advised to leave 
 the place by his friends, which he did, though before 
 he left they desired him to write a letter at his earliest 
 convenience, explanatory of his course, and in further 
 illustration and proof of some of his positions. His 
 answer to that reasonable request was. The Brother- 
 hood of Thieves: or, a True Picture of the American 
 Church and Clergy ; in some respects the most remark- 
 able pamphlet of seventy-two closely-printed pages 
 that the anti-slavery, or any other enterprise of reform 
 has ever produced. It was published in 1843. It 
 defied contradiction, both as to doctrine and declara- 
 tion. It passed through many editions, and went 
 everywhere, east and west. And no matter who, or 
 what power and influence abolished slavery, that work 
 stands unrefuted and unrefutable ; and shall stand a 
 monument to the moral and material heroism, ability, 
 fidelity, and disinterestedness of its author, till time 
 shall be no more. 
 
 Distinguished abolitionists were often called men of 
 one idea. Anti-slavery, in its immeasurable importance 
 to all the interests of the country, material, mental, 
 moral, and social, as well as religious, and political, 
 was one idea far too great for ordinary minds, even 
 without any other. But the sturdy symmetry and con- 
 sistency of Mr. Foster's character were as wonderful 
 as were his vigor and power in any one direction. 
 Earliest and bravest among the temperance reformers, 
 when even that cause was almost as odious as anti- 
 slavery became afterward ; a radical advocate of peace 
 from the standpoint of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 " Resist not Evil," seconded by the apostolic injunc- 
 tion, "Avenge not yourselves;" a champion in the 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 149 
 
 woman suffrage enterprise from its inception ; an 
 intelligent, earnest advocate of the rights of labor, 
 and deeply interested in all the educational and 
 moral, social and philanthropic associations for the 
 advancement and improvement of the city and neigh- 
 borhood where he lived, he left behind him a record 
 and a memory to grow brighter as the years sweep on; 
 and his virtues becoming more and more luminous, 
 shall be the better appreciated by multitudes who 
 learn to profit by them. 
 
 The beauty and harmony of his home were unsur- 
 passed. It was sacred to peace and love. Its unosten- 
 tatious but elegant and generous hospitality was the 
 admiration of all whoever enjoyed it, by day or night. 
 At almost seventy-two, he passed away on the 8th 
 of September, 1881, deeply lamented by many true 
 and devoted friends, whose respect, admiration and 
 affection he had won by a long life intensely devoted 
 to the highest interests of man and womankind. 
 
 But it is time for Mr. Foster and myself to return to 
 the lecturing field. 
 
 On a cold, cloudy afternoon in early winter, we left 
 Concord for a short campaign, to commence in that 
 part of Pembroke now known as Suncook. At that 
 time it was a neighborhood of a dozen houses, mostly 
 small, one store, a tavern of the class then known as 
 " Meadow-hay taverns," and a brick school-house, 
 elbowed a little to one side, and in which we were to 
 hold our meeting. The road was rough and hard 
 frozen, the day was cold, and my old open wagon 
 unfurnished with buffalo robes. But we were young 
 and tolerably vigorous, and cared little for such trifles, 
 well warmed within with an earnest purpose, we could 
 resist a good deal of wind and weather. We intended 
 to reach an anti-slavery family on our way, in time for 
 
150 AC IS CONTINUED, 
 
 tea and then go on with them to the meeting, a mile 
 or two beyond. But when we arrived, tea was done 
 and nothing was said about it, though a ride of some 
 miles over a frozen, rough road, after a busy afternoon 
 of preparation for the tour, seemed to argue strongly 
 in favor of some refreshment, the prospective evening 
 work emphasizing the necessity. So we fasted, and 
 my patient pony, Tunbridge, communed meantime with 
 the stone hitching-post at the gate. In due season, we 
 started for the meeting, the family carriage leading 
 the way. The people were gathering in goodly num- 
 bers and, tying Tunbridge to a tree and covering her 
 well in her warm blanket, we entered the school-house 
 and were soon at our wonted business. Our meetings 
 were always open to, and often lively and late with 
 free discussion. So it proved on that evening ; and 
 when we did close, it was after ten o'clock, and Foster 
 and myself found ourselves left entirely alone in the 
 house, and our horse and wagon outside, fastened to 
 a tree. 
 
 For special reasons it should be told here that when 
 we entered the service of the State Society, we found 
 it in debt to the editor and publishers of the Herald 
 of Freedom, two thousand dollars ; nor did it own any 
 printing-press, type, nor other office appointments. 
 Our first business then seemed to be of a financial 
 character, and Mr. Foster entered into it with his 
 characteristic energy and fidelity. Most of the debt 
 was due to the editor, contracted while patiently per- 
 forming work of unsurpassed ability, fidelity and 
 devotion to the cause of liberty and humanity. Fos- 
 ter conceived the plan of funding the debt and divid- 
 ing it into shares of five dollars each, in all amounting 
 to four hundred shares. Any individual might take 
 one share or more according to ability or inclination. 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 1 5 I 
 
 and two persons could unite in taking one share. 
 No payment was to be required till all the shares were 
 secured, and to the lasting honor and credit of 
 Mr. Rogers, it should be told that his own subscrip- 
 tion to the shares amounted to almost half the sum 
 due him. To dispose of these shares was, of course, 
 an important part of the business of our meetings 
 where there was prospect of any success ; and our 
 own compensation by a general collection, was never 
 named till all the shares possible, were secured. And 
 my own salary that year was exactly three hundred and 
 four dollars and forty-eight cents, and that not all col- 
 lected in cash. And Foster certainly was not better 
 paid. Whether at that Pembroke meeting we passed 
 round the hat for ourselves I do not remember, but we 
 did secure a few shares to the debt. At all events, 
 when the meeting closed, we were left entirely alone. 
 Our only recourse was the " Meadow-hay tavern," 
 down in the village. No reproach to the then keeper 
 of the house that such were sometimes so misnamed. 
 I had met him before and knew him as a worthy man. 
 We drove down, but found the house closed and the 
 family all in bed. But the hostler, as was then universal 
 custom, slept in a " bunk," as it was called, in the bar- 
 room. Not quite Goldsmith's : 
 
 * * * •' bed by night and chest of drawers by day," 
 
 but still subserving some such purpose. With not 
 much difficulty we waked the hostler and he appeared 
 and let us in. We told him we were sorry to disturb 
 him but we were strangers and wished accommodation 
 for ourselves and horse over night. He said he could 
 feed our horse but that he could do nothing for us, 
 beyond giving us a bed. So I went with him to the 
 stable, saw our Tunbridge well fed and cared for, and 
 the wagon placed under cover, and at eleven o'clock, 
 
j^ 2 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 we went supperless to our bed. That, we shared 
 together, as the best our vice landlord could do for us 
 at that hour of the night. 
 
 Our next engagement was away across the country 
 at Epsom, a long drive over rough and hilly roads, and 
 we were to commence at one o'clock. Before sunrise I 
 was at the stable with the hostler attending to my mare. 
 When Foster appeared, we went into a store opposite, 
 and invested four cents in baker's biscuits, and four 
 more in raisins ; and sitting down by the stove, we 
 made our supper of the previous night and our break- 
 fast for that morning out of our purchase. And, whole 
 truth to tell, Foster had no money and I had left most 
 of my own small amount with my lonely little wife at 
 home, so that we were only living as we could afford. 
 The wife of an anti-slavery apostle then, enjoyed no 
 enviable lot. 
 
 And this may be the place to repeat of my own 
 wife, that she supposed, and all her friends supposed, 
 and I supposed and all my friends supposed that when 
 she wedded, it was to a Congregational minister who 
 had, even while a theological student remarkable 
 experiences and successes in revivals of religion, and 
 had besides four invitations from parishes in New 
 Hampshire and Massachusetts to preach as a candidate 
 for settlement. But while preaching a year as a hired 
 supply, it became unmistakably certain that I could 
 never do any good, honest, hearty anti-slavery work, 
 such as the nation and the times demanded, and 
 retain my standing in the Congregational pulpit. I 
 found the neighboring ministers were prowling about 
 among the church and people of my congregation 
 whispering surmises that my anti-slavery zeal and my 
 intimacy with the "Infidel Garrison," and the already 
 suspected Rogers were shaking my own orthodoxy too. 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 153 
 
 And one day a member of our church was sent to 
 remind me that the brethren were fearing I was getting 
 too much in the way of preaching works instead of 
 faith as the means of salvation. He brought me 
 several texts, such as : " By grace are ye saved through 
 faith ;" and others of like import, a whole foolscap 
 page of them, the last being : " Not of works lest any 
 man should boast." I pleaded guilty as to the charge 
 of dwelling more on works, and gave as reason that I 
 thought we failed less in faith than in works. But 
 he did his errand and went his way. And I went 
 mine, though it soon led a long way from that and 
 every other pulpit. But more about this hereafter. 
 Possibly a good deal more. Here it need but be 
 said that it was only after serious, solemn considera- 
 tion that my resolution was formed. That however 
 hardly made the disappointment less, to wife, or her 
 friends, or mine, and, possibly, to myself least of all. 
 But our breakfast over we returned to the tavern, 
 on which the sun had not yet risen. I greeted the 
 landlord and called for our bill. " Bill," he said good 
 naturedly ; " bill, why, you don't owe anything, do 
 you?" He knew we could have had no supper, and 
 the tavern breakfast bell had not yet rung. So I 
 explained to him that our last evening meeting held 
 late, and that we had to drive to Epsom for another 
 there to-day at one o'clock. So we had to catch a 
 bite at the grocery across the street, and get on our 
 way, but that we owed him for horse-keeping and our 
 lodging. He poured a good natured glass of satire 
 on our anti-slavery friends who would treat us so gen- 
 erously, and said we might pay him half a dollar if we 
 had a mind to, for our horse, but for us he should 
 charge nothing. So we were soon off for Epsom. 
 The morning was fine, but the roads were hilly and 
 
154 ACTS CONTINUED, 
 
 rough, so that when we arrived it was time to com- 
 mence, and a good audience had assembled, some 
 from several miles away. The days were at the short- 
 est, and we were to hold an evening meeting, so that 
 there was not much time to be lost. It was quite sun- 
 set when we closed. A Mr. Sanborn came and said 
 we had better go home with him to supper, as prob- 
 ably no other family would invite us, and there was no 
 tavern in the town. He told us he and his family were 
 anti-slavery, and kept to the old organization, and 
 would be extremely glad to entertain us, though he 
 lived two miles away, and up the mountain besides. 
 And he also said, and much to my joy, that we need 
 not take our horse out in the evening, as we could be 
 brought back in the family wagon, " Catamount 
 hill," as it was and is called, proved to us the " Delect- 
 able mountains" of Bunyan's pilgrims. We had two 
 interesting meetings, but New Organization had 
 preceded us and captured the church and minister, so 
 that those who aided us there, as elsewhere, with hos- 
 pitality, with sympathy, or otherwise, were outside of 
 the sectarian folds. The experiences of Monday and 
 Tuesday were a fair average of the experiences of the 
 week, for we reached Concord on Monday, having 
 been absent eight days ; and we had held one or two 
 meetings every day. A snow storm came in the time, 
 and we were compelled to have our Tunbridge winter 
 shod in consequence. We had had some success in 
 disposing of our shares to the debt, but beyond that 
 our financial operations would not to-day be pro- 
 nounced a success. On reckoning up we had exactly 
 thirty-seven cents more than when we set out, and 
 that was in my hands. I did not smile if Foster did, 
 when he said : " Well, Parker, I have no wife and 
 you have ; so this time we will not divide." Nor prob- 
 
SKETCH OF STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 155 
 
 ably did my wife smile heartily when I reached home 
 and disclosed to her the situation. We made our sup- 
 per of plain coarse bread and butter. But next morn- 
 ing, to my wonderment, we had just the same for 
 breakfast. In a joking way I complained of her fare, 
 and said something about a new boarding house un- 
 less she set a better table. The wit was a little too 
 cool and deposited a dew drop or two in her eye and 
 down her cheek, as she told me her money was out, 
 and she did not like to break our resolution, never to 
 be in debt. It would have been in order then for my 
 eye to reflect back her's, but a rainbow in her sky 
 seemed to me just then the needed return. It was 
 true we determined in our little forty dollars a year 
 rent never to be in debt ; but her health then was not 
 as robust as mine. Such a breakfast was soon dis- 
 patched, and nearly as soon I was on the street to 
 break our good resolution, if there was strength in my 
 credit to do it. Mr. Franklin Evans then (as I be- 
 lieve ever since) kept an excellent general country 
 store, and readily consented to trust me for whatever 
 was needed. When I asked for my first and costliest 
 article, which was fourteen pounds of good flour, he 
 advised my taking a half barrel, as more economical. 
 But I declined his generous proposal, and kept my bill 
 within three dollars, though some nice butter and sugar 
 were in my purchase. Before bed-time three dollars 
 came from some unexpected source, with which the 
 debt was paid as promised, and wife and I slept that 
 night as before from our marriage, "owing no man 
 anything, but to love one another." And it is only 
 truth and justice to say that from that night, the 
 handful of meal and cruse of oil never wholly failed 
 our humble home. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ACTS OF THE APOSTLES CONTINUED— LETTER OF CON- 
 CORD WOMEN— CLERICAL USURPATION-MORE REVE- 
 LATIONS OF NEW ORGANIZATION— RIOTOUS PROCEED- 
 INGS AT DOVER— BY THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD OF 
 FREEDOM. 
 
 As we are now back in Concord, we will once more 
 recur briefly to the South church. Readers doubtless 
 have seen, if not deplored, some repetition in previous 
 chapters — only necessary till they become acquainted 
 with the persons and the principles mostly presented in 
 these pages for their consideration. 
 
 It is now proposed to present a new phase of anti- 
 slavery action and effort, in which all could bear ac- 
 tive part who chose. Concord South Congregational 
 church had several excellent men and women, who 
 had made themselves quite offensive to the minister 
 and some prominent members by their fidelity to the 
 anti-slavery cause. Some had even withdrawn, both 
 from communion supper service and Sunday worship. 
 Some w r ere women who were denied all speech or 
 prayer, in private as well as public assemblies. They 
 addressed a formal communication to the church, ex- 
 pressive of their views and determinations, and then 
 withdrew wholly from such fellowship. 
 
 And in presenting that letter here it should be said 
 that the same course became common, if not general, 
 among genuine abolitionists all over the country, until 
 the sect known as Come-outers grew to be numerous, 
 and odious, too, to all who lacked courage or honesty 
 to imitate that entirely scriptural course. Great 
 numbers of these church withdrawal letters are before 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. I 57 
 
 me in the bound volumes of anti-slavery papers, some 
 of them of diamond points ; those of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Rogers among them. New organized and third polit- 
 ical party abolitionists displayed most fiery zeal at the 
 ballot box once or twice a year ; would vote for no 
 whig nor democrat to fill the meanest office. At the 
 baptismal and sacramental altar whig and democrat 
 shrunk into "gnats," and were swallowed in the com- 
 munion wine, who, on Monday at the polls, swelled 
 into larger " camels" than ever were exhibited at Bar- 
 num's menagerie. Not so the women, nor some 
 of the husbands of the women who addressed the sub- 
 joined 
 
 Letter to the South Congregational church in Concord, 
 under the pastoral care of Daniel J. Noyes : * 
 Dear Brethren and Sisters : — We, the under- 
 signed, members of the South Congregational church 
 in this town, feel bound in duty to God and man to ad- 
 dress to you the following communication : 
 
 Three millions of our fellow beings are living in 
 our midst under the following circumstances : The 
 family institution is abolished among them — husbands 
 and wives, parents and children, are torn asunder to 
 gratify the cupidity of their oppressors; they are pun- 
 ished as felons for any attempt to learn to read the 
 Holy Gospel ; parents are liable to be scourged and 
 punished with death for teaching their children the 
 way of life and salvation by Jesus Christ. Eight 
 thousand children are annually stolen, labeled as prop- 
 erty and converted into merchandize. One sixth of 
 the population of this nation are driven to incessant 
 and unrequited toil from the dawn of life to its close. 
 Three millions of God's immortal children, our breth- 
 ren and sisters, are held and used among us as chat- 
 tels personal, and bought and sold as brute beasts. 
 Parents not unfrequently sell their own children. 
 Thus a cloud of frightful, perpetual night is drawn 
 over millions of souls in this land of Bibles and pro- 
 fessed christian ministers and churches. 
 
158 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The American church and clergy constitute a main 
 pillar of support to this system of unutterable crimes 
 and woes. Thousands and tens of thousands are re- 
 ceived as christians and christian ministers who are 
 identified with this system as slave-holders and apolo- 
 gists for slavery. These millions of imbruted slaves, 
 our brethren and sisters, are fallen among thieves and 
 robbers by your church door. The church has re- 
 fused to pour in the oil and the wine. Both pastor 
 and church have acted the part of priest and Levite to 
 these suffering beings. By your silence as a church 
 you are lending the most efficient support to this sys- 
 tem. You fellowship man-stealers as christians and 
 christian ministers. 
 
 We owe it as a duty to Him who hath loved us and 
 died for us, and to our suffering brethren and sisters 
 in bonds, to refuse all participation in slavery. We 
 feel that we do participate in that sin while we recog- 
 nize any body of men and women as a christian church 
 that refuses to bear an open, clear and solemn testi- 
 mony against it. 
 
 With such views and feelings we can no longer re- 
 cognize you as a christian church while as a body you 
 continue in your present position of silence to the 
 wrongs of the slave. * * * 
 
 * * * And we furthermore feel bound to protest 
 against the spirit of a church which could prompt to 
 the exclusion of two of its most worthy members, who, 
 that they might keep a conscience void of offense to- 
 wards God and towards man, have absented them- 
 selves for a season from your meetings ; while others 
 far behind them in spiritual attainments, and over 
 whom you have solemnly promised to watch, are guilty 
 of the same offense, and are suffered to remain with- 
 out advice, warning or expostulation. 
 
 May we all be directed by that wisdom which cometh 
 from above, and at last be reunited in the church tri- 
 umphant. Louisa W. Wood, 
 
 Esther W. Currier, 
 Mary Ann French, 
 Sarah H. Pillsbury. 
 Concord, N. H., January 16, 1841. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 159 
 
 The last signer of this letter supposed, when she 
 married, one year before, that she was the wife of a 
 reputable and very promising young Congregational 
 minister, and a large and highly conservative circle of 
 family connections, one or two of them members 
 of this same South church, and all of them of the 
 best society in Concord, presumed the same. It can 
 readily be supposed that at that time it required no 
 little heroism in a young woman of two or three and 
 twenty, thus to come out from all church, and family, 
 and society relations, and continue her future destiny 
 with an anti-slavery lecturer who had also made 
 himself doubly odious by renouncing church, pulpit, 
 and society and party affiliations and united himself 
 with Garrison, Rogers and the school of "Come-outers," 
 already more odious, if possible, than any other infidel- 
 ity or heresy of those days. It may be added that 
 most of the relatives of that then young wife, are now 
 no more of earth, but such as do remain, have come, 
 and not recently neither, to hold her in high and well 
 deserved esteem. The other signers of the letter, who 
 survive, are, and ever have been, among the truest and 
 noblest women in the land. And all of them lived to 
 prove to the world that in their whole anti-slavery 
 course, they were guided by the highest, divinest dic- 
 tates of conscience and humanity. 
 
 The next movement of Mr. Foster and myself was 
 into the counties of Rockingham and Strafford. 
 Wherever we went our great difficulty was to reach 
 the ear of the people. The clergy, especially the new 
 organization clergy, seemed most incorrigible, most 
 unscrupulous of all. They appeared, as already inti- 
 mated, to have conspired together against us. The 
 following extract from one annual report of the 
 Vermont Domestic Missionary society, signed by 
 
160 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Rev. Samuel Delano, corresponding secretary, "in 
 behalf of the directors," gives the sentiment of that 
 numerous and powerful body, embracing the strength 
 of the whole Congregational and Presbyterian church 
 of that state : 
 
 The ministers are the heads of the churches — the 
 leaders in the sacramental host of God's elect. No 
 measure can be carried without them, much less in 
 opposition to them. And scarcely any proper meas- 
 ure can fail to succeed, when the ministry put forth 
 their power. In view of this fact, it is asked, with the 
 utmost earnestness, ought they not, and in view of 
 their obligations and of the glorious results sought, 
 will they not come up to this work, and lead on the 
 churches ? The churches can be reached in no other 
 way. No man can approach a church when the pas- 
 tor interposes. He cannot, and he may not if he can. 
 To give Vermont to Christ — this is the peculiar work 
 of the church of Vermont. It is the field given to 
 these ministers and churches to cultivate and keep. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, at the seventeenth annual 
 meeting of the American Home Missionary Society, 
 in a resolution, presented the necessity "of a stated 
 evangelical ministry, as eminently the power of God 
 for the conversion of the world." In his address, he 
 spoke mainly in behalf of the " great west." He 
 supported his resolution with characteristic force as 
 against a transient ministry, pointing, perhaps, to the 
 Methodist policy of rotation or change. Summing 
 up, he said : 
 
 A stated ministry unites society by strong bonds. A 
 good pastor is a sort of central power in society. He 
 holds the affections of those with whom he dwells, 
 and becomes a patriarch among them * * * * 
 Instances of the effects thus produced might easily 
 be mentioned. I could tell you of a minister who 
 having preached in a place fifty years became the 
 patriarch of the village. And once when a lecturer 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. l6l 
 
 came there whom he thought unsafe, he put on his 
 gown and wig and cocked hat, and walked up one 
 side of the street and told his people they had better 
 not go, and then walked in the same way down the 
 other side, and every soul staid at home ! All that is 
 healthful in society, finds support in the stated 
 ministry. 
 
 We found clerical authority like that in full force in 
 many a country town, so that much of our work was 
 actual invasion. " The kingdom of heaven suffering 
 violence and the violent taking it by force." In 
 the town of Northwood, we found the minister, 
 was in every important sense the "village patriarch" 
 after the very heart of Dr. Beecher. He would not 
 give our notice, and no public notice had been given 
 of our meetings, which we intended should continue 
 two evenings. And when Foster called on him and 
 solicited the use of his vestry and his own attendance 
 and cooperation, he quite spiritedly refused having 
 anything to do with him. The vestry, however, was 
 not too holy to be used for whig and democratic 
 caucus and convention, not always conducted in very 
 orderly or decent manner. A mile away from the 
 church we had the use of a school-house two evenings, 
 as at first intended. We spent the cold day in going 
 from house to house, endeavoring to waken an interest 
 in our movement. At the first meeting but few came, 
 and they men and boys only. One glimmering tallow- 
 dip and a small glass lantern made almost a vain 
 attempt to show us to each other. After prayer, with 
 which we then opened our meetings, we introduced a 
 resolution, declaring all not actively engaged in the 
 anti-slavery enterprise, to be by position if not in 
 spirit, slaveholders. Such a charge brought several 
 of the staunchest advocates of slavery and ablest men 
 of the town to their feet. A lawyer and an old 
 
162 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 academy preceptor defended slavery from the Bible. 
 And both pleaded earnestly the cause of the church 
 and pulpit against our charges as deduced from the 
 resolution presented. The ex-preceptor said he had 
 lived at the South among slaveholders and that our 
 " Southern brethren" emphasizing the words, were 
 "as high minded, hospitable and pious a people as 
 could be found on this globe." And moreover, that 
 no happier class of persons could be found anywhere 
 than the slaves. Indeed, he earnestly declared their 
 very labor was a source of happiness, as he knew from 
 his own experience, never having been so happy in his 
 life as when at work on his father's farm. 
 
 Toward the close, the debate ran high, and a member 
 of the Congregational church, not relishing a discus- 
 sion when the truth was so manifestly against him and 
 his side, tried hard to adjourn us, complacently assur- 
 ing Foster and myself that " our further labors in 
 the town could be dispensed with." But hoping to 
 get access to a better class of people, we succeeded in 
 an adjournment to next evening, much to our surprise 
 as well as gratification. 
 
 The next evening brought a full house, but the 
 enemy overpowered us, and organized and officered 
 to suit themselves. Some would have gladly heard us 
 had they been permitted. We did get an opportunity 
 in the course of the evening to present one more res- 
 olution, which we had prepared before hand. It was 
 our custom when we saw that a mob was inevitable, to 
 try to turn it to good account, by making what we did 
 say, as effective and as likely to be remembered as pos- 
 sible. So my second resolution read in substance that 
 no person should be regarded as a christian or chris- 
 tian minister, who was not an earnest, active, out- 
 spoken abolitionist. The uproar was renewed at once 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 163 
 
 with augmented violence, the moment the resolu- 
 tion was heard. After a time Foster obtained the 
 floor for a few moments, and reasoned of righteous- 
 ness, temperance and judgment already come, as few 
 young men of that or any day since ever did. Even 
 our stoutest opponents stood aghast, if, like the Roman 
 Felix, they did not tremble. But our meetings showed 
 no immediate good results. One old gentleman 
 kindly entertained us, and with his family sympathized 
 deeply with us in our seeming disappointment. But 
 we devoutly thanked him and the family, and assured 
 them on parting that we were already accustomed to 
 such repulsions, and were prepared for whatever 
 awaited us. 
 
 Deerfield, the next day, proved equally inhospitable 
 to the truths we carried there. The Calvinistic Bap- 
 tist minister was personally very friendly to us, and 
 an abolitionist, too, but had not heard of our coming, 
 and no notice had been given of our intended meet- 
 ings ; nor was it convenient for us then to attempt 
 any meetings. We called on the Free Will Baptist 
 minister, and found him a hard-headed, harder-hearted 
 democrat, of the most pronounced pro-slavery type. 
 Doubtless he has long since passed away ; but to his 
 dying day, I dare affirm he remembered the remon- 
 strances and rebukes he, on that occasion, received 
 from the inspired voice of Stephen Foster. 
 
 At Nottingham I was invited by the Congregational 
 minister, Mr. Le Bosquet, to preach for him on Sun- 
 day, during the day. I had not then, in form, laid 
 down my ministerial prerogative, and accepted when 
 convenient every such proposal. Mr. Le Bosquet was 
 a new organization abolitionist, and so could not 
 wholly agree with me then, though friendly towards 
 me, and even magnanimous. But he finally lapsed 
 
164 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 entirely into the political vortex, and never, so far as 
 I knew, abandoned the Congregational pulpit or de- 
 nomination, with all its incorrigible pro-slavery char- 
 acter. 
 
 Our reception at Lee, home of the Quaker family 
 of the Cartlands, was not unlike that at Northwood in 
 so far as the character of audiences was considered, 
 though they were numerically larger and more voci- 
 ferous. Northwood had no Cartland family, as had 
 Lee, and that made a difference in our favor, morally' 
 of thousands, though our resolutions were voted down 
 of course, by stamping majorities. A venerable Bap- 
 list minister attended on Sunday evening ; even post- 
 poned his own regular meeting for it. He not only 
 opened our exercises with prayer, but bore friendly 
 testimony to our general course. So on the whole our 
 few friends in Lee were much pleased with our visit 
 and labors there. 
 
 Exeter, to which we went next, was one of the old, 
 aristocratic, wealthy, conservative towns, and a county 
 seat besides, so that really we had little to hope at its 
 hand or heart. We had not underestimated the moral 
 and spiritual quality of the people. In the larger, 
 most popular, denominations clerical authority was 
 more malignant, more imperious than we had any- 
 where found it before. The Christian minister was ill, 
 and we did not call on him, but were assured that he 
 was decidedly friendly to us and our cause. The Meth- 
 odist clergyman showed himself indeed on our side, 
 for he not only permitted us to occupy his meeting- 
 house, but suspended some special protracted relig- 
 ious services then holding, that we might have not 
 only his house, but congregation as well. And we 
 found two or three colored families in the town 
 who manifested deep and intelligent interest in our 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 165 
 
 work, so that on the whole, we found a goodly 
 number of interested sympathizers in our mission, 
 if not among the opulent and popular, certainly 
 of that not less worthy, nor by any means less import- 
 ant class, who, eighteen hundred years before, heard 
 "gladly " a far greater teacher and lecturer. 
 
 One morning call on a Congregational minister of 
 the place was worthy of remembrance and recall, and 
 that will be all that need be said of our visit to Exe- 
 ter. We certainly entered his study in a becoming 
 manner and proper and kindly spirit. We gave our 
 names and the object of our coming in tone and tem- 
 per of which none could complain. But in a bluster- 
 ing, threatening mood and language absolutely 
 abusive, he positively forbade our speaking on our 
 subject in his presence. Mr. Foster told him that we 
 sometimes had to speak to men whether they would 
 hear or forbear. He snatched up his pen with the ut- 
 most violence and commanded us to leave him to his 
 work. His large size and great agitation, his lip 
 actually quivering with rage, and the haughty manner 
 in which he stormed at us, strongly reminded us of 
 the caution of Him who spake as never man spake : 
 " Beware of Men !" As we turned to go we told him 
 we must express our disapprobation of his course, and 
 in obedience to divine command, shake off the dust of 
 our feet as our testimony against him. His treatment 
 of us compelled the belief of many things told us 
 against him as to his manner of life. At that very 
 time men were going home drunk and abusing their 
 families ; one man actually murdered his wife in his 
 drunken rage, and yet that same minister was baptiz- 
 ing the rum trade and trader, and receiving them to 
 full church communion and fellowship. It need not 
 be told that several of his church members had alreadv 
 
I 66 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 withdrawn from his ministrations. And if other facts 
 concerning him, which were given us from eye and 
 ear witnesses, should be here produced, they would 
 almost exceed belief. But his demeanor towards us 
 prepared us to accept whatever of immorality might 
 be spoken against him. Afterwards we said and wrote 
 truly that we had pleaded the cause of the slave in 
 bar-rooms and in grog-shops, in the field, the forge, 
 the factory and the highways, if not in the hedges, 
 but it was for a New England minister, pastor of one 
 of the largest Congregational churches in his state, to 
 positively and peremptorily forbid us to open our 
 mouths for the dumb in his reverend presence. 
 
 Should it be objected that he was only one, and 
 represented only himself, it could be answered that he 
 was one of a powerful denomination and influential, 
 too far above the average membership in every coun- 
 cil ; and a denomination, too, that made the heresy of . 
 rejecting infant baptism at that day an offense of such 
 importance as to refuse ordination for the ministry at 
 home and the missionary abroad. 
 
 Readers by this time understand that every individual 
 clergyman or separate church described in these 
 records is only as representative of large numbers, 
 and by no means as exceptions to general rules. One 
 incident, however, is worthy of mention for its origin- 
 ality. Nor do I remember more than one or two like 
 it in all my lecturing mission of almost forty years, 
 and it was in the afternoon of the day we left Exeter. 
 
 We drove into Stratham, where we had sent on an 
 appointment for afternoon and evening. Inquiring 
 the way as we rode along, we learned that our meeting 
 would be at two o'clock, in a meeting-house, to which 
 we were easily directed, and which we soon reached. 
 It was a small, pretty little steepled building, situated 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 167 
 
 almost alone, not a house very near it, and only a few 
 in sight of it. Driving our horse under a friendly shed 
 in the rear, we entered and found everything comfort- 
 able and desirable as possible, but not a human soul 
 nor body present beside ourselves, The hour had ar- 
 rived, and so had the speakers, but where was the 
 audience ? We sat an hour or more, till the sun was 
 getting low, and then drove on to a little village pros- 
 pecting ; but soon found to no purpose. It was made 
 very certain that the house would not be lighted nor 
 warmed for evening, so we drove down to Greenland, 
 adjoining, which we found, spite of its name, a warmer 
 clime. 
 
 But Foster could not forget Stratham. We had 
 met mob after mob ; minister after minister, sometimes 
 the direct instigator of the mob ; and almost always 
 we had achieved some sort of honorable success ; if 
 not triumph. True, it was " hard to kick against 
 pricks ;" but to kick against nothing, could not be 
 borne. However, it was early spring before he found 
 it convenient to visit Stratham again. Then he went 
 alone. He had his meeting appointed in a school 
 house, on a bright April moonlight evening. When he 
 entered the house, a dozen or two had gathered. He 
 waited a reasonable time, hoping to see more. But no 
 more came. So he commenced his lecture. I do not 
 know what he said or did not say. Probably it would 
 have made no difference. For just as he grew a little 
 animated and earnest in gesture as well as utterance, 
 his audience rose, probably at a preconcerted signal, 
 and deliberately and respectfully walked out of the 
 house, leaving him entirely alone ! So there he stood, 
 a sentence half uttered, a gesture struck down in its 
 formation. Perhaps never before nor afterwards, was 
 he more completely subdued. 
 
l68 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 At North Hampton, we had a little clerical exper- 
 ience not unworthy of mention. No meeting had 
 been appointed so we assumed all responsibility, not 
 •• mobbing," as Mr. Emerson charged, but taking 
 possession of the town. We fortunately found one 
 good man who went with us to call on the minister to 
 ask for his vestry and his cooperation for an anti- 
 slavery meeting. The minister was a mile away visit- 
 ing a winter school. Foster sat in the sleigh while our 
 friend with me knocked at the school-house door. The 
 minister appeared in the entry as we desired, but no 
 sooner were my name and business announced than 
 the clerical wrath kindled. He did not, like his stalwart 
 Exeter brother, forbid my speaking in his presence, but 
 in similar spirit declared he would hold no communi- 
 cation. No, said he, " I have heard of you and 
 Stephen Foster, and I want nothing to do with you. 
 You abuse the ministers in your Herald of Freedom ; 
 men that I respect. I know what it contains. I read it." 
 
 So do most of the ministers, might have been 
 responded to him, but I did not interrupt him. When 
 I did speak I said, you treat us just as do most of the 
 orthodox ministers ; and you need not wonder that we 
 expose them in the name of humanity and for the 
 sake of the down-trodden slave. " O, I see," he said, 
 "what you are after. You want to draw me into argu- 
 ment and then hold me up in your Herald, as you 
 have so many other ministers ; but I shall not put 
 myself in your power." I then made some little 
 remark, which stirred his indignation, and he broke 
 forth again and charged, me and my companion very 
 vehemently with attacking holy institutions, rending 
 churches, abusing ministers, disturbing the public 
 peace and seeking to undermine all the institutions of 
 society. He forgot what he said a moment before 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 1 69 
 
 about putting himself in my power and stormed along 
 till all he said would have made a very much longer 
 account than is here given. I did send what made 
 nearly two columns in the Herald, and mailed copies 
 of it to most of the leading men of the town, there 
 being then no subscribers, or not more than one 
 there. 
 
 It is highly probable that Mr. Foster and myself in the 
 lecture field, with Mr. Rogers at the helm of the Herald 
 of Freedom, were justly chargeable with not a little dis- 
 turbance of the public peace. I wrote a sermon at 
 the time from the text, "Think not that I am come to 
 send peace on earth : I came not to send peace but a 
 sword." It was strictly orthodox in doctrine, so I 
 sometimes preached it in orthodox pulpits ; did so in 
 Concord South church, which was the beginning of 
 its anti-slavery sorrows, for Foster did not go there 
 till more than a year afterwards. Rogers was present, 
 and here are a few things he said of it in the next 
 Herald. I had not then wholly abandoned preaching, 
 nor been disowned by the Suffolk association of minis- 
 ters from whom I received regular license in Boston 
 to preach the Congregational gospel. But I was soon 
 called to account after my presumption in preaching 
 such a sermon to such a body as Foster proved the 
 South church to be in its coming judgment day, some 
 year or two afterwards. 
 
 After a few words on ministerial influence and what 
 constitutes it, and who it was who " made himself of 
 no reputation," and had "no weight of influence," 
 Rogers proceeded to say : 
 
 Parker Pillsbury is doubtless one of the three 
 intended by the Christian Panoply. He has no influ- 
 ence. But the Panoply and kindred ministers abound 
 with it. Those who heard brother Pillsbury on Sunday 
 
170 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 evening before last, may understand what it is that 
 gives "influence and weight" to a New Hampshire 
 minister. The full auditory that heard him that even- 
 ing, with the attention of life and death, and the 
 hushed stillness of the churchyard can tell how 
 necessary "influence and w y eight " are to constitute a 
 preacher of the gospel. 
 
 The text was the declaration of Christ, that he came 
 not to send peace, but a sword, on the earth. Then he 
 spoke of the human character ; the agitating, disturb- 
 ing influence of truth on that character — he glanced 
 at the turmoil and confusion into which truth had ever 
 wrought it, and the bitter hostility the church and 
 ministry had manifested towards the spirit of reforma- 
 tion, from the days of Him who came to bear witness 
 unto the truth down through the times of Luther to 
 our own. He spoke of the necessity, safety and whole- 
 someness of moral agitation in society and in the church, 
 and the deadly danger of moral stagnation. He illus- 
 trated the one by the tossed ocean, ever pure and whole- 
 some from its ceaseless inequietude, and the other by 
 the stagnant, lifeless pool, become putrid by its own 
 quiescence,breeding only croaking frogs and noisesome, 
 hurtful reptiles. He declared the duty of the watch- 
 man on the walls of Zion was to be ever in the van of 
 moral agitation. When the tempest was up he should 
 be prompt to mount the foremost billow and direct the 
 storm. And in time of dead calm, the watchman of 
 all men, should wake the moral hurricane. 
 
 We can merely touch on this sermon. The breath- 
 less auditory best attested its power and its palpable 
 truth. But the Christian Panoply says brother Pills- 
 bury has no weight of influence. Of the manner of 
 the speaker, we can only say he seemed to us to be 
 mightily in earnest j to believe solemnly what he w 7 as 
 preaching and not at all like one reciting a task. 
 
 This testimony from Mr. Rogers is only produced 
 here to show what really was the disturbing element 
 among the clergy, and gave such point and significance 
 to the anti-slavery movement, especially to the labors 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 1 7 I 
 
 of the field lecturers ; and at that time in New Hamp- 
 shire and Massachusetts much more than anywhere 
 else. The cause was now eleven years old, but never 
 before had the sin of slavery been so directly laid at 
 the door of the church. But the time had come when 
 ''judgment must begin at the house of God." Even 
 Judge Birney's "American Churches the Bulwarks of 
 American Slavery " had by no means produced the 
 desired effect. For some reason, it was first published 
 in England, and seems not to have had much circula- 
 tion in the United States till its second edition revised 
 by the author, in 1842, and published in Garrison's 
 native town, Newburyport, Massachusetts. 
 
 While slavery was only an evil, the church and even 
 the clergy could be, and many of them were opposed 
 to it. Professor Stuart, of Andover Theological Sem- 
 inary, denied even that doctrine, and wrote and pub- 
 lished a tract entitled, '■'■Slavery not a malum in se," 
 which had many readers and believers, and produced 
 a marked effect, particularly among the ministry. But 
 Garrison was already in the field, and slavery was 
 branded as a sin against God and a crime against man, 
 always and everywhere ; and the only remedy for it 
 was immediate and unconditional emancipation of 
 every slave. This demand had many supporters in 
 the church and pulpit, till the application was made 
 directly and forcibly to them, with the more startling 
 declaration that no slave-holder could be a christian. 
 And when at last the uncompromising abolitionists 
 proclaimed their determination to have "no union nor 
 fellowship with slaveholders, in state nor church," and 
 pronouncing the northern apologist and abettor, no 
 less wicked than the slave-holder, because sinning 
 against more light, and with less motive and tempta- 
 tion, then the alarm pealed out so as to reach the 
 
jy 2 Ai rS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 deafest ear, the deadest church. Almost every Con- 
 gregational and Presbyterian minister in the north 
 heard it and stood aghast ! Even President Lord, of 
 Dartmouth college, fled in dismay; though he, like 
 Rev. Mr. Curtis had preached and written plainly 
 against slavery as sin, not the "malum in se," of pro- 
 fessor Stuart. Idie most anti-slavery ministers made 
 haste to find, or base a remedy in new organization. 
 So especially was it here in New Hampshire, as has 
 been sufficiently shown. Only three Congregational 
 ministers, I think, in the state remained to the old 
 society, and one of them was unordained, and another, 
 Rev. Benjamin Sargent, was Presbyterian, settled in 
 that part of Chester now known as Auburn. He and 
 Thomas P. Beach, who has already appeared in these 
 pages, and will again, next year (1842) remained true 
 to their convictions, though at cost of much personal 
 bitterness and even cruel persecution from their clerical 
 brethren and other opponents of the anti-slavery cause. 
 The third was he of "no weight of influence" in 
 Christian Panoply esteem ; and more especially after 
 he had preached his sermon on moral and religious 
 agitation, from the text, "I am not come to send 
 peace, but a sword." 
 
 I pass over several meetings of much interest, 
 attended by Mr. Foster and myself, one at Great Falls, 
 which continued two or three days and closed on Sun- 
 day afternoon in time for us to ride to Dover for a 
 meeting there in the evening. 
 
 Mr. Rogers had come down in the last of the week 
 and was with us a part of the time at Great Falls. But 
 the Dover meeting on Sunday evening proved of 
 greater interest and more importance than had been 
 anticipated. And so marked were some of its pecul- 
 iarities and so prominent was the part borne in it by 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 173 
 
 Mr. Rogers, that readers will surely be grateful to me 
 for permitting them to read his description of it, in his 
 next week's Herald. The heading to his editorial 
 read thus : 
 
 VIOLENT BREAKING UP OF A MEETING AT DOVER — ■ 
 REV. MR. YOUNG, FRANCIS COGSWELL, ESQ., AND 
 COL. ANDREW PIERCE. 
 
 We mention the names cf these three individuals 
 here in the same connection with the words above in 
 which they appeared with the disturbance and breaking 
 up of an anti-slavery meeting in the place last Sunday 
 night. We give the public the facts. 
 
 Sunday evening, accompanied by our state agents 
 Pillsbury and Foster, on our way home from the 
 Somersworth convention, we met a very large and most 
 respectable assemblage of the people of Dover in the 
 Orthodox Congregational meeting-house. It was, so 
 far as we could judge, as intelligent and enlightened 
 an auditory as that large town could furnish. The exer- 
 cises began by reading a hymn by Rev. Mr. Young, 
 minister of that house, singing by the choir, prayer by 
 Rev. Mr. Haydon, Baptist clergyman, then a hymn 
 read by Mr. Young and singing again ; when, after 
 explaining to the audience the mistaken notice that 
 had been given which might have led to an expecta- 
 tion of a prepared address from us, we offered for the 
 consideration of the meeting, a resolution of the fol- 
 lowing purport : 
 
 That at this stage of the anti-slavery enterprise, no 
 intelligent person, not openly and faithfully engaged 
 in it, ought to be recognized as a christian, or as 
 possessed of common humanity. After reading the 
 resolution through distinctly twice to the meeting, we 
 proceeded to enforce it in the plainest, most faithful 
 manner we were able to do without any preparation 
 except the brief prayer we offered to God in secret 
 that he would enable us to say something to reach the 
 heart and conscience of the influential and high minded 
 auditory before us. Owing to severe exhaustion and 
 indisposition, we had intended to say but few words 
 at the meeting, and to leave the main service in the 
 
174 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 hands of our brethren, the agents ; one of whom took 
 the resolution to the meeting with that understanding. 
 But just before the close of the second singing he 
 handed it to us with the wish expressed that we should 
 lead in the discussion, to which we assented, trusting 
 in God to give us somewhat to say on so embarrassing 
 an occasion. We proceeded to remind our audience 
 of the fact of our country's enslavement of a sixth 
 portion of the people, of the character and objects 
 of the anti-slavery enterprise, of its advancement 
 from the beginning and its present stage, and of the 
 unchristian and inhuman position of all in the country 
 who refused to enlist openly and faithfully in it. We 
 talked some forty minutes as near as we could judge, 
 and as plainly and faithfully as we were able. The 
 audience gave us the stillest and most active attention. 
 Considering the pointed character of the remarks we 
 were obliged to make and the auditory we were 
 addressing, proud in talent, influence, wealth and 
 reputation and all that finds human self-respect, we 
 were deeply grateful and somewhat surprised that 
 they gave us such patient and forbearing audience. 
 May God bless it to the anti-slavery repentance of 
 them all. 
 
 We were followed by our brother Foster in a strain 
 of the pertinent, eloquent and solemn remark which 
 distinguishes him as an anti-slavery speaker. In the 
 course of his exposition of the character of the com- 
 munity in relation to slavery, he remarked on the sup- 
 port given the slave system by their honoring it in the 
 persons of distinguished slave-holders for whom they 
 had recently voted for high offices in the gift of the 
 people, and by their fellowshiping slave-holders and 
 their apologists as christians and ministers of the 
 gospel. The auditory awarded him throughout the 
 most pointed attention. 
 
 When Foster closed, we addressed them to show 
 that their position while out of the anti-slavery enter- 
 prise, was the one, and the very one, and the only one 
 which could aid the south in their slave-holding, and 
 which the south desired them, or would consent that 
 they should take. We spoke of their estimation of the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 1 75 
 
 free colored man, and of the estimation in which he 
 was held abroad — by subjects of monarchy, by the first 
 talent and character in Great Britain — and of the 
 reception we met with there as abolitionists on our 
 recent visit abroad, compared with the estimation we 
 were held in here at home. The same attention was 
 vouchsafed us while we spoke, as before. 
 
 At our closing, brother Foster arose and requested 
 the enlightened audience, if any among them denied 
 or doubted the soundness of our positions or the truth 
 of our facts, or of the resolution before us, they would 
 give the meeting the benefit of their opinions, and set 
 us right. No one rose nor moved from his seat. A 
 considerable time elapsed in perfect silence. Brother 
 Pillsbury privately asked us if it were advisable to 
 offer anything farther. We advised him to consult his 
 feelings and follow his duty. 
 
 He arose, and after alluding to the lateness of the 
 time and the probability of his wearying the audience, 
 went on to speak of the effect produced by him on the 
 last fourth of July upon an auditory in that house by 
 an anti-slavery address, when nearly all the people, 
 ministers and all left him at the sound of martial music 
 which struck their ear as it was heralding in the 
 streets a liberty procession in honor of the declaration 
 of man's inalienable birthright to freedom. He then 
 referred to the resolution, and was proceeding to 
 illustrate and enforce with striking power the implied 
 charge of the unchristian and inhuman character of 
 the pro-slavery community, by its fellowshiping and 
 honoring slave-holding in the professor and in the 
 minister of the gospel, when he gave the name of the 
 Reverend Edwin Holt, of Portsmouth, as a highly 
 honored and ardently fellowshiped instance of the 
 slave-holding minister who had, he averred — bought a 
 woman, held her as a slave and sold her again and 
 deeded her away body and soul to the slave purchaser, 
 and had never repented of it nor confessed it, and 
 notwithstanding was held in high estimation by the 
 brotherhood of the ministry. He spoke of the impos- 
 sibility of putting down slavery while slave-holding 
 was so esteemed — declared Mr. Holt's offence worse 
 
1 76 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 than killing the body — that slavery was rightly esti- 
 mated by Patrick Henry, when he exclaimed, "give me 
 liberty or give me death !" He was proceeding to 
 compare Mr. Holt as a murderer with Ferguson, the 
 Exeter murderer, and to give his offence the preemi- 
 nence, when the Rev. Mr. Young, rudely and with 
 great excitement and violence of manner, broke in 
 upon him: "Mr. Pillsbury, Mr. Pillsbury, you must 
 stop! I must protest solemnly against such slanderous 
 accusations being thrown out in this house. I cannot 
 consent to have my brethren in the ministry thus 
 slandered in my presence when they have not been 
 impeached by their brethren," and more in like strain 
 and temper. 
 
 Brother Pillsbury calmly asked him : But is not 
 what I say true ? If I have uttered anything slander- 
 ous before this audience I wish to be convinced of it 
 that I may make becoming acknowledgements. Mr. 
 Young replied, this is not the place to settle that — his 
 brethren in the ministry were the tribunal to settle 
 that, and he should not discuss it. Brother Pillsbury 
 replied that any one had a right to state the truth, and 
 particularly such truth as that. Whereupon Francis 
 Cogswell, esq., rose and in vehement voice and man- 
 ner said, that as a member of that church, he would 
 not sit there and see that sacred place desecrated by 
 the slanders that had been thrown out by the speakers 
 that evening, and that the meeting ought to break up, 
 etc., whereupon a voice of similar earnestness came 
 down upon us from the gallery in the same strain, 
 accusing the speakers of slander, and of profaning 
 that holy place, (pointing to the foot of the pulpit 
 where we were standing) with delivering political 
 addresses on that holy day — and when he had spoken 
 as long as he wished, proposed that the meeting now 
 close. The speaker, we were sorry to see, was Colonel 
 Andrew Pierce. We immediately demanded of him 
 to state before that audience, a single slanderous word 
 we had uttered that evening ; stated that we submitted 
 ourselves to the auditory, and if we had said a sinyie 
 untrue thing, or anything not demanded of us as an 
 advocate of the slave in their presence, we would 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. I 77 
 
 retract it and make them acknowledgement to their 
 entire content. Col. Pierce then confined his accusa- 
 tion to the other speakers, whom he said he did not 
 know ; and on our asking what they had either of them 
 said that was slanderous, he replied that they had said 
 that three-fourths of the professors of the religion in 
 the country were on the road to hell — alluding to 
 brother Pillsbury's remark, that if the resolution were 
 true, three-fourths of the professed Christianity of the 
 country were in the broad road to death, and that the 
 church and ministry of the country were the strong- 
 holds of slavery. \ nere had been no argument used, 
 he said, by the speakers, and he declared there was no 
 one in the house who was not opposed to slavery. We 
 replied by asking him if it was not a truth that the 
 church and the ministry were the stronghold of 
 slavery ? when Mr. Cogswell again furiously interfered 
 and protested against further discussion and hoped 
 the meeting would break up and go home ; whereupon 
 we were greeted with a tumultuous rising all at once, 
 a smart hissing from the vicinity of Messrs. Pierce 
 and Cogswell, and a violent slamming of seats and 
 going out of the house ; all of which struck us as 
 savoring more of desecration of the house than any 
 "words of truth and soberness" that had been uttered 
 by the speakers. One rose out of the auditory about 
 the middle stage of the disturbance and demanded to 
 know of those who accused the speakers of slandering 
 Mr. Holt, whether the accusations against him were 
 true — he wished for information to know if it were 
 denied by any man. It was the first time he had 
 heard of it, and he wished seriously to be informed if 
 Mr. Holt had done what was charged, and what was 
 pronounced slanderous. The questioner was John 
 Parkman, Unitarian minister, whose position on the 
 occasion we really respect too much to attach to his 
 name the unwarrantable title of Reverend. His 
 questions for the moment hushed the tumultuous 
 tempest, but no one answered him. We had been 
 accused three times by three different speakers of 
 slander in relation to Mr. Holt, and when a denial of 
 the slanderous charge was called for, no man was pre- 
 
178 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 pared to deny it or offer the least word in support of 
 the false and wicked accusation made against us. 
 Our meeting had been rudely and violently broken up, 
 and the auditory thrown into a spasm of mobocratic 
 excitement by Messrs. Young, Cogswell and Pierce 
 and the speakers falsely accused of slander, and when 
 called on even to deny the truth of what was charged 
 as the slander, neither of them had the hardihood to 
 deny its truth. Indeed Rev. Mr. Young shortly after 
 in private conversation at the pulpit foot, admitted the 
 truth of the charge, and said that Mr. Holt knew his 
 sentiments in relation to slavery; that he had pro- 
 claimed them before the people there, and that he 
 himself felt that he could not again exchange pulpits 
 with Mr. Holt. Why then, we asked, did you accuse 
 our brethren of slander, when you knew the charge 
 was true? It was not the charge, he said, but the 
 manner, and time, and place ! He said Mr. Holt had 
 not been impeached by his brethern. That was the 
 very thing complained of, we responded ; it was that 
 our brother Pillsbury was complaining of, when you 
 interrupted him ; he was charging that very fact on 
 the ministerial brethren, that they were fellowshiping 
 a slave-holder as a minister of the gospel, and that 
 slave-holding in their estimation, was no ground of 
 impeachment. It was an unhappy state of things he 
 admitted, but here was not the place to discuss it. 
 There was coming up at this moment, a part of the 
 audience who had retired. 
 
 About the time the hissing commenced, Mr. Young 
 had quitted his seat in the pew and taken his place on 
 the platform with us and requested the people not to 
 hiss. In justice to Mr. Cogswell we add that we 
 understood by someone that he endeavored to check 
 the hissing which took place while he was speaking 
 and very naturally accompanied the furious tone in 
 which he spoke. 
 
 As the meeting was breaking up, brother Foster 
 proposed that the singers retain their places till the 
 noise subsided, that we might close our meeting with 
 singing. The choir were prevented from this, had 
 they been disposed to it, by an immediate extinguish- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERTi APOSTLES. 1 79 
 
 ment of the lights, which took place tit the call of some 
 one in behalf of the disturbance. " Put out the lights," 
 was the cry in real 1S55 style, and we supposed it was 
 preparatory to a personal onset. After the singing 
 was prevented, and the lights out in the gallery, and 
 silence restored, brother Foster called on Rev. 
 Mr. Young to close the meeting with prayer. He 
 declined, and brother Mack of the Morning Star, was 
 called on and immediately complied. And his prayer 
 was most appropriate to the occasion. We told 
 Mr. Young that the whole violence and outrage were 
 chargeable to him ; and he promptly admitted it. 
 The lights were quickly extinguished and we were 
 left at the foot of the pulpit stairs to grope our way 
 out in utter darkness as best we could. But we left 
 the house unmolested. * * * The 
 
 people of Dover had their option to admit us to the 
 meeting house or not — they acted their pleasure as to 
 coming to hear us ; they had opportunity any of them 
 to reply to anything we had said ; they were so 
 apprised ; they were invited to ; they were urged to. 
 They declined, and they knew they could be heard 
 after brother Pillsbury should close. Were they not 
 bound then to suffer the meeting to proceed and to 
 close in quiet? Had Mr. Young, Mr. Cogswell, or 
 Mr. Pierce, either of them a right to excite the meet- 
 ing as he did, as they all did, and hazard the disgraceful 
 and infamous results of a mob, after they had declined 
 an invitation to say regularly and properly all they 
 wished to say ? Is that their Christianity ? Is that their 
 respect for the liberty of speech ? 
 
 Such was the account of the Dover meeting-house 
 mob given by the editor of the Herald of Freedom in 
 the same week of its occurrence. If nothing was ex- 
 tenuated, surely nought was set down in malice. But 
 it was an act of peculiar aggravation, when the cir- 
 cumstances are put in the record of it. 1 )over had had 
 for several years one of the ablest and best Congre- 
 gational ministers in the state, and certainly one of 
 the most active in the anti-slavery cause, Rev. David 
 
rSo ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Root. Nor was his church as a body, far behind him. 
 Nor was he by any means among the first, nor most 
 active in the clerical conspiracy which led or drove to 
 the division and new organization. Had northern 
 clerical cooperation and church participation in all the 
 crimes, cruelties and damning guilt of slavery never 
 been arraigned, Dover had never had a mob in de- 
 fence of such partnership in the sin. Had Mr. Root 
 remained the minister of that church, it is hardly 
 probable that scenes so disgraceful would have been 
 witnessed. But Mr. Root had left Dover and New 
 Hampshire, and the Rev. Mr. Young was in his stead 
 straight from the sombre shades of Andover Theo- 
 logical Seminary. It was a large, rich church and 
 society that had settled and ordained him, and they 
 worshipped in one of the largest and finest meeting 
 houses then in the state. Some of us who were with 
 Mr. Young at Andover rather wondered at their selec- 
 tion to succeed such a man as David Root. But so it 
 was, though his stay in Dover was short, and he early 
 abandoned the ministry altogether. 
 
 The mob of that dark December night was precipi- 
 tated by the arraignment of Rev. Edwin Holt, of 
 Portsmouth, as a slaveholder. And yet Mr. Young 
 knew the charge was true. He admitted it to Mr. 
 Rogers at the very steps of the altar, before the 
 tumult had wholly ceased. His church must have 
 known it was true. And Mr. Holt knew that Mr. 
 Young knew it was true, because Mr. Young told us 
 that Mr. Holt knew what his opinion of the business 
 was, and he gave us to understand, doubtless intended 
 that we should understand, that he had dealt very 
 faithfully with him, as an offending brother. Why, 
 then, did he cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war 
 on our meeting for free and friendly discussion ? A 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. l8l 
 
 meeting, as were all the meetings we ever held, free 
 alike to our foes and friends. A meeting in which 
 Mr. Young or Mr. Cogswell, or Mr. Pierce, could have 
 had half of every hour, and more, had he desired, to 
 contradict or disprove any statement of ours, about 
 Mr. Holt, or anybody, or anything else. But the 
 truth was, there was nothing to contradict. We knew 
 whereof we affirmed. That was no new scene to us. 
 On that very night, Foster had on a coat, (a dress coat 
 of the style of that time), one skirt of which was torn 
 square off in a violent mob at Portland, only the week 
 before, and which coat he wore for weeks afterward, 
 as a testimony against Portland Christianity, though 
 his friends very soon furnished him another. 
 
 No, it is not very likely we could be convicted of 
 false statements in the face of two or three mobs in a 
 week. For we were not courting persecution. We 
 were not ambitious for martyr honors, nor confessors' 
 crowns. But we spoke the truth, and if not the whole 
 truth, certainly nothing but the truth in the love of 
 God and man. And we could not often be success- 
 fully contradicted, as most who heard us knew full 
 well. 
 
 Mr. Young was not countenanced by all his congre- 
 gation in his strange and unwarrantable course on 
 that occasion. Indeed, he was quite sharply, though 
 good-naturedly rebuked by one parishioner as we 
 groped our way out in the total darkness. He hap- 
 pened, unfortunately, to tell us what we could not 
 mistake, that it was very dark. Then responded his 
 parishioner, who could hear but not see him, " True, 
 Brother Young, but it is about as light as you ever 
 make it for us." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MEETINGS IN WEST CHESTER— RIOTOUS AND SHAMEFUL 
 CONDUCT— RIDE TO DERRY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT- 
 FRANKLIN MOB DESCRIBED IN LETTER BY MR. FOSTER. 
 
 That the churches were indeed the bulwarks of 
 slavery grew every day more and more apparent. 
 And as Dover, and several other of the larger towns 
 have testified, it may be proper to report briefly on a 
 few of the smaller places we visited, such as Auburn, 
 Chester, and Derry. Auburn was at that time known 
 as West Chester. Its church was Presbyterian, its 
 minister, Rev. Benjamin Sargent, already introduced 
 in these pages, venerable in years and rich in the 
 graces of the true christian minister and man of that 
 period. , 
 
 The Methodists had a strong hold in West Chester, 
 but at the center of the town, Congregationalism held 
 undisputed sway and ruled with rigor not often sur- 
 passed. No town ever more sternly or successfully 
 resisted the anti-slavery, or other unpopular reforms. 
 
 In conversation with a venerable deacon of the 
 church on the Indian question, so prominent at the 
 time of the Seminole war, he declared to me that it 
 was the duty of the first settlers of the country to ex- 
 terminate the Indian tribes as completely as did the 
 Israelites the inhabitants of Canaan and of Midian"; 
 " killing everything that breathed." He said all our 
 Indian wars ever since were God's judgments, sent as 
 penalty for neglecting that duty! And, moreover, 
 that they would be inflicted till that duty was done. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 183 
 
 He seemed exactly of the spirit of some Connecticut 
 colonists, who, it was told, seized the territory under 
 two resolutions, unanimously adopted : 
 
 I. Resolved — That the earth is to be given to the 
 saints as an inheritance forever. And 
 
 II. Resolved — That we, being saints, do hereby take 
 possession of that portion of it bounded as follows, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 I never heard that the Chester Congregational 
 church, or its deacons, or minister, held ever after- 
 wards any more humane sentiment towards the In- 
 dians, or even the slaves, while slavery lasted. 
 
 Our first anti-slavery meeting at West Chester was 
 held in the Methodist meeting-house — adjourned 
 there from the school-house, which was too small for 
 half who came, the evening being Sunday. Most of 
 the time was occupied by Mr. Foster, who paid the 
 Methodists, who were present in large numbers, the 
 compliment of presuming that they wished to know 
 the exact truth as to their connection with slavery, 
 that they might be governed accordingly. So he 
 opened Judge Birney's tract and proceeded to read 
 exactly the record the denomination had furnished 
 for itself in the past as far back as 1780 ; when it was 
 
 Resolved, That the conference acknowledges slavery 
 contrary to the laws of God, man and nature ; and 
 hurtful to society ; contrary to the dictates of con- 
 science and true religion. 
 
 In 1784, when the Methodist church had been fully 
 organized, rules were adopted fixing the time when 
 members who were already slaveholders should eman- 
 cipate all their slaves, and then followed this solemn 
 injunction : 
 
 Every person concerned, who will not comply with 
 these rules, shall have liberty quietly to withdraw 
 
184 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 from our society within the twelve months following 
 the notice being given him as aforesaid. Otherwise, the 
 assistants shall exclude him from the society. No 
 person holding slaves shall be admitted into our 
 society or to the Lord's supper, till he comply with 
 these rules concerning slavery. And those who buy, 
 sell or give away slaves, unless on purpose to free 
 them, shall be immediately expelled. 
 
 And then, again, in 1801, the conference declared: 
 We declare that we are more than ever convinced 
 of the great evils of African slavery, which still ex- 
 ists in "these United States. ***** Every 
 member of the society who sells a slave shall, imme- 
 diately after full proof, be excluded. ***** 
 Proper committees shall be appointed by the annual 
 conferences out of the most respectable of our friends, 
 for the conducting of the business. And the presid- 
 ing elders, deacons, and traveling preachers shall pro- 
 cure as many proper signatures as possible to the 
 addresses: and give all the assistance in their power 
 in every respect to aid the committees and to further 
 the blessed undertaking. Let this be continued from 
 year to year, till the desired end be accomplished. 
 
 So much, and more of the same character, Mr. 
 Foster had in hand to read to the Methodists who on 
 that evening composed a large proportion of our nu- 
 merous audience. And so much he read to the credit 
 of early Methodism. But then he had to unfold and 
 expose the terrible degeneracy and apostacy in a 
 single generation. And this was his offence, though 
 his testimony was still as before only what the denom- 
 ination itself furnished him. 
 
 In the year 1836 the general conference was held in 
 Cincinnati, Ohio, and adopted with only fourteen dis- 
 senting voices this resolution : 
 
 Resolved, By the delegates of the annual confer- 
 ences in general conference assembled, that we are 
 decidedly opposed to modern abolitionism ; and wholly 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 1 85 
 
 disclaim any right, wish, or intention to interfere in 
 the civil and political relation between master and 
 slave as it exists in the slave holding states of this 
 Union. 
 
 And this resolution, though ample to the purpose of 
 Foster, was a small part of the stunning testimony he 
 presented to show that the northern Methodists were 
 fully as guilty as their southern brethren of all the 
 abominations of slave holding. For instance, he cited 
 the declarations of the most eminent northern minis- 
 ters and doctors of Methodist divinity. Rev. Dr. Fisk,, 
 president of the Wesleyan university of Connecticut,, 
 said and published to this effect : 
 
 The relation of master and slave may, and does- 
 exist in many cases, under such circumstances as free 
 the master from the just charge and guilt of immor- 
 ality. The text, i Cor., 7th chap., 20 to 23d verse, 
 seems mainly to enjoin and sanction the fitting con- 
 tinuance of their present social relations. The free 
 man was to remain free, and the slave, unless eman- 
 cipation should offer, was to remain a slave. The 
 general rule of Christianity, not only permits, but in 
 supposable cases, enjoins a continuance of the master's 
 authority. The New Testament enjoins obedience upon 
 the slave, as an obligation due to rightful authority. 
 
 Only so much from a great deal by Dr. Fiske, in like 
 vein and tone. And this one baptismal sealby Bishop 
 Hedding, then living in Lynn, Massachusetts, as read 
 in the Christian Advocate and Journal : 
 
 The right to hold a slave is founded on this rule : 
 "Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men 
 should do unto you, do ye even so to them, for this is 
 the law and the prophets." 
 
 The argument of Mr. Foster enraged as much, as 
 surprised the Methodist portion of the audience. He 
 showed slavery to be wholesale adultery and concubin- 
 age, and that all, who upheld it by fellowshiping it 
 
l86 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 as christians, or fit to be regarded with anything less 
 than abhorrence and execration, were partakers in 
 those sins and shames. He proved, that Methodist 
 church members and ministers had held, or still held 
 hundreds of thousands of slaves, while pretending to 
 detest slavery and to be seeking its overthrow; holding 
 them as "goods and chattels," robbing them of mar- 
 riage, and dooming them to perpetual prostitution, till 
 the southern Methodist church had made itself a great 
 house of ill-fame, a vast brothel, into which the Son 
 of God himself, 1 in the person of his forlorn brethren 
 and sisters, was continually and hopelessly cast ! He 
 declared no house of ill-fame in New York was guilty 
 of such fearful impiety, such frightful abomination. 
 For there the victim or the guilty could flee out and 
 escape, while in the churches they were held, were 
 compelled by both religion and government, to stay 
 and endure, even though their soul and spirit were 
 pure as the angels of God ! 
 
 Mr. Foster was heard an hour or more with com- 
 parative order and attention. Suddenly a man rose 
 in great agitation, much as a drunken man or lunatic 
 some times did in our meetings, and demanded proof 
 of what had been said. Nothing needed proving, as 
 the church and clergy supplied all the argument, and 
 the inferences were as self-evident as heat from fire, 
 or light from the heavens. But instead of drunkard 
 or lunatic, the man proved to be one of the leading 
 members of that very church, and it required the aid 
 of some of his brethren to quiet him and restore the 
 order of the meeting. Foster then opened the Bible 
 and read the eighteenth chapter of Revelation down 
 to the thirteenth verse, and sat down, leaving the re- 
 maining time to me. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 187 
 
 The verse containing the injunction : "Come out 
 of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her 
 sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues," read in 
 Mr. Foster's deep, earnest, solemn tones, produced a 
 deep impression ; and a man rose with much apparent 
 sincerity and asked : " Would it not be better to re- 
 main in the churches and reform them?" He, too, ' 
 was a Methodist brother and, we were told, was a re- 
 formed inebriate. Had I known that at the time, I 
 should have asked him whether dram-shops and 
 brothels were fit haunts for those who had abandoned 
 them, even to save the still lost ones, when everything 
 and more could be done, and better done, from the 
 outside ? and especially if remaining within, or 
 going within, involved eating of the same loaf and 
 drinking the same cup with the guilty. 
 
 But as it was, I asked why Wesley did not remain 
 in the old Episcopal church ? Why not so preach his 
 doctrine as not to create schism and separation ? I 
 asked if Unitarians or Universalists were ever exhorted 
 to remain in their communion and work reform there, 
 instead of coming out and uniting with the more 
 evangelical churches into whose faith they had been 
 converted. On the question of changing their religious 
 preferences or beliefs, by leaving their pro-slavery 
 communions to become abolitionists, I remarked that 
 no such change would be required. I said, do you 
 wish or prefer to be a Methodist ? Then be a Metho- 
 dist with all your heart ; be such a Methodist as was 
 Wesley who declared slavery "the sum of all villanies" 
 which must brand a slave-holder as the sum of all vil- 
 lains ; such a Methodist as was Dr. Adam Clarke, your 
 own great Bible Commentator, who said and wrote : 
 " If one place in hell is hotter than any other, that 
 place should be appropriated to slave-holders." To 
 
I S8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 the Presbyterian and Congregationalist, my doctrine 
 was substantially the same. To the Baptist, I asked, 
 do you wish to be a Baptist, and be immersed bodily 
 in the beautiful Massabesic, whose waves roll in here- 
 almost to our very feet ? no abolitionist shall say you 
 nay. Only carry out your own avowed principles, and 
 inasmuch as you will not drink the sacramental wine 
 with such as have only been sprinkled with clean 
 water in baptism, or with such as will commune with 
 them, they themselves having been immersed, so in 
 relation to slave-holders. Have no religious fellow- 
 ship with them, nor with any who do commune with 
 them as christians. Exclude the slave-holder and all. 
 who will not exclude the slave-holder. Not that I hold 
 to your doctrine of "Close Communion," as it is called : 
 but that is your affair, not mine. Your right of 
 religious freedom is as good as mine, and shall be 
 respected and defended by me as sacredly as my own. 
 Only be consistent in other particulars as well as in 
 that already suggested. And that is, do not make 
 infant baptism a greater heresy, (more damnable 
 heresy, the apostle would call it,) than infant stealing;, 
 robbing cradles of their priceless contents, and help- 
 less mothers of their innocent babes. Do not exclude 
 from fellowship the infant sprinkler, and then welcome: 
 the infant-stealer, the cradle-robber, the trundle-bed- 
 plunderer to pulpit and sacramental supper, as of the 
 same "one lord, one faith, one baptism" with your- 
 selves. That, I said, is all we abolitionists have a right 
 to ask. 
 
 The meeting closed at a late hour, in good order, 
 and apparently, in the main, friendly spirit. We 
 appointed meetings for Monday and Tuesday even- 
 ings, the latter in the school-house of the village where 
 we then were. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 189 
 
 On Monday I met the Methodist minister, and held 
 with him a long conversation. He assured me he 
 would gladly attend our meetings and hold discussion 
 with us, but his engagements rendered it impossible. 
 He gravely charged Mr. Foster and myself with incul- 
 cating the most wicked and abominable sentiments ; 
 accused us of the grossest misrepresentation and 
 falsehood on the previous evening, and said he should 
 take a public opportunity after ice were gone to expose 
 us. I told him he should have been at our meeting 
 of last evening and heard for himself ; for it was evi- 
 dent he knew nothing at all about what was said or 
 done. He insisted that he had full confidence in his 
 informant, though it was plain that he had talked with 
 none better than the half-crazed being, who so rudely 
 and wildly interrupted our proceedings. But I again 
 invited him in most cordial manner to come to our 
 meetings, and proposed to go in to one of his, but he 
 gave me no further attention. 
 
 When we went to our meeting on that evening, we 
 found the school-house door locked against us. This 
 was done by a prominent member of the Methodist 
 church, on his own responsibility ; in full assurance 
 that anti-slavery sinners had no rights that Methodist 
 saints could be bound to respect. A noble and gener- 
 ous-hearted man of the world, opened his commodious 
 dwelling, and there we held our meeting. The Pres- 
 byterians were holding their monthly concert of prayer 
 for the heathen, close by, and at the same hour. 
 Mr. Foster left me to conduct our meeting, and went 
 into the Presbyterian's concert of prayer and was per- 
 mitted to address them a half hour, as afterward 
 appeared to effective purpose. And whom should he 
 meet there cheek by jowl with the rest, but my Metho- 
 dist minister, who in the morning, assured me he 
 
IOO \i"1S OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 would certainly attend our meeting, "but for positive 
 engagements ! " He had passed directly by our 
 meeting, and gone to a Presbyterian concert of prayer ; 
 what he had never in his life done before, and in all 
 probability, never did again. 
 
 Mr Foster addressed the concert on the character 
 and conduct of the American Board of Foreign Mis- 
 sions in regard to the heathenism of our slave system 
 at home. He showed how the treasury of the Board 
 was replenished by robbery. Man-stealers, and the 
 buyers and sellers of stolen men, women and children,, 
 not only contributors to, but controllers, with other 
 officers, of the moneys raised — the price of blood, the 
 very blood of Christ himself, in the person of his 
 children and little ones, the price of his blood given 
 in contributions to publish his name to the distant 
 tribes of Africa, and the heathen world ! Showing 
 from Judge Birney's American Churches, the Bulwarks 
 of American Slavery, that the Board even had slaves 
 bequeathed in will to its funds, by pious persons at the 
 south. It was said that in the case cited by Judge 
 Birney, the bequest was not accepted ; but the reason 
 probably was, that to receive it, involved attendance 
 "on the part of all who claimed it" at the Superior 
 Court of Bryan county, in the state of Georgia. None 
 will doubt this when that stupendous body, the Amer- 
 ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 
 shall come hereafter into these chronicles for examin- 
 ation. On the next morning, Mr. Foster was told by 
 some who heard him at the concert, that they had 
 withheld their contributions, never before having 
 dreamed that the American Board was sustained by 
 robbery, and controlled in part by man-stealers. 
 
 In the course of Tuesday, we learned that attempts 
 were making to close the school-house against us on 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 191 
 
 that evening also. The plan was frustrated by our 
 friends who secured the key. Then a riot was con- 
 certed ; we knew that, because the zealous Methodist, 
 who, on Sunday evening came so near utterly routing 
 us, told us he " had labored hard more than three 
 hours, to prevent a riot this evening." We always 
 knew well what to expect, when ministers and other 
 like good and influential men told us how much they 
 feared a mob, and how hard they were working to 
 prevent it, and how they hoped that now there would 
 be no mob. 
 
 On this occasion, we had a large attendance, and 
 the best and most respectful attention to the close. 
 But the Methodist minister did not appear. Our 
 zealous Methodist friend, who had labored three 
 hours to prevent a riot, was conspicuously absent. 
 Some others, also, who had been quite demonstrative 
 in defence of the church and clergy, especially the 
 Methodist church and minister of that place, were ab- 
 sent, in body, to say the least. 
 
 All this absence was easily accounted for when we 
 came out. The evening was dark and rainy. Several 
 had brought lanterns. Our horse and carriage stood 
 outside, with others, but ours had been singularly dis- 
 tinguished. Past experience had taught us that it 
 might be so, especially when good men " had labored 
 hard to prevent our being mobbed." Borrowing a 
 friendly lantern, we discovered that all the upholstery 
 of the carriage, (a new comfortable, covered buggy,) 
 cushions, whip, reins and valisses, had been deeply 
 "daubed," not with the untempered Methodist ''mor- 
 tar " of those days, nor the super-fragrant eggs of 
 Sanbornton Bridge, which our readers cannot have 
 forgotten, but with an anointing quite as unsavory 
 and unclean, furnished by some grass-fed and well 
 
102 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 fed Chester cow. The Methodist minister, a Mr. 
 Quimby, had assured me he would be with us that 
 evening and take part in our meeting, but for positive 
 pre-engagement. He was surely well represented 
 outside the school-house, and had no need to attend 
 himself. 
 
 Next day but one, all damages were repaired in 
 time for us to drive over to Deny. There, again, we 
 fell into Methodist hands. Both the Congregational 
 and Presbyterian pulpits and churches had long be- 
 fore proved themselves impervious to anti-slavery 
 truth by word or deed. Accidentally, we encountered 
 the Methodist minister, Mr. Hazeltine, who seemed to 
 speak us kindly, and tendered us his meeting-house 
 for two evenings. We blessed and thanked him de- 
 voutly, and soon had notices posted about the village 
 accordingly. Then we drove away two or three miles, 
 to look up some abolitionists of whom we had heard 
 but never seen, and to extend, as widely as possible, 
 notice of our meetings. At the hour appointed we 
 were at the meeting-house, but, to our surprise and 
 disappointment, we found the door locked against us. 
 Nor was anybody in sight of whom we could ask ex- 
 planations. We went into a shoemaker's shop to make 
 inquiry, and were told "the brethren" had been to- 
 gether, and unanimously vetoed the kindly offer of 
 their minister. We demanded of the minister, who 
 came in, what the strange procedure meant. He said 
 that since he had offered us the house he had seen 
 the West Chester minister, who, it appeared, had 
 scampered down after us as quick as possible, to 
 sound an alarm, and that he had given such report of 
 our meetings in his parish that it was not deemed ad- 
 visable to have anything to do with us. For his own 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 1 93 
 
 part, he said, he was still in favor of our having the 
 meeting-house, but the Discipline did not warrant it, 
 as he had not appointed the meetings. 
 
