Chapter XIII: Part 13

Soon after his return from England, at the annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association in May, 1844, he again brought up the subject, and earnestly endeavored, with others, to induce that body to vote that slaveholding was anti-republican, inhuman, and unchristian. It led to a protracted discussion of two days or more, which resulted in nothing else than a vote of censure passed upon the Unitarian Church in Savannah, Georgia, because they refused to receive the services of the Rev. Mr. Motte, sent to them by the Executive Committee of the Association, having heard that he had protested in a sermon against the wrongs inflicted upon the colored people both at the North and South.

Henry H. Fuller, of Boston, strenuously opposed the introduction of the subject of slavery to the consideration of the Association in any way. “We of the North have nothing to do with it. It is a system of labor established in some of our sister States by their highest legislative authority. It was consented to by the framers of our National Constitution, and guaranties given for its protection,” &c., &c. After much more of the same sort, he gave way for Mr. May to offer the following resolutions, instead of those by which he had called up the debate:--

1. “_Resolved_, That the American Unitarian Association, desirous
that the pecuniary or other aid rendered by them from time to time
to individuals and societies in the slaveholding sections of our
country should not be misunderstood or misconstrued, do hereby
declare their conviction that the institution of slavery, as
existing in this country, is contrary to the will of God, to the
Gospel of Christ (especially to the views which _we_ entertain
of it), to the rights of man, and to every principle of justice
and humanity; and in a spirit not of dictation, but of friendly
remonstrance and entreaty, would call upon those whom they may
address, as believers in one God and Father of all, to bear a
faithful testimony against slavery.

2. “_Resolved_, That the Executive Committee be, and they hereby
are, requested to transmit a copy of the preceding resolution to
each of our auxiliary Associations, and to such societies in the
slaveholding sections of the country as may from time to time
receive pecuniary aid from this Association.”

Dr. J. H. Morison objected to any action by the meeting. “1st. Because we shall thereby lose our influence at the South. 2d. Because we shall convert the Association into an Abolition Society. 3d. Because it would be a dastardly proceeding, at our distance from the scene of danger, to utter sentiments hostile to slavery, with which the Southern Unitarian societies might be identified.”

Dr. E. S. Gannett said that the Association never contemplated any action on slavery. It was contrary to the objects of its formation. It would also be an invasion of the rights of conscience,--being the setting up of a creed with reference to this subject. Moreover, he said, it would be injurious to the slaves. Ten years ago their bondage was much lighter than at present. And then it would be to identify ourselves with the Abolitionists of the free States, whom he most unsparingly and vehemently condemned, and said there was little comparative need for us to go South to rebuke an evil, when we had such a “hellish spirit alive and active here in our very midst, even in New England.”

Hon. S. C. Phillips, of Salem, was not in favor of such action as the resolutions proposed, but still thought we should take some action, and very properly in connection with this case of the Savannah church we should present, as we fairly might, our views on the whole subject of slavery. He said there had been great error in our so long silence on the subject. Our leading policy had been to avoid it, and much injury, and the prevention of much good, had been the consequence. “The time has come,” said he, “when no man can be silent everywhere, and at all times, on this subject without guilt.”

Mr. Phillips offered a series of resolutions instead of Mr. May’s.

Rev. Mr. Lunt, of Quincy, opposed any action, and spoke with great severity of the Abolitionists, whom he charged with being bent on the dissolution of our Union and also the subversion of Christianity.

My cousin vindicated the Abolitionists from Mr. Lunt’s charges, reminding him and the audience of the ground which Dr. Channing and other true friends of our country had taken respecting disunion, in case of the annexation of Texas. Mr. May showed that the Abolitionists had opposed only a false and corrupt church, not the Church of Christ, and still less Christianity itself, in which they gloried as the basis and impelling principle of their movement.

The resolutions were ably supported by the mover, Mr. Phillips, and four other laymen, and by eleven ministers, and finally passed by a majority of forty to fifteen, and were in part as follows:--

After a preamble, setting forth the offensive conduct of the Savannah church,--

“_Resolved_, That, viewing the institution of slavery in the light
of Christianity, we cannot fail to perceive that it conflicts with
the natural rights of human beings as the equal children of a
common Father, and that it subverts the fundamental principle of
human brotherhood.

