Chapter VIII: Letter VIII: Vindication of Abolitionists

GROTON, Mass., _6th month, 1837_.

DEAR FRIEND:--In my last, I commented upon the opposition to the establishment of a College in New Haven, Conn., for the education of colored young men. The same remarks are applicable to the persecutions of the Canterbury School. I leave thee and our readers to apply them. I cannot help thinking how strange and unaccountable thy soft excuses for the _sins of prejudice_ will appear to the next generation, if thy book ever reach their eye.

As to Cincinnati having been chosen as the city in which the Philanthropist should be published after the retreat of its editor from Kentucky, thou hast not been ‘sufficiently informed,’ for James G. Birney pursued exactly the course which _thou_ hast marked out as the most prudent and least offensive. He edited his paper at New Richmond, in Ohio, for nearly three months before he went to Cincinnati, and did not go there until the excitement appeared to have subsided.

And so, thou thinkest that abolitionists are accountable for the outrages which have been committed against them; they are the tempters, and are held responsible by God, as well as the tempted. Wilt thou tell me, who was responsible for the mob which went with swords and staves to take an innocent man before the tribunals of Annas and Pilate, some 1800 years ago? And who was responsible for the uproar at Ephesus, the insurrection at Athens, and the tumults at Lystra and Iconium? Were I a mobocrat, I should want no better excuse than thou hast furnished for such outrages. Wonderful indeed, if, in free America, her citizens cannot _choose_ where they will erect their literary institutions and presses, to advocate the self-evident truths of our Declaration of Independence! And still more wonderful, that a New England woman should, _after years of reflection_, deliberately write a book to condemn the advocates of liberty, and plead excuses for a relentless prejudice against her colored brethren and sisters, and for the persecutors of those, who, according to the opinion of a _Southern_ member of Congress, are prosecuting ‘the _only plan_ that can ever overthrow slavery at the South.’ I am glad, _for thy own sake_, that thou hast exculpated abolitionists from the charge of the ‘deliberate intention of fomenting illegal acts of violence.’ Would it not have been still better, if thou hadst spared the remarks which rendered such an explanation necessary?

I find that thou wilt not allow of the comparison often drawn between the effects of christianity on the hearts of those who obstinately rejected it, and those of abolitionism on the hearts of people of the present day. Thou sayest, ‘Christianity is a system of _persuasion_, tending by kind and gentle influences to make men _willing_ to leave their sins.’ Dost thou suppose the Pharisees and Sadducees deemed it was very _kind_ and _gentle_ in its influences, when our holy Redeemer called them ‘a generation of vipers,’ or when he preached that sermon ‘full of harshness, uncharitableness, rebuke and denunciation,’ recorded in the xxiii. chapter of Matthew? But I shall be told that Christ knew the hearts of all men, and therefore it was right for him to use terms which mere human beings never ought to employ. Read, then, the prophecies of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and others, and also the Epistles of the New Testament. They employed the most offensive terms on many occasions, and the sharpest rebukes, knowing full well that there are some sinners who can be reached by nothing but death-thrusts at their consciences. An anecdote of JOHN RICHARDSON, who was remarkable for his urbanity of manners, occurs to me. He one day preached a sermon in a country town, in which he made use of some _hard_ language; a friend reproved him after meeting, and inquired whether he did not know that hard wood was split by soft knocks. Yes, said Richardson, but I also know that there is some wood so rotten at the heart, that nothing but tremendously hard blows will ever split it open. Ah! John, replied the elder, I see thou understandest _how_ to do thy master’s work. Now, I believe this nation is _rotten at the heart_, and that nothing but the most tremendous blows with the sledge-hammer of abolition truth, could ever have broken the false rest which we had taken up for ourselves on the very brink of ruin.

‘Abolitionism, on the contrary, is a system of _coercion_ by public opinion.’ By this assertion, I presume thou ‘hast not been correctly informed’ as to the reasons which have induced abolitionists to put forth all their energies to rectify public opinion. It is _not_ because we wish to wield this public opinion like a rod of iron over the heads of slaveholders, to _coerce_ them into an abandonment of the system of slavery; not at all. We are striving to purify public opinion, first, because as long as the North is so much involved in the guilt of slavery, by its political, commercial, religious, and social connexion with the South, _her own citizens_ need to be converted. Second, because we know that when public opinion is rectified at the North, it will throw a flood of light from its million of reflecting surfaces upon the heart and soul of the South. The South sees full well at what we are aiming, and she is so unguarded as to acknowledge that ‘if she does not resist the danger in its inception, it will _soon_ become _irresistible_.’ She exclaims in terror, ‘the truth is, the _moral_ power of the world is against us; it is idle to disguise it.’ The fact is, that the slaveholders of the South, and their northern apologists, have been overtaken by the storm of free discussion, and are something like those who go down to the sea and do business in the great waters: ‘they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.’