 It somehow got abroad in the village that we were 
 in the shoemaker's shop, and very soon the room, en-' 
 try, steps and all, were thronged with a noisy, babbling 
 rabble that it would wrong the real brutes to call 
 brutal, all burning with indignation, because, as they 
 most vociferously declared, we were seeking to tear 
 down the Church and the Sabbath. I never met a 
 more abusive gang in any grog-shop. We congratu- 
 lated the minister on the number and quality of his 
 defenders. The three most prominent, the actual 
 leaders, were all members of his own church. One of 
 these taunted Foster with wearing spectacles. This 
 raised a great laugh. I asked the man, " Do you 
 know God could, with one lightning flash, so blind 
 you that, even with spectacles, you could never see 
 more ?" Another of them said, " The Chester Meth- 
 odist minister was here to-day, and told us you called 
 his church a brothel." Then one cried out, " O, they 
 know what a brothel is!" which raised a yell of glee, 
 with clappings and stampings that shook the whole 
 building. "Yes, yes," bawled another, "their looks 
 show it." And this, to them, minister and all, seemed 
 to clinch the argument wholly in their favor. The 
 victory was theirs. We admitted it, and left the town 
 to celebrate and enjoy it to all hearts' content. I 
 never heard that a genuine anti-slavery meeting was 
 ever held in that town. There might have been. 
 Doubtless, New Organization lecturing might have 
 been called in to take away the reproach and shame 
 of driving away the earnest and devoted abolitionists, 
 who had taken their lives in their hands and gone 
 forth everywhere, proclaiming liberty to the captive, 
 
194 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 whether guilty men and ministers would hear, or 
 whether they would forbear. Both those ministers 
 were New Organizatioriists of most Pharisaic type. 
 And both declared they preached, themselves, once a 
 year, on slavery, though they always selected Fast or 
 Thanksgiving day for that subject. And both seemed 
 to think that entitled them to our acceptance and 
 respect as abolitionists. As we drove slowly out of 
 the village, in the dark evening, and with sad hearts, 
 the crowd of " brethren " and others from the shoe- 
 maker's shop pursued us with their shouting and 
 howling, some of them seizing our carriage wheels 
 and holding back so that our poor little Tunbridge 
 had hard work to pull us out of their power. What 
 they wanted was to provoke us to resistance. Then 
 they would have taken sweet revenge by violence on 
 our persons, perhaps to the extent of Lovejoy's mur- 
 derers at the west, a few years before. We never 
 doubted that our non-resistance principles saved our 
 lives in many a desperate encounter. And in them 
 and their heroic Author we confidingly reposed our 
 trust. Nor surely, under the circumstances, could 
 we have pursued a wiser course, whatever might have 
 been our principles. For we stood almost always 
 nearly alone against the towns, at first. 
 
 In the account thus given of our reception in some 
 of the smaller or average New Hampshire towns, the 
 object can hardly be mistaken. Almost exactly such 
 reports could be extended to length beyond human 
 patience and endurance. And without going out of 
 New Hampshire, or including any other persons than 
 the three already named, the editor of the Herald of 
 Freedom, Mr. Foster and myself. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that we did not 
 find or make excellent friends and glad co-workers 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 195 
 
 with us in our mighty mission. We lived, when 
 abroad, much of the time on the fat of the land ; 
 only metaphorically as to the. fat, for we entered the field 
 vegetarians, and Foster so continued tili age, infirmity 
 and medical men counselled him otherwise, though 
 possibly, neither wisely nor well. 1 always doubted 
 it. We collected money, and in two years paid off 
 the society-debt and bought press and type and office 
 appointments for the Herald of Freedom. We broke 
 down the Democratic party soon after, and did vast 
 damage to many pro-slavery churches and pulpits by 
 exposing them to the light of day and truth. My 
 salary the first year was exactly eighty-three cents a 
 day. The second year I was voted four hundred dol- 
 lars, all collections above that sum to be paid into the 
 treasury of the society. And Mr. Foster's pay was 
 probably less, but he often insisted on a too liberal 
 division with me, on the ground that 1 had a wife and 
 he had none. 
 
 In West Chester were, besides Rev. Mr. Sargent, 
 whose faithfulness cost him his pulpit, Mr. Benjamin 
 and Mr. Amos Chase, not brothers, only in soul and 
 spirit, whose anti-slavery devotion was too deep and 
 divine for human praise. Sadly as our carriage suf- 
 fered, they did not permit it nor us to leave the place 
 till all damage was repaired and everything rendered 
 clean and sweet, and new, so far as necessary. Once 
 afterwards Lucy Stone and myself had an engage- 
 ment there, and no conveyance could be had nearer 
 than two miles and a half. Two or three inches of 
 snow had fallen that day, and the road we had to take 
 was through woods, and not a track had been made. 
 No conveyance possible, I proposed to walk on to 
 Amos Chase's and send him back for my companion, 
 while I would commence the meeting alone. To this 
 
196 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Lucy bravely objected, saying her bloomer dress and 
 calf-skin boots, made like mine, would carry her safely 
 through with me on foot. And they did. She was 
 hardly-willing to allow me to carry her bag a part of 
 the way. It was pitch dark some time before we ar- 
 rived, and the soft, damp snow had wet our feet as 
 though we had walked in water all the way. Mr. 
 Chase insisted that I should wear his boots to the 
 meeting, and socks, as well. The family took Lucy 
 away, and, as she told me next day, put her in a com- 
 plete change from head to foot, which perspiration, 
 added to the wet snow, had made absolutely neces- 
 sary. Had West Chester been Uerry on that night, 
 our situation must have been deplorable indeed. But 
 we knew into what hands we should fall, and so 
 trudged cheerily, though wearily on, through darkness, 
 forest and snow. Mr. Benjamin Chase still lives, an 
 honor and ornament to the best rural society of the 
 Granite state. 
 
 Most of the mob violence yet described, has been 
 rather of the harmless sort, so far as bodily injury is 
 considered, since Mr. Foster and myself together took 
 the field. And Mr. Foster has hardly yet been heard 
 through the Herald columns. He shall now have his 
 turn, and readers will soon see to what purpose. 
 
 In the same month, (or within four weeks, a part of 
 two months), of our Chester and Derry encounters, we 
 attempted to hold some meetings in Franklin. I told 
 Foster it rather appeared to me that he could give a 
 better account of our experiences there than any one 
 else, and besides, that it was time for him to do part 
 of the reporting, were it only for the sake of variety. 
 Though dreading a pen almost as much as a sword, 
 in his own hand, he reluctantly consented ; and the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. I 97 
 
 following description, every word, every way as truth- 
 fid as it is graphic, is his own verbatim letter, as in 
 the Herald of Freedo?n, "of November 19th, 1841 : 
 
 ANOTHER MOB — THE PULPIT ITS ORIGIN. 
 To the Rev. Isaac Knight, pastor of the Congrega- 
 tional Chit rc/i in Franklin ; 
 
 Sir — Impelled by a sense of duty to you, to your 
 flock and the public, I sit down to address you relative 
 to the recent outrage that was perpetrated upon an 
 anti-slavery meeting in your parish, and by persons 
 under your immediate supervision. That transaction 
 has inflicted a blot upon the character of your once 
 respectable village, which time will not soon efface. 
 It has degraded it in the eyes of all who respect 
 either the laws of God or man, by openly setting both 
 at defiance, trampling under foot the rights of the de- 
 fenceless and unresisting, and spurning every appeal 
 to the claims of justice, humanity and pure religion. 
 That savages and barbarians, whose trade is war, and 
 whose only law is the dictates of unchastened pas- 
 sion, should occasionally indulge in acts of brutal 
 violence, is not surprising. But a mob among chris- 
 tians, under the very eye of the pulpit, and in de- 
 fence of that pulpit fills the mind with astonishment- 
 It is sad proof that the pulpit and mob are identical 
 in spirit and coincident in their aims ! 
 
 My object in this communication is to call the at- 
 tention* of all who will take the trouble to read it, to 
 the origin of those disgraceful proceedings, which 
 have earned for Franklin the unenviable reputation of 
 having riotously broken up and dispersed an anti- 
 slavery meeting ; but more especially to hold up a 
 mirror in which you will be able to see your own 
 character and that of your fellow craftsmen. Like 
 David in the matter of Uriah and Saul of Tarsus in 
 the martyrdom of Stephen, you are doubtless uncon- 
 scious of your guilt. But will not posterity and a 
 coming judgment assign to you the authorship of 
 that outrage ? 
 
 Was it not through your influence, aided by that of 
 your clerical coadjutors, that your parishioners were 
 induced to trample upon their own laws, brutally 
 
ICjS ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 assault the friends of liberty, and transmute the quiet 
 and security of their village into uproar and lawless 
 violence? Such I solemnly believe to be the fact. 
 Am I mistaken in this opinion ? Let a rehearsal of 
 the scenes of that dismal night, and of your con- 
 temptuous treatment of the anti-slavery cause on the 
 previous Sunday, answer. Notice had been given, 
 through the Herald, that brother Pillsbury and my- 
 self would hold anti-slavery meetings in your parish 
 on Sunday and Monday evenings, in which all parties 
 would be allowed a hearing, and in the discussions of 
 which all would be allowed to participate. Your 
 meeting-house was closed against these meetings, and 
 you were generally understood to regard them as a 
 nuisance, and those who were to conduct them as in- 
 fidels and "dangerous men." You had said that you 
 " would sooner co-operate with fiends from perdition 
 than with them." So inveterate was your hostility, 
 that our friends thought it useless tj ask you to read 
 a notice of the meetings. One was, however, posted 
 up within the walls of your meeting-house. But it 
 soon fell a sacrifice to the piety and loyalty of your 
 parishioners, and shared a kindred fate with the meet- 
 ing it was designed to notify. 
 
 No inconsiderable portion of the people of Franklin 
 regard you as their spiritual guide. Your opinion on 
 all moral subjects is their supreme law. Wherever 
 you lead, they implicitly follow. What you recom- 
 mend, they cordially support. What you repudiate, 
 they feel religiously bound to oppose. I knew this, 
 and that your hostility to anti-slavery would, in all 
 probability, deter most of them from attending our 
 meetings. I knew, also, that they were profoundly 
 ignorant of the character of our enterprise, and of 
 their own guilt as accomplices and abettors of south- 
 ern man-stealers, and that they were likely to remain 
 so. To enlighten, and, if possible, to reclaim them 
 from theidolatrous worship of a slave-holding religion 
 to the pure doctrine of the gospel, was my aim and 
 purpose. For that purpose I attended the meeting- 
 over which you have assumed the authority of a 
 "Rabbi," which is to say, being interpreted, (a) 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 1 99 
 
 Master. In doing this, I was clearly within the rights 
 guaranteed to me in the New Testament. The meet- 
 ing was public. Everybody was invited to attend, 
 and by the law of God, which you profess to preach' 
 all who were present had an equal right to speak. I 
 chose to avail myself of that right in behalf of the 
 despairing bondsman, who has neither Bible, Sabbath 
 day nor marriage institution. But, no sooner had I 
 commenced speaking than the house was thrown into 
 utmost disorder and confusion through your agency. 
 Your abrupt descent from "the sacred desk," and 
 exit from the house, was the signal for a general re- 
 treat. The meeting-house was instantly in uproar. 
 Seeing their "guide" retire, about two-thirds of the 
 vassal audience immediately followed. But they went 
 out at your beck, and not prompted by their own con- 
 sciences. They were anxious to hear,' but were afraid 
 of displeasing their master. But, having satisfied the 
 claims of the pulpit, as they supposed, by leaving the 
 room, most of them remained in the entry, literally 
 choking up the doors, so desirous were they of hear- 
 ing what I had to say. A few had the courage to re- 
 turn and resume their seats after you had left. 
 
 Evening came, and brought together an unusually 
 large number for an anti-slavery meeting, but your 
 seat was vacant. " Here are the sheep," thought I, 
 as the seats of the capacious town hall were rapidly 
 filling up with men and women, some of whom were 
 from a distance of three or four miles, "but, where is 
 the shepherd ? He fancies they have broken loose 
 from the fold, and that wolves are among them. Has 
 he left them and fled ? Is he indeed a hireling?" 
 
 The exercises of the evening elicited a good degree 
 of interest. After some preliminarv remarks from 
 brother Pillsbury, I addressed the meeting for nearly 
 two hours, on the slave-holding character of the 
 American church and ministry. The audience was 
 unusually solemn and listened "with marked attention 
 and much apparent interest and conviction, while the 
 religious professions of the country were successfully 
 shown to be at war with Christianity, and to constitute 
 the main bulwark of slavery. Every sect in the country 
 
200 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 was shown to be more or less contaminated with the 
 spirit of slave-holding, while in most of them, man-steal- 
 •ing is not a disciplinary offence. Nor is it regarded as a 
 sin, as is apparent from the fact that many of their 
 most popular ministers are man-stealers ; and their 
 theological seminaries, such as Andover, Princeton, 
 and Middletown, teach the doctrine that man-stealing 
 if accompanied by mild treatment, is not sinful. 
 
 As our remarks on Sunday evening were confined 
 to the church and ministry, I was not a little surprised 
 on entering the meeting on the following evening, to 
 find there a large number of men and boys " of the 
 basest sort," some drunk, some sober, apparently much 
 exasperated at our doctrines, and determined, if pos- 
 sible, to put a stop to their spread. They could not 
 endure to hear their ministers and churches so tra- 
 duced, and had come to their defence. The leader of 
 this gallant band, a Mr. Hilton, whose intoxication was 
 only zeal for the honor of the church, rather than of 
 new rum, was in shirt sleeves, as the insignia of his 
 office. Several others had appropriate emblems. The 
 room was filled with a dense, fetid smoke, which was 
 exceedingly annoying, and rendered respiration in 
 some parts of it difficult. On examination, it was 
 found that these fumes proceeded from breathing 
 holes of perdition in a remote part of the room, which 
 Satan had contrived to open for our special annoyance, 
 through the lips of some half a dozen of your young 
 parishoners, by means of some ignited tobacco leaves, 
 which he had caused to be rolled into the shape of a 
 pig's tail, and put into their delicate little mouths. 
 Brother Pillsbury commenced speaking, but was soon 
 interrupted by the talking and racket of these young 
 gentlemen of the cigar. Finding it difficult to proceed, 
 he remonstrated against such rude behavior, and 
 expressed his regret that youth of so much promise 
 should, in an unguarded hour, suffer themselves to be 
 made a cat's paw by their parents and other superiors 
 in age, to tear in pieces the sacred charter of the lib- 
 erties for which their ancestors bled ; and which it 
 should be their highest honor to inherit and transmit, 
 unimpaired to posterity. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 201 
 
 This appeal was not without effect upon most of 
 those for whose particular benefit it was intended. 
 But the speaker had not proceeded far when he was 
 again interrupted by an outburst of holy indignation 
 at his infidelity and irreverence for man-stealers and 
 their abettors from an opposite quarter of the house. 
 This proved a more serious affair. Captain Hilton, 
 accompanied by his tipsy corporal, one Kimball, made 
 a pass at the speaker. Their feelings, it appeared, 
 had been deeply wounded by some of the speaker's 
 remarks, and nothing would appease them short of a 
 total retraction of the obnoxious sentiments. They 
 were no non-resistants. They had embraced the 
 Christianity of the Concord church. They wanted 
 satisfaction and they knew how to obtain it. Brother 
 Pillsbury coolly replied to their demands that he had 
 spoken the truth and should make no apology for it. 
 " Damn you," said the captain, " you have slandered 
 and abused all our ministers and churches, and every- 
 thing that's good among us." " Damn you," cried 
 another, " you shall take all that back ; " and imme- 
 diately seized him by the collar. The room at this 
 time exhibited a scene of dreadful confusion and 
 alarm. Observing that the women were preparing to 
 leave the house, I left brother Pillsbury in the hands 
 of his assailants and to the protection of his heavenly 
 Father, and passed to the other side of the room for 
 the purpose of allaying their fears and encouraging 
 them to remain. 
 
 As the crowd had by this time become so dense 
 around brother Pillsbury that I could not approach 
 him, I stepped upon the railing and with much 
 strength of lungs, succeeded in raising my voice 
 above the uproar that filled the house. My expostu- 
 lations with the mob on the meanness of disturbing a 
 free meeting, where all enjoyed equal privilege of 
 being heard, succeeded in restoring quiet, when it 
 was found that brother Pillsbury, with an unresisting 
 demeanor, had protected himself from personal in- 
 jury, although for a time entirely in the power of 
 infuriated drunkards ! Order being restored, he 
 resumed his remarks. 
 
202 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 But the mob were not yet satisfied. They hi d not 
 fully vindicated their character nor that of the church 
 and ministry from the slanderous accusations of the 
 anti slavery agents. After the lapse of about three- 
 quarters of an hour, most of the rioters retired fn m 
 the hall. Joined, as we supposed, by a new recruit 
 from the bar-room, they soon came back and com- 
 menced a hideous noise in the entry, which entirely 
 overpowered the speaker's voice, and gave signs of 
 another brutal assault. Several persons, not abolition- 
 ists, attempted to hush the noise, but to little purpose. 
 One of them called upon the constable to take the 
 leaders into custody, but he declined on the ground 
 that he had no precept. I took occasion to remind 
 this scrupulously conscientious political " minister of 
 God " that when I entered your meeting-house for the 
 purpose of preaching the gospel in an orderly man- 
 ner, it was not thought necessary to obtain a piectpt 
 in order to dispose of me ; but that any member of the 
 congregation who chose, the minister himself not ex- 
 cepted, turned constable and thrust me from the house. 
 
 Finding it impossible to proceed with our exercises, 
 brother Pillsbury and myself felt it our duty to shake 
 off the dust .of our feet and leave the place. This 
 we did by a short, though solemn testimony, zgaii st 
 all those through whose agency the meeting had 1 een 
 broken up. While recording that testimony, a death- 
 like silence pervaded the room. Evt n the infuriated 
 ranks of the besotted rioters that were momentarily 
 threatening to break forth upon us, were overp< wered 
 by its fearful import, and they silently retired in dis- 
 may at the terrors of the c< ming judgment, leaving 
 us to return in safety and unmolested to our lodgings. 
 
 Such are the prominent facts connected with this. 
 disgraceful outrage. It only remains for me to sub- 
 mit the question whether, in view of them, I am not 
 fully justified in the opinion that you were the guilty 
 author. What possible interest had Mr. Hilton and 
 his associates in the breaking up of our meetiig? 
 The anti slavery enterprise does not and cannot mo- 
 lest them. They have nothing to fear from the prev- 
 alence of free principles. The mob was on your be- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 203 
 
 half. Its avowed object was to defend your charac- 
 ter, and that of the church and ministry generally, 
 against what it professed to regard as the slanderous 
 accusations of the abolitionists. 
 
 How is it, sir, that the bar-room has disgorged it- 
 self to furnish a body-guard for the pulpit ? Why 
 are the most vicious of your citizens so jealous of your 
 reputation ? Can we suppose that they acted contrary 
 to your wishes in this matter ? Men may oppose, but 
 will rarely defend us by means which we do not sanc- 
 tion and approve. 
 
 You declared you "would sooner co-operate with 
 fiends from perdition than with Rogers and his coad- 
 jutors !" 
 
 Is not this mob alarming proof that you are co- 
 operating with fiends from perdition in the perpetuity 
 of slavery, and not with Rogers and his coadjutors in 
 its overthrow? Respectfully yours, 
 
 STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 
 
 Andover, Mass., Nov. 7, 1841. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 DARTMOUTH COLLEGE — RIOTOUS BEHAVIOR OF THE 
 STUDENTS— STRAFFORD COUNTY ANNIVERSARY— EAST 
 ERN RAILROAD AND ITS JIM CROW CARS-OUT- 
 RAGES ON COLORED PASSENGERS. 
 
 Franklin was but a specimen of New Hampshire, 
 and Mr. Knight was in immense majority, and Dart- 
 mouth college was helping to keep the number of his 
 kind good, if not increase it. At Franklin, the rioters 
 were mostly boys, set on or led on by some old enough 
 to be their fathers and grandfathers, drunk on rum or 
 rage, spleen and spite, but doing the will and pleasure 
 of church and minister. Their ribaldry was as offen- 
 sive as their blasphemy. What we most feared, had 
 most reason to fear, was that some indiscreet friend 
 of ours might be impelled to resist their outrages of 
 word and deed by force. True, the provocation was 
 very great. But had such resistance been made, even 
 to a single blow, however slight, it would have filled 
 the hordes surrounding us with fiendish delight, and 
 bloody scenes must inevitably have followed. Since 
 the war of the rebellion, almost every ruffian appears 
 to be armed with dirk, pistol, or both, ready for use at 
 any moment. It was not so then and there, but I long 
 kept in my cabinet stones and other missiles, includ- 
 ing heavy bullets, which had been hurled at me and 
 my brave companion, through windows, or as we 
 walked or rode along the streets to or from our meet- 
 ings. We read in New Testament times of a Stephen 
 stoned to death by a mob. I traveled and worked 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 205 
 
 with another Stephen who would have cheerfully 
 suffered similar fate. And who shall say it would not 
 have been in an equally holy cause ? And. in deep 
 humility and sincerity I can say we together passed 
 through many scenes where it would have been our 
 joy, and true honor, too, to fall as did the ancient 
 Stephen, could our cause have been best subserved 
 thereby. But it was only in extreme peril that my 
 constitutional cowardice was so far overcome. Mob 
 violence was ever my aversion and dread, till deep in 
 the midst of it. Brave old military heroes have often 
 told me that they trembled at the outset, and till after 
 the first few shots had been exchanged. Then there 
 was no more fear. I could well understand them. 
 But not so my friend Foster. He seemed ever cool 
 and serene, before and through the fiercest encoun- 
 ters. Nor did any one ever see him exultant, in his 
 most brilliant successes. But to return to our 
 narrative. 
 
 The next experiences and their results to be de- 
 scribed occurred, soon after at Dartmouth college, 
 which introduced me to society and scenes unknown 
 before. 
 
 The question has often been asked me, sometimes 
 in letters from distant states, at what college I re- 
 ceived my education. It always sounded strangely in 
 my ears, when remembering that at seven and twenty 
 there was not a harder worked, nor working man, 
 young nor old, in my native state of Massachusetts, nor 
 my involuntarily adopted state of New Hampshire, at 
 four years old. At twenty-four, I joined the Congre- 
 gational church, in Henniker. To me, it was the 
 most sacred, solemn step of my whole life. There 
 had been none of those dark, despairing convictions, 
 so frequently felt and described, and still less had 
 
206 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 there been any of the raptures, the "joy unspeakable 
 and full of glory," that so many experienced, and 
 even loudly boasted. I waited for such, long, earn- 
 estly, expectantly, and confidently. A doubt that 
 such were necessary had not entered my mind, though 
 many around me gave sad evidence in their lives and 
 conversation after their experience, that even the most 
 intense anguish of conviction and exttaic joy in the 
 hour of conversion, were no assurance of regenera- 
 tion or change of heart. The reasonableness, wisdom 
 and righteousness of the divine requirements were 
 made so plain to my understanding, and the observ- 
 ance of them, according to my enlightenment, so 
 necessary to the highest happiness and welfare of the 
 human race, that in the very love of them, I accepted 
 them, irrespective of all questions of perdition as 
 penalty or paradise as reward. Educated almost 
 from infancy in the Congregational Sunday-school, 
 and corresponding religious teaching with scrupulous 
 care and faithfulness at home, it was easy to assume 
 as true all the doctrines of our denomination, trinity 
 atonement, total depravity and election, as well as 
 everlasting rewards and retributions. If away beyond 
 my comprehension, I remembered how many great 
 and holy men had embraced and defended them ; how 
 many godly men and women had died martyrs for 
 them on torturing racks and in burning flames, and 
 who in my situation could doubt their truth without 
 violence to every pulsation of soul and spirit? 
 
 And so I entered the church tremblingly, but re- 
 solved to the best of all I was, or could become, to 
 adorn my profession. And whatever duties were 
 taught me as a christian professor, I endeavored to 
 perform. Temperance and anti-slavery were among 
 my first espousals ; the former with the approval of 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 207 
 
 and encouragement of our pastor, but the latter rather 
 in spite of him. Our first anti-slavery lecture was 
 delivered in the Methodist meeting-house, by Moses 
 A. Cartland, then a most excellent Quaker school- 
 teacher and principal, if not founder, of the once well- 
 known Clinton Grove school, in the adjoining town of 
 Weare. It was in the spring of 1 835, while I was yet 
 with my father and family on the farm. The lecture 
 was a calm, serene, but truthful and faithful presen- 
 tation of the wrongs of the slave, the crimes and 
 cruelties, the outrages and abominations inseparable 
 from the slave system ; but all delivered with the 
 gentleness and spirit of Lydia Maria Child, from 
 whose writings he frequently and liberally quoted, 
 and several older members of the church than myself 
 were deeply impressed by the important truths we 
 heard. Not so, however, the minister and most of the 
 leading church members and officers. A general town 
 meeting was called at the town house, and speeches 
 were made and resolutions adopted denouncing and 
 condemning the anti-slavery agitation and all who 
 abetted or encouraged it. And similar meetings 
 were held in many towns all over the state, and 
 their proceedings were published in the newspapers. 
 At this time, and for three or four years after- 
 ward, the agitation had not jarred the founda- 
 tions of church or pulpit to such a degree as to pro- 
 duce the winnowings, the separations and rendings 
 that were to ensue in 1839 and 1840, when in very 
 deed judgment had to begin, and did " begin at the 
 house of God /" Till then, there were many in the 
 churches, ministers as well as others, who hated 
 slavery and were willing it should be abolished if the 
 peace and sleep of their organizations be not thereby 
 disturbed. But so it could not be. In our church at 
 
208 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Henniker, temperance was held and preached as a 
 cardinal christian virtue. The church covenant re- 
 quired of every member " total abstinence from ar- 
 dent spirits as a drink," as early as 1835, if not before. 
 Had the ministers espoused and proclaimed the doc- 
 trines and duties of anti-slavery as earnestly, most of 
 the church would as cordially have embraced them. 
 My anti-slavery gave some offence, especially when 
 once a slaveholder came and preached in our pulpit, 
 and I absented myself from meeting solely in conse- 
 quence. But only few held with me, and none had 
 gone so far as to refuse sermon and sacrament from a 
 slaveholder, though several men and women approved 
 my course in such refusal. 
 
 It was to the question however, at what college my 
 education was obtained, that I proposed to answer a 
 few words, and directly in continuation of the matter 
 in hand. In prosecuting our mission, Mr. Foster and 
 myself found ourselves at Hanover, and the gates of 
 Dartmouth college, from whence Foster had graduated 
 only three years before, and with more than ordinary 
 college honors. I had never before seen the interior 
 of that, nor of any other college, in my life ; and to 
 academies and high-schools I was scarcely less a 
 stranger. 
 
 The annual meeting of the Grafton county society 
 had been already held, but in the south part of the 
 county, a full day's drive from Hanover, and a similar 
 convening seemed desirable in the northern section, 
 and Hanover was the selected place. It was a full 
 week, however, before any house could be found in 
 which to assemble, and the committee were at length, 
 after that delay, compelled to call our meeting at the 
 dancing hall of the principal hotel. Neither church 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 209 
 
 nor college would open to us a door, nor condescend 
 to give us any reason why we were so summarily 
 denied. 
 
 At the time appointed, however, the convention 
 assembled in encouraging numbers, was duly organ- 
 ized, opened with prayer, and we proceeded to busi- 
 ness. Henry C. Wright, of Philadelphia, formerly a 
 Congregational minister, Mr. Foster, and myself 
 were present as principal speakers, though all persons 
 present were cordially invited, as was our invariable 
 custom, to participate in the discussions. The first 
 resolution presented was to the effect that in any 
 moral conflict, strength and success depended, not so 
 much upon numbers, as on inflexible adherence to 
 principle. An interesting debate ensued, which occu- 
 pied the remainder of the morning session, when the 
 resolution passed unanimously, and we adjourned 
 till afternoon. 
 
 At two o'clock we again assembled, when after 
 prayer the following resolution was offered : 
 
 Resolved, That every person in the nation, north or 
 south, who is not an open abolitionist, is by his influ- 
 ence, sustaining and perpetuating slavery, and should 
 be regarded by every friend of humanity as a virtual 
 slave-holder. 
 
 This resolution was the order for afternoon. A 
 clerical agent of the new organization came also among 
 us. He moved an amendment diluting the resolution 
 to his taste and temper. And as church, college and 
 village made a large part of the audience after closing 
 all their doors against us, the original resolution was. 
 rejected, by small majority. In the evening, our 
 resolution read as below : 
 
 Resolved, That American slavery is a complication 
 of the foulest crimes ; robbery, adultery, man-stealing, 
 and murder; and should therefore be immediately 
 and unconditionally abolished. 
 
2IO ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The college students crowded themselves together 
 and were very disorderly, both before and after the 
 exercises began, clapping, hissing, and hooting, in 
 most indecent and vulgar manner. Mr. Foster opened 
 the discussion in an address of wondrous eloquence 
 and power of argument, showing how slavery was all 
 the resolution charged and a great deal more, and 
 that logically, morally, every way, the slave-holder 
 must be robber, adulterer, man-stealer and murderer. 
 Then he illustrated what these crimes meant in slavery; 
 how a man-stealer must be as much greater than a 
 horse or sheep-stealer, as a man is better and greater 
 than sheep or horse. Then he asked : " How much 
 greater is a man than a sheep ? " " Who in Dartmouth 
 college can solve that problem? Who?" And yet, he 
 declared, " those monsters are hourly stealing the very 
 Christ who died for them, in the person of his little 
 ones. For inasmuch as they do it to the poorest, 
 blackest of his children, they do it unto God ! And 
 to Christ his Son. All this, not to speak of the other 
 capital crimes mentioned in the resolution. And who 
 perpetrates these outrages ? They are ministers, 
 bishops, elders, doctors of divinity, deacons, and 
 church members, presidents and professors of colleges 
 and theological seminaries." And he declared, "those 
 at the north who fellowshiped such as christians and 
 christian ministers, are bad as they. They voluntarily 
 make themselves man-stealers and robbers, adulterers 
 and murderers, in position, all of them ; and many of 
 them in heart. We do not see them do the deeds, 
 and so we hold them innocent. But what would you 
 say if President Lord, of your own college, should be 
 seen carrying home at night, a stolen sheep ? or buy- 
 ing one he knew had just been stolen ?" 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 211 
 
 From that time, the order and quiet of the conven- 
 tion were no more. But the disturbance did not 
 begin then, it was only mightily increased. It com- 
 menced before the opening prayer, and did not wholly 
 cease during the evening. There were those, not all 
 boys, who, during some of Mr. Foster's most thrilling 
 appeals, and blood curdling descriptions, would keep 
 up their scraping, whistling, and snickering, as though 
 they were in some cheap circus or minstrel show. 
 Possibly on some battle-field in the Rebellion, they 
 learned their mistake. 
 
 For a time we were completely silenced by the 
 uproar. The editor of the Hanover Amulet, who hap- 
 pened to enter at that moment, said in his next paper: 
 " Judge of our surprise when we entered the hall where 
 we supposed every heart beat in unison with sympathy 
 for the oppressed, to find general tumult and confu- 
 sion," which tumult continued through the evening 
 with greater or less atrocity to the very last ; and the 
 clerical new organization agent added greatly, and 
 seemed to enjoy greatly, the outrage. 
 
 But no explanation which Mr. Foster could make 
 availed anything. For a long time, he had no hearing 
 at all. When he obtained the ear for a few moments, 
 he abjured utterly, any disrespect to President Lord 
 or to the college. He only wished to impress on the 
 minds and hearts of his hearers, the awful wickedness 
 of slavery, and not less of the north, especially the 
 northern church and clergy, in fellowshiping as 
 christians, these monsters of iniquity — that for Dr. 
 Lord he had only profound respect ; and with good 
 reason, he said, for he had ever been as a father to 
 him, both while he was at college and since he gradu- 
 ated ; and that sooner should his tongue cleave to the 
 roof of his mouth than be guilty of uttering one word 
 
2 12 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 to his injury ; but all to no purpose. He was con- 
 stantly hissed and insulted till he closed his remarks, 
 and afterwards, if he attempted to speak, until we 
 closed the meeting. 
 
 Henry C. Wright was not much better received, 
 though in most pathetic word and tone, he depicted 
 the condition of the enslaved, completely, hopelessly, 
 and to their last breath, in the power of those who had 
 been proved beyond all possibility of doubt, robbers, 
 and adulterers, man-stealers and murderers ; cruel, 
 remorseless, relentless as death. Mr. Wright was 
 heard, with more or less interruption, nearly half 
 an hour. 
 
 The next speaker was the new organization minis- 
 ter. He was from some place in Massachusetts. In 
 rather a sneering, contemptuous manner he asked, 
 not the mob, but us who had called the meeting, if he 
 might speak. He had surely heard the resolution 
 offered, and seen it adopted unanimously, that " all 
 persons present be invited to participate in the delib- 
 erations of the convention." In his conventions and 
 meetings, no such resolution was ever offered, speak- 
 ing and voting being always insolently denied to 
 women, even such women as Abby Kelly, the Grimke 
 sisters, and Lucretia Mott. He, of course, as in the 
 afternoon, strenuously opposed our resolution, and 
 presented a stupidly modified and diluted substitute. 
 The solemn and pathetic address of Mr. Wright had 
 produced a deep and desirable impression on many 
 minds, and the object of the substituted resolution 
 and its mover was to efface it. His low, vulgar wit, 
 the farthest possible remove from the searching de- 
 scription and appeal of Mr. Wright, was loudly 
 cheered and applauded by the uproarious crew for 
 whose benefit it was uttered. Very sapiently, he quo- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 213 
 
 ted the law of his state of Massachusetts as to what 
 constituted murder. He was applauded and approved. 
 Mr. Foster responded from his seat with the scripture 
 law, " He that hateth his brother is a murderer," and 
 was loudly hissed. As the best our opponent could 
 do with the scripture allusion as a higher law, he be- 
 gan a taunting strain of remark about our being, not 
 an anti-slavery society, but a non-resistance, no-gov- 
 ernment association ; and gave as his proof that we 
 quoted scripture instead of ordinary, legal definitions. 
 This false and foolish charge, two or three times re- 
 peated and boisterously applauded, was all the irrele- 
 vant matter thrust upon us in a business way. No 
 notice was taken of this, except by Mr. Wright, who 
 very coolly remarked that an anti-slavery convention 
 was not the place to discuss non-resistance. Our op- 
 ponent admitted that the resolution was strictly true 
 in every charge but that of murder. In our argument 
 we had not alluded to scripture at all on any of the 
 counts in the resolution. We had judged slavery by 
 ordinary statute and the natural rights of common 
 humanity. At this point, we asked our opponent 
 whether to shoot down, or tear in pieces with trained 
 blood-hounds, a poor slave who, under cover of night, 
 was quietly, peacefully fleeing to Canada for freedom, 
 was not murder ? " No," he said, " not legal murder," 
 and this answer elicited applause loud and long, mak- 
 ing the floor to tremble under our feet. From this 
 time, if not indeed long before, all sense of honor, 
 propriety, decency, was disregarded. The women 
 present had before retired in disgust, and it seemed 
 probable that we who had called the convention 
 would no longer be suffered. But Foster determined 
 to make one more effort at a hearing. Seizing on a 
 moment of comparative silence, in a loud voice he 
 
2 14 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 proceeded to say that he had a few days before visited 
 Hanover, to secure a place for this convention, but 
 was unable to procure any place whatever that was 
 controlled by the college ; that he then applied for 
 this tavern hall, and, after some delay and delibera- 
 tion, he secured it, at the not unreasonable price of 
 three dollars a day ; that it had been our intention to 
 continue the convention two days and evenings, but 
 such had been the confusion and uproar of this even- 
 ing, and such the manifest intention, if possible, to 
 hinder the orderly and quiet prosecution of our busi- 
 ness, the meetings will be closed to-night ; and the 
 responsibility of disturbing and breaking up an open, 
 free-discussion, anti-slavery convention, may rest on those 
 to whom it justly belongs. 
 
 These remarks, in good, strong, earnest tone and 
 spirit, made a deep impression. Many had not before 
 comprehended the position in which they had placed 
 themselves and their college. One young man, after- 
 wards a professor in a theological seminary, rose and 
 attempted what proved a most lame and impotent de- 
 fence of the rioters. He said it was the custom of 
 the students to express their approval or disapproval 
 of whatever passed before them in this way ; that an 
 attack had been made on Dr. Lord, an honored and 
 respected officer of the institution, and it was not 
 strange that those who honored and venerated him 
 should thus manifest their disapprobation. And be- 
 sides, the students themselves had been reproached, 
 and took this method to express their displeasure at 
 that also. One or two others also spoke to about the 
 same import ; one adding to other charges, that our 
 "speeches were wild and windy," and another, that 
 they "were long and tedious." 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 215 
 
 Glad at seeing any change for the better in the 
 temper or methods of our opponents, I ventured, for 
 the first time during the evening, to occupy a few 
 minutes, and began by assuring the meeting that it was 
 not strange, since the president and college professors 
 had driven the poor slave to the tavern hall as the 
 only place where, with their approval, his friends 
 could assemble to plead his cause, the students, imi- 
 tating their spirit, should come here also to drive 
 us from this, the slave's last refuge. I reminded 
 them that this, like all our meetings, was open 
 to free and friendly discussion ; unlike most assem- 
 blies, as free to our opponents as our friends. 
 We learned afterwards that the committee of the 
 Congregational meeting-house, which was also refused 
 us, was composed in part of the college faculty, the 
 very chairman of the board being one. I said further, 
 what surely was always true at that time, that we found 
 the most violent opposition to the anti-slavery cause 
 among the so-called "educated ministry," and that 
 from this time we could not be surprised at it, for here 
 at college, they see the doors of meeting-houses, ves- 
 tries, lecture rooms, shut against us, and commence 
 their hostilities by driving us even from tavern halls, 
 Here to-night, I said, we see what the candidates for 
 the ministry can do through hatred to our movements, 
 and in imitation of the spirit of those under whose 
 tuition you have placed yourselves ; and everywhere 
 we are seeing and feeling what you may do when you 
 come to be ministers. I said that my own life had 
 been anything rather than a student's life ; that, 
 though I had traveled and lectured extensively 
 throughout New York and New England, singularly 
 enough, I had never, till to-day, seen even the outside 
 of a college (we thought of that, exclaimed one in 
 
2l6 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 the crowd) ; and I hoped as to moral character, that 
 what we saw here, was not a fair specimen of our 
 higher institutions of learning ; though I felt com- 
 pelled to say. that, judging from the spirit and posi- 
 tion of the clergy and most of our educated men on 
 the great questions of moral reform, I feared most of 
 our large seminaries of learning had not been much 
 misrepresented by the students of Dartmouth college, 
 here to-night. It did not surprise me that by this 
 time the tumult was renewed by some of the younger 
 portion of the disturbers, nor did I greatly regret it, 
 for I felt that my rebuke was as necessary as it was 
 richly deserved ; and that kind of hostile demonstra- 
 tion only clinched tighter the argument. Many 
 endeavored to hush the confusion and some cried 
 loudly, " Hear him, hear him." But I had closed my 
 remarks, and kept my feet till it was possible to be 
 again heard, and then moved that the convention be 
 now finally adjourned; which was immediately put, and 
 carried unanimously. And with that closed my first 
 and last connection with any college. And now the 
 question is answered ; at what college I obtained my 
 education? The answer; my collegiate education, at 
 Dartmouth ; and all in one day. There needed no 
 more. One or two later, fiercer, college mobs added 
 nothing new, nor important to my stock of knowledge 
 in that department. 
 
 Still, why blame the students ? They had good rea- 
 son to suppose they were serving the college, and 
 doing the will of its officers. It was no worse for 
 them to mob us out of the hotel hall, than it was for 
 their masters and the church authorities to send us 
 there, by shutting us out of every other place. Our 
 cause was then passing through its most fiery ordeal. 
 The time having come "that judgment must begin 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 217 
 
 at the house of God," church and pulpit, college, 
 university and theological seminary seemed to have 
 made treaty, offensive and defensive, against it. Most 
 of those institutions, as well as the academies and les- 
 ser seats of learning, were then, as always, largely 
 under clerical control. The writings of President 
 % Lord, of Dartmouth college, on slavery and the abo- 
 litionists, were fearful. Some of them lie before me. 
 In the light of the "Golden Rule," of Confucius, and 
 of the Sermon on the Mount, centuries after, they are 
 infamous. Amid the blazing terrors of Fort Wagner 
 and Port Hudson, the torments of Andersonville and 
 Libby prisons, they are truly diabolical. Shall we 
 blame the pupils of such a president for a few hours 
 of rude, indecent and vulgar behavior, and riotously 
 breaking up of a county convention with welcome 
 entrance to what might have been a free, friendly 
 anti-slavery discussion ? Verily, no ! 
 
 Andover Latin Academy and Lane Theological 
 Seminary had driven away large numbers of their 
 bravest, most conscientious and high-minded students 
 by downright pro-slavery intolerance. Canaan, New 
 Hampshire, Academy, had been broken up for the 
 unpardonable sin of admitting a few colored pupils on 
 equal terms with the white, by vote of the people in 
 legal town meeting assembled. A committee was ap- 
 pointed for the business, and, as officially reported in 
 the JV. H. Patriot, the edifice was lifted from its 
 foundations, and by three hundred men and a hun- 
 dred yoke of oxen was hauled out of town. The 
 most respectable and wealthy farmers in the place 
 assisted in service like that at the bidding of the 
 slave-power, which then ruled supreme. Well does 
 Senator Wilson, in his History, ask in his account of 
 it, " Could the fanaticism of slavery go farther than 
 
2l8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 that? how demoralized the community which could 
 furnish the actors in such a drama, and applaud it 
 when enacted ! " 
 
 But "the fanaticism of slavery" could and did go 
 a great deal farther than that, as Senator Wilson and 
 his country learned to their cost, in the coming years. 
 
 Miss Prudence Crandall, a benevolent and philan- 
 thropic woman of the Society of Friends, had her 
 school in Canterbury, Connecticut, utterly broken up 
 and routed for the same offence as that of the Noyes 
 academy at Canaan. Her's was a school for girls, 
 and the outrages attending the transaction were some 
 of them too shameful to be told. Town meetings 
 were held, resolutions offered and discussed in words 
 harder than bullets ; Mrs. Crandall was arrested, 
 thrust into prison, dragged to trial, and, though ac- 
 quitted by the court, was re-arrested, tried over again, 
 and this time convicted. Her counsel filed a bill of 
 exceptions, and appealed the case. By the highest 
 tribunal in the state the verdict was overruled. Then 
 a ruffian crowd assailed her house, and destroyed it, 
 and the pupils were all sent to their homes, to return 
 no more ! 
 
 We could easily forgive the rioters at Dartmouth 
 college. And moreover, a clerical new organization 
 agent was present, greatly to encourage them. The 
 churches had already been proved, by their own vol- 
 untary testimony, "the bulwarks of American slavery," 
 and nearly all the large literary and theological insti- 
 tutions in the land were buttressed about them. We 
 forgave the students, remembering who it was that 
 said, " It is enough for the disciple that he be as his 
 master, and the servant as his lord." 
 
 This chapter will close with a highly descriptive 
 and instructive account of the annual meeting of the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 219 
 
 Strafford County Anti-Slavery Society, in 1842, at 
 Dover, much of it from the pen of Mr. Rogers. It 
 was largely attended, and continued three whole days 
 and evenings. Many resolutions were discussed and 
 adopted with entire unanimity. The most important 
 are given below. The first was offered by Rev. John 
 Parkman, then Unitarian minister of Dover : 
 
 Resolved, That our devout acknowledgments are 
 due to that Almighty Power whose arm has sustained 
 us so graciously in every stage of our enterprise, for 
 the encouragement furnished to future exertion by 
 the successes of the past. 
 
 The resolution was earnestly supported by the 
 mover and Mr. Garrison, and unanimously adopted. 
 The next were as below : 
 
 Whereas, According to the recognized interpreta- 
 tions of the United States Constitution, and the uni- 
 form practice of the federal government, the free states 
 arc pledged to the support of slavery j and whereas, 
 southern slaveholders, by their oppression and cruelty, 
 are doing all in their power to incite their slaves to re- 
 sistance, at the same time relying upon our aid to de- 
 liver them in their hour of peril ; therefore, 
 
 Resolved, That we solemnly warn the whole country 
 that, come what may come, compact or no compact, 
 Constitution or no Constitution, Union or no Union, 
 neither duty to God nor allegiance to law would ever 
 allow us to obey any requisition of government call- 
 ing us to put down by arms any rising of the slaves. 
 
 Resolved, That it be recommended to abolitionists 
 to call town meetings in their respective towns, to 
 consider those terms of the federal compact which 
 have been construed to bind them to the support of 
 slavery, and whether they would comply, should they 
 be called upon to do so by the United States Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Resolved, That the church that has set and that con- 
 tinues the example of the negro pew, (and which 
 example has been so eagerly followed by the proprie- 
 tors and conductors of our steamboats and railway 
 
220 ACTS OF AXTI-SLAVERV APOSTLES. 
 
 cars,) is guilty of an attack on the works of the great 
 Creator which gives convincing assurance that it is 
 not governed by the spirit of Christ, nor the fear of 
 that God who is declared to be "no respecter of per- 
 sons." 
 
 Resolved, That the Eastern Railroad corporation, in 
 compelling its sers r ants to outrage people of color by 
 invidiously commanding them out of respectable into 
 inferior cars, and even in dragging them out by force 
 and violence, is cruelly proscriptive and insulting to 
 our common humanity. 
 
 Resolved, That in the rejection, by the United States 
 senate, of the nominations of Messrs. Everett, Wilson 
 and Eastman, upon the alleged ground of opinion in 
 regard to slavery, we see another proof of the undue 
 predominance of southern interests in our national 
 legislature, and we regard the expression of pub- 
 lic sentiment recently manifested upon this point as a 
 sign that the free states are becoming sensible of this, 
 and of the connection between their own rights and 
 the assertion of the rights of the slaves. 
 
 Resolved, That the omission of the United States 
 senate to confirm the nominations of Everett and 
 others, on account of their anti-slavery opinions, just 
 named, reveals the horrid truth that the South holds 
 slavery to be the paramount interest of the country ; 
 and that the resentment manifested at this refusal by 
 the pro-slavery northern press betrays the humiliating 
 truth that the North regards the rejection of party 
 nominations as a greater insult to liberty than the en- 
 slavement of one-sixth part of the people. 
 
 Resolved, That the course of Andover theological 
 seminary in attempting, through some of its profes- 
 sors, to justify American slavery from the Bible, in 
 openly opposing the anti-slavery enterprise, and in 
 giving to the community a ministry that has generally 
 proved itself the sternest obstacle to the progress of 
 anti-slavery truth, has been such as should excite the 
 deepest apprehension and alarm for the cause of hu- 
 manity and of Christianity, and calls loudly for the 
 severest rebuke of every abolitionist. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 22 1 
 
 Subjoined are the editorial remarks of Mr. Rogers, 
 in the Herald of Freedom : 
 
 The Dover Meeting. — We had intended a full 
 account of this great and interesting and most im- 
 portant convention, for this week. It was the more 
 necessary as the report of the officers of the meeting 
 is so condensed and bare. The proceedings lose much 
 of their intrinsic force by the compressed form in 
 which they are presented. Several resolutions, for in- 
 stance, that were acted on separately, are given in one 
 and as if passed together. We are about starting to 
 accompany Brother Pillsbury to Hancock and Fran- 
 cestown to a series of anti-slavery meetings, and can 
 say now but a hasty word and be more particular here- 
 after. The meetings were held in the old Court 
 House, a very convenient and comfortable room, and 
 well employed ; and as lit as a meeting house would 
 be, and more free. There was a goodly attendance. 
 The mass of the people did not come in. They were 
 not advised to by their controllers. The ministers did 
 not as they ought to have done, give the people notice 
 and exhort or encourage them to attend. They did 
 not want them to. They wanted them not to. They 
 were there themselves, led by curiosity, or policy, or 
 fear, or all three. The Rev. Mr. Young was there, 
 in nervous but heartless attendance, during the entire 
 meeting. > He looked on verily like a priest and a 
 Levite. The Rev. Mr. Horton was in and out, with 
 his sneer and his laugh, looking and acting more like 
 a jolly friar than a christian. He is professionally en- 
 gaged in reading Church of England service Sundays, 
 and that is the worship of his sect. Nothing would 
 be deemed by him "a greater insult," he asserted to 
 some one during the convention, " than to be called 
 an abolitionist." Nothing, we remark, would be so 
 deep an insult to abolitionism. " I would not be 
 caught shaking hands with Mr. Lloyd Garrison," he 
 said. 
 
 We intend to give a full and particular representa- 
 tion of the meeting, and of the part acted by promi- 
 nent opposers in attendance as well as the abolition- 
 ists, if we can get time before we forget it. It was a 
 
222 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 marvellous meeting', and there were marvellous human 
 developments there which would instruct the times if 
 they could be graphically delineated. Hogarth would 
 be the narrator to give the demeanor of a pro-slavery 
 minister or politician at an anti-slavery meeting. 
 
 This is all for which Mr. Rogers had time during 
 the week of the convention. Attending other meet- 
 ings with Mr. Foster and myself the next week in 
 other counties, to which his presence added great 
 charm and force, prevented but a few more remarks 
 on that at Dover, in the next Herald, to this purport; 
 
 The Dover Meeting is not forgotten, but un- 
 avoidably deferred. We have never attended a meet- 
 ing of any character so splendidly sustained and so 
 orderly, voluntarily and beautifully conducted. It 
 was a self-governed meeting. Our nominal president 
 declined keeping order; and when, once or twice, some, 
 who came in to dispute, called for order and bred 
 some little disorder, he threw the meeting on its 
 self-government, and all was quietness. Oh, that the 
 people, the laboring people, the toiling people, the 
 livelong-day working men, and the women, whose task 
 is never done, oh, that they had been allowed to be 
 present and hear the truths that would have found 
 response in their unsophisticated hearts! They were 
 not allowed to be there. They were discouraged 
 away by the unprincipalled politician and the Jesuiti- 
 cal priest. How shall anti-slavery get at them ? 
 Must it go with Foster into the synagogues on Sun- 
 day, and speak to them in the face of the cannon's 
 mouth and bayonet's point ? When shall anti-slavery 
 find a chance to speak to the people .' We were amazed 
 above measure to hear brother Francis Cogswell and 
 Rev. Brother Young eulogizing Garrison. " I have 
 been highly pleased with Mr. Garrison," said brother 
 Young. Brother Young's being pleased or displeased, 
 by the way, was infinitely unimportant. He seemed 
 to think it more material than to repent of his mobo- 
 cratic, pro-slavery spirit, which could outrage the 
 decencies of an anti-slavery meeting, last winter, in 
 his own meeting-house! He declared solemnly, the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 223 
 
 ■second evening of the convention, that he was pleased 
 with some of the proceedings of the meetings ! an in- 
 direct clerical blow at other of the proceedings — viz. 
 'at the apostolic plainness of Pillsbury, and the Nathan- 
 like directness of the faithful Foster. He would 
 compliment the infidel Garrison himself if he could 
 do it at the expense of these men. "If you would 
 send out such men as Garrison," said friend Cogs- 
 well, "your cause would prosper." "How long have 
 you been an admirer of Garrison, brother Cogswell?" 
 said we. "Oh, I have not liked his writings," said 
 he. " He has not written as he speaks, here." "Al- 
 ways," said we, "only he speaks with more ultraism 
 and denunciation than he has ever written. "Impos- 
 sible! I find no fault with anything he has said 
 here," said Brother Cogswell. " Everybody finds 
 fault with Garrison," said we, "until they see him and 
 bear' him speak. If you had read what you have 
 heard, it would have been, ferocious denunciation. But 
 when you see the man and hear him, it is quite an- 
 other thing. And, brother Young," said we to him, 
 as he stood by, praising Garrison, "brother Young, 
 we never shall hear anything from you of Garrison's 
 infidelity hereafter. Remember that." * * * * 
 * * * The Strafford-county anti-slavery society 
 is auxiliary to the N. H. anti-slavery society. We 
 mention the auxiliaryship, for, on that point, our 
 friends were strenuously assisted by the genius of new 
 organization under the treacherous form of neuterism. 
 A few clergymen, afraid to espouse the unpopular 
 side of old organization, and ashamed of the revealed 
 infamy of the new, took refuge under the name of 
 neutrality, or neither one thing nor another. This an- 
 niversary was not of the excrescence which they con- 
 trived to form. Such excrescences have no anniver- 
 saries. They do not live long enough. They never 
 live a year unless kept alive by external galvanic in- 
 fluences. The American Union lived but a day. 
 The new organization lived longer, but it was by gal- 
 vanism. It has undergone a change, now, "in its 
 mode of existence." It is a third political party, with 
 liberty poles up and flags flying, as smart as any of 
 the "nations round about." 
 
224 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Strafford anti-slavery organised itself as an auxil- 
 iary to the old movement. And it is its grand anni- 
 versary we are noticing. We spoke last week of some 
 of the names in it. * * * We do not eulogize 
 abolitionists as men do the politicians, but we proclaim 
 their excellencies, if at all, in behalf of our despised 
 and down-trodden cause. We claim for that cause 
 the worth of those enlisted in it. We remind the 
 scornful world that "the salt of the earth is with us." 
 And we bid them beware on whom they are trampling. 
 But anti -slavery leans not on the merits, however great, 
 of those who have embarked in it. It is among the 
 chief merits of any man, that he has espoused so glo- 
 rious a cause as this. But this is delicate ground and 
 we hasten from it. The forenoon of the first day was 
 spent, after getting over the choice of officers, which 
 being matter of constitutional obligation could not be 
 dispensed with, had it been desired, but which was 
 disposed of in the most summary manner possible, by 
 choosing, at one vote, all the last year's officers, en 
 masse, in discussing a resolution offered by John Park- 
 man. A resolution touching the influence of the 
 church and clergy on our enterprise had been offered 
 by Brother Lunt, of Somersworth. It went to the very 
 gist of the movement, and touched slavery in the apple 
 of its eye. At Brother Parkman's request, it was 
 deferred by the mover till the consideration of one he 
 desired to introduce, which came very properly as a 
 threshold topic — to wit: acknowledging obligation to 
 God in view of the past successes of the cause, and 
 the grounds of encouragement found in them to future 
 effort. This was beautifully discussed by Brothers 
 Parkman and Garrison. 
 
 The afternoon was not, in our opinion, so wisely nor 
 profitably spent. Instead of taking up Brother Lunt's 
 resolution, as should have been done in its order, 
 Brother Henry C. Wright, with a view perhaps to 
 bring out the eminent talent present, on the constitu- 
 tional question, introduced a series of resolutions in- 
 volving the relations slavery sustains to that poor old 
 unprincipled compact. The afternoon was wasted in 
 a waste of ability on a heartless theme. There was 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 225 
 
 much good speaking, which in Fancuil hall or any of 
 our meeting houses, on some patriotic occasion, would 
 have been lauded to the stars by the party presses. 
 But no appeals were made to the heart or conscience 
 of a slave-holding people. For one, though, we once 
 labored a good deal to vindicate the old military com- 
 pact from the reproach of slavery, we care very little 
 about it now, as an anti-slavery question. It will move 
 the hearts of the people neither one way nor the other. 
 While as pro-slavery as they now are, the thunders of 
 the Almighty alone can rouse their attention, or lead 
 them to repentance. The awful truths of the Bible, 
 not the constitution, are to be poured on their obdur- 
 ate hearts. We care nothing for our obligation, one 
 way or the other, under this compact, to interfere in a 
 rising of the southern slaves. Abolitionists, as such 
 cannot fight for the slave, nor need they tell the south 
 they will not fight against him. The south don't ex- 
 pect us to. She thinks, or pretends to think, aboli- 
 tionists are for inciting the slaves to rise and kill them 
 all. Of course the masters need not be told, nor the 
 north either, that we will not take arms in behalf of 
 slavery. That slavery is unconstitutional, we have no 
 doubt. But the nation does not care for that. They 
 will interpret the constitution as they choose to under- 
 stand it. Least of all, would they ever alter their 
 habits, or change their social character to suit a mere 
 heartless political compact. They will hold slaves in 
 spite of everything but the fear of hell. We would 
 urge on them the horrible iniquity of incurring that 
 awful retribution. They would fear it now but for the 
 ungodly influence of the clergy. That sears their 
 conscience and hardens their heart. The mind of the 
 convention was perplexed by an argument on the con- 
 stitution. No doubt the clergymen present were 
 greatly edified and relieved by it. We put it to the 
 sound judgment of all concerned, whether the subiect 
 is worth our anti-slavery while. The constitution can't 
 hold slaves when the great national brotherhood of 
 thieves shall have relaxed their grasp upon them. 
 Had the Strafford bar been present, who usually occu- 
 pied the room, or had the court been sitting, the argu- 
 
22<) ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 ment would have enlightened their heads, if it could 
 not have softened their hearts. But the convention 
 was a body of plain-minded, simple hearted men and 
 women, whose souls would starve on such husks as 
 statutes and constitutions. 
 
 The evening meeting was at Rev. Mr. Young's 
 synagogue. He did not break it up riotously, as he 
 did the meeting of our state agents last winter, which 
 disorderly and mobocratic proceeding was suffered to 
 pass too lightly. Had poor laborers mobbed the 
 meeting, we should have treated them with much less 
 ceremony. But it was the reverend and elevated Mr. 
 Young, and we treated it, as well as bore it, with very 
 deferential submission. It was really a ruffian dis- 
 turbance. Jeremiah Young broke in upon the de- 
 cency and order of the meeting with the rudeness 
 and lawlessness of a ruffian. He differed from a 
 drunken brawler only in form. He as clearly violated 
 the right, and so did friends Cogswell and Pierce. 
 They declined speaking when invited, and when they 
 had the right. They held back till they were excited 
 by their mobocratic minister, and then they broke out. 
 They must not think to treat anti-slavery quite so 
 contemptuously, and go unreproved. We ought to 
 have reproved them on the spot, as riotous and dis- 
 orderly men. But the evening meeting at the anni- 
 versary was not disturbed. We take occasion, how- 
 ever, to enter our disapproval of its arrangement. It 
 was planned beforehand for the purpose of an intel- 
 lectual impression. Not exactly so, but in accordance 
 with that sort of policy. The ablest speakers were 
 selected, instead of leaving the meeting, these among 
 the rest, to its spontaneous action. Garrison and 
 Phillips spoke, but not like themselves. They were 
 hampered by the arrangements of the meeting. They 
 were not impelled to speak. And the fugitive Doug- 
 lass was mounted away up into the mahogany perch, 
 where the people look up to gaze at Rev. Brother 
 Young, Sundays, as the Israelites did up Mount Sinai 
 after Moses, or after him who abode in the thick 
 clouds about its summit. What a place for a fugitive 
 slave to speak in, and to tell his simple story ! It was 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 227 
 
 incongruous enough to be in the synagogue itself, 
 where a free colored man can't be allowed a pew, as 
 we understand. But it was the awkwardest of all 
 places, to be mounted up among those astral lamps, 
 as high, almost, as the stars. The parties all per- 
 formed as well as men could under the circumstances, 
 but it was no evening for the afternoon that preceded 
 it. Rev. Brother Young was "delighted " with it. No 
 mob dog moved a tongue, whereas, had the meeting 
 been spontaneous, Douglass would have moved hearts 
 of stone there, and Garrison and Phillips would have 
 made the house quake through all its dedicated re- 
 cesses. Brother Young was so pleased with the meet- 
 ing that he condescended, the next evening, to de- 
 clare his satisfaction publicly. He was pleased, he 
 graciously said, with most that he had heard ; mean- 
 ing, of course, the parts of the meetings we have no- 
 ticed. Collins said something, at a late hour, of the 
 outrage inflicted on himself and Douglass on board 
 the railroad cars from Boston. Douglass gave a 
 sketch of his slave experience, and of slavery itself, 
 but somewhat embarrassed by his unnatural position. 
 He told how he learned to read — of his conflict with 
 the alphabet and the abs amid the hazards of slavery. 
 He learned to write on board fences, making some of 
 his early capitals with their heads downwards and 
 looking the wrong way. It was laughable to hear 
 him. Still, we could not help thinking of humanity 
 driven to such extremity for the rudiments of knowl- 
 edge, here amid the lights and professions of a relig- 
 ious republic. Here, where learning is as common as 
 the air, the poor slave, trodden down below humanity, 
 has to steal the crumbs of intelligence that lay about 
 almost within reach of the dogs in the street. Thanks 
 to our missionary, theologizing, Bible-circulating, 
 tract-spreading religion ! It has slaves whom it dooms 
 to death for learning the letters and syllables of the 
 language they have to speak, and in which they want 
 to read the Bible ! 
 
 Next morning the meeting opened tree and unfet- 
 tered. A voluntary prayer was offered, not as an 
 unmeaning ceremonv, as is common in fettered 
 
228 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 assemblies, and Lunt's resolution was called. He 
 made a plain, sensible, spirit-moving speech upon it. 
 Many others spoke, as mentioned in the report of the 
 meeting, and with exceeding power. We hardly ever 
 witnessed a half day like it ; it was an uninterrupted 
 stream of solemn interest throughout, particularly the 
 passage between brothers Coues and Garrison. 
 Brother Coues had rarely attended anti-slavery meet- 
 ings, and had been rather repelled by apprehensions 
 of anti-slavery harshness and denunciation. He 
 deprecated in his speech, which was very beautiful 
 in manner, but we think, too full of allowance in sen- 
 timent to pro-slavery claims, the denial of christian 
 character to all slave-holding ; and claimed for them 
 a sort of indulgence to remain in their unhallowed 
 relation to their fellow-men. Garrison answered him 
 in apostolic style ; and the manner in which brother 
 Coues received his over-powering admonition, was 
 most affecting and delightful. It was uttered with 
 christian fidelity, and received with christian magnan- 
 imity. Garrison's appeal was one of the best expos- 
 itions of Christianity we have ever heard. Sundry 
 clergymen heard it, who had doubtless often warned 
 their flock against anti-slavery, on account of "the 
 infidelity of Garrison." They now heard him, 
 and how must the remembrance of their falsehood 
 have blistered their consciences, if hot iron had 
 not seared them ! * * * * 
 
 The Dover Enquirer, one of the party presses, in the 
 magnificent struggle going on in the country for the 
 loaves and fishes of office, ventured the other day to 
 speak of the meeting, and of our remarks upon it. 
 The editor supposed he had espied out an indefensi- 
 ble sentence or two, and he seized upon them with 
 true pro-slavery veracity, leaving out all that common 
 honesty would have published in connection, to give 
 the reader opportunity to judge of the unwarrantable 
 extracts. Colonel Wadleigh (for most all of these 
 political editors are colonels or majors), is almost fero- 
 cious for the sacred honor of the meeting house. The 
 politicians and militia officers nearly all are. They 
 think meeting houses are the sure defense of religion, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY ATOSTLES. 229 
 
 as the clergy think the militia is the sure defense of 
 a state, which the ministers profoundly believe. They 
 have little confidence in any other security but mili- 
 tary. " Trust God " they say with Cromwell, but like 
 him they would emphasize particularly, "keep your 
 powder dry." The editor imagines a discrepancy 
 between our doubting whether we could have had a 
 meeting house for our discussion meetings, and the 
 fact that one was opened to evening lectures. It was 
 of them of which we spoke, and not of the public lec- 
 tures or set speeches. These are not near so sacri- 
 legious as free discussion on resolutions. We do not 
 think Brother - Young would consent to have his taber- 
 nacle exposed to another discussion meeting when 
 Parker Pillsbury and Stephen S. Foster were to be let 
 loose among the speakers. The Rev. Brother Horton, 
 of the elegant piece of gothic that stands in the shoes 
 of Brother Freeman's old law office, would have hardly 
 allowed Garrison to profane his solemn sanctuary. 
 But they were not asked for nor offered. It was very 
 convenient, for Dover has so few that are interested 
 in anti-slavery, that almost any building is big enough 
 to accommodate its meetings there. A "hard cider " 
 meeting, to procure for the poor, bleeding, miserable 
 country the relief of a couple of bank vetoes, would 
 have called for a more spacious apartment. Friend 
 Wadleigh would have been out at that, with a log 
 cabin or musty cider cask about him in the way of 
 badge, chock full of patriotic excitement. He spoke 
 of our hard talk about Dover people. We have this 
 to say of them, whether we said it before or not; that 
 so small an attendance in so populous a village, on a 
 meeting, that for magnitude of subject and for talent 
 and ability in the discussion, has never been paralleled 
 in New Hampshire, betrays a peculiarity of taste not 
 the most creditable. A whig hurrah, or a democratic 
 Van Buren row would have assembled twenty times as 
 many at least, if not a hundred. The laborers of the 
 place would have gladly attended, had they under- 
 stood the character of our meeting and been permitted 
 to go. The rulers and priests dare not have them go. 
 Any laboring people under heaven, if sober, would 
 
230 ATI'S OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 have been delighted with that meeting. Probably 
 Friend Wadleigh would not. He is a politician. Pol- 
 iticians' tastes could not like it, any more than rum- 
 burnt, tobacco-steeped palates can like spring water. 
 O, the miserable lot of a political editor ! We know 
 none more deplorable, except a rum-selling store 
 keeper's or taverner's, All his life long, he has to 
 stand and watch the weathercock, and drop in with its 
 variations. To conclude with Friend Wadleigh, we 
 ask him, if he ventures to publish anything more from 
 our paper, to give enough for a sample, if he have not 
 space, after giving the whig victories, to publish the 
 whole. 
 
 The second evening of the meeting went off far 
 better than the first. The church and minister resolu- 
 tions were discussed. The meeting was not quite so 
 unshackled as it would have been out of a Solomon's 
 temple. For dedication is a decayer of free discussion. 
 " Sacred architecture," as Daniel Webster calls it, is 
 not so promotive of free talk or thought as it is to 
 something more agreeable to the apprehension of car- 
 dinals and clergy. The resolutions, however, were 
 pretty profitably discussed. Friend Smith, of Somers- 
 worth, made a good speech. Henry C. Wright got 
 Rev. Brother Young into the sled where anybody but 
 a divine would have had his legs broke. A divine can 
 get out of a sled where nobody else could. And if 
 his legs are broke all up into fragments, he can walk 
 off on them as though nothing had happened. Or, if 
 he limp, he is so solemn and sacred nobody will no- 
 tice it. The auditory were called on to vote. They 
 could vote .as they pleased. They had a right to 
 speak. So had Rev. Brother Young. But he did not 
 choose, or dare to. But when the vote was about to 
 be taken, he got up in true cardinal style to warn the 
 congregation not to vote for the resolves. He offered 
 no argument. He had none to offer. Nobody could 
 have any, in truth. So he offered his ghostly warnings 
 and caveats. He whined and looked solemn, and 
 tried to clergy-fy the people out of their free vote. It 
 was a blockhead effort. He had no right to try to 
 induce that audience to vote by any other influence 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVER'S APOSTLES. 231 
 
 than argument and reason. He did not attempt to 
 offer any of either. And Rev. Brother Scott, too. of 
 the Methodist-Episcopal order, who had through the 
 two days kept his solemn and cunning peace, he rose 
 up on the eve of the vote to interpose his sacerdotal 
 authority. Peradventure some poor class-led soul 
 there, had been delivered enough to follow conscience 
 a short space, and vote condemnation to a church and 
 clergy that enslave humanity. He groaned out his 
 naked opinion with all the impudence of Yankee sect, 
 and all the importance of the Episcopal high church, 
 which characterizes that order of our priesthood. 
 Why did he not attempt an argument, or else hold his 
 tongue? What right had he to try to influence re- 
 sponsible immortals by long-faced authority merely? 
 It is supreme arogance, and an insult to all who have 
 to hear it. Rev. Daniel I. Robinson attempted an ar- 
 gument. He is a Methodist, but he is a man, also, 
 and although far out of his old and right way, as we 
 think and see, he does not attempt to lead people after 
 him, by merely a denominational disfigurement of 
 face. We detest this holy puckerism, and will scout it. 
 It makes fools of men, and roguery under it is su- 
 premely detestable. The resolutions passed, in spite 
 of the reverend scarecrows and lamentations. 
 
 The next morning, our Massachusetts friends 
 returned to their homes, and the society met by 
 adjournment to close the unfinished business ; expect- 
 ing only a short morning session. Reverend Brother 
 Young, Francis Cogswell, esquire, and some other dis- 
 tinguished persons were promptly in attendance. 
 Brother Young seemed to feel relieved, by the absence 
 of the Massachusetts men, of the embarrassment which 
 had kept him two days silent, and he entered bravely 
 into debate. A resolution was up, censuring those 
 churches that still maintain the abomination of a 
 negro pew. Brother Young took hold of it with 
 quite an unceremonious hand. He spoke with true 
 clerical superciliousness, of the rashness and indiscre- 
 tion of abolitionists, and of the inacuracy of the reso- 
 lution. The church, he said, was not at all responsi- 
 ble for the negro pew. They did not own the pews, 
 
232 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 nor build them ; it was the parish, and the church and 
 paiish were two things — quite distinct — as distinct as 
 husband and wife, he said. He did not offer any 
 amendment to the resolution, nor take any responsible 
 part in the meeting, but only condescended to show 
 the absurdity and folly of the resolve, and of those 
 who advocated it. Brother Cogswell spoke of "the 
 confusion of ideas " that seemed to prevail there, in 
 mistaking pew-owners for the church, and in suppos- 
 ing that the churches had the real estate in meeting- 
 houses, and the regulation of negro pews. He denied 
 that there were any such pews, and so did Brother 
 Young, and called for proof. In reply it was said, 
 after thanking the gentlemen for condescending to our 
 debate, that there was some "confusion of ideas" in 
 the meeting, but that it still appeared to abolitionists 
 that the allowance of such an infernal exclusion in a 
 house of worship, as negro pews, was the prerogative 
 of the church and clergy who led the worship and 
 accepted the house and the act of parish — that it was 
 not a question of estate, but of unrighteous distinc- 
 tion ; that as to the existence of it, the existence of 
 the colored people in the country, might as well be 
 questioned and as reasonably attempt to be proved. 
 The pertinency of the comparison to " man and wife," 
 by Brother Young, when speaking of church and par- 
 ish as two distinct things, was remarked on, as not 
 expressive of vast separation, inasmuch as they twain 
 were one flesh, etc., whereupon Brother Young denied 
 that there was any prejudice against colored people, 
 or desire to exclude them— referred to distinction 
 between domestics and employers, by way of showing 
 that there was none between white people and colored. 
 On being routed from that by innumerable instances 
 of negro pews, and the like exclusions all over the 
 country, which were poured in upon him by the meet- 
 ing, the reverend brother adroitly retreated upon 
 this, that he had not denied the existence of prejudice, 
 but that it was only against the color of the skin. It 
 was against something else, he said ; a matter which 
 nobody had agitated, or cared about ; a poor attempt 
 to get off, not candid, nor true. But these great 
 
ACTS (il ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 233 
 
 meetings should have reporters. That Dover meeting 
 fully reported, would have been one of the most 
 entertaining and instructive ever holden. The elo- 
 quence poured forth on that occasion, should not be 
 lest. * * A report of it would fill a 
 
 volume ; and whoever began it would finish it. 
 
 So far the Herald report of Mr. Rogers. Surely 
 but for him, the outside world would have known very 
 little of one of the most remarkable and important 
 anti-slavery conventions ever held in the state or the 
 nation. A note was struck in it which rang out loud 
 and long over New England and round the land, as 
 will be seen, if these chronicles get truly and faith- 
 fully recorded, even though to but limited extent, 
 which may be their chief calamity. A few special 
 explanatory remarks on the resolutions adopted, 
 may still be in place for the benefit of those 
 whose fathers and mothers had no active, friendly 
 hand in the mighty moral upheavals of that period. 
 And surely they were almost the whole nation then, 
 whatever may be the boast of to-day. 
 
 The first resolution, though wholly devotional, had 
 in it no unmeaning cant, for our movement was strictly 
 moral and religious, and probably a large majority of 
 the convention were devout members of some chris- 
 tian church. 
 
 The resolution declaring our determination not to 
 aid in the rendition of escaped slaves, was at that 
 moment especially proper, were it only as an agitating 
 and educating instrumentality. The constitutional 
 obligation was then beginning to be more strenuously 
 insisted upon, as anti-slavery sentiment increased. 
 And the way to Canada was more and more patron- 
 ized, and many faithful conductors were found for the 
 underground railroad up to that city of refuge from 
 
 is 
 
234 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 our republican, democratic system of whips and 
 chains, blood-hounds and red-hot branding irons. 
 And the lore of college and university and the wis- 
 dom and piety of the theological seminary had been 
 called in or voluntarily tendered in support and sanc- 
 tification of such diabolical doings. And the great 
 body of the clergy, as well as the rank and file of 
 both political parties, were ready spaniels, sharp of 
 scent, fleet of foot, to run and bark, to catch and 
 hold as bidden. And this explains the reason why we 
 publicly resolved that we would not obey the fugitive 
 slave law. 
 
 The two long resolutions relating to the nomina- 
 tion of Edward Everett, as minister to Great Britain, 
 with two other appointments of less significance, 
 hinted at a good deal more than was true. No such 
 refusal was meant or intended, nor certainly for any 
 such reason as was held out. Neither was there really 
 reason for abolitionists to stoop to pick up such 
 crumbs of comfort from the circumstances, as some of 
 us appeared to hope. It was not regard for northern 
 rights which led to such little resistance as was made. 
 It was only fear of disturbance in the party ranks, 
 and dread of loss of party supremacy. 
 
 And then as to Mr. Everett's anti-slavery senti- 
 ments, the south had no fear of them. He had al- 
 ready given full proof of his subserviency, at sundry 
 times and in divers manners. The slaveholders fre- 
 quently chastized their slaves, not for any offence 
 committed, but only to remind them that they were 
 still slaves, and must know and keep their place. Mr. 
 Everett was now called to a new *and high dignity, 
 and it seemed proper to his northern masters, or at 
 least prudent, to impose a few cracks of the cow- 
 skin, were it only to quicken his memory, as well as 
 
A.CTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 235 
 
 movement, in their foreign service, to them at that 
 time, nearly as important as any at home. Mr. Everett 
 was a member of congress in 1826, when an amend- 
 ment was submitted to the federal constitution, which 
 brought up ''the vexed question" of slavery. Then 
 came his opportunity to declare what he called his 
 "confession of faith" on the terrible problem. His 
 large learning, gained at Harvard and the institutions 
 of Germany, and especially scripture learning, for it 
 must be remembered, he was Reverend Edward Everett, 
 led him to strictly examine and expound to his fellow 
 congressmen the true meaning of the Greek word, 
 dou/os, as used in the New Testament. His speech 
 on the occasion was printed under his own supervision, 
 and the following is a paragraph : 
 
 The great relation of servitude, in some form or 
 other, with greater or less departure from the theoretic 
 equality of man, is ///-separable to our nature. I know 
 of no way by which the form of this servitude can be 
 fixed, but by political institution. Domestic slavery, 
 though I confess not by that form of servitude which 
 seems to be most beneficial to the master, certainly 
 not that which is most beneficial to the servant, is not, 
 in my judgment to be set down as an immoral and 
 irreligious relation. I cannot admit that religion has 
 but one voice to the slave, and that this voice is ''rise 
 against your' master." No sir ; the New Testament 
 says, "slaves obey your masters ; " and though I know 
 full well, that in the benignant operation of Christian- 
 ity which gathered master and slave around the same 
 communion table, this unfortunate institution disap- 
 peared in Europe, yet 1 cannot admit that, while it 
 subsists, its duties are not pre-supposed and sanctioned 
 by religion. It is a condition of life, as well as any 
 other, to be justified by morality, religion and interna- 
 tional law. 
 