“_Resolved_, In the necessary effects of slavery upon the personal
and social condition, and upon the moral and religious character
of all affected by it, we perceive an accumulation of evils over
which Christianity must weep, against which Christianity should
remonstrate, and for the removal of which Christianity appeals to
the hearts and consciences of all disciples of Jesus to do what
they can by their prayers, by the indulgence and expression of
their sympathy, and by the unremitting and undisguised exertion of
whatever moral and religious influence they may possess.”

Then follows a resolution that it should not be considered, in any part of our country, a disqualification of any minister or missionary for the performance of the appropriate duties of his office, that he is known to have expressed antislavery sentiments, and approving the course of the Executive Committee in withdrawing their assistance from the church in Savannah because of their rejection of Rev. Mr. Motte.

The discussions at that meeting were seasoned with many vehement denunciations of the Abolitionists, uttered by several prominent Unitarian ministers. William L. Garrison was denounced as one “instigated by a diabolical spirit.” “The Abolitionists,” it was said, “were aiming to subvert Christianity, to extirpate it from the earth.” Dr. Francis Parkman, of Boston, loudly declared that “no letter or resolution condemning slavery should ever go forth from the American Unitarian Association while he was a member of it.” And he highly commended a New England captain, of whom we had then recently heard, because “he put his ship about and carried back to the master a slave whom he had found secreted on board the vessel.” Dr. Parkman openly and personally denounced those who introduced the subject, as “born to plague the Association.” And he, together with Dr. G. Putnam, and other prominent ministers, spoke of Dr. Channing’s earnestness in the antislavery cause as a great weakness.

Later in the same year, 1845, at a meeting of Unitarian ministers in Boston, “A Protest against American Slavery,” prepared I suppose by Rev. Caleb Stetson, John T. Sargent, and Samuel May, Jr., was adopted and sent out to be circulated for signatures. It received the names of one hundred and seventy-three ministers, of whom one hundred and fifty-three were of New England. It was publicly stated at the time that about eighty, comprising many of the most influential ministers of the denomination, refused to sign the Protest. Among the recusants were the Rev. Drs. Gannett, Dewey, Young, Parkman, Lothrop, G. Putnam, Lamson, N. Frothingham, S. Barrett, E. Peabody, G. E. Ellis, Bartol, Morison, and Lunt.

Of those who did sign the Protest, I am sorry to add not a large proportion can with truth be said to have been faithful to the solemn pledge they therein gave, as follows: “We on our part do hereby pledge ourselves, before God and our brethren, never to be weary in laboring in the cause of human rights and freedom, until slavery shall be abolished and every slave set free.”

Once or twice afterwards Mr. May pressed the subject upon the Unitarian Association, but with little better results. Subsequent events, however, have shown, too plainly to be denied or doubted, that it would have been more creditable to themselves, and far better for our country, if “the older and wiser” men of our denomination had listened to his counsels and followed his noble example. Alas, our land is filled with testimonies written in blood, that if the ministers of religion had only been fearless and faithful in declaring the impartial love of the Heavenly Father for the children of men of all complexions, and their equal, inalienable rights, which would assuredly be vindicated by Divine justice, our late civil war would have been averted!

In 1847 Mr. May was appointed _General Agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society_, and continued in that responsible and laborious office until after the abolition of slavery in 1865. He was instant in season and out of season, and in co-operation with his devoted assistant, Rev. R. F. Wallcut, rendered services the amount and value of which cannot easily be estimated.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.