Our view of the doctrine of expediency, thou art pleased to pronounce ‘wrong and very pernicious in its tendency.’ Expediency is emphatically the doctrine by which the children of this world are wont to guide their steps, whilst the rejection of it as a rule of action exactly accords with the divine injunction, to ‘walk by faith, _not_ by sight.’ Thy doctrine that ‘the wisdom and rectitude of a given course depend entirely on the _probabilities of success_,’ is not the doctrine of the Bible. According to this principle, how absurd was the conduct of Moses! What probability of success was there that he could move the heart of Pharaoh? None at all; and thus did _he_ reason when he said, ‘Who am _I_, that I should go unto Pharaoh?’ And again, ‘Behold, they will not believe _me_, nor hearken unto my voice.’ The _success_ of Moses’s mission in persuading the king of Egypt to ‘let the people go,’ was not involved in the duty of obedience to the divine command. Neither was the success of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others of the prophets who were singularly _unsuccessful_ in their mission to the Jews. All who see the path of duty plain before them, are bound to walk in that path, end where it may. They then can realize the meaning of the Apostle, when he exhorts Christians to cast all their burden on the Lord, with the promise that He would sustain them. This is walking by _faith_, not by sight. In the work in which abolitionists are engaged, they are compelled to ‘walk by faith;’ they feel called upon to preach the truth in season and out of season, to lift up their voices like a trumpet, to show the people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins. The _success_ of this mission, _they_ have no more to do with, than had Moses and Aaron, Jeremiah or Isaiah, with that of theirs. Whether the South will be saved by Anti-Slavery efforts, is not a question for us to settle--and in some of our hearts, the _hope of its salvation has utterly gone out_. All nations have been punished for oppression, and why should ours escape? Our light, and high professions, and the age in which we live, convict us not only of enormous oppression, but of the vilest hypocrisy. It may be that the rejection of the truth which we are now pouring in upon the South, may be the final filling up of their iniquities, just previous to the bursting of God’s exterminating thunders over the Sodoms and Gomorrahs, the Admahs and Zeboims of America. The _result_ of our labors is hidden from our eyes; whether the preaching of Anti-Slavery truth is to be a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death to this nation, we know not; and we have no more to do with it, than had the Apostle Paul, when he preached Christ to the people of his day.

If American Slavery goes down in blood, it will but verify the declarations of those who uphold it. A committee of the North Carolina Legislature acknowledged this to an English Friend ten years ago. Jefferson more than once uttered his gloomy forebodings; and the Legislators of Virginia, in 1832, declared that if the opportunity of escape, through the means of emancipation, were rejected, ‘though they might _save themselves_, they would rear their posterity to the business of the dagger and the torch.’ I have myself known several families to leave the South, solely from a fear of insurrection; and this twelve and fourteen years ago, long before any Anti-Slavery efforts were made in this country. And yet, I presume, _if_ through the cold-hearted apathy and obstinate opposition of the North, the South should become strengthened in her desperate determination to hold on to her outraged victims, until they are goaded to despair, and if the Lord in his wrath pours out the vials of his vengeance upon the slave States, why then, Abolitionists will have to bear all the blame. Thou hast drawn a frightful picture of the final issue of Anti-Slavery efforts, as thou art pleased to call it; but none of these things move me, for with just as much truth mayest thou point to the land of Egypt, blackened by God’s avenging fires, and exclaim, ‘Behold the issue of Moses’s mission.’ Nay, verily! See in that smoking, and blood-drenched house of bondage, the consequences of oppression, disobedience, and an obstinate rejection of truth, and light, and love. What had Moses to do with those judgment plagues, except to lift his rod? And if the South soon finds her winding sheet in garments rolled in blood, it will _not_ be because of what the North has told her, but because, like impenitent Egypt, she hardened her heart against it, whilst the voices of some of her own children were crying in agony, ‘O! that thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes.’

Thy friend,

A. E. GRIMKÉ.