 In another paragraph, Mr. Everett declared : 
 Sir, I am no soldier ; my habits and education are 
 very unmilitary ; but there is no cause in which I 
 
236 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 would sooner buckle a knapsack on my back, and put 
 a musket on my shoulder, than that of putting down 
 a servile insurrection at the south ! 
 
 In 1834, Mr. Everett was elected Governor of 
 Massachusetts. The anti-slavery enterprise then in 
 its fourth year, had already greatly agitated the north 
 and south, and filled the latter with apprehension and 
 alarm. While northern politicians of both parties 
 were clamoring for the suppression of TIic Liberator 
 and other anti-slavery publications, as " incendiary 
 matter" Governor McDuffie of South Carolina, in his 
 message to the legislature, pronounced slavery "the 
 corner-stone of the republican edifice." And he 
 moreover declared that the laws should punish such 
 interference with slavery as that of the abolitionists, 
 by death, without benefit of clergy. 
 
 And Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, in his 
 message to the legislature, responded on this wise : 
 
 Whatever, by direct and necessary operation, is cal- 
 culated to excite an insurrection among the slaves, 
 has been held by highly respectable legal authority, 
 an offence against the people of the commonwealth, 
 which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at com- 
 mon law. The patriotism of all classes must be 
 invoked to abstain from a discussion, which, by exas- 
 perating the master, can have no other effect than to 
 render more oppressive, the condition of the slave ; 
 and which, if not abandoned, there is great reason to 
 fear, will prove the rock on which the union will 
 split. 
 
 Surely, with such a record as this, unsullied by any 
 anti-slavery blemish except of most indirect character, 
 and above all, never having by word or deed expressed 
 sympathy or approval towards the anti-slavery enter- 
 prise, it is hardly possible that the south felt any fear 
 or distrust of Mr. Everett, as ambassador to the court 
 of Great Britain. If we cannot trust him, the slave 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 237 
 
 power might well have asked, whom can we trust ? 
 They first whipped him with seeming rejection, that he 
 might not forget who were his masters, and then con- 
 firmed his nomination. 
 
 The outcry raised against the south, by the north- 
 ern pro-slavery press, for its apparent distrust of 
 Mr. Everett, is well characterized in the second of the 
 two resolutions at the Dover convention. It was the 
 rejection merely of a party nomination ; not any insult 
 to liberty ! 
 
 All three of the nominations named in the resolu- 
 tions, were confirmed ; the other two were New 
 Hampshire men. Hon. Joel Eastman was appointed 
 to a local position in his own state, and Gen. James 
 Wilson to be surveyor-general of Iowa. 
 
 The other resolutions in the report relate to some 
 prescriptive outrages perpetrated on persons of color 
 by the officials of the Eastern railway, then running 
 from Boston eastward through Lynn and Salem. The 
 church setting the example of a " negro pew," ex- 
 tending often to the sacramental table, as well as to 
 seats in the meeting-houses, the Eastern railroad made 
 haste to follow it in arranging its passenger cars. A 
 "negro car," always inferior in convenience and com- 
 fort, was provided, and all colored people, men, 
 women, children, well-dressed or ill, cultivated and 
 accomplished, or barbaric and rude, were driven into 
 it. Charles Lenox Remond, an elegant, highly-bred 
 colored man, a perfect gentleman in whatever exalts 
 and ennobles manhood, an intimate friend of Lady 
 Byron, and other of the most distinguished personages 
 in Great Britain ; and Frederick Douglass, now so 
 well and widely known in two hemispheres, intimate 
 while abroad with the like of 0"Connell and other 
 eminent men of the two houses of parliament, both of 
 
238 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 these, on returning from their foreign travels, were 
 subjected to such cruel indignities, and two or three 
 times with added and most aggravating accompani- 
 ments. 
 
 Senator Wilson, in his " History of the rise and fall 
 of the slave power in America," volume first, page 
 492, refers to " the unchristian prejudice " which induced 
 the regulations adopted by railroads to exclude persons 
 of color from the ordinary passenger cars, and com- 
 pelling them to ride in cars by themselves, or sometimes, 
 without regard to tastes, character or means, in " sec- 
 ond-class cars," bare and comfortless, the enforced re- 
 ceptacle of all who from any cause, could not, or 
 would not take seats in first-class cars. The two cor- 
 porations in Massachusetts, which were prominent in 
 making and enforcing these odious regulations, were 
 the Eastern and the Boston and New Bedford. * * 
 
 * * * In the year 1841, David Ruggles, a colored 
 man of New York, who had aided six hundred of his 
 countrymen in escaping from slavery, was ejected from 
 the cars against the earnest protest of Rev. John M. 
 Spear, for the simple offence of taking a seat with 
 white passengers. He brought an action in the New 
 Bedford police court against the employes of the com- 
 pany for an aggravated assault. But Justice Crapo 
 discharged promptly the offenders. On the Eastern 
 railroad, scenes of violence were of frequent occur- 
 rence. Colored persons of character and intelligence 
 were, in several instances, violently dragged from the 
 cars occupied by white passengers ; and in some cases 
 their friends, who remonstrated against such brutality, 
 were treated in like manner. Among those forcibly 
 ejected from the cars, was Frederick Douglass. * * 
 
 * * * T'hg general agent of the Massachusetts 
 anti-slavery society was repeatedly insulted while trav- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERV APOSTLES. 239 
 
 eling on that road, for remonstrating against its un- 
 just and inhuman usages. In one instance he re- 
 ceived blows and kicks, from the effects of which he 
 did not recover for a number of weeks. Once, a 
 colored man being ejected. Dr. Daniel Mann and sev- 
 eral other white passengers remonstrated, when they, 
 also, were seized and dragged violently out and pro- 
 hibited from pursuing their journey, "unless they be- 
 haved themselves ! " Dr. Mann brought an action in 
 the Boston police court against the conductor of the 
 train, but could obtain no redress for such high-handed 
 outrages. * * * Charles Lennox Remond 
 was a native of Salem, a colored gentleman of intelli- 
 gence and worth, and of highly preposessing man- 
 ners. In England, where he had spent nearly two 
 years, he had vindicated the cause of the oppressed, 
 and had won the confidence and applause of the 
 British abolitionists. He was everywhere hailed as 
 the champion of his race, and treated with most 
 friendly and respectful consideration. He bore from 
 England the warmest sympathies and best wishes of 
 the friends of emancipation. He was commissioned 
 to bear the address of sixty thousand Irishmen to 
 their countrymen in America, headed by the names of 
 O'Connell and Father Mathew. Arriving in Boston, 
 he went to the Eastern railroad station to take passage 
 for his home in Salem. • He was not allowed to take 
 his seat with other passengers, put was compelled to 
 occupy what was called the u Jim Crow " car. Several 
 of his white friends, wishing to welcome him on his 
 return, met him at the station and took seats with him. 
 They were, however, ordered by the conductor to 
 leave the " Jim Crow " car, voluntarily, or to be removed 
 by force ! Thus was this gentleman of character and 
 
240 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 culture, fresh from his travels and the hospitalities of 
 the best families of England, rudely and roughly 
 treated on his arrival in his native state. 
 
 And Senator Wilson could have named others be- 
 sides Dr. Mann, who suffered similar indignities and 
 for the same reasons. James N. Buffum had traveled 
 extensively in Britain with Douglass, addressing im- 
 mense anti-slavery meetings ; but in his own town of 
 Lynn, with him was dragged out of railway cars, 
 making no resistance except to cling to the backs of 
 the seats, which, as they were athletic men, they gen- 
 erally brought out with them, "one in each hand." 
 The railroad authorities at length became so indig- 
 nant that they refused to allow the trains to stop in 
 Lynn at all. And for several days the rule was en- 
 forced. At one time they sent a police-officer with 
 the trains to see that their atrocious mandates on 
 the subject of negro hate were obeyed. One 
 day Mr. Buffum saw a white man riding in the 
 cars with a pet monkey in his lap. He good-naturedly 
 asked the conductor : " How is this, that you drag 
 out ( the connecting link,' as you call the colored man, 
 and permit the two extremes, the white man and the 
 monkey, the opposite link on the brute side, to 
 ride unmolested as any white gentlemen ? " The 
 conductor did not reply. He had his orders and must 
 obey them. And the shameful "Jim Crow" car con- 
 tinued, with occasional outrages, till public opinion 
 rose indignantly on legislation, and compelled enact- 
 ments sweeping them out of existence. " The negro 
 pew " in churches can still be found, north, east and 
 west, as well as south. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 DISCUSSION ON CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS BY REV. MR. 
 PUTNAM AND REV. MR. SARGENT — HILLSBOROUGH 
 COUNTY CONVENTION AT HANCOCK — AND MEETING 
 AT NASHUA, BY MR. FOSTER, AND WHAT CAME 
 OF IT. 
 
 The Strafford-county anniversary has occupied much 
 space, but discloses the genius and spirit, philosophy 
 and methods, of the anti-slavery enterprise ; and could 
 the addresses and speeches have been reported and 
 published with the proceedings, the wondrous ability 
 of at least some of its advocates, would have been no 
 less apparent. The editor of the Herald earned un- 
 payable thanks for his glowing descriptions which are 
 as just and truthful as they are brilliant and beautiful. 
 
 New organizanion was now asserting itself, and 
 gave us some inconvenience, chiefly through clerical 
 influence and action, as the following incident will 
 reveal : 
 
 In the winter of 1841, Rev. Rufus A. Putnam, Con- 
 gregational minister, of Chichester, proposed an even- 
 ing discussion with our faithful friend, Rev. Mr. 
 Sargent, of West Chester, on the question : "Are our 
 church organizations christian?" Happening that 
 week to be at home in Concord, and the moon and 
 sleighing favoring, I proposed to Mr. Rogers that we 
 attend and hear the arguments. Knowing that our 
 new organized clergy, of most of the sects, were then 
 in arms to defend them, he readily consented, and 
 just as the sun was setting and the moon rising, we 
 
242 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 set out on our ride of seven or eight miles. A mile 
 short of Mr. Putnam's meeting-house, where the 
 meeting was held, lived Mr. Benjamin Emery, a true 
 anti-slavery man, and there we left our horse and 
 sleigh, and with him walked the remainder of the dis- 
 tance. We arrived in time for the preliminary exer- 
 cises, which were quite as many and lengthy as at the 
 ordinary Sunday services of that day, now over forty 
 years ago. Mr. Putnam read a hymn, which was sung 
 by the choir. Then the Methodist minister offered 
 {performed, Rogers called it), a long, miscellaneous 
 prayer. The people were not impressed, nor inter- 
 ested ; and it seemed a waste of valuable time. Some 
 had come long distances to attend what it was pre- 
 sumed would be an interesting, instructive and profit- 
 able discussion, and were impatient, evidently, to get 
 at the business of the occasion. It might be unchar- 
 itable to presume that the unexpected arrival from 
 Concord had something to do with the prolonged de- 
 votional exercises. But the editor of the Herald had 
 voice as well as pen, and it would have been uncourt- 
 eous not to have invited him to a part in the proceed- 
 ings of the meeting. But undoubtedly the less time 
 allotted to him, the better it might be for the affirma- 
 tive side of the question in hand. And so some were 
 not surprised that prayer and praise were thus pro- 
 longed, even though inopportune, for still another 
 hymn had to be solemnly read and then sung. 
 
 There was a good country audience, some, like Mr. 
 Rogers and myself, having come several miles. Pre- 
 liminaries being settled at last, Mr. Putnam appeared 
 behind a huge pile of notes, newspapers, and other 
 signs of most elaborate preparation, and commenced 
 a tiresome apology, for ill health, many duties, includ- 
 ing attending a funeral, and general want of suitable 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 243 
 
 preparation and arrangement. He feared he shouid 
 not be able to speak to acceptance, on account of 
 bodily infirmity, but would do the best he could, 
 and there were others present who would take part 
 in the meeting, which was to be free to all. He con- 
 tinued in this strain till we felt constrained to believe 
 that he had made all possible preparation, and, be- 
 sides, was not over-desirous that his opponents should 
 have more time than was their right. And so it turned 
 out. He had a manuscript discourse of, apparently, 
 about his usual length, besides piles of newspapers, 
 which he read at intervals, with dry and desultory 
 comments and needless explanations, consuming quite 
 two hours, in spite of " bodily ailments," which, had 
 they been as described, should have kept him at home. 
 His main subject, instead of being as was expected, 
 the Christianity of the churches, was the infidelity and 
 Jacobinism of the old organization. And he tried to 
 prove it by showing that Garrison and others in Mass- 
 achusetts had betrayed the anti-slavery cause, by sift- 
 ing into The Liberator other subjects than anti-slavery, 
 such as non-resistence and woman's rights, no Sabbath, 
 no ministry, no church of Christ. He did not pretend 
 that these subjects were brought openly into the anti- 
 slavery society, but we were secretly promoting them. 
 He read a part of the phrenological character of Gar- 
 rison, as given by O. S. Fowler, to prove his secretive- 
 ness, and that he did not tell everybody all he thought. 
 And Rogers and Pillsbury and Foster had introduced 
 these subjects into New Hampshire, and Garrison and 
 Rogers had even carried them to England. He read 
 with all the emphasis at his command, something from 
 a print he had brought, advocating the right and pro- 
 priety of unlimited intercourse of the sexes, and 
 placed it with his other documents, which he had given 
 
244 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 his audience to understand were publications of old 
 organization abolitionists. That was a little too atro- 
 cious for Mr. Rogers. He at once rose and demanded 
 of him "the author of that beastly stuff!" and, 
 moreover, why he read it here. Mr. Putnam admitted 
 that it was not an anti-slavery publication, but then 
 Garrison associated in convention with persons of 
 such sentiments, though he by no means presumed he 
 held them himself. " But why, then, produce them 
 here, and read them as though you believed, and in- 
 tended your hearers should believe, that he both held 
 and inculcated them?" I had till that moment 
 thought Mr. Putnam honest, but easily influenced by 
 his abler clerical brethren ; though I could never have 
 suspected him of any such duplicity, not even as a 
 "pious fraud." Had not some one been there, how- 
 ever, to arraign him, probably many present, and 
 nearly all his own people, would have supposed such 
 "beastly stuff" old organized anti-slavery morality. 
 The purpose was palpable that by such reckless au- 
 dacity he expected to prove that the abolitionists were 
 promoting the most shameless libertinism, under the 
 guise of anti-slavery. Had he been let alone, he 
 doubtless would have done it, at least to his own sat- 
 isfaction, and to the great delight of all who implicitly 
 trusted him. And yet we certainly always regarded 
 Mr. Putnam as, on the whole, one of the very best of 
 the new organized ministers. But there he was in a 
 dilemma like that. Self-convicted, too. Mr. Rogers 
 charitably attributed it to ministership. The end he 
 imagined to be right. Of the means there need be 
 no scruple nor hesitation. Mr. Rogers said, and 
 doubtless truly, that had the device of reading that 
 filthy newspaper been perpetrated in a law court, it 
 would have excluded the daring offender from the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 245 
 
 court, and the rabble that haunt the court-house would 
 have spurned him from their groggy circle. In his own 
 words, Rogers, in describing the scene in the Herald, 
 farther said : "There is some regard for principle in 
 a desperate game of sharps before a jury ; but. not a 
 shadow of any in a church trial. * * * * Every 
 man's and every woman's experience, who has had 
 trial of them, can testify that this is true. * * * 
 * * We are not speaking of the clergy as men, 
 aside from their office. But bring the church into 
 straits; disturb their denomination ; touch their cler- 
 ical power, and they will out Herod the evil one him- 
 self in their obliquity. Literally they stick at 
 nothing." 
 
 Certainly every word of this was warranted by 
 what we saw that evening. But at the end of nearly 
 two hours' weary reading and not less tiresome talk- 
 ing, Mr. Putnam sat down. Once in the time, his op- 
 ponent in the discussion, Rev. Benjamin Sargent, 
 asked him one simple question. He was reading a 
 charge against the Methodist church, relating to sla- 
 very, made by Stephen Foster in some printed paper. 
 Mr. Sargent asked if the charge were not true. Mr. 
 Putnam declined to answer. One of his church mem- 
 bers came to his rescue, and in most flippant tones 
 protested against any interruption. When Mr. Rogers 
 asked why Mr. Putnam read the "beastly" newspaper 
 he did, the same church member had interposed, and 
 quite officiously, as if in some sense the armor-bearer 
 of his chief. He said " Mr. Putnam might as well 
 answer forty questions as one." Of some questions, 
 he could more easily have answered forty thousand, 
 than the single one then asked. 
 
 Mr. Sargent, in his brief reply, expressed a just and 
 proper regret that the question proposed, had not yet 
 
246 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 been even appnoached. He asked what the opinions 
 of William Lloyd Garrison, on the sabbath question, 
 the non-resistance, or woman's equality questions had 
 to do with "The Christianity of Church Organiza- 
 tions ? " to consider which the meeting had been 
 called. He had no objection to stating what were the 
 views of Garrison on all those subjects. As to the 
 Sabbath, he showed and proved that Garrison held 
 exactly with the Quakers, and they with John Calvin, 
 Martin Luther, Archbishops Paley, Whately, and sev- 
 eral others whom he named. On non-resistance he 
 cited Jesus, the Christ, in the whole letter and spirit 
 of his memorable sermon on the mount. For woman's 
 equality in the church, he quoted him who said : 
 "there is neither Jew nor Greek; bond nor free; 
 male nor female." He spoke of sectarianism as 
 non-christian, as a denial practically, of the christian 
 name and faith ; that as there was neither Jew nor 
 Greek, male nor female, so there could be neither 
 Congregational nor Presbyterian, Baptist nor Metho- 
 dist ; and consequently, that our church organizations, 
 whatever else they may be, or may not be, are surely 
 not Christian, nor even Paulian. He thought Mr. Put- 
 nam admited that sectarianism was unchristian, by his 
 frequent association with his neighbor, the Methodist 
 church. Mr. Putnam denied that his association with 
 Methodism was frequent. Mr. Sargent said he had 
 been told moreover, that a member of Mr. Putnam's 
 church had been excommunicated for attending 
 Methodist meetings. That, too, Mr. Putnam denied. 
 But we were assured on the spot that it was true, and 
 that the person was then present. Mr. Rogers offered 
 the columns of the Herald 'for any authentic statement 
 of the facts, but I think no statement by either side 
 ever came. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 247 
 
 Mr. Sargent spoke but briefly, though every word 
 was to the point and the purpose, and on the question 
 mainly for which the meeting had come together. On 
 sitting down he expressed the hope that Mr. Rogers 
 and myself might have a little time, late as it had 
 become, Mr. Putnam having occupied quite two hours. 
 But before either of us could speak, Mr. Putnam had 
 to reply to Mr. Sargent ; though not with success, but 
 quite otherwise, we thought. Next, the church mem- 
 ber who had frequently spoken, or interrupted speak- 
 ing, had to be heard at some length, he too having 
 numerous minutes and documents to assist his mem- 
 ory. Finally, the coast being clear, Mr. Rogers rose, 
 evidently much to the satisfaction of a large part of 
 the audience. He expressed his satisfaction at seeing 
 so goodly a number present to hear for themselves. 
 Anti-slavery he thought had been deprived of a fair 
 hearing before the people, who had been greatly 
 alarmed or hindered by the calumnies of the clergy 
 and church. But he believed if the people could hear 
 candidly and impartially, they would render a just 
 verdict and the slave would have his liberty. He said 
 the drift of Mr. Putnam's reasoning was to convict the 
 old organized abolitionists of wickedly incumbering 
 the anti-slavery cause with extraneous doctrines and 
 demands. He denied the charge wholly and totally ; 
 declared the old organized abolitionists had but one 
 fundamental doctrine and demand, namely : that our 
 slave-holding was a sin and a crime, and should be 
 immediately and unconditionally abandoned. Whereas 
 the new organization had many doctrines, such as 
 sacredness of human governments, and church organ- 
 izations, and their machinery ; sabbath, ministry, and 
 the like, woman's inferiority, necessity of litigation, 
 
248 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 and many other things, and he proved all his positions 
 by simply producing and reading the constitutions of 
 both organizations. 
 
 Mr. Rogers was asked if he had not changed his 
 opinion respecting anti-slavery political action. He 
 said frankly, he had, but becoming convinced that all 
 legislation was force, and that as anti-slavery, in our 
 opinion, was a strictly moral and religious movement, 
 a work of repentance and reformation, we could not 
 resort to physical force. He contended that without 
 the life-taking power, or the power and right, usurped 
 or assumed right, to enforce its decrees, government 
 would be powerless ; a mere exhortation. * * 
 
 That if slave-holding were forbidden by congress, it 
 must be with penalties and power to enforce them at 
 whatever cost, otherwise all such legislation must be 
 null and void. If the penalty were resisted by force, 
 it must be repelled by force to the extent, if need be, 
 of cutting off the head of every offender by the sword. 
 And so, to enforce a law, would be as the march of an 
 army. Or if the penalty were not death, but only 
 imprisonment, and the culprits refused to enter the 
 dungeon doors, the sword of the marshal must enforce 
 the penalty even at cost of life. Or if fine only be the 
 penalty, it must be collected though at point of bayo- 
 net or sword. If law be penal, it is capital ; and if 
 not penal it is no law. " Finally," said Rogers, "legal 
 abolition of slavery would be abolition at the point of 
 the sword, and as decidedly military in spirit, and as 
 far from being moral as would be an invasion of the 
 slave plantations by an anti-slavery army." Mr. 
 Rogers told the people no less frankly that as an 
 abolitionist, he felt compelled to denounce the clergy 
 as an anti-christian order, and the sectarian church 
 organizations, as disowned by Christianity and forbid- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY AI'OSTI IS. 249 
 
 den of Clod. They used their influence, lie said, in 
 the name of Christianity, to crush out the anti-slavery 
 enterprise. Had they not done that, we, as abolition- 
 ists, should have let them alone. But in doing that, 
 they proved themselves false to the christian name 
 and all that it implies, and fidelity to the slave 
 demanded that we unmask and expose them. Had 
 they let the slave and his cause alone, the clergy 
 might rule the people, and the people might bow to 
 their authority, as to any other idolatry, and anti- 
 slavery might never have molested them. * * 
 Mr. Rogers had every ear, and it was a golden oppor- 
 tunity well improved. It is impossible to convey any 
 idea of the impression produced at that late hour of a 
 winter's night, many having come several miles to 
 attend the meeting. 
 
 My own part in the discussion was of little account, 
 and almost literally postponed to the eleventh hour. 
 Our church-member opponent, in the plenitude of his 
 charity, had declared he could even fellowship me as 
 an abolitionist. When I rose, at the last moment, there 
 was only time for me to decline the extended hand, in 
 the name of, and for the sake of anti-slavery consist- 
 ency, fidelity and moral integrity. In the first place, 
 our friend was an abolitionist, tried and true, as was 
 supposed. Then he apostatized into the new organi- 
 zation and liberty party. Then he back-slid, or down- 
 slid, into the whig party, and became a champion in 
 the presidential canvass, 
 
 " For Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 
 
 until it was almost as hard to count him as it was the 
 speckled pig of Uncle Peter. He said he could 
 count them all, only that one ; but he jumped and 
 flew around so, it was impossible to count him. The 
 
 meeting adjourned in excellent humor, though my op- 
 
 16 
 
250 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 ponent regretted that there was no time to reply to 
 my illustration of the pig, which he declared was of 
 the nature of a libel. And we were afterward in- 
 formed that he deliberately contemplated a suit at 
 law, to restore his offended dignity. But no such 
 calamity ensued. 
 
 We footed it briskly back under the bright moon 
 to Mr. Emery's, the merry sleighbells of the farm- 
 ers from remote hills and valleys swiftly passing us. 
 A hasty cup of tea and accompaniments, while the 
 boys put our Tunbridge in position from her warm 
 stable, well prepared us for our hour's midnight ride, 
 and we trotted gaily into our own street and yard just 
 as the old Baptist church clock told the hour of 
 twelve. 
 
 Such, at that time, was new organized clerical anti- 
 slavery. And the best of it. It is a sorrowful con- 
 sideration, that nearly all the parties named in this 
 narration have gone to the realm of departed spirits. 
 A good reason why their words and works should be 
 regarded with all the respect and charity possible. 
 None doubted Mr. Putnam's hatred of slavery ; but, 
 with his sect generally, especially its ministers, the 
 church organization and its machinery were more 
 than the liberty of the enslaved. Strange how priest 
 and Levite are much the same in all time. And the 
 " Good Samaritans," though often outlawed by state 
 and church, are«ever foremost in rescuing the robbed 
 and despoiled, the fallen and oppressed, from even 
 the thraldom, civil and political as well as ecclesias- 
 tical, of the church and clergy themselves. 
 
 This work is Acts of tlie Anti-Slavery Apostles, not 
 history of the anti-slavery enterprise. The present 
 generation can know little of the labors and experi- 
 ences of the years between 1831 and 1S61 ; nor can 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 25 I 
 
 any better lessons be now given than by true descrip- 
 tions, word pictures, taken on the spot, and by the 
 actors in or witnesses of, the scenes and encounters. 
 The following report of a Hillsborough county, New 
 Hampshire, convention, is also by Mr. Rogers. He 
 aided me immensely in conducting, he shall now aid 
 me no less in reporting it to history and posterity. 
 The world knows far too little of the editor of the 
 Herald of Freedom. Part of the account, personal to 
 this writer, is given with deep humility, and only at 
 the earnest solicitation of his few surviving friends 
 and fellow-laborers in the great conflict, whose will 
 and wishes may well be his highest law. It is from 
 the Herald of October 21st, 1842 : 
 
 The Hancock Convention. — Another grand anti- 
 slavery meeting has transpired. And truth enough 
 has been told to revolutionize a nation, with either 
 eyes to see or ears to hear, or hearts to understand. 
 Our nation has neither. We can hope for little more 
 than to prevent the coming on of another generation 
 like the present. We may cripple the power of the 
 slaves of the present age to disable the generation 
 that is rising from discerning the truth. If we can, 
 the coming generation may have sense and courage 
 enough to perceive that slaveholding is not the quint- 
 essence of righteousness. 
 
 Six of us went over to the Hancock convention 
 from Concord : Joseph and Mary Ann French, Parker 
 Pillsbury, Stephen Foster and Caroline Farrand, and 
 myself. A half day's ride through a most benighted 
 region, embracing Reverend Moses Kimball's province 
 of Hopkinton, whose only remnant of humanity that 
 I know of is their tasty jail, the moral aspect of the 
 whole way contrasting mournfully with the glorious 
 upland country and a yellow autumn day, brought us 
 to a couple of anti-slavery homes, on the Henniker 
 highlands, George and Daniel Cogswell's. We were 
 welcomed with a heartiness and cheer that fully made 
 up for the utter blank which stretched all the way 
 
252 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 from there to Concord. 1 don't know of a single 
 habitation in all that distance that would have given 
 us a human reception, had they known us as we were, 
 the mortal enemies of slavery, and pf its patrons, the 
 priesthood. We left the river road, on the margin of 
 the Contoocook, and wound our way among the hills 
 to the southward of the beautiful village of Henniker. 
 It brought us at length into a valley behind the high 
 ridge that overlooks the village. We ascended to the 
 summit, where stand the pleasant and comfortable 
 dwellings of our two friends. Brother dwellings they 
 are, near by each other as are the families, twin in 
 affection as in kindred. 1 could hardly image to my- 
 self a more desirable lociition. Remote, but not lonely, 
 the two families, alone, affording each other abundant 
 society. A glorious prospect stretches around them. 
 Off to the south, beyond the deep, narrow valley, rose 
 high, wooded hills, their heavy hard-wood growth 
 touched gorgeously with the frost-pencil of October. 
 North, the village, shining at their feet, with its 
 painted dwellings and green fields, deformed only by 
 a sectarian steeple or two and a kindred rum tavern, 
 a wide upland country swelling beyond, rising in the 
 distance and terminating with old Kearsarge, its bare 
 head among the drifting clouds. 
 
 After a most pleasant refreshment, bodily and men- 
 tal, with our affectionate friends, (who have not yet 
 cast off from their association their pro-slavery church 
 corporation) we resumed our ride for Hancock, among 
 some of the boldest inhabited scenery I have ever 
 seen in New Hampshire. Bold and free as his own 
 intrepid spirit, we passed the farm on which grew up, 
 from four years old, our noble coadjutor and veteran 
 fellow-laborer, Parker Pillsbury. The rugged moun- 
 tain homestead where he was bred from early child- 
 hood — bred to toil ; where he worked through all his 
 young life, hard and faithfully as his manhood is labor- 
 ing for the slave, with almost as little acknowledge- 
 ment or thanks as the world then awarded him, when 
 he developed obscurely among the rocks. We passed 
 the solitary school house where he was allowed the 
 few weeks schooling of his childhood. But thanks 
 
UTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 253 
 
 they were so few. He was educating all the better 
 for humanity's service on that rugged farm. He there 
 taught himself to be a man. A great lesson he had 
 effectually learned before he came in contact with 
 seminaries and a priesthood. These proved unequal 
 on that account, to over-match and cower down his 
 homespun nobility of soul. They tied their fetters 
 round his manly limbs, but he snapped them as Samson 
 did the withes, and went out an abolitionist, carrying 
 off the very theological gates with him upon his manly 
 shoulders. He is away from home now ; gone on a 
 campaign into Rhode Island, and I will have a word 
 about him. It is due from me, and has long been. 
 
 The abolitionists of the country ought to know 
 Parker Pillsbury better than they do. I know him 
 for all that is noble in soul, and powerful in talent and 
 eloquence. The remote district school houses in New 
 Hampshire and in the granite old county of Essex, 
 Massachusetts, where he was born, would bear me 
 witness to all I could say. He is one of the strong 
 men of our age. I wish he oftener felt his own ' 
 strength, if he ever feels it and would oftener put it 
 forth, when he happens among the multitude audi- 
 ences of the lowlands, where he is too apt to keep 
 himself in the back ground. And the abolitionists, I 
 fear, have regarded him too much as he regards him- 
 self. He has overlooked himself, and they have over- 
 looked him. He has undervalued his inestimable 
 services, and the abolitionists have imitated him in it. 
 He has gone unpaid — not that, it is not the word he 
 would allow. Paid or unpaid are not the words for 
 him, but unsustained, unsupported. He has broken 
 down in two or three years by giant labor, a consti- 
 tution of adamant, matured and hardened into iron 
 in the school of his early toil. He has broken it down 
 and what has he received in requital ? The curses of 
 the priesthood and their vassal followers, and the for- 
 getfulness of the abolitionists. He has been abroad 
 in the fields, and they snugly at their homes ; he has 
 performed the incessant labor of the galley slave, with 
 little better than slaves' fare, often times, and hardly 
 better than slaves' wages. He never complains, but 
 
254 ACTS OF ANTI-S] AVKKV APOSTLES. 
 
 that is no sign that 1 should not. 1 have neglected 
 to complain for him, as other abolitionists have given 
 cause for the complaint. It is a shame that such a 
 man as Parker Pillsbury should be unappreciated. I 
 know the anti-slavejy cause is odious in the commun- 
 ity ; I know its advocates are detested, but abolition- 
 ists should not forget their field laborers. Pillsbury, 
 and Foster, and Beach have served and suffered in 
 this cause the last two years as hardly any of its cham- 
 pions have suffered or served ; and their fidelity has 
 had little other effect upon abolitionists than to cause 
 them to shake their heads at their daring temerity. 
 Instead of pouring into the breach made by them in 
 the wall, abolitionists have, too many of them, halted 
 and stood gazing to see how it would come out with 
 them, amid the hosts of the enemy closing around 
 them, or else absolutely discouraging their gallant ad- 
 vance. So it is, and so it is always to be. 
 
 But I must hasten on to Hancock. Hancock, a 
 revolutionary name — named too for the bold signature 
 at the head of the brave old Declaration, but the abode 
 of a population anything but akin in spirit to revolu- 
 tionary fathers. Contented colonists and vassals, 
 most of them under the bloated tyranny of Archibald 
 Burgess, and a subaltern aristocracy. We reached the 
 dwelling of our friends, the Boutells, at nightfall, 
 where we were at once at home amid all that is kind 
 and comforting in anti-slavery hospitality. 
 
 We learned that the old Orthodox meeting-house 
 had been obtained for our meeting, it being so owned 
 that the Very Reverend Father Burgess could not by 
 his nod prevent our having it. He had also given 
 notice of the convention from his pulpit on the Sab- 
 bath before, and with all the ghostly importance of a 
 haughty friar, had warned the church and congrega- 
 tion not to attend it. He gave the very sensible and 
 priestly reason that if they did attend, and the meet- 
 ings were mobbed, it would be laid to them ! As honest 
 and rational remark as commonly falls from a thick- 
 headed priest. As if a mobbing could be laid to those 
 who attended the meetings it was breaking up, and 
 helped to bear the brunt and danger of it. The 
 course of all others that would prove conclusively to 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 255 
 
 the abolitionists that they were not countenancing the 
 mob, so anybody but a soggy would perceive. And 
 what did he talk about a mob for ? Had he used his 
 influence to stir one up ? His minions, when spoken 
 to about our having the house, said "Yes, if the aboli- 
 tionist will be answerable for any damage done to it." 
 As much as to say, " If you will pay for what mischief 
 •we may do to it, you may have it." For who but they or 
 their children would harm the house, or disturb the 
 meetings ? The creatures of friend Archibald did stay 
 away, but they sent their young fry to mob the con- 
 vention, by ringing the bell, by uncouth pranks and 
 brute noises, by hurling stones along the aisles and 
 through the windows. We picked up two stones 
 large enough to cause instant death had they struck 
 any of us on the temple or other dangerous place. 
 They were preserved and brought away as trophies of 
 the education of the hopes of the church in Hancock, 
 and of the godly preaching of the Reverend Archi- 
 bald Burgess. He has preached there a good while. 
 It was his sacerdotal pleasure that his old folks should 
 stay away from the anti-slavery meeting, and that 
 their nimbler offspring should go and do what in 
 them lay to break it up. And so they did. The old 
 ones staid away with commendable self denial. Many 
 of them doubtless felt curious to go, but they had to 
 deny themselves and stay away, and friend Archibald 
 ought to commend them for it in the pulpit at the 
 head of the regiment. Three days the meetings con- 
 tinued, day times and the evenings of two days, in 
 the midst of a thick settled, populous village, and the 
 mass of the population had to stay at home ; and the 
 meetings ten fold more interesting and more instruc- 
 tive than any they had ever had among them of any 
 kind. They would have thought so themselves if 
 they could have been allowed to be there. But they 
 were not. Archibald Burgess, their priest, admonished 
 them to stay at home, and they did not dare to go. 
 God admonished them by their consciences to go, but 
 who was the Lord, that they should obey his voice ? 
 Archibald Burgess was their Divinity, their fat Idol. 
 They must worship him or he would frown at them 
 
256 Ml- "1 ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 from that awful pulpit, on that holy day, and, may be, 
 pray against them, so that they would not have pros- 
 pered " in their basket and store." 
 
 The godly children of the church, rang that old 
 liberty bell till they made it hoarse, and almost broke 
 their young mobocratic backs with pulling the rope. 
 It annoyed the village more than it did us, who were 
 down under it in the house. We told them to ring on 
 in welcome. It was a free meeting, and every one of 
 them was at liberty to take what part in it he chose. 
 If he had no ability to speak against anti slavery, he 
 might ring the bell, or he might sneeze, or bark, or 
 throw stones. There A\as one pro-slavery tailor in 
 the entry that had sneezed with great ability. I never 
 heard anybody that had such talent at sneezing. I 
 remembered hearing him sneeze when we were there a 
 year % ago. He sneezed out doors then, and he 
 was heard all over the neighborhood. Mr. Burgess 
 himself could not have sneezed like him, I don't be- 
 lieve. He came into the meeting, and when any of 
 the speakers touched on Mr. Burgess' connection with 
 man-stealing, the tailor would sneeze in his defense. 
 Others of his defenders would bark, some whistled, 
 others scraped the floor with their hind feet ; one 
 came in with a great club in his hand and marched up 
 to the altar, and, with mock solemnity, took a seat be- 
 fore it. The young mobocrats " laffed." The aboli- 
 tionists took no notice of him nor them. He got sick 
 of sitting there and marched out. Then they " laffed " 
 out again. By and by he came in again and marched 
 up into the pulpit. That was a killing manoeuvre. 
 They did " laff " " like all possessed." We thought it 
 was the very place for the poor fellow, and that he 
 became it quite as well as their lubberly priest. He 
 began to preach up there. Foster was speaking at 
 the time, but gave way for him. He talked away and 
 could not help saying some good things. One of the 
 young religious gentry present interrupted him, for 
 things did not seem to be working just right fur the 
 opposition. Pillsbury requested that the speaker be 
 not interrupted, and said he had spoken more im- 
 portant truth, he would be bound to say, than had 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 257 
 
 been spoken in that pulpit in two years, [t was so 
 
 apt a remark, and, with all. so confounded true, that 
 the whole mobocracy cheered it with a peal of applause. 
 The)' could not help it. They forgot for the instant 
 the errand they were sent on, and gave a volley of 
 spontaneous and hearty cheers. After that they were 
 glad for a while to be still. But Foster roused them 
 again by his terrible invective. He displayed Burgess 
 in such condemning light as one of the great brother- 
 hood of thieves and patrons of robbery and adultery 
 in the slave system, that they could not bear it, and 
 began again to show their religious rage. Several 
 large stones were hurled in at the front door, and 
 went tumbling up the broad aisle to the foot of the 
 pulpit. They were big enough to have broken the 
 legs of anybody who might have stood there. By and 
 by smash went the glass, and in at the side windows 
 came the stones, glass rattling and stones bounding 
 against the pew doors. Real clerical argumentation. 
 Truly religious weapons of defense for the church and 
 minister. 
 
 This was in the evening. The academy students 
 had poured in, in considerable numbers. There are 
 two seminaries close by the meeting-house. A Con- 
 gregational academy and a Baptist, where Baptist 
 larnitj and orthodox larniri are severally taught. 
 Dipped arithmetic and grammar at one, and sprinkled 
 at the other. With whatever intent the students came 
 in at first, the chief of them, after hearing awhile what 
 was said and done on both sides, manfully moved into 
 the center of the house, away from the mob at and 
 near the doors, so as to separate themselves from it 
 and identify themselves with the meeting. Some of 
 them spoke and protested against the conduct of the 
 mob, and behaved very honorably, and received the 
 commendation of the convention. And I would here 
 add that, if those young men were out from under 
 this priestly control, they would most of them be 
 abolitionists, and make free and noble men. And 
 they will not be such slaves as their fathers. Their 
 young breasts will inhale the reviving and disenthral- 
 ing atmosphere our reform is generating around them, 
 
258 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 and it cannot fail to give them more or less of free- 
 dom. Saturday morning there was hesitation about 
 letting us have the key. It seemed to be feared that 
 an impression was making in the meetings, dangerous 
 to the church and the minister, although both staid 
 away and kept most of the people away. Those 
 young students would go in, and no knowing what 
 effect it might have upon them. It was some time 
 before the house could be got open, and shelter from 
 a falling rain was obtained in sheds or where else it 
 might be. No mobbing on Saturday, save ringing 
 the bell. One young student ventured up into the 
 pulpit, to show his "gimp." He had not witnessed 
 the experiment there, probably, of the night before. 
 The audience were reminded, in his hearing, of their 
 entire freedom to say and do what they severally 
 pleased, but on their own responsibilities. If they 
 wanted to mount up into the pulpit, to play the fool, 
 or for whatever purpose, it must be on their own ac- 
 count. The convention would not be responsible. 
 And if any of them wanted to play the buffoon, or 
 mobocrat, the pulpit was a fit place to perform in as 
 any other. Every one to his taste. Pro-slavery was 
 very partial to the pulpit, and the pulpit was open to 
 it on that occasion, as every other part of the house. 
 They might whistle, or they might behave quietly 
 and kindly, as they would be done by* They might 
 speak, or they might bark and play the quadruped, or 
 they might sneeze, as their champion had done the 
 night before, or hurl stones through the windows, 
 only it would all have to be done on their own ac- 
 count, and not on ours. Several of the students did 
 speak ; some, who seemed to be dieting for the minis- 
 try, spoke cant and absurdity. One young man, 
 Marshall, of Nashua, quite young, spoke very man- 
 fully, and with candor and ability. If he follows out 
 his heart, he will be an abolitionist and make an able 
 advocate. A young Mr. Chamberlain canted and 
 cavilled. He was a great friend of religion, and 
 greatly wounded at our treatment of the virtuous and 
 philanthropic folks, who, as we said, were instigating 
 what their children had been doing to break up the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 259 
 
 meeting, and who had kept the people from attend- 
 ing it. Mr. Student Bonner was quite loud and vehe- 
 ment in defence of "our church and clergy." He 
 was not in favor of slavery, but he wanted the blacks 
 sent to Africa if they were liberated. They did not 
 belong to this country, and had no rights here. Stu- 
 dent Bonner, by the way, belongs to Canada. He 
 said they did not help carry on the revolution. 
 He denied that liberty would do the slaves any 
 good. He denied that slave-holding was man-steal- 
 ing, or criminal. Foster had declared that it was ; 
 Bonner rose and denied it. Foster bade the audience 
 beware of that young man ; he would put the com- 
 munity on its guard against him. He had denied 
 that stealing children and enslaving them was sinful. 
 That young man, he said, was dangerous in commun- 
 ity with such notions. He bade those who had prop- 
 erty exposed to beware of him. He had avowed the 
 principles of a thief : the young fellow had been 
 exceedingly impudent in his remarks upon the aboli- 
 tionists, saying everything offensive and abusive, he 
 well could ; specifying nothing, attempting to prove 
 nothing, and well deserved Foster's severity. Whether 
 there was any peculiar pertinency in the application 
 of the word thief, more than Foster knew of, Bonner's 
 acquaintances can say. Another young gentleman 
 student was highly scandalized at "the abuse heaped 
 on the clergy and Mr. Burgess." He was young, but 
 could not refrain, when sacred things were thus 
 attacked. Foster might speak here, he said, but if he 
 were to go into yonder house, (where Burgess was to 
 speak on Sunday,) he would be among those who 
 would lay hold on him and drag him out. 
 
 The students, however, behaved very well in the 
 main ; some of them exceedingly well, considering 
 the pro-slavery influence with which they stood con- 
 nected. They did not talk with much good sense ; 
 they spoke like students ; had they been free, unsoph- 
 isticated youth, uninfected by the schools and the 
 meeting-house, they would have gone en masse for 
 the meeting, and borne a generous testimony in its 
 favor. Pillsbury told them very impressively the 
 
260 \< IS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 obligations they were under to the meeting. It was 
 at the first meeting, he admonished them, where their 
 right of free speech had ever been recognized. They 
 were called and reckoned boys, by other meetings of 
 the day, and would not be allowed to speak on equal 
 terms in any of them. Here they were not boys, but 
 men. What would have been their reception, he 
 asked, in an association of ministers, had they ven- 
 tured to speak as they were free to speak here ? He 
 asked them to appreciate it. He told them they were 
 not boys ; they had rights and responsibilities ; and 
 he warned them how they used them. That should 
 be a memorable clay to them, he said, when in a con- 
 vention of men and women, their equal right of free 
 speech was for the first time recognized and asserted 
 for them, even by those to whose objects they were 
 not friendly. Asserted, not for this meeting only, but 
 for all meetings of a public and proper character. He 
 told them they had right to speak everywhere for 
 themselves ; as good right as any number of years 
 could ever confer upon them. He told them of the 
 part they might act for God and humanity, if they 
 would only use their talents and act up to their con- 
 science and their convictions. 
 
 Sunday was devoted to the Scriptural evidences of 
 the sacred institutions. The clergy are wielding to 
 overawe and put down the anti-slavery movement, 
 the Sabbath, the clerical order, the dedicated temple 
 and the meeting-house worship, to which anti-slavery 
 as well as every other moral reform, is obliged to give 
 way. All these were freely and faithfully discussed 
 in the light of Christianity, and were all shown from 
 abundant scriptural authority and evidence to be un- 
 warranted by the gospel and forbidden by its great 
 Teacher. If the people had been there and dared to 
 hear impartially, enough was said to convince them 
 all. Had the priesthood human ears and common 
 mortal understanding, it would have saved them from 
 their diabolical delusions to have been there and heard, 
 if truth can save them. But the people were only few 
 of them there. The clergy would not let them come. 
 The clergy were not there. The two belonging to 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. j6i 
 
 that neighborhood were absent. They did not dare 
 to be there. They would as soon resign their licenses 
 as meet the abolitionists in presence of the people on 
 the meeting-house floor. 
 
 Now, I appeal to the people if they themselves 
 ought not to have attended the convention. Subjects 
 of the utmost importance to them were those to be 
 discussed, and in a perfectly free meeting. They had 
 full and equal liberty to speak as well as to hear. 
 Men and women were to discuss those subjects whom 
 the community had no reason to doubt were compe- 
 tent to a sensible and profitable examination of them. 
 They ought to have been there. They would have 
 been if they had been free. They would have been 
 had they not been slaves. 
 
 And the two clergymen ought to have been there. 
 Burgess should have given notice of the meeting and 
 exhorted the people to go and hear for themselves. 
 If the meeting was free and open to reply as well as 
 to abolitionist, and he knew it* would be, he surely 
 should have been there himself, and advised others to 
 be there. If we were propagating errors, he knew the 
 place to put us down was in our own meetings. If 
 we were wrong he was the man learned and faithful 
 enough to put us all right. He would put us right 
 for our sakes as well as for other people. Why not ? 
 Suppose we did not reverence him. We complain of 
 him that he wants reverence. Will he prove it by 
 refraining to meet us because we won't render it to 
 him ? He pretends to regard us as wolves, while he 
 professes to be a shepherd. What is the duty of a 
 shepherd when the wolf cometh ? To flee and hide 
 himself ? " The hireling fleeth because," etc., but the 
 true shepherd never. If we were wolves, Shepherd 
 Burgess was afraid of us, If he is a wolf in sheep's 
 clothing, he had good reason to fear us. 
 
 But the clergy can't always keep us from the peo- 
 ple. By the blessing of God, anti-slavery will yet 
 deliver the people of this clergy. They may as well 
 let us have a hearing first as last. They may as well 
 meet us. They must meet us before the people, or 
 the people shall at length know the reason why they 
 
262 VCTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 do not meet us. This skirmishing and dodging will not 
 always avail them. A hand-to-hand conflict must by 
 and by come, and under circumstances most unauspi- 
 cious to the clergy. They will utterly dishonor and dis- 
 credit themselves before the world by their behavior in 
 avoiding the contest. We are right, and they shall 
 meet us, or we will fall upon them at their very altars, 
 and take hold of their horns as Benaiah did upon 
 Joab. Foster and Beach, Brown and Allen, are al- 
 ready scaling the walls of their sanctuaries. Others 
 will follow. The pulpit is "coward's castle," but it is 
 being stormed and it will be taken. If the clergy will 
 hide there and by spells and sorcery prevent the peo- 
 ple from hearing the cry of outraged humanity, its 
 advocates will point their cannon at the sacred 
 order, and never cease battering till it tumbles to 
 the ground. 
 
 Our convention terminated on Sunday afternoon, 
 near night. There was throughout a goodly, but not 
 full attendance. All the humanity of the place was 
 there. There was a lack of attendance on the part 
 of abolitionists from the surrounding region. Why 
 are they not awake ? When liberty lies bound, lacer- 
 ated and bleeding on southern plantations, and her 
 advocates here in New England are imprisoned for 
 pleading her deliverance, is it time to stay at home 
 for ordinary cause ? Would they stay at home if a 
 brother or sister or a wife were a slave, or if a hus- 
 band were shut up in a loathsome cell at Newburyport, 
 only for liberty of speech ? 
 
 I must not forget in this hurried sketch, Foster's 
 preaching at the threshold of Burgess' synagogue, on 
 Sunday noon. He entered it in the forenoon, not to 
 speak, but to appal, as I suppose, that haughty hire- 
 ling by his presence. And it made him turn pale 
 with coward apprehension. He feared Foster would 
 open his mouth to speak. He knew he could oppose 
 nothing to his powerful word but brute, ruffian, raga- 
 muffin force. He trembled to be driven to it before 
 his parish. Wicked man ! Why does he not give 
 liberty of speech? Can he not defend himself? 
 Foster is an able man, but I am not afraid of him 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 263 
 
 where he is wrong. Why should the Reverend Mr. 
 
 Burgess be ? Has he no |ongue to defend himself, 
 and in the midst of his own people ? 
 
 Foster spoke over half an hour, out on the com- 
 mon before the synagogue, at intermission, and with 
 great power. The people heard him. Burgess was 
 within, like Putnam's wolf, but did not dare to come 
 out. He must have heard Foster's voice, and prob- 
 ably ordered the few that were with him to set up a 
 tune, for they did, the cowards ! They did not dare 
 to listen to the truth, so they sang a psalm. They 
 were " not merry " and so they sang psalms. They 
 were scared at the truth, and so they sang to drown 
 it. Some of the leading subalterns of the priest at 
 length returned from their home to the meeting. 
 They were filled with rage when they came within 
 sound of Foster's voice. They howled like very 
 fiends. One of them, mighty well dressed and re- 
 spectable looking, said : " The damned creatnre is 
 crazv ; what is he here for? "If he is crazy," cried 
 another, "he ought to be kicked off the ground." 
 "Takeaway your minister," said one of the select 
 men to our friend, David Wood, "or I will have aeon- 
 stable here to take care of him." But Foster was on 
 the common, and it was intermission time, to boot. 
 " I do not keep a minister," replied our friend Wood. 
 "Foster is his own minister, not mine." 
 
 We had no officers in our convention, no president, 
 no secretary, no business committee, no resolves passed. 
 The question of president was fully discussed, and 
 officers dispensed with unanimously. There was no 
 vote of invitation to all persons present to participate. 
 We were an open human meeting. We were met to 
 promote humanity. And we declared everybody had, 
 of course, a right to speak and act in our meeting, 
 for it was everybody's meeting. Our harmony was 
 perfect. Even the mobocracy was subdued and 
 brought to order by the overpowering influence of 
 liberty. 
 
 The foregoing may seem to young readers a narra- 
 tive too long drawn out. But it conveys only a faint 
 idea of the scenes witnessed and encountered there. 
 
264 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 And not only there, but in hundreds of towns besides. 
 And the mob spirit there manifested was mildness it- 
 self compared with many other places east and west. 
 When the clerical or political party leaders saw that 
 we were determined the cause of the slave should 
 be presented to the people, they felt safe in setting the 
 mob on us at any time, knowing that we were non- 
 resistants in every encounter. At Hancock, when the 
 volley of stones came crashing in at the windows 
 among the people, the women kept quiet, but a man 
 cried out, " Let's adjourn ; let's adjourn." Happening 
 to be speaking at the moment, I raised my voice so as 
 to be heard in the confusion and asked ; Did your 
 fathers adjourn at Bunker Hill when fired upon by the 
 enemies of freedom ? The effect was as sudden as sat- 
 isfactory, and the silence and order continued to the 
 close of the session. The poor fellow with the shilalah 
 in the pulpit had been drinking, but he rose and made 
 a few very sensible remarks, rebuking severely the 
 disturbers, which we applauded, and that rather won 
 him to our side. I had often by strategy captured the 
 champion of rioters whom they had crazed with liquor 
 and put forward to annoy me so as to break up the 
 meeting if possible. Sometimes I would invite him 
 to a friendly discussion and take him 'to the platform 
 and propose that I would speak half an hour and he 
 take notes and reply as he saw might be needed. I 
 would furnish paper and pencil and proceed. The 
 plan would not always succeed ; neither did it always 
 fail of the desired result. I well recollect such an oc- 
 currence one terrible night in Vermont. The moon 
 was bright as silver, but the mercury was much below 
 zero. I should have held my man and 'the audience 
 had not the rioters began pelting their champion at 
 the table with paper pellets, tobacco quids and similar 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 265 
 
 arguments, doubtless the best they had to offer. He 
 soon kindled into rage against them, and I think 
 would have died then in my defense had it been 
 necessary. I was able to continue speaking in the 
 confusion till the disturbing element was shamed into 
 comparative silence, and then closed the meeting. 
 This was unexpected, and some of the most violent 
 begged me to proceed, promising the best of order 
 and behavior to the end. But I declined, telling them 
 I had captured their champion and proved him the 
 most decent man of them all, and now they might 
 have the responsibility of breaking up a free meeting 
 where they would have been welcome to half the 
 time. 
 
 The Hancock convention had no presiding nor 
 other officers, and so was a gathering after Mr. Rog- 
 ers's own heart, as his graphic but eminently just and 
 truthful description shows. 
 
 While on Hillsborough county it may be opportune 
 to report one more meeting held or attempted by Mr. 
 Foster alone. It was in the town of Nashua, where 
 anti-slavery never had rapid nor healthy growth. The 
 people not coming to Mr. Foster he felt called on to 
 go to them. It need not be told again that he differed 
 at that time from most of his fellow christians in 
 modes of worship. Fie believed devoutly that in all 
 christian assemblies there should be freedom of utter- 
 ance, whether by prayer, speaking, or song, as was 
 both preached and practiced by Christ and the early 
 apostles. But into whatever religious assembly he 
 entered, his manner was always decent and respectful, 
 and whether he spoke or prayed, his tones of voice 
 were remarkably solemn and impressive. But I am 
 sure he never once interrupted any religious services, 
 except in places where political leaders and religious 
 
266 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 teachers had used all their influence and authority to 
 keep the people from attending his meetings, which 
 were always supereminently free. 
 
 Mr. Foster's own account of the affair will best 
 describe it, and as it was written in a prison into 
 which his faithfulness brought him, it will be all the 
 more interesting. A part only of his letter will here 
 be given. It was dated, 
 
 Amherst Jail, May 7, 1S42. 
 
 My dear brother Rogers — Under the superin- 
 tending providence of Him by whose permission, 
 Joseph was cast into prison in Egypt, and the prophet 
 Jeremiah wis incarcerated in a loathsome dungeon, 
 and Jesus Christ scourged, spit upon, and nailed to 
 the cross, I have been given up into the power of my 
 enemies, arrested and confined within the walls of a 
 loathsome cell. But though captured, I am not con- 
 quered ; nay, I am a conquerer. My body is indeed 
 incased in granite and iron, but I was never more free 
 than at this moment ; I have at length triumphed 
 over every foe ; I have achieved this victory by con- 
 quering my own servile slavish fear of man, and all 
 the instruments of torture and death, which his mali- 
 cious passions have invented. * I 
 was a slave. I am a slave no longer. My lips have 
 been sealed by man. They will never be again, till 
 sealed in death. My body is freely yielded to the 
 persecutors to torture at pleasure. But my spirit must 
 and shall be free. Equal, unrestricted liberty of 
 speech at all times, and in all places, is my birthright. 
 It is the gift of God to every member of the family of 
 man, and I will defend it in the face of prison and of 
 death. * * * You, brother Rogers, and 
 the rest of my anti-slavery coadjutors may turn your 
 backs upon our synagogues, or sit silent spectators of 
 their hypocritical worship, while the dying wail of 
 millions of your countrymen is borne to your ears on 
 every southern breeze — if you can. I cannot. I will 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 267 
 
 not. So long as the soil of America is polluted by the 
 footprints of slavery, I will speak, in behalf of the 
 victim, wherever I can reach a human ear. 
 
 * * My countrymen are pirates. They 
 
 legalize the sale and enslavement of their own " free 
 and equal" brethren. They authorize their transpor- 
 tation to distant ports to be sold into perpetual slavery. 
 I scorn the friendship of such a people ; it is enmity 
 against God. * * * My enemies never 
 
 made greater blunder than when they sent me to this 
 gloomv prison. It is an honor I did not expect ; one 
 I feared I might never merit. 
 
 As your readers may wish to know the circum- 
 stances under which 1 came to this place, I will relate 
 them, with such accuracy as can be done from mem- 
 ory, though there is not time for detail. 
 
 Last Saturday I visited Nashua, with the intention 
 of giving a course of anti-slavery lectures, similar to 
 those I have recently given at Dover, Exeter, and Som- 
 ersworth. On my arrival, application was made for 
 a house suitable to my purpose, but no such place 
 could be obtained. The meeting-houses were refused, 
 for no valid reason, except the UniversaHst, which 
 was engaged for a course of scientific lectures. I 
 called on Rev. D. D. Pratt, pastor of the Baptist 
 church, and requested permission to address his con- 
 gregation on the subject of slavery, the next day. 
 Mr. Pratt refused my request, and remarked that he 
 felt himself compelled to decide what was best for his 
 people, and that he would send for me when he wanted 
 my help. I then called on the Congregationalist min- 
 isters, Mr. Richards and Mr. McGee, for similar pur- 
 pose, but with no better success. 
 
 On Saturday evening, I attended a meeting at Mr. 
 Richards' vestry, and spoke twenty minutes or more 
 to an attentive audience, most of whom I presumed 
 were members of the church. On Sunday morning, 
 after mature reflection and fervent prayer to God 
 for divine guidance, I visited the Baptist meeting- 
 house for the purpose of occupying some portion of 
 the day in advocating the claims of that part of 
 our countrymen who are held in slavery by the minis- 
 
268 ACTS OK ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 ters and members of the Baptist church. In doing 
 so, I acted in good faith to the assembly I met. 
 They said that place was the house of God, and I 
 took them at their word and claimed in it the rights 
 and privileges of a child of God. They said their as- 
 sembly was a christian meeting, and I knew if it was, 
 it would recognize and respect the equal right of all 
 to speak, or "to prophesy one by one." They said 
 Christ was their Lord and Master, and I knew if they 
 were followers of his, I should be in no danger of be- 
 ing thrust from their house. For when was it ever 
 told of "the Prince of Peace " that he was seen run- 
 ning out ot the synagogue with a Pharisee on his 
 back? Or when did he privately instruct Deacon An- 
 drew or Rev. Simon Peter to drag out the spies that 
 he foreknew would come into the temple "to entangle 
 him in his talk," feigning themselves iust men ? They 
 said they were the sheep of Christ's flock, sent forth 
 by their divine shepherd into the midst of wolves, of 
 which I was one, and I knew if such were the fact, 
 I was in no danger of being devoured by them, or 
 dragged from their fold ; for when was it ever heard 
 of sheep that they had devoured a wolf, or ferociously 
 seized upon him and hurled him from their pen? 
 They said Jesus had commanded them to "be wise as 
 serpents and harmless as doves," and I knew if they 
 followed such directions, they would look to God 
 for protection, and not to a wicked Universalist ; and 
 would seek to conquer their enemies by the power of 
 love, and not by the terrors of the avenging sword. 
 They claimed to be christians, and I knew that among 
 such, it would be perfectly safe for me to give utter- 
 ance to my sympathies for God's perishing poor. 
 
 I rose for that purpose, but was immediately inter- 
 rupted by Mr. Pratt, who said he wished to commence 
 the regular exercises. I did not notice this interrup- 
 tion, and was proceeding with mv remarks, when sud- 
 denly Deacon Chase pounced upon my back and held 
 me fast in his talons. We did not have a regular fight, 
 like some which have recently disgraced the halls of 
 congress, for the one only reason, that I declined a 
 combat with the reverend ambassador of Christ and 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 269 
 
 his devout deacon. I would not assert that Rev. Mr. 
 Pratt would have fought in person, had I stood upon 
 my rights. He might have thought that too undig- 
 nified. He would doubtless have contented him- 
 self with aiding and abetting the affray, by giving 
 it his countenance and approval, as he did my subse- 
 quent ejection from the house. After being dragged 
 from the platform by the deacon, I was carried into 
 the street by three or four men, whose names were not 
 given. I inquired of the deacon, who still had me in 
 his talons, if I was his prisoner. He replied that I 
 was not, and let go his grasp. I then turned to go 
 into the house, but was arrested by the deacon and 
 his associates. A messenger was immediately dis- 
 patched to the Universalist meeting-house, in search 
 of one of those " ministers of God, who bear not the 
 sword in vain." The messenger soon returned, ac- 
 companied by Constable Gillis, by whom, with the as- 
 sistance of Deacon Chase, I was pulled by the arms 
 and collar a distance of fifteen rods or more, to a rum 
 tavern, and thrown on the bar-room floor. Soon 
 after, I was seized and dragged up two flights of stairs 
 and thrown upon the floor of a small upper chamber, 
 and subsequently delivered into the custody of two 
 keepers. 
 
 Having secured me in this temporary prison, the 
 deacon returned to his meeting, to tender to the 
 church the emblems of the body and blood of "the 
 Prince of Peace." I was arrested, as the constable 
 informed me, on complaint of Deacon Edwin Chase, 
 Deacon David Philbrook, Norman Fuller, and another 
 member of the church, whose name I have lost. 
 
 During the afternoon. Brother Preble, a Free-will 
 Baptist minister, came into my prison and asked the 
 constable, who was then present, to accompany me to 
 Thayer's hall, at five o'clock, to fulfill an appointment 
 made for me at that place. This he declined doing, 
 but said he would release me for that purpose, on con- 
 dition that Brother Preble and certain others would 
 be responsible for my return, provided he. could ob- 
 tain consent of the complainants. Their consent to 
 this was asked, but denied ! During the evening, one 
 
270 VCTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 of my keepers left. The other remained through the 
 night, and slept with his clothes on, the door locked 
 and the lamp burning. Indeed, 1 was as strictly 
 guarded as though I had been a felon, waiting only an 
 opportunity to escape. 
 
 At ten o'clock, on Monday morning, I was put on 
 trial before Israel Hunt. The complaint set forth 
 that I had entered the Baptist meeting-house, "with 
 force and arms," and disturbed the meeting by mak- 
 ing a noise, by rude and indecent behavior, etc., etc. 
 The principal witnesses against me were Rev. Dura D. 
 Pratt, and Deacon Edwin Chase. As a precaution, 
 Mr. Hunt required them to swear by the living God, 
 that they would tell the truth, the whole truth and 
 nothing but the truth, relative to the case under trial. 
 But instead of so doing, both of them kept back a part 
 of it, as did Annanias and Sapphira a part of their 
 possessions, and, what was quite as unchristian, testi- 
 fied to what was palpably false, and what I think they 
 must have known was false. None present could fail 
 to remark that their memory was all on one side. Mr. 
 Pratt testified that I treated him " ungentlemanly." 
 On being asked what I said or did that was ungentle- 
 manly, he could not recollect, he said, then, but he was 
 certain, very, that I treated him ungentlemanly. His 
 answers to my questions on the point reminded me of 
 the lines I have seen, but cannot now recall where : 
 
 " I do not like thee, Dr. Fell ; 
 
 The reason why I cannot tell ; 
 But this I do know, very well, 
 I do not like thee, Dr. Fell." 
 
 So with the reverend gentleman. He knew full well 
 that I treated him "ungentlemanly," but wherein 
 he could not tell. But finally, being pressed on that 
 point, he testified that I told him I would preach to 
 his people whether he was willing or not. This, in 
 his opinion, was ungentlemanly. Well, admitting 
 that it would have been, it so happened that I did 
 not say it, as brother Preble, who was present, will 
 testify. But I did say to Mr. Pratt that I had come 
 to Nashua to obtain a hearing in behalf of my en- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 27 1 
 
 slaved countrymen, and that, if access to the public 
 ear through the ordinary channels was denied me, I 
 should seek a channel of my own. 
 
 As I do not acknowledge allegiance to any human 
 power, I made no defence. I asked the witnesses 
 some questions, and said a few words, but they were 
 designed to influence the audience present, rather 
 than the decision of Mr. Hunt. In that, I felt no 
 interest. My only object was to expose the wicked- 
 ness and hypocrisy of Dura D. Pratt and the majority 
 of his church, that they might no longer ensnare the 
 ignorant and unwary. 
 
 Mr. Hunt's sentence was, that I pay a fine of three 
 dollars and costs of prosecution ; at the same time in- 
 timating that a repetition of the offence would be fol- 
 lowed by a much heavier penalty. I assured him I 
 had done my duty in attempting to preach the gospel 
 to the Baptists, and it was contrary to my sense of 
 propriety to pay a fine for it. And I should, there- 
 fore, refuse to do it. And, as to threat of augmented 
 penalty for similar fidelity in future, I should not be 
 at all intimidated by it. And so long as any portion 
 of my countrymen were held in slavery, my voice 
 would never be silent, till silent in death. 
 
 Mr. Hunt then ordered me to be imprisoned till the 
 fine was paid. 
 
 At ten o'clock the next day this order was carried 
 into effect, by my incarceration in this loathsome 
 prison, where duty to God and my countrymen re- 
 quires me to remain at present. Relief is kindly 
 offered me from several sources, whenever I shall 
 think proper to accept it. But I feel that the object 
 is not yet accomplished that my heavenly Father had 
 in view, in sending me to this dismal abode. And 
 till that is done, I have no wish to be relieved. To 
 one as restless as 1 am, imprisonment is oppressive. 
 But I can endure it patiently for His sake who died 
 for me. I can now surely " remember them that are 
 in bonds, as bound with them." * * * * 
 Bid my friends, one and all, be of good cheer. We 
 shall triumph soon. My eye is already on the victory. 
 You and I may be called to yield up our lives in the 
 
272 \r I S OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 final struggle. Be it so. I am ready. I have already 
 passed the bitterness of death. My enemies have 
 done their worst. I fear them no longer. Do not 
 think me insane, that I write thus. I know in whom 
 I have believed, and that a happier state awaits me 
 when the toils of life are done. 
 
 Your friend and brother, 
 
 Stephen S. Foster. 
 Brave hero ! But many did call him insane, even 
 some of his best, truest friends. I remember once, 
 in Faneuil Hall, at an anniversary, we had a discussion 
 lasting all an afternoon and evening. Garrison, Rog- 
 ers, Wendell Phillips, Charles Burleigh and Foster 
 were, of course, all on one side. Rev. John Pierpont, 
 Theodore Parker, Thomas Earle, of Philadelphia, 
 David Lee Child, the gifted husband of the more 
 gifted Lydia Maria Child, and probably others, were 
 on the opposing side. The house was crowded in 
 every part. Mr. Pierpont was speaking, and with 
 quite his usual eloquence and power. I was sitting 
 with Foster, clown in the body of the hall. Every ear 
 seemed to be opened, every eye fixed on the speaker. 
 Suddenly, Foster detected what proved a fatal moral 
 flaw in the logic. Quietly he rose and addressed the 
 chair: "Mr. President." Mr. Pierpont, always the 
 perfect 'gentleman in every grace the word implies, 
 and never more so than when in debate, ceased speak- 
 ing and listened. Everybody listened. Foster re- 
 sumed : " Mr. President, will our friend, Mr. Pier- 
 pont, allow me to ask him a question just here?" 
 "Certainly," was the ready response from the speaker, 
 gracefully drawing back from the front of the plat- 
 form. Foster then proposed his question. I do not 
 remember it, but I well recollect that it lighted up 
 the whole dark, deep chasm between moral rectitude 
 and political expediency, showing Mr. Pierpont far 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. -'7,5 
 
 over on the wrong side. All saw it, but none ap- 
 plauded, though, in that vast throng, thousands must 
 have approved. The stillness was almost overpower- 
 ing. Mr. Pierpont broke it in a manner that at once 
 engraved him on the tablets of my memory, and em- 
 balmed him in my heart's affection forevermore. He 
 spoke only this : " Mr. President, some folks say our 
 friend Foster is crazy. But I wonder what this audi- 
 ence think about it?" Only this, when a storm of 
 applause burst forth almost rocking the old " Cradle 
 of Liberty" to its foundations. Mr. Foster's triumph 
 was complete ; but the graceful magnanimity of Mr. 
 Pierpont I am sure entitled him to a kingly share in 
 all the honors of that memorable scene. 
 
 Mr. Foster, not without reason and propriety, closed 
 his pathetic prison epistle with the appeal : " Think 
 me not insane because I thus write." 
 
 Insane ! Flad a like insanity pervaded a small part 
 of the American church, pulpit and people, southern 
 slavery would never have attained such proportions in 
 the name of republican liberty and protestant chris- 
 tian religion, as to demand the blood of half a million 
 young men, brave and beautiful, to wash its guilt 
 away. 
 
 Insane ! Rogers did not deem him insane. Blaz- 
 ing down two solid columns of the same page of the 
 IlcralJ of Freedom with the letter, went his editorial 
 comments, every word of which should be here repro- 
 duced, in justice to martyr memory and the facts of 
 history. On the jail itself he wrote : u It is provi- 
 dential in Foster's behalf that Amherst jail stands so 
 near Chestnut hills and anti-slavery Milford, so that 
 the friends of humanity in those favored places can 
 come to his relief and comfort in his otherwise soli- 
 tary confinement. Those two localities abound in 
 
274 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVER\ APOSTLES. 
 
 ministering spirits to the faithful prisoner. They have 
 seen to the cleansing and purification, to some extent, 
 of this loathsome receptacle of the victims of clerical 
 and deaconish vengeance. They have expurgated 
 Foster's department, I understand, of its vermin. The 
 character of a people may be judged somewhat by its 
 prisons, as well as its deacons and clergy. A savage 
 people will support bloody minded incarcerating dea- 
 cons and dragging-out clergy, and filthy, noisome, 
 verminous cells, in which to shut up those whom it 
 hates and fears." 
 
 Referring to the justice who tried the cause and 
 pronounced the sentence, he said : " The humane 
 magistrate who played the part of Pilate in the matter, 
 albeit he did not wash his hands as the profligate 
 Roman did, fined Foster low, yet so high (three dol- 
 lars) that he thought in his majestic soul that it would 
 deter him from " speaking again in the synagogue, in 
 this name." He expressed his trust, I understand, to 
 that effect, when pronouncing his solemn sentence. I 
 should love to have witnessed the look with which 
 Stephen replied to that magnificent suggestion. Poor 
 depository of a little brief authority ! He little appre- 
 hended the character or the calling of the man he was 
 dealing with. He might naturally enough suppose 
 that one who had abandoned all the prospects of young 
 ambition, a pulpit, a chance few young men of the 
 time have had before them, (but for his christian in- 
 tegrity) a reputation, which had he pursued it, would, 
 ere this time, have crowned him thick with literary 
 and ecclesiastical honors ; who had abandoned all and 
 made himself "of no reputation," would now be driven 
 back from the high and solemn duties for the sake of 
 which he had done it all, by a three dollar fine ! It was 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOST] ES. 275 
 
 an apprehension worthy the official dignitary who 
 could mistake christian participation in a religious 
 meeting for a legal disturbance of that meeting !" 
 
 Mr. Rogers had some time before given his opinion 
 of Mr. Foster's right to enter professedly christian 
 assemblies, to plead the cause of the oppressed, in 
 language to this effect: "Mr. Foster is the agent 
 of the State Anti-Slavery Society, but takes his own 
 way of performing the duties of his agency. How far 
 the society would approve this new measure we can- 
 not say. For ourselves, we cannot deny the Christian- 
 ity of it, and we see not how the meetings he enters 
 can, or how they can object to it consistently with 
 their christian profession. They assume to be chris- 
 tian assemblies, and to be governed by apostolic rules 
 and usages. They would be scandalized to be desig- 
 nated as any other than christian meetings. By those 
 rules and usages, Foster has undoubted right to en- 
 ter, uninvited, unpermitted, and be heard. They are 
 congregational meetings to be sure, but they claim 
 that Congregationalism is Christianity, in its most 
 approved form, and has no other than New Testa- 
 ment organization, principles and usages. As political 
 assemblies, they may deny Foster's right. As worldly 
 meetings, they may charge him with intrusion. As 
 heathen meetings, they may complain and cannot be 
 estopped by the plea that Foster comes in as a chris- 
 tian, claiming under the usages of a christian assem- 
 bly. The reply that they are a heathen and not a 
 christian assembly would put him on a different de- 
 fense. Whether it would be a defense in that case 
 for him to say that, as a man he has a right, and is in 
 duty bound to enter any human assembly and cry 
 aloud in the paramount behalf of perishing humanity. 
 
2]b ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 whatever business might be going on there, is another 
 question and need not be decided, so long as these 
 meetings do not claim to be heathen." 
 
 This, and much more, was written for and published 
 in the Herald of Freedom of the first of October, 
 1841, in connection with an account of the Hancock 
 meeting of that year. 
 
 Whether Mr. Foster was right or wrong in his 
 course, was never considered by the clergy at all. 
 They assumed that he was wrong, and with equal au- 
 dacity, they assumed always that they were right in 
 ordering him dragged out and sent to prison, or fined, 
 or both, at the discretion of a civil magistrate. Thus 
 they voluntarily placed themselves, as christian min- 
 isters, under the protection of the sword of human, 
 worldly authority, while claiming to be, while profes- 
 sing to be, servants and disciples of the prophesied 
 " Prince of Peace." Of him who said : "My king- 
 dom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of 
 this world, then would my servants fight. * * * 
 But now is my kingdom not from hence." 
 
 Nor should readers of these chronicles forget who 
 was Mr. Foster, and what was his object in thus seek- 
 ing the ear, the heart and conscience of the American 
 churches and people, "whether they would hear or 
 whether they would forbear." He was a christian 
 teacher and minister, not then ordained, though he 
 had thoroughly educated and qualified himself to oc- 
 cupy any pulpit or professor's chair, in college or 
 theological seminary. He knew profoundly the his- 
 tory of the church and its ministry, from the calling 
 of Moses and the Levites to, Samuel, the earliest 
 prophet ; to Isaiah and Ezekiel, and onward to John 
 the Baptist and Jesus Christ and his chosen and or- 
 dained apostles. And when or where in all the Jew- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 277 
 
 ish or christian scriptures was it ever read or known 
 that the priests, prophets, or apostles, were to ask 
 leave of the ungodly to preach unto them the doc- 
 trines of repentance, reformation and righteousness ? 
 Or when, or where, was it ever read or heard that such 
 right, or even duty, was ever forbidden by any "rules 
 or usages," still less, laws of divine appointment or 
 approval, in any assembly, Jewish or christian ? 
 