The awful iniquity of our nation culminated in the enactment of the _Fugitive Slave Law_, which, as Edmund Quincy said at the time, stood, as it now stands, “a piece of diabolical ingenuity, for the accomplishment of a devilish purpose, _without a rival_ among all the tyrannical enactments or edicts of servile parliaments or despotic monarchs.” It was the essential article of a political conglomerate, prepared by the Arch Compromiser, Henry Clay, which was called the Omnibus Bill; some parts of which, he vainly thought, would conciliate the Northern States to the reception of the whole. It provided for the admission of California into our Union, with an antislavery Constitution; for the organization of two other Territories without the prohibition of slavery; the extension of the southwestern boundary of Texas to the Rio Grande; the abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, with the guaranty of slavery to its inhabitants until they should see fit to abolish it; and the perpetuity of the interstate slave-trade; but infinitely worse than any of these objectionable parts were the stringent measures it proposed for the recovery of fugitives from slavery. Stripped of the verbiage of legal enactments, the provisions of this abominable law were as follows:--

1. The claimant of any person who had escaped, or should escape
from slavery in any State or Territory, might apply to any Court
of Record or Judge thereof, describe the fugitive and make
satisfactory proof that he or she owed service or labor to said
claimant. Thereupon the Court, or in vacation the Judge, was
required to cause a record to be made of the description of the
alleged fugitive, and of the proof of his or her enslavement, and
give an attested copy of that record to the claimant; which copy
was required to be received by any court, judge, or commissioner in
any other State or Territory of the Union, as full and conclusive
evidence that the person claimed, and so described, was a fugitive
from slavery and owed service to the claimant, and therefore should
be delivered up.

Any marshal or deputy who should refuse to arrest such a fugitive
was to be fined _one thousand dollars_. And if, after having
arrested him or her, the fugitive should in any way escape from his
custody, the marshal or deputy should be held liable to pay to the
claimant the value of the runaway.

And any person who should in any way prevent the claimant or his
agent or assistants from getting possession of the fugitive, by
hiding him or helping him to escape, or by open opposition to his
would-be captor,--such offender was to be fined _one thousand
dollars_ for violating this _righteous_ law; and be liable to pay
another _thousand dollars_ to the claimant of the fugitive.

In order that every facility should be afforded to _our slaveholding brethren_ to retake their fleeing property, many commissioners were ordered to be appointed in all suitable places (in addition to the courts and judges) whose especial duty it should be to attend to cases that might arise under the Fugitive Slave Law. And each commissioner or judge, who found the accused guilty of having fled from bondage, was to receive a fee of ten dollars. But if the proof adduced by the claimant did not satisfy him that the accused was a fugitive from his service, then the judge or commissioner was to receive only five dollars. Thus bribery was by this law superadded to every other device to enable the American slaveholder to recover his escaped slave, and return him or her to a still more cruel bondage.

Nor was this all that was atrociously wicked in the enactment. It provided further that, while the claimant or his agent might give testimony or make affidavit to the enslavement of the arrested one, “in no trial or hearing under the Act was the testimony of the alleged fugitive to be admitted in evidence” that he was not the one that his claimant called him, or that he had been emancipated by the will of a former owner, or by the purchase of his liberty.

If there be among the laws of any other nation, in any other part and in any other age of the world, an enactment, a decree, a ukase, so profoundly wicked, so ingeniously cruel, as this law which the Congress of the United States passed in 1850,--the very middle of the nineteenth century,--I beg to be informed of it, for I confess at the close of this recital I feel as if, in my shame and misery, I should be relieved for a moment by bad company.

At first it may seem strange that Mr. Clay should have supposed the people of the Northern States would conform to the requirements of such a law; would consent that their States should be made the hunting-grounds, and themselves the bloodhounds of Southern oppressors in pursuit of their fleeing slaves. And yet was he not justified in this low opinion of us by the conduct of many of those who were elected to be representatives of the opinions and wishes of the majority of our communities? The execrable bill could not have become a law, without the concurrence of Northern members in both Houses of Congress; for, in both, the larger number were from the non-slaveholding States. Yet it was enacted by the votes of twenty-seven of the Senators against only twelve; and by one hundred and nine of the Representatives opposed by seventy-five. And many of these recreants to the fundamental principles of justice and humanity had led Mr. Clay, and the Southern politicians generally, to expect such votes as they gave by the sentiments they uttered in the preceding debates.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

The man who did more than any one, if not more than all of the members of Congress from the free States, to procure the passage of the Bill of Abominations, was _Daniel Webster_, who had represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for twenty-five years; who led her in opposition to the Missouri Compromise in 1819, and for nearly twenty years afterwards was regarded as a leader of the advanced guard of liberty and humanity. But when, in 1838, he went into the Southern States to make his bids for the presidency, he uttered words that foretold his moral declension, though not to so deep a depth as he descended in his advocacy of the Fugitive Slave Law. The infamy of his speech on the 7th of March, 1850, can never be forgotten while he is remembered. He then declared it to be his intention “to support the Bill with all its provisions to the fullest extent.”

Another fact which adds a sting of bitterness to the shame of the North was, that this Act, the baseness, meanness, cruelty of which no epithet in my vocabulary can adequately express, became a law by the signature of the President, subscribed by _Millard Fillmore_, a New York man and a Unitarian withal.

Notwithstanding the general expressions of indignation and disgust at Mr. Webster’s baseness and treachery in supporting the Fugitive Slave Bill throughout the North, especially from all parts of his own State, Massachusetts, he and other members of the Senate and the House of Representatives persisted until, as we have seen, the Act became a law. The arch-traitor was rewarded with the office of Secretary of State. Such was his gratitude for this small compensation that, on taking leave of the Senate, he pledged himself anew to the infamous principles he had avowed on the 7th of March.[R]

No sooner was the deed done, the Fugitive Slave Act sent forth to be the law of the land, than outcries of contempt and defiance came from every free State, and pledges of protection were given to the colored population. It is not within the scope of my plan to attempt an account of the indignation-meetings that were held in places too numerous to be even mentioned here. They will make a proud episode in the history of our nation since 1830, whenever it shall be fully written. Meanwhile, let me here refer my readers to the admirable Reports of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, especially those written by the piquant pen, under the guidance of the astute mind, of Edmund Quincy, for the last ten or fifteen years of our fiery conflict.

I must confine myself to my personal recollections, and in this particular they are most grateful to me, and honorable to the city of Syracuse, where I have resided since 1845.

The Fugitive Slave Act was signed by the President on the 18th of September. Eight days afterwards, a call was issued through our newspapers summoning the citizens of Syracuse and its vicinity, without respect to party, to meet in our City Hall on the 4th of October ensuing, to denounce and take measures to withstand this law. As the time of the meeting approached the popular excitement increased, and at an early hour the hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Hon. A. H. Hovey, the Mayor of the city, was elected to preside, sustained by eight vice-presidents of the two political parties, three of whom had been then, or have been since, mayors of Syracuse, and the other five, gentlemen of the highest respectability, though only one of them had been active with the Abolitionists,--Hon. E. W. Leavenworth, Hon. Horace Wheaton, John Woodruff, Esq., Captain Oliver Teall, Robert Gere, Esq., Hon. L. Kingsley, Captain Hiram Putnam, Dr. Lyman Clary.

The President addressed the meeting very acceptably, declared himself to be with us in opposition to the law, adding: “The colored man must be protected,--he must be secure among us, come what will of political organizations.” A series of thirteen resolutions was read, three of which will make known sufficiently the spirit of them all. The second was:--

1. “_Resolved_, That the Fugitive Slave Law, recently enacted by
the Congress of these United States, is a most flagrant outrage
upon the inalienable rights of man, and a daring assault upon the
palladium of American liberties.”

3. “That every intelligent man and woman throughout our country,
ought to read attentively, and understand the provisions of this
law, in all its details, so that they may be fully aware of its
diabolical spirit and cruel ingenuity, and prepare themselves to
_oppose_ all attempts to enforce it.”

13. “_Resolved_, That we recommend the appointment of a Vigilance
Committee of thirteen citizens, whose duty it shall be to see
that no person is deprived of his liberty without ‘due process of
law.’ And all good citizens are earnestly requested to aid and
sustain them in all needed efforts for the security of every person
claiming the protection of our laws.”