 Mr. Foster, like Mr. Garrison and Mr. Rogers, was 
 a christian and christian minister and teacher, in all 
 that those words of hallowed memory could ever be 
 rightly made to mean. And to whom was he sent ? 
 Or, if not sent, to whom did he come? To a nation 
 of oppressors, the like of whom, under all the circum- 
 stances, no age had ever seen, from the bondage of 
 Israel in Egypt to the enslavement of Anglo Saxons 
 by Norman invaders, whose deeds of manumission 
 were sometimes recorded on the blank leaves of the 
 parish Bible, kept in the church, secure from all inva- 
 sion or violation as though sanctioned by a "thus 
 saith the Lord," with the volume itself. Foster was 
 himself part of a nation, (no unimportant part, as be- 
 came apparent), that in the name of republicanism 
 and Christianity, enslaved down to lowest brute-beast 
 level, one-sixth part of its entire people. He found 
 in his own nation, millions of human, immortal beings, 
 without one marriage sanctioned by law, or sanctified 
 by religion, among them all ! One-sixth part of the 
 habitations of the people, houses of open, known 
 prostitution, the holy rights, responsibilities and de- 
 lights of parentage as utterly unknown, unrecognized, 
 as among the beasts of the stable or the stall. Mil- 
 lions of immortal, accountable human beings, and not 
 one of them permitted to learn to read the name of 
 the great creator, under pains and penalties, severe, 
 
278 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 sometimes almost, as for murder itself ! Millions of 
 men, women and children, held accountable to human 
 law, as well as divine, of whom a commission of the 
 synods of South Carolina and Georgia, in the year 
 of christian grace, 1833, declared, as with astonish- 
 ment : " Who would credit it, that in these years of 
 religious revival and benevolent effort, in this christian 
 republic, there are over two millions of human beings 
 in the condition of heathen, and, in some respects, 
 in worse condition ! From long-continued and close 
 observation, we believe that their moral and religious 
 condition is such that they may justly be considered 
 the heathen of this christian country, and will bear com- 
 parison with heathen in any country in the world ! " 
 
 Another writer in that same South Carolina synod, 
 ou his own account, calls loudly for missionaries to 
 those heathens, saying ; " I hazard the assertion that 
 throughout the bounds of our synod, there are at least 
 one hundred thousand slaves, speaking the same lan- 
 guage with ourselves, who never heard of the 
 plan of salvation by a redeemer ! " 
 
 To such a people and nation did Stephen Foster 
 come with his terrible words of warning, expostulation 
 and rebuke. Saw Moses and Aaron any such abom- 
 ination and outrage in Egypt ? But they asked no 
 leave to enter the house of Pharaoh and confront the 
 tyrant to his face ; demand immediate and uncon- 
 ditional emancipation of every bondman in the land, 
 and all his house hold ; and flocks and herds, as well. 
 Isaiah asked no leave nor license to go to the house 
 of Israel and Jacob, and show them their sins, and 
 rebuke them for their vain fastings and solemn, 
 religious mockeries, while refusing to " loose the 
 bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens and 
 let the captive go free," and break every yoke of 
 
\( IS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 279 
 
 oppression and cruelty. His commission was, "Cry- 
 aloud, and spare not ; lift up thy voice like a trumpet!" 
 And he obeyed ; and so did Jeremiah ; so did Eze- 
 kiel. To be sure, they were persecuted ; were impris- 
 oned ; some suffered death. But what then ? They 
 were obeying what to them, was a divine command. 
 "Go thou and speak my words unto them ; whether 
 they will hear, or whether they will forbear ; for they 
 are a rebellious house." * * "They will 
 
 not hearken unto thee, for they will not hearken unto 
 me ; for all the house of Israel are impudent and 
 hard-hearted." 
 
 But can it be shown from any history, sacred or 
 secular, that Hebrew prophet ever saw such oppression 
 and cruelty as our slave-holders created and unblush- 
 ingly confessed ! Or even paganism more dreadful 
 than that which southern synods owned covered all 
 their slaveland as with a funeral pall ? 
 
 But the no less faithful prophet, Stephen Foster, saw 
 it. He felt it. He felt that he was a part of it, till so 
 far as it was possible, he had come out from it, sep- 
 arated himself from it, religiously and politically, and 
 consecrated himself and all that he had, all that he 
 was, all that he could acquire, all that he could become, 
 to the work of redeeming the slave, and rescuing his 
 nation from the righteous wrath of that God before 
 whom Jefferson declared he trembled when he remem- 
 bered that He was just, and that His justice could not 
 sleep forever ! 
 
 Had not James G. Birney proved by his tract, of 
 stunning power of argument, that "the American 
 churches were the bulwarks of American slavery ; " 
 and every witness furnished by the church and pulpit 
 themselves ; and Judge Birney himself a ruling elder 
 in the most powerful and popular denomination in 
 
280 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 all the south ? and so soon as he had washed his hands 
 clean from all blood guiltiness in slave-holding, a man 
 of most unblemished moral and social, as well as intel- 
 lectual character, in this or any nation. And had not 
 Foster demonstrated to the whole christian world, and 
 out of their own mouths, too, that the American 
 church and clergy were a great brotherhood of 
 thieves ? A great brotherhood of thieves, taking 
 them at their own word ; not producing a single wit- 
 ness of his own, nor cross-questioning one of theirs ? 
 
 Why should he not then enter the synagogues on 
 the sabbath day, with greater boldness than ever did 
 Jesus the synagogues of Judea, or the temple at Jeru- 
 salem ? enter them, though every New Hampshire hill 
 had been a Calvary, and every tree a cross ! Who 
 was Mr. Justice Hunt of Nashua, with his stupendous 
 three dollar fine, or the deacons of Reverend Dura D. 
 Pratt, or his reverence himself, with Amherst jail and 
 a constable drafted from Nashua Universalist church 
 to drag him away to it, who, or what were all these to 
 the soul and spirit of one who had heard and heeded 
 the voice of Him who said; "I do send thee to a 
 people impudent and hard-hearted, who will not 
 hearken unto thee, for they will not hearken unto me. 
 Nevertheless, go and speak my word unto them, and 
 it shall be known that there hath been a prophet 
 among them, whether they will hear, or whether they 
 will forbear ! " 
 
 But this account may be extended too far. Inclos- 
 ing it, probably it may be as a leave taking from my ever 
 to be revered friend and companion in arms in our 
 moral but fearful conflict for the rights of humanity. 
 Incidentally his name may appear again in these pages, 
 but that will be all their limits allow. The close shall 
 also be in his own words, appropriate climax to his letter 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. " 2SI 
 
 from the jail. Under date of Canterbury, January 
 15, 1S42, he wrote to the Herald of Freedom a letter 
 from which the following are extracts. It will be ob- 
 served that he had almost twenty years yet before him 
 of fearful encounter, with the no less faithful com- 
 panionship, who with him endured to the end of the 
 anti-slavery strife : 
 
 Dear Rogers — I designed to be with you in Con- 
 cord to-day, to commence a course of anti-slavery 
 lectures, but, as you see, I am not there, and for the 
 very worst of reasons. I am disarmed if not con- 
 quered by the enemy. My voice for all practicable 
 purposes is gone. Since the wet weather came on, 
 the inflammation on my lungs has returned with other 
 symptoms of unfavorable character than those of the 
 original attack. * * * I am now laid on the shelf 
 for the present, perhaps for the winter. Possibly for 
 even a longer period. Indeed, when I dare look 
 on my shattered form, I sometimes think prisons will 
 be needed for me but little longer. * * Within 
 the last fifteen months four times have they opened 
 their dismal cells for my reception. Twenty-four 
 times have my countrymen dragged me from their 
 temples of worship, and twice have they thrown me 
 with great violence from the second story of their 
 buildings, careless of consequences. Once in a Bap- 
 tist meeting-house they gave me an evangelical kick 
 in the side, which left me for weeks an invalid. Times 
 out of memory have they broken up my meetings with 
 violence, and hunted me with brick-bats and bad eggs. 
 Once they indicted me for assault and battery ; I 
 think it was on that notorious band of kidnappers, the 
 Boston police and their abettors, the judges of the 
 supreme court. Once in the name of outraged law 
 and justice have they attempted to put me in irons. 
 
282 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Twice have they punished me with fine for preaching 
 the gospel ; and once in a mob of two thousand 
 people have they deliberately attempted to murder me, 
 and were only foiled in their designs after inflicting 
 some twenty blows on my head, face and neck, by the 
 heroism of a brave and noble woman. To name her 
 in this besotted age would be to cast pearls before 
 swine ; but her name shall be known in other worlds. 
 * * Still I will not complain, though death 
 should be found close on my track. My lot is easy 
 compared with that of those for whom I labor. I can 
 endure the prison, but save me from the plantation /" 
 Space permits no more. This whole letter is worthy 
 a place by the side of the most pathetic strains in the 
 epistles of the great apostle to the Gentiles. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MARTYR PERIOD — IMPRISONMENT OF ALLEN, 
 BROWN, BEACH, HARRIMAN AND FOSTER. 
 
 Two British women wrote each a work on American 
 slavery, of similar character. One was entitled " The 
 Martyr Age," by Harriet Martineau ; the other, by 
 Eliza Wigham, was " The Anti-slavery Cause in Amer- 
 ica, and its Martyrs." Both were highly interesting 
 and valuable but neither could treat of the later per- 
 secutions and imprisonment of Eoster and others, for 
 their heroic determination to bring the cause of the 
 enslaved to the doors and altars of the sanctuary. A 
 dozen years before, Garrison had appealed to the pul- 
 pit, beginning with his own minister, Dr. Lyman 
 Beecher, then of Boston. But his appeal was worse 
 than in vain. " I have already too many irons in the 
 fire," responded the reverend doctor. But Garrison 
 said, seriously : " You had better let all your irons 
 burn up, than neglect your duty to the slave." " I am 
 a colonizationist," said the doctor; "your zeal is 
 commendable, but misguided. Give up your fanati- 
 cal notions about immediate emancipation, and be 
 guided by us (meaning the clergy), and we will make 
 you the Wilberforce of America." And so said nearly 
 all the leading clergy of the north ; Congregational, 
 Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Unita- 
 rian, all alike. The exceptions, such as were worthy 
 the distinction, were soon proscribed as " Garriso- 
 nians," name then below every name. And there 
 seemed a settled determination that the people should 
 
284 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 not hear the abolitionists, nor know of their doctrines, 
 nor of their own duties and obligations to the slaves. 
 Many proofs of this have already been adduced ; but 
 many more are soon to appear. Another " Martyr 
 Age " was demanded to expose and overturn the 
 power and reign of a pulpit thus given over to work 
 iniquity and practice such oppression and cruelty, in 
 the very name of him who came preaching " deliver- 
 ance to the captives, and the opening of the prison 
 doors to them that were bound." New Hampshire 
 and Massachusetts were not worse than other states, 
 but in them were many of the fiercest encounters; in 
 them was this spiritual wickedness in high places most 
 fearfully revealed to the gaze and astonishment of 
 mankind. 
 
 Take the following excerpts from one Pastoral Cir- 
 cular, issued by the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
 Baptist association, headed, "To the churches com- 
 posing the Portsmouth association — grace, mercy and 
 peace from God the Father, and Christ Jesus, our 
 Lord :" 
 
 " There are indications that we are on the eve of 
 a moral and religious revolution." This was in the 
 autumn of 1S42, and the dreaded "revolution" was 
 indeed upon them, in the new and increased faithful- 
 ness of some, at least, of the anti-slavery apostles in 
 breaking down the barriers a wicked and cruel clergy 
 had raised between them and the people, as well with- 
 out as within the churches. With subtle cunning and 
 real Jesuitry they concealed in their Circular (wishing 
 " grace, mercy and peace"), the names, not only of 
 persons, but of principles and objects they meant to 
 oppose, and talked about important schemes of moral 
 and philanthropic name under direction of those who 
 have little or no sympathy for pure Christianity ; in 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. ■ 285 
 
 one breath denouncing the ministry, and in the next 
 calling for its influence to be manifested in support of 
 their favorite measures for doing good. * * * 
 * * " Making it difficult to counteract their in- 
 fluence in many cases, because of the goodness of 
 the*cause in which they profess to be engaged." 
 
 With verbiage vague as this, the Circular pro- 
 ceeded at much length to caricature the faithful labor- 
 ers in the lecturing field, as well as editors and 
 others, and warning their disciples against presuming 
 on the dignity and authority of those who claim to 
 be set over them in the Lord, in strain like this : 
 
 Let the churches, directly or indirectly, rule the 
 ministers, let them lose confidence in their religious 
 teachers, as men who merely consult their own per- 
 sonal views and ends, without inquiring what truth 
 and faithfulness to the souls of the people demand 
 at their hands ; let the ministry, by any effort of the 
 church, or of the enemies of God, become despised 
 in the eyes of the world, and the chief instrumentality 
 of heaven's appointment for rearing up the kingdom 
 of Christ on earth is gone. 
 
 But the following single paragraph is quite sufficient, 
 for all present purposes : 
 
 We are also aware that the ministry itself is charge- 
 able, to no little degree, with bringing about such a 
 state of things as we herein deplore. May be they 
 have thought, by placing themselves more on a seem- 
 ing level with their fellow-citizens, by mingling in 
 their debating clubs, and joining with them in their 
 efforts to bring about certain moral improvements, 
 that in this way they would get a nearer access to 
 them with the gospel ; but we think that by pursuing 
 such a policy, they have unavoidably lost that reverence 
 which the people must have for their ministers, over that 
 which they cherish for other men, and lost also the end 
 which they thought to gain, by taking such steps. 
 Nor is this all. Ministers have not been sufficiently 
 respectful and decent in their intercourse toward each 
 
286 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 other, and the world and the church have seen it, and 
 taken undue liberties from it. Hence, the ministry 
 has plunged a dagger at its own vitals ; and now, as 
 long as they continue to disrespect and accuse each 
 other, they must not be surprised if they are dises- 
 teemed by others. Let them begin the work of reform- 
 ation among themselves, and let them so demean 
 themselves that the robes of their office shall be held in 
 future by all, as sacred and inviolable. 
 
 Abolitionists soon learned what that "seeming 
 level," and " mingling in debating clubs," meant, with- 
 out being told by the clergy themselves. In this case 
 they were super-ingenuous. 
 
 But Connecticut and Massachusetts were even more 
 definite and authoritative, speaking through Congre- 
 gational associations in state councils assembled ; and 
 enacted what doubtless to this day is the law of the 
 whole Congregational and Presbyterian church, not 
 only of those states, but of the whole land : 
 
 Resolved, That the operations of itinerant agents 
 and lecturers, attempting to enlighten the churches in 
 respect to particular points of christian doctrine and 
 christian morals, and to control the religious senti- 
 ment of the community on topics which fall most ap- 
 propriately within the sphere of pastoral instruction 
 and pastoral discretion as to time and manner, with- 
 out the advice and consent of the pastors -and regular 
 ecclesiastical bodies, are an unauthorised interference 
 with the rights, duties and discretion of the stated 
 ministry — dangerous to the influence of the pastoral 
 office, and fatal to the peace and good order of the 
 churches. 
 
 The pastoral letter of the Congregational association 
 of Massachusetts, at the same time, contained mandates 
 like these : 
 
 We would call your attention to the importance of 
 maintaining that respect and deference to the pastoral 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 287 
 
 office, which is enjoined in scripture, and which is es- 
 sential to the best influence of the ministry on you 
 and your children. 
 
 One way in which this respect has been in some 
 cases violated, is in encouraging lecturers or preach- 
 ers on certain topics of reform to present their sub- 
 jects within the parochial limits of settled pastors 
 without their consent. (!) 
 
 Your minister is ordained of God to be your teacher, 
 and is commanded to feed that flock over which the 
 Holy Ghost hath made him overseer. If there are 
 certain topics upon which he does not preach with 
 the frequency or in the manner that would please you, 
 it is a violation of sacred and important rights to en- 
 courage a stranger to present them. Deference and 
 subordination are essential to the happiness of society, 
 and peculiarly so in the relation of a people to their 
 pastor. Let them despise or slight him and he ceases 
 to do them good, and they cease to respect those 
 things of which he is at once the minister and the 
 symbol. There is great solemnity in these words : 
 " Obey them that have the rule over you and submit 
 yourselves." 
 
 And Vermont Congregationalism through its State 
 Domestic Missionary Society, in 1841, spoke officially 
 to this effect : 
 
 The ministers are the heads of the churches; the 
 leaders in the sacramental host of God's elect. No 
 measure can be carried without them, and much less 
 in opposition to them. And scarcely any proper mea- 
 sure can fail to succeed when the ministry put forth 
 their power. In view of this fact it is asked with utmost 
 earnestness, ought they not, and in view of their ob- 
 ligations, and of the glorious results sought, will they 
 not come up to this work and lead on the churches ? 
 The churches can be reached in no other way. No 
 man can approach a church when the pastor inter- 
 poses. He cannot, and he may not if he can. To give 
 Vermont to Christ, this is the peculiar work of the 
 church of Vermont. 
 
288 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 And as spoke Vermont in these few utterances, so* 
 spoke, practically, the entire church of New England 
 and of the north, of every denomination, not even the 
 Quakers excepted. 
 
 What now was the duty of every faithful anti-slavery 
 man and woman ? 
 
 The ministers were the heads of the churches ; the 
 leaders of the sacramental host. No measure could 
 be carried without them, No measure could fail to 
 succeed when they put forth their power. No man 
 could approach a church when the pastor interposed. 
 " He cannot, and he may not if he can" was the dread 
 declaration. Here now was the situation. The Ports- 
 mouth association had issued their Encyclical for the 
 double purpose of blasting the name and reputation 
 of the abolitionists to save not only themselves per- 
 sonally, in their pro-slavery infamy, but the clerical 
 order, which they dishonored by their character and 
 conduct. 
 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut had spoken a little 
 before Vermont, but substantially to the same fearful 
 effect. And New Hampshire had already begun the 
 execution of the same spiritual decrees, and found the 
 state ready, willing and waiting with its courts, con- 
 stables, county houses and jails, to open up the new 
 Spanish inquisition with all its terrors and tortures. 
 
 And the new organization, led largely, almost 
 wholly, by ministers, endangered the good name of 
 anti-slavery, though happily only for a short time, for 
 soon most of the new organized type of anti-slavery 
 sunk to a political party, pledged to support slavery 
 in the states as then existing, including the right to 
 recapture fugitive slaves, only resisting its extension 
 by congress into new territory. That, and to traduce 
 and villi f y faithful, uncompromising abolitionists, and 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 289 
 
 to apologize for slave-holders, and to defend their 
 right not only to the christian name at home, but to 
 recognition and fellowship as christians and christian 
 ministers at the north, was an important part of the 
 work of most of the leading clergy, bishops and doc- 
 tors of divinity included, in every evangelical demom- 
 ination in the country, whether holding slavery as 
 sacred or professing anti-slavery. Religious news- 
 papers in all the evangelical sects furnished the evi- 
 dence of this every month if not every week in the 
 year. Reports and resolutions of the proceedings of 
 all the national missionary, Bible and tract societies 
 often abounded with such evidence. General assem- 
 blies, Presbyterian ; general conferences, Methodist ; 
 association and consociation of the Congregational 
 churches all testified to the same terrible truth ; and 
 though the Methodist general conference was rent in 
 twain by the angry agitation, there never was an hour 
 while slavery lasted when the northern conference did 
 not hold in its communion thousands of slave-holders, 
 with their tens of thousands of slaves ! Their annual 
 conferences extended clear down to Arkansas, Texas 
 and New Mexico, according to their own Book of Dis- 
 cipline, published so late as the year i860, and now 
 lying on my table. Not that there were not many 
 good anti-slavery men and women in the churches, 
 but how could they be reached ? Stephen Foster 
 found a way. I had spent most of the summer of 1841 
 in my native Massachusetts, but when about to return 
 to New Hampshire I addressed Foster a letter as to 
 our future course of action, containing these few T 
 periods : 
 
 Dear Stephen Foster — Perhaps my duty has been 
 neglected in not writing to you in my absence from 
 our field of labor. I will now endeavor to make some 
 
290 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 amends, though I have not much to communicate. To 
 soldiers like you and me, recitals of sieges, sorties, or 
 battles are not interesting, unless rich in strange 
 incident, fearful encounter, terrible suffering, hair- 
 breadth escape, or wondrous victories. So I do not 
 think much need be said of my work in the old Bay 
 state, beyond what you may have read in the news- 
 papers. 
 
 Still, what I have witnessed and experienced in 
 Essex, Plymouth and Bristol counties makes me re- 
 luctant to leave the state just now, but I must come 
 to New Hampshire. Brother Stephen, the granite 
 rocks must echo us there in the coming months, and 
 the hills reply as we sound through the state the doc- 
 trines of universal freedom to the whole brotherhood 
 of man. They call you and me " dangerous men." 
 We must show ourselves such. 
 
 Devise some plan, if you can, by which we may greatly 
 improve on the operations of the past. 
 
 If we scourged a pro-slavery clergy and church 
 with whips last year, let us this year lay on with scor- 
 pions. Let us make every hold of spiritual tyranny 
 send up its death shriek as we flash down into it the 
 lightning of eternal truth, and roll its thunders among 
 its darkest, deepest caverns. Let us write Tekcl over 
 every pro-slavery pulpit in characters of flaming fire, 
 until the knees of every reverend Belshazzar who sits 
 enthroned on it shall smite together. 
 
 Armed with the truth we shall be omnipotent ; and 
 the hour has come. The groans of our three million 
 bondmen have pierced the heavens, and the arm of 
 the Almighty is made bare as of old, for deliverance. 
 With faith we may be as Moses and Joshua, in hasten- 
 ing its coming, and God helping us we will be. We 
 are prepared to be scandalized as infidels, and reviled 
 
ACTS OB" ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 291 
 
 as the enemies of man and God. To the popular, 
 prevailing religion we are infidels, and mean to be. 
 Woe to such as are not ! The pulpit of our land saith 
 in its heart, "There is no God." It is corrupt. It 
 has done abominable wickedness ; and so has the 
 church, which is its own handiwork. * * 
 
 * * Our religious institutions have made 
 
 themselves the body guard of slavery. We cannot 
 come at the monster but through them. Let us not 
 mistake ; a pro-slavery religion must be hunted out 
 of the land ; too long has it cursed the earth. It has 
 delighted in blood and tears ; it has fattened on 
 human misery. It has extorted groans and wailings 
 from countless victims, but its own hour has come ! " 
 
 This letter accomplished mightier results than could 
 have been anticipated. In exactly one month from 
 the day of writing it, the answer to the desire that he 
 should devise some new method by which we could 
 greatly improve on our past, was more than fore- 
 shadowed in his heroic and masterly entrance into the 
 Concord North Church, and rising with all the dig- 
 nity and devotion of an inspired and commissioned 
 prophet of God, demanded to be heard at the hour of 
 sermon, in behalf of the millions in our republican 
 and christian nation who were grinding in the prison- 
 house of cheerless, hopeless and interminable bondage. 
 Of course he was denied, and violently, savagely 
 thrust out of the synagogue. 
 
 But the end was not then nor there ; the beneficent 
 results of the brave act shall never end. In that hour, 
 Foster might have beheld clerical usurpation and dom- 
 ination, so lately, so audaciously asserted in New 
 Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
 
292 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 and exercised in other states, falling like " Lucifer, 
 son of the morning," from heaven ! falling to rise no 
 more ! 
 
 For his sublime example soon began to be imitated 
 elsewhere, and a martyr period, all unexpected, burst 
 upon us. Satan seemed to come down in great wrath, 
 as if seeing that his time was short. This generation 
 knows little of the trials experienced by the faithful 
 abolitionists in those times that tried men's souls, and 
 the souls of women as well. Indeed, this generation 
 seems to know little of what slavery was, any more 
 than what was genuine, uncompromising anti-slavery. 
 The first to follow in the steps of Mr. Foster in his 
 new movement, were two plain, honest, but earnest 
 working men, mechanics in Littleton, by the White 
 Mountains. Their names were Nathaniel Allen and 
 Erastus Brown. Both were heard, but subsequently 
 arrested, tried and consigned as felons, to Haverhill 
 jail. Readers of these pages have heard of that grim 
 bastile before ; and of Nat. Allen and his gift of a new 
 harness to the anti-slavery cause. The principal vil- 
 lage lawyer, Mr. Carlton, volunteered his services in 
 their behalf ; the sympathies of the community were 
 greatly enlisted in their favor. Both men were uni- 
 versally respected and esteemed ; they were radical 
 temperance men, and non-resistants ; had no foes out- 
 side the church, and were both model husbands and 
 fathers, as well as kind neighbors and faithful friends. 
 But they endeavored to " remember them that were 
 in bonds, as bound with them," and the church and 
 ministry waxed exceeding wroth against them. They 
 sought to do unto others, especially their enslaved 
 fellow beings, as they would have others do unto them, 
 and the church and pastor haled them to prison; their 
 wives and children weeping aloud as they left their 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 293 
 
 liomes. Perhaps the church and pastor thought, ver- 
 ily, that they were doing God service; at any rate, 
 away many miles, to prison, they sent them. 
 
 And while in confinement, they wrote me letters, 
 worthy the persecuted saints of other times ; by 
 Nero, Torquemada and the Inquisition. These pages 
 are hardly worthy a few brief excerpts of their con- 
 tents. Allen wrote : " We were brought here at the 
 instigation of the church and minister, Mr. Worcester, 
 who, as you will recollect, publicly admonished his 
 people that "this speaking must be stopped.'" But 1 
 complain not ; I am better off than those for whom I 
 plead. I am happy here, and think I may be, in 
 whatever situation my enemies may place me. We 
 were arrested on the sixteenth of August ; our trial 
 was quite interesting ; some of our citizens spoke very 
 feelingly in our behalf. The people of Littleton out- 
 side the church, and a portion of the aristocracy, think 
 it was the most disgraceful prosecution that was ever 
 enacted in the town. My wife and children feel badly 
 to have me here, but I suppose the church thought it 
 would be for the glory of God. * * I trust 
 
 it will result in good ; and I forgive and pray God to 
 forgive the church and all who sent us here." 
 
 In another letter he writes : " If we had but some 
 clean straw and a block of wood for our heads, it 
 would add very much to our comfort. But I will find 
 no fault. I was never more happy in mind than at 
 present. Tell our friends, especially those whom our 
 absence most affects, that our situation is rather 
 pleasant than otherwise." 
 
 To Mrs. Allen he wrote : " True, our situation, 
 filthy and over-run with vermin though it be, is more 
 tolerable than I expected, so give yourself no un- 
 necessary anxiety on my account. I am comfortable 
 
294 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 and contented. More than that, I am unusually 
 happy, and believe I shall continue so, however long 
 I may remain here." 
 
 Mr. Brown wrote under date, 
 
 Haverhill Jail, August 30, 1842. 
 
 Brother Pillsbury — I greet you through the 
 bolted doors and grated windows of Grafton county 
 jail. * * Brother Allen and myself are con- 
 fined here for the crime of opening our mouths for 
 the dumb and suffering of our common humanity, un- 
 bidden by any except our Savior. I am filled with 
 strange emotions when finding myself, for the first 
 time in my life, incarcerated within prison walls. A 
 favored opportunity for remembering them that are in 
 bonds. * * I cast my eyes around, and con- 
 trast the dismal aspect of my half-lighted, barred and 
 bolted cell (where, as I am assured, deeds of darkness 
 have been indeed done, for two men were murdered, 
 we are told, in this room, by a third named Burnham, 
 all three confined only for debt,) with the inimitable 
 beauties spread out in the vast expanse between us 
 and the setting sun, now darting his last rays far up 
 a cloudless sky ; though I do not feel like saying much 
 about myself nor of my situation when I think of the 
 poor, wretched victims of hate or jealousy who have 
 suffered, or are now suffering, within these filthy dun- 
 geons, treatment which should mantle with the blush 
 of shame any human face that witnesses it inflicted 
 even on a brute beast. * * We are in a cell 
 with a young man who tells us he has been confined 
 more than a year on charge of theft, of which he de- 
 clares he is innocent, and I believe he is. He has 
 been in this cell four months, and says it is a heaven 
 compared with the loathsome den underneath where 
 he lingered eight months ! He was only removed 
 from it on account of declining health. It is sad to 
 hear the low, murmuring sound of human voices from 
 distant cells, as they occasionally come up to our 
 room-mate through a small hole in the huge barred 
 and bolted door or grated window, through which the 
 scarcely audible voices can be heard as if in supplica- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 295 
 
 tion from the lower world ! * * I regret our 
 confinement, not so much for ourselves as on account 
 of the inconvenience, anxiety and privation it causes 
 our families, who need our presence and assistance, 
 and the remorse it must yet cause our accusers and 
 those who stood by them when they sent us here. 
 Walking my cell in silence, and contemplating the 
 various pains and penalties which professed christians 
 have inflicted on their fellow beings, {for the glory of 
 God, we must suppose,) and the cruel privations and 
 sufferings endured by the body for the good of the son/, 
 I am led to exclaim : "Is this, then, the, religion of 
 Jesus Christ ? Is this the doctrine of Him who came 
 to teach forgiveness of injuries — the love of enemies? 
 Is this what He meant by undoing heavy burdens, 
 and opening the prison doors of them who were 
 bound ? and when He said, ' If ye forgive not men 
 their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father for- 
 give yours?'" Each morning I rise from my pallet 
 of straw, or rather of chaff and vermin, with the very 
 kindest feelings toward my persecutors, and unabated 
 zeal in behalf of the slaves ; and I remain your friend, 
 as ever, Erastus Brown. 
 
 These few periods, from letters of Allen and Brown, 
 show what manner of spirit they were of, and what 
 was their condition while in prison as to body and 
 spirit. It is most remarkably true that persons sent 
 innocently to prison, as were these two brave men, 
 always become deeply interested in their fellow-pris- 
 oners, whether guilty of crime or otherwise. It is not 
 strange, then, that my friend Brown, one of the truest, 
 bravest, most humane men who ever lived, should 
 deeply sympathize with the young man, whether inno- 
 cent or otherwise, who had already suffered the pains 
 and pangs of a dozen ordinary deaths, before guilt 
 had been proved or innocence admitted. And many 
 called Brown insane. Some of his accusers deemed it 
 charitable to think or say that he was not in his right 
 mind when he persisted in opening his mouth for the 
 
296 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 dumb, and for him who had no friend nor defense in 
 the Sunday assemblies of his oppressors and en- 
 slavers. Doubtless, many said, " He hath a devil, and 
 is mad," and so they shut him in jail, knowing well 
 the kind of cells they kept for the heinous crime of in- 
 sanity .' I felt at the time that Allen and Brown were 
 the sanest men in Littleton, unless their counsel, Mr. 
 Carlton, was an exception. Both men have been dead 
 many years, but they saw the death-blow given to 
 slavery, and.departed universally respected and deeply 
 lamented by their families and friends. Their con- 
 finement lasted but sixteen days ; though their re- 
 lease, like that of Jeremiah, the Hebrew prophet, was 
 by the civil, not the ecclesiastical, authority. 
 
 But the powers that ruled in the church, mistook 
 entirely the character of the abolitionists. Had they 
 shown themselves and their discipleship to be follow- 
 ers of him who came "preaching deliverence to the 
 captive, undoing the heavy burdens and letting the 
 oppressed go free," and breaking yokes, instead of 
 laying them mercilessly on the shoulders of men and 
 of women, and on their children after them, in succes- 
 sive generations, there need have been no other aboli- 
 tionists, no other emancipation. In one word, had 
 the church and ministry been, in any true sense, an 
 anti-slavery, a temperance, and a peace society, there 
 never would have been any other, nor need of any 
 other, nor room for any other. 
 
 But the church was neither of these, and so those 
 associations had to appear, to save even the church 
 and pulpit themselves from the guilt of all these evils. 
 And the first and sternest work of the abolitionists 
 was to loose the bands of wickedness in the church, 
 especially such as prevented approach to the people 
 with the claims of the enslaved millions in our own 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 297 
 
 boasted republican and christian land. That one 
 fact proved the truth and justice of Judge Birney's 
 tract, " The American Churches the Bulwarks of 
 American Slavery." 
 
 The government had decreed slavery, including the 
 right of the slaveholder to call on the whole north to 
 defend him against slave insurrection, and to aid him 
 in recapturing his fugitive slaves, who might take 
 shelter under any friendly roof ; with heavy pains and 
 penalties for attempting to shield them from their 
 tyrant pursuers. The supreme court had declared all 
 this to be the exact meaning of the words of the con- 
 stitution. 
 
 Then the church, everywhere in the country, had 
 pronounced the same system of all unutterable cruel- 
 ties, abominations and wickedness to be in exact ac- 
 cordance with the will of God, as revealed in the 
 scriptures of both Old and New Testament. 
 
 And the church, or rather the clergy, presumed on 
 one step farther. The federal constitution has some- 
 thing to say about the right of the people " peaceably 
 to assemble" for any proper purpose. The pulpit, 
 far and wide, proclaimed to the extent of its spiritual 
 jurisdiction and influence, that abolitionists had no 
 such rights, and for a time the government sanctioned 
 such a ruling, and, as has just been shown, loaned its 
 prisons for enforcing it. 
 
 For it should be kept in memory that Mr. Foster 
 never invaded a religious assembly against its own 
 usages, till the proclamation had gone forth that lec- 
 turers had no right to enter a parish, not a meeting- 
 house, without the pastoral consent and approval. 
 Not till long after that audacious decree had had its 
 dire result in keeping the people, especially the church 
 membership, from entering the anti-slavery meetings, 
 
298 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 free as they almost invariably were of entrance, and 
 of speech, as well. And it required many a prosecu- 
 tion, fine, imprisonment and other gross outrages, to 
 break down that formidable "bulwark" and give the 
 proclamation of liberty free course to run and be 
 glorified. 
 
 But the strength of the anointed ones became equal 
 to their day and its duties, and their courage and faith 
 to its dangers and endurances. 
 
 The imprisonment of Brown and Allen awakened a 
 similar zeal in many others, both in New Hampshire 
 and Massachusetts. Perhaps it is true to say that in 
 those two states, the hardest battle with the ecclesias- 
 tical power, and so the severest of the whole conflict, 
 was fought. 
 
 The jails of Newburyport and Salem, Massachu- 
 setts, were several times honored by the entrance and 
 detention for longer or shorter periods, of the victims 
 of pro-slavery spleen and spite. I think in every in- 
 stance church members not only instigating, but ac- 
 tually prosecuting the suits. Even the county house 
 of Essex county was put in requisition for the same 
 unrighteous purpose. The offender in that instance 
 was a woman, Mrs. Almira Swett, of Georgetown. In 
 a somewhat voluminous history of Essex county, pub- 
 lished in 1S78, mention is made of the anti-slavery 
 operations in Georgetown, and the following is ex- 
 tracted from the account : 
 
 No movement in Georgetown was ever of a more 
 .stirring or important character than that of the early 
 agitation of the question of anti-slavery. In it were 
 enlisted many men and women whose hearts were fully 
 committed to the agitation. Among the leaders in 
 the reform were Theodore G. Elliot, Moses Wright, 
 James H., Asa W. and Almira Swett, and others. The 
 speakers frequently heard were William Lloyd Garri- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 299 
 
 son, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Parker 
 Pillsbury, and the long line of the advocates of that 
 cause. They carried the discussion to the doors of the 
 churches, which were then committed to silence. Rev. 
 Mr. Braman was unfriendly to the agitation, which 
 added warmth and interest to the debates. These 
 speakers were bold and incisive in their utterances, 
 which made the conflict between them and the con- 
 servatives, as they were called, warm. Mrs. Swett 
 was one of the boldest of the female supporters of the 
 cause, and when she attended church she was accus- 
 tomed to take her knitting work with her, which led 
 her to be arrested for contempt of worship. For this 
 and for the defense of her brother, who was before the 
 church for waywardness on this subject, she was ar- 
 rested and tried, being charged in the forms of law 
 with "assault and battery." She was convicted and 
 sent to Ipswich. When arrested, she told the officers 
 she " could not leave home at that time ; that her 
 family needed her attention." She offered no resist- 
 ance, simply declining to comply with the request of 
 the officer. Assistance was procured, and Mrs. Swett 
 was lifted into the sleigh and carried into the court 
 room in the same way. After trial and conviction 
 she was borne back to the sleigh and carried to Ips- 
 wich, but the keeper of the " House of Correction" 
 declined to receive her, declaring that those who had 
 brought her there deserved more than she to be re- 
 tained. The meetings of the Come-outers were held 
 on the steps of churches, in groves, and in barns. 
 Thomas P. Beach was once rotten-egged while 
 speaking from the steps of a church. To avoid this 
 indignity in barns, the women were seated and the 
 speaker stationed before them, when the doors were 
 opened to accommodate the listening crowd without. 
 
 It has been intimated in early parts of this work 
 that the course of Mr. Foster and others in entering 
 the meeting houses during Sunday services and asking 
 or claiming the right to be heard on the subject of 
 slavery, did not meet the approval of Mr. Garrison nor 
 many of the most prominent abolitionists. But the 
 
300 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 sin, if it were sin, was like some of the psalms ; one of 
 "degrees." All anti-slavery meetings would have 
 been prevented if possible, at the north, as they were 
 actually at the south. The northern pulpits forbade 
 them just as far as they had the power. Edward 
 Everett, a clergyman, when made governor of Massa- 
 chusetts, said in his message to the legislature, refer- 
 ring to anti-slavery meetings and measures : " What- 
 ever by direct and necessary operation is calculated 
 to excite insurrection among the slaves, has been held 
 by highly respectable legal authority, an offense against 
 the people of the commonwealth, which may be prose- 
 cuted as misdemeanor, at common law. The patriotism 
 of all classes must be invoked to abstain from discus- 
 sion, which by exasperating the master, can have no 
 other effect than to render more oppressive the con- 
 dition of the slave." 
 
 But no abolitionist worthy the name, held, or 
 attended one meeting the less for any threats of gov- 
 ernors, ministers or mobs. , And what wonder that 
 some went so far, in the name and spirit of New 
 Testament christian liberty, as to believe it their sol- 
 emn duty as well as natural right to enter any chris- 
 tian assembly to plead the cause of down-trodden and 
 bestialized humanity ? 
 
 And women not unfrequently carried their knitting 
 work, as men did their novel or newspaper into the 
 cars, and entertained themselves as best they might 
 while they rode along. Women did the same at con- 
 ventions, and do still ; and more than Georgetown 
 women did the same thing at the Sunday meetings as 
 their testimony and rebuke against the solemn mock- 
 ery of a worship that in long sermons apologized for 
 slave-holders and proved their right to hold slaves,, 
 both by patriarchal example and the divine approval 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 30 1 
 
 in Old and New Testament precept and permission. 
 And they had other motives, the same as were preached, 
 and practiced too, by Martin Luther, when he wrote 
 to his converts ; " If any set up sabbath observance 
 on a Jewish foundation, or for the mere day's sake, 
 then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance 
 on it, or to do anything on it that shall reprove this 
 encroachment on the christian spirit and liberty." 
 Calvin and the Fathers of the reformation did the 
 same. The taste of such things may be questionable, 
 especially judged by modern standards. But the 
 right is another affair. Daniel Webster somewhere 
 said he might have rights concerning which, ordinarily, 
 he should feel little interest ; but let one of the least 
 of those rights be invaded or threatened, and he 
 declared he would plant himself on its extremest verge 
 and contend for it to the death ; as who would not ? 
 Mrs. Swett testified against the mockery of a worship 
 that would not plead for the slave, nor permit others 
 to do it, by quietly sitting down with her knitting 
 work in front and full view of the minister. Her 
 brother rose in his place and bore testimony in the 
 same behalf by word of mouth ; and both acted from 
 religious sense of duty ; and doubtless, with as lofty 
 spirit of devotion as ever actuated the heart of John 
 Calvin or Martin Luther, or the most saintly of their 
 disciples. 
 
 When Boston was sending back fugitive slaves, 
 armed citizen soldiers were brought from distant 
 towns in Massachusetts, and Faneuil hall was turned 
 into barracks for their accommodation, to protect the 
 slave-hunters and their accomplices while they seized 
 their prey, proved property and triumphantly bore it 
 away. It might have been in questionable taste, but 
 it certainlv was a testimonv of stunning force, when. 
 
302 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 at a great grove anti-slaver)- gathering on a Fourth of 
 July, Mr. Garrison, holding a copy of the constitution 
 of the United States in his hand, literally and deliber- 
 ately set it on fire and consumed it, to the delight, as 
 well as with the approval of thousands who sat or 
 stood around him. 
 
 That constitution was the pledge and solemn guar- 
 anty from the north to the south that any attempt on 
 the part of the slave to escape from his bondage, by 
 fighting or by flight, should be resisted by the north, 
 at whatever cost of treasure or blood. What better 
 did such a constitution deserve than to be branded as 
 "a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell," 
 and to be burned with fire before all the people ? And 
 what day so appropriate for such auto da fc, as the 
 Fourth of July ? And who so worthy to officiate at 
 the altar of sacrifice as William Lloyd Garrison ? 
 
 And thus did earnest, brave men and women of 
 varied description as to culture, calling and sense of 
 propriety, seek to subserve the interests of their com- 
 mon humanity by such methods and measures as 
 seemed right in their sight. 
 
 Arrests and imprisonments were frequent, some- 
 times for actual offense, sometimes for being present 
 and approving the act. The names of several are 
 before me ; most of them now numbered with the 
 departed. Prominent among them, as to order of ar- 
 rest, or length of imprisonment, were Jesse P. Harri- 
 man, of Danvers, Massachusetts, and Thomas Parnell 
 Beach, a native of Vermont, but Congregational min- 
 ister in New Hampshire, for several years, or till he, 
 as heretofore described, identified himself with the 
 anti-slavery cause. His great labors and severe suf- 
 ferings, by imprisonments and otherwise, chiefly in 
 New Hampshire and Massachusetts, early broke him 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 3°3 
 
 down, and compelled him to retire from the conflict. 
 Having relatives in Ohio, he removed with his family 
 to that state, and when able, was successfully em- 
 ployed as a teacher. But in the year 1846, he was 
 released to his well-earned rest and reward, when only 
 thirty-eight years of age. His longest and severest 
 confinement was in Newburyport jail, where he was 
 kept three months, in the winter of the years 1841 and 
 1842. He was arrested for attempting to speak in 
 two Sunday meetings, one in Danvers, the other at 
 Lynn. For the double purpose of showing the spirit 
 and temper of the accused, and the nature of their 
 offenses, I will first permit one of them to speak for 
 himself, through his prison bars. While in confine- 
 ment, Harriman wrote a number of letters to the Her- 
 ald oj Freedom, and the following are excerpts from 
 two of them, dated : 
 
 Salem Jail, Sept. 24 and 27, 1842. 
 
 Dear Brother Rogers — I write from within the 
 granite walls of a loathsome prison. A rather singu- 
 lar place to put non-resistants, but so it is, and I sub- 
 mit with meekness. Oh, God, enable me to forgive 
 my enemies ! This is what I want to feel. I can as- 
 sure them I will never be the means of sending them 
 here, or to any similar place. 
 
 But the question may be asked, how came you im- 
 prisoned ? I answer, through the instigation of the 
 church, either directly or indirectly. Let us see if it 
 be not so: 
 
 On the Fourth of July, it was Sunday, Thomas P. 
 Beach felt it his duty to go into the Baptist meeting- 
 house, at Danvers, New Mills, and speak in behalf of 
 the down-trodden slaves, our three millions of christian 
 heathen ! He went, and when there was an interval 
 in their wicked worship, (I think it wicked), he rose 
 and began to speak. The committee, Black and Cald- 
 well, fell upon him and dragged him from the house 
 with great violence. He was then prosecuted for go- 
 
 < 
 
304 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 ing into the house. The officer came to my house on 
 Sunday and arrested him. He commanded me in the 
 name of the commonwealth to help him. I utterly re- 
 fused. My answer was, in the name of God, I refuse. So 
 I am here for not helping to drag Brother Beach from 
 my own dwelling. And I now say to the world, I 
 will never commit such a sin, though, as a result, 
 bonds and imprisonments should ever await me. 
 
 But how has the church been the instigator of my 
 imprisonment ? They have sanctioned all the doings 
 of those who put me here. How did Saul assist when 
 Stephen was stoned to death? He did not cast one 
 stone at him. But he kept the raiment of those who 
 did. To this hour, not one of the New Mills church 
 has visited me, except my wife and Mrs. Porter, who 
 lives in our house. One of the old members took 
 friend Black by the hand, after he had dragged Beach 
 from the meeting-house, and said : " Major Black, 
 you have my hearty thanks for what you have done." 
 Black testified to this under oath, before John W. 
 Proctor. That church has never shown to the world 
 that they were opposed to the proceedings in the case 
 of Brother Beach or myself. On the other hand, they 
 have shown to all around them that they are in full 
 fellowship with our being in jail. * * The 
 scripture saith : " The name of the Lord is a strong 
 tower : the righteous runneth into it and is safe." 
 But the church goes to the state for protection. * 
 * Will the church of the blessed Savior cast into 
 prison, or uphold slavery and war? Never! Christ 
 said, " My kingdom is not of this world." * 
 
 Thomas P. Beach is now in Newburyport jail, on two 
 indictments. One by the Baptist church and society 
 in Danvers, William Black acting as their tool. After 
 he had caused a writ ,to be issued against Brother 
 Beach, and the officers had come to my house and 
 taken him, he seemed to repent. At any rate, he sent 
 and withdrew the complaint, and Beach was set at 
 liberty. I saw Black the same day, and he said, in 
 front of my house, " I am sorry I had anything to do 
 with this. I should not, only that I was excited. I 
 would rather have given ten dollars than made the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 305 
 
 complaint." To another person he said : "I went to 
 the Baptist meeting to see the fun." Then, when the 
 complaint was renewed, he went before (justice) 
 Proctor, and stated, under oath, that he made the 
 complaint as one of the selectmen of the town. And 
 when Mr. Proctor commented on his testimony he 
 said, " Mr. Black is one of the fathers of the town, 
 and his testimony, on that account, is entitled to more 
 weight," or words to that effect. What, friend Rog- 
 ers, do you think the children of such a town must 
 be, from such a father?" 
 
 The other indictment against Beach is from the 
 Quaker society at Lynn. I saw the whole transac- 
 tion — heard Beach speak, heard the uproar, and saw, 
 with astonishment, those worshiping Quakers thrown 
 into whirlwinds of passion. The spirit seemed to move 
 them with great violence. How James P. Boyce and 
 other professed abolitionists can remain in that wicked 
 body, I do not know. This thee and thou religion 
 seems to me not worth having. Boyce sat looking, at 
 the time of the outrage on Beach, with a complacency 
 to me unaccountable. Had it been in any other than 
 a Quaker meeting-house, he would have cried " Sec- 
 tarianism ! Priestcraft!" at the top of his voice. I 
 would, in all kindness, advise him and James N. Buf- 
 fum to begin a little reform in their own society be- 
 fore crying " Priestcraft " so much abroad. * * 
 Thomas Parnell Beach now lies in Newburyport jail, 
 for speaking in the Quaker meeting-house, at Lynn, 
 in behalf of our millions of oppressed and bleeding 
 slaves. And what good does it do the cause of God 
 to go to that house on the first day of the week, and 
 sit there mute as dumb dogs ? Why are not Boyce 
 and Buffum mute in meetings out of town? How 
 happens that the spirit moves them to speak in all 
 other places but that Quaker bastile ? I 
 
 feel, and the slaves must feel, that it is high time that 
 Quaker nest were stirred up. * * 1 write 
 
 this rough letter in Salem jail, on Sunday night, 
 between seven and eight o'clock, with my Bible one 
 side of me, and your Herald of Freedom, on the other, 
 
306 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 and why mav I not speak out ? I write amid granite 
 walls and iron bolts and bars. I am a slave, shut in 
 here ; so bear with me a little longer as your brother 
 in bonds, Jesse P. Harriman. 
 
 Such was the faithfulness with which abolitionists 
 were in those perilous days accustomed to deal with 
 one another, no matter how dear to each other, nor 
 how prominent in position or influence. But it so 
 turned out that our true-hearted friend Harriman 
 received in the same paper with his faithful reproofs 
 of Boyce and Buffum, an announcement which must 
 have cheered and encouraged him greatly in his 
 lonely cell. Beach, too, heard the same glad tidings 
 down in his Newburyport confinement, showing him 
 that his work among the Quakers of Lynn had already 
 borne glorious fruit among the most noble and intelli- 
 gent young men and women in the society ; for on the 
 next page of the Herald containing his letter, Mr. 
 Harriman read the following incidental notice of 
 James Buffum, by Mr. Rogers, giving account of a five 
 days' Strafford county anti-slavery meeting held at 
 Great Falls : 
 
 Our gallant friend, James N. Buffum, of Lynn, was 
 at our Great Falls meeting and afforded the usual aid 
 and interest derived from his originality, good sense, 
 and excellent simplicity of heart. Friend Buffum is 
 not a lecturer ; he is better; he is a talker; though 
 his talk very often rises into the most effectual elo- 
 quence of speech. Give us enough such talkers and 
 we will talk the infernal slave system out of the sym- 
 pathy of everybody who has humanity enough left to 
 pass muster among mankind. Our imprisoned brother 
 Harriman calls on friend Buffum to deal impartially 
 with Quakerism at home in Lynn, as he does with sect 
 abroad. I can gladden friend Harriman's heart by 
 the fact that James Buffum has already, or is about 
 doing it, renounced that broad-hatted type of secta- 
 rianism and given it over to Satan, with the faithful 
 intrepidity of a Come-outcr. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 307 
 
 Before returning to the Harriman and Beach arrest 
 and imprisonment, it will be pertinent and profitable 
 to introduce a brief extract from the history of Lynn, 
 as found in the late, large, and generally valuable his- 
 tory of the county of Essex, Massachusetts. The 
 reasons for it will be apparent in subsequent pages. 
 The extract is as follows : 
 
 The year 1841 is to be remembered in Lynn as the 
 time of a fresh efflux of free thought exhibited by 
 what became widely known as the " come-outers." 
 These people were primarily Garrisonian abolitionists, 
 starting with the unimpeachable doctrine of human 
 equality before the law. But not finding the cause of 
 the slave well espoused by most of the religious bodies 
 of that day, they unwisely pronounced all the churches, 
 in league with Slavery, and called for good men and 
 women to come out and testify against them. Hence 
 the name, come-outers. They were not confined to 
 Lynn, but they had a strong position here, being 
 upheld by such men as Christopher Robinson, Jona- 
 than Buffum and others, men of private and public 
 excellence apart from the delusion here sustained. 
 The real mischief was from without, as will appear. 
 On a Sunday in 1841, they rallied here in force, deter- 
 mined to try a bold, though foolish movement. The 
 people in general knew nothing of it ; but there were 
 in town, Stephen S. Foster, Nathaniel P. Rogers, 
 Parker Pillsbury, Thomas P. Beach, Henry Clapp, Jr., 
 and many others, full of bitter words and martyr 
 spirit. Dividing into parties, they repaired to several 
 of the churches of the largest congregations, entered 
 without ceremony, and interrupted the services with 
 excited harangues. Foster led off at the first church ; 
 Dr. Cook commanded him to " sit down ; " but as he 
 paid no heed, half a dozen men quietly seized him 
 and carried him out, passive as a log, and set him on 
 the side-walk, his mates following. Pillsbury at the 
 same time, headed an attack on the Baptists ; and 
 proving more troublesome, was shut up in a closet 
 and detained till the end of service. Afternoon, noth- 
 ing daunted, Beach entered the First Methodist 
 
^o8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 church alone, leaped the altar-rail during the last 
 prayer, and began to talk. No questions were asked, 
 for the thing was well noised about and Methodist 
 blood is not given to hesitation ; in a minute, Beach 
 was going ''neck and heels," and struggling smartly, 
 down the aisle and steps, more being willing to help 
 than could get a chance. He claimed that his thumb 
 was broken in the affray, but it was not credited. 
 Some of the others had visited the Quaker meeting in 
 the morning, and finding opportunity, without inter- 
 rupting others, had spoken and been sharply rebuked 
 in turn ; but no conflict happened there. About six 
 o'clock in the afternoon, Lyceum Hall was opened, 
 and they made a demonstration of their own, where 
 probably more harshness, more invective, more 
 unreason, were poured out within an hour, than most 
 ever hear in a lifetime. But there was no more dis- 
 turbance ; Foster ranted to small crowds about the 
 streets for a few days, not much noticed, and then 
 disappeared. Others made some trouble for them- 
 selves, elsewhere, and their printed effusions were 
 abundant in Lynn ; but their strength was all gone in 
 that one effort. 
 
 The foregoing has at least the virtue of brevity. 
 But for truthfulness, if this be a sample of his whole 
 work, it certainly is fortunate for Lynn that Mr. Cy- 
 rus M. Tracy is not her only historian. His first 
 mistake is as to time ; He should have made it 1842. 
 The second relates to number of speakers who " ral- 
 lied in force." Only four came, and but two of them 
 spoke in any of the churches, or attempted to speak ; 
 the other two believed in the right of their companions 
 to speak, under the circumstances, in any christian 
 assembly, only observing the apostolic rules of decency 
 and order ; and as Beach and Foster felt it their 
 religious duty more than right, to do as they did, Mr. 
 Rogers and I accompanied them in part of their 
 attempts to be heard on that memorable occasion. 
 We were all present at the Congregational meeting- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 309 
 
 house, and saw Mr. Foster dragged out as a wolf 
 might have been from a fold, though hardly by the 
 sheep and lambs themselves. But we did not go to 
 the Baptist house at all till we saw him, from the other 
 side of the common, dragged by a furious crowd down 
 the steps, and thrown violently to the ground, and, 
 as afterwards appeared, quite severely hurt. 
 
 It should be remembered that these methods were 
 not adopted at all till every possible means had been 
 used, from fairest to foulest, to prevent our access to 
 the people, and more especially to the churches. Nor 
 was Lynn, by a great way, the first attempt. Nor was 
 there anything peculiar about the movements there, 
 except in their greater number on one day, and in one 
 place. 
 
 On Saturday, the 25th of June, 1S42, Mr. Rogers 
 and I went to Lynn and called at the very hospitable 
 home of Jonathan and Hannah Buffum, intending to 
 remain over Sunday. I do not recollect, and can now 
 never ascertain, whether we expected to meet Foster 
 or Beach, but certainly no meeting was appointed, till 
 on Saturday evening, Mr. Christopher Robinson 
 called with Foster and Beach at Mr. Buffum's, with 
 proposals that something be done for anti-slavery 
 work on the morrow. It was concluded that he and 
 Foster would call on Rev. Mr. Cook, of the Congre- 
 gational meeting-house, to procure, if possible, a hear- 
 ing for him there, and that Mr. Beach and I should 
 call on Overseer Nathan Breed, and ask for the 
 Friend's meeting-house, for similar purpose. But we 
 were denied in both instances. Foster first asked 
 Mr. Cook if he would be willing to allow him to 
 preach for him a part of the day. The no was em- 
 phatic. Then would you permit us the use of the 
 house at five o'clock, afternoon, or some unoccupied 
 
3IO ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 hour? That was also refused, and with threats that 
 if he ever came into the house to speak at all, he 
 "would be taken care of." Foster had said no word 
 about going in, but did say, calmly, that it was uncer- 
 tain where he should speak next day, but probably 
 somewhere in Lynn. Friend Breed was told, when 
 he denied us the Friends' house, that he must not be 
 surprised if he should hear some of us speaking in 
 his meeting, to which he replied, " You will find us a 
 peaceable people." The next morning, Rogers went 
 by himself to the Congregational house, having un- 
 derstood that Foster would be there, and probably 
 would attempt to address the people. I accompanied 
 Beach and Foster. Foster went forward and sat 
 down in a side slip, opposite the pulpit. It was as 
 perfect a June Sunday as ever shone, but the large 
 house and not less large minister, avoirdupois, had 
 but scattered audience. 
 
 At the close of the long prayer, which at that period 
 was offered with the congregation standing, Foster, 
 instead of sitting down, commenced speaking, in very 
 solemn and subdued tone of voice. As soon as Mr. 
 Cook heard him, he turned towards him, and in most 
 military tone, as became a commander in the " church 
 militant" ordered him to "sit down." Foster did not 
 obey. "Sit down, sir ! " was then uttered with force 
 and gesture. But Foster seemed only to hear a higher 
 command, saying, " Cry aloud ; spare not ; lift up thy 
 voice like a trumpet and show my people their trans- 
 gressions, and the house of Jacob their sins." At 
 which Cook thundered out, in a tone strangely unlike 
 the solemn voice of Foster, " I command you in the 
 name of the commonwealth to sit down ! " By that 
 time, the sexton and two others came to the rescue, 
 and seizing Foster, (whose non-resistance principles 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 311 
 
 on such occasions always put him into a perfectly pas- 
 sive state), two of them by his shoulders, his face 
 downward, and the other, a most conveniently short 
 man, as though gotten up for just that use, catching 
 hold of him by the ankles, as he might a wheelbarrow 
 by the handles, they bore him down the aisle through 
 the porch, and down the steps to the sidewalk, in the 
 most grotesque and ludicrous manner imaginable. 
 Rogers and Beach followed, as did I and several oth- 
 ers, who were of the audience, though to us strangers. 
 Foster rose to his feet at once, and, looking at his 
 bearers, said, pleasantly, " This, then, is your Chris- 
 tianity, is it ? " He continued speaking, to attentive 
 listeners, too, till the sexton, seeing the attention 
 given, told the people to go back into the house. 
 " No breaking in upon worship, friend sexton," said 
 Rogers. "We shall have to drag you out if you do. 
 Don't drive folks in, if you do drag them out." The 
 sexton laughed. We all laughed. Rogers advised 
 the good-natured sexton to resign and not do such 
 dirty work for such a minister and church. After 
 speaking some time to excellent purpose, Foster 
 walked directly across the common, not many rods, 
 entered the Baptist meeting-house and sat down till 
 the services were closed and the benediction pro- 
 nounced. Then, as the people were moving out, he 
 began speaking again. The sexton at the other house 
 had asked Foster, in a kindly way, why he didn't wait 
 till the exercises closed, and then he would not have 
 been molested. But Foster assured him "that would 
 have made no difference. You would have dragged 
 me out then as you have now." As those Baptists 
 verily did. They fell on him the moment they heard 
 his voice, like blood-hounds. They hurried him down 
 the aisle and door-steps to the ground, with such 
 
312 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 violence as did him and his clothing serious injury,, 
 as there was good reason to think they intended. He, 
 however, rose up and addressed them a few gentle 
 words and walked away to his lodgings, at Friend 
 William Bassett's, at that time a most welcome, hos- 
 pitable and desirable anti-slavery home. Rogers stood 
 thoughtfully surveying the scene, when some younger 
 brethren of " the Baptism of John," assailed him a 
 little in the style of the high priest's palace, in Jeru- 
 salem, eighteen centuries ago. " This is one of them," 
 said a beardless youth, with a leer of contempt. 
 Rogers did not deny. " You ought to be tarred and 
 feathered," sneered out another, spitefully. "Yes," 
 said the first, "and carried to the county jail." "And 
 cowhided," said another, " for disturbing meetings on 
 the Sabbath in such a way." 
 
 "Ah," responded Rogers, "is that, then, the spirit 
 of your worship? Does your gospel run like that, 
 my friends ? Is it tar your enemies ; feather them 
 that hate you ; cowhide them that despitefully use 
 you ? Why, friends, is that your way? " Some of the 
 world's people were rather pleased, and laughed ;. 
 whereat, the knights of the tar-bucket ran away. 
 
 At noon, we decided to hold a meeting in Lyceum 
 hall, at six o'clock, and issued notices to that effect. 
 Mr. Rogers, never having seen a Friends' meeting, in 
 the afternoon attended their regular service, at three 
 o'clock. He found there both Beach and Foster. I 
 did not go near. All was still for a considerable 
 time. Beach was first to break the silence. He said 
 he had a testimony to bear, and proceeded in his 
 usual serious and moderate manner, ten or fifteen 
 minutes, and gradually drew into the then inactive 
 and very indifferent course of the Friends' societies 
 towards the anti-slavery enterprise in particular ; but 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 313 
 
 also on the great evils of war, intemperance, and their 
 like, when a high-seat Friend rose and said to him : 
 "Thy speaking is an interruption of our worship." 
 Beach responded that he thought speech was free in 
 Friends' meetings, and proceeded. Then another 
 voice came down from the high seat, desiring the 
 friend to be quiet. But Beach kept on, till a third 
 elder rose, and asked to be heard. Beach then said, 
 " If anything is revealed to thee, I will hold my peace." 
 " I have," said the high-seat voice, and Beach sat 
 down. Then the " revealed " word was uttered, thus : 
 "We request thee not to disturb our meeting any 
 longer by thy speaking." Beach then resumed ; upon 
 which high-seat members began shaking hands, the 
 sign for closing the meeting. As the elders and some 
 others passed down the aisles, William Bassett, then 
 an esteemed and much respected young member, 
 called out to them to remain and hear the truth, and 
 not run away from it. Just then, his mother, a ven- 
 erable and highly honored member of the society, 
 rushed forward, and in great apparent grief besought 
 him, in piteous and pleading tones, to desist and be 
 quiet. But he answered her tenderly and affection- 
 ately, though firmly, " Mother, I am about my 
 heavenly Father's business, and cannot hear thee 
 now." He then proceeded at some length, most of 
 the elderly men having gone out. When Mr. Bassett 
 had closed his testimony, which he confessed he had 
 too long neglected, Foster arose, most of the women 
 and young men remaining, and some of the elders re- 
 turning, and stepping on a seat overlooking the crowd, 
 he called attention to "that afflicted mother," as he 
 designated Mrs. Bassett. "Mark her distress and an- 
 guish of spirit. It would be no wonder, nothing 
 strange or new, should her reason be dethroned by 
 
314 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 such shock upon it ! And who but you ministers of 
 those ' high seats ' would be the guilty cause of her 
 calamity?" He was proceeding in such fervid strain, 
 when the older members, near the door, dashed for- 
 ward, and seizing him with great violence, pulled him 
 down from the seat and started with him for the door. 
 Friend Nathan Breed had told Mr. Beach and me the 
 evening before, that we would find them "a peaceable 
 people," should we wish to speak. And here and thus 
 they were. But before Foster had been dragged half 
 way to the door, a brave young friend had reached 
 him, and called out to the furious crowd, " Hold ! you 
 shan't drag this man out." He was followed by several 
 others, and Foster was rescued and resumed his speak- 
 ing. Of course the excitement was very great, but 
 Foster now had full opportunity. He cited George 
 Fox and Edward Burroughs, the highest Quaker au- 
 thorities for entering any religious assembly, and de- 
 manding right to be heard. He called for the history of 
 their example, and William Bassett immediately pro- 
 duced and read it to them all, undoubtedly to the as- 
 tonishment of most of them. The fact was, Beach 
 and Foster had done exactly what the early Friends 
 both did, and defended and taught, if they did not 
 command, and their cause prospered greatly through 
 their bravery and fidelity, as did ours that day at Lynn, 
 as has been already seen. 
 
 When, at a late hour in the afternoon, the crowd at 
 the Friends' meeting-house dispersed, Foster and 
 Beach took some notices of our Lyceum hall meet- 
 ing and walked down, Beach to the First Methodist, 
 and Foster to the Baptist house, from which he had 
 been dragged, a few hours before, intending to read 
 them at the close of their third services. But both 
 were dragged out with savage fury, though both meet- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. ^ r 5 
 
 ings were nearly done when they entered the houses. 
 Both were non-resistants, and so accepted quietly such 
 usage as was tendered. Beach had a thumb dislo- 
 cated by Methodist madness, which cost him severe 
 suffering, as well as for a long time the use of his 
 hand. Foster suffered the loss of a part of his coat 
 collar, through Quaker quiet, and a sleeve cuff by Bap- 
 tist hands. But that was not all. Though their ser- 
 vices were through, he was caught up and carried 
 down to the porch and thrust into a dark closet under 
 the stairs, where the sexton kept the lamps, oil-cans, 
 and other similar sanctuary utensils, and stored him 
 there "some fifteen or twenty minutes." When they 
 finally released him, he made them a short and kindly 
 address, and holding up his damaged raiment, he said, 
 "This torn collar illustrates Quaker Christianity, and 
 this absent cuff is an emblem of your Baptist 
 religion." 
 
 It need not be said that by this time the town was 
 quite awake. We hardly dared think that our Lyceum 
 hall meeting would be tolerated. But it was, and 
 crowded, too, and continued with unabated interest 
 three hours, and the order and quiet were all that 
 could be desired. All four of us from New Hamp- 
 shire were heard with attention and respect ; and 
 though we spoke our extremest thought on the rights 
 of speech and of worship, and of the importance of 
 a true understanding of them for the success of the 
 anti-slavery enterprise, beset by foes on every hand, 
 and of every description, the pro-slavery church and 
 clergy, of course the most deadly and dangerous, the 
 very "bulwarks of slavery," not one whisper of doubt 
 or dissent was manifested by word or deed. Foster 
 not only invited, but urged discussion on any of our 
 positions, then and there, by clergy or laity, or any 
 
316 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 who might differ with us. We had heard that some 
 of us were to be arrested on Monday, but we volun- 
 tarily put ourselves on trial, and were now ready, he 
 said, to meet our accusers. But no one appeared, 
 then nor on Monday. Prosecutions had been threat- 
 ened, but none came. So on Tuesday, Rogers and I 
 returned to New Hampshire, leaving Foster and Beach 
 to pursue the work in their own way, which they did, 
 and with mighty power, and signal success, too, not- 
 withstanding the complacent conclusion of Mr. Tracy, 
 the Lynn historian, that "their strength was all gone 
 in that one effort " in Lynn, as we shall see. 
 
 Foster extended his field with Beach to Boston, and 
 then alone to New Bedford and Nantucket. There 
 the people became so stirred, Quaker population 
 though it largely was, as to break up his course of lec- 
 tures with one of the fiercest mobs of the whole con- 
 flict, and he was solemnly advised to leave the island, 
 " to prevent the shedding of human blood," which he 
 accordingly did. But he soon after more than com- 
 pleted his course of lectures, for at the request of 
 leading citizens of Nantucket, he wrote and published 
 " The Brotherhood of Thieves ; or a True Picture of 
 the American Church and Clergy." The world some 
 day may wish to see it. It ran through ten editions, 
 of two thousand copies each, and produced most 
 millennial results, both east and west. For stunning 
 as the title page sounded, the seventy-two subsequent 
 pages proved beyond doubt or question, that it was 
 true and just. 
 
 But Beach and Foster did not hasten their depar- 
 ture from Essex county. Soon they were in South 
 Danvers and Danvers New Mills. Were both dragged 
 out of meeting-houses there as at Lynn, and for the 
 same offense. Their experiences there were varied, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 317 
 
 sometimes adverse, then more prosperous, as they 
 happened to fall into the civil or ecclesiastical grasp. 
 They could at least be heard in court, as never in the 
 church. And they were even permitted to decline 
 testifying at the civil tribunal, if for conscience sake 
 they declined, as Foster did on one oceasion, if no 
 more. 
 
 Beach would have been a dipped Baptist, at New- 
 Mills, whether he would or no, but for the good-na- 
 tured roguishness of a boy in emptying the water 
 trough ; and Foster might have seen one of his South 
 Danvers persecutors severely punished had he been 
 willing to appear against him in court. 
 
 The Herald of Freedom of the 2 2d of July, 1842, 
 has this brief notice of the scenes, headed " Beach 
 and Foster Imprisoned by the Church." "Thomas 
 P. Beach, our anti-slavery lecturer, rose to speak in a 
 professed christian meeting at Danvers New Mills 
 Sunday before last, and the professors flew into a rage 
 and fell upon him and dragged him out of the meet- 
 ing and went to plunge him into a large water trough, 
 they had filled for the purpose, but they found the 
 trough dry. A little boy hearing of their sectarian 
 purpose had pulled out the plug and hid it. It is 
 unnecessary to say that they were Baptists. The same 
 day Stephen S. Foster, as I learn, at another professed 
 christian meeting at South Danvers, being kicked 
 out by one of the worshippers, and the man kicking 
 him, prosecuted for it by another of the worshippers. 
 (because, as I suppose, he had kicked beyond worship 
 measure) and Foster being ordered to testify against 
 him, and declining doing so, on the ground that that 
 was not his way of forgiving an injury, the church 
 fined him. He declined paying the fine, and they 
 thrust him into Salem jail. The New Mills Baptists 
 
318 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 prosecuted Beach, and sent him also to Salem jail, 
 and placed several Danvers citizens under bonds for 
 declining to assist in carrying the prisoner to jail." 
 
 Imprisonments at that period were frequent of 
 abolitionists, some of whom being non-resistants, were 
 committed for refusing to take lessons in the art of 
 human slaughter, under the milder name of " military 
 duty." Most of the victims from our ranks were for 
 the crime of a too liberal interpretation and exercise 
 of the rights of speech and worship, in a country whose 
 government and religion were incorrigibly committed 
 to breeding, trafficking in and holding slaves. 
 
 The imprisonment of Thomas Parnell Beach at New- 
 buryport, foreshadowed by the letter of Mr. Harriman 
 from Salem jail, already given, came a few weeks 
 later. He was kept in close confinement three months, 
 on indictments by the Lynn Quakers and Danvers 
 Baptists. His own account written in the jail reads 
 to this purport : 
 
 " I was indicted on the Danvers and the Lynn 
 Quaker affair. Those quiet, meek, peaceable, perse- 
 cuting followers of Jesus have marched up and bowed 
 their joints at the door of the court house and begged 
 the state to stretch out the bayonets, load up the big 
 guns and rifles, and drive this blood-thirsty Beach to 
 prison sine die, or till he pay a fine of a hundred dol- 
 lars, which he has no means of paying, and could not 
 pay conscientiously if he had. For every dollar so paid 
 helps the church to persecute Christ, making the state 
 her more willing tool. I am not astonished that Dan- 
 vers' Baptist majors and captains should fly to the 
 courts and the forts, but that meek, loving, forgiving 
 Quakers, who cannot bear arms, which are the only 
 possible support of human governments, can step for- 
 ward and say to the state, ' Please imprison Thomas 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 319 
 
 Beach because we shook hands and broke up our 
 meeting! Spirits of George Fox and Edward Bur- 
 roughs, awake ! awake !' " 
 
 Most, perhaps all, who were active in this persecu- 
 tion of an innocent but brave, noble, peaceful and 
 conscientious man, have long since passed with him to 
 their final account, so I would tread softly on their 
 ashes, and speak of them only in tones of tenderness 
 and charity. I will let their victim be mainly his 
 own chronicler. He forgave them here ; he will for- 
 give them there, or wherever they have gone, and help 
 them to forgive themselves. His friends, while he 
 was confined, brought his family to Newburyport, and 
 kindly and tenderly cared for them. His little boy, 
 three or four years old, shared his cell with him much 
 of the time ; and through his prison bars he spoke to 
 larger audiences and to better purpose than ever be- 
 fore ; though always one of the most impressive, per- 
 suasive, effective pleaders for the deliverance of the 
 enslaved who ever entered the field. 
 
 While a prisoner, he not only wrote some powerful 
 articles for the Newburyport Herald, some of which 
 are now before me ; but the friends of Freedom, not 
 knowing whether he would ever be discharged, estab- 
 lished a paper expressly for him, called A Voice from 
 the Jail. It ran during his confinement, and was con- 
 ducted with remarkable ability. Some of its pages 
 flashed as with heavenly fire ; every word of them 
 would be worth reprinting, were it only to reveal the 
 power, intellectual and spiritual, of some of the 
 bravest champions in reform, whose word and work 
 ever enlightened and blessed mankind. 
 
 With a very few extracts of articles written by Mr. 
 Beach while a prisoner, this account, already too 
 extended, will close. 
 
320 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 On the right to speak anywhere in behalf of 
 enslaved millions, ground down into the dust as human 
 being never was before ; and when every voice, every 
 press, every pulpit, was bidden to silence, as widely 
 'and effectively as possible, he wrote thus : 
 
 I will not stop to argue nor question the right. 
 Every instinct of my humanity, or anybody's, will 
 sharply rebuke the cowardly, quivering spirit that 
 should moot this query and respond to it ; is it 
 right to speak for enslaved, crushed humanity any 
 where ? Right to speak in God's house for three 
 hundred new-born babes daily sacrificed to the Mol- 
 och of slavery ! Right to echo the prayer of three hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand women, members of nominal 
 churches, that they may be delivered from the lust, 
 violence, and degradation to which a man-stealing 
 church and clergy have reduced them ! Right to 
 stand on the threshold of the sanctuary, and cry in the 
 ear of the dozing priest and deacon, thus guilty in 
 fellowshipping hell itself as a christian institution ; to 
 beseech them to lift their heel from the neck of my 
 wife, brother, sister, mother ! Right to cry robber, 
 adulterer, murderer, in the ear of a church that buys, 
 sells and enslaves God's own image ; that sells Jesus 
 Christ at auction, and then declare they " have not vio- 
 lated the christian faith /" O shame, where is thy 
 blush? O spirit of 1835 and '37, where art thou? 
 Does fear wither thy courage ? or startle thee from 
 thy high purpose to deliver the slave, at all hazards ? 
 has love, or desire of applause ennervated thy power, 
 or scattered those rays that once came flashing, burn- 
 ing from thine eyes ? * * * * 
 
 * * Oh, if the state could have enough of 
 
 this work to do, it would soon be sick of supporting 
 the victims of church malice and sectarian hate ! 
 * * I want company here ; I wish every jail in 
 Massachusetts and New Hampshire filled with those 
 who have boldness enough to go and charge upon 
 these God-dishonoring corporations, not only all the 
 guilt, for the tears, stripes, groans and degradation of 
 the slave, but also for the bolting and barring of every 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 321 
 
 prison door, the beheading and strangling of every 
 criminal and culprit in the land, together with all the 
 blood shed, from Abel down to the present hour. 
 Oh my God, when will thy children be willing to suf- 
 fer with Jesus, for a perishing world ? when renounce 
 home, money, lands, pride, selfishness, lust, for the 
 cross of Christ and the crown of glory ? * * 
 
 * * * I am in this prison for attempting to exer- 
 cise speech freely as a man. I felt called on to open 
 my mouth for the slave, in places where professing 
 christians meet to worship. Should I not obey that 
 call ? Am I a man, and may I not speak when I 
 think and feel that I ought to speak ? Why am I made 
 with these organs of utterance and capacities for 
 thought and conviction if all may be controlled by the 
 power of others ? Why have I sympathies for my suf- 
 fering kind if I may not let them flow out? What did 
 God mean in my formation ? Has He made me in 
 mockery ? Is He deluding me ? Is He trifling with 
 His intelligent creation ? He, who never trifles with 
 brutes nor inanimate nature ? I spoke for the slave on 
 my humanity's motion, and at the bidding of God, and 
 I am here for it. Well, I will bear it as becomes a 
 man. But let me tell my incarcerators, they commit 
 a mighty mistake when they imprison a nature that 
 knows how to endure privation like this. * * 
 I am a prisoner, but no matter, it is experience — an in- 
 valuable teacher. I am an abolitionist now, and can 
 remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. 
 