The meeting was addressed in a very spirited strain by two colored gentlemen,--Rev. S. R. Ward and Rev. J. W. Loguen. They each declared that they and their colored fellow-citizens generally had determined to make the most violent resistance to any attempt that might be made to re-enslave them. They would have their liberty or die in its defence.

Mr. Charles A. Wheaton, Chairman of a Committee, then read an Address to the citizens of the State of New York, setting very plainly before them the degradation to which this law would reduce them. It showed them how the law would nullify all the provisions made in the Constitution for the protection of our dearest rights, as well as the liberties of any amongst us who might have complexions shaded in any measure. And it called upon the citizens of the Empire State to rise in their majesty and put down all attempts to enforce this law.

Hon. Charles B. Sedgwick then rose and advocated the Resolutions and Address in an admirable speech. He exposed the atrocious features of the slave-catching law in detail, demonstrated its unconstitutionality as well as cruelty, and awakened throughout his audience the keenest indignation against it. He said it was the vilest law that tyranny ever devised. He would resist it, and he called on all who heard him to resist it everywhere, in every way, to the utmost of their power. Rev. R. R. Raymond, of the Baptist Church, then spoke stirring words in thrilling tones. “How can we do to others as we would that they should do to us, if we do not resist this law? Citizens of Syracuse! shall a live man ever be taken out of our city by force of this law?” “No! No!!” was the response loud as thunder. “Let us tell the Southerners, then, that it will not be safe for them to come or send their agents here to attempt to take away a fugitive slave. [Great applause.] I will take the hunted man to my own house, and he shall not be torn away, and I be left alive. [Tremendous and long cheering.]”

I was then called up. But I shall leave my readers to imagine what I said, if they will only let it be in very strong opposition to the law.

The Report of the Committee on Resolutions, and an Address, was then put to vote, and adopted with only one dissenting voice. The Vigilance Committee of thirteen was appointed, and the meeting was adjourned to the evening of the 12th.

Our second meeting was, if possible, more enthusiastic than the first. All the seats in the hall were filled, and the aisles crowded before the hour to which the meeting was adjourned. The Mayor called to order precisely at seven o’clock. It devolved upon me, as Chairman of the Committee, to report Resolutions. There were too many of them to be repeated here. Two or three must suffice.

1. “_Resolved_, That we solemnly reiterate our abhorrence of the
Fugitive Slave Law, which in effect is nothing less than a license
for _kidnapping_, under the protection and at the expense of our
Federal Government, which has become the tool of oppressors.”

6. “_Resolved_, That now is the day and now the hour to take our
stand for liberty and humanity. If we now refuse to assert our
independency of the tyrants who aspire to absolute power in our
Republic, we may hope for nothing better than entire subjugation
to their will, and shall leave our children in a condition little
better than that of the creatures of absolute despots.”

10. “_Resolved_, That as all of us are liable at any moment to
be summoned to assist in kidnapping such persons as anybody may
claim to be his slaves, and to be fined one thousand dollars if
we refuse to do the bidding of the land-pirates, whom this law
would encourage to prowl through our country, it is the dictate of
prudence as well as good fellowship in a righteous cause, that we
should unite ourselves in an Association, pledged to stand by its
members in opposing this law, and to share with any of them the
pecuniary losses they may incur, under the operation of this law.”

11. “_Resolved_, That such an Association be now formed, so that
Southern oppressors may know that the people of Syracuse and its
vicinity are prepared to sustain one another in resisting the
encroachments of despotism.”

William H. Burleigh first spoke in support of the resolutions. One of the newspapers the next day said: “We can do no justice to the ability and surpassing eloquence of Mr. Burleigh’s speech; the deep feelings of his soul were poured out in terms of consuming oratory.” Judge Nye, then of Madison County, was present, and being called to address the meeting, said, among many other good things: “I am an officer of the law. I am not sure that I am not one of those officers who are clothed with anomalous and terrible powers by this Bill of Abominations. If I am, I will tell my constituency that I will trample that law in the dust, and they must find another man, if there be one who will degrade himself, to do this dirty work.” “Be assured, Syracusians, there is not a man among the hills and valleys of Madison County who would take my office on condition of obedience to this statute.” These sentences, and other good things that Judge Nye said, were received with great applause.