 * * Oh, the crime of making slaves of human 
 beings ! Of keeping them slaves ! Oh, the responsi- 
 bility which lies on this Christendom ! Oh, the crime 
 of professing godliness, and keeping humanity in 
 slavery ! This is the crime of the churches. Oh, the 
 awful crime against God and man of assuming a priest- 
 hood, pretending it to be christian, and using its 
 mighty influence to perpetuate human enslavement 
 and hinder a peaceful movement for its overthrow ! 
 
 Speech, glorious organ of reform among men, will 
 it ever be free ! Free, it would work wonders. Free, 
 men and women would then speak like God. Now 
 speech is enchained. Men speak as they would walk 
 
322 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 in fetters, and they look as they speak. The human 
 look is cowered and brought down, and all human 
 action seems constrained and servile. 
 
 The list of the imprisoned could be extended, but 
 the instances given already must suffice. They show 
 what manner of spirit actuated both the persecutors 
 and their victims Many more were roughly removed 
 from meetings where they attempted to speak in most 
 decent and proper manner for the enslaved, some of 
 them women of spotless purity of heart and life. The 
 churches lost many of their choicest members and the 
 Come-outer connection greatly increased, especially in 
 Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Hayward's 
 " Book of Religions " contains an excellent descrip- 
 tive account of them, written by William Bassett, whose 
 name has already graced honorably these pages. 
 Many meetings of them were established, and the 
 present Free religious societies, now so widely known, 
 may be truly said to have had their beginnings then 
 and there. Lynn furnished memorable instances 
 Two months after the Sunday demonstration there by 
 Beach and Foster, already described at so great length, 
 Mr. Rogers was again there and attended the regular 
 " Come-outer " meeting. He wrote : " Though the 
 clergy taunt them for their homely name, they must 
 have trembled yesterday when they saw the people 
 throng to their meeting in such numbers." Among 
 the speakers on that day was Frederick Douglass, then 
 comparatively new on the anti-slavery platform. He 
 spoke on the subject of prayer, and illustrated it by 
 his own experience while a slave. He said he prayed 
 long and earnestly for freedom in words as he had 
 been taught but nothing came of it. At length he 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 323 
 
 addressed his legs : " O legs, give me freedom ! O 
 legs, bring me to freedom ! And as you see," he said, 
 "they did it. They answered my prayer." 
 
 And Douglass might have added, perhaps he did 
 add, you " Come-outers" arc but fugitive slaves escaped 
 from your spiritual and ecclesiastical plantations. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CONVENTIONS AT NANTUCKET AND NEW BEDFORD- 
 FREDERICK DOUGLASS DISCOVERED— LETTER FROM 
 MR. GARRISON— MEETINGS AND MOB DEMONSTRATIONS 
 IN SALEM— OPERATIONS IN MAINE— MOBS IN PORT- 
 LAND AND HARWICH. 
 
 Here may be the place to go back a year and give 
 account of two conventions, memorable in anti-slavery 
 history, held in New Bedford and Nantucket, in Au- 
 gust, 1 841. All our meetings, of that and the following 
 year, as has been seen, especially in New Hampshire 
 and Massachusetts, were of intense interest, and peril, 
 too, on account of the new and stern tests demanded 
 of abolitionists, both in their political and ecclesiasti- 
 cal relations. Both the whig and democratic parties 
 and all the great popular religious denominations, as 
 the Baptist, Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Method- 
 ist and Presbyterian (new school and old), were all 
 committed to the power and policy of the southern 
 slaveholders. 
 
 And so the text of the true anti-slavery apostles and 
 prophets was : "Come out of them, my people, that ye 
 be not partakers in their sins, and receive not of their 
 plagues ! " 
 
 Prominent among the speakers at that meeting in 
 New Bedford, were Garrison, Edmund Quincy, and 
 George Bradburn, then a talented and popular Uni- 
 versalist minister and radical abolitionist ; though, 
 with the other two named, now no more. We closed 
 late on Sunday, and adjourned to meet at the same 
 place on Monday morning at half-past seven o'clock. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 325 
 
 This early hour was necessary to complete our busi- 
 ness and be ready for the Nantucket steamer, at half- 
 past ten, as we were to commence another convention 
 on that island the next day. 
 
 The "Report of Proceedings at New Bedford" is 
 not now before me ; but the following resolution, 
 adopted at Taunton, by a unanimous vote, the next 
 week, on my return, after long discussion, is probably 
 a fair specimen, as relates to the church ; and our 
 position was not different towards the political 
 parties : — 
 
 Resolved, That American slavery is wholesale rob- 
 bery, adultery, man-stealing and murder, and is the 
 sin of the whole nation, but preeminently of the north ; 
 and is sustained by both the republicanism and 
 religion of the country, but preeminently by the 
 religion ; * * * and hence no enlight- 
 
 ened person should be recognized as a christian who 
 is not an active, outspoken abolitionist. 
 
 Several of our speakers were colored, of whom New 
 Bedford at that time had many. I think there were 
 two religious societies of colored people there, each 
 with meeting-house and minister. Many of them, 
 however, fled — men and women — to Canada, in 1850, 
 on the enactment of the new fugitive-slave law, 
 swifter than the exodus of Israel out of Egypt. 
 
 One of them spoke so effectively at our meetings 
 that he was invited to go with us to Nantucket, with 
 promise of expenses paid. Not much was required 
 for fare, for he and his wife were allowed only the 
 forward deck, where they suffered from both sun and 
 rain, especially on our return, by rain. Our company, 
 of course, protested, but the rule was imperious. 
 
 The Nantucket meeting continued two or three 
 days and evenings, most ably sustained, and with 
 increasing interest to the very last. Till then I had 
 
326 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 never heard a fugitive slave speak, nor any distin- 
 guished colored man. But as Emerson used to say, 
 " eloquence at anti-slavery conventions, is dog cheap." 
 
 A young New Bedford barber, slightly colored, 
 named Sanderson, never a slave, tall, handsome, 
 made one of the finest addresses I had then heard on 
 the subject of slavery, Edmund Quincy, who sat by 
 me, remarked, and truly, as the young man sat down, 
 " There was not an error of grammar in that whole 
 speech." And it was more than half an hour in de- 
 livery. 
 
 Later in the evening, our invited friend from New 
 Bedford, the fugitive slave, came to the platform. The 
 house was crowded in every part, and he evidently 
 began to speak under much embarrassment. To that 
 time the meetings had advanced with increasing fervor, 
 and, as this was the last session, I began to fear a de- 
 cline for the close. But the young man soon gained 
 self-possession, and gradually rose to the importance 
 of the occasion and the dignity of his theme. In the 
 course of his remarks, he gave a most side-splitting 
 specimen of a slave-holding minister's sermon, both 
 as to delivery and doctrine, the text being : " Ser- 
 vants, obey in all things your masters." I can vouch 
 for the correctness of its doctrine, from a volume of 
 published sermons, preached to masters and slaves, 
 (now on my desk) by the then Bishop Meade, of the 
 Virginia Episcopal church. There was a parody, 
 too, on a hymn then much sung at the south, entitled, 
 "Christian Union." The following verses are part 
 of it : 
 
 Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell 
 How pious priests whip Jack and Nell, 
 And women buy and children sell, 
 Then preach all sinners down to hell, 
 And sing of heavenly union. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 327 
 
 They'll talk of heaven and Christ's reward, 
 
 And bind his image with a cord. 
 
 And scold and swing the lash abhorred, 
 
 And sell their brother in the Lord 
 
 To handcuffed heavenly union. 
 
 They'll church you if you sip a dram, 
 And damn you if vou steal a lamb. 
 Yet rob old Tony, Doll and Sam 
 Of human rights and bread and ham, 
 Kidnapper's heavenly union ! 
 
 They'll raise tobacco, corn and rye. 
 And drive and thieve and cheat and lie, 
 And lay up treasures in the sky, 
 By making whip and cowskin fly, 
 In hope of heavenly union. 
 
 They'll crack old Tony on the skull, 
 And preach and roar like Bashan bull, 
 Or braying ass, of mischief full, 
 Then seize old Jacob by the wool 
 And pull for heavenly union. 
 
 I do not distinctly remember that this parody was 
 given in that sermon, but as we so often heard it, 
 and sometimes sung with most exquisite drollery and 
 grace, it is hardly probable that it was omitted there. 
 
 When the young man closed, late in the evening 
 though none seemed to know nor to care for the hour, 
 Mr. Garrison rose to make the concluding address. I 
 think he never before nor afterwards felt more pro- 
 foundly the sacredness of his mission nor the impor- 
 tance of a crisis moment to his success. I surely 
 never saw him when he seemed more divinely inspired. 
 The crowded congregation had been wrought up al- 
 most to enchantment during the long evening, partic- 
 ularly by some of the utterances of the last speaker, as 
 he turned over the terrible Apocalypse of his experi- 
 ences in slavery. 
 
 But Mr. Garrison was singularly serene and calm. 
 It was well that he was so. He only asked a few sim- 
 ple, direct questions. I can recall but few of them, 
 though I do remember the first and the last. The 
 
328 ACTS OF ANTI- SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 first was : "Have we been listening to a thing, a 
 piece of property, or to a man ?" " A man ! A man !" 
 shouted fully five hundred voices of women and men. 
 " And should such a man be held a slave in a republi- 
 can and christian land ?" was another question. " No, 
 no ! Never, never !" again swelled up from the same 
 voices, like the billows of the deep. But the last was 
 this : " Shall such a man ever be sent back to slavery 
 from the soil of old Massachusetts ?" this time uttered 
 with all the power of voice of which Garrison was 
 capable, now more than forty years ago. Almost the 
 whole assembly sprang with one accord to their feet 
 and the walls and the roof of the Athenaeum seemed 
 to shudder with the " No, no !" loud and long con- 
 tinued in the wild enthusiasm of the scene. As soon 
 as Garrison could be heard, he caught up the acclaim, 
 and superadded : " No ! — a thousand times no ! 
 Sooner the lightnings of heaven blast Bunker Hill 
 monument till not one stone shall be left standing on 
 another !" 
 
 The whole can better be imagined than described 
 by pen of mine. I could rehearse as well the raptures 
 of cherubim and seraphim around the throne over the 
 rescue of a thousand souls from the slavery of Satan 
 and of sin. 
 
 Before us stood one trophy, self-delivered, self-re- 
 deemed from our chattel slave system, then seething 
 with all the terrors of the second death. And why 
 should not we have rejoiced then and there ? For 
 that proved none other than the baptismal, the conse- 
 crating service of Frederick Douglass into the life- 
 work and ministry which he has since so wondrously 
 fulfilled. 
 
 Not long before Mr. Garrison's death, I wrote him 
 a letter, congratulatory, as was his due, on the singu- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 329 
 
 larly successful completion of his life-mission and 
 work, and expressing the hope that thus ''seeing the 
 travail of his soul " was his supreme satisfaction, as it 
 might well be. In my letter, 1 recalled to him the 
 Nantucket scene, as given above. 
 
 Dear Friend Pillsbury — 1 did not mean that a 
 fortnight should elapse before answering your letter, 
 the receipt of which gave me much pleasure, not only 
 because of the stirring memories of " Auld Lang Syne" 
 awakened by it, but also for its very kind and frater- 
 nal spirit. 
 
 But this delay happily enables me to date my an- 
 swer on New Year's day, and consequently to offer you 
 the heartfelt congratulations of the season, and my 
 best wishes that this may prove the happiest year you 
 have yet experienced. 
 
 However, let it bring forth what it may or must, 
 whether of prosperity or adversity, joy or sorrow, 
 health or sickness, even unto death, 1 have no doubt 
 you will bear with courage and fortitude what ever 
 comes, remembering that our earthly existence is con- 
 ditioned upon ever shifting vicissitudes and final decay. 
 You will be prepared to say : 
 
 " I'll raise a tax on my calamity, 
 And reap rich compensation for my pain ; 
 I'll range the plenteous intellectual field 
 And gather eyery thought of sovereign power 
 To chase the moral maladies of man — 
 Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies, 
 Though natives of this coarse, penurious soil." 
 
 Your anti-slavery reminiscenses seemed almost liter- 
 ally to turn back the wheel of time and make me fancy 
 that I was still residing in Seaver Place, where our per- 
 sonal acquaintance and friendship began. Since then I 
 have doubled my age, having completed my seventieth 
 year on the twelfth of last month. You are several years 
 my junior, and so at that period were comparatively 
 a young man, but stout in heart and consecrated in 
 purpose to the work of breaking every yoke and let- 
 ting the oppressed go free. 
 
330 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Your coming into the field of conflict was specially 
 timely, and displayed on your part rare moral courage 
 and a martyr readiness to meet whatever of religious 
 obloquy, popular derision, social outlawry, mobocratic 
 violence or deadly peril might confront you as the 
 outspoken and uncompromising advocate of immedi- 
 ate and unconditional emancipation. 
 
 For then the aspect of things was peculiarly dis- 
 heartening, a formidable schism existing in the anti- 
 slavery ranks, and the pro-slavery elements of the 
 country in furious commotion. But you stood at your 
 post with the faithfulness of an Abdiel, and whether 
 men would hear or forbear, you did not at any time to 
 the end of the struggle fail to speak in thunder tones 
 in the ear of the nation, exposing its blood-guiltiness, 
 warning it of the wrath to come, and setting forth the 
 duty of thorough repentance and restitution. 
 
 If you resorted to a ram's horn instead of using a 
 silver trumpet, it was because thus only could the 
 walls of our slave-holding Jericho be shaken to their 
 overthrow. 
 
 I need not remind you of what you were called to 
 confront in the anti-slavery lecturing field, for more 
 than a score of years. Atrocious misrepresentation 
 and defamation on the one hand, and sharp privations 
 and perilous liabilities on the other. 
 
 And so in regard to Stephen S. and Abby Kelley 
 Foster and other faithful and self-sacrificing laborers 
 in the same manner. No heavier burdens were borne 
 by any in the abolition ranks, nor borne with greater 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 The agitation thus produced, the light thus dis- 
 seminated were essential to the overthrow of the slave 
 system. 
 
 You, too, have seen the travail of your soul, and 
 may well be satisfied. Laus Deo ! 
 Truly yours, 
 
 Wm. Lloyd Garrison. 
 
 So much was said in the last chapter about my 
 native county of Essex, that a brief account of my 
 own experiences there may here not be out of place. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY* APOSTLES. 331 
 
 A visit I made to Salem in the spring preceding the 
 operations of Beach and Foster in the adjoining towns 
 of Danvers and Lynn, disclosed more vividly the type 
 and temper of " new organization" than anything yet 
 given, not excepting even the Chichester discussion 
 not very long before. ]t has been clearly shown that 
 the secession of 1840 left the American anti-slavery 
 society bereft of nearly all the evangelical clergy and 
 . church members who then belonged to it. Salem had 
 a few excellent abolitionists, including Charles Lenox 
 Remond, and the several members of the family, of 
 whom he was eldest son. It was a cold dismal day 
 when I arrived ; alternate snow and rain rendering it 
 quite as unpleasant under foot as over head. After 
 two hours of weary walking and calling and denials, 
 I obtained the use of a small meeting-house, belong- 
 ing to the colored people, quite in the south part of 
 the town. Then I set about posting up notices, such 
 as agents then carried, which unruly boys following 
 me tore down almost as fast as nailed up. But the 
 news went round, and the dark evening brought to- 
 gether the few abolitionists of the place and enough 
 colored people to make a fair audience. Salem at 
 that time was almost fatally infected with prejudice 
 against the African color. " Colorphobia" was the 
 name we abolitionists gave the disease, and a more 
 frothing, foaming madness was never visited on the 
 human family. It raged so fearfully that respectable, 
 intelligent, well-dressed, well-behaved colored people, 
 ministers, church members, school teachers, women as 
 well as men, were frequently insulted and outraged, 
 not only on railroads, but wherever they were, if they 
 presumed to exercise the plainest, most simple of the 
 inalienable rights of humanity. In some towns, I am 
 quite certain that Salem was one of them, lyceums 
 
332 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 refused to sell tickets to the best of colored men and 
 women. Even as late as 1845, if not later, Senator 
 Sumner and Mr. Emerson refused to lecture for bodies 
 so bigoted and proscriptive, and their reasons for so 
 declining were in the newspapers. At my first meet- 
 ing in Salem, prejudice against color was the theme 
 of remark. The town had furnished sufficient reasons 
 only a short time before for such a course. On the 
 following evening we held our meeting in a commodi- 
 ous lecture room under Mechanics' hall, then occu- 
 pied on Sundays by a religious society. But for some 
 reason our numbers were not much increased. There 
 was at that time a general determination on the part 
 of leaders in state and church, especially the latter, to 
 keep the people from coming to a knowledge of the 
 truth. Reason enough surely, for the course so soon 
 to be adopted by Foster, Beach and others, of going 
 where the people were. 
 
 At my second meeting, I threw down the gauntlet 
 to new organization, by a direct attack on the hypo- 
 critical pretensions of its anti-slavery. The Howard- 
 street Congregational church had had for its minis- 
 ters, Rev. Geo. B. Cheever, an imprisoned martyr, a 
 few years before, for bold and daring faithfulness in 
 the temperance cause ; and Rev. Charles T. Torrey, 
 who had left it a few years before, that he might bet- 
 ter serve the anti-slavery enterprise, and who perished 
 subsequently in a Baltimore prison, for the offense, as 
 was alleged, of going into the south to incite slaves 
 to run away from the plantations to Canada or the 
 northern states. With such a previous record, the 
 Howard-street church had set itself forth as a model 
 new organization anti-slavery church, and I proposed 
 on the third evening, to examine its claims, not only 
 to an anti-slavery character at all, but as any kind of 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 333 
 
 anti-slavery instrumentality worthy the respect of the 
 slave or his friends, or the dread or fear of tyrants 
 and oppressors. 
 
 The next evening brought together many more than 
 could find admission, and the defenders of the church 
 appeared in force. Some were communicants, though 
 many more were not ; but all seemed inspired, or im- 
 pelled, or influenced by the same spirit, and of what 
 manner of spirit, the evening was to disclose. 
 
 It was claimed for the church that six or seven 
 years before it had passed and registered a resolution 
 of refusal to hold christian communion and fellow- 
 ship with slave-holders. It was, however, shown that 
 the member of the church who presented the resolu- 
 tions, had since lived a considerable time in Tennes- 
 see ; was in business among slave-holders there, and 
 lived unmolested ; while Birney, Dresser, Crandall 
 and others, not to speak of the murdered Lovejoy, 
 had not only suffered every indignity, almost, short of 
 death, but had finally been driven away from the 
 slave states altogether. 
 
 My direct charges against the church, notwithstand- 
 ing its anti-slavery resolutions and professions, were, 
 
 1. That its minister exchanged pulpits with the 
 other Congregational ministers of Salem and vicinity, 
 many of whom were notoriously pro-slavery, and 
 violently opposed the whole anti-slavery movement. 
 
 2. When the church celebrated the sacramental 
 supper, invitation was given to " all members of sister 
 churches in regular standing," to sit down at the 
 table. 
 
 3. That Howard-street church was part and parcel 
 of the Essex county and Massachusetts associations 
 
334 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 of Congregational ministers and churches ; all or 
 nearly all of them being in full church fellowship with 
 slave-holders. 
 
 4. That it contributed its money to the -support of 
 Bible, missionary and tract societies, that were in part 
 managed as well as supported by slave-holders, whose 
 money was the price of slaves bought and sold in the 
 market, or of their unpaid and unpitied toil under the 
 lash of cruel task-masters. 
 
 5. That both its meeting-house and vestry were 
 peremptorily refused us for anti-slavery meetings, 
 where all persons present were to have equal right of 
 speech and discussion. 
 
 Such were my allegations, and not one of them had 
 to be proved, for every one was admitted, and some of 
 them with unblushing boasts ! It was even declared, 
 by one influential member of the congregation, that 
 in his opinion, if a colored family should purchase a 
 pew in the central part of the meeting-house, a dozen 
 families would immediately leave the society. It was 
 doubtless so. Such was the anti-slavery of the How- 
 ard-street church, on its own admissions and confes- 
 sions. And that church was every way as good as the 
 average churches of Massachusetts and of New En- 
 gland, of every evangelical denomination, Instead of 
 meeting my charges, the defenders of the church 
 openly accused me with deliberately meditating the 
 destruction of the christian church, ministry, sabbath 
 and all religious institutions ; declared the Garriso- 
 nians were doing no good ; were arraigning the 
 churches before tribunals of ungodly men ; were in- 
 ducing good men and women to leave their churches, 
 to renounce their Bibles, to disregard their ministers, 
 and closed his harangue, which had wrought him into 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 335 
 
 a high state of excitement, with expressing a hope 
 that the audience would not be influenced by any 
 thing I should say during the meetings. 
 
 Others spoke on the same side and to similar pur- 
 port. Late in the evening, Mr. Remond rose to re- 
 ply, amid much tumult, but gave way for an adjourn- 
 ment to the next evening, in.the same hall. That night 
 came the crowd, many evidently on mischief intent. 
 The exercises were opened with prayer and reading 
 part of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew. I then 
 made a few remarks on the anti-slavery character of 
 the Howard-street church, and its strange defense and 
 defenders of the previous evening, and gave way for 
 Mr. Remond. His reply to the charges against the 
 abolitionists and his eulogy of Mr. Garrison, as the 
 hero and champion of the anti-slavery enterprise and 
 faithful friend of the colored race everywhere, north, 
 as well as south, was one of the most earnest, eloquent 
 and impressive utterances I had then ever heard from 
 human lips, no matter of what color or race. 
 
 But it only roused the rage of our opponents. The 
 principal defender of the church generally, and of the 
 Howard church in special, took possession of the floor 
 and he and his troop held it for the remainder of the 
 evening. On announcing my appointment for the 
 next night, I was interrupted by a very ruffianly fel- 
 low mounting a seat and declaiming loudly, " You can 
 hold another meeting in this hall, only on condition 
 that you say nothing about Howard-street church nor 
 any other. Our excellent and brave friend, Mr. 
 Josiah Hayward, who had attended all our meetings, 
 inquired if t»hat was said in earnest and in good faith, 
 and was answered that it was, and was peremptory. 
 By this time the tumult became general ; but I suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining a momentary hearing, and pro- 
 
$1,6 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 tested against occupying any house or hall unless the 
 most untrammelled free speech was permitted, both 
 sides and all sides having hearing on the subject in 
 hand, and insisted that any church, pulpit, or institu- 
 tion that could not bear the light and the lightning of 
 such investigation and examination, was a dangerous 
 element, that should not be tolerated in any govern- 
 ment. Probably not half I said was heard by the now 
 maddened crowd that thronged every possible point of 
 available space. In less than three minutes every 
 slip on the side of the hall occupied by the men from 
 porch to platform was not only stove down, but pul- 
 verized almost to kindling wood ; and most of the 
 lamps were extinguished and their shades and reflect- 
 ors, if not the lamps themselves, mingled in the gen- 
 eral crash and destruction. Then the other side, as 
 the women rushed forward towards the platform, 
 shared similar fate ; the doors and entrance were so 
 thronged as to make escape impossible. It was most 
 fortunate that we were on the lower floor, so that 
 many of the women, greatly terrified, escaped through 
 the windows. One fainted quite away and was, with 
 much difficulty restored to consciousness. We had 
 almost been broken up an hour before, by a false 
 cry of fire raised in the vestibule, but the full chorus 
 of confusion and uproar was reserved till now. I 
 learned next day that my friends kept watch and ward 
 over me, having reasons to fear for my personal 
 safety. The threatened violence was not offered, how- 
 ever, nor had it once occurred to me that I was in the 
 least peril ; in all those days of darkness and danger, 
 my implicit trust was in non-resistance, and in the 
 infinite wisdom and power from whence, as I then 
 fully believed, proceeded that sublime inspiration.. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 337 
 
 But we and our meeting were not all that suffered 
 in that visitation of mob violence. While all the proud 
 and popular sectarian meeting-houses of Salem were 
 closed to the cry of the enslaved, and to us who had 
 espoused their cause, Rev. Mr. Comings threw open 
 the doors of the hired hall of his free church and 
 society, and cordially invited us in, charging no rent 
 beyond cost of warming and light ; but seeing the 
 general storm of opposition raised against us, the 
 board of directors of the Mechanic Hall immediately 
 passed the following order : 
 
 Voted unanimously : That the Salem Free church 
 be requested to vacate the room occupied by them in 
 Mechanic Hall forthwith, and that the Secretary be 
 ordered to notify them by sending a copy of this vote. 
 
 Pursuant to the above, I hereby notify you that I 
 shall take possession of the room immediately and 
 request that you will cease to occupy it from and after 
 this day. Yours respectfully, 
 
 Henry B. Graves. 
 
 Some little delay was, of course necessary, to pro- 
 cure means of moving, and place where to move ; but 
 the next the society knew, their little library and 
 whatever else they possessed there, were thrown into 
 the street. Their rent was ever paid punctually on 
 the day it was due, and the conditions of contract 
 entitled the society, as we were assured, to three 
 months' notice before they should be required to 
 vacate the premises. So here was exemplified, what 
 really was new organized, church anti-slavery ; and 
 the best of it, too. Shut out of its meeting-houses, 
 vestries, chapels and every place they controlled, as 
 remorselessly as from any others, we found a platform 
 in a basement hall, secular in itself, though rented by 
 a religious society for its Sunday service, and there we 
 hoped for at least two or three evenings, we might 
 
$7,8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 enjoy the right and perform the duty, undisturbed, of 
 pleading the cause of the down-trodden, despised and 
 oppressed slaves. And with such results as are here 
 only faintly and partially, but truthfully described. 
 Thus desperately determined were the leaders and 
 chiefs of both church and state, to prevent, as far 
 as possible, the spread of genuine, uncompromising 
 anti-slavery truth. 
 
 I held one more meeting, but had to return to the 
 colored people's Bethel where the series began; and it 
 should be said to the credit of that little despised 
 church and society, that their conduct throughout the 
 whole scene, was noble, manly, womanly, brave and 
 heroic to the last degree, though subjected at times to 
 insult and outrage almost too shameful for human 
 nature to endure. The last meeting was as riotous as 
 either of the others, though the noise was mostly in 
 the porch and outside, though not all. One old dea- 
 con, who need not be named, as he must have been 
 dead many years, abused the colored people grossly 
 in his talk. But he was let off as he deserved, as he 
 doubtless felt most, with a silent contempt. I was 
 told that he was frequently guilty of similar behavior 
 towards the people of color, though many, if not most 
 of them in the town, were in every way his superiors. 
 
 One woman, compelled by sickness to leave the 
 meeting, was roughly assaulted in the porch, her cap 
 and bonnet were torn off, and her dress otherwise 
 badly damaged. An inoffending colored young man 
 was also attacked in the porch, knocked down and 
 then pitched headlong into the street ; he gathered 
 himself up and ran, but was chased. In the dark, he 
 threw a stone at his pursuers, which, if it hit, did not 
 hurt so badly as to prevent the ruffian from prosecut- 
 ing him and bringing him, next morning into court. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 339 
 
 The case was brought before Hon. J. G. Waters. I 
 attended, determined if possible to see justice done. 
 To my surprise and satisfaction, Judge Waters, after 
 patient hearing of the parties, dismissed the case, 
 severely reprimanding the complainant, and telling 
 him he was the offender, and more deserved punish- 
 ment than the young man he had arrested. 
 
 Thus terminated my first anti-slavery visit to that 
 ancient town. I had good reasons to believe my 
 humble services were not lost upon it ; Essex county 
 became famous in the cause of true and unfaltering 
 anti-slavery, and even its political abolitionists, some 
 of them, were of the very bravest and best. Its 
 Evangelical pulpits were always conservative, some of 
 them even bitterly so ; the Unitarians and Universal- 
 ists furnished some eminent exceptions ; and the 
 names of Thomas T. Stone, Samuel Johnson, John 
 L. Russell and Willard Spalding will always be had in 
 honor as the unfaltering friends of radical, uncom- 
 promising anti-slavery. 
 
 But returning to the narrative, it should be borne 
 in mind by readers that the incidents related here, 
 though numerous, are only representative of thousands 
 which will never be recorded ; or, as is hyperbolically 
 declared in the new Testament of the works of 
 another, "the world itself might not contain the books 
 which should be written ; " for our conflict extended 
 over thirty years. 
 
 A day's work and its incidents, in which I had 
 a partner, a quiet young beginner in the service, 
 will not be inappropriate, as following the scenes and 
 experiences of Salem. 
 
 In the early spring of 1852, I made a little tour in 
 the state of Maine, in which I was joined by Alonzo 
 J. Grover, now an eminent lawyer at the west. He 
 
34° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 was then in the course of his studies, but well up in 
 anti-slavery knowledge, interest and earnestness. On 
 a snowy, sleety, windy morning, we arrived in Bruns- 
 wick, perfect strangers to every human inhabitant. 
 Dropping our not capacious valises at a corner gro- 
 cerv, we ventured out to reconnoitre, with a view to 
 an evening meeting. The low, level land was covered 
 with the melting and melted snow and mud, making 
 walking disagreeable, indeed. And we were not sorry 
 that no suitable place within our means, could be had 
 for our lectures, as it would be nearly impossible, un- 
 der such circumstances, to secure attendance and 
 a collection that would pay the expenses of the hall. 
 So after an hour or two of prospecting, under much 
 difficulty and discouragement, we concluded to aban- 
 don Brunswick, with its college and churches, and 
 try what Freeport, the next, and much smaller place, 
 might do for us. 
 
 The skies were still scowling, and some large snow- 
 flakes continued to fall, melting, mostly, as they 
 reached the ground. It was ten o'clock, or after, 
 when we picked up our satchels and set out for Free- 
 port, seven or eight miles off. 1 Tie walking was bad, 
 of course ; but my companion was young and val- 
 liant, and I had not then grown old. By two o'clock 
 we reached our destination, having been on our feet 
 nearly five and a half hours, the ground cold and wet 
 and snow falling most of the time. And the Bruns- 
 wick heart and hospitality were colder and more re- 
 pelling than the weather. Our first inquiry on reach- 
 ing Freeport, was for a hall. We soon found one of 
 unattractive appearance, over a store, entered by a 
 flight of outside stairs. It had no seats, only round 
 the sides, being used mainly, probably, for dancing. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. ^4 1 
 
 We could have it in the evening, seating, warming and 
 lighting it ourselves, for some small sum, probably 
 not more than one dollar. 
 
 Our next business was to give notice. For that 
 purpose, after posting a written bill or two at the post- 
 office, and another store, we entered the street, begin- 
 ning at one end, one of us on one side and the other 
 on the opposite, and walked its entire length, calling 
 and leaving word at every house. That occupied an 
 hour or more, bringing us to the middle of the after- 
 noon. We did not forget that we had not dined, but 
 till our hall was secured and the people notified of our 
 meeting, dinner had to wait. We dined for a few 
 cents, on such crackers and cheese or herrings as the 
 grocery afforded, no unusual occurrence with us in 
 those days, and then proceeded with our evening prep- 
 arations. There being no tavern in the town, we 
 first looked up lodgings for the night. A woman who 
 kept a few boarders consented to entertain us, though 
 we told her that having just dined, we should need no 
 supper, and might not call on her till after the 
 meeting. 
 
 Returning to our hired hall, we called at a house 
 where there was plenty of dry wood, and paid the 
 owner a four-pence-ha'-penny for as much as we 
 could carry in our arms, and that furnished our even- 
 ing fire. Then for seats, we borrowed some soap or 
 candle boxes of the store-keeper, who seemed much 
 to admire our thrift, and with a few boards laid on 
 them, that need was met. It now only remained to 
 procure the light. For that, we bought a pound of 
 tallow candles, ten to the pound, and the good-natured 
 store-keeper, I am sorry to have forgotten his name, 
 threw us in five good-sized potatoes, out of a barrel, 
 which, slashed in halves and bored, made ten, not the 
 
342 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 apocalyptic "golden," but good and sufficient candle- 
 sticks. This was nothing new with us. I often 
 lighted halls in that way. Once, I well remember, in 
 Cleveland, Ohio, only with this difference, that round 
 turnips were used instead of potatoes. 
 
 It was almost dark when our preparations were 
 completed, so we kindled the fire, lighted a candle, 
 and, contentedly enough, sat down for a little rest, 
 before the meeting should commence 
 
 It was more than thirty years ago, in a small coun- 
 try village, the day had been stormy or cloudy, dark- 
 ness came on early, and so did our audience. It was 
 composed wholly of men and boys. That was neither 
 new nor strange. No anti-slavery meeting had ever 
 been held or attempted there before, so far as we 
 could learn. Others might be held possibly to excel- 
 lent purpose. We were respectfully heard, so soon as 
 we could get understood. As no women were pres- 
 ent, some did not hasten to put away their cigars when 
 we commenced speaking. " Chewing the cud " seemed 
 almost as common as among the cattle in the stall. 
 Neither was that any surprise ; seeing it as we had 
 from our boyhood, in even the meeting-houses on 
 Sunday, as well as in the pulpits and pews. Generally 
 if we asked for a collection something would be 
 raised, at least sufficient to pay for the hall. In this 
 instance, as we traveled into and out of town on foot, 
 and paid but sixteen and a quarter cents for fire and 
 lights, and a very small fee for the room, I have for- 
 gotten how little, we surely were not, so far, much 
 out of pocket. What our boarding-house charges 
 would be, we had not then ascertained. But we did 
 learn, a few minutes later, when we put out our can- 
 dles, and, valises in hand, presented ourselves at the 
 door. We were permitted to enter and sit down. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 343 
 
 Then our prudent hostess told us that had she known 
 what was the object of our "going about," and what 
 sort of lectures we gave, she should not have con- 
 sented to take us into her house. Her family, she 
 said, were bitterly opposed to us and our work ; and 
 a good deal more in similar tone and spirit. But as 
 there was no other place where we could get in, she 
 would keep us over night, though we must leave as 
 soon as we were up in the morning. We staid. 
 
 Supperless to bed and breakfastless on the road 
 next morning, baggage in hand, and almost before the 
 villagers were any of them abroad, was prettv rugged 
 discipline for my new comrade, but he bore it well ; 
 and, doubtless, should he write a sketch of that day 
 and night adventure he would enliven it with many 
 incidents which have escaped my recollection, or 
 which, for sake of brevity, I have omitted, and yet it 
 was in no important sense peculiar or unusual. Every 
 earnest, faithful, anti-slavery lecturer in those dark 
 and often perilous days, encountered the same or much ' 
 more disagreeable every week, all the year through, 
 especially when, as we were then, breaking in to new 
 and unexplored fields. 
 
 But older and more cultivated grounds did not al- 
 ways greet the coming of the apostle with anything 
 like the Hebrew strain : " How beautiful upon the 
 mountains are the feet of him who bringeth good 
 tidings," as the following account of a Portland meet- 
 ing proves : 
 
 The autumn of 1842 was memorable for the vigor, 
 earnestness and success, too, of the anti-slavery move- 
 ment in eastern Massachusetts and eastern New 
 Hampshire. Extensive accounts of meetings and 
 movements in Lynn, Salem, Danvers, Georgetown and 
 
344 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Newburyport, Massachusetts, and of Exeter, Dover 
 and Great Falls, in New Hampshire, have been al- 
 ready given. 
 
 But Portland, Maine, shared in the great and good 
 work. It made itself more conspicuous, too, by its 
 violent opposition to our word and work, than any 
 place we visited in any state named. It did not, like 
 some other towns, arrest, fine and imprison, but its 
 mob-malice and rage did contemplate actual murder, 
 and the wonder is how its myrmidons were restrained 
 from their fell purpose. This report will be con- 
 densed mainly from the Portland newspapers them- 
 selves. Papers not identified with the Garrisonian en- 
 terprise. In September of the year mentioned, Stephen 
 S. Foster and Rev. John Murray Spear held a series 
 of meetings and discussions on slavery in the city 
 hall, Mr. Foster the principal speaker. Mr. Spear had 
 been for some dozen or fifteen years a Universalist 
 minister in different Massachusetts towns, New Bed- 
 ford, Hyannis and Weymouth chiefly, when the tidal 
 wave of anti-slavery reached his pulpit and swept him 
 onward into the foremost billows of that then tempes- 
 tuous movement. For some thirteen years he did 
 faithful service in the cause of the enslaved, suffering 
 severe persecution in their behalf, even before he 
 abandoned the pulpit, which he did not do till he had 
 labored long and earnestly to bring his denomination 
 up to an uncompromising and inflexible position of 
 hostility to slavery, but, like many other ministers in 
 more evangelical denominations, labored in vain. A 
 slave-holder bringing a slave girl to New Bedford 
 while he was minister there, he brought her case be- 
 fore Judge Shaw, of the supreme court, who declared 
 her freedom, she being no longer in a slave state. She 
 availed herself of the opportunity. Then Mr. Spear 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 345 
 
 was arrested as a slave-stealer, the mob howling after 
 him as he walked the street, " Nigger stealer ! Nig- 
 ger stealer !" For some time the peace of the town 
 was disturbed ; threatening and horrible images were 
 hung in the night before his door, and his life was 
 deemed in peril while the agitation lasted. His inter- 
 est in the temperance and other reforms was no less 
 than in anti-slavery, and he subsequently became, in 
 connection with his brother, Rev. Charles Spear, 
 pioneer in a grand movement in the interest of prison- 
 ers and of discharged convicts ; and originated, and 
 for years edited and published a journal, entitled the 
 Prisoner s Friend, which had a wide circulation, and 
 was productive of great good. In later years Mr. 
 Spear has been closely associated with spiritualism, 
 traveling extensively in both hemispheres, including 
 a tour to the Pacific coast, to promote its interests. 
 
 In the Portland tumult, so far as appeared by the 
 newspaper accounts, Mr. Spear does not seem to have 
 given any offense, but being found in bad company 
 he was made to suffer accordingly. On the way to 
 his lodgings he was violently asaailed and barely 
 escaped with his life. But in the heavenly home 
 hospitality and care of Oliver and Lydia Dennett, 
 surrounded with other ministering spirits of the city, 
 who watched around him, he was, after seven weeks, 
 restored, though I am assured his attendants once 
 gathered at his bedside expecting to witness the 
 closing scene of his earthly existence. 
 
 At the last meeting of the series, in which Mr. Fos- 
 ter was to speak, as previously announced, on " The 
 Influence of Southern Slavery in the Northern States," 
 was witnessed, the Portland American declared : 
 " One of the most disgraceful riots ever seen in Port- 
 land. Mr. Foster commenced his remarks in a very 
 
346 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY, APOSTLES. 
 
 mild and conciliatory manner,explaining the reasons for 
 his peculiar mode of address, and saying that he was 
 a friend to the laboring classes, and was a working- 
 man himself. During his introduction he was con- 
 stantly interrupted by singing, hissing, hooting, by 
 insulting remarks and throwing of rotten eggs. The 
 patience with which the audience bore the insolence 
 of these reckless scoundrels induced them to proceed 
 farther. The benches were broken, a general fight 
 commenced, and a rush was made for the speaker. 
 Our citizens, however, formed a solid phalanx around 
 the desk, rendering it unapproachable. The mob 
 pressed on like blood hounds for their victim. Shouts 
 were heard, 'Hand him over ! Hand him over ! We 
 want the blood of the d — m— d scoundrel. Murder 
 the d — m — d abolitionist,' and other expressions 
 equally characteristic of the temper and intentions of 
 the miscreants. The mayor was present and ordered 
 them to leave the hall. After a great deal of effort 
 he succeeded in clearing the place. A false alarm of 
 fire was raised, calling off a few, but the mob remained 
 in a solid body, watching at each flight of steps and 
 around the windows for the lecturer. 
 
 At length, when it was supposed that they had dis- 
 persed somewhat, he was taken out under protection 
 of the mayor and several brave ladies, to the house of 
 a friend, followed by some five hundred persons. He 
 was several times struck on the face and back of his 
 head and seriously injured. We regret to add that 
 there were some men of respectable appearance whom 
 we saw and heard encouraging the mob by their voices. 
 * * One old man in broadcloth we mean espe- 
 cially ; whose gray hairs should warn him that it is 
 time he were thinking of other things than depriving 
 a freeman of liberty of speech. One 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 347 
 
 man, while the rioters were already worked up to the 
 fury of madmen, shouted at the top of his lungs, 
 ' Turn him out ; bring a pot of lampblack,' and then 
 grossly and vilely insulted the stranger in language 
 too foul for our columns. * * Since the 
 
 above was in type, the captain, of whom we spoke in 
 our description of the mob, called and discontinued 
 his paper, but admitted all we charged upon him ex- 
 • cept the shouting at the top of his lungs." 
 
 Another article from the same paper, commenting 
 on the Portland Advertiser's notice of the affair, says : 
 " The Advertiser s notice of the riot was one of the 
 most cold-blooded things we have seen. Hear it : 
 'Last evening our city was threatened with a mob. 
 The noted S. S. Foster has given two or three lectures 
 on such topics as he sees fit to connect with abolition, 
 and the city hall was thronged last night with a mixed 
 multitude, including some females, mostly composed, 
 as we judge, of those who were inclined to stop his 
 excitable harangue. Some of the friends of the lecturer 
 took such measures to check the disturbances that the 
 crowd proceeded to acts of violence, which broke up 
 the meeting. A good many blows were aimed on both 
 sides. As we believe no one was seriously hurt, we 
 do not go into the disagreeable details.' So much for 
 the Advertiser." 
 
 To which the American responds : " Monstrous ! 
 Our peaceful city was only ' threatened with a mob!' 
 There was no mob. Oh no ! Those who rushed to- 
 wards the desk and demanded the life, aye, the life, 
 for we heard and saw the whole, the life of the speaker, 
 who broke settees, threw rotten eggs, knocked Mr. 
 Foster down in the street, struck him some twenty 
 times, and who surrounded the house where he staid, 
 threatening destruction t,o its inmates, these miscreants 
 
34-8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 did not, in view of the Advertiser, constitute a mob ! 
 * The charge that 'the friends of the lecturer 
 took such measures to check the disturbance that the 
 crowd proceeded to acts of violence,' is false. After 
 the crowd had commenced throwing missiles at the 
 speaker ; after the riot had commenced ; after the 
 rioters had been repeatedly urged to be quiet, a young 
 gentleman rose and moved that they be expelled from 
 the house. They went there with the previously ex- 
 pressed determination to break up the meeting, and 
 to do the lecturer bodily injury." 
 
 Such accounts did the Portland papers give, and 
 such were received as substantially correct. Mr. Fos- 
 ter had his story to tell, and so had Mr. Spear, and 
 so had their anti-slavery friends. To-day, after a 
 lapse of more than forty years, little idea is likely to 
 be formed of such scenes as were then and there, and 
 often elsewhere, enacted. Foster had offended most, 
 and so was most hated and hunted. Spear, though 
 not less faithful when he did speak, had given less 
 offense, and so was not deemed in such danger, and 
 was less vigilantly shielded, and thus came nearest to 
 losing his life. Foster suffered in person and apparel, 
 though his friends, brave women as well as men, hov- 
 ered all about him, taking off his spectacles, changing 
 his hat, and in other ways disguising him. He wore 
 at the time a dress instead of frock coat, the skirts a 
 little elongated, as was the style. A ruffian contrived 
 to get hold of one skirt and tore it squarely off, leav- 
 ing the other dangling alone, looking grotesquely 
 enough. But that he turned to excellent account, for 
 he wore it weeks afterwards wherever he went to tell 
 its own tale. And surely, " thereby hung a tale " of 
 sublime import. The coat was kept in the family for 
 years as a significant trophy of honorable war. But 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 349 
 
 he suffered severely in person. Mr. Rogers, James N. 
 Buffuin, myself, and others were holding a five days' 
 convention at Great Falls, New Hampshire, forty miles 
 from Portland, and Foster was expected to be with us 
 a part of the time, but detained longer at Portland 
 than was expected, he was late in reaching us. When 
 at length he came, his appearance on entering, with 
 ragged raiment, with sickly, worn and weary cast of 
 countenance, stirred every heart and moved many to 
 tears. Mr. Rogers, in his account of the Great Falls 
 convention in the Herald of Freedom, thus spoke 
 of it : 
 
 " On Thursday, in the midst of our discussions, the 
 meeting was deeply stirred by the entrance of Foster 
 from Portland. His countenance pale and distressed 
 but not cast down, and his garments torn off of him, 
 fresh from the hands of a terrible mob. I can here 
 only say he was greeted with most affectionate inter- 
 est by the meeting, and listened to in the account he 
 gave, at the request of the assembly, of the scenes he 
 had just passed through, with solemn attention." 
 
 But there were encounters sometimes more trying 
 to flesh and blood than mobs. Just as the last word 
 was written on the scenes at Portland, chance threw 
 before me the Liberator, of April 16, 1852, containing 
 the following letter, which the editor headed truly 
 ■enough, " One Week's Experience of a 'Field Hand.' " 
 
 Dear Friend Garrison — I will write you the ex- 
 perience of the past week. You need not publish it, 
 unless you choose. Sometimes we have such weeks 
 in the field service, in spite of all forecasts and pro- 
 visions to prevent them. 
 
 I left Lawrence on Monday morning on a tour 
 eastward. In the evening of that day I lectured to a 
 respectable audience in Rochester, N. H. Tuesday 
 
35° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 morning we were whirling in the midst of one of the 
 most violent snow storms of the whole winter. At 
 three in the afternoon I took the cars for Great Falls, 
 where were to be meetings in the evening, and the 
 evening following. On account of an accident the 
 train consisted only of freight cars, into one of which 
 we were all stowed, men, women and children, as live 
 stock goes to Brighton. 
 
 Arrived at the Falls, I wallowed about in the snow 
 and slush, the storm still continuing, in search of some 
 one who could give me tidings of the meetings. But 
 it came out that none had been appointed, nor any 
 arrangements made. Mr. Grover was to have been 
 with me, but the snow storms and drifts hindered the 
 cars, so I took the business into my own hands alone. 
 By floundering through the deep snow and water for 
 a time, I learned that the only place we could possi- 
 sibly obtain was Central hall. I found the proprietor, 
 and he told me it could be had at six dollars an even- 
 ing, though he afterwards said he did let it for five 
 dollars sometimes. Before I had time to put in my 
 plea of poverty, he told me it was to be occupied so 
 many evenings, that my own preengagements were 
 such as to end the whole matter. Thus terminated 
 the mission at Great Falls. 
 
 Having had no appointment made for Thursday 
 evening, I was induced, by my friends in Rochester, 
 to return and hold one more meeting there. The 
 failure at the Falls gave me Wednesday evening also, 
 and so, on short notice, I called a meeting for that 
 evening too. By this time Friend Grover had arrived, 
 and spoke the whole of Wednesday evening, to a 
 small but attentive audience. He left next morning 
 to go on to Portland. At the appointed hour on 
 Thursday. I went to the hall. Not a soul was there, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 35 I 
 
 nor body even — for they do not always come together. 
 Nearly an hour afterwards my audience had not in- 
 creased in the least. It was Fast Day and the 
 people were keeping such fast as — they had chosen. 
 Such was the termination at Rochester. 
 
 On Friday morning, I set off for Kennebunk, the 
 place of my appointment. At the Kennebunk depot, 
 I inquired for the persons to whom we had written, 
 and found they lived five miles distant. I also learned 
 that nobody lived nearer to whom I could apply, and 
 that no place could be had in town, unless it were a 
 small, remote school-house, for even a fugitive slave 
 to hold a meeting. 
 
 Finally, I engaged a poor man, who had lost both 
 hands and arms, by the premature discharge of a can- 
 non, and who drove his horse by means of hooks at- 
 tached to the stumps, to carry me the five miles to 
 where our friends lived. The day was dismal, and 
 the riding as much so. But we arrived at last, and I 
 was set down in the center of a clearing of a few hun- 
 dred acres, surrounded almost completely by a low, 
 thick growth of pine woods. I took out my luggage, 
 paid my fare, and made up to the house. 
 
 My repeated knocking brought no one to open. I 
 tried the door and found it fast. The other door was 
 faster yet. Then I went over the way, and inquired. 
 The young woman thought the family were gone only 
 a mile. The old lady said they were gone away to a 
 funeral, several miles, and had been gone all day. 
 
 Here, then, I was, five miles from Kennebunk depot, 
 still farther from Saco, the next nearest, and three or 
 four miles, at least, from everywhere else — all alone, 
 with my luggage, the skies scowling with threatening 
 clouds, the distant forests fencing and surrounding 
 me with their gloomiest curtains, and the almost im- 
 
352 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 passable roads making their worst faces at me, and 
 elongating their fearful miles to immeasurable extent. 
 The good old lady, however, insisted on my eating 
 dinner, from which she and her daughter had just 
 risen. Then, with both hands full of bags and bun- 
 dles, I set off, on foot, for Saco, five or six miles. 
 
 I never in my life saw such intolerable walking in 
 New England. The soil, much of the way, was clay, 
 and the frost just coming out of it, and then a ming- 
 ling of snow, it made a complete compound of Bun- 
 yan's "Slough of Despond," "Enchanted Ground," 
 "Hill of Difficulty," and all his dragons. The cold 
 north-east wind, too, blew full in my face, and every 
 sign denoted immediate storm. I plunged along as 
 fast as possible, to escape that additional woe, and 
 reached Saco and Biddeford late in the afternoon, 
 possibly somewhat fatigued, and perfectly parboiled in 
 perspiration. It was a pilgrimage not to be forgotten. 
 
 The week has gone— and it has been one of most 
 uncommon labor, disappointment, vexation and suffer- 
 ing. I have lectured to everybody who came near 
 me, but my labors in that line were confined to Roch- 
 ester, and two meetings. My traveling expenses have 
 been three dollars and seventy-five cents, to say noth- 
 ing of my walking, which was worth twice as much ; 
 my receipts have been one dollar and five cents, and I 
 have not procured one single subscriber to the Liber- 
 ator nor to any of our papers. Such is the experience 
 of one week. Who would not be a soldier in such a 
 warfare ? 
 
 Yours, still full of hope and trust, 
 
 Parker Pillsbury. 
 Portland, April 12, 1852. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 353 
 
 • 
 
 A. J. Grover rejoined me in Portland, and our next 
 campaign included Brunswick and Freeport, of which 
 report has been already given. 
 
 One more riotous demonstration should have place 
 in these chronicles, but space and time must make it 
 both brief and the last. It occurred in Harwich, Mass,. 
 on Sunday, the fourth and last day of a grand anti-sla- 
 very convention, held in a beautiful grove, in Septem- 
 ber of the year 1848. - No building on the Cape could 
 have held half the attendance. Cape Cod at that 
 time was the birth-place and nursery of more sea-cap- 
 tains than any other portion, of equal extent, on the 
 whole Atlantic coast. And many of the most emi- 
 nent of them were early able and faithful friends and 
 supporters of the anti-slavery enterprise. 
 
 But sea-captains were not all abolitionists, else the 
 Harwich Sunday tumult, in defense of v the church as 
 "the bulwark of slavery," would not have transpired. 
 The constitution of the country, the courts, the politi- 
 cal parties, the commerce and trade, had all been 
 shown to be conducted in the interest of slavery, and 
 no riotous demonstration appeared. But not so on 
 Sunday, when the churches and clergy were arraigned 
 as the bulwark and forlorn hope of the accursed in- 
 stitution. The mob at Harwich was the result of an 
 exposure of a diabolical deed by the captain of a 
 coaster, sailing between Norfolk and New York, and 
 other northern ports. I am glad to have forgotten 
 his name, and do not care ever to hear it spoken 
 again. 
 
 But while in Norfolk, not long before our conven- 
 tion, a slave came on board and asked this captain 
 what he would charge to carry him and another to 
 New York or Boston. A contract was made for one 
 hundred dollars — paid in advance. The captain 
 
354 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 pocketed the cash, then went on shore, betrayed the 
 poor slave, had him arrested, imprisoned and adver- 
 tised, and then sailed north, bringing the hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 We who knew the slave system, could imagine the 
 fate of the imprisoned victim, though we never heard 
 what it was. The cruel captain never told us that, 
 though undoubtedly he knew, for when he went back 
 to Norfolk he carried the money, found the owner, 
 paid him over the hundred dollars, and received back 
 twenty-five as his reward ! 
 
 Twenty-five dollars for a deed that no Modoc nor 
 Apache Indian under heaven would ever have done ! 
 In cold, unprovoked blood — never ! 
 
 Sunday was the fourth and last day of our conven- 
 tion, and not less than three thousand people were on 
 the ground. Some estimated them at four thousand. 
 
 I learned all the facts I have just given, from the 
 captain himself, early in the day. In the afternoon, 
 when the crowd was the greatest, I made a full state- 
 ment of the case, in words as fitting as were then at 
 my command. Of course the effect on the audience 
 was intense, but dependent on the estimate which dif- 
 ferent persons placed on the transaction between the 
 captain and his helpless victim. 
 
 In the tumult, the captain came to the platform, and 
 not having heard my statement, he demanded, in great 
 wrath, who it was that accused him of stealing ! He 
 said somebody had just told him he had been accused 
 of stealing. He was answered that his name had not 
 been mentioned there ; and that nothing had been 
 said about stealing. He said he had a right to be 
 heard, and wished to be heard. We cheerfully 
 accorded him the platform. He came forward, and 
 in the frankest, blandest manner, stated his own case 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 355 
 
 in his own words. When he concluded, we invited him 
 to a seat on the platform, which he accepted. 
 
 Stephen Foster spoke next. He began in quite a 
 conversational tone to say : Mr. Chairman — We have 
 now heard from his own mouth, what our friend had 
 to say of the matter in hand. And he confirms every 
 statement of Mr. Pillsbury, excepting one : he has not 
 told us that he is a member in good and regular stand- 
 ing of the Baptist church, as Mr. Pillsbury assured us 
 he was. Now I wish to ask him if that is also true. 
 He admitted that with the rest, 
 
 Foster then opened his argument. And those who 
 ever heard him can more easily imagine than I can 
 describe, its power. Every eye kindled, every heart 
 throbbed, with admiration, or with rage and wrath. I 
 had often heard him called "a son of thunder," before. 
 At that moment, he seemed Father of the seven thun- 
 ders of Patmos, with all their bolts at command. He 
 swayed those hundreds and thousands as prairie 
 cyclones, the vast fields of corn. And yet the cap- 
 tain, really on trial, listened to every word with respect 
 and attention. I knew he heard a voice within, louder, 
 more eloquent than the utterances of Foster, and 
 whose rebuke he could not resist. 
 
 The mob spirits now rushed for the platform, and 
 with oaths and curses of stunning power, called on 
 the captain to pitch him down to them. Their num- 
 ber seemed legion ; and their nature and spirit like 
 that other legion, known of old. The captain mildly 
 replied to them that he wished none of their interfer- 
 ence nor defense. He left the platform soon after, 
 and moved out of the crowd, and held a long conver- 
 sation with some Boston abolitionists, who had come 
 down on purpose to attend the convention. And he 
 very frankly told them that he had no fault to find 
 
356 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 whatever with our treatment of the matter, nor of 
 him. Nor did he ever after complain, that we heard. 
 Mr. Foster kept his feet and held the crowd at bay, 
 showing our religion to be falsehood and hypocrisy, 
 when a member of the orthodox church, who had just 
 come from his meeting, (and it was said from the sac- 
 rament), leaped like a lion on to the platform. His 
 eyes flashed fury if not fire ; his teeth and fists were 
 clenched, and he seemed a spirit from the pit, who 
 might have been commissioned to lead its myrmidons 
 in a deadly fray, for such a faith and such a church as 
 his, that a dozen years before had been proved by one 
 of its most eminent members, 
 
 "The Bulwark of American Slavery." 
 
 He asked no leave to speak ; paid no respect to pres- 
 ident or rules. His first note was a shriek. " It's a 
 lie ; what you say is a lie ; a damned lie ! and I'll de- 
 fend the church ! " 
 
 But he was immediately outvoiced by the yelling 
 troop, who leaped like tigers at his heels, as into the 
 arena, and added fearful deeds to his not less fearful 
 words. 
 
 What became of my platform companions I did not 
 see. I was immediately seized, and with kicks, blows, 
 and dilapidated clothing, hurled to the ground. 
 
 There lay Captain Chase and Captain Smith, of 
 Harwich, both old men, who, with many others, had 
 sprung to our defense. There the two lay, their faces 
 covered with blood ! They were both radical peace 
 men, and only remonstrated with our remorseless as- 
 sailants. But both of them would willingly have died 
 in our stead, or in our defense. Truer, nobler men 
 never lived. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 357- 
 
 Havoc was soon made of our platform and what it 
 contained. It was roofed over, but a temporary struc- 
 ture, for officers and speakers, and aged persons who 
 sought its convenience and comfort. William Wells 
 Brown, one of our eloquent fugitive slave lecturers, 
 was roughly seized up and pitched over back of the 
 platform by the infuriated crowd, down some six or 
 eight feet, and left to his fate. Mr. Foster was res- 
 cued and taken away from danger — his Sunday- frock 
 coat rent in twain from bottom to top, and his body 
 considerably battered and bruised. 
 
 Lucy Stone stood heroically with the rest of us, 
 ready for any fate. But her serene, quiet bearing dis- 
 armed the vulgar villainy of our assailants, and she 
 escaped unharmed. 
 
 I have seen many mobs and riots in my more than 
 forty years of humble service in the cause of freedom 
 and humanity, but I never encountered one more des- 
 perate in determination, nor fiendish in spirit, than 
 was that in Harwich, in the year 1848. 
 
 And that mob was wholly, directly and undeniably 
 in defense of the American church. "I'll defend the 
 church," was the wild shout of the baptized 
 ruffian who led the hordes, as he vaulted unbidden 
 to our platform of moral and peaceful agitation and 
 argument in behalf of our enslaved millions. "I'll 
 defend the church," and his infuriated, yelling and 
 blaspheming troop followed him, and commenced 
 their fell work. 
 
 Yes, to save the church was that dire scene enacted. 
 The church that Judge Birney had proved out of her 
 own mouth was the "bulwark of American slavery in 
 every one of her largest, most popular denominations !" 
 Church, clergy, and theological seminary, every thing, 
 
358 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 indeed, under ecclesiastical control. And Hon. James 
 G. Birney was surely among her choicest leaders and 
 brightest lights. 
 
 To my own account of this remarkable scene, per- 
 haps should be subjoined at least an excerpt of the 
 official proceedings of the convention. The follow- 
 ing is the close of it : 
 
 Parker Pillsbury related a fact illustrative of the 
 truth of the resolution under discussion of a sea-cap- 
 tain, of Cape Cod, a member of the Baptist church. 
 
 Immediately the captain's friends reported to him 
 that he had been slandered, upon the platform, and in 
 due time the captain presented himself and demanded 
 why he had slandered him, on that platform ? He 
 was assured that his name had not been spoken by 
 any one on the platform, and that if he would wait 
 for the speaker to conclude his remarks he should 
 have opportunity to say all he wished. 
 
 Accordingly, when the speaker sat down, the cap- 
 tain took the platform, and stated the facts precisely as 
 Pillsbury had done, so it was manifest that there was 
 no slander, nor even contradiction between them. 
 
 S. S. Foster then proceeded to dissect the transac- 
 tion, as stated by the captain himself, and to find its 
 moral quality. It was a process which he well under- 
 stood, nor did he fail to expose the deformity of the 
 deed, and cause its infamy to stand out in fearful 
 blackness before that great assembly. The captain 
 said he had nothing to reply, and left the platform as 
 quietly as he had come upon it, saying he had not 
 come there to make any disturbance. Foster then 
 held up to the audience, in its true character, the re- 
 ligion, under whose cherishing influence such crimes 
 take root and grow, and asked who would defend 
 such a church ? At that moment Captain Stillman 
 Snow, a member of the Congregational church under 
 the pastoral care of Rev. Cyrus Stone, (who we are 
 credibly informed, went about among his people and 
 advised them to stay away from our meeting), this 
 Captain Snow, steaming from his own meeting, rushed 
 
ACTS OF AXTI-SLAVKRY APOSTLKS. 
 
 359 
 
 through the crowd in front of Foster, screaming at 
 the top of his voice, "I'll defend the church. What 
 you say is a lie, a damned lie!" His lips trembled, 
 his head shook upon its socket, like a leaf rattled by 
 the winter tempest, while his countenance looked as 
 if the genius of rage had his dwelling there. He 
 made a leap at Foster, which was a signal for his allies. 
 In a twinkling, there was a rush upon the platform. 
 \Y. W. Brown, a fugitive slave, was seized and thrown 
 over the high back of the platform, where he was tram- 
 pled on by the throng gathered there. Pillsbury, with 
 torn clothes, was dragged from the platform, receiv- 
 ing as he went, kicks and blows from those behind him. 
 Those in front of him were harmless, awed by his 
 fearless words, and undaunted look. 
 
 Again and again, some desperate spirits, with 
 clenched uplifted fists, swore vengeance and destruc- 
 tion, but like the old Roman, Pillsbury calmly replied 
 "strike, but hear me." While he was thus beset on 
 every hand, S. S. Foster was assailed in another direc- 
 tion no less violently. At the first onset he hastened 
 Lucy Stone from the platform, but had scarcely time 
 to turn about, when the mob, thirsting for his blood, 
 closed in around him, seizing him with desperate vio- 
 lence, wherever they could lay their hands upon him, 
 and though they did not " part his garments among 
 them," they quite divided his coat. For a few 
 moments the most terrible confusion prevailed — all 
 ran, without knowing whither they went — so great 
 was the excitement that neither friends nor foes recog- 
 nized each other. One friend would take hold of the 
 arm of Foster for his protection, and another friend 
 would pull him off supposing him an enemy. 
 
 One friend would step forward to stay an . uplifted 
 blow, and another friend would push him aside, sup- 
 posing that he intended himself to strike. The scene 
 baffled all description. At this juncture a shout was 
 raised that they were riding Foster on a rail. This 
 false cry was most opportune for Brown, who, during 
 the whole time, had been dragged and trampled by 
 the mob. Now his tormentors left him to seethe ruin 
 of Foster, and thus he made his escape, rifled by these 
 
360 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 pious defenders of the nation's religion, of quite a 
 number of his Anti-slavery Harp. Foster, who had 
 been surrounded by the mob, showed no sign of fear 
 or fright. The man who had never quailed in peril's 
 blackest hour, was not the man now to tremble or flee. 
 But the friends, apprehensive for his safety, urgently 
 solicited him to leave the ground ; and when he did 
 not manifest a disposition to go, they took him, with 
 most unpleasant haste, outside the grove, aided by the 
 mob, who were pushing terribly in the rear, and on all 
 sides. 
 
 When Pillsbury ascertained that Brown and Foster 
 were safe, and that nothing more could be done, he, 
 too, left, taking the public road towards the house of 
 Captain Small, a well-known friend of the oppressed. 
 The mobocrats, who had returned to the grove howl- 
 ing and yelling in their rage and disappointment, that 
 Foster was out of their clutches, when they found that 
 Pillsbury was leaving, followed in hot pursuit, raising 
 the dust higher than the trees, filling the air with 
 demoniac screams and yells, which were heard at the 
 distance of more than a mile, and frighful enough to 
 make Pandemonium itself pale. They rushed on 
 headlong about thirty rods, and then, though Pills- 
 bury was walking only a short distance in front of them, 
 for reasons best known to themselves, they turned back 
 to the grove, cursing as they went, and proceeded to 
 vent their rage upon the platform, which they soon 
 demolished. 
 
 While they were tearing up the planks they were 
 uttering most dreadful oaths, and vowing vengeance 
 on the lecturers, (should they ever make their appear- 
 ance there again) who, they said, had assailed their 
 laws and their religion, which they were going to de- 
 fend. The world will judge what kind of laws and 
 what kind of religion need such a defense. It was a 
 proud day for anti-slavery, and one which the friends 
 will long have occasion to remember with gratitude. 
 The lecturers were not particularly disturbed until all 
 had been said which they wished to say, until every 
 nail was driven in the right place, and then the mob 
 clenched them. They meant their violence for evil, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 361 
 
 but God meant it for good. The dragon's teeth, which 
 they were then unconsciously sowing, will yet come 
 up, a host of true-hearted anti-slavery men and women, 
 who will redeem Cape Cod from the false religion 
 which now curses and enslaves it. Much praise is 
 due to the friends, who are too numerous to mention, 
 who so nobly stood by those whose lives the hungry 
 mob were seeking. Nor would we fail to make suita- 
 ble mention of others, who, during the day on Sunday, 
 were active in exciting the mob spirit. Prominent 
 among them was Henry C. Brooks, a merchant of 
 Boston, of the firm of Crowell & Brooks, 38 Commer- 
 cial street, son of Obed Brooks, Esq., of Harwich. 
 
 The good effect of the mob is already manifest in 
 the increased activity and interest of the friends on 
 the Cape, whose liberal contributions to the cause 
 have been nearly doubled, and who see new reasons 
 for girding themselves to more vigorous effort in be- 
 half of human freedom. 
 
 ZEBINA Small, P resin' rut. 
 
 Charles Stearns, 
 
 Lucy Stone, 
 
 Secretaries. 
 
 Only time, space and patience of readers prevent 
 insertion of the whole of the able report of the secre- 
 taries of that phenomenal convention. Most of the 
 names of the rioters mentioned in the extract given 
 are suppressed. 
 
 No other mob or riot will be described in this work. 
 Such as are given are but representative of many, very 
 many ; some less destructive to property and harmful 
 to person, and some others in those respects a great 
 deal worse. 
 
 And now, wondrous to tell, with such records, the 
 church and clergy claim and boast that they abolished 
 slavery ! The real, everlasting truth is, we had almost 
 to abolish the church before we could reach the dread- 
 ful institution at all. We divided, if we did not de- 
 stroy. Not to speak of the General Assembly of the 
 
362 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Presbyterian church at all, we did divide and even 
 subdivided the General Conference of the Methodist 
 Episcopal church. The slavery question certainly 
 produced rupture in the American Board of Foreign 
 Missions, the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions and 
 the American Tract Society, as has been, or as will 
 be shown. If it be said that it was their own internal 
 heat that was consuming them, the answer would be 
 it was not light and fire from heaven, the divine illum- 
 ination of the Holy Ghost, or their differences would 
 not have been so easily reconciled by surrendering the 
 whole ground to the enemy ; the Northern Methodist 
 Conference retaining thousands of slave-holders and 
 tens of thousands of slaves, and six of the very largest 
 of the slave states, besides Delaware and Maryland. 
 The two missionary boards and tract society threat- 
 ened at one time some separation or purification, but 
 to what purpose will be made to appear 
 
 The institution at Oberlin, Ohio, was first to attempt 
 a new standard for freedom in education and religion, 
 irrespective of sex, complexion or race, with a pro- 
 fessedly anti-slavery board of teachers and directors. 
 But Oberlin was at once proscribed by the great bodies 
 of ministers and churches, whose fellowship extended 
 to the south. And even Oberlin never so much as 
 contemplated any separation from our unhallowed 
 union with slave-holders. Instead of it, under an 
 assumed idea or pretence that the constitution was 
 anti-slavery and not pro-slavery, an assumption that 
 no president, congress nor supreme court nor state 
 legislature nor court ever believed for an hour, Ober- 
 lin continued loyal to the government, swore by itself 
 or elected rulers to support the constitution, and then 
 kept the oath or made a virtue of perjury and violated 
 it by refusing to return the fugitive slave. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 363 
 
 And scarcely had the institution reached respecta- 
 bility in the estimation of more declared pro-slavery 
 ecclesiastical associations, north and south, before the 
 Infinite Patience was exhausted, and with the bolts of 
 eternal justice stove down our already blood-besmeared 
 idol, and buried it beneath the untimely graves of half 
 a million men slain in a thousand battles, their mas- 
 sacred commander-in-chief and president of the nation 
 with his own heart's blood, sealing the sacrifice ! 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SOME ACTS OF THE PRO-SLAVERY APOSTLES— PERSONAL 
 ENCOUNTER WITH THE HENNIKER. N. H., CHURCH AND 
 SUFFOLK, MASS., ASSOCIATION OF MINISTERS— REV. DR. 
 BACON AND SON ON SLAVERY AND WHO ABOLISHED IT 
 —THE CHURCH AND CLERGY IN THE MEXICAN WAR. 
 
 =1 
 
 It is time to draw this work to a close. It was un- 
 dertaken with extreme reluctance at the earnest solici- 
 tation of those whose wishes it is my delight to obey, 
 even at any cost of personal sacrifice of my latest 
 years, only if the cause of truth and the demands of 
 history be also subserved. And strict truth and jus- 
 tice to everybody concerned, has been, and shall be to 
 the end, my one constant study and care. 
 
 The next chapter may be called " Acts of the Pro- 
 Slavery Apostles," and will have respect mainly to the 
 connection of the church and c.ergy of the country 
 with the slave system. Their hostility to the anti- 
 slavery enterprise was not wakenec into fierce and 
 general opposition till slavery was not only declared a 
 sin ; such sin as that no slave-holder could be a chris- 
 tian, nor worthy to be fellowshipped as such, whether 
 south or north. The abolitionists insisted that every 
 church and pulpit dictating terms of sacramental com- 
 munion should hold the man-steaier as just so much 
 greater criminal than the felon of the sheep-fold, as 
 a man is better than a sheep, remembering who He was 
 that asked, " How much better is a man than a sheep ?" 
 And our warrant for this judgment came from the 
 very highest evangelical authority the church could 
 furnish. Long before slavery hau reached the pro- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 365 
 
 portions of 1834, or developed half its prospective 
 cruelties, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
 church had officially and authoritively taught, citing 
 as their scripture basis, the first epistle of Timothy, 
 first chapter, ninth and tenth verses : " The law is 
 made for manstealers. This crime among the Jews 
 exposed the perpetrators of it to capital punishment. 
 Exodus xxi, 16 ; and the apostle classes them with 
 sinners of the first rank. The word he uses, in its 
 original import, comprehends all who are concerned 
 in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or' in 
 retaining them in it. Stealers of men are all those 
 who bring off slaves or freemen, and keep, sell, or 
 buy them. To steal a freeman, says Grotius, is the 
 highest kind of theft. In other instances we only steal 
 human property, but when we steal or retain men in 
 slavery, we seize those who, in common with ourselves, 
 are constituted, by the original grants, lords of the 
 earth." 
 
 In 1791, Rev. Jonathan Edwards, D. D., declared 
 and published this : ' 
 
 " To hold any man in slavery, is to be every day 
 guilty of robbing him of his liberty, or of man-stealing. 
 Fifty years from this time (1791) it will be as shame- 
 ful for a man to hold a slave as to be guilty of com- 
 mon theft or •obbery." And John Wesley this : 
 " What I have said to slave-traders equally concerns 
 all slave-holders of whatever rank and degree ; seeing 
 men-buyers arc exactly on a level with men-stealers J 
 Indeed, you say, 'I pay honestly for my goods ; and I 
 am not concerned to know how they are come by.' 
 Nay, but you are ; you are deeply concerned to know 
 they are honestly come by ; otherwise you are par- 
 taker with a thief, ? id are not a jot honester than he. 
 But you know they are not honestly come by ; yo u 
 
366 ACTS OF A&TI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 know they are procured by means nothing near so inno- 
 cent as picking pockets, house-breaking, or robbery upon 
 the highway. You know they are procured by a delib- 
 erate species of more complicated villainy, of fraud, 
 robbery, mid murder than was ever practiced by Mo- 
 homedans or Pagans. In particular by murderers of 
 all kinds ; by the blood of the innocent poured out 
 like water. Now, it is your money that pays the 
 African butcher. You, therefore, are guilty, princi- 
 pally, of all these frauds, robberies and murders." 
 
 With abundance more of similar character and from 
 the same high and representative sources, so that the 
 abolitionists in their position and demand were only 
 holding the church and pulpit to their own once de- 
 clared and published principles on slavery, as well as 
 always on every other acknowledged sin. 
 
 But every one of the great popular denominations 
 apostalized as slavery grew in numbers of its victims 
 and in the terrible crimes, cruelties, tortures and tor- 
 ments, incident to the system, and became directly 
 implicated, if not indeed the very chief of sinners, 
 themselves. 
 
 What then could true christian abolitionists do, 
 whether ministers or church members, but come out 
 of such fellowship, to avoid the guilt of partaking in 
 the sin ? Nothing in all scripture was more sublimely 
 emphatic than the apocalvptic command, " Come out 
 of her my people, that ye be not partakers in her sins, 
 and that ye receive not of her plagues." And among 
 the sins charged in that blood-guilty communion 
 was, that its "merchandize" was "in staves and souls 
 of men. 7 ' 
 
 Some of those who composed the associations, who 
 were known as " Come-outers," framed a course of 
 proceedure for themselves, and rather excommunica- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 367 
 
 ted the churches than came out from them. To them 
 the church was a principle, an idea, not a corporation 
 or organization, voting members in or out by majori- 
 ties, and in many of the sects forbidding women to 
 vote at all on any question, though generally a major- 
 ity, and frequently a large majority of the member- 
 ship. To such Come-outers the visible church of the 
 New Testament was Christianity made visible in the 
 life and character, whether of one or more, no matter 
 how many, only let purity go before peace and liberty 
 before charity. Conservatives held that " peaceful 
 error was better than boisterous truth." But the other 
 answered " Nay, not so. Peace if possible, but truth 
 and right at whatever cost." 
 
 Our church in Henniker refused any forward step. 
 Several withdrew from it altogether when a Kentucky 
 slave-holder was invited to preach in the pulpit on 
 Sunday, and administer the sacramental supper. Once 
 when visiting in town a meeting was appointed for 
 him all day on Saturday, in hope that two successive 
 days of his preaching might produce a religious awak- 
 ening and possibly a revival. No such result, however, 
 followed. But an anti-slavery society was formed in 
 the town, that did good and effective work, some join- 
 ing from all the churches. 
 
 After absenting myself from the communion service 
 a number of years, engaged constantly in the anti- 
 slavery apostleship, I sent a letter to the church, ex- 
 communicating it from my christian regard and fellow- 
 ship until it should repent of the sins and shames of 
 slave-holding and bring forth fruits meet for repen- 
 tance. No notice was taken of me nor my letter till 
 in the autumn of 1846. Then, with a new pastor, 
 who was also clerk of the church, an official order was 
 sent me, signed and countersigned by the clerk, sum- 
 
368 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 moning me to appear, on a given day, to answer to 
 the charge, not of absence from worship and com- 
 munion table, but of denying the inspiration of the 
 Bible. 
 
 I had labored with the church publicly and privately 
 for years on the guilt and danger of slave-holding, or of 
 recognizing as christians or christian ministers the 
 southern slave-breeders or slave-holders, before send- 
 ing my letter of solemn excommunication. But no 
 similar step, nor any steps, had been taken towards 
 me, by the church or pastor, till the formal call, 
 couched in quite legal phrase, to come into court and 
 plead guilty or not guilty, to a charge foreign as pos- 
 sible from the question, which for years had been in 
 agitation between us. My only answer was the fol- 
 lowing letter, forwarded without unnecessary delay, to 
 the minister, who was also clerk of the church : 
 
 Milford, N. H., Oct. 15, 1846. 
 
 Friend Eden B. Foster — Yours of September 26th 
 was duly received. In reply I would only say that I 
 am not aware of the existence of any Congregational 
 church in Henniker. Certainly none of which I am a 
 member. 
 
 Four or five years ago there was an organization in 
 that town known by that name, myself belonging to it. 
 But that body I excommunicated for its grossly immoral 
 character. 
 
 Since then the individuals comprising it, excepting a 
 very few who have repented, have been to me as 
 "heathen men and publicans," and so far as their 
 conduct and their influence on the community are to 
 be seen, my estimate of them must be pronounced 
 eminently just. 
 
 I am still laboring for their reformation, and shall 
 rejoice to see signs of penitence ; and to forgive with 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 369 
 
 all forbearance and charity so soon as I see hope of 
 genuine repentance and fruits meet for repentance. I 
 know of no other business which concerns me and the 
 persons who once composed, with myself, the Con- 
 gregational church in Henniker, and hasten to sub- 
 scribe Sincerely yours, 
 
 Parker Pillsbury. 
 
 What action was taken on this letter, if any, I never 
 knew. If excommunication was voted, or other steps 
 taken, no copy or report was ever sent me, and so 
 there the matter rested. 
 
 But a controversy with the ministry, still more 
 grave, yet remained. I was licensed to preach in 
 Boston by the Suffolk north association of divines, 
 after a pretty severe doctrinal examination, my certifi- 
 cate being signed by Dr. Curtis, president, and Dr. War- 
 ren Fay, secretary of the association, both then minis- 
 ters in Charlestown. My preaching was mainly in 
 New Hampshire and within the bounds of the Hop- 
 kinton association. Only for remembering them that 
 were in bonds as bound with them, according to the 
 dictates of my own conscience and interpretation of 
 the divine will, I gave great offense to members of 
 the association. But instead of calling on me in any 
 capacity, official or private, they made complaint to 
 the Suffolk association that granted my license. This 
 led to correspondence between that body and myself, 
 of which the following letters are all that concern 
 either history or the present. It will be observed by 
 dates of letters, that all this was some years before 
 my final encounter with the minister and people at 
 Henniker. This whole affair to-day may seem trivial ; 
 but to myself and wife, and other near and dear 
 friends, there was mighty meaning in every step, as 
 one after another had to be taken. 
 
37° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The summons before the Suffolk association was as. 
 below : 
 
 Malden Mass., Feb. 3, 1841. 
 Mr. Parker Pillsbury : 
 
 Dear Brother — At a meeting of the Suffolk north 
 association, held in Charlestown, Feb, 2d, 1841, the 
 following preamble and vote were unanimously 
 adopted : 
 
 Whereas, Certain communications have been re- 
 ceived by this association, and are now on file, from 
 the Hopkinton association, of New Hampshire, and 
 Mr. Parker Pillsbury, a licentiate of this body, relative 
 to charges preferred by the Hopkinton association 
 against Mr. Pillsbury. Therefore 
 
 Voted, That the case be assigned for consideration 
 and final action, to a meeting of this association, to 
 be held in Boston, at the house of Mr. Blagdon, on 
 Tuesday, the twenty-third day of the present month, 
 at nine o'clock, a. m., when the parties may be fully 
 heard ; and that a copy of this vote be communicated 
 by the scribe, both to the Hopkinton association and 
 to Mr. Pillsbury. 
 
 A true copy of record. 
 
 [Attest] A. W. McClure, Scribe. 
 
 To this arraignment, I immediately responded, to 
 the following effect : 
 
 Concord, N. H., Feb. 20, 1841. 
 To the Suffolk North Association of Congregational 
 
 Ministers in Massachusetts : 
 
 Brethren — Your communication of the third in- 
 stant was duly received. By it I learn that you have 
 appointed a time and place for consideration of 
 charges preferred against me by the Hopkinton, N. 
 H., association of ministers, and for "final action " on 
 the same. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 37 1 
 
 On the course of the Suffolk association in this 
 matter, I wish to be indulged in a few remarks. 
 
 In the first place, I was not a little surprised at your 
 disposition to hasten the final action of a case so im- 
 portant to me and the parties concerned. In an ''ex- 
 tra official " note, appended to your communication, 
 your secretary says, "They [the association] thought 
 it their duty to give you the opportunity to substan- 
 tiate your allegations against the ministers of your 
 region, pn the truth of which allegations, you rely for 
 defense against the charges filed against you by the 
 Hopkinton association.,' 
 
 Now, you must have been aware that to go from 
 town to town over any considerable part of the state, 
 summon witnesses and assemble them at Boston, or to 
 take affidavits and transmit them to the place of meet- 
 ing, would be a work of much time and labor. You 
 must also have been aware that in no other way could 
 I attempt a defense. Had I not, then, good reason 
 to be surprised that your communication informing 
 me that " final action " was to be had on my cause on 
 the twenty-third of February, was not mailed in Mai- 
 den, Mass., till the fourth of the same month ? Is 
 such haste as this common in the courts of law ? 
 
 But let me say farther, no charges as yet, have been 
 specified against me. You say in your former com- 
 munication that the complaint of the Hopkinton as- 
 sociation is founded on an article from my pen, pub- 
 lished in the Herald of Freedom, '• printed at Concord, 
 N. H., October 2d, 1840, containing charges against 
 the clergy that are highly slanderous and unchristian." 
 This is the indictment, and the whole of it. 
 
 Now, does the Suffolk association expect me to as- 
 semble witnesses at Boston, to prove every position in 
 
372 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 that letter touching the clergy ? If not, why have 
 they not specified the charges that are " highly slander- 
 ous and unchristian ? " 
 
 But one word in relation to the general manner of 
 procedure. We have heard much of late in this state 
 of " Congregational usage ; " and of " ecclesiastical 
 usage ; " and of "ministerial usage." But what shall 
 I call that " usage " which (aside from considerations 
 already noticed), permits a clerical body, to which I 
 do not, never did, and never shall belong, and to 
 which I am in no way, whatever, responsible, beyond 
 that general relation which all christians bear to one 
 another, to pursue a course towards one whom they do 
 not regard as a brother in the ministry, such as the 
 Hopkinton association have pursued toward me ? Had 
 they no individual duty to discharge to me alone ? 
 Or, had the association, in its organized capacity, 
 none? Could they never, as individuals, nor collec- 
 tively, administer one word of instruction, rebuke, nor 
 correction ? When they saw me wandering out of the 
 way, was there no one venerable from age or experi- 
 ence, to warn my inexperienced feet ? Or, could not 
 the body together give me one word of caution ? 
 Why should they, at the very outset, adopt a proced- 
 ure which they knew must either condemn and banish 
 me unheard, or subject me to such labor and expense 
 for trial as I am utterly unable to meet ? 
 
 But they acted as they saw fit ; nor am I surprised 
 nor grieved : 1 had no right nor reason to expect 
 otherwise of a body of men, who, when a brother came 
 before them with a complaint against one of their own 
 number, to sustain which complaint, some six or eight 
 of the best members of his own church stood ready, 
 could deliberately vote in a moment after the presenta- 
 tion, to return it to its author, unread and unopened !. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 373 
 
 I have the best of evidence to show that the clergy, as 
 a body, are determined to sustain each other in the 
 crusade against the advocates of the rights of our 
 enslaved fellow men. No unimportant part of that 
 evidence is the fact that the Suffolk North Associa- 
 tion have signified their intention to take "final action" 
 on the complaint of the Hopkinton Association against 
 me, irrespective of the manner or character of that 
 complaint in three weeks after the determination was 
 formed, and information of it transmitted to the par- 
 ties concerned. I need not repeat here what has 
 already been intimated, that you and the Hopkinton 
 Association also must be aware of the utter impossi- 
 bility for me to avail myself of the testimony requisite 
 to a fair and full representation of the case, in so short 
 a time. 
 
 But I ask for nO continuance ; I am not anxious to 
 prove to you that the great body of the clergy of this 
 state are, and have been, deadly hostile to anything 
 like efficient action for the overthrow of slavery. I 
 deem it more important to establish that fact among 
 those who support them ; I mean their pastoral 
 charges. And I am glad to know that the happiest 
 success attends my labors, and those of my faithful 
 coadjutors in the work. 
 
 You will not therefore be surprised to learn that I 
 do not feel called upon to appear before you on the 
 day you have specified for a hearing of my case. I 
 might well say,in the words of Nehemiah to his adver- 
 saries, " I am doing a great work, so that I cannot 
 come down. Why should the work cease while I 
 leave it and come down to you ? " I should gain little, 
 even could I do all that could be wished. The same 
 
374 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 work would still have to be done among the people 
 which is required now, and by the same instrumental- 
 ity, and through the same opposition. 
 
 I need not tell you that I have been compelled to 
 excommunicate from my fellowship, most of the min- 
 isters of our land for the sin of conniving at American 
 slavery ; I do not regard them as christians, nor 
 christian ministers. I regret to be compelled to add 
 that even the Suffolk North Association of Ministers, 
 are no exception ; nor can I recognize them as vested 
 with any authority to decide who shall, or shall not 
 be licensed to preach the gospel. You have shown 
 yourselves in various ways, to be the friends of the 
 southern oppressor, rather than of the opprest. Not 
 many of you have even established the monthly con- 
 cert of prayer for the enslaved, to intercede with God 
 on their behalf. You have done well for the heathen 
 abroad, perhaps, but have neglected three millions of 
 heathen at the doors of your own sanctuaries. Most 
 of you oppose directly, the agitation of the subject of 
 slavery, in any manner, among your people. You are 
 in full fellowship and communion with the slave-hold- 
 ing ministers at the south, and their more guilty 
 apologists at the north. For ten years we have been 
 laboring to awaken an interest in the churches in 
 behalf of the bleeding slave. Labor enough has been 
 done in New England to have made every church, as 
 a church, the inflexible foe of oppression, as it exists 
 at the south, had it noti>een for the mighty opposition 
 that has been constantly thrown in the way by the 
 pulpit. It has come to be a mere truism that the 
 firmest pillars of the bloody Moloch are the professed 
 ministers of Jesus Christ ; and in no part of these 
 states have those ministers shown themselves more 
 subservient to the will of slave-breeding and slave- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 375 
 
 holding ministers and others, than in Boston and 
 vicinity. With your blood-stained feet on the necks 
 of three millions of your prostrate brethren, you are 
 deliberately talking of "censure" and " resumption" of 
 my "license" because I have espoused faithfully their 
 cause ! 
 
 Recreant should I be to the interests of my Redeem- 
 er's kingdom, to recognize such men as ministers of 
 Christ. I know full well how the warning will be 
 received ; but still I warn you to repent. God has a 
 controversy with you on this awful sin of enslaving 
 millions of immortal beings as yourselves, compelling 
 them into absolute heathenism, concubinage, adultery; 
 robbing them of everything, wives, children, all the 
 endearing relations of life, manhood, womanhood, 
 with all else' only to gratify the cupidity of an 
 unrighteous and cruel master-hood. Your Christianity 
 has less of humanity in it than has the religion of the 
 Seminole savage! he befriends the slave and wel- 
 comes him to his wigwam : you, or most of you, and 
 multitudes under your pastoral charge, are deaf as 
 adders to his woes. Search the heathen world, ancient 
 and modern ; you shall look in vain for a system of 
 greater abominations, more horrible cruelties than 
 American slavery ; and yet you baptise and sanctify it, 
 and admit it to full sacramental communion and 
 fellowship. 
 
 The ancient Romans with hearts of steel, had their 
 god of war ; the ferocious Vandal had his god of 
 vengeance ; but none of their high places ever shewed 
 an altar to the fell demon of slavery. Never did the 
 Nine Sisters hold fond dalliance with a fiend so foul ; 
 never was Apollo's golden lyre tuned to his praise ; 
 never did the wild harp of northern minstrelsy in all 
 its long buried melodies, indite one hymn to the blood- 
 
376 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 swollen vampire. Never was altar reared to such 
 divinity till the christian slave chain was forged, and 
 the christian coffle formed ; till torturing evangelical 
 thumb-screws were invented, and human flesh had 
 hissed and broiled beneath the red-hot branding iron, 
 and the one eternal God, in the person of his chil- 
 dren, his own image and likeness,, was bought and 
 sold in the shambles with the beasts that perish ! 
 
 And now you, grave and venerable ministers, 
 demand of me to fall down and reverence and wor- 
 ship your blood-besmeared idol, on pain of "censure," 
 or resumption of the license with which you invested 
 me as a preacher of the gospel ; and as logical con- 
 sequence, expulsion from the church on earth, and the 
 society of the redeemed in heaven ! Brethren, you 
 know you can not deny what I say. 
 
 For three hundred years, your Christianity has been 
 tearing at the vitals of Africa, like vultures, snatching 
 away from her bosom her poor sons and daughters in 
 myriads, to supply the christian slave-markets of this 
 and other nations. Her wailings have been borne on 
 the trade-winds, on all the winds, to the ends of the 
 earth. And yet to this hour, doctors of divinity dare 
 doubt, dare openly deny that slavery is sin ! and even 
 such as feign to believe it sin, make themselves, by a 
 strange silence or open connivance, more guilty, if 
 possible, or certainly more dangerous, than those who 
 deny or doubt. 
 
 I repeat my denial that what is taught and pro- 
 fessed by the great body of clergy in this nation as 
 Christianity is not Christianity at all. I confine myself 
 inth is letter wholly to slavery. To American chattel 
 slavery. There are other accounts to be considered 
 when slavery is overthrown. Let your intimated 
 
 censure " and resumption of ''license" be carried 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 377 
 
 into full execution. I shall still preach the gospel of 
 Christ, and by his grace wash my hands from all par- 
 ticipation in your gu.lt on the awful crimes and cruel- 
 ties of slavery, and in the last day be a swift witness 
 against you, unless you repent. 
 
 Brethren, regard this letter as my solemn eoccommuni. 
 cation of you, and my work with you is done 
 
 I go now to the lost sheep on the mountains to un- 
 o d to them t he treasures of the gospel. And I shall 
 ell them, as I have done before, except your righ- 
 teousness exceed the righteousness of most of the pro- 
 fessed ministers of Christ around you, you can in no 
 case enter mto the kingdom of heaven. And when' 
 they, and you, and I, stand at the tribunal of God 
 with assembled worlds, the down-trodden and sorrow- 
 stricken slave in the vast congregation, it shall be 
 known who has served God and who has not 4 nd 
 justice shall be meted out to us all. 
 
 Yours, waiting that great event, 
 . Parker Pillsbury. 
 
 At a subsequent meeting of the Suffolk North As- 
 sociation my "license" was resumed, as had been 
 before intimated and threatened. But my higher 
 more divine commission became to me from that time 
 more and more sacred and important. Under it I 
 have spoken the words of truth, righteousness and 
 freedom for more than forty years, to multitudes of 
 men women and children in both the hemispheres, and 
 as 1 humbly hope and trust, not all in vain. 
 
 The first open, direct arraignment of the American ' 
 church and clergy as the guilty accomplices, north and 
 south, in all the crimes and cruelties, the sins and 
 shames of slavery, was a little pamphlet, entitled, 
 I he American Churches the Bulwarks of American 
 Slavery. It was written by an American, though first 
 
37 8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES 
 
 published in England in 1840. The last of similar 
 mport and purpose, was a larger work, published in 
 1847, entitled, "The Church as it is; 1 he Forlorn 
 
 Hope of Slavery." 
 
 The peculiarity of both these publications was, that 
 the persons and parties whose character and conduct 
 were to be considered, furnished all the testimony 
 themselves, and the evidence was all direct, with no 
 cross question nor quibble of any description, from 
 the other side, so whatever conclusion might be 
 reached, it would be wholly through their own words 
 and works, as by themselves published to the world. 
 
 Since slavery was abolished, the clergy, as was al- 
 ways predicted they would, have claimed it as the 
 result of their prayers, preaching and votes. But it 
 was never expected that they or their children would 
 boldly declare through pulpit and press, as well as by 
 lips and lungs, that the abolitionists, even Garrison, 
 did more harm than good; that "the final extinction 
 of slavery was accomplished in pursuance of princi- 
 ples which Garrison abhorred, and by measures which 
 he denounced;" that "he had but a heterogeneous 
 following, charged with all the fanaticism of the 
 times- and confined mostly to eastern Massachusetts 
 and northern New England ; " a "motley party ; was 
 only captain of a corporal's guard ;" << his main prin- 
 ciples were, down with the constitution, dissolve the 
 union, denounce the churches and ministers, renounce 
 the orthodox belief in the Bible ; a man of headlong 
 force, erratic, short-sighted and narrow thought not 
 of cleansing, but of crushing the temple of liberty, 
 which would have made slavery perpetual and extin- 
 guished forever all hope of an American nation . 
 
 A semi-centennial discourse, delivered in Cincinnati, 
 Ohio, in April, 1881, contains most of these quota- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 379 
 
 tions ; and Rev. A. T. Rankin, in some published 
 essays, the present year, supplies part of the remain- 
 der. But it remained for Leonard Woolsey Bacon, 
 son of the late Dr. Leonard Bacon, of Connecticut, 
 to print such a life-size portrait of Garrison as will be 
 here subjoined. It is in a biographical sketch of his 
 father, in a popular magazine. Dr. Bacon's anti-sla- 
 very was worthy such a son, and to be by him cele- 
 brated in the manner it is in the notice furnished the 
 Century. It received many well-deserved scathings 
 when it appeared, and as anti-slavery had nothing to 
 fear from the father, so neither has the memory or 
 good name of Garrison anything to dread from the 
 contemptuous caricatures of the son. Both may be 
 safely trusted to history and to posterity. But here is 
 the Woolsey Bacon portrait : 
 
 In almost any assembly of crotchety people — long- 
 haired men and short-haired women — over a scheme 
 for the reconstruction of the solar system, you will 
 hear the appeal to " Remember Garrison, how he be- 
 gan with nothing and a printing-press against the 
 whole nation and the whole church, and how at last 
 he succeeded in bringing everybody over to his side." 
 It is really a matter of interest to public morals that 
 the ingenuous youth of America should know the truth 
 of this matter — that Mr. Garrison and his society 
 never succeeded in anything ; that his one distinctive 
 dogma, that slave-holding is always and everywhere a 
 sin, was never accepted to any considerable extent 
 outside of the little ring of his personal adherents ; 
 that his vocabulary, which had no word but man- 
 
 stealer and pirate for the legal guardian of a decrepit 
 
 24 
 
380 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 negro, or for one hofcling a family of slaves in transit 
 for a free state, with intent to emancipate them, never 
 became part of the American dictionary ; that the 
 sophistry with which he spent a lifetime in trying to 
 confuse plain distinctions had little effect except to 
 give acrimony and plausibility to the defense of sla- 
 very ; and that the final extinction of slavery was ac- 
 complished in pursuance of principles which he ab- 
 horred, by measures which he denounced, and under 
 the leadership of men like Leonard Bacon, in litera- 
 ture and the church, and Abraham Lincoln in politics, 
 who had been the objects of his incessant and calum- 
 nious vituperation. 
 
 And yet this bold calumniator has the grace to ad- 
 mit that " the brunt of my [his] father's arguments 
 in the earlier stages of the slavery controversy, was 
 directed more against the so-called abolitionists than 
 against the advocates of slavery." Till the firing on 
 Fort Sumter the abolitionists never knew that " the 
 brunt of Dr. Bacon's arguments was ever changed in 
 its direction," to any important purpose, to either side. 
 Leonard Woolsey Bacon graciously thinks, however, 
 that Garrison, now that slavery is abolished, may " be 
 forgiven the great harm he did for the sake of the 
 little good." 
 
 But all this aside from the main question in hand. The 
 clergy to-day would have the world believe they were 
 always opposed to slavery, and sought its overthrow. 
 They were opposed to slavery just as was the govern- 
 ment. No more ; no less. And if the church and 
 government were against slavery, why did they not 
 put it out of existence ? How could it have stood 
 against them ? If they were opposed to slavery why 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 381 
 
 were Louisiana and Florida bought for its extension ? 
 Why was Mexico robbed of Texas after a four years' 
 bloody and cruel, and fearfully unjust war on our part, 
 only to reinstate slavery where Roman Catholicism 
 a few years before had abolished it, as it hoped, for- 
 ever ? 
 
 Whatever of slave-breeding, or slave-holding, or 
 slave-trading abroad, or slave-hunting at home the 
 government authorized and supported, the church 
 sanctioned and sanctified. So also of slavery exten- 
 sion. The clergy actually clamored for chaplaincies 
 in the atrocious Mexican war, knowing well its origin 
 and objects. The religious press, north and south, 
 shouted for the war, irrespective of denominational 
 differences. The Presbyterian Herald asked its read- 
 ers," Do you pray for the Mexicans?" and answered : 
 
 There are good reasons why you should. They 
 have souls like other men. Is not this overlooked ? 
 They are not wild beasts, though like them. Why 
 pray for a Hindoo or a Hottentot ? Because he 
 has a soul of infinite value, but exposed to eternal 
 death. So has every Mexican. Because they are all 
 Papists. And will you pray for the conversion of 
 Romanism around you, and not for the conversion of 
 that one thousand miles off ? 
 
 The pope decreed the abolition of slavery in Mex- 
 ico in 1829, " for the glory of God and to distinguish 
 mankind from the brute creation." Good reason why 
 slave-holding Presbyterians should "pray for the con- 
 version of Mexicans as well as for Hindoos and Hot- 
 tentots." But the Presbyterian Herald had another 
 reason for praying for the Mexicans, verily this : 
 
 They are our enemies. This is one of the strongest 
 reasons. Does not the Savior so teach ? Matthew 
 v ; 44. This does not refer to private enemies only 
 —it extends to public foes also. It may be your duty 
 to fight them, to preserve the life and the liberty of 
 
382 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 our countrymen — strictly in the defensive. But does 
 that duty to our country exempt us from the other 
 duty to them ? Fighting and praying can go together. 
 Jesus was a lion, yet a lamb — so his disciples. 
 
 The Protestant Telegraph viewed the war and its 
 results, thus hopefully : 
 
 I have no fellowship with war, and deeply regret 
 our present relations with our sister republic, Mexico ; 
 yet I cannot but hope for some good from the conflict, 
 and that good is, the entrance of the Protestant religion 
 into the Mexican states. The Roman Catholic religion 
 is now the religion of that nation ; none other is tol- 
 erated ; but it is utterly impossible that republican 
 institutions can exist and flourish in connection with 
 Romanism. The immense wealth of the churches in 
 Mexico, now hoarded up in idolatrous images of silver 
 and gold, (a petticoat of the Virgin Mary, estimated 
 at half a million,) may be distributed among the 
 people as a consequence of this conflict, or be laid out 
 in the establishment of schools, in internal improve- 
 ments, in efforts of various kinds, to exalt the people. 
 ■"Great is the Diana of the Ephesians," is now the cry, 
 but it may soon give place to "Great is the Lord our 
 God." 
 
 But what shall be said of this from so eminent a 
 Divine, as Rev. Joel Parker, D. D., in a sermon 
 preached, and then published in the Christian 
 Observer ? 
 
 I was not an advocate for the present administration. 
 I cast my vote for the opposing candidates, and my 
 judgment is, that if they had been elected, the Mexi- 
 can war would have been avoided, and the honor of 
 the country as well preserved as at present. But our 
 present chief magistrate was duly elected. He is not 
 the president of the democratic party ; he is the presi- 
 dent of the nation ; he is my president and your 
 president, and we are bound to treat him with the 
 same deferential respect as if he had been the very 
 man of our choice. Moreover, are we absolutely cer- 
 tain that he is not really laying a foundation for a 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 383 
 
 claim on our gratitude in this very matter of the 
 Mexican war ? For one, I am free to confess that 1 
 am not so well informed in respect to our relations 
 with Mexico, as to be sure that our executive eould 
 have wisely avoided this collision. Perhaps I am as 
 well acquainted with the subject as the majority of my 
 hearers, yet I have no doubt that a bare three month's 
 devoted to an investigation of our past and present 
 relations with Mexico, would secure to me tenfold the 
 amount of intelligence which I at present possess in 
 relation to the subject; and if it were left for me to 
 decide, whether that course of policy should be pur- 
 sued which has involved us in war, I should not, with 
 my present limited knowledge, dare to assume the 
 responsibility of deciding against it ! 
 
 Or this in the New England Puritan, from its 
 editor, Rev. Parsons Cooke, D. D. 
 
 The fact that this nation is earnestly engaged in 
 war with a neighboring nation, seems to be little real- 
 ized by the mass of the people, and especially by 
 christian people, who ought to take a deep interest in 
 the subject. But what shall christians do in the case? 
 The war will not be brought to a close the sooner by 
 bringing christian influence into antagonism with any 
 legal measures for prosecuting the war. We are in 
 the war by the acts of our government, and shall get out 
 of it, if we ever do, by the acts of the government and 
 none the sooner for any attempts to embarrass that 
 action. Our rulers have taken the responsibility of this 
 plunge, and we, in the exercise of a religious influence, 
 are not called upon either to justify or resist their action. 
 As citizens exercising the political franchise, at the 
 proper time, we with the rest, must make our opinions 
 felt, touching such important measures. But now the 
 simple question is, what can we do as christians, to 
 secure the favor of Providence and avert the storm ? 
 
 The Rev. Evan Stevenson, editor of a monthly 
 magazine in Georgetown, Kentucky, hungered after 
 the righteousness of such a war as keenly as this 
 discloses : 
 
384 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 While the war continues, we cannot and will not dis- 
 cuss the question of slavery, as we honestly feel more 
 like discussing roast beef and yams, or, if our service 
 is required, national rights, with our sword on the Rio 
 Grande. We entreat our correspondents that they 
 forward to us for publication no religious controversies 
 pending this conflict with Mexico. Let us drop our 
 denominational prejudices, "Fight the good fight of 
 faith, and lay hold upon eternal life." 
 
 Only two more of these excerpts, and one of them 
 very brief. The Christian Observer, a new-school 
 Presbyterian organ, of first-class, spoke in this tone, 
 and at such length, by a correspondent : 
 
 Mexico is open ! — Mexico is open to christian, as 
 well as commercial enterprise. Our countrymen 
 are protected in the prosecution of their lawful busi- 
 ness, and so would our citizens be in the sale or gra- 
 tuitous circulation of Spanish Bibles, tracts and bound 
 volumes. These books are on the shelves of our de- 
 positories. Why should they remain there, when now 
 they may be placed in the hands of the population at 
 Matamoras, Monterey, Tampico, Vera Cruz, Jalapa, 
 Perote, Puebla, etc., etc.? Will those whose obliga- 
 tions bind them to this circulation, answer this ques- 
 tion ? The sword has opened the way. Our officers 
 and soldiers themselves need all the kindly influences 
 we can exert on them. They will gratefully receive 
 these publications, and bless their benefactors. Shall 
 we withhold them from the men who fight the battles 
 of the country I Many of the officers and soldiers, par- 
 ticularly among the volunteers, are church members, and 
 will reioice in such an enterprise. Colporteurs can be 
 found on the ground. Discharged volunteers will re- 
 main, and instead of shooting balls, will love to do 
 good, and communicate to the millions perishing 
 around them, the word of life. What is my duty as 
 an American christian ? Let the hundreds of thou- 
 sands of christian freemen in our land answer that 
 question. If Captain Bragg gave " a little more 
 grape," and turned the victory, why may not the sons of 
 peace and righteousness follow up that victory, with all 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 385 
 
 those missiles and weapons which are mighty through 
 God to the pulling down of strongholds ? It must 
 be done. // is the great movement of the present cen- 
 tury. Who will lead the advance ? j. c. s. 
 
 And this one more, from the Nashville, Tennessee, 
 Union : 
 
 "At a Missionary meeting, held in the Methodist 
 church, on Monday night, funds were raised for mak- 
 ing General Taylor, Colonel Campbell, Colonel An- 
 derson, Captain Cheatham, and Captain Foster, life- 
 members of the Conference Missionary society. These 
 compliments will be duly appreciated by the brave 
 officers, who are winning laurels on the field of battle." 
 
 So did the government and the governing part and 
 power of the church, cooperate in fighting and robbing 
 to extend, as well as support slavery. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ACTS OF PRO-SLAVERY APOSTLES-GENERAL ASSEMBLY 
 OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH— AMERICAN BOARD 
 OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS — THE 
 BAPTIST CHURCH— METHODIST-EPISCOPAL CHURCH — 
 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH — CAMPBELLITES — 
 AMERICAN BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETIES— FUGITIVE 
 SLAVE LAW. 
 
 A long chapter this may be, though it is last but 
 one, and that one, readers may be glad to know, will 
 not be long. The charges against the church and 
 clergy may be sweeping and severe. All that is now 
 proposed is to submit their own recorded, printed, 
 published testimony in support of them. In scripture 
 phrase, "By their own words shall they be justified, 
 or condemned." 
 
 For convenience, the great representative ecclesias- 
 tical bodies will be considered separately, beginning 
 with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church. 
 Notwithstanding its powerful testimony against sla- 
 very, so late as 1818, as has been shown, it grew to be 
 one of the boldest blasphemers against the holy spirit 
 of freedom the world has produced. And the New- 
 school assembly, after the memorable separation into 
 old and new schools, became quite as unscrupulous as 
 the other. Though slavery had little or nothing to do 
 in dividing the body, the new school was much the 
 strongest in the northern states. 
 
 In the new-school general assembly, in 1840, a mo- 
 tion was made, by a member, on the subject of sla- 
 very, when Rev. Dr. Cox, of Brooklyn, immediately 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 387 
 
 moved its indefinite postponement. On the motion 
 being carried, he exultingly exclaimed : "Our Vesu- 
 vius is capped safely for three years," that being the 
 time for the next meeting. And Judge Birney assures 
 us that Dr. Cox was at the first an abolitionist. 
 
 The clergy of the old-school were even more de- 
 monstrative in opposition to anything like hostility to 
 the "peculiar institution." When the Richmond min- 
 isters held a meeting, expressly to wash their hands 
 clean before all the world, of any anti-slavery stain, 
 Dr. William L. Plummer was absent ; but on his re- 
 turn, he made haste to assure his acceptance and ap- 
 proval of the action taken, by a letter to the committee 
 of correspondence, from which these are extracts : 
 
 " I have carefully watched this matter from its ear- 
 liest existence, and everything I have seen or heard of 
 its character, both from its patrons and its enemies, 
 has confirmed me beyond repentance, in the belief, 
 that, let the character of abolitionists be what it 
 may in the sight of the judge of all the earth, this is 
 the most meddlesome, impudent, reckless, fierce, and 
 wicked excitement I ever saw. 
 
 " If abolitionists will set the country in a blaze, it 
 is but fair that they should receive the first warming 
 at the fire. 
 
 "Abolitionists are like infidels, wholly unaddicted 
 to martyrdom for opinion's sake. Let them under- 
 stand that they will be caught [lynched] if they come 
 among us, and they will take good heed to keep out 
 of our way. There is not one man among them who 
 has any more idea of shedding his blood in this eause 
 than he has of making war on the grand Turk." 
 
 To these instances of clerical devotion to the wor- 
 ship of the bloody idol, Judge Birney adds this ; a 
 letter from a reverend divine, announcing his inten- 
 
388 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES 
 
 tion to appear at the next session of the Presbytery, 
 with important business, for which he would have 
 everybody previously prepare. He opens thus ; 
 To the Sessions of the Presbyterian Congregations 
 within the bounds of the West Hanover Presbytery : 
 At the appointed stated meeting of our Presbytery, 
 I design to offer a preamble and resolutions on the 
 subject of treasonable and abominably wicked in- 
 terference of the northern and eastern fanatics, with 
 our political and civil rights, our property and our do- 
 mestic concerns. You are aware that our clergy, 
 whether with or without reason, are more suspected by 
 the public than the clergy of other denominations. 
 Now, dear christian brethren, I humbly express it as 
 my earnest wish, that you quit yourselves like men. If 
 there be any stray goat of a minister among you, 
 tainted with the blood-hound principles of abolition- 
 ism, let him be ferreted out, silenced, excommunicated, 
 and left to the public to dispose of him in in other respects. 
 Your affectionate brother in the Lord, 
 
 Robert N. Anderson. 
 
 Mr. Birney farther gives us this individual expres- 
 sion of Rev. Dr. Spring, of New York. He says : 
 "At the anniversary of the American colonization so- 
 ciety, held in Washington, in 1839, Dr. Spring was on 
 the platform, as one of the speakers. At his side was 
 Mr. Henry A. Wise, a Virginia member of congress, a 
 slave-holder and professional duelist. In his speech, 
 he had declared : 'The best way to meet the aboli- 
 tionists is with cold steel and Dupont's best ! ' ' [best 
 gun-powder.] And Mr. Birney adds : " We were 
 told that Dr. Spring spoke in sympathy with the south- 
 ern sentiment, as evinced in the speech of Mr. Wise." 
 Subsequently, Mr. Birney says : " The doctor preached 
 and published a series of sermons on slavery in its 
 scriptural relations, which were regarded by the pro- 
 slavery party as highly serviceable to their cause." 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 389 
 
 If it shall be objected that these are only individual 
 utterances, it may be said for that very reason they 
 are given. But they are also the expression of the 
 most eminent />/v-eminent men in the denomination. 
 Men of whom one is supposed to chase a thousand, 
 and two to put ten thousand abolitionists to flight, 
 even though ''with cold steel and Dupont's best." 
 
 What follows shall be the expression of the very 
 best of the general assembly, the new-school, and so 
 late as the year 1846, when the American anti-slavery 
 society had reached its sixteenth year, and when mul- 
 titudes of church members had left the communion, 
 when new and free churches had been organized and 
 ministers settled over them, in the good name of anti- 
 slavery. 
 
 At the session of 1846, the voice of protest against 
 slavery was so much louder and stronger than ever 
 before, that a report had to be made as nearly as pos- 
 sible in tune and tone with the protests. It was pre- 
 sented by Rev. Dr. Durheld, and read as follows : 
 
 The system ot slavery, as it exists in these United 
 States, viewed either in the laws of the several states 
 which sanction it, or in its actual operation and re- 
 sult in society, is intrinsically unrighteous and oppres- 
 sive, and is opposed to the prescriptions of the law of 
 God, to the spirit and precepts of the gospel, and to 
 the best interests of humanity. 
 
 The testimony of the general assembly, from the 
 A. D. 1787, to A. D. 1818, inclusive, has condemned 
 it, and it remains still the recorded testimony of the 
 Presbyterian church of these United States against it, 
 from which we do not recede. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, withhold the expression of 
 deep regret that slavery should be continued and coun- 
 tenanced by any of the members of our churches ; 
 and we do earnestly exhort both them and the 
 churches, among whom its exists, to use all means in 
 their power to put it away from them. Its perpetua- 
 
39° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 tion among them cannot fail to be regarded by multi- 
 tudes influenced by their example, as sanctioning the 
 system portrayed in it, and maintained by the statutes 
 of the several slaveholding states, wherein they dwell. 
 
 But while we believe that many evils incident to the 
 system, render it important and obligatory to bear tes- 
 timony against it, yet would we not undertake to de- 
 termine the degree of moral turpitude on the part of 
 individuals involved by it. This will doubtless be 
 found to vary in the sight of God, according to the 
 degree of light and other circumstances pertaining to 
 each. In view of all the embarrassments and obsta- 
 cles in the way of emancipation interposed by the 
 statutes of the slaveholding states, and by the social 
 influence affecting the views and conduct of those in- 
 volved in it, we cannot pronounce a judgment of general 
 and promiscuous condemnation, implying that desti- 
 tution of christian principle and feeling which should 
 exclude from the table of the Lord all who should 
 stand in the legal relation of masters to slaves, or jus- 
 tify us in withholding our ecclesiastical and christian 
 fellowship from them. We rather sympathize with, 
 and would seek to succor them in their embarrass- 
 ments, believing that separation and Recession among 
 the churches and their members, are not the methods 
 God approves and sanctions for the reformation of 
 his church. 
 
 While, therefore, we fee! bound to bear our testi- 
 mony against slavery, and to exhort our beloved 
 brethren to remove it from them as speedily as possi- 
 ble, by all appropriate and available means, we do at 
 the same time condemn all divisive and schismatical 
 measures, tending to destroy the unity and disturb the 
 peace of our church, and deprecate the spirit of de- 
 nunciation and inflicting severities, which would cast 
 from the fold those whom we are rather bound, by the 
 spirit of the gospel, and the obligations of our coven- 
 ant, to instruct, to counsel, to exhort, and thus to lead 
 in the ways of God ; and towards whom, even though 
 they may err, to exercise forbearance and brotherly 
 
 ve. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 391 
 
 As a court of our Lord Jesus Christ, we possess no 
 legislative authority ; and as the General Assembly of 
 the Presbyterian church, we possess no judiciary au- 
 thority. We have no right to institute and prescribe 
 a test of christian character and church membership, 
 not recognized and sanctioned in the sacred scrip- 
 tures, and in our standards, by which we have agreed 
 to walk. We must leave, therefore, this matter with 
 the sessions, presbyteries and synods — the judicator- 
 ies to whom pertains the right of judgment to act in 
 the administration of discipline, as they may judge it 
 to be their duty, constitutionally, subject to the gen- 
 eral assembly, only in the way of general review and 
 control. 
 
 This was the exact position of the General Assem- 
 bly New School in 1846. Briefly analyzed, it contains 
 a fearful condemnation of slave-holding ; then a 
 re-statement of the old positions of the body, back in 
 the former century and onward to 18 18, and a hypo- 
 critical profession of adherence to them still ; * * 
 hypocritical, because regret is expressed in another 
 place that, "slavery is still countenanced and contin- 
 ued by members of our churches;" which, if true, 
 and slavery be such sin and shame, crime and cruelty, 
 why were not the offenders dealt with long ago as 
 other sinners, and so the church cleansed from such a 
 curse? But the next propositition is a most unblush- 
 ing attempt, weak too, as well as wicked, to excuse 
 and extenuate the guilt of slave-holding, notwith- 
 standing the previous stunning condemnation of it ; 
 while the last declaration is that " as a court of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, we possess no legislative authority, 
 and as the general assembly of the Presbyterian 
 church, we possess no judicial authority ! " And so 
 the abomination went on from generation to genera- 
 tion ; growing with the nation's growth, increasing 
 with the increase of the church ! 1 
 
392 ACTS OF ANTI-SI. AVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Parodied in but a single word, this is the way these 
 grave propositions would, a part of them, read : 
 
 First, the system of legalized adultery, as it exists 
 in these United States is intrinsically unrighteous, 
 and opposed to the law of God and the spirit and 
 precepts of the gospel. 
 
 We cannot, therefore, withhold the expression of 
 deep regret, that adultery should be countenanced and 
 continued by any of the members of our churches. 
 And we do earnestly exhort both them and the 
 churches among whom it exists, to use all means in 
 their power to put it away. 
 
 But while we believe that many evils incident to 
 adultery, render it important and obligatory to bear 
 testimony against it, yet we would not undertake to 
 determine the degree of moral turpitude, on the part 
 of individual adulterers. This will doubtless be found 
 to vary in the sight of God, according to the degree 
 of light and other circumstances pertaining to each 
 individual. 
 
 While, therefore, we feel bound to bear our testi- 
 mony against adultery, and to exhort our beloved 
 erring brethren to remove it from them, as speedily as 
 possible, by all available and appropriate means, we 
 do at the same time condemn all divisive and sehis- 
 matical measures, te'nding to destroy the unity and 
 disturb the peace of our church, and deprecate the 
 spirit of denunciation, and inflicting severities which 
 would cast from the fold those adulterers whom we 
 are rather bound by the spirit of the gospel, and the 
 obligations of our covenant, to instruct, to counsel, to 
 exhort, and thus to lead in the way of God ; and 
 towards whom, even though they may err, to exercise 
 forbearance and brotherly love. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 393 
 
 Does not this change of a word throw light and 
 lightning on the problem ? Or suppose the words 
 sheep -stealing and sheep-stealers had been substituted, 
 taking the hint from him who exclaimed once, " How 
 much better is a man than a sheep ! " 
 
 And yet was not slavery both adultery and theft in 
 all their most odious forms? That very church had 
 quoted the eminent scholar, as well as priest and di- 
 vine, Grotius, as declaring man-stealing to be the 
 very highest kind of theft. But it was away back in 
 1794. The one unalterable truth was, the leading 
 clergy never held slavery to be sin, in any such sense 
 as even mere heretical offenses. Here is the general 
 assembly, meekly and humbly confessing that it "pos- 
 sesses no judicial, no legislative authority to reach 
 such "sum of all villainies" as slave-breeding and 
 slave-holding, and drive it out of church communion 
 and fellowship ! Does anybody believe that if it were 
 a question of robbing hen-roosts, instead of cradles 
 and trundle-beds, a way would not have been made, 
 had none existed, out of dilemma so dreadful, in all 
 the years between 1794 and 1846? Church mem- 
 bers and ministers have been expelled from the 
 churches for denying or doubting the right or validity 
 of infant baptism, where infant-stealers, where baby- 
 breeders for the slave shambles, were welcomed to 
 both pulpit and sacramental supper ! Is it, then, too 
 much to say, that denominational differences in the 
 American churches have been deemed greater offenses 
 and to be more severely and summarily punished 
 than all the atrocities connected with the holding of 
 slaves ? 
 
 a. b. c. F. M. 
 
 The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
 Missions was organized in the year 1810. It was com- 
 
394 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 posed of ministers and members of the Congregational 
 and Presbyterian churches mainly, and its sole object 
 was to operate among heathen nations and tribes, 
 with a view to their enlightenment, elevation and cul- 
 tivation. Its membership was gathered from north 
 and south, its missionaries, in one instance, Rev. John 
 Leighton Wilson, a slave-holder, (and according to 
 his statement there were others) as well as young min- 
 isters and their wives from non-slave-holding states ; 
 and its treasury was supplied from the northern and 
 southern states, the gifts of those whose wealth as well 
 as traffic, was in "slaves and souls of men," And 
 Judge Birney's tract contains an authentic account of 
 one legacy left to the Board, bequeathed for the ben- 
 efit of the Indian mission, which for some reason was 
 in litigation in the Georgia courts. And an advertise- 
 ment copied from the Charleston, South Carolina, 
 Courier of February 12, 1835, was to this purport : 
 
 " FIELD NEGROES. 
 
 By Thomas Gadsden. On Tuesday, the 17th inst., 
 will be sold at the north of the Exchange, at ten 
 o'clock, a. m., a prime gang of 
 
 TEN NEGROES, 
 
 accustomed to the culture of cotton and provisions, 
 belonging to the Independent church, in Christ's 
 church parish. 
 
 February 6, 1835." 
 
 What was here but " trade in slaves and souls of 
 men ?" 
 
 In the United States the operations of the board 
 extended only to the Indian tribes, and to but few of 
 them, chiefly the Cherokees and Choctaws. The 
 American board, like the general assembly, and at 
 about the same time, became greatly disturbed by the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOST1 I 395 
 
 agitation of the question of slavery. And like the 
 general assembly, they referred the whole matter to 
 committees for examination and report. In 1845, 
 petitions and memorials against slavery were so many 
 that the board seemed compelled to something more 
 declarative than in preceding years in regard to them. 
 Accordingly an august committee of nine was elected, 
 all eminent men, Rev. Dr. Woods, of Andover Theo- 
 logical Seminary, chairman. Their report, of nine 
 closely-printed octavo pages, is before me, but no 
 change of former action is even recommended, either 
 by the board itself or by its missionaries. The bur- 
 den of complaint was that missionaries admitted slave- 
 holders to the mission churches sustained by the 
 moneys of the board, contributed by the churches. 
 The charge was admitted, but justified thus : 
 
 The primary object aimed at in missions should be 
 to bring men to a saving knowledge of Christ, by mak- 
 ing known to them the way of salvation through His 
 cross. * * The missionaries acting under the 
 commission of Christ and with the instruction of the 
 New Testament before them, are themselves at first, 
 and subsequentlv with the churches they have gath- 
 ered, the rightful and exclusive judges of what consti- 
 tutes adequate evidence of purity and fitness for 
 church fellowship in professed converts. 
 The indulgence of any known sin, and the neglect of 
 any known duty, are to be decidedly discountenanced. 
 
 * * In respect to social and moral evils, with 
 which missionaries are to come in contact in proscu- 
 ting their work, it should be borne in mind that they 
 are by no means few or of limited territorial extent. 
 The evils of slavery will probably be met in some form 
 in nearly every part of the great missionary field. 
 
 * * Should it be found, as the result of experi- 
 ence, that souls among the heathen are in fact regen- 
 erated by the Holy Spirit before they are freed from 
 all participation in the social and moral evils, and that 
 
396 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 convincing evidence can be given that they are regen- 
 erated, then may not the master and the slave, the 
 ruler and the subject, giving such evidence of spir- 
 itual renovation, be all gathered into the same fold of 
 Christ? * In proceeding on these princi- 
 
 ples the missions, under the care of this board and the 
 churches gathered under them, are no otherwise con- 
 nected with slavery than they are with every other 
 evidence and result of imperfect moral renovation in 
 their converts and church members. And they no 
 more really give their sanction to the one than they do 
 to all the others. 
 
 It may be well to show here what some of those 
 social and moral evils are, which are enumerated in 
 this report. Next to slavery castes in India come ; 
 then " unrestrained exactions made in the form of 
 revenues ;" then " military or other service connected 
 with a species of feudalism," and lastly, and later in 
 the report, " Polygamy ! " 
 
 Exactly how many wrongs are required to make one 
 right, or to justify one wrong, the board does not 
 show. It seems to plead guilty to sanctifying so many 
 at the outset. But paying taxes and performing mili- 
 tary service are not counted " social and moral evils," 
 nor yet '' results of imperfect moral development" in 
 the United States nor Great Britain. But even should 
 the mission converts be compelled to most oppressive 
 taxation, in whatever form, they surely are never re- 
 quired to perpetrate slave-holding nor polygamy, for 
 both of which the missionaries of the board were 
 called to account, and were not only proved, but, to a 
 limited extent, actually pleaded guilty. But to return 
 to the report : 
 
 Your committee believe that no established system 
 of involuntary servitude prevails among any tribe of 
 North American Indians where the missionaries of this 
 board are laboring, except the Cherokees and Choc- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 397 
 
 taws. * The following statements will there- 
 
 fore relate to the Cherokee and Choctaw missions, 
 
 * Negro slaves appear to have been intro- 
 duced among those Indians by white men, who re- 
 moved into their country from sixty to eighty years 
 ago, and to have gradually increased in number, till 
 the missions were established among them in 1817 
 and 1 818. By a census taken in 1820, Cherokees 
 were holding five hundred and eighty-three slaves. 
 
 * The number now owned by both tribes 
 may probably be not far from two thousand ; while 
 the number of Indians in both tribes is thirty-eight 
 thousand. * * That slavery should exist at 
 all in these tribes who have suffered so severely from 
 the violation of their own rights by their white neigh- 
 bors, is deeply to be regretted. And all should earn- 
 estly pray that as social improvement and christian 
 knowledge are advancing rapidly among them, they 
 may rapidly exemplify the spirit of the true philan- 
 thropy as well as the gospel law of love, by showing 
 that they duly appreciate the rights and welfare of 
 the whole race of man. * * 
 
 * "Relative to the principles on which converts were 
 to be received to the churches, all the missionaries of 
 the board among the Cherokees and Choctaws, seem 
 to have been perfectly unanimous, Both masters and 
 slaves," says Mr. Buttrick, "I receive on the same 
 principle, viz., on the ground of their faith in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ." Mr. Worcester says: "The general 
 principle on which I have voted for the reception of 
 members is that all are to be received who desire it, 
 and give evidence of a change of heart." Mr. Wright 
 says : "When any, whether masters or servants, have 
 given evidence of a change of heart, of repentance 
 and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, they have been re- 
 ceived." * * * 
 
 * * * " The whole number of the 
 Cherokee tribe is about eighteen thousand, and the 
 number of slaves owned by them is probably about 
 one thousand. The whole number of church mem- 
 bers in this tribe is two hundred and forty, of whom 
 fifteen hold slaves, and twenty-one are themselves 
 
39 8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 slaves The Choctaw tribe, including the Chickasaws, 
 about twenty thousand. The whole number con- 
 nected with our churches there is six hundred and 
 three oT whom twenty hold slaves, one hundred and | 
 thirty-one are slaves, and seven are tree, negroes 
 
 -* * * Mr. Bymgton says: "We 
 
 give such instruction to masters and servants as are 
 contained in the epistles, and yet not in a way to give 
 the subject a peculiar prominence, for then it would 
 seem to be personal, as there are usually but one or 
 wo slave-holders present. In private, we converse 
 about all the ills and dangers of slavery. Mr. Wright 
 says "The instructions, public and private, direct 
 and 'indirect, have beeiyuch as are found in the 
 
 Blbl % * * ic strongly as your commit- 
 
 tee are convinced of the wrongfulness and evil ten- 
 dene es of shareholding, and ardently as they desire 
 its speedy termination, still they cannot think that in 
 all cases it involves individual guilt, in such manner 
 It every person implicated in it can on senptura 
 grounds be excluded from church fellowship. 1 i the 
 fano-uage of Dr. Chalmers, < Distinction ought to be 
 made betwixt the character of a system, and the char- 
 ter of the persons whom circumstances have impli- 
 cated m it. ^ ^ u Suchi substantially, are the 
 views of your committee; and the more they study 
 Sod's method of proceeding in regard to war, slavery, 
 polygamy and other kindred social wrongs, as it is un- 
 folded in the Bible, the more they are convinced that 
 n deal ng with individuals implicated in those wrongs 
 of lono- standing, and intimately interwoven with the 
 relatTons and moments of the social system he ut- 
 most kindness and forbearance are to be exercised, 
 Xh are compatib.e with .teady adhere to P„„ 
 
 * # * Some of the slave-noiueib 
 have'' been known to require their slaves to attedd 
 meetings and other opportunities for obtaining reh- 
 Xus instruction, and all are believed to favor then 
 loino-so Before it was forbidden by law in 1841, 
 numbers of their slaves were taught to read, in bab- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 599 
 
 bath and week-day schools. And such instruction is 
 still, to some extent, given in private, and seven out 
 of fourteen slaves in Fairfield church, in the Cherokee 
 country, can read, and one can write. * * * 
 One who has been occasionally employed as a helper 
 in missionary work, highly esteemed for intelligence 
 and exemplary piety, has been left by the will of his 
 master, manager of his property, and virtually guar- 
 dian of his orphan child and heir. * * * 
 
 * ''That the missionaries among 
 
 these Indians have been faithful in their work, seems 
 evident, not only from their own statements, but also 
 from the fact that the holy spirit has most remarkably 
 owned and blessed their labors, the hopeful converts 
 among the Choctaws being proportionately more nu- 
 merous than those in any other mission connected 
 with the board, except that at the Sandwich Islands." 
 Finally, the report closes with this remarkable con- 
 fession, without proposing any change, or system of 
 operations that would tend to remove the atrocious 
 slave system, or ameliorate the condition of one of its 
 victims. Here is the conclusion of the report, the 
 names of the committee appended to it : 
 
 " There can be no prospect of benefiting the slave, 
 in a slave country, without the consent of the owner. 
 The only hope we can have of benefiting either the 
 one or the other, is through the influence of the gos- 
 pel ; and the gospel, to be effectual must be conveyed 
 in the spirit of meekness and love." 
 
 Leonard Woods, 
 Bennet Tyler, 
 Reuben N. Walworth, 
 Thomas W. Williams, 
 Calvin E. Stowe, 
 Benjamin Tappan, 
 David Sanford, 
 James W. McLane, 
 David Greene. 
 The American board is occupying much space, but 
 it must be remembered that it represented the Con- 
 gregational and Presbyterian church and clergy of 
 
400 ACTS 01 ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 the country at that time, both as to religion at home 
 and as sent to the heathen abroad. Abolitionists 
 charged that it was a pro-slavery religion, and in no 
 sense anti-slavery. None denied that there were hon- 
 orable exceptions ; but as in the state, so in the 
 church, the governing influence, and power upheld 
 and extended slavery, and so slavery continued, and 
 its victims were multiplied. 
 
 The report underwent long discussion, and scanty 
 extracts of the arguments are here given. Rev. Dr. 
 Tyler, president of a Connecticut theological semi- 
 nary, said : " The apostles admitted slave-holders to 
 the church, and for this board to decide against it 
 would be to impeach the apostles." 
 
 Rev, Dr. Bacon, another Connecticut divine, said : 
 "The board ought to make a distinction between sla- 
 very and slave- hoi ding, a distinction that I deem ex- 
 tremely obvious. The master does not make the man 
 a slave, but the laws and constitution of society." 
 Readers will remember that Dr. Bacon was before us 
 not very long ago, with his anti-slavery. He was 
 famous at definitions , and stating and adjusting issues, 
 not one of which I think he declared " raised by Gar- 
 rison, was ever accepted." But here was a definition 
 to be admired, a distinction to be remembered ; a 
 "distinction between slavery and slave-holding." A 
 distinction between horse-stealing and stealing horses. 
 "The master does not make the man a slave." To be 
 sure, he takes him, works him ; takes her, works her, 
 and if there be children, the laws say "they shall fol- 
 low the condition of the mother ! " Not the father. 
 There was often a too striking resemblance between 
 the owner or overseer, and the children, for that. So 
 the children followed the condition of the mother. 
 And thus Dr. Bacon's innocent slave-holder enjoyed 
 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOST1 Is. 401 
 
 all the profits of the outrageous robbery and wrong, 
 from generation to generation, and the "laws and 
 constitution of society " suffered the perdition which 
 otherwise the thief and robber must meet. 
 
 Dr. Stowe, of another theological seminar)-, said : 
 " I would sooner die, than say our missionaries ought 
 to enter their open protest against all the evils with 
 which they may come in contact. * * * 
 
 Jacob lived with four women at once. Had there 
 been an organized church then, must Jacob have been 
 excluded?" * * "These examples 
 
 are for our instruction, and give us just the light we 
 need in this matter." 
 
 And Dr. Beecher said: "Masters and slaves ex- 
 isted in the primitive churches, and it was allowed by 
 Christ and his apostles. Slavery is an organic sin, 
 made by law, and therefore not dealt with as other 
 sins." 
 
 " Organic sin." That was good. That was worthy 
 of Dr. Bacon. I remember a wicked wag who asked, 
 on reading it, " Could not the laws and constitution 
 of society organize all the sins ? and then we could 
 rush in the millennium as by spontaneous com- 
 bustion." 
 
 The report was thus severely criticised, and how 
 earnestly was shown in the strange fact that, on taking 
 the vote, there was not one dissenting voice ! 
 
 And it is certain that most of the churches, and 
 doubtless many ministers, were ignorant that one of 
 their own missionaries was owning slaves at home 
 while preaching to the Africans in their own native 
 land. Nor did they know what laws the Choctaw and 
 Cherokee Indians enacted to protect themselves in 
 slave-holding, after the missionaries went among 
 
402 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 them. The Indians had heard of the abolitionists, 
 and doubtless feared, if they did not suspect the mis- 
 sionaries themselves. 
 
 The secretaries and directors of the board knew all 
 about those slavery-protecting enactments, as well as 
 did their missionaries ; but they did not disclose all 
 they knew. They did not for a long time tell that 
 John Leighton Wilson, one of their African mission- 
 aries, was himself an owner and holder of slaves. 
 The Boston Recorder did, and the Congregational Ob- 
 server said : " The secretaries have not acted with 
 their usual judgment in suppressing the letter of Mr. 
 Wilson, for six years" — a letter as was said, announc- 
 ing that he, and even other missionaries, owned slaves. 
 
 Here are a few examples of Indian legislation to 
 protect the holding of slaves in the nations : 
 
 "Beit enacted by the national council, that from 
 and after the passage of this act, it shall not be lawful 
 for any person or persons to teach any free negro or 
 negress, not of Cherokee blood, nor any slave, belong- 
 ing to any citizen or citizens of the nation, to read or 
 write." The annexed penalty is "fine not less than 
 one hundred, nor more than five hundred dollars, at 
 the discretion of the court." 
 
 Another statute prohibited slaves from "owning any 
 horses, cattle, swine, or fire-arms." The reason as- 
 signed for such legislation was, that the ownership of 
 such property by slaves, " has become a nuisance to 
 the master, and a temptation to theft." 
 
 In 1836, the Choctaws enacted : "That from and 
 after the passage of this act, (and it was almost twenty 
 years after the mission had been established), if any 
 citizen of the United States, acting as a missionary, 
 or a preacher, or whatever his occupation may be, is 
 found to take active part in favoring the principles 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 403 
 
 and notions of the most fatal and destructive doc- 
 trines of abolitionism, he shall be compelled to leave 
 the nation, and forever to stay out of it. 
 
 "And be it further enacted : That teaching slaves 
 how to read, to«write, or to sing, in meeting-houses or 
 schools, or in any open place, without the consent of 
 the owner, or allowing them to sit at table with him, 
 shall be sufficient ground to convict persons of favor- 
 ing the principles and notions of abolitionism." 
 
 And this one more, enacted on the 15th of October, 
 1846, almost at the very moment of the meeting of 
 the board when the report of the committee of nine 
 was made, now under our consideration : 
 
 " Be it enacted ; That no negro slave can be 
 emancipated in this nation, except by application, or 
 petition of the owner to the general council. And 
 provided also that it shall be made to appear to the 
 council, that the owner or owners, at the time of ap- 
 plication, shall have no debt or debts outstanding 
 against him, her, or them, either in or out of this na- 
 tion. Then, and in that case, the general council 
 shall have power to pass an act for the owner to 
 emancipate his or her slave, which slave, after being 
 freed, shall leave this nation within thirty days after 
 the passage of this act. And in case any such slave 
 or slaves shall return into this nation afterwards, he, 
 she, or they, shall be exposed to public sale for the 
 term of five years, and the proceeds of such sale shall 
 be used as national funds." 
 
 And now the most remarkable word of all remains 
 to be spoken. The A. B. C. F. M. held its anniver- 
 saries regularly ; made annual and most elaborate re- 
 ports ; some of them showing frightful pictures of the 
 slave system among the Cherokee and Choctaw 
 churches and church members. But in the year 1859, 
 
404 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES 
 
 the board reported its work done in the Choctaw na- 
 tion, and in i860, in the Cherokee, and gave its legit- 
 imate, logical reason : " The Cherokees are a chris- 
 tian people." * * * 
 
 * * * " The committee have arrived 
 at the conclusion that it is time to discontinue its ex- 
 penditures among the Cherokees. To prevent all 
 misapprehension, it should be stated at the outset > 
 First, that this is not owing to the relations of our work 
 among; those Indians to the system of slavery." The 
 Choctaw mission was similarly closed, in 1859. 
 
 O, no! "Slavery had nothing to do with it!" 
 The board found slavery among the Indians in 181 7, 
 accepted it as of divine appointment, and compelled 
 its missionaries to accept it, and they did ; as did the 
 churches and pulpits that sustained them, When the 
 anti-slavery agitation reached to the churches, and 
 protests were sent up against a slave-holding religion, 
 supported at home, and sent abroad to the heathen, 
 the Board refused to interfere. And once when the 
 Sandwich Island missionaries sent home a most power- 
 ful remonstrance against slave-holding in the churches 
 as a hindrance to their missionary work as well as 
 false to the true christian faith, the Board suppressed 
 their testimony, and by solemn resolution duly adopted, 
 recorded and published, virtually imposed silence on 
 the subject, at every missionary station under its 
 patronage. When the interest on the subject began 
 to threaten loss to the treasury, then the Board by its 
 Secretaries attempted, by argument to justify slavery 
 as supported by scripture ; by patriarchal practice and 
 apostolic approval, the very chiefest apostle actually, 
 as was claimed, voluntarily restoring a runaway slave 
 to his owner. From 181 7 to i860, more than forty 
 years, did the Board conduct the religious and moral 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 405 
 
 education of those Indian tribes, gathering them into 
 churches : masters and slaves alike, with this law in 
 full force : 
 
 No slave, or child of a slave, is to be taught to read 
 or write, in or at any school, by any one connected in 
 any capacity therewith, on pain of dismissal and 
 expulsion from the nation. 
 
 And now one thought more, and the Board and all 
 its work shall be discharged from further consid- 
 eration. 
 
 In i860 the Cherokees, and in 1859 the Choctaws, 
 were graduated by the Board from paganism to Chris- 
 tianity with full credentials, as no longer in the dark- 
 ness of the heathen world. In 1861, the war of 
 Rebellion set the country on fire. The Indian tribes 
 were early awake to the situation. The New York 
 Evangelist, on the 21st of March of the same year, 
 1861, said; "the Cherokee, Choctaw, and other 
 Indian tribes of the south-west, nearly all of them 
 slave-holders, are evidently under the influence of the 
 secessionists. The principal Choctaw chief hastened 
 to convene the local legislature * * * and 
 recommended a. general council of the Chickasaws, 
 Creeks, Seminoles and Choctaws to be held at a cen- 
 tral point for the purpose of adopting some line of 
 policy necessary to their security. 
 
 In August following, the New York Journal of 
 Commerce announced that : " The Choctaws, Creeks, 
 Seminoles and Chickasaws have given their adher- 
 ence to the Confederates, and probably the Cherokees 
 are divided on the question." 
 
 Of the rest, we know enough. How well and truly 
 was it said at the opening of the war of Rebellion, "in 
 the forty-two years of the maintenance of the Chero- 
 kee and Choctaw missions, by the American Board, 
 
406 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 they have connived at slavery, avoiding, by various dis- 
 honorable and dishonest means and contrivances, the 
 hard duty of reformation. Now they go a step fur- 
 ther, spontaneously and publicly vouching for slave- 
 holding churches as christian churches, and for a 
 nation upholding the worst form of slavery, as "a 
 christian people." 
 
 And between four and five thousand armed Indian 
 warriors, led by an able Boston-born general, the 
 tallest, handsomest officer in the rebel army, at the bat- 
 tle of Pea Ridge, fighting in a war waged by slave- 
 holders and waged wholly for slavery, and nothing 
 else, was a spectacle worthy the American Board of 
 Commissioners for Foreign Missions ! 
 
 THE BAPTIST CHURCH. 
 
 Or if we turn to the Baptist denomination with its 
 vast proportion in the slave states, the record will not 
 improve ; and in that again we can learn its spirit 
 and position through its great national Foreign 
 Missionary Association known in early anti-slavery 
 days as The Baptist Triennial Convention. The har- 
 mony in it seems never to have been disturbed by the 
 slavery problem till broken by the tocsin of the aboli- 
 tionists. For so late as the year 1834, Rev. Dr. Bolles, 
 of Boston, one of its Secretaries of correspondence in 
 an official paper, said : 
 
 There is a pleasing degree of union among the mul- 
 tiplying thousands of Baptists throughout the land. 
 * * * Our southern brethren are generally 
 slave-holders, both ministers and people. 
 
 And another Boston Baptist doctor of divinity, Rev. 
 Daniel Sharp, wrote under date January 21st, 1840: 
 "There were undoubtedly both slave-holders and slaves 
 in the primitive churches ; I therefore for one, do not 
 feel myself at liberty to make conditions of commun- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 407 
 
 ion which neither Christ nor his apostles made. I do 
 not feel myself wiser nor better than were they ; * 
 * * and I believe that a majority of the wisest 
 and best men at the north hold to these sentiments." 
 
 In 1841, at the Triennial convention and by appoint- 
 ment, a slave-holder presided, another slave holder 
 performed the devotional exercises, and a third slave- 
 holder preached the Triennial sermon ; and the Rev. 
 Elon Galusha, of New York, an tamest, outspoken 
 anti-slavery man, was removed from the Board of 
 Management, partly, or principally, from demands 
 like this of the Camden, South Carolina Baptist 
 church : 
 
 Resolved, That we view with contempt, the advice, 
 opinions, menaces and declarations of Elon Galusha 
 and his coadjuutors contained in their address to 
 southern Baptists. 
 
 Resolved, That we recommend to our associations 
 to use their influence to have Elon Galusha expelled 
 from his office as Vice-President of the Board of 
 Foreign Missions. 
 
 The fifth, sixth and seventh, ran thus : 
 
 Resolved, That we extend to northern Baptists who 
 are opposed to the abolitionists, our warmest affection 
 and fraternal regard. They will ever have an interest 
 in our prayers. 
 
 Resolved, That the address of Elon Galusha be 
 returned to him, with request that he will never again 
 insult us with an address of any kind. 
 
 Resolved, That these proceedings be published in 
 the Christian Index, The Biblical Recorder, Religious 
 Herald, New York Baptist Advocate, and Camden 
 Journal. 
 
 C. M. Bleeker, Chairman, 
 E. G. Robinson, Secretary. 
 
 And as already told, Mr. Galusha was removed. 
 All the proceedings appeared to have been in keeping 
 
408 ACTS OK ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 with such expulsion ; for the meeting closed with the 
 sacramental supper and singing: 
 
 Lo, what an entertaining' sight 
 Are brethren who agree ! 
 
 A member writing to the Biblical Recorder and 
 Southern Watchman, thus rejoices: 
 
 Our meeting was truly delightful. The spirit of 
 the gospel prevailed, and gave a tremendous shock 
 to the abolitionists. Let us be thankful to God, and 
 give him the glory. And now, if we of the south and 
 they of the north, whose sympathies are with us, shall 
 be mild I am satisfied that abolitionism will go down 
 among Baptists. All our " principal men" are sound 
 to the core on this vexed question. 
 
 The Triennial Convention exhibited a noble spec- 
 tacle of moral grandeur. About two hundred and 
 fifty men from the various parts of our extended coun- 
 try were engaged in a long and arduous session, that 
 tried the temper and put into requisition all the intel- 
 lectual energy which they possessed. And all this in 
 connection with a most exciting subject. And yet, 
 self-possession, calmness, the christian spirit, predom- 
 inated throughout the whole scene. No tumult, no 
 angry feeling, no harsh expression had place in our 
 deliberations and conclusions. At the communion 
 board on Lord's day the scene was overwhelming. In 
 view of the cross the hundreds that participated were 
 all one. No test, other than that of our dear Lord's 
 requirement, was thought of. To God be all the glory, 
 Amen and Amen. 
 
 But such dissatisfaction arose among the now " prin- 
 cipal men" in the convention that before the next Tri- 
 ennial gathering a division occurred. A new but 
 small rival society was formed. One principal reason 
 assigned being that gifts of slave-holders should not 
 mingle with northern contributions in the missionary 
 treasury, since God had said " I hate robbery for a 
 burnt offering-." 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 409 
 
 But the extent of principle and height of integrity of 
 this new and sublimated movement, was seen in the 
 fact, that when, just afterwards, the old board sus- 
 tained a loss by a failure in India, there was an imme- 
 diate appropriation of five hundred dollars voted to it, 
 with all its slavery, out of this purified treasurv. The 
 following is the official record of the proceeding : 
 
 Whereas, The Foreign Mission Board have re- 
 cently sustained a heavy loss, by the failure of their 
 banker at Calcutta, and thus appropriated supplies are 
 cut off from the missionaries in Asia ; therefore 
 
 Resolved, That the treasurer of this committee be 
 instructed to forward, as soon as possible, five hun- 
 dred dollars from funds now in the treasury, to the 
 relief of the missionaries, "to be expended under the 
 direction of Dr. Judson and Mr. Vinton." 
 
 [Signed] S. G. Shipley, Chairman. 
 
 C. \V '. Denison, Secretary. 
 
 The new association seems to have been short lived, 
 for at the next meeting of the old board, all parties 
 old and new were present, and the proceedings were 
 as unanimous almost as before slavery had ever dis- 
 turbed them. The president, a North Carolina slave- 
 holder, declined a reelection, on the ground that, as 
 for more than thirty years the chief officer had been 
 selected from the slaves states, it was time the boon 
 should be conferred on the north. Accordingly, the 
 Rev. Dr. Wayland, of Providence, on the second bal- 
 lotting, was elected to that office. 
 
 The subject of Slavery was introduced and disposed 
 of by the passage of the following resolution, only 
 two voting in the negative : 
 
 Resolved, That cooperating together as members of 
 this convention in the work of foreign missions, we 
 disclaim all sanction, either express or implied, of 
 slavery or anti-slavery / but as individuals we are free 
 to express and promote our view on this or other sub- 
 jects, in a christian manner and spirit. 
 
410 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Rev. Mr. Davis, of New York, [neighbor of Elon 
 Galusha] then remarked with much exultation, if not 
 exaltation, that the convention had passed a stupendous 
 crisis, and moved a season of devotional exercises. 
 The season was voted, a northern minister, Mr. Webb, 
 of Philadelphia, gave thanks, and they closed with 
 singing the Doxology, by the congregation, 
 
 " Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." 
 
 In view of the passage of the above resolution, the 
 editor of the Boston Christian Reflector, a professedly 
 anti-slavery journal, most complacently remarked : 
 
 " It will be seen by the passage of the resolution on 
 Friday, that we are no longer required to fellowship 
 slavery or slave-holders, as such, in the work of mis- 
 sions." 
 
 But had the business related to infant sprinkling 
 instead of infant stealing, or on immersion as baptism, 
 instead of sprinkling, the whole past history of this 
 immense denomination throughout Christendom proves 
 it would never have been so easily nor so amicably 
 adjusted. In 1846, a new association was incorpora- 
 ted under the name of "The American Baptist Mis- 
 sionary Union," and the old triennial was no more. 
 The first article of the new constitution designates the 
 name, the second the object of the society. The third 
 provides that " persons, " without reference to place, 
 " may be life members, by the payment at one time of 
 not less than one hundred dollars." The twenty-first 
 article declares that the officers and missionaries of 
 the association " shall be members in good standing of 
 regular Baptist churches." No north nor south any 
 more. 
 
 It has been contended that this association was 
 formed with particular reference to a separation from 
 slavery. I was so informed by an officer of the board. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 41 I 
 
 But there was no such intimation, either in the act of 
 incorporation or the constitution. Among the life 
 members were persons from Missouri, Mississippi, 
 Delaware, and Georgia ; and the first meeting of the 
 board of managers was organized by the choice of a 
 president from a free, and a secretary from a slave- 
 state. The first meeting of the union was opened with 
 prayer by the Rev. Nathaniel Colver, of Boston. All 
 these proceedings, and others, are appended to the 
 annual report of the old Baptist convention for 1846. 
 But enough about the mission movements as be- 
 tween south and north, or between slavery and anti- 
 slavery. The Baptist denomination, like the others, 
 had hosts of anti-slavery men and women ; but the 
 ruling power was for slavery, or the system could not 
 have survived as it did, till stove down by the aveng- 
 ing bolts of eternal wrath. 
 
 METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 Coming now to the mighty Methodist denomination 
 it would be a relief and joy if a far better record could 
 be given. But to write history, not make it, is the 
 work still in hand. 
 
 Two copies of the Methodist Book of Discipline are 
 before me, of different dates, but both contain an ad- 
 dress " To the Members of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church," signed by the bishops, in which it is declared : 
 " We wish to see this little publication in the house of 
 every Methodist. And the more so, as it contains the 
 articles of religion, maintained more or less, in part, 
 or in whole, by every reformed church in the world. 
 Far from wishing you to be ignorant of any of our 
 doctrines, or any part of our discipline, we wish you 
 to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the whole. 
 You ought, next to the word of God, to procure the 
 
 26 
 
412 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES 
 
 articles and canons of the church to which you be- 
 long." One chapter of the discipline is entitled : 
 "General Rules and Reception of Members." On one 
 page this is found : 
 
 There is only one condition previously required of 
 those who desire admission into these societies ; a 
 desire to flee from the wrath to come and to be saved 
 from their sins. 
 
 But wherever this is really fixed in the soul it will 
 be shown by its fruits. It is, therefore, expected of 
 all who continue therein that they should continue to 
 evidence their desire for salvation ; 
 
 First, by doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every 
 kind, especially that which is most generally practiced ; 
 the taking of the name of God in vain ; the profaning 
 the day of the Lord ; drunkenness ; buying or selling 
 spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of 
 extreme necessity. 
 
 And then the next, for some reason, to this writer 
 inexplicable, is printed in italics, and reads thus : 
 
 The buying and selling of men, women and children 
 with an intention to enslave them. 
 
 There are many more of these requirements of 
 larger or less importance, and then the section closes 
 thus : 
 
 If there be any among us who observe not these 
 rules, who habitually break any of them, let it be 
 known unto them who watch over that soul, as they 
 who must give account. We will admonish him of the 
 error of his ways. We will bear with him for a season. 
 But if then he repent not, he hath no more place 
 among us. We have delivered our own souls. 
 
 So much for text. Now for commentary. In less 
 than half a century from the enactment of that mag- 
 nificent rule and testimony against slavery, against 
 "the buying and selling of men, women and children, 
 with intention to enslave them," printed in the disci- 
 pline in italics, from the first, the slaves of Methodist, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 413 
 
 ministers, elders and deacons holding them with the 
 rest, numbered tens of thousands, and those numbers 
 rapidly increasing in every slave state. And before 
 the Garrisonian anti-slavery agitation was seven years 
 old that stupendous organization in general confer- 
 ence, convened at Cincinnati, Ohio, anno domini 1836, 
 by vote of a hundred and twenty to only fourteen, 
 solemnly resolved that they " are decidedly opposed to 
 modern abolititionism, and wholly disclaim any right, 
 wish, or intention, to interfere in the civil and politi- 
 cal relation between master and slave, as it exists in 
 the slave-holding states of this Union." 
 
 He is a close student of history who can parallel in 
 brazen audacity and effrontery such action as this. By 
 vote of a hundred and twenty to fourteen, on motion 
 of Rev. A. J. Few, D. D., of Georgia, the conference 
 solemnly declared they had " no wish nor intention " to 
 fulfil what they have so often declared to the world 
 was a most important part of their covenant vows. 
 
 One of the rules specified in the section of rules and 
 requirements reads : 
 
 "By doing good, especially to them that are of the 
 household of faith, employing them preferably to oth- 
 ers, helping each other in business, and so much the 
 more because the world will love its own, and them 
 only." Now observe how this rule was respected. In 
 southern and some northern states, colored people 
 were never allowed to testify in any court against any 
 white person in any case. Any outrage on any colored 
 woman or man could be perpetrated by any white 
 ruffian with perfect impunity, were none but colored 
 witnesses at hand. And scenes and instances of 
 shocking cruelty went often unpunished on that ac- 
 count. 
 
414 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 And now behold the Methodist General Conference 
 wrestling with a problem like that. There were at 
 that moment more than eighty thousand colored 
 Methodist communicants, and Ohio and several other 
 non-slave-holding states enacted them all as unfit to 
 give testimony under oath in any court of justice within 
 their jurisdiction. They might do for Methodist 
 churches, might even be fit for heaven, but they were 
 not worthy to be trusted under oath to speak the 
 truth. 
 
 Now, what was to be done ? The conference was 
 equal to the occasion. In 1840, in general conference 
 assembled, this resolution was adopted, and become 
 Methodist law : 
 
 Resolved, That it is inexpedient and unjustifiable 
 for any preacher to permit colored persons to give testi- 
 mony against white persons, in any state where they 
 are denied that privilege by law. 
 
 So ran Methodist brotherly "preference" toward 
 their " own household of faith," as required by the 
 "rules of admission to fellowship." The state pro- 
 nounced colored testimony unfit for courts of civil 
 law and justice against white offenders, no matter what 
 the crime. And the Methodist General Conference, 
 in 1840, sanctified the impious proscription by extend- 
 ing it over their own church trials, as well. 
 