Hon. C. B. Sedgwick then presented a petition to Congress for the repeal of the Act, and called upon his fellow-citizens to sign it. He enforced this call by a very impressive speech, declaring again and again his fixed determination to oppose to the utmost any attempt to carry back from Syracuse a fugitive slave. “A man (no, a dog) may come here scenting blood on the track of our brother Loguen; shall we let him drag him off to slavery again? No! never!! Loguen has been driven and stricken from childhood to manhood. He has been literally a man of sorrows. His soul was trodden upon by oppression. But he rose in the might of his manhood, and made his way across rivers, through swamps, over mountains, to our city. And it shall be a place of safety to him. We will not give him up. He is a husband and a father on our free soil, and will you give him back to the hell of slavery? No! never!!

‘Dear as freedom is,
And in my soul’s just estimation prized above all price, I had
rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.’”

I wish I could convey to the ears of my readers the hearty, deep-toned notes of applause that welcomed these declarations.

I then presented a pledge, binding those who might sign it to stand by one another, and share equally all pecuniary penalties they might be made to suffer because of their opposition to this oppressive and cruel Act.

Rev. Mr. Raymond was afterwards called up, and he spoke in a manner that was very affecting. I have room for only a brief extract from the report of it.

“Oh! the hardships this law has brought upon the fugitives from slavery that have sought an asylum with us! I attended the other day a meeting of Baptist ministers in Rochester. There was a colored brother there in the depths of distress. He arose in our midst and gave voice to the agonies of his soul. A few years since he escaped from one of the richest slaveholders in Kentucky. With him, he had been brought up in ignorance. Since coming among us he had learnt to read, and had become so well educated as to be able to teach others. In the course of two years he had gathered a church in a meeting-house that had been built mainly by his instrumentality. He had a comfortable homestead in Rochester, and a happy family about him. But now his master had sent for him, declaring he would have him under this law. ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘what have I done? what is my crime? All the power and cunning and sagacity of this great nation are moving to drag me back again into slavery,--worse than death.’ His head fell upon his bosom, he sobbed aloud, and we wept with him, and a deep groan of execration went up from the souls of us all to the God of mercy against this law.” This recital awakened intense feeling throughout our meeting and murmurs of indignation. “And now,” Mr. Raymond continued, “suppose that while we were glowing with sympathy for that brother and abhorrence of the law,--suppose the man-thief had come into that meeting and put his hand upon that brother to bear him off to the South. What would have been the result? I tell you we would have defended him, if we had had to tear that man-thief in pieces.” This was received with great applause. “What,” continued Mr. Raymond, “what if the officers should come here and put their hand on me as one claimed to be the property of another man, would you let me go?” “No! No!! No!!!” from every quarter was the hearty response. “And yet why not me as readily as a man of darker skin? If ever there was a law which it was right to trample upon, it is this. You are counselling revolution, some may say. Revolution indeed! O, my fellow-citizens, blood has been flowing, not in battle-fields, but from the backs of our enslaved countrymen ever since 1776, and is flowing now. [Deep sensation.] Yes, and that blood has gone up to Heaven and provoked God against us. Yes, and blood will flow profusely on the battle-fields of a civil war if we carry out this accursed law,--if we do not proclaim freedom throughout the land.”

Several other gentlemen addressed the meeting in a similar strain; among them, Colonel Titus, who said: “With all my heart I concur in the sentiments and spirit of the resolutions and in the speech of Mr. Raymond. I am for suspending the operation of the bill until it shall be repealed. If the Southerners or their Northern minions undertake to enforce its provisions, and attempt to carry off our friend Loguen, or any other citizens, I am prepared to fight in their defence. I would advise our colored neighbors not to remove to Canada, but to rely on the patriotism of the citizens of Syracuse for protection. The Assistant United States Marshal is in the hall, and it is well to have him understand what are the real sentiments of his fellow-citizens, which I trust will be found to be almost unanimous in