 Thus they unblushingly confessed to man and God 
 that they had in fellowship over eighty thousand mem- 
 bers, redeemed by sacrificial blood, enrolled in the 
 " Lamb's Book of Life," as they believed when they 
 baptised and received them ; eighty thousand fit to 
 shine and reign for ever and ever in heaven, and yet 
 not worthy to testify any more in an ecclesiastical 
 court held before their own sacramental altar, than at 
 any civil tribunal ! While the veriest blasphemer, the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 415 
 
 vilest profligate who ever scoffed at the mention of 
 religion, if covered with a white skin, even though 
 purpled with drunkenness and debauchery, might be 
 legal and competent testimony in both, to any extent, 
 whatever the crime. In view of a proceeding so mon- 
 strous, an eloquent writer of the time thus justly per- 
 tinently said : 
 
 By this rule, which is now a part of the discipline of 
 the church, eighty thousand of its colored members 
 are denied the right to testify against a white brother 
 or sister in any case whatsoever. No matter what the 
 crime may be, or how aggravating the circumstances. 
 The reverend mover of the resolution might now vio- 
 late the chastity of the colored members of his church 
 with entire impunity. He is no longer in any danger 
 of being censured and silenced by his more fortunate 
 brethren, as was a late Massachusetts doctor of 
 divinity. Should he unfortunately be " overtaken in 
 a fault," the church has "provided a way of escape." 
 And an ample provision it is, even for the chiefest of 
 sinners. Neither the reverend doctor, nor any of his 
 coadjutors, could desire greater liberty — or privilege^ 
 as they might term it. The lips of their victim and 
 her friends are now hermetically sealed up, both in 
 the church and in the civil tribunals ! 
 
 Dr. Adam Clarke, the eminent Methodist scripture 
 commentator, says, on Ephesians vi, fifth : " In 
 heathen countries slavery had some sort of excuse. 
 Among christians it is a crime for which perdition has 
 scarce adequate punishment." But Dr. Adam Clarke 
 had hever heard nor read of slavery in heathen coun- 
 tries more horrible than the slavery thus supported, 
 sanctioned and sanctified in the Methodist church ! 
 What would he have said to this resolution of Dr. 
 Few ? Thrilling protests were offered against it in 
 the conference but to no purpose. One of them con- 
 tained words like these : 
 
416 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The adoption of such a resolution has inflicted, 
 as we fear, an irreparable injury upon eighty thousand 
 souls, for whom Christ died. Souls, who by this act 
 of your body, have been stripped of the dignity of 
 christians, degraded in the scale of humanity and 
 treated as criminals, for no other reason than the color 
 of their skin ! 
 
 The protest, which was wholly in the tone of these 
 pathetic words, was, as Judge Birney shows, " handed 
 to the bishops, but was never read to the conference." 
 
 Why need it have been even handed to the bishops ? 
 One had already declared, ex-cathedra, " The right to 
 hold slaves is founded on this rule ; all things what- 
 soever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye 
 even so unto them." That was Bishop Hedding, 
 whose home was in Lynn, Massachusetts. 
 
 And the " pastoral letter " of the general conference 
 of 1836, closed its solemn exhortation on the whole 
 question of slavery in a strain like this : 
 
 From every view which we have been able to take, 
 and from the most calm and dispassionate survey of 
 the whole ground, we have come to the conclusion 
 that the only safe, scriptural and prudent way for us, 
 both as ministers and people, to take is, wholly to re- 
 frain from this agitating subject. 
 
 And Bishop Soule had declared, " I have never yet 
 advised the liberation of a slave, and I think I never 
 shall." 
 
 Rev. Wilbur Fisk, D. D., President of the Wesleyan 
 University in Connecticut, declared : "the relation of 
 master and slave may, and does, in many cases exist 
 under such circumstances as frees the master from the 
 just charge and guilt of immorality. * * * The 
 New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as 
 an obligation due to a present rightful authority." 
 
 And Moses Stuart, of Andover Theological Semin- 
 ary, had published a tract, to prove that slavery was 
 
ACTS OK ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 417 
 
 not in itself an evil ; and had said in so many words, 
 "slavery may exist without any violation of the chris- 
 tian faith." And it was in view of American slavery 
 that he wrote. And Dr. Fisk endorsed Stuart thus : 
 "This doctrine of Professor Stuart will stand, because 
 it is Bible doctrine." 
 
 But the impertinent and persistent meddling of some 
 ministers and many of the laity of the Methodist body, 
 in time had its disastrous effect ; and in the year 1843, 
 a sufficient number of individual ministers and separ- 
 ate churches had withdrawn from conference jurisdic- 
 tion, to warrant anew Methodist organization. So in 
 May, 1843, a convention was held in Utica, New 
 York, and inaugurated The Wesleyan Methodist Con- 
 nection of America. This mightily increased the agi- 
 tation in the parent body. It was now certain that 
 something decisive must be done, that had not yet 
 even been contemplated. The next year, 1844, the 
 general conference met in New York, where it was 
 shown, to the terror of the most pro-slavery, that one 
 of the bishops had, by recent marriage, become a 
 slave-holder ! An agony of strife was wakened which 
 lasted day after day. In the hope of appeasing the 
 opponents of slavery, the Baltimore annual confer- 
 ence voted with them on a censure ; but not expulsion 
 from church nor office. The censure was only to the 
 extent that "Bishop Andrew be requested to suspend 
 the exercise of the duties of his office, while his 
 impediment should exist, but that his name may stand 
 in the hymn book and book of discipline, and his sal- 
 ary be continued, just as in the past !" 
 
 Our travelling agents were constantly disputed by 
 Methodists as to the conference action on Bishop 
 Andrew as a slave-holder. I myself had meetings 
 broken up by mobs, for the sole offense of speaking 
 
4l8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 the truth, and only the truth, on that most remarkable 
 proceeding in the Methodist general conference. 
 After one of these riotous demonstrations, I pub- 
 lished in the Liberator of January 28, 1848, the follow- 
 ing letter, which readers must pardon me for produc- 
 ing here : 
 
 Dear Friend Garrison — A short time since, as I 
 was addressing a large assembly on the connexion of 
 the Methodist church with slavery, a minister of that 
 denomination rose up and charged me with bearing 
 false witness, and added, with much earnestness, that 
 the church had even deposed one of its bishops, only for 
 marrying a lady who held slaves. A similar declaration 
 has been often made, and I find the church generally 
 believes it. It may be that the ministers know no 
 better ; though it is a defense of the ir hearts at great 
 cost to their heads to suppose it. 
 
 I have before me the official proceedings relative to 
 Bishop Andrew, in the general conference of 1844, and 
 will give a few very brief extracts. They were pub- 
 lished by the church at the conference office in New 
 York. 
 
 After the subject had been many days under dis- 
 cussion, and no prospect of an adjournment had 
 appeared, the four bishops, beside Andrew, issued an 
 address to the conference, in which they say, (page 
 
 185)- 
 
 At this painful crisis, we have unanimously con- 
 curred in the propriety of recommending the postpone- 
 ment of further action in the case of Bishop Andrew, 
 until the ensuing conference. 
 
 It was not done, however, and the discussion pro- 
 ceeded. At length, the following resolution was 
 passed, as the sense of the conference, (pp 191-2) — 
 
 Whereas, the discipline of our church forbids the 
 doing of any thing, calculated to destroy our itinerant 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 419 
 
 general superintendence; and whereas, Bishop Andrew 
 has become connected with slavery, by marriage and 
 otherwise, and this act having drawn after it circum- 
 stances, which, in the estimation of the general con- 
 ference, will greatly embarrass the exercise of his 
 office as an itinerant general superintendent, if not in 
 some places entirely prevent it ; therefore, 
 
 Resolved^ That it is the sense of this general confer- 
 ence, that he desist from the exercise of this office, so 
 long as this impediment remains ! 
 
 The yeas and nays were taken, and the resolution 
 was adopted, in to 69. 
 
 After some further discussion, the bishops issued an- 
 other address to the conference, proposing the three 
 following questions — p. 214 of records: 
 
 First — Shall Bishop Andrew's name remain, as it 
 now stands in the minutes, hymn-book and discipline, 
 or shall it be struck off of those official records? 
 
 Second — How shall the bishop obtain his support? 
 As provided for in the discipline, or in some other way ? 
 
 Third — What work, if any, may the bishop perform? 
 and how shall he be appointed to that work ? 
 
 It was moved to refer the question to a committee 
 of three, but the motion was afterwards withdrawn. 
 
 The following, from page 216 of the Record of 
 Proceedings, tells the rest : 
 
 Mr. Mitchell proposed the following resolutions, in 
 reply to the inquiries of the bishops : 
 
 Resolved, First, as the sense of this conference, that 
 Bishop Andrew's name stand in the minutes, hymn- 
 book and discipline, as formerly. 
 
 Resolved, Second, that the rule in relation to the 
 support of a bishop and his family, applies to Bishop 
 Andrew. 
 
 Resolved, Third, that whether any, and in what 
 work Bishop Andrew be employed, is to be determined 
 by his own decision and action, in relation to the pre- 
 vious action of this conference in his case. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The ayes and noes were called on the first resolu- 
 tion. For it, 154 ; against it, 18 For the second 
 resolution, ayes 141, noes 14. 
 
420 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Dr. Winans said he should go against the'third res- 
 olution. The discipline of the church knew no dis- 
 cretion in an officer of recognized standing, to with- 
 draw himself from the duties of his office. By the 
 two votes just passed, it was clear and unequivocal, 
 that Bishop Andrew had an unquestioned standing as 
 a bishop of the M. E. church, by a vote of a large 
 majority of that church, and the provisions of the dis- 
 cipline ; and he congratulated the south on the fact 
 that they had now a recognized slave-holding bishop, 
 whose name appeared on all their records, after being 
 known as a slave-holder, and that Bishop A. has no 
 right to elect, whether he would serve, or in what way 
 he would serve. 
 
 Mr. Cartwright thought his brother Winans shouted 
 before he was happy. 
 
 Mr. Winans — I was happy. 
 
 Dr. Cartwright — Yes ; but the brother was only 
 happy in the false fires of his own warm imagination. 
 
 The ayes and noes were then taken on the third 
 resolution. Several asked to be excused, some retired ; 
 and the result of the vote was, ayes 103, noes 67. 
 
 Such, then, was the expulsion of Bishop Andrew. 
 A subsequent report of the conference, adopted by a 
 vote of 116 to 26, declares on page 232 : 
 
 The action of the general conference was neither 
 judicial nor punitive. It neither achieves nor intends a 
 deposition — nor so much as a legal suspension ! Bishop 
 Andrew is still a bishop ; and should he, against the 
 expressed sense of the general conference, proceed to 
 the discharge of his functions, his official act would be 
 valid .' 
 
 And yet the Methodist clergy tell the people, and 
 make them believe it, and have often done it in my 
 meetings, that Bishop Andrew was expelled as a 
 bishop, for the crime of owning slaves. 
 
 Yours, to expose such lies and hypocrisy, 
 
 Parker Pillsbury. 
 
 Slavery was sometimes called "the peculiar institu- 
 tion ; " the "patriarchal institution." An old cotton 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 421 
 
 king, of Boston, visiting the south, talked softly to 
 slave-holders about their "unenlightened labor." 
 But it remained for the general conference of the 
 Methodist-Episcopal church to refine on that, putting 
 it in one single word, and that a less offensive word, 
 than labor and unenlightened labor, too. Slave-holding 
 in Bishop Andrew was but an impediment ! and not 
 serious, at that, as it neither deprived him of the hon- 
 ors, nor emoluments of his office ; only relieved him 
 from its labors and responsibilities. 
 
 But the southern Methodists were no more happy 
 than before. Nothing short of the terrible penalty 
 inflicted on Bishop Andrew, would placate the north, 
 and that with the south seemed only to complicate 
 matters more and more. Division, disruption, 
 threatened — last year, six or seven thousand church 
 members and nearly a hundred ministers, had seceded 
 and formed the Weslyan Connection of America, all 
 in the good name of anti-slavery. So that was never 
 part of the general conference. It was now the slave- 
 holder's turn. Nor did they hesitate. The south se- 
 ceded, and from that day (1844), onward to and 
 through the war of the rebellion, there were both a 
 southern and northern general conference. 
 
 But the new Utica movement found no place in 
 either, neither desired it. And so there seemed more 
 need of it than ever. And yet, from the day of the 
 separation, many in the northern conference, minis- 
 ters and people, proudly plumed themselves as a 
 strictly anti-slavery church, that had shaken off the 
 pollutions of slavery. 
 
 But two stern denials must be made of any such 
 virtue. The northern conference never left the south- 
 ern, still less excommunicated it. The south aban- 
 doned the north in part, only in part, for the sake of 
 
422 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 peace, not the north for the sake of purity. But both 
 were disappointed. The south found no peace, the 
 north surely purchased no purity, as most stubborn 
 facts more than prove. This history is only written, 
 not made ; and the testimony is all furnished by the 
 parties most concerned themselves. 
 
 The following extract from the proceedings of the 
 first meeting of the southern general conference, 
 shows how far there had been any change of heart on 
 either side, as concerning the sin which John Wesley 
 had designated as "the sum of all villainies," and 
 Dr. Clark had declared, " Perdition had scarcely ad- 
 equate punishment," for such as logically proved them- 
 selves the sum of all villains. But here is the extract : 
 
 After the formal adjournment on Monday, Bishop 
 Soule requested the members to tarry a few minutes, 
 Dr. Winans then read an expression of his feelings 
 and that of many of his brethren, who had passed 
 through the bounds of a portion of the "northern 
 church," for the very kind and affectionate treatment 
 they had received from their northern brethren on 
 their way to this city. It expresses the hope that, 
 although a separation has taken place, whenever a 
 southern brother, in the providence of God, shall be 
 called to visit a northern city, or place, where there is 
 a Methodist pulpit, he may find it open to his ministry, 
 and assuring the northern brethren that the like chris- 
 tian courtesy shall be always extended to them. The 
 document was unanimously adopted and ordered to 
 be signed by a committee of the conference. 
 
 And why should it not be ? for the very next year 
 but one, we find one of the largest annual conferences, 
 the Baltimore, of the north, adopting this resolution : 
 
 jResoIvcrf, That this conference disclaims having any 
 fellowship with abolitionism. On the contrary, while 
 it is determined to maintain its well-known and long- 
 established position, by keeping the traveling preach- 
 ers composing its own body, free from slavery, it is also 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 423 
 
 determined not to hold connection with any ecclesias- 
 tical body that shall make non-slaveholding a condi- 
 tion of membership in the church ; but to stand by 
 and maintain the discipline as it is. 
 
 And now for the one overpowering fact of all ; a 
 fact which for years after the separation of 1844, con- 
 victed multitudes of Methodists, ministers with the 
 rest, of an ignorance the most remarkable, or hypoc- 
 risy and falsehood the most fearful ever known in all 
 the annals of human weakness or wickedness. 
 
 Not only did not the northern hemisphere of the con- 
 ference sunder itself from the southern to rid itself of 
 the sin and guilt of slavery, but instead, when the south 
 withdrew, the north contrived to retain seven or eight 
 Annual conferences whose territory was mainly or wholly 
 in the slave states in which dwelt four thousand Method- 
 ist slave-holders, owning more than twenty-five thousand 
 slaves ! 
 
 And that was a body to set itself before men, 
 angels and God as an anti-slavery church. Every- 
 where, in New England and New York, as well as at the 
 west, the anti-slavery agents encountered that 
 astounding boast and pretension among the Method- 
 ists, both ministers and people. 
 
 I could not myself believe, till I went to the Meth- 
 odist book concern in Boston, and purchased the 
 book of discipline, now on my desk, and read the 
 boundaries of those annual conferences, with my own 
 eyes. "Border territory" it is called in the official 
 records of that time, but it included Delaware, most, 
 or all of Maryland and Virginia, the whole of Ken- 
 tucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. 
 
 To the resolution of the Baltimore conference just 
 cited to show, what northern conference anti-slavery 
 was worth as testimony against slave-holding sin, 
 
424 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 shame and crime, let this be added, and the argu- 
 ment shall close : the extracts are from the "Address 
 of the Philadelphia annual conference, to the 
 societies under its care, within the bounds of the 
 Northampton and Accomac circuits." 
 
 Whereas, the discipline says, "Virginia conference 
 shall be bounded on the east by Chesapeak Bay and 
 the Atlantic Ocean; " and "Philadelphia conference 
 shall include the eastern shore of Maryland and Vir- 
 ginia " — the Chesapeake Bay, an arm of the ocean 
 being between them ; therefore, Resolved, that in our 
 administration, we will regard the "eastern shore of 
 Maryland and Virginia" as not being "border" work 
 in the sense of the " plan of separation." 
 
 We cannot, therefore, but regard all the Methodist 
 societies within the peninsula, as under our pastoral 
 jurisdiction, according to the provisions of the plan of 
 separation. 
 
 If the plan of separation gives us the pastoral care 
 of you, it remains to inquire whether we have done 
 anything as a conference, or as men, to forfeit your 
 confidence and affection. We are not advised that 
 even in the great excitement which has distressed you 
 for some months past, any one has impeached our 
 moral conduct, or charged us with unsoundness in 
 doctrine, or corruption, or tyranny in the administra- 
 tion of discipline. But we learn that the simple cause 
 of the unhappy excitement among you is, that some 
 suspect us, or arTect to suspect us, of being abolition- 
 ists. Yet, no particular act of the conference, or any 
 particular member thereof, is adduced, as the ground 
 of the erroneous and injurious suspicion. We would 
 ask you, brethren, whether the conduct of our minis- 
 try among you for sixty years past, ought not to be 
 sufficient to protect us from this charge ? Whether 
 the question we have been accustomed for a few years 
 past, to put to candidates for admission among us, 
 namely, are you an abolitionist? and without each one 
 answered in the negative, he was not received, ought 
 not to protect us from the charge. Whether the 
 action of the last conference on this particular matter, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 425 
 
 ought not to satisfy any fair and candid mind that we 
 are not, and do not desire to be, abolitionists. * * 
 * * We cannot see how we can be regarded as 
 abolitionists without the ministers of the Methodist 
 Episcopal church south, being considered in the same 
 light. * * * 
 
 Wishing you all heavenly benedictions, we are, dear 
 brethren, yours, in Christ Jesus, 
 
 J. P. DURBIN, 
 
 J. Kennaday, 
 Ignatius T. Cooper, 
 William H. Gilder, 
 Joseph Castle, 
 
 Committee. 
 Wilmington, Del., April 7, 1847. 
 
 Such was American Methodism in 1836, and onward 
 to 1847, and the Philadelphia conference of that year. 
 Such was Methodism as held, represented, inculcated 
 by the bishops, elders, and rulers in the high places 
 of power in that immense spiritual dominion, alike in 
 the northern and the southern states. 
 
 But such was not Methodism in the day, nor in the 
 mouth of John Wesley. 
 
 On February twelfth, 1772, he wrote in his Jour- 
 nal : I read a book of an honest Quaker on that exe- 
 crable sum of all villanies, called the slave trade ; I 
 read nothing like it in the heathen world, whether 
 ancient or modern ; it infinitely exceeds in every 
 instance of barbarity, whatever christian slaves suffer 
 in Mohamedan countries." 
 
 And a word more from the same hand, shall close 
 this too extended chapter on Methodism and slavery. 
 He wrote : "What I have said to slave-traders, equally 
 concerns all slave-holders, of whatever degree or rank. 
 The blood of your brother crieth against you from the 
 earth. O, whatever it costs, put a stop to that cry ! 
 Your hands, beds, houses, lands, furniture, are stained 
 with blood. Surelv it is enough ! 
 
426 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 
 
 The anti-slavery character of this denomination is 
 pretty clearly set forth in a pamphlet, entitled, 
 " Thoughts on the duty of the Episcopal church in 
 relation to slavery," by the late William Jay, one of 
 its most illustrious members : 
 
 Alas ! for the expectation that she would conform 
 to the spirit of her ancient mother. She has not only 
 remained a mute and careless spectator of this great 
 conflict of truth and justice with hypocrisy and 
 cruelty, but her very priests and deacons may be seen 
 ministering at the altar of slavery ! Offering their 
 talents and influence at its unholy shrine, and openly 
 repeating the awful blasphemy that the precepts of 
 our Savior sanction the system of American slavery I 
 Her northern, free-state clergy, with rare exceptions, 
 whatever they may feel on the subiect, rebuke it 
 neither in public nor in private. And her periodicals, 
 far from advancing the progress of abolitionism, at 
 times oppose our societies ; impliedly defending 
 slavery, as not incompatible with Christianity, and, oc- 
 casionally withholding information useful to the cause 
 of freedom. 
 
 As why should they not, or, rather, it might be 
 asked, how could they have done otherwise ? pulpit, 
 or press, with instructions like the following, issued 
 by the oldest bishop in the United States, for their in- 
 struction and guidance, though directed, as will be 
 seen, to a far more august dignitary than the bishop 
 
 himself : 
 
 Jubilee College, Illinois, N. A., ) 
 August 1, A. D. 1846. \ 
 To the RigJit Rev. Samuel, Lord Bishop of Oxjord, 
 England : 
 
 Very dear Brother in the Lord Jesus — Allow 
 me, the oldest bishop of the " Protestant Episcopal 
 church" in the United States, to address your lord- 
 ship on the subject of a pamphlet, entitled ''A Re- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 427 
 
 proof of the American Church," which "reproof" is 
 said to be contained in copious " extracts " from your 
 lordship's lately published history of said church. 
 
 Never having read this work from which the said 
 " reproof " is drawn, yet from many years' acquaint- 
 ance with your lordship's excellent character, 1 can 
 say, with full confidence, that the acerbity which is 
 spread over the pages of this pamphlet cannot be ap- 
 proved by your lordship. * * * 
 
 In the deepest sorrow of heart do I lament the mel- 
 ancholy effects produced by the circumstances before 
 me. Alas ! what do I see ? The bishops and clergy 
 of America censured for that of which they are not 
 guilty, and of which they are not the cause, and those 
 who censure them evidently unconscious both of the 
 evils which their mistaken censure produces, and of 
 the extent of the evils which must follow from the 
 weight of their character and opinion. 
 
 Before I proceed, I beg leave to state, that, in en- 
 deavoring, by mv feeble means, to shield the Prot- 
 estant Episcopal church in the United States, I crave 
 to be understood as not assuming political ground. 
 The Episcopal church in America did in no wise orig- 
 inate slavery. She always, in connection with other 
 benevolent persons of the day, raised her voice against 
 its introduction into the then British colonies. Nor is 
 she now, in any competent sense, a part of the civil 
 government to cure its temporal evils. Her bishops 
 are not, as the English prelates are, admitted to a seat 
 in the halls of legislation, nor are they allowed to 
 "rise in their places " to plead the cause of humanity. 
 All she can do is by her prayers and the preaching of 
 the gospel, and teaching the blessed doctrines of 
 Christianity, to endeavor to ameliorate the condition 
 of the slave ; but, like the primitive christians, 
 amidst the evils that surround her, she does not think 
 herself called upon to eradicate at once the evil. She 
 rather finds herself commanded, as were the servants 
 in the gospel, to exercise caution, " lest in eradicating 
 the tares, they root out the wheat also." Let both 
 grow together, saith our Lord. Let the evil be borne 
 for the sake of the good that may be done to the souls 
 of the ooor slaves. 
 
428 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The tenor of these remarks falls in with the exam- 
 ple of St. Paul. The gospel through his mouth and 
 the power of the divine Spirit had converted the noble 
 Philemon from the slavery of sin to the freedom of 
 the Son of God. This Philemon's " runaway slave " 
 enjoyed the same benefit at the hands of the same 
 apostle, some time after, while a prisoner in the city 
 of Rome. His name was Onesimus, and while minis- 
 tering to the necessities of the holy apostle, he heard 
 the word of God, and like his master, believed. It now 
 becomes a matter of great importance, in relation to 
 the subject of this letter, to know what directions the 
 apostle gave to the converted slave of Philemon, when 
 he sent him back to his master. Was it that he was a 
 freeman in the temporal sense, and must maintain his 
 rights as a part of "a whole gospel," Was it that as 
 a freeman he was to go back and claim the privileges 
 and immunities of this his temporal freedom, as it is 
 now understood by the abolitionists ? Was it that 
 henceforth he was to consider himself as having a right 
 to propogate his sentiments and " preach the whole 
 gospel ? That is to say that he had a right to creep into 
 his former master's kitchen and fill the heads of all the 
 bond servants with the ideas of their temporal rights 
 according to this creed, thereby exciting them to rebel- 
 lion, and if resisted, (and resisted they certainly would 
 be) to murder their kind master and take possession 
 of his estate. 
 
 Far, very far, from so wicked an estimate of the 
 holy religion unto the blessings and privileges of which 
 the apostle had admitted him, this now converted ser- 
 vant of the pious Philemon, that he sent the former 
 immediately back to serve the latter as heretofore. Not 
 a word of abolitionism was uttered in the presence of 
 Onesimus, or intimated by the apostle. He entreats 
 Philemon to receive his servant back again as a brother 
 beloved of Christ, though still a servant, and as such, 
 if required, engages to pay the losses he had occasioned 
 his master by his leaving him. " If he hath wronged 
 thee aught, put that to my account, I Paul have writ- 
 ten it with my own hand, I will repay it." How dif- 
 ferent this from the language of modern abolitionism. 
 Yet this, my Lord, is a part of our Holy Bible. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 429 
 
 Hence it is clearly to be inferred that the relations 
 of political society are to continue, be they what they 
 may, notwithstanding the most intimate ties of chris- 
 tian fellowship. 
 
 Here is another singularly illustrative act, furnished, 
 too, as is all the testimony introduced by the church 
 herself. In 1836, Rev. George W. Freeman delivered 
 two sermons in Raleigh, North Carolina, that were 
 published under the imposing title of " The Rights 
 and Duties of Slave-holders," with the following im- 
 primatur from Bishop Ives, of the diocese : 
 
 Raleigh, Nov. 30, 1836. 
 Rev. and Dear Brother — I listened with most un- 
 feigned pleasure to the discourses delivered last Sunday, 
 on the character ot slavery and the duties of masters 
 And as I learn a publication of them is solicited, I beg, 
 from a conviction of their being urgently called for at 
 the present time, that you will not withhold your con- 
 sent. 
 
 Your affectionate friend and brother in the Lord, 
 
 L. S. Ives. 
 In South Carolina, the "Society for the Advance- 
 ment of Christianity," made up of clergymen and lay- 
 men, the bishop at the head of it, seized upon the ser- 
 mons, imprimatur and all, and published them as re- 
 ligious tracts, for gratuitous distribution. 
 
 An extract from the sermons read thus : " No man, 
 or set of men in our day, unless they can produce a 
 new revelation from heaven, are entitled to prouounce 
 slavery wrong. * * Slavery, as its exists at the 
 present day, is agreeable to the order of Divine Provi- 
 dence." 
 
 And now one more witness, perhaps most valuable 
 of all, and a late bishop, too. On my table is a work 
 with this imposing title : 
 
 Sermons addressed to masters and servants, and pub- 
 lished in the year 1743, by Rev. Thomas Bacon, minister. 
 
430 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 of the. Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland, now 
 republished with other tracts and dialogues on the same 
 subject, and recommended to all masters and mistresses 
 to be used in their families. By the Reverend William 
 Meade. Winchester, Virginia. John Heiskell, printer. 
 
 In his preface, Bishop Meade remarks : "The edi- 
 tor of this volume offers it to all masters and mistresses 
 in our southern states, with the anxious wish and 
 devout prayer that it may prove a blessing to them- 
 selves and their households. He considers himself 
 most happy in having met with the several pieces 
 which compose it, and could not with a quiet con- 
 science refrain from affording to others the opportunity 
 of profiting thereby." 
 
 The title of this work shows its miscellaneous char- 
 acter. The sermons are in two series, the first, doubt- 
 less, by Mr. Bacon published in 1743. Then succeed 
 two others, author not named, but presumably by 
 Bishop Meade himself, and always so assigned while 
 he lived. And from them the following excerpts are 
 taken. He first shows that God appointed, for great 
 and wonderful ends, several offices and degrees in his 
 family, making some masters and mistresses, some 
 kings and rules, some merchants and sea-faring men, 
 some tradesmen, husbandmen and planters and labor- 
 ing men to work for their own living, and some He 
 hath made servants and slaves to assist and work for 
 their masters and mistresses who provide for them. 
 And as God hath sent each of us into the world for 
 some or other of these purposes, we are all obliged, 
 from the king to the poorest slave, to do the business 
 He hath set us about. And while you whom He hath 
 made slaves are honestly and quietly doing your busi- 
 ness and living as poor christians ought to live, you 
 are serving God in your low station as much as the 
 greatest prince alive. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 431 
 
 With more in the same strain, but not one duty 
 specified, not one grace, not one emotion nor aspiration 
 that rises above, or relates to any power or person, 
 only the master and mistress and their service and 
 adoration, as what follows, in the recent bishop's own 
 words, abundantly shows : 
 
 When people die, we know of but two places they 
 have to go to, and one is heaven, the other hell. Now 
 heaven is a place of great happiness, which God hath 
 prepared for all that are good, where they shall enjoy 
 rest from their labors. And hell is a place of great 
 torment and misery, where all wicked people will 
 be shut up with the devil and other evil spirits, and be 
 punished forever, because they will not serve God. 
 If, therefore, we would have our souls saved by 
 Christ, if we would escape hell and obtain heaven, we 
 must set about doing what he requires of us, that is, 
 to serve God. Your own poor circumstances in this 
 life ought to put you particularly upon this, and taking 
 care of your souls. * * Almighty God hath 
 been pleased to make you slaves here, and to give you 
 nothing but labor and poverty in this world, which 
 you are obliged to submit to, as it is his will that it 
 should be so. And think within yourselves what a 
 terrible thing it would be, after all" your labors and 
 sufferings in this life, to be turned into hell in the 
 next life ; and after wearing out your bodies in service 
 here, to go into a far worse slavery when this is over, 
 and your poor souls be delivered over into the posses- 
 sion of the devil, to become his slaves forever in hell, 
 without any hope of ever getting free from it. If, 
 therefore, you would be God's freemen in heaven, you 
 must strive to be good and serve him here on earth. 
 Your bodies, you know, are not your own ; they are at 
 the disposal of those you belong to ; but your precious 
 souls are still your own, which nothing can take from 
 you, if it be not your own fault. Consider well, then, 
 that if you lose your souls by leading idle, wicked 
 lives here, you have got nothing by it in this world, 
 and you have lost your all in the next. For your idle- 
 ness and wickedness are generally found out, and your 
 
432 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 bodies suffer for it here ; and what is far worse, if you 
 do not repent and amend, your unhappy souls will 
 suffer for it hereafter. 
 
 Having thus shown you the chief duties you owe to 
 your great master in heaven, I now come to lay before 
 you the duties you owe to your masters and mistresses 
 here upon earth. And for this you have one general 
 rule, that you ought always to carry in your minds, 
 and that is, to do all service for them, as if you did it for 
 God himself. Poor creatures ! you little consider 
 when you are idle and neglectful of your master's 
 business, when you steal and waste, and hurt any of 
 their substance, when you are saucy and impudent, 
 when you are telling them lies and deceiving them, or 
 when you prove stubborn and sullen, and will not do 
 the work you are set about without stripes and vex- 
 ation, you do not consider, I say, that what faults you 
 are guilty of toward your masters and mistresses, are 
 faults done against God himself, who hath set your 
 masters and mistresses over you in his own stead, and 
 expects that you will do for them just what you would 
 do for him. Pray, do not think I want to deceive you, 
 when I tell you that your masters and mistresses are 
 God's overseers, and that if you are faulty towards 
 them, God himself will punish you severely for it in 
 the next world, unless you repent. * * You 
 are to be obedient and subject to your masters in all 
 things. And christian ministers are commanded to 
 exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters 
 and to please them well in all things. You are to be 
 faithful and honest to your masters and mistresses ; 
 not purloining nor wasting their goods and substance, 
 but showing all good fidelity in all things. Do not your 
 masters, under God, provide for you ? And how shall 
 they be able to do this, to feed and to clothe you, un- 
 less you take honest care of everything that belongs 
 to them ? Remember, God requires this of you ; and 
 if you are not afraid of suffering for it in this world, 
 you cannot escape the vengeance of Almighty God. 
 
 Turning now to the next sermon, page 116 of the 
 volume, the bishop expounds, reasons, and argues to 
 this effect : 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 433 
 
 "All things whatsoever ye would, that men should do 
 unto you, do ye even so unto them ;" that is, do by all 
 mankind just as you would desire they should do by 
 you, if you were in their place, and they in yours. 
 
 Now, to suit this rule to your particular circum- 
 stances ; suppose you were masters and mistresses, 
 and had servants under you, would you not desire 
 that your servants should do their business faithfully 
 and honestly, as well when your back was turned as 
 while you were looking over them ? Would you not 
 expect that they should take notice of what you said 
 to them ? That they should behave themselves with 
 respect towards you and yours, and be as careful of 
 every thing belonging to you as you would be your- 
 selves ? You are servants, do, therefore, as you would 
 wish to be done by, and you will be both good servants 
 to your masters, and good servants to God, who requires 
 this of you, and will reward you well for it, if you do 
 it for the sake of conscience, in obedience to his com- 
 mands. * * * Take care that you do not fret, or 
 murmur, or grumble at your condition ; for this will 
 not only make your life uneasy, but will greatly offend 
 Almighty God. Consider that it is not yourselves, it 
 is not the people you belong to, it is not the men that 
 have brought you to it, but it is the will of God, who 
 hath by his providence made you servants, because, 
 no doubt he knew that condition would be best for 
 you in this world, and help you the better towards 
 heaven, if you would but do your duty in it. So that 
 any discontent at your not being free, or rich, or 
 great as you see some others, is quarreling with your 
 heavenly Master, and finding fault with God himself. 
 * * * There is only one circumstance which 
 may appear grievous, that I shall now take notice of, 
 and that is correction. 
 
 Now, when correction is given you, you either deserve 
 it, or you do not deserve it. But whether you really 
 deserve it or not, it is your duty, and Almighty God 
 requires that you bear it patiently. You may, per- 
 haps, think that this is hard doctrine, but if you con- 
 sider it right, you must needs think otherwise of it. 
 Suppose, then, that you deserve correction, you cannot 
 
434 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 but say that it is just and right, you should meet with 
 it. Suppose you do not, or at least, you do not deserve 
 so much or so severe a correction for the fault you 
 have committed ; you perhaps have escaped a great 
 many more, and are at last paid for all. Or suppose 
 you are quite innocent of what is laid to your charge, 
 and suffer wrongfully in that particular thing, is it not 
 possible you may have done some other bad thing 
 which was never discovered, and that Almighty God, 
 who saw you doing it, would not let you escape with- 
 out punishment one time or another ? And ought you 
 not in such a case, to give glory to Him, and be 
 thankful that he would rather punish you in this life 
 for your wickedness, than destroy your souls for it in 
 the next life ? But suppose that even this was not 
 the case, (a case hardly to be imagined,) and that you 
 have by no means, known or unknown, deserved the 
 correction you suffered, there is this great comfort in 
 it, that if you bear it patiently, and leave your cause 
 in the hands of God, he will reward you for it in 
 heaven, and the punishment you suffer unjustly here, 
 shall turn to your exceeding great glory hereafter. 
 
 So much for Bishop Meade ; his whole volume is a 
 wonderful exposition and illumination of the whole 
 slave system, as related to, or rather sanctified by the 
 American church, almost irrespective of denomination. 
 Judge Birney, might have reproduced these extracts 
 in his luminous tract on slavery and the church, and 
 on them alone, so far as the Episcopal body is con- 
 cerned, have rested his case forever. 
 
 The whole volume of Bishop Meade contains two 
 hundred and fifty pages of solid apology for, and jus- 
 tification of slavery as then existing at the south, in 
 the name of the christian religion, its Christ and God. 
 
 No other copy of it has ever come to my knowledge. 
 For it, I was indebted to the kindness of my excellent 
 friend, Mr. Samuel Brooke, a native Virginian himself. 
 He was born a Friend or Quaker, one of a family of 
 four or five brothers, all excellent men who early 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 435 
 
 removed into Ohio and became earnest, working abol- 
 itionists, eminently hospitable to anti-slavery lecturers, 
 both men and women ; besides being large proprietors 
 in the underground rail-road ; and frequently running 
 its nightly and well loaded trains, themselves. And 
 my friend, Samuel Brooke, who gave me Bishop Meade, 
 was long an active anti-slavery agent, and for a num- 
 ber of years, general agent of the Western Anti-Shiv- 
 ery Society, and since slavery was abolished, an officer 
 in the revenue department of the government service. 
 
 But a word more on the Protestant Episcopal church 
 and its defense and reverend defenders of the terrible 
 slave system. For besides Bishop Meade, another 
 eminent divine has left us his volume of sermons, now 
 on my table. It contains twenty-six discourses, and 
 the title-page reads thus : " Sermons preached on 
 plantations to congregations of negroes, by the Rev. 
 Alexander Glennie, rector of All Saints parish, Wac- 
 camaw, S. C, Charleston, S. C. Published and sold 
 by A. E. Miller, number 4 Broad street, 1844. 
 
 In his preface, Dr. Glennie says : "The following 
 sermons were written for the benefit of the colored 
 portion of my flock. As the want of simple sermons, 
 suited to the capacity of negroes, is frequently spoken 
 of, I have made this selection from among those which 
 I have been writing for several years past, and pub- 
 lish them in the hope that catechisists and religious 
 masters may find them of use." 
 
 The fourth sermon of the twenty-six is precisely in 
 tone and sentiment like the quotations from Bishop 
 Meade. Readers, therefore, could not be interested 
 in them. Let this one exclamation suffice. The text 
 is : " With good will doing service as to the Lord 
 and not to men." The first utterance is in two lines : 
 " In this part of the word of God, servants are taught 
 
436 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 with what mind they should do their service." And 
 then this exclamation : " What a blessed book the 
 Bible is, my brethren ! " 
 
 And the law of the state at that moment, punished 
 with twenty lashes any slave found in any assembly 
 convened for mental instruction, held in any secret 
 place, though in presence of white persons. And an 
 older law, never repealed, punished with fine of a 
 hundred pounds, any person who should teach a slave 
 to write. In North Carolina, to teach a slave to read 
 or to sell, or give a slave any book, Bible or tract not 
 excepted, was thirty-nine lashes, if the offender were 
 a free negro ; or, if a white person, a fine of two hun- 
 dred dollars. The reason given for this law was 
 stated in the preamble, and read, in part, thus : That 
 "teaching slaves to read and write tends to excite dis- 
 satisfaction in their minds and to produce insurrection 
 and rebellion." 
 
 More time and space have been given to the Episco- 
 pal church than was intended. Not by any means 
 because that was more culpable than the other denom- 
 inations ; but the nature of the testimony adduced, 
 appeared to throw more and clearer light on the rela- 
 tion between master and slave, and between both and 
 the church, than almost any other, making incontest- 
 ably certain that in church and clerical estimation, 
 slaves had no religious rights which white saints were 
 bound to respect here ; nor any salvation hereafter, 
 but such as must be worked out with " literal fear and 
 trembling," in wholly secular service for such masters 
 and mistresses as "God had set" to wield the lash 
 over them. To just such, and there were then three 
 millions of them, and a fourth million being born, 
 could Rev. Dr. Glennie, with deep devotion, exclaim : 
 " What a blessed book, my brethren, is the Bible ! " 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 437 
 
 But let one more Episcopal bishop come into this 
 court of inquiry and investigation ; "the Right Rev. 
 George W. Doane, bishop of New Jersey." For there 
 may be worse, as well as better men than Dr. Glennie 
 and Bishop Meade, and northern men, too. In 1857, 
 or near, there was published in Philadelphia, an 
 edition of the Episcopal "book of common prayer," 
 marked by the authentic imprimatur of Bishop Doane. 
 At that time no works of religious art were more ad- 
 mired than those of Ary Scheffer, and not one of his 
 more than his wonderful and deeply affecting "Chris- 
 tus Consolator." The New York Tribune shall tell 
 the rest, in an article copied into the National Anti- 
 Slavery Standard, of January 2d, 1858 : 
 
 All of our readers, we will venture to assume, are 
 familiar with the engraving of Ary Scheffer's famous 
 picture, entitled "Christus Consolator." They will 
 remember that the Savior is seated with the emblems 
 of his divine compassion around him, in the persons 
 of the wretched beings whose diseases he had cured, 
 or whose sorrows he had ministered unto. There is 
 the mother laying her dead infant at the sacred feet, 
 the sick man imploring the healing of the Almighty 
 touch, the maniac just restored to reason, with his 
 broken chain in his deliverer's grasp, the negro slave 
 holding out his fettered hands for help and deliver- 
 ance. Everybody that has seen it will recall it all. 
 Well, the Philadelphia publishers of the prayer-book 
 have selected this conception of Scheffer's as an ap- 
 propriate ornament of its title-page. And, surely, 
 they might have looked very far for a more fitting 
 one ; but they thought it needed some emendation 
 and expurgation before being put before the eyes of 
 dainty christians in this land of churches and of cart- 
 whips. The imploring face and the eloquent man- 
 acles of the slave might, perchance, disturb the 
 devotions of southern saints, and even make the cot- 
 ton-stuffed hassocks of many northern brethren un- 
 comfortable to their knees. So, to remove this cause 
 
438 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 of offense out of the way, the prudent publishers, 
 while they left all the other monuments of Christ's 
 compassion, most carefully expurged the negro. Per- 
 haps they thought it was derogatory to the divine 
 character of Jesus to suppose him capable of sympa- 
 thizing with a nigger. Perhaps they belong to the 
 sect of the philosophic (and we dare say pious) John 
 Randolph, of Kansas, who denies that negroes have 
 souls any more than horses or oxen. More likely, 
 their prophetic souls told them that the black face and 
 those chained wrists would stand in the way of the 
 mercantile transaction they were engaged in with the 
 church. We have seen many and base concessions to 
 slavery and pro-slavery on the part of publishers at 
 the north, but we think that this mutilation of an 
 artist's ideal, to suit the prayer-book to the state of the 
 slave-market, is rather the meanest, paltriest and dirtiest 
 of them all ! 
 
 We would not be understood as implying that either 
 the Episcopal church or the prelate who gave his 
 sanction to this edition of the Book of Common Prayer 
 is responsible for this worse than shabby trick. What- 
 ever faults may have been attributed to Bishop Doane 
 we believe that he was always in favor of the admis- 
 sion of the colored churches to equal right of repre- 
 sentation in the conventions of the church, during the 
 long struggles of Mr. John Jay (erroneously printed 
 William on page 426) to effect what justice and 
 canonical regularity alike demanded. And we be- 
 believe, too, that the section of the Episcopal church 
 usually distinguished as the high church, in this city 
 and in Boston, and perhaps generally in the free 
 states, set an example of christian spirit in this regard, 
 which their dissenting opponents might well follow. 
 In the city of Boston, we happen to know, while a 
 prominent Baptist church makes it a condition in the 
 deeds of the pews that they shall be forfeited if sold to a 
 Baptist with a colored skin, the Church of the Advent, 
 embracing many persons distinguished for genius, cul- 
 ture, refinement and wealth, not only admits black men 
 and women to a perfect equality of sittings, but ac- 
 tually seeks them out to invite them to come in. And 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 439 
 
 we believe the same christian spirit of equality before 
 God prevails among the high churchmen of this city, 
 also. This sneaking act of servility we attribute solely 
 to the publishers, and we have told of it merely as a 
 proof of the all-pervading influence of slavery, and of 
 the opinion of the Philadelphia printers as to its 
 supremacy in the church. The sensitive nerve of the 
 pocket answered to the sensibility of the slave-holding 
 conscience, and hence this despicable toad-eating, 
 even in the presence of God himself. 
 
 No southern sect was more zealous in giving what 
 was called " religious instruction" to slaves than the 
 Episcopalians. And by many, as has been shown, it 
 was held that the slaves should be taught to read the 
 book, to see for themselves that it was God and not 
 man, the Bible not the laws nor constitution that au- 
 thorised and ordained slavery ! And so why should 
 Ary Scheffer's picture contradict the doctrine and im- 
 pertinently disturb the consciences of the slave-holding 
 bishops and christians in New Jersey or in the south- 
 ern states ? 
 
 Of the lesser denominations composing the Ameri- 
 can church or churches, it may be sufficient to say 
 that generally they supported the dominant political 
 parties and their policy toward slavery, including, as 
 has already been shown, the execution of the fugitive 
 slave law to the end. The one exception was the old 
 school Scotch Covenanters, few indeed and extremely 
 sectarian, but their doctrine and practice on war as 
 well as slavery, were always respected and honored by 
 the abolitionists. 
 
 The Friends, or Quakers, permitted no slave-hold- 
 ing among members. But neither the duelling, slave- 
 holding, nor other known vices of Henry Clay, nor 
 the bloody and barbarous war record of Zachary Tay- 
 lor, besides being a very large slave-owner, prevented 
 
44° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES 
 
 a large proportion of the Quakers of the country from 
 supporting them as candidates for the presidency of 
 the United States. The Unitarians and Universalists 
 denied the sacramental fellowship to none, deeming 
 the table their Lord's and not their own. So a slave- 
 holder might presume to approach unforbidden. But 
 it was ever the opinion of at least one anti-slavery 
 apostle, that if a persistent horse thief or notorious 
 counterfeiter had made too bold approach, that, were 
 it only for the decency and respectability of the thing, 
 the question of expediency and propriety would not 
 have been deemed irrelevant or out of order. But 
 abolitionists as such never interfered with any denom- 
 inational doctrines or doings, only so far as they 
 might affect favorably or unfavorably the emancipa- 
 tion of the slaves. 
 
 The Free Will Baptists, too, like the Quakers, 
 claimed exemption from the guilt of slave owning, 
 and in 1839, at Coneaut, Ohio, refused to ordain a 
 slave-holder to the ministry, and voted that " with 
 sorrow of heart we learn that slavery is tolerated, de- 
 fended and practiced in the christian church." But 
 the whole truth soon disclosed that they could do 
 much more than call slave-breeders, slave-traders and 
 slave-holders the "Christian church." In New Hamp- 
 shire and Maine, where their great strength lay, they 
 reviled the anti-slavery movement, and expelled both 
 ministers and members for anti-slavery fidelity. This 
 very hour I spoke with one of them, a man of most 
 unspotted christian character, and to this time, a 
 faithful and able minister of the New Testament. No 
 democracy in slavery's darkest days was too foul for 
 Free Will Baptist embrace. The democratic party 
 long ruled Maine and New Hampshire, as it could not 
 have done but for the vote of that denomination. One 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 441 
 
 of its ministers insolently boasted to me that every 
 voting member in his church belonged to the demo- 
 cratic party, and he himself had held distinguished 
 civil office as a working member of the party. In all 
 these denominations just named, I knew many, or 
 some most honorable exceptions, to be sure not many 
 in all, and among the very best and bravest, some were 
 leading clergymen. 
 
 Of the Campbellites or Disciples, not so good ac- 
 count can be given. They were little known in New 
 England or New York. But where they were found 
 generally, though not quite always, they were on the 
 side of the oppressor. Their principal leader, if not 
 founder, was Rev. Alexander Campbell, and he was 
 also editor and controller of the Millennial Harbinger, 
 the denominational organ. In that, Dr. Campbell 
 wrote thus : 
 
 " Is the simple relation of master and slave neces- 
 sarily and essentially immoral and unchristian, as that 
 for example of the adulterer and adulteress ? We are 
 clearly and satisfactorily convinced it is not. It would 
 be, in our most calm and deliberate judgement, a 
 sin against every dispensation of religion, — Patriar- 
 chal, Jewish and Christian, — to suppose that the re- 
 lationship of master and slave was, in its very nature 
 and being, a sin against God and man." 
 
 In May of the same year he declares further : 
 
 " There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting 
 slavery, but many regulating it. It is not, then, we 
 conclude, immoral. 
 
 " The discipline of the church is the only discipline 
 under which christian slaves can be placed by christian 
 masters. If they will not faithfully serve their chris- 
 tian masters, who 'p arta l<e of the benefit' of their 
 labors, then are they, after proper instruction and ad- 
 
442 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 monition, to be separated from the church, and to be 
 put under whatever other discipline a christian master 
 under the existing laws of the state, may inflict." * * 
 
 * " To preserve unity of spirit among 
 
 christians of the south and of the north is my grand 
 object, and for that purpose I am endeavoring to show 
 that the New Testament does not authorize any inter- 
 ference or legislation upon the relation of master and 
 slave, nor does it, either in letter or spirit, authorize 
 christians to make it a term of communion. 
 
 "Every man who loves the American Union, as 
 well as every man who desires a constitutional end 
 of American slavery, is bound to prevent, as far as 
 possible, any breach of communion between christians 
 at the south and at the north." 
 
 So far Dr. Campbell. Dr. Shannon, president of 
 Bacon college, an eminent Disciple authority, also 
 wrote a Bible argument for slavery, with this conclu- 
 sion : 
 
 " Thus did Jehovah stereotype his approbation of 
 domestic slavery, by incorporating it with the institutions 
 of the Jewish religion, the only religion on earth that 
 had the Divine sanction." 
 
 In paying attention to the Free Will Baptists it 
 seemed proper to refer to their democratic tenden- 
 cies at a time when that party ruled supreme and 
 slavery enjoyed the full benefit. The Campbellites 
 were similarly patriotic, and appear to have so con- 
 tinued, even to the very last presidential election, as 
 the following passage from the famous " Dorsey-Gar- 
 field correspondence " proves : 
 
 On August 30, 1 881, Mr. Garfield wrote thus : " If 
 we carry Indiana in October, the rest is comparatively 
 easy. We shall make a very serious, perhaps fatal, 
 mistake if we do not throw all our available strength 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 443 
 
 into that state. I have taken great pains to ascertain 
 the situation of the parties there, not from extensive- 
 correspondence alone, but I have sent intelligent and 
 trustworthy observers to various parts of the state to 
 make special enquiries on various aspects of the con- 
 test- * * From twenty-five thousand to thirty 
 thousand voters of Indiana are members of the denom- 
 ination of Disciples, and at least half of them are dem- 
 ocrats ! A quiet, but very earnest movement, wholly 
 outside the state committee, has been organized, and 
 is being vigorously and judiciously pushed, with the 
 strongest probability that at least two thousand five 
 hundred changes of votes in our favor will result. 
 * 1 went over the whole ground with Sen- 
 ator Dorsey when he was here en route for Chicago, 
 and his letters since his arrival there strongly confirm 
 my opinion. 
 
 No comment is needed here. My own experience 
 among " Disciples," not only in Indiana and Ohio, 
 where they were very numerous in the hottest days of 
 the anti-slavery conflict, but in other parts of thew r est, 
 induced me to believe that not only were "at least 
 half of them democrats," but that they were very far 
 from being of the highest order even of the demo- 
 cratic party. 
 
 One personal encounter I well remember. My trav- 
 eling companions and myself, three or four in all, went 
 on a beautiful October Saturday to Hiram, the seat 
 of the college of which Mr. Garfield was principal and 
 head, to commence in the afternoon a strictly moral 
 and religious anti-slavery meeting to hold over Sun- 
 day. But in the afternoon a crowd of the pupils got 
 possession of the house, and behaved in so vile and 
 vulgar a manner as to prevent our being heard, and 
 before night we were glad to leave the place. 
 
444 ACTS 0F ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The Millennial Harbinger was law and gospel there 
 to all intents and purposes, coming fresh from Vir- 
 ginia, then the land of whips, chains and red hot 
 branding irons, and all the frightful paraphernalia and 
 appointments for slave-breeding and slave-trading, as 
 well as slave-holding. Virginia, where so late as 1849 
 a law was enacted making it criminal to teach any 
 slave or free colored person to read or write. Vir- 
 ginia, where the kind-hearted Margaret Douglass was 
 imprisoned for teaching some free colored children to 
 read only the New Testament and catechism. Vir- 
 ginia, under whose soil ran the roots of Preceptor Gar- 
 field's Hiram college, whose students, studying under 
 the afterwards President Garfield, could, and did, 
 wantonly, wickedly, maliciously, under a bright Octo- 
 ber sun, enter, break up and scatter a strictly moral, 
 peaceful, religious, anti-slavery convention, and com- 
 pel those who had come to hold it, to leave the town ! 
 
 THE AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY. 
 
 This society was organized in 1816, its object being 
 " to encourage a wider circulation of the Bible without 
 note or comment," using only the then accepted ver- 
 sion, and its field was the world, as opportunity and 
 resources permitted. The slave states had some aux- 
 iliary societies, though in most, if not every one of 
 them, a sixth part of the people were prohibited, under 
 heavy penalties, from being taught to read. True the 
 slaves were held amenable to the law, and seventy 
 offenses which they might commit were punishable 
 with death ! And in the election of president and 
 members of congress the masters were permitted to 
 count three-fifths of the slaves as free men and cast 
 their votes for them accordingly ; and in the year 
 1837, many millions of surplus revenue were distribu- 
 ted among the states on the same unjust and unrigh- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SI AVI. k\ VPOSTLES. 445 
 
 teous principle, giving six slave states nearly seven 
 million dollars ; while Pennsylvania, with a free pop- 
 ulation larger than all six of them, received less than 
 four million dollars. 
 
 But the parent Bible society never reckoned even a 
 fractional humanity in slaves. So far as reading and 
 writing were concerned, it just plunged the whole 
 slave population down to the dead level of brute 
 beasts, as will be shown. Strange confusion would 
 sometimes result from a state of society so unnatural, 
 so monstrous. In 1841, a little Bible auxiliary soci- 
 ety existed in New Orleans, and one of its distribu- 
 ting agents was overheard asking a group of slaves if 
 they could read or write, or wanted a Bible ? He was 
 immediately arrested as an incendiary and carried to 
 court. His name was Chauncey B. Black, and the New 
 Orleans Picayune, of August 12, 1841, gives a minute 
 account of the trial. The accuser was William H. 
 Avery ; the magistrate was Mr. Recorder Baldwin, 
 and Mr. Maybin, Mr. Lowndes, Mr. Stevens, Mr. 
 Goodrich, and Rev. Mr. Wheaton, (good Massachu- 
 setts names) were summoned to testify. 
 
 The accused stated that he was agent of the Bible 
 society, and that he was appointed by Mr. Lowndes, 
 one of the prominent members of it. He said he was 
 then engaged in taking the names only, of such per- 
 sons as stood in need of the Bible and would accept 
 it from the society, and entered on his list indiscrim- 
 inately white and colored, free persons and slaves. 
 
 The witnesses admitted their organization and ob- 
 jects; had raised a thousand dollars already, and 
 ordered books from the parent depository in New 
 York to that amount ; some in German, French and 
 Spanish, as well as in the English language, but they 
 
446 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 declared " it never for one moment entered into the 
 mind of the society to present one single Bible to a 
 slave." 
 
 Mr. Lowndes distinctly stated, and impressed it 
 strongly on the mind of the court, " that before any 
 Bibles were distributed to those whose names might 
 be taken by the accused, the list was to be first sub- 
 mitted to him. And as it was opposed to his own 
 feelings, and contrary to the intention of the society, 
 he would certainly furnish no Bible to any slave." 
 
 " The strongest, most satisfactory evidence was 
 given that the accused bore an excellent character ; 
 and that in speaking to the slaves at all he acted from 
 a misconception of the instructions of Mr. Lowndes, 
 and an ignorance of his duties as an agent of the Bible 
 society." 
 
 A Mr. Micon was counsel for the accused, and made 
 a good and successful defense. 
 
 "The Recorder briefly addressed the prisoner, told 
 him he highly approved the laudable work of distribu- 
 ting the Bible, in which he was engaged. But while 
 executing that duty, he must be cautious not to in- 
 fringe on other rights which are as saered to tins eom- 
 munity as religion itself. Believing that in speaking to 
 the slaves he was actuated by no evil intention, he 
 would discharge him, bidding him God-speed in his 
 religious career, and cautioning him against ever 
 bringing himself in contact with our institutions." 
 
 The latest Louisiana enactment on the teaching of 
 slaves letters which I can find was in 1830, to this 
 purport : 
 
 " Any person who shall attempt to teach any free 
 person of color or slave to spell, read or write, shall, 
 upon conviction thereof, be imprisoned not less than 
 one, nor more than twelve months." 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 447 
 
 But what shall be said to this provision for oral in- 
 struction, in that same Louisiana ? According to 
 Judge Stroud, quoting First Martin's Digest, 610 : 
 " It shall be the duty of every owner to procure for 
 his sick slaves all kinds of temporal and spiritual as- 
 sistance which their situation may require." 
 
 Here truly was death-bed repentance contemplated, 
 distancing in extremity that of the thief on the cross. 
 But there were many at the south, as has already been 
 intimated, who believed that the slaves should have 
 the Bible, and be taught to read it. The reason given 
 was that it would tend to make and keep them contented 
 with their lot in bondage, to know that it was all by di- 
 vine appointment ! 
 
 In the year 1854, at the Abbeville, South Carolina, 
 district Bible society anniversary, this subject was 
 agitated, and had earnest and extended discussion. 
 This society was organized in 1823, and had, in 1854, 
 seven working auxiliary associations. At the anniver- 
 sary of that year, a principal address appears to have 
 been delivered by Robert A. Fair, Esq., and published 
 in the society proceedings, under this heading : 
 
 "The christian duty of placing the Bible in the 
 hands of the negro, and teaching him to read it." 
 
 A few passages from that discourse will be both in- 
 structive and interesting : 
 
 If the teachings of holy writ were at war with the 
 institution of slavery, and we were struggling to 
 maintain it in opposition to those teachings ; or if the 
 proposition were to put the slave in possession of a 
 knowledge of the arts and sciences — to confer a high 
 degree of intellectual culture — fully to educate him, 
 we might be disposed to yield the point. But how 
 stands the case ? Why, that the teachings of the Bible 
 are not only not unfriendly to the institution of sla- 
 very, but that in those teachings, the institution is 
 
44& ACTS OF ANTI-SI. AVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 most amply recognized. It is upon them that we tri- 
 umphantly rest its defense. 
 
 That question being settled beyond dispute, the in- 
 genious orator proceeds": 
 
 We would not be startled at the announcement of 
 the fact that two-thirds of our slave population do 
 not know or believe that the subject of slavery, or 
 their condition, is ever alluded to in the Bible — that 
 two-thirds of them are ignorant of the authority by 
 which we essay to hold them in bondage, or demand 
 at their hands obedience and service. To such, how 
 galling is the yoke ! How bitter is the bondage ! 
 
 So much for the slaves and the Bible. Now for the 
 masters. For the humane, Mr. Fair does not forget 
 to deal Fairly by both parties. As, for example : 
 
 Nor would we be startled at the announcement of 
 the fact that many masters are ignorant of any scrip- 
 tural view of the subject — ignorant of the true 
 grounds upon which to place the institution and the 
 duties of masters ; which ignorance betrays them into 
 many errors and abuses, the tendency of which is to 
 undermine the institution. Now, relieve the minds of 
 both parties of their ignorance and darkness, and 
 thoroughly educate and indoctrinate them into clear, 
 sound, intelligent scriptural views of the whole subject, 
 and of what an immense weight will the institution be 
 relieved ! and of what a burden will the bosoms of 
 slaves, and the minds of masters be relieved ! 
 
 Here are the motives, reasons for teaching both 
 masters and slaves the scriptural doctrine of chattel 
 slavery. That both may know that God and the Bible 
 were at the bottom of the whole horrible system. 
 
 But what said the parent organization, " the Amer- 
 ican Bible society," now under our consideration, to 
 such reasoning and such religion ? It said, through 
 its secretary, and the Monthly Record, organ of the 
 society, just this : 
 
 This subject of furnishing Bibles to slaves, is one 
 of vast importance and will receive more of the at- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 449 
 
 tention of our southern auxiliaries than heretofore. 
 I find that the recent excellent address, delivered in 
 South Carolina, and reprinted in part in our February 
 Record, has been widely read, and so far as I have 
 learned, meets the approval of the christian com- 
 munity. 
 
 But the Southern Presbyterian reviews Mr. Fair with 
 great severity — disagrees with him altogether, thus : 
 
 We insist that the laws are imperiously demanded 
 by a regard to the public safety. Is there any great 
 moral reason why we should incur the tremendous 
 risk of having our wives and children slaughtered, in 
 consequence of our slaves being taught to read in- 
 cendiary publications ? * * * Mr. Fair seems 
 to be uninformed of the fact that the scriptures are 
 read in our churches every sabbath day. And these 
 very passages which inculcate the duties of masters 
 and slaves, in consequence of their textual connec- 
 tion, are more frequently read than other portions of 
 the book. 
 
 It is worthy of note that Mr. Fair is not a clergy- 
 man. Possibly, the editor of the Presbyterian is not. 
 But he evidently belongs to the church militant, and 
 holds statute law forbidding slaves to read such "in- 
 cendiary publications" as Isaiah, and the sermon on 
 the mount, as absolutely needful for the safety of " the 
 throats of the wives and children of slave-holders." 
 
 Such, at that time, was the American Bible society 
 and its auxiliaries, judged by the declarations and tes- 
 timonies of its organs and officers. Its own friends, 
 and no othe/s. 
 
 THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
 And now we touch bottom, if ever, in sounding the 
 depths of clerical devotion to slavery. To the Tract 
 society, ministers, always its controlling, governing in- 
 fluence, especially in the publication department, the 
 
45° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 slave-holder could well have sung, in the strain of 
 King Solomon : 
 
 " Many daughters have done virtuously, 
 But thou e.xcellest them all." 
 
 The Bible society could say it was instituted for one 
 sole, specific purpose, to disseminate the scriptures, 
 " without note or comment." The tract society was 
 chartered : 
 
 "To diffuse the knowledge of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ as the redeemer of sinners, and to promote the 
 interests of vital godliness and sound morality, by the 
 circulation of religious tracts, calculated to receive 
 the approbation of all evangelical christians." 
 
 And so, when asked to testify in one little sheet, 
 against slavery, as was asked by thousands of church 
 members and contributors to its funds, were it " only 
 so much as quotations from scripture, bearing on the 
 various elements of oppression which enter into sla- 
 very, it dared to refuse, on the simple ground that all 
 tracts were to receive the approbation of all evangel- 
 ical christians." And how could slave-holders ap- 
 prove even scripture protest against their patriarchal 
 institution ? 
 
 Indeed, the time came, when not only whole 
 churches and their ministers protested against the 
 course of this society, but even state ecclesiastical as- 
 sociations earnestly petitioned, as well as solemnly 
 protested, in relation to the subject. It was the gen- 
 eral association of Michigan that asked, with but a 
 single dissenting vote, for the scripture tract against 
 slavery. For only " so much as the naked Bible texts 
 against it." In one instance, the answer was soured 
 with an insolence worthy the plantation itself. "If 
 the southern churches remain evangelical churches, 
 and southern christians are evangelical christians, it 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 451 
 
 is their right, and your duty, to abstain from publishing 
 efoen truths, the publication of which, they would not 
 approve. 
 
 But instead of dwelling on the controversy, which 
 for a long time only worried the society, and its nearly 
 harmless opponents, and which would neither expiate 
 the tediousness nor reward our toil, let us glance a 
 little at some of the society action in various ways to 
 shield the bloody idol from the attacks of the earnest, 
 upright and downright abolitionists, whose word and 
 work were always, not only respected by the south, 
 but greatly feared ; as our New York and Boston anti- 
 slavery anniversaries always showed, to the very last. 
 
 Besides tracts, the society published, for cheap sale 
 or gratuitous distribution, many bound volumes, and 
 sometimes they contained sentiments quite blasphe- 
 mous to the worship of the slave-holding Moloch. 
 These were always, with wondrous prudence and fore- 
 sight, suppressed. Some of these works were English, 
 and copy-righted, too. But that made no difference. 
 They were not only "pirated," as it was called, but 
 most unrighteously perverted (and for most piratical 
 purposes, too), from the author's meaning. Instead 
 of denying, the publishing committee defended what 
 they did : they defended it in one of their annual re- 
 ports, thus : " We do expunge whatever the christians 
 of the south would regard as untruthful, harsh, or de- 
 nunciatory." 
 
 Here, now, is an instance. The well-known work, 
 by the eminent Dr. Harris, of London, on covetous- 
 ness, entitled : " Mammon," a prize essay, was thus 
 seized and published by the tract society, with this 
 slight, but, to slave-holders, terribly significant omis- 
 sion. The author, showing the immoral influence of 
 covetousness, said : " Its history is the history of 
 
452 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 slavery and oppression, in all ages." " Evangelica 
 christians at the south," might stand "oppression," 
 but "slavery," never. And so "oppression" was re- 
 tained, but not " slavery." 
 
 Another English work, republished by the society, 
 was entitled, " Habitual exercise of love to God," by 
 Joseph John Gurney, an eminent preacher of the 
 society of Friends. It was remarkable that the society 
 should have taken up a work of such an arch heretic 
 as a Quaker preacher. But so it did, and mutilated 
 it to this extent. On page 142, the author reaches a 
 conclusion thus : 
 
 Had this love always prevailed among professing 
 christians, where would have been the sword of the 
 crusader ? where the African slave trade ? where the 
 odious system which permits man a property in his 
 fellow man, and converts rational beings into market- 
 able chattels ? 
 
 The tract society makes this sentence read like this : 
 Listen ! 
 
 If this love had always prevailed among professing 
 christians, where would have been the sword of the 
 crusader ? where the tortures of the inquisition ? where 
 every system of oppression and wrong by which he 
 who has the power revels in luxury and ease, at the 
 expense of his fellow men ? 
 
 Another foreign book was " Life of Mary Lundie 
 Duncan, of Scotland. On one occasion, she had 
 listened with youthful ardor and sympathy, to the elo- 
 quence of the distinguished orator, as well as aboli- 
 tionist, and, subsequently, member of parliament, 
 George Thompson. She afterwards wrote this, 
 which the tract society suppressed from her work : 
 
 We have lately been much interested in the emanci- 
 pation of the slaves. I never heard eloquence more 
 overpowering than that of George Thompson. I am 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 453 
 
 most thankful that he has been raised up. O that the 
 measure soon to be proposed in parliament, may be 
 successful ! " 
 
 Later, when he was about to visit the United States, 
 at the earnest desire of Garrison and other abolition- 
 ists, to plead the cause of the American slave, Mrs. 
 Duncan addressed him as, "George Thompson, the 
 eloquent pleader for the abolition of slavery ; " and 
 closed her communication with these strains : 
 
 " Yet go, heaven-favored hero, go ! 
 
 Pursue your glorious plan ; 
 Abridge the weight of human woe, 
 And raise the slave to man. 
 
 " Heaven bless your cause ! Your country's prayers, 
 Attend you o'er the sea ! 
 Go break the chain that slavery wears, 
 And bid the oppressed go free ! " 
 
 All this, and much more was most unrighteously 
 suppressed by the mendacious publication committee 
 of the Tract Society ! 
 
 Mrs. Lundie was in New York when this memoir of 
 her daughter was already in the hands of that com- 
 mittee ; and it was well understood that she was 
 called upon by one of the secretaries and modestly 
 asked, even urged to consent to the mutilations. But 
 she persistently declined ; the lines being peculiarly 
 precious to her for their sentiment, and for her dear 
 daughter's sake. The shameless omissions were how- 
 ever made, reckless of all truth and right, regardless 
 of a mourning mother's feelings, and tenderest love ! 
 
 One other of these marvelous changes, and mon- 
 strous omissions, is all for which time, space, and 
 patience can permit. 
 
 Dr. Cotton Mather, so well known in Puritan his- 
 tory, among his voluminous writings, left one entitled, 
 Essays to do good," and here is a passage : 
 
454 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 O that the souls of our slaves were more regarded 
 by us ; that we might give a better demonstration 
 that we despise not our own souls, by doing what we 
 can for the souls of our slaves ! How can we pre- 
 tend to Christianity, when we do no more to christian- 
 ize our slaves ? 
 
 But the Tract Society carefully, prudently, printed 
 the word servants, instead of slaves! 
 
 And the following whole paragraph was most 
 wickedly suppressed : 
 
 But if any servant of God may be so honored by 
 Him as to be made the successful instrument of 
 obtaining' from a British Parliament, an act for the 
 christianizing of the slaves on the plantations, then it 
 may be hoped something more may be done, than has 
 yet been done, that the blood of souls may not be 
 found in the skirts of our nation. A controversy 
 with heaven and our colonies may be removed, and 
 prosperity may be restored ; or however the honorable 
 instrument will have unspeakable peace and joy in the 
 remembrance of his endeavors. In the meantime, the 
 slave trade is a spectacle which shocks humanity. 
 
 " The harmless natives basely they trepan 
 And barter baubles for the soul of man. 
 The wretches, they to christian climes bring o'er. 
 To serve worse heathen than they did before ! " 
 
 Such were the suppressions and changes made by 
 the Tract Society in reproducing the " Essays to do 
 good," more than a hundred years after they were 
 written. One other fact should be stated here which 
 even adds to the audaciousness of the whole proceed- 
 ing. For a long time the work was out of print. It 
 was afterwards reissued in England ; and slavery 
 having already been abolished there, the allusions to 
 it were for that reason omitted. But the editor in a 
 foot note, stated what they were, and why they were 
 omitted. That edition was followed in this country ; 
 but not the notes ; the English editor omitting the 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 455 
 
 passages because they were inapplicable to his coun- 
 try, and giving his reasons; the Tract Society omit- 
 ting them because they were applicable, in dreadful 
 sense, and saying nothing about it ! 
 
 For some of these startling statements and facts, 1 
 am indebted to a masterly letter of remonstrance sent 
 by the unanimous vote of the Fourth Congregational 
 church in Hartford, Conn., to the officers and direct- 
 ors of the American Tract Society. The letter was 
 prepared by a committee consisting of the pastor of 
 the church, Rev. Wm. H. Patton, John Hooker, Esq., 
 an eminent lawyer of Hartford, husband of the well, 
 and widely known Mrs. Elizabeth Beecher Hooker, 
 and Mr. Milo Doty. It was published in a tract form 
 of thirty-four closely printed pages, and circulated to 
 the number of several thousands. In 1855, the stereo- 
 type plates were generously presented to the American 
 Tract Society, and the work was immediately adopted 
 as No. 16 of its tract publications. 
 
 But to the old Tract Society, the mighty appeal was 
 of small account; it had already received thousands of 
 similar substance and disposed of them after its pleas- 
 ure. It is only too certain that its officers knew very 
 well the quality of the remonstrants, especially their 
 leaders and directors. I have already more than 
 intimated that they were not of formidable or danger- 
 ous character to the slave-holding communion, and 
 their northern allies and abettors. When the Ameri- 
 can churches were proved "the bulwarks of American 
 slavery," and its "forlorn hope," indeed, by testimony 
 immovable as earth's foundations, the abolitionists 
 came out of them as their only escape from the sin 
 and its plagues. But the " new organization " anti- 
 slavery as it was called, did not come out from among 
 the slave-holders ; and the American Tract Society 
 
456 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 knew it, and knew they had no intention of such sep- 
 aration. The directors of the American board of 
 foreign missions knew it, and the Baptist board, and 
 the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
 church. There were some pretended separations, and 
 we have seen to what purpose. The tract society 
 saw to what purpose, at the time, and knew just what to 
 expect ; and the society was not disappointed. 
 
 There was a seeming separation among the support-' 
 ers of the American Tract Society. 
 
 It should be said here that the original tract 
 society was organized and incorporated in Massachu- 
 setts with head quarters at Andover.. In 1823, its 
 name was changed from New England Religious 
 Tract, to American Tract Society. In 1825, the 
 American Tract Society was incorporated in New 
 York under a new charter, the Massachusetts society 
 becoming a branch of it : but surrendered all its 
 stereotype plates and publications to the new society, 
 with agreement that it should be furnished with all 
 the publications it required, at cost not greater than 
 it had been before. This union continued till 1859 ; 
 then, in consequence of the dissatisfaction of many 
 members, and some officers, (expressed like the 
 Hartford and other letters,) because the society would 
 not publish tracts disapproving of American slavery, 
 the Boston society withdrew and resumed its 
 former independent position. And what readers 
 must desire to know is, exactly what position did the 
 Boston department assume and sustain towards the 
 parent stock at New York, from which they had 
 sawed themselves off, and that had been deliberately 
 guilty of the outrages just revealed and exposed, and 
 which the remonstrants themselves urged with such 
 power as motive and reason for their final withdrawal. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 457 
 
 Among the many writers, whether as editors of 
 periodicals or authors of reports of societies, or of con- 
 ventions, or of tracts, or larger works on slavery and 
 kindred themes, the anti-slavery conflict produced no 
 one of finer quality, everyway, especially for patient, 
 untiring industry and perseverance, clear, calm and 
 ever conscientious judgment of men and of parties, 
 whether political or religious, than Mr. Charles K. 
 Whipple. To his sterling faithfulness, energy and 
 perseverance, editors, lecturers and other writers and 
 workers were often indebted for facts, statements and 
 statistics, inevitable to their success. His exhaustive 
 work on the relations to slavery of the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, in nearly 
 two hundred and fifty large pages, closely printed in 
 fine type, compiled wholly from its own annual reports 
 and other official documents, was a labor greater than 
 has made the fame and fortune, too, of many authors 
 of our day. 
 
 And his invaluable tract of twenty-four well-filled 
 pages on the two Tract societies after the separation, 
 and their relations towards each other, should have cov- 
 ered with blushes of shame the faces of all who pre- 
 tended to anti-slavery character, only in consideration 
 of such repentance and reformation as that fully and 
 faithfully disclosed. The dissenters were numerous, 
 and doubtless many were earnest and sincere. Thirty 
 auxiliary bodies, thirteen being states, or their equiv- 
 alent, could not all have been pretended. But we 
 shall see into what they were led, and out of what they 
 unfortunately were not led. They did at last compel 
 the Darent society to lend an ear to their petitions 
 and protests, and a committee of fifteen, ten being 
 ministers, and nearly all well-known friends of the 
 society and approvers of its former unrighteous courses, 
 
458 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 was appointed to make inquiry and investigation into 
 what too many already knew. And all who did know 
 should have been ashamed. 
 
 Subsequently that committee reported to this effect : 
 
 Resolved, That the action of the executive, as re- 
 ported, be approved. 
 
 A long debate ensued. Various substitutes and 
 amendments were offered and rejected, and finally 
 the original resolution, which was presented by Bishop 
 Mcllvaine, was adopted, by a vote of the great major- 
 ity of the members and directors present. 
 
 And immediately following this action of entire ap- 
 proval of their former course, in the completest pos- 
 sible manner, the whole board of officers was re- 
 elected : 
 
 And now the question is as to the course of the re- 
 monstrants, "Thirty auxiliary bodies in all, thirteen 
 of them representing states or other large districts." 
 
 Their first resolution at their meeting in Boston 
 directed the executive committee to report next year 
 on "the expendiency of dissolving the connection be- 
 tween this society and the National Society at New 
 York." No hurry, it seems. "Next year " will do. 
 And then the inquiry will only be as to "the expedi- 
 ency " of the step. And now for their fourth resolu- 
 tion to this purport : 
 
 Resolved, That we entertain the highest respect for 
 the wisdom, judgment and sincerity of the special com- 
 mittee of fifteen, appointed by the American Tract 
 Society of New York, at the annual meeting of 1856, 
 and do heartily adopt the resolutions reported by 
 them, and declare our purpose to carry into effect the 
 principles embraced in those resolutions. 
 
 Why not then have held their peace and kept to 
 their work ? Entertaining " the highest respect for 
 the wisdom, judgment and sincerity of that committee 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 459 
 
 of fifteen," why not have let them alone ? How would 
 that committee have looked turning round and pass- 
 ing a like admiration "for the wisdom, judgment and 
 sincerity," especially sincerity of those dissenters? 
 But to give facts, not comments on them, is our pres- 
 ent business. 
 
 Here is another of the declarative resolutions of the 
 disaffected : 
 
 Resolved, That the political aspects of slavery lie 
 entirely without the proper sphere of this society and 
 cannot be discussed in its publications ; but that those 
 moral duties which grow out of its existence, as well 
 as those moral evils which it is known to promote, 
 and which are condemned in scripture, and so much 
 deplored by evangelical christians, do undoubtedly 
 fall within the province of this society, and can and 
 should be discussed in a fraternal and christian spirit. 
 
 One more quotation will be sufficient, and more than 
 sufficient for the purposes of this work. 
 
 Passing over much which might be cited from this 
 annual report of the Boston society, [its forty-fourth] 
 take the following from the official " Address of the 
 executive committee to the friends of the society, in 
 the following July, a few weeks after their anniversary. 
 They say : 
 
 It may be well to state that the organic relations of 
 this society to the New York society have not been 
 materially changed by the above resolutions. This 
 society may therefore be made the channel for the 
 contributions of all persons who, for any reason, may 
 prefer our position or our policy to that of the other 
 society. * * We invite no separation from 
 that society, but under present circumstances we be- 
 lieve the greatest amount of good will be done by each 
 society occupying the whole country as its field. We 
 are not an anti-slavery society, but simply a religious 
 tract society. We earnestly entreat the churches of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ no longer to permit this im- 
 
460 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 portant enterprise to decline because of divers views 
 on the various questions arising out of the slave sys- 
 tem, the time and occasion for that having passed ; as 
 two societies now offer their facilities for conveying 
 the gospel of Christ in this form to those whoso much 
 need that gospel. 
 
 And this voluminous and tedious testimony is but 
 a specimen of what might be adduced ; and to what then 
 do all these confessions amount ? In the first place 
 the new association of dissenters declares in so many 
 words, " We are not an anti-slavery society, but sim- 
 ply a religious tract society." Only that, and nothing 
 more. And what was the New York Society, but just 
 that, and nothing less ? 
 
 Another confession is : " The organic relations of 
 this society to the New York, have not been materially 
 changed." And another : " We invite no separation 
 from the New York society." And this one more, 
 most remarkable of all, explaining why neither is, nor 
 should be an anti-slavery society, nor pretend to be ; 
 as it is only "certain moral duties which grow out of 
 the existence of slavery, as well as those moral evils 
 which it is known to promote, that lie within our 
 proper sphere." What is this but flat denial that sla- 
 very in itself is sin at all ? Drunkenness, in itself, is 
 no evil. Is it ? Nor adultery, any more than mar- 
 riage. Is it ? 
 
 The old tract society published testimonies solemn 
 as judgment, heaven and hell, against intemperance, 
 novel-reading, card-playing, horse-racing, theater- 
 going, and chewing and smoking tobacco. But to de- 
 grade men and women to brute beasts, goods and 
 chattels, and then treat them accordingly, as did the 
 Bible and tract societies, not counting them as families 
 at all, that was no sin. Both societies proposed to 
 supply states or counties, cities or towns, as the case 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 461 
 
 might be, with their works, " every family willing to 
 receive them." And reported every family so sup- 
 plied, when they knew, and everybody knew, that to 
 sell or give a Bible or tract to any slave, and in some 
 states, to any free person of color, was a penal offense 
 and sure to be sorely punished by the statute law ! 
 The old society knew it had nothing to fear from the 
 new, and trusted it accordingly. Dr. Nehemiah 
 Adams, of Boston, had published two volumes of most 
 unblushing vindication of slavery, one of over two 
 hundred, the other almost three hundred pages, and 
 he was one of the most prominent and influential 
 officers in the publication department of the tract 
 society, and never endangered the sale of his works 
 by printing tracts or protests against his favorite in- 
 stitution. The declared object of the tract society is, 
 in part : "To diffuse the knowledge of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, as the redeemer of sinners, and to pro- 
 mote the interests of vital godliness and sound 
 morality." 
 
 And it was no violation of "sound morality" to 
 establish, support and sanctify, generation after gen- 
 eration, a slave system, that converted every slave 
 cabin into a brothel of 'prostitution, or a hovel or sty 
 of beasts, where marriage and parentage were un- 
 known, not one marriage of all the millions of slaves 
 ever sanctioned by law, not one mother ever made 
 legally secure for one hour in the possession of her 
 babe ; no, not one ! Not one slave girl, no matter how 
 beautiful, had the slightest protection for her virtue, 
 though dearer to her, as was thousands of times 
 proved, than life ; no, not one ! The whole slave 
 code was declared in one terse utterance : 
 
 " If any slave shall presume to strike any white 
 person, such slave may be lawfully killed." Killed, 
 of course, on the spot ! 
 
462 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 In all this, there was no outrage on " sound moral- 
 ity," nor "vital godliness," in tract society estimation ; 
 in one society, more or less, than in the other. " We 
 are not an anti-slavery society." No, truly not. You 
 need not have said it. 
 
 Herodotus tells us that the Babylonians and 
 Cyprians had a law or custom, compelling every 
 woman, once in her life, to visit the temple of Venus, 
 and prostitute herself to the honor of that unclean 
 divinity. But Babylonians and Cyprians were not 
 christians. They were not even Jews. They were 
 pagans. And then, their women need go there but 
 once. The slave girl or woman never went anywhere 
 else. "Vital godliness," and "sound morality," in 
 Bible and tract society sense, sent her there, kept her 
 there all her life, and the people, excepting a few abo- 
 litionists, said amen and amen. The great ecclesias- 
 tical organizations wielded a power in shaping and 
 controlling their character and destiny, second only to 
 omnipotence. The commission of the faithful, un- 
 compromising abolitionists, was unmistakable: "Go 
 and speak my words unto them, whether they will hear 
 or whether they will forbear. * * And they, 
 whether they will hear or whether they will forbear, 
 (for they are a rebellious house), yet shall they know 
 that there hath been a prophet among them." And 
 the faithful among them spoke that divinely inspired 
 word, crying aloud and sparing not, showing the 
 southern slave-holder his transgressions, and his 
 northern abettor and apologist his sins, till the dying 
 agonies of Bull Run and over a thousand other bat- 
 tles and bloody encounters, answered for them, mag- 
 nified and made honorable their ministrations, and 
 showed to the whole world that there was yet a God 
 in Israel ! 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 463 
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 
 
 Iii the early part of this work allusions were made 
 to that "bill of abomination," known as the fugitive 
 slave law of 1850. That law was often executed, and 
 sometimes in Boston, with peculiar atrocities and ag- 
 gravations, the navy yard near by, furnishing ample 
 facilities for the necessary.military force. Once, how- 
 ever, troops were ordered from the interior of Massa- 
 chusetts, and quartered in Faneuil hall, till the poor 
 victim was sent back to his whipping post and brand- 
 ing-iron. Honest men and women were beggared by 
 imprisonments and heavy fines, for harboring and 
 concealing, or refusing to aid in the blood-hound 
 work of pursuing and capturing fugitive slave men 
 and women in their nightly flight to Canada. Massa- 
 chusetts pulpits, even Andover theological seminary, 
 ably defended the diabolical business. On the 7th 
 of March, 1850, Daniel Webster nearly stunned, not 
 only his constituency, but the whole north, by his 
 speech in the United States senate, in advocacy of 
 that direful enactment. The old federal and whig 
 party succession of Massachusetts, had bowed low 
 and long to the despotic, slave power before. All the 
 compromises in the constitution had been exacted and 
 enforced, unrighteous and unjust as all of them were, 
 from the first. Then, even against constitutional re- 
 striction, Florida and Louisiana had been purchased 
 for slave states. The Seminole and Mexican wars 
 ensued, as a first consequence, continuing on through 
 a dozen years and more, all " red with uncommon 
 wrath," in many of the atrocities perpetrated on the 
 poor Indians ; but now new vials of slave-holding in- 
 dignation, as well as power, were to be uncorked upon 
 the north. The people of the northern states had 
 long violated the solemn command to " remember 
 
464 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 them that were in bonds as bound with them," and 
 now a stern decree came up from the slave power, to 
 go and be bound with them in chains more ignoble than 
 the shackles of the slaves themselves ! Robert 
 Toombs, of Georgia, had prophesied that he would yet 
 "call the roll of his slaves on Bunker hill." And now 
 he did so, and in Faneuil hall as well ! Slaves armed 
 to protect the lordly slave-holder in recapturing, in 
 Boston streets, their fellow slaves, who had been at 
 least brave enough to attempt escape to Canada, land 
 of kings and queens, where they could be free ! 
 
 So was it when Professor Stuart sat down in the 
 sacred shades of Andover, and wrote a work all ablaze 
 with blasphemy against liberty, entitled, " Conscience 
 and the Constitution, with remarks on the recent 
 speech of Daniel Webster, in the senate of the United 
 States, on the subject of slavery ; " a work in large oc- 
 tavo, of about a hundred and twenty pages. It was 
 not the first time the venerable professor had drawn 
 his pen in defense of his friend, Mr. Webster, in some 
 of his official acts, as the history of the Tyler admin- 
 istration revealed. 
 
 From Professor Stuart's hundred and eighteen 
 pages, less than one will here be given, the first part 
 bearing directly on the return of fugitive slaves. On 
 page sixty, he asks : 
 
 What, now, have we here ? Paul sending back a 
 christian servant, who had run away from his christian 
 master. * * * He enjoins it upon Onesimus 
 to return to his master forever. This last phrase has 
 respect to the fact that Paul supposed that the sense 
 of christian obligation which was now entertained by 
 Onesimus, would prevent him from ever repeating the 
 offense. And all this, too, when Philemon, being an 
 active and zealous christian, would in a moment have 
 submitted to any command of Paul, respecting Ones- 
 imus. Why, then, did Paul send him back ? There 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 465 
 
 !s only one answer to be given, viz., that Paul's chris- 
 tian conscience would not permit him to injure the 
 vested rights of Philemon. * * * Paul's con- 
 science sent back the fugitive slave ; Paul's conscience, 
 then, like his doctrines, was very different from that 
 of the abolitionists. Theirs, encourages him to run- 
 away, and then protects him in the misdeed. The 
 conscience of Paul sends him back the fugitive with- 
 out any obligation at all on the ground of compact ; 
 theirs, encourages and protects his escape, in the face 
 of the most solemn national compact. And all this 
 for consciences sake. 
 
 Some of the states, Massachusetts among them, had 
 enacted state laws or measures, contravening in some 
 respects, the demands of the slave law. On that sub- 
 ject, Professor Stuart wrote: "To the position our 
 honored legislature in their recent resolves, viz.: 
 That the case of the fugitive shall' be tried 'by 
 jury, in the state where the claim is made,' / am un- 
 able, highly as I respect their motives, to yield my as- 
 sent." 
 
 And, in summing up, the professor says, and this 
 closes the citations from him : 
 
 I have done with this subject. The brief result, as 
 it strikes my mind, is, that the Constitution in respect 
 to fugitives held to service or labor, must be obeyed. It 
 is useless to talk about conscience as setting it aside. It 
 is an imputation on the men who formed our govern- 
 ment. It is holding them up to the world as having 
 neither justice nor humanity. 
 
 In these extracts the italicizing and capitalizing are 
 the professor's own. Let them speak for themselves. 
 I will only say, they are but samples of his whole 
 work. 
 
 President, Nathan Lord, D. D., of Dartmouth Col- 
 lege, soon after the appearance of " Conscience and the 
 Constitution" wrote to the author, Professor Stuart, a 
 reply in a pamphlet letter of two and forty pages 
 
466 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 octavo, correcting, not the doctrine, or morality of his 
 work, but some statements of fact relating to Puritan 
 history and slavery. Professor Stuart wrote on page 
 109 : " In looking back on the history of slavery in 
 our country, whence do we find it to have originated ! 
 From Great Britain, and from her alone ; all the colo- 
 nies fought pitched battles against it ; but the king 
 and parliament defeated them. North and south were 
 united on this question — united before the Declaration 
 of Independence, and united for a long time after it." 
 
 These statements of the learned Professor, the 
 more learned President Lord refutes in masterly man- 
 ner ; he shows that slavery existed in all the British 
 colonies with exception of Georgia for a short time 
 and with a power of erudition and argument proves it, 
 and apparently, approves it too. He even implicates 
 the Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania 
 Quakers with the rest. The President says : 
 
 A foggy sort of notion is beginning to prevail, that 
 from their origin, at any rate from their settlement in 
 this country under William Penn, the Quakers as a 
 denomination, have been opposed to slavery. This 
 position if true, would only prove that among many 
 wild and visionary theories which distinguish them 
 as a sect, they adopted that of abolition. But the 
 notion is not true ; opposition to slavery sprang up 
 among them at a comparatively recent date. William 
 Penn lived and died a slave owner. There is a letter 
 on record from T. Matlack, an aged Friend, to William 
 Findlay, which gives account of the rise and progress 
 of this idea among them. The letter says : 
 
 The practice of slave-keeping in New Jersey and 
 Pennsylvania, commenced with the first settlement of 
 the province, and certainly was countenanced by 
 William Penn. * * * Penn left a family 
 of slaves behind him. * * * Slave-keeping 
 of course, became general among Friends. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERV APOSTLES. 467 
 
 President Lord says Penn attempted to legislate, 
 not for the abolition of slavery, but for the sanctity of 
 marriage among slaves, and for their personal safety ; 
 but he also declares, "there is no more reason to sup- 
 pose George Fox was an abolitionist, than that 
 Governor Winthrop was an abolitionist. And by 
 Rees's Cyclopedia, by Sir Edward Coke, Sir William 
 Temple and Lord Campbell, he establishes the fact of 
 practical slave-holding and slave-trading, and shows 
 that slaves could neither acquire nor hold any property 
 in land nor goods, and children always followed the 
 condition of the parents ; and further, that the 
 renowned Sir John Hawkins first opened and estab- 
 lished the African slave trade with Queen Elizabeth, a 
 ready accomplice. So President Lord argues that it 
 was natural and reasonable that Puritans in the colon- 
 ies should hold and trade in slaves as they did, even 
 " branding them on the shoulder" and exporting cargoes 
 of their Indian prisoners to the West Indies. At the 
 close of King Philip's war, he says, " a great many of 
 the chiefs were executed in Boston and Plymouth, and 
 most of the rest of the prisoners were shipped for 
 slaves to the Bermudas and other parts." This, 
 he says, and truly, '' was an affair of state." Ami 
 then whole pages more, which must not only have 
 enlightened the mind of Professor Stuart, but greatly 
 gladdened his heart ; as showing that even the Puri- 
 tans, always regarded as only very little, if any, lower 
 than the angels, were not only slave-breeders, and 
 traders, but exalted the red hot branding-iron as part 
 of the paraphernalia of the diabolical business. 
 
 President Lord's own estimate of slavery is directly 
 given in two other pamphlets, now on my table, beside 
 the long letter to Professor Stuart. In one, entitled 
 "A True Picture of Abolition," he says (page 8, 9) : 
 
468 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 The south is slave-holding. It is so constitutionally 
 and legally. Slavery enters into the structure of its 
 society, not a thing of accident, possibly not every- 
 where of preference, but an inheritance according to 
 the common law of earth ; a providential order, with- 
 out which, in view of necessarily, that is naturally and 
 statedly existing diversities of race, culture and con- 
 dition, the social state could not have been constitu- 
 ted at all, and " life, liberty and happiness " would 
 have been insecure to a christian people, who had 
 just bought them at so great a price. Slavery was not, 
 indeed, the cornerstone, but the practical condition of 
 the Union, the constitution and the laws. * * 
 It had existed in the usages of nations. It was 
 common law ; it was incorporated into the civil insti- 
 tutions of Moses ; it was recognized accordingly by 
 Christ and His apostles. They regulated it by the 
 just and benevolent principles of the New Testament. 
 They condemned all intermeddlers with it. * 
 
 Wherever it was subsequently abolished its want of 
 physical adaptation and consequent inconveniences, 
 not its essential wrongfulness, were mainly the reasons 
 for its abolition. 
 
 On page ten the president continues : 
 
 So it stood till a generation arose that comprehended 
 none of these living realities ; that honored not God 
 and the Father, and for His everlasting word of 
 natural and revealed religion, substituted a higher law. 
 Among them were born the abolitionists, who are now, 
 officially, supreme over the land. They were at first 
 a small class of speculative enthusiasts, intoxicated by 
 the airy pantheism of France and Germany, which 
 had covertly breathed its spirit into the " glittering 
 generalities" of the Declaratien of Independence, and 
 by that instrument insensibly affected the public mind. 
 They were men of no mark nor figure ; inflated vis- 
 ionaries, mistaking their own fancies for another gos- 
 pel, which is not another. 
 
 With almost two pages octavo of similar if not 
 even worse. 
 
ATI'S OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 469 
 
 Of the doings in congress he wrote : " Calhoun and 
 Webster at the head, or such men as Brooks (Bully 
 Brooks) and Sumner at the tail, could never have ion- 
 tended greatly to the public detriment, till congress 
 let in subjects of discussion which concerned more 
 immediately the government of gods. That was our 
 original mistake. * * Common mistake of all coun- 
 tries, as virtue declines. * * * Till we made that 
 blunder the country was united, prosperous and happy. 
 There had been no such instance in the history of the 
 world." 
 
 One quotation more. Would that space and patience 
 of readers, would permit insertion of the whole pam- 
 phlet. On pages twelve and onward the president 
 proceeds : 
 
 Abolitionism became an institution, organic and 
 vital, body and soul ; a working power. It was en- 
 vious at God's appointed orders. It labelled'the con- 
 stitution, " A covenant with death, an agreement with 
 hell.'" * * Gaining confidence as it acquired 
 ascendency over the simple, the curious, the fearful, 
 the imaginative, the undisciplined, the dispassionate, 
 it aspired to popular control and revolutionary 
 distinction. But to that end it must become re- 
 ligious. It was ready for the occasion. 
 It appealed to scripture, now twisted by improved ver- 
 sions, arbitrary criticisms and fantastic commentaries 
 from its literal, direct and scientific meanings, till it 
 was made as subservient and as obscure as a Delphic 
 oracle. * * To the same end it must also 
 be political. It affected the well-being of the state. 
 It studied intrigue and finesse. It became an expert. 
 It disciplined its ranks. It found the balance of party 
 power and then sold itself to the progressive party. 
 The price was the government of the country. The 
 object was the dissolution of the Union, and then the 
 introduction of the New Jerusalem. * Such 
 
 is the moral record of abolitionism, brought down to 
 the date of presidential proclamations. 
 
47° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 So we speak, for so we make good our cause. Aboli- 
 . tionism is at fault. It is false and wrong. It destroys 
 the ancient landmarks. It obliterates the old paths. 
 It puts its heel on constitutional relations. It sunders 
 what God has united, and unites what God had sun- 
 dered. 
 
 So much, and surely very much, for Nathan Lord> 
 D. D., president of Dartmouth college. Readers may 
 remember, about the college mob we had there twenty 
 years before this pamphlet was written. For this did 
 not appear till 1863. This was penned amid the bat- 
 tle thunders and dying shrieks and groans of the war 
 of the rebellion — over the graves of thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands already dead ! With such 
 presidents of colleges as Dr. Lord, and such theolog- 
 ical professors as Moses Stuart, what wonder that we 
 had our pro-slavery riot and tumult at Dartmouth ! 
 What wonder that we had such general assemblies of 
 the Presbyterian church ! And such missionary, Bible 
 and tract societies ! And what wonder that slavery, 
 with its inevitable attendant horrors, so supported, so 
 sanctified, continued so long ! 
 
 But to return to the fugitive slave law and its eccle- 
 siastical sanctification. The two volumes of Dr. 
 Adams, of Essex-street church, Boston, published in 
 1854, and 186 1, are before me. The whole soul and 
 spirit of them both is summed up in these few words, 
 in the volume of 1851, and with these few, readers 
 will be glad to have done with them : 
 
 '' Unless we choose to live in a perpetual state of 
 war, we must prevent and punish all attempts to de- 
 coy slaves from their masters. Whatever our repug- 
 nance to slavery may be, there is a law of the land, 
 a constitution to which we must submit, or employ 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 47 1 
 
 suitable means to change it. While it re mains, all our 
 
 appeals to a higher law are fanaticism" 
 < 
 
 And Dr. Adams was, for many years, a prominent 
 
 member of the publication committee of the American 
 tract society. 
 
 The last fugitive slave bill was signed by acting 
 President Millard Fillmore, and became a law, Sep- 
 tember 1 8th, 1850. Its execution soon began, but, 
 everywhere, was attended with difficulties ; was some- 
 times resisted even unto blood. The pulpit soon 
 came to the rescue ; Boston sure to be in the van. 
 
 On the first Thanksgiving day, Dr. Sharp, of the 
 Baptist church, and Rev. Mr. Rogers, of the Congre- 
 gational, gave each a sermon, which was subsequently 
 printed, from which a few extracts will now be given. 
 Of the Essex-street pastor, Dr. Adams, nothing need 
 be adduced after the passage from his South-side view 
 of Slavery," just presented. 
 
 Dr. Sharp said : 
 
 It is our duty to submit to the government extend- 
 ing over the region in which we dwell, and to obey 
 the magistrates under whose jurisdiction we are. The 
 condition of our obedience is, that they who claim to 
 govern us, have legal authority for doing do. With 
 these facts well established, our obedience is not to be 
 measured and graduated by our estimation of the 
 wisdom or folly of the laws under which we live ; 
 their partiality or impartiality, their justice or injus- 
 tice. With one exception, while any given law exists, 
 although it may operate upon our interests unjustly 
 and oppressively, we must, nevertheless, submit 
 to it. * * * 
 
 * * * To bring this subject nearer 
 
 home, let us consider the duty of subjection to 
 the powers that be, as applicable to the fugitive slave 
 law. And in what I would say, I would have it un- 
 derstood that I discriminate between slavery and mul- 
 titudes of excellent persons who hold slaves. Before 
 
472 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 the colonies became independent, or the union of the 
 states was formed, slavery, that system of injustice, 
 oppression and wrong (as it appears to me), was so 
 interwoven with all the habits, interests and worldly 
 hopes of the people at the south, that they had not 
 the courage, the faith, the disinterestedness, to set the 
 slaves free. And yet they feared that their slaves, 
 hearing of the freedom of their own race in other 
 states, would attempt to escape. The southern mem- 
 bers, therefore, of the convention that framed the na- 
 tional compact called the constitution of the United 
 States, insisted on a clause securing the return of 
 fugitives from labor, on legal evidence of the fact 
 being presented. • This engagement became part of 
 the constitution. I regret its existence, but there it 
 is. * * * 
 
 * * * The question then arises, are 
 you willing to enjoy the benefits of the great national 
 compact, but to violate its conditions ? How much 
 there would be of high-mindedness in such a course, 
 I leave it to you to determine. * * * 
 
 * * * Much less can the free citizens 
 of the United States, living under the protection, and 
 enjoying the benefits of our blessed laws, with all the 
 advantages of the national compact, be justified in 
 encouraging poor fugitive slaves to acts of resistance, 
 in putting forth the fist, or unsheathing the sword of 
 rebellion. In this state, world-wide renowned for its 
 steady habits, no one should allow himself to have the 
 hardihood and unseemliness to say that a law of con- 
 gress cannot be here enforced. 
 
 * * * Our country, extending from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific, having a coast and an interior 
 unparalleled in the world's history, is the new Canaan, 
 the land of promise, to which the poor and the tax- 
 ridden, and they who have yet something left, are 
 coming from the decaying institutions and over-stocked 
 millions of older lands. But it will be a Canaan no 
 longer than we prize the union, revere the constitu- 
 tion, and obey the laws, wise or unwise, right or wrong, 
 until we can modify or change them from unwisdom 
 to wisdom, from wrong to right, by the only process 
 that is justifiable, the process of legislation. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 473 
 
 So held and taught Dr. Sharp. It is easy to re- 
 member, if hard to accept the words of those brave 
 men, who, eighteen hundred years before, had said : 
 "Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken 
 unto you more than unto God, judge ye ? " 
 
 But Dr. Sharp held with Dr. Adams, that "appeal 
 to any higher law than the constitution, while that was 
 in force, was fanaticism j '" 
 
 But we must hasten to Mr. Rogers, of the Winter- 
 street Congregational church : 
 
 Within the limits of this broad land, the citizen of 
 the United States is everywhere at home ; the soil of 
 his country beneath his feet, the flag of his country 
 above him, and the protection of its laws around him, 
 he is nowhere an alien and a stranger in this common- 
 wealth of our Israel. * And yet 
 with peace in our borders, with plenty in our store, 
 with every privilege and opportunity open to all men 
 for development of mind, for appreciation of all the 
 benefits pertaining to air, to earth, to sea ; and yet 
 with all of good we have, and can have, there are dif- 
 ferences among us : there are dissensions ; and bitter 
 words are uttered, and bitter words are retorted, and 
 men speak of resistance to law ; some men speak of 
 the nullification of the constitution. Men speak of 
 disunion, horrible as it is, and it has thrilled every 
 nerve in my soul ! Horrible as it is, these words 
 have become as familiar as household words. It has 
 been proclaimed : " Law or no law, constitution or no 
 constitution, the hands of the law and of the people 
 should not execute the behests of the court, within 
 the precincts of this commonwealth. 
 
 It is one of the articles of the constitution, that a 
 person held to service or labor in one state under the 
 laws thereof, shall be delivered up on the claim of the 
 party to whom such labor is due ; I say that it is one 
 of the articles of the constitution ; for you might 
 readily gather from the popular cry, and from the 
 tendency of the popular feeling, that the whole of the 
 constitution of the United States was nothing but an 
 
474 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 instrument for the oppression of the slave, in utter 
 forgetfulness of every other right and every other duty. 
 It is one of the articles of that constitution ; being one 
 of the articles of that constitution, then I gather that 
 whatsoever party is in power, it makes no difference 
 what the name, what the principles they affirm before 
 or after election, whatever party is in power, in their 
 place in congress, if there were no law already made, 
 pursuant to this article of the constitution, they would 
 be bound to make a law, and a law which should carry 
 out this provision and restore the fugitive to the claim- 
 ant upon due proof of that claim and that service to 
 be rendered in another state. 
 
 Do you say, no ? do you say that it would be wrong ? 
 that it is sinful, thus to do ? but I ask you to consider 
 as an honest man, with a consciousness that your rep- 
 resentative had called the God of heaven to witness 
 that he will maintain the constitution of these United 
 States, would you have him perjure himself and refuse 
 to carry out the constitution ? Leave it to an infidel 
 Christianity to teach such morals, but when you ask 
 counsel of God, expect no such answer. * 
 
 * * The fugitive asks us to interpose ; when he 
 does so he asks us to do what the people of the 
 United States, or a majority of them, have said we 
 shall not do ; he asks us to do precisely what we have 
 agreed not to do. We are under bonds to the millions 
 of this country to keep the peace, and to make this a 
 government of law, and not a government of force. 
 Oh, it is a miserable alternative in which we are placed 
 by the mistakes, by the guilt of our fathers beyond the 
 waters, in bringing this curse upon us, and leaving us 
 to decide between what seems the voice of charitv and 
 mercy, and a law vigorously severe, to which neverthe- 
 less we must bow. If the slave ask us to stand 
 between him and the marshal armed with the power 
 of the people, for his arrest, what can we say to him, 
 but make the miserable confession that we have dis- 
 possessed ourselves of the power to stand between 
 the oppressor and the oppressed ? 
 
 Then it follows, and should be distinctly understood, 
 that if a fugitive from bondage come to our common- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 475 
 
 wealth, and abideth here, he docs it on his own respon- 
 sibility, and does it with a knowledge that those among 
 whom he lives, have dispossessed themselves of all 
 power under the constitution and the law to stand 
 between him and his master. This we can do for him, 
 but, when the question is presented to us, shall we 
 obey the law ? and the answer is, nay, but resist it ; 
 what do we, but nullify the constitution of which the 
 law is but the practical working? What do we hut 
 make void the organic law of the country? What do 
 we but that which South Carolina has attempted in 
 the days of her nullification, and seems likely to repeat 
 in this second case of her madness ? Ah ! we said bit- 
 ter things against South Carolina in those days. We 
 told her there were bayonets enough and men enough 
 in the old Bay state to put her in her place and keep 
 her there. *If we were right then, we are 
 wrong now, But it is said we are wiser now 
 and we may have been right. Then the law is a sin 
 against Cod, and the constitution a law organic in the 
 life of the nation. Well if it be so, then it seems to 
 me the inference is very plain. This confederacy 
 ought not to exist an hour ; if it be so, then those men 
 who voted for the admission of California as a free 
 state into this confederacy, were very wicked men. It 
 was voting the admission of that commonwealth 
 into a confederacy against the God of heaven. 
 
 But when the slave asks me to stand between him 
 and his master, he asks me to do something more than 
 free him ; and here is the difficulty. Could you sep- 
 arate the question of the slave's freedom or bondage, 
 from those difficulties with which, under the law, it is 
 involved ; would you make it a clear question here 
 upon this soil, whether he should be a free man or a 
 slave, there is not a hand or heart within the limits of 
 the commonwealth, but would go at once for freedom. 
 W T e must be false to our fathers, false to ourselves and 
 to the spirit breathed into the soul of the word of 
 Cod, if we could even have any other sympathy than 
 sympathy with the oppressed,, against the oppressor, 
 the bondman rather than the bond master. But when 
 the slave asks me to stand between the marshal and 
 
 3° 
 
476 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 himself, what does he ask me to do ? simply to free 
 him ? no, that is not all ; he asks me to substitute 
 force for law ; anarchy for government. He asks me 
 to overturn the tribunals of justice, to break into frag- 
 ments the power of a nation overshadowing all, and 
 protecting all. He asks me to do him right by wrong- 
 ing twenty millions of men ! The question comes 
 home to my soul ; I am not at once ready to answer ; 
 I pause ; I reflect ; I meditate ; if I resist that law, I 
 nullify the constitution ; in doing it, I am righteously 
 held to answer for all the natural and proper conse- 
 quences of my conduct. 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, and because there 
 is a God. 
 
 Then I say unto you, as a minister of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the conviction of my conscience is that 
 upon the ground of reason, there is no safety for us, 
 no better hope for the slave, than for the time, the 
 carrying out of the constitution and laws of the coun- 
 try ; and that as a question of conscience, God 
 requires this at our hand. 
 
 But if the spirit of sedition and rebellion become 
 rampant in the land ; if the ordinary strength of the 
 magistracy cannot countervail it, if there be trea- 
 son, if there be rebellion ; if needful, to defend the 
 constitution of the fathers, the magistracy call you 
 to arms, arm ! If they call you to the field of battle, 
 stand in your ranks as your fathers stood, shoulder to 
 shoulder ; if to take human life, take it ; and if you fall, 
 your memory shall be hallowed with those -xdiose bones 
 mo ul dei- 011 the slopes of Bunker Hill ! 
 
 Verily, verily ! Had Mr. Rogers lived in Babylon, 
 or Cyprus, with what alacrity would he have despatched 
 his daughters in all their maiden modesty, and virgin 
 purity, to the foul embraces of Mylitta's horrible rites ! 
 "As a minister of the gospel" he demanded "obeying 
 the constitution and the laws." 
 
 This is what he says. " When my daughter asks 
 me to save her from such foul pollution, what does 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 477 
 
 she ask ? simply that I save her? no, that is not all ; 
 she asks me to substitute force for law ; anarchy for 
 government. I pause; I reflect; I meditate. If I 
 resist the law, I nullify the constitution ! * * 
 
 * When my daughter asks me to stand between 
 
 her and the law, what does she ask ? she asks me to 
 murder a nation's life ; and I will not do it, because 
 I have a conscience, and because I believe there is a 
 God ! " 
 
 And that was Rev. William Rogers, of Winter street 
 Congregational church in Boston, in the one thousand 
 eight hundred and fiftieth year of christian grace ! 
 And of the Independence of the United States, the 
 seventy-fourth ! Change only the civil fugitive slave 
 law for the sacred prostitution act of Babylon and 
 Cyprus, and the parallel is complete ; is perfect. 
 With only this tremendous difference in favor of 
 Babylon and Cyprus ; that there, one visit to the teni' 
 pie sufficed forever. But return to American slavery, 
 under its fugitive law was crossing that awful "bridge 
 of sighs," over which was inscribed, 
 
 "All hope abandon ye who enter here !" 
 
 And now this protracted argument is done ; not for 
 lack of material, but only out of respect to space and 
 time. For be it ever remembered, all that has been 
 adduced, and surely it is much, is but specimen of 
 whole volumes which yet remain. .For instance, the 
 masterly argument of Mr. Whipple, on the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, is a 
 book of nearly two hundred and fifty pages, closely 
 printed in fine type, and made up entirely from the 
 annual reports and other official literature of the board 
 itself. And his work might have been extended to 
 two or three times its present size ; and the same sub- 
 stantiallv, could be said of the sources from which the 
 
478 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 information and evidence have been derived on the 
 American Bible and Tract societies, and on the great 
 leading, controlling, religious sects and organizations 
 that represented the religious sentiment of the country 
 at the beginning, and in the progress of the great 
 anti-slavery conflict. And what must be the conclu- 
 sion from it all ? Judge Birney answered early : "The 
 American churches the bulwarks of American slav- 
 ery." Stephen S. Foster replied later, in tones of 
 thunder, " The Brotherhood of thieves ; or a true pict- 
 ure of the American church and clergy." Then came a 
 ringing voice from the west : " Slavery, and the slave- 
 holder's Religion ; " by Samuel Brooke, of Ohio, and 
 still later : "The Church as it is : the Forlorn Hope of 
 slavery," a larger pamphlet than the others. Nor were 
 these all. And all pursuing the same course, which 
 was to permit the accused to furnish all the testimony; 
 not half, nor a part, but the whole. Nor was there 
 any cross questioning, nor inferential evidence, from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 What more could church or clergy have asked, 
 unless in the language and spirit of those who 
 demanded of the great teacher of Nazareth : " What 
 have we to Jo with thee? let i/s alone!" Or what can 
 this generation ask of us to-day ? the very few of us 
 who yet remain on earth ? and in justice to ourselves 
 and our cause, what less, or otherwise, could, or 
 should we abolitionists, have done ? 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 SOME PERSONAL SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES-^ 
 LAST SPEECH IN AN ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY 
 GATHERING. 
 
 Returning now to the acts of the anti-slavery 
 apostles, it should be explained that this lung digres- 
 sion to the acts of another order of apostles became 
 necessary after the work was begun, and extends it, 
 too, beyond my original design. Within the past 
 year, the enemies of the anti-slavery enterprise, or 
 their children, have not only renewed their old calum- 
 nies against the faithful and uncompromising friends 
 and advocates of that enterprise, but they have urged 
 them with augmented aggravations. Their language 
 need not be here reproduced. They themselves have 
 given it to history and to posterity, and they and the 
 sure years, will render a true and just verdict. 
 
 But though the book has grown already beyond my 
 purpose at the outset, it shall not close without at 
 least some fraternal and friendly allusions to a few 
 faithful men and noble women with whom I became 
 acquainted in the lecturing field, each single one of 
 whom deserves a volume of finer strains than mine. 
 
 The Burleigh brothers, Charles C, and Cyrus M., 
 came to the field almost in their boyhood, but valiant, 
 vigorous as the young knights of chivalry, equal al- 
 ways to any encounter. Had Charles C. Burleigh 
 pursued the profession of the law, as was his inten- 
 tion, there was no eminence he could not easily have 
 reached. On the platform, in argument, he had no 
 
480 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES 
 
 superior and few equals. We always felt safe when 
 Burleigh came to the stand. He never rose but when 
 he had something to say. And, generally, when he 
 had spoken, not much more was needed on the ques- 
 tion in hand. With his pen, when he did write, he 
 was not less mighty, as his " Thoughts on the Death 
 Penalty," away back in 1845, proved. N. P. Rogers 
 wrote of it in the Herald of Freedom : " I have gone* 
 over the 'Thoughts' as particularly as I am able to a 
 book, and can witness to its being all that the reader 
 has right to expect from the power of the writer. It 
 is arranged with great judgment and order, and winds 
 about the poor old gallows tree an uninterupted 
 chain for its destruction. Chain lightning, I wish it 
 might prove, to strike and splinter it to its very roots, 
 as I have seen a white pine, that had been just visited 
 by one of these touches from the clouds. * * A 
 trimmer, abler, more masterly argument, has not been 
 put together in words. Burleigh's antagonist is Dr. 
 George B. Cheever. Burleigh doesn't leave a rag of 
 his parson's gown on his back. Nobody makes an ar- 
 gument perfect and unanswerable but Charles Bur- 
 leigh. Give him a good cause at the bar, as good as 
 he has here, and let him speak first, and the adversary 
 council would never reply. The court wouldn't let 
 him. His client wouldn't let him, not if he had com- 
 mon sense. The counsel wouldn't himself, for he 
 wouldn't find an inch of ground left to start on. I 
 never knew so absolute an arguer as Burleigh. And 
 he has displayed himself completely in this work." 
 
 A younger brother, Cyrus M. Burleigh, was an 
 earnest, faithful worker in the lecture field, but fell an 
 early victim to consumption. Amiable, gentle, com- 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 48] 
 
 panionable, simple and sincere, he was ever well re- 
 ceived, and most beloved and respected, where best 
 known. 
 
 Abby tLelley Foster and Lucy Stone both achieved 
 enviable success in their anti-slavery work, not to 
 speak of their ever abounding labors since in the 
 cause of woman suffrage, to well fill a volume. And 
 each has a brilliant and cultivated daught< r, too, 
 every way equal to its production. Mrs. Foster was 
 in the lecturing field when I entered it, in 1840, and 
 had been for a number of years. And she is the last 
 survivor of those I found there who continued con- 
 stantly in the conflict till the battle was won. She 
 early entered to conquer or die, and nobly and bravely 
 she kept her vow. Lucy Stone came later, but came 
 not less with the spirit of hero and martyr, and came 
 long before the period of peril, as well as of sacrifice 
 and severe suffering was passed. I have seen her in 
 truly ferocious mobs, that knew no distinction of sex 
 nor color, race nor religion. I once saw her hit on the 
 head with a large Swedenborgian prayer-book, hurled 
 across the hall with a velocity and force worthy other 
 cannons than the "sacred canons" of "holy church." 
 A less severe blow, on a vital spot, has taken life. The 
 mob was in a hall, used on Sundays for Swedenborgian 
 worship ; and in a town famous in that (.lay for the 
 manufacture of cotton gins, for southern trade, and 
 so was an offering to slave-holding customers, as well 
 as a tribute to religion and worship. 
 
 Charles Lenox Remond earned a place in anti-sla- 
 very history worthy a monument, as well as extended 
 biography. Salem, the place of his birth and resi- 
 dence during most of his life, never knew him, never 
 will, to do any justice to his memory and worth. But 
 he achieved a reputation, both in his own country and 
 
4§2 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Great Britain, that might well be coveted, and doubt- 
 less was, by thousands who knew him in Salem, 
 and all over Massachusetts and New England ; but 
 who scorned him and his race, not more for their 
 color than condition in slavery, down to which so 
 many millions of them were consigned by the republi- 
 canism, the religion and the unhallowed prejudice and 
 hatred of the nation. Many times I have myself gazed 
 on him with admiration, when before the best Boston 
 audiences, he acquitted himself with a power of 
 speech, argument and eloquence, which rarely, if 
 ever, thrilled a house of congress or legislative hall. 
 And I would often wonder how many young men of 
 Salem, how many in Massachusetts, who had enjoyed all 
 the advantages of grammar school, high school or acad- 
 emy, from which his color drove him away, could come 
 there and occupy and fill his place — not occupy, merely, 
 but fill his place ! How many ! Alas ! how few, how 
 very few, could do it ! We hear much, talk much of 
 "self-made men." But who ever thinks of how scant 
 material our codes, customs, constitutions, schools and 
 churches permitted the colored people, a half-century 
 ago, to set up the business of "self-made men" 
 making ! 
 
 And then I had not been long in the lecturing field 
 before fugitive slaves began to appear on our plat- 
 form. Among the earliest, as well as most eminent 
 were Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. 
 And what had they out of which to create a "self- 
 made " manhood, or any manhood ? I was to-day 
 reading two advertisements, and feel inclined to copy 
 them to answer that question. The first was from the 
 Charleston, S. C, Courier, of February 12th, 1835, an( ^ 
 was headed : 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 483 
 
 " Field negroes — by Thomas Gadsden. On Tues- 
 day, the 17th instant, will be sold at the north of tin- 
 Exchange, at ten o'ciock, a. m., a prime gang of ten 
 negroes, accustomed to the culture of cotton and pro- 
 visions — belonging to the Independent church, in L'iuist 
 church parish." 
 
 The other was this, taken from the Savannah, Ga., 
 Republican, one item only given here, as below : 
 
 Also, at the same time and place, the following ne- 
 gro slaves, to wit : Charles, Peggy, Antoinnett, Davy, 
 September, Maria, Jenny, and Isaac — levied on as the 
 property of Henry T. Hall, to satisfy a mortgage fi. 
 fia. issued out of Mcintosh superior court, in favor of 
 the board of directors of the theological seminary of 
 the synod of South Carolina and Georgia, vs. said 
 Henry T. Hall. Conditions, cash. C. O'Neal, 
 
 Deputy -shei-iff, m. c. 
 
 And right at hand was another, which has just 
 fallen under my eye, and will help to answer this 
 question about self-made manhood : 
 
 On the first Monday of February next, will be put 
 up at public auction, before the court house, the fol- 
 lowing property, belonging to the estate of the late 
 Rev. Dr. Furman, viz : A plantation or tract of land, 
 on and in the Wateree swamp. A tract of the first 
 quality of fine land, on the waters of Black river. A 
 lot of land in the town of Camden. A library of a 
 miscellaneous character, chiefly theological. Twenty- 
 seven negroes, some of them very prime. Two mules, 
 one horse, and an old wagon. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence reads : "All men 
 are created equal." So all men, at creation, have equal 
 elements to make up into manhood. But Rev. Dr. 
 Furman had another breed of men, seven and twenty 
 of them, and two mules and one horse ; or twenty-nine 
 in all, and all " created equal." And " one old wagon," 
 just as "equal " as the rest. And the Independent 
 church in Christ's church parish, had ten more. And, 
 
484 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLKS. 
 
 then, a "South Carolina theological seminary " had in 
 litigation, eight. Now, it is not probable that Fred- 
 erick Douglas was any one of these. But he, and 
 every slave who makes himself a man, sets out from 
 that dead level. Who ever thinks of it? "Two 
 mules, a horse, and an old wagon, and twenty-seven 
 negroes, some of them very prime." Nothing said of 
 the mules, not a word of the horse. But the wagon 
 is "old," and only part of the negroes are prime. 
 Probably some of them may be older, more dilapi- 
 dated than the wagon. Frederick Douglass began 
 there, as an old wagon ; one of a gang of "twenty- 
 seven negroes, two mules, a horse, and an old wagon." 
 Some of the negroes not "very prime." Does any 
 mortal man, or woman, comprehend all the tremen- 
 dous meaning of these words? If there be, such 
 must have read more and deeper than Rev. Dr. Furman's 
 " library of miscellaneous character, chiefly theological" 
 advertised with the rest of his property. Finally, if 
 the average Salem, or Massachusetts boys, with all 
 their advantages of school, below the university, can- 
 not rival Charles Lenox Remond, who, though never 
 a slave, nor son of slaves, yet had none of their ad- 
 vantages in youth nor manhood, what will they say of 
 Frederick Douglass, as he stands to-day, in the na- 
 tional capital, spurning the lingering evolutionary 
 processes of Darwin, and mounting, as in an instant, 
 from the deep dead level of mules, horses and old 
 wagons, to the very proudest manhood yet achieved 
 in the nineteenth century ! When, or where in all the 
 historic, or traditionary years of the past, shall the 
 self-made man be found to measure with such a 
 phenomenon as this ? 
 
 And there were many others in the field, doing noble 
 anti-slavery work, when I entered it, who were not 
 
ACTS OK ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 485 
 
 agents of anti-slavery societies for any length of time, 
 and perhaps never at all. Among these were Dr. 
 Hudson, Henry C. Wright, Edwin Thompson and 
 James N. Buffum. The last, Mr. Buffum, has been 
 named before among these pages, and in a way greatly 
 to his credit, and by one, too, who could appreciate 
 genuine anti-slavery service, no matter by whom per- 
 formed. And besides much good work well done, Mr. 
 Buffum's house was for forty years, not only a safe and 
 well-patronized depot of "the under-ground railway," 
 but a hotel of unlimited, as well as elegant hospitality 
 extended by himself and family with utmost cheerful- 
 ness, not only to the anti-slavery apostles, but the 
 faithful, earnest workers in every other department of 
 real progress and reform. But beyond the good work 
 done in his own country, Mr. Buffum also rendered val- 
 uable service to the anti-slavery cause in Great Britain; 
 particularly in Scotland, with the churches there- 
 in 1845, it was found that the Free church had sent 
 delegates to the United States, Dr. Candlish and Dr. 
 Cunningham, to solicit money to aid their branch 
 of the Scottish church. And by consorting with 
 American churches, north and south, fellowshipping 
 slave-holding ministers and others as christians, and 
 by silence, or open avowal, approving of the slave 
 system, with all its attendant horrors, they obtained 
 and carried home three thousand pounds, or about 
 fifteen thousand dollars. Some of it they acknowl- 
 edged was even obtained from slaves. At that time, 
 it so happened that Frederick Douglass and Henry 
 C. Wright, as well as Mr. Buffum, were in Great Brit- 
 ain ; and, joined by George Thompson, then in his 
 full power and prime, they entered Scotland and com- 
 menced a system of anti-slavery conventions and op- 
 erations which soon set the country ablaze, as the 
 
486 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 journals expressed it, with excitement and agitation. 
 The battle-cry was, " Send back that blood-stained 
 money ! " 
 
 And the slogan of William Wallace and his val- 
 liant Scottish chiefs and knights, was not more terrible 
 among the highlands, seven hundred years before, 
 when southern hosts invaded them, than were the 
 voices of Thompson and his three American friends, 
 one then a young fugitive slave, (and a Douglass, too, 
 worthy his namesake who followed Wallace), demand- 
 ing, day and night, in city, town and country, of that 
 heartless Free church and its unscrupulous priesthood, 
 to return that blood-besmeared gold and come out 
 from the fellowship and communion of a slave-breed- 
 ing, slave-trading and slave-holding church, and its 
 northern abettors in the United States of America, 
 and thus rebuke, instead of partake in their cruelties 
 and crimes. Before me are full reports of some of 
 those meetings, and for earnestness, as well as argu- 
 ment, eloquence, pathos, and intense responsive feeling 
 in many crowded audiences, the cause might well 
 have been proud' of them in either hemisphere. And 
 from every account given, it is certain that Mr. 
 Buffum acquitted himself nobly wherever he spoke or 
 labored, during his year abroad. And when seven 
 years afterward I visited Great Britain, no American 
 was mentioned with more respect, or inquired about 
 with more apparent interest, than James N. Buffum. 
 
 In the New Testament "Acts of the Apostles,"' 
 mention is made of " honorable women, not a few." 
 These Acts could register great numbers of such, who 
 went everywhere preaching the anti-slavery word. 
 Sarah and Angelina Grimke emancipated their slaves 
 in South Carolina, and in their youth abandoned afflu- 
 ence and elegance at the south and came to the north 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 487 
 
 and gave the remainder of their long lives to the 
 cause of freedom and humanity. Later, came Sallie 
 Holley, daughter of Hon. Myron Holley, of New York, 
 graduate, with Lucy Stone, of Oberlin College, who 
 seems like a true Sister of Mercy to have consecrated 
 her whole life to the outcast Ethiopian. For so soon 
 as slavery was abolished, she, with her invaluable and 
 inseparable companion, Caroline Putnam, removed to 
 Lottsburg, Virginia, and established themselves as 
 teachers among the freed people, where they still con- 
 tinue in their truly millennial work, making the wilder- 
 ness to bud and blossom as the rose, and the old 
 deserts of slavery to shout and sing for joy. Susan 
 B. Anthony was early in the temperance and anti- 
 slavery, as well as woman suffrage work. Jane Eliza- 
 beth Jones and Josephine S. Griffing performed labor, 
 made sacrifices, encountered sufferings at the west, 
 not known, probably never will be known, to the 
 world. Lucy N. Colman went from Massachusetts 
 and for several seasons did excellent service and 
 encountered the incidents sometimes not easy to face, 
 of pioneer work. Sarah P. Remond, sister of Charles 
 Lenox Remond, went to the west, and with her brother 
 did service above all praise — removing prejudice 
 against their complexion and winning fast friends 
 wherever they came. Sarah subsequently went to 
 England, studied medicine in London, went to Italy, 
 married, and settled in large medical practice in 
 Florence. But most wondrous of all was the Ethi- 
 opian Sybil, Sojourner Truth, still living, a centenarian 
 and more. These all it was my pleasure and privi- 
 lege to meet as best of friends, as well as co-workers 
 in that mighty moral and peaceful struggle for human- 
 ity and liberty which made the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century memorable amid the ages. 
 
4o8 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 It is impossible for me to do justice to the services 
 of not a few others whom I met on the held of con- 
 flict, should I even mention their names. Oliver 
 Johnson was among the first to place his young Green 
 Mountain manhood bravely by the side of Garrison. 
 And his recently published work entitled " Garrison 
 and His Times," has been of important use to me in 
 the compilation of these chronicles. 
 
 The faithful, most invaluable services of Samuel 
 May as general agent of the Massachusetts Anti- 
 Slavery Society for many years, and for a time, before 
 and during the rebellion, of almost the whole Eastern 
 States movement, would if truthfully written be nearly 
 a history of the anti-slavery enterprise for its last 
 quarter of a century. 
 
 And Andrew T. Foss was another minister who 
 abandonded his pulpit and profession, and for a dozen 
 years was among the bravest and best of the Anti- 
 Slavery apostles, never faltering till the last slave was 
 free. 
 
 George W. Putnam, poet as well as lecturer, accom- 
 panied George Thompson in one of his brilliant lec- 
 turing tours through the country. And the surpassing 
 genius of the orator so inspired the poet and singer 
 that his impromptu songs, given in connection with 
 the lectures, added greatly to the interest, enthusiasm 
 and success of the campaign. 
 
 Captain Jonathan Walker, of the "Branded Hand," 
 published a small volume of his sufferings and sacri- 
 fices in a vain attempt to carry a cargo of escaping 
 slaves across from Florida to the nearest British West 
 India Islands. Narrowly escaping with his life, he 
 returned to his home on Cape Cod, where, joined by 
 Loring Moody, he entered the lecturing field. The 
 account of his terrible sufferings in a Florida prison, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 489 
 
 besides being branded on the palm of his right hand 
 with a red hot iron, for the dreadful crime of doing 
 as he would be done by, and "remembering them 
 that were in bonds as bound with them," was heard 
 with profound attention, interest and sympathy, by 
 many large audiences all over New England. He 
 subsequently removed to Michigan, where he died in 
 1878, at the advanced age of seventy-nine years. A 
 handsome monument of Hallowed granite, costing 
 about seven hundred dollars, and generously pre- 
 sented by Rev. Photius Fisk, of Boston, marks the 
 place of his burial. The city of Muskegon, near which 
 he lived and died, honored itself by presenting and 
 preparing a commodious lot in its principal cemetery, 
 where his body lies entombed. And on the first of 
 August, (a memorable day in British anti-slavery his- 
 tory,) 1878, the monument was unveiled with appro- 
 priate ceremonies, in the presence of the Mayor and 
 city government, besides many state officials, and a 
 concourse of fully ten thousand people. The pro- 
 cession, with three bands of music, the marshals 
 mounted, a part of them colored men, in special com- 
 pliment to the deceased, extended nearly from the 
 city hall to the monument. 
 
 Mr. Moody continued in the anti-slavery service, 
 was at one period general agent of the Massachusetts 
 Society, till the opening of the war of the rebellion. 
 He was afterwards secretary of the Society for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and still later of a 
 similar association in behalf of poor children. His 
 reports proved conclusively his earnestness and faith- 
 fulness and consequent usefulness in his work. His 
 last labor was doubtless most important of all in his 
 life of nearly seventy years. He originated and organ- 
 ized The Institute of Heredity, perhaps, viewed in all 
 
49° ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 its aspects and relations, the most important enter- 
 prise to universal human well being of the nineteenth 
 century. And while its secretary, treasurer, and 
 almost sole working element, he faltered and finally 
 died early in the year 1883. 
 
 Among the later, younger comers into the anti- 
 slavery vineyard were E. H. Heywood, graduate of 
 Brown University, at one time general agent of the 
 Massachusetts Society, Joseph A. Howland and Aaron 
 M. Powell. But in the early Christian years, seventy 
 apostles were at one time ordained and sent forth to 
 do all the works and wonders of the very chiefest 
 apostles, whose names were not even recorded, with or 
 without divine inspiration. And yet they all returned 
 and reported that even the very devils had been sub- 
 ject to their command and control. So there were 
 many unnamed and unknown to-day, who on the anti- 
 slavery field of moral, even of mortal, combat, 
 "wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, 
 quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 
 the sword, waxed valliant in the fight and turned to 
 flight the armies of the aliens." 
 
 ADMISSIONS AND CONFESSIONS. 
 
 In concluding these acts and chronicles, two con- 
 siderations present themselves : one as admission, the 
 other confession. In the severe arraignment of the 
 American church and ministry as the bulwark, and 
 finally as the forlorn hope of slavery, it was not 
 always easy, if indeed necessary, to make explicit 
 exceptions. Though the sect known as come-outers, 
 particularly in the second decade of the Garrisonian 
 movement, was numerous, it was not true that all 
 came out of the churches who deserved the good name 
 of abolitionists ; many remained in the churches 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. p;i 
 
 under the plea or pretense of reforming them ; they 
 did so after the churches had been proved the accom- 
 plices of actual and practical adulterers at the south ; 
 and the churches at the south, worse than the houses 
 of ill fame in New York ; worse than the temples of 
 the obscene goddess, Mylitta, in Cyprus and Babylon. 
 Worse in at least two particulars ; one visit to the 
 abominable worship of Mylitta was all that the law 
 required of women in a lifetime. But in the southern 
 churches, marriage was utterly unknown among 
 slaves in all their lifetime. Out of that dreadful con- 
 dition there was no escape but into the cold embraces 
 of death ; and. the victims were born into their con- 
 dition ; thev did not enter it voluntarily, as do the 
 wretched inmates, the dens of infamy in New York. 
 They are not born into them ; no law, no custom, 
 no religious observance forces them there ; they enter 
 when they will ; they can leave when they choose. 
 And more than that, there are many Magdalen 
 associations and female moral reform societies whose 
 special mission it is to tempt them from those dread 
 abodes, by promise of every assistance to return to 
 the paths of purity and virtue, with no penalty for the 
 past, no rebuke, no reproach, only the gentle word of 
 Him who said to one of the same unhappy class, "go, 
 and sin no more." All this was urged on the con- 
 sideration of church members who would not leave 
 their adulterous slave-holding communion and fellow- 
 ship, with this appeal ; could you recommend to the 
 inmates of no worse place than the house of ill repute 
 in New York, to remain in it to reform it? Could you, 
 would you, though you believed such reformation 
 possible ? 
 
 And not unfrequently, such church abolitionists 
 were zealous members of the so-named liberty, or 
 
49 2 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 free soil party, and had left the whig and democratic 
 parties with stern self assumed integrity, and would 
 not vote in them, nor for them, nor their candidates, 
 for any office in the public gift. Thousands of times 
 such have been seen on Sunday, at the sacramental 
 supper, with the wickedest whigs and democrats who 
 ever voted for slave-holders, or caught and returned 
 fugitive slaves ; but on Monday, at the polls, they 
 would spurn all such from their presence as unclean ; 
 would no more vote for them, nor their candidates, 
 than for the Prince of Darkness. Then, to which- 
 ever of the three parties they belonged, they were 
 members of a slave-holding union and government, 
 and sworn by themselves or their elected officers, to 
 support the constitution, which over and over again 
 had been decided by the supreme court of the coun- 
 try, to require the return of fugitive slaves, as well as 
 to hold the slave claimant secure against any insur- 
 rection among his slaves. Even Senator Sumner 
 never forgot those obligations. In his letter accept- 
 ing the office of senator of the United States, he 
 wrote : " I accept, as the servant of the union ; bound 
 to study with equal patriotic care the interests of all 
 parts of the country ; and to oppose all sectionalism, 
 whether it appear in unconstitutional efforts by the 
 north to carry so great a boon as freedom into the 
 slave states, or in unconstitutional efforts by the south, 
 aided by northern allies, to carry the sectional evil 
 into the free states." Such were the "solemn guar- 
 anties" to the slave power as declared by John Quincy 
 Adams, as accepted by Senator Sumner on his elec- 
 tion to the United States senate, in 185 1. In 1861, 
 ten years later, Mr. Lincoln came to the presidential 
 chair. He began, not only where Mr. Adams left off, 
 where Senator Sumner left off, but where the whole 
 
\> IS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOS1 I I S. 493 
 
 democratic party left off; and in his very inaugural 
 address said, in reference to those same "solemn 
 guaranties" and their binding force ; " I understand a 
 
 proposed amendment to the constitution has passed 
 Congress to the effect that the Federal Govern 1 
 Shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of 
 the states, including that of persons held to service. 
 To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I now 
 depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular 
 amendments, so far as to say, that holding such a 
 provision to now be implied constitutional law, 1 have 
 no objection to its being made express and irrevocable!" 
 
 So much for President Lincoln. And only a little 
 more than one month before he passed through Ohio 
 on his way to Washington and his inauguration, a 
 slave woman and her unborn babe were sent back 
 from Cleveland to Virginia, under circumstances, 
 recital of which in the city papers should have chilled 
 all human blood. Referring to the sickening transac- 
 tion, Mr. Garrison said: "Several columns of our 
 paper are occupied with a heart-moving but most 
 humiliating account of the legal rendition of a fugitive 
 slave girl in Cleveland, and by republican hands, as a 
 peace offering to the traitors and brigands of the 
 south. Hear what Judge Spaulding, a high professing 
 anti-slavery man of many years standing, said in his 
 concluding speech at the trial : 
 
 "While we do this in the City of Cleveland, and 
 permit this poor piece of humanity to be taken 
 peaceably through our streets and upon our railways 
 back to the land of bondage will not the frantic south 
 stay its parricidal hand ? Will not our compromising 
 legislators cry, hold ! enough ? . . . We are this 
 day offering to the majesty of constitutional law a 
 
494 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 homage that takes with it a virtual surrender of the 
 finest feelings of our nature ; and is, I almost said, 
 the contravention of a christian's duty to his God " 
 
 And that was Judge Spaulding, an eminent free- 
 soil man and republican of many years ! And what 
 was the answer of his fratricidal south, to now " stay 
 her fratricidal hands ? " He obtained his answer not 
 many weeks after, from the brazen throats and blazing 
 lips of Carolina cannon around Fort Sumpter, shaking 
 the sea and land ; and followed by the bloodiest 
 slaughter of human beings that this poor world has 
 mourned in all the christian centuries ! 
 
 Now this one word about " sweeping charges," and 
 making no exceptions, or too few, so constantly and 
 universally preferred against the abolitionists. We 
 saw the very best men in church and state with no 
 exception, in the three great political parties, sol- 
 emnly sworn and pledged to observe all the compro- 
 mises of the federal constitution, and religiously keep- 
 ing the obligation. Every man they sent to congress 
 was thus sworn. Through their agents they kept the 
 oath ; or violating it they were guilty of legal and 
 moral perjury. This the abolitionists saw, and hence 
 their obedience to the demand issued from Patmos : 
 " Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partaker 
 in her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." 
 
 And so where should we begin to make exceptions of 
 such as remained in connection with the state, or in 
 fellowship with the church fulfilling their obligations 
 and requirements ? But we made exceptions. We 
 made too many, not too few. Our charity covered 
 not only a multitude of sins, but of sinners, too. 
 
 And now the final consideration relates to ourselves, 
 the abolitionists. And, as already intimated, it shall 
 take the form of confession. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 495 
 
 Through all these many pages, to patrons and read- 
 ers, too many perhaps, no word has been spoken of 
 differences or disagreements among ourselves, any 
 more or less among leaders than others, men or 
 women. For among the abolitionists, though there 
 were women in goodly numbers on the platform of 
 speech and in the field of work, we knew no male nor 
 female, no high nor low. 
 
 In the great apostacy of 1840, which resulted in the 
 formation of what was known as new organization, one 
 principal grievance, especially among the more ortho- 
 dox sects, was what they termed the ''woman question." 
 With that came the cry against our " no votingtheory," 
 that we were opposed to all government among men 
 and nations, as though there were or could be no gov- 
 ernment but our government, no church but our 
 church. With all these questions or quibbles, the 
 abolitionists made short shrift and went on with their 
 work. 
 
 But being intensely human, abolitionists were in- 
 tensely individual. And so they proved true what a 
 great man once wrote, that for any considerable num- 
 ber of persons to profess to think just alike on any 
 important prbblem was simply to confess that they did 
 not think at all. 
 
 Abolitionists did think, and deeply too. And they 
 felt as intensely as they thought. And so how could 
 they but differ ? And there were disagreements that 
 were not all reconciled before death sundered the par- 
 ties to meet on earth no more. But they lived and 
 died with their faces ever towards freedom, justice 
 and love. A little more toleration, a very little more 
 remembrance of our difference of temperament, of 
 power of perception, of inherited tendencies, of possi- 
 ble material, mental or moral infirmity in ourselves, 
 
49^ ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 for which we should be scarcely responsible in the 
 least degree, might have preserved from many a dis- 
 cordant note that seemed to ring on down to the gates 
 of the grave. It was not anger, it was not hate. 
 It was rather the result of intensity of love. At least 
 it was so among some of our very truest, bravest, best, 
 whose natures could but love, could never hate. 
 
 "Alas ! they had been friends in youth ! 
 But whispering tongues can poison truth : 
 And constancy lives in realms above : 
 And life is thorny, and youth is vain : 
 And ' to be wroth -with those ive love 
 Doth work like madness in the brain." 
 
 To the last, there were differences of opinion. On 
 the question when to cease our operations as an anti- 
 slavery organization, there was much earnest debate. 
 Some contended that our distinctive work was not ac- 
 complished till the slave was made equal to the mas- 
 ter at the ballot box, and in the government. And 
 that this was all the more important since it was only 
 by the slaves' valor on the battle-field, that the mas- 
 ters had been defeated and their rebellion suppressed. 
 
 As my last printed speech was on that subject, at 
 the last anti-slavery anniversary I attended, it may be 
 pardonable to present it here, as showing somewhat 
 the temper and spirit of the discussion, as well as the 
 nature of the subject then in hand. It is, however, 
 only pardonable because from the beginning it has 
 been my constant care to be myself as little obtrusive 
 as the nature of my work would warrant consistently 
 with exact truth and right. 
 
 The anniversary exercises were held in the church 
 of the Puritans, whose walls had often shuddered 
 with the truly terrible eloquence of Dr. Cheever, from 
 Sunday to Sunday, in rebuke and denunciation of the 
 southern oppressor and his not less guilty abettor 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 497 
 
 and accomplice in the north, in church and pulpit, as 
 well as in the state. In the later years of the anti- 
 slavery conflict, after he had been anathematized by 
 the pulpit and almost driven from the pale of the 
 church, only for his faithfulness to the cause of free- 
 dom and humanity, for his orthodoxy, as well as pri- 
 vate virtues were high as heaven above suspicion, he 
 seemed to speak as by permission and power of Him 
 who "touched Isaiah's lips with hallowed fire," and to 
 superadd at times all the terrors of Patmos as well. 
 No other voice penetrated the dark, deep recesses 
 of the pro-slavery church and pulpit, the American 
 Bible, missionary and tract societies, as did his. For 
 to his faith and virtue, he added a perfect knowledge 
 of all their works and ways. My resolution at that 
 last anniversary, read as below : 
 
 Resolved, That the objects of the American anti- 
 slavery society, as announced in its constitution and 
 declaration of sentiment, are, "the entire abolition of 
 slavery in the United States," and " the elevation of 
 " all persons of color, who possess the qualifications 
 of others, to the enjoyment of the same privileges, 
 and the exercise of the same prerogatives as others." 
 And while we joyfully welcome, and will heartily co- 
 operate with every new auxiliary in this vast field of 
 action and effort, under whatever name, we can never 
 lay down our own distinctive apostleship, until all 
 those high purposes are fully accomplished. 
 
 Though we had come to the last day and session of 
 our meeting, I had not spoken before. We met at an 
 early hour in the forenoon, and it was now nearly 
 three in the afternoon, and we had not even taken a 
 recess ; but I ventured to obtrude myself at that 
 unseasonable hour, and was heard with most respect- 
 ful attention in the following remarks : 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 Mr. President — This is the first time I have pre- 
 sumed on the attention of this convention, and now I 
 know full well it is too late to ask to be heard. But 
 it seems to me something might be said which has not 
 yet found utterance, and I will not be long. I quite 
 agree with our excellent friends who have said that 
 this society has been four years virtually dead, though 
 it seems to me a most humiliating confession to make. 
 And I think, that although they insist that this is no 
 time for a funeral, still, if the society has been really 
 four years dead, it is time it should be buried out of 
 sight. It has certainly been inactive, though I trust 
 it has only slept. And I have hoped that to-day a 
 voice would be uttered that should be effective, say- 
 ing, " Lazarus, come forth ! " 
 
 Four years ago it was announced on our platform 
 that slavery was dead — that our anti-slavery efforts 
 were no longer needed — that General Scott was now our 
 general agent in place of Mr. May, and that the Amer- 
 ican army was now the American anti-slavery society. 
 Well, that new anti-slavery society, under General 
 Scott and others, prosecuted its conflict with such suc- 
 cess and disaster as we now know. And the war 
 dragged its slow length along, through nearly four 
 dreary, desolating years. And slavery was still able 
 to compete valiantly, if not successfully, with the 
 mightiest armies that ever gathered in the field of 
 bloody fight. For though we began with but seventy- 
 five thousand, and they enrolled only for ninety days, 
 before that period expired, we had summoned sud- 
 denly a half-million more, for a three years' service. 
 And in less than four years, our army had reached the 
 stupendous muster-roll of more than two and a half 
 millions, and nearly the half-million had already 
 " fought their last battle, slept their last sleep ! " 
 
\i I'S OF ANTI-SI.AVERV APOSTLES. 499 
 
 Last month, we were wakened early one Monday 
 morning, to celebrate what we presumed to be the 
 complete triumph of our northern hosts and vanquish- 
 ing of every southern foe. Richmond had surren- 
 dered, General Lee was our prisoner, and his forces 
 with him, and we fancied that then, indeed, our work 
 was done. There lay the monster slavery writhing in 
 death agonies at our feet, his head not bruised only, 
 but severed from his scaly form. And the whole free 
 north burst into a joy unseen, unknown before since 
 we were a nation. And that was a full week of jubi- 
 lation. We thought the great red dragon was dead, 
 our work done, and already reconstruction was under 
 way. The president had made that last speech of his 
 on the question, and the press of the country had 
 given in its adhesion to his fatal doctrine. 
 
 I well remember that on our Massachusetts Fast- 
 day, our friend, Mr. Spaulding, of Salem, who ad- 
 dressed us so earnestly this morning, invited me to 
 occupy his pulpit. And let me say for him, that al- 
 though pastor of one of the largest churches in that 
 state, he has been so faithful as to have driven what is 
 known as "the copper-head element," pretty much 
 out of his congregation, and dared still to invite me 
 to give the fast-day discourse. So, occupying the 
 desk, I presumed the prerogative of minister and 
 selected a text from the scriptures, and spoke of the 
 goodness and forbearance of God to the nation. The 
 text was this, from the Hebrew prophets : " What 
 could I have done for my vineyard that I have not 
 done in it? Wherefore when I looked that it should 
 bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ? " 
 
 In the course of remark, I referred to that speech 
 of President Lincoln, and said it appeared to me 
 highly proper that we observe a day of fasting and 
 
500 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 prayer, for we had to treat with an evil spirit, which, 
 though we fancied he was dead, and were celebrating 
 our conquest and victory, was one that went not out 
 after all, but by prayer and fasting. In the afternoon 
 of that day, I went into the Salem Athenaeum and 
 read every daily newspaper of New York and Boston 
 there, and every one, I think, with no exception 
 endorsed its doctrine. 
 
 I had a lecture in a neighboring town that evening, 
 and went to it with a heavy heart ; for I felt that it 
 would be my duty to tell my audience that our joy 
 was ill-timed, and would be vain ; that our rejoicing, 
 I was sure, would be turned into mourning. For in 
 our very hour of triumph and of victory, as we 
 thought, we were not doing justice ; and were ready 
 to reconstruct the government on the basis of white 
 suffrage and citizenship, and that also disloyal ; reject- 
 ing the bravery and loyalty that God had made the 
 salvation of the country ! I went to my lecture, you 
 may be sure with heavy, desponding heart. I told my 
 audience it seemed to me we were lost. I said : you 
 have all called me "blue, blue-black, and bilioits," and 
 I know not what else, from the beginning of the war, 
 but we are inevitably lost ! For God has visited us 
 in judgment ; and in the last hour, when He seems to 
 have left nothing undone that he could do for His 
 vineyard, we still forget justice and judgment ; none 
 calling for justice, nor any in the high places of gov- 
 ernment pleading the cause of the poor, the very 
 poorest of the poor ! It was a sad meeting ; well 
 might it have been sad ; it continued till a late hour 
 in the evening ; and a sadder audience. I never 
 addressed, and a sadder heart in that joyous week, 
 probably could not be found, than was mine. But in 
 four and twenty hours from that time, God did appear, 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 501 
 
 and in most mysterious manner, and showed that there 
 was at least one thing more possible to be done in his 
 vineyard, that had not been done. The solemn, 
 mourning drapery which darkens this temple to-day, 
 answers the question of our text ; "what more could 
 have been done for my vineyard than I have done in 
 it?" 
 
 And so we closed our week of joy. I thought of 
 the lines of Byron on Bonaparte, when he sung of 
 his greatness and his fall : 
 
 "O who would soar the solar height 
 To set in such a starless night ! " 
 
 Yes, Mr. President, that was a sad week for us. 
 Our enemy was not slain ; for while we exulted over 
 his fall, and triumphed in what we presumed his ever- 
 lasting discomfiture, the quivering monster gath- 
 ered enough vitality to swing around his envenomed 
 tail, and in an instant to sting our almost idolized 
 chief magistrate to death, before our very eyes ! 
 
 I felt then, that there was more work for me to do ; 
 and I have felt all through this meeting, that there 
 was more work yet to be done by this grand old anti- 
 slavery society, and I thought if we were indeed to 
 cease from our good old apostleship, and our associa- 
 tion was to be sacrificed here, it was fitting and well 
 that we had this funeral drapery hanging here about 
 us. But it seems to me that such a deed as our dis- 
 bandment and dissolution would better become 
 Ford's theatre than "the church of the Puritans," 
 crape-darkened as it is for the dreadful tragedy which 
 long yet must the nation mourn ! 
 
 No, Mr. Chairman, no ; our work is not yet quite 
 done ; at least mine is not done, nor will it be done 
 till the blackest man has every right which I, myself 
 enjoy. I cannot prove that I love my neighbor as 
 
502 ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES. 
 
 myself till he stand by my side. And I honor my 
 friend, Senator Wilson, for standing here to-day, and 
 asserting- it as his life purpose, to labor in private and 
 in public, for the accomplishment of that glorious 
 end. And I dare tell you my friends, that when 
 slavery is abolished, we shall all know it, for it will be 
 as though " Death and Hell gave up the ghost ! " 
 
 When we comprehend the malignity, yea, the 
 " uncommon wrath " of the fell demon we have to 
 face and overcome, and the terrible power and ten- 
 acity of life he has acquired, we shall all realize that 
 our warfare is no pastime, no children's play ; and 
 that however freedmen's aid societies, and christian 
 associations may operate in their fields, they will every 
 one of them, need the old polar star to guide them in 
 their new, untried and dangerous way. 
 
 Charity of readers may be trusted to forgive the 
 egotism of inserting this address, in part for its sad 
 historical reminiscences, but more especially for the 
 other reasons already intimated. In methods and 
 measures, abolitionists, even of clearest vision, spirit- 
 ual as well as mental, could not always see eye to eye; 
 though ready to live and die in defense of their com- 
 mon cause. But let the temper and spirit which 
 breathe in this utterance, remarkable only that it was 
 my last on our great subject ever given to the public 
 through the press ; let this witness, that even in our 
 differings, we were still in heart and spirit friends in 
 all which that divine word can be made to mean. 
 
 And now this work is done. Would, that it could 
 be as truthfully said, ''well done." But nearly three 
 score and fourteen, is too late in life to be engaged 
 in such a service ; especially when it is remembered 
 that authorship has been no part of all my public 
 labors of three and forty years. 
 
ACTS OF ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTL1 . 503 
 
 Truth in statement, justice and right towards all 
 persons and parties interested in any way in these 
 chronicles, have been constantly, carefully, kept in 
 view, alike towards foe and friend. In soul, spirit, 
 purpose, I have known no foes ; no sun has risen nor 
 gone down on any wrath of mine. 
 
 Most of my early comrades in the field-service, have 
 gone, some of them long since gone to their well 
 earned rest and reward. It is mine yet to live and 
 guard watchfully 'their graves, and with tenderest 
 affection to cherish their memory, and to shield it 
 from any unjust reproach to the full extent of my 
 power and to my latest breath. 
 
 Of the great west and my many dear ones there 
 living, or dead, I have scarcely spoken. And yet, 
 nearly twenty of my autumns, and several winters 
 were spent in most laborious service in the western 
 states ; and many there became not only faithful 
 co-workers, but life-long and devoted friends. A vol- 
 ume much larger than this and greatly better every 
 way would not suffice to do any justice to their 
 exalted worth. But I live in unshaken faith and 
 expectation of a glorious re-union awaiting us all. 
 
 Nor with my present vision, could I desire sublimer 
 felicity in such re-union, than to become more and 
 more divinely endowed with celestial wisdom, knowl- 
 edge and power ; and then, in the same spirit of love 
 and good will to men, to all men, appealing ever only 
 to the highest, divinest elements in the human nature, 
 to continue our work and service till the whole race 
 shall be restored and redeemed, and sin and death, 
 the last great and only real enemies, shall together 
 give up the ghost. 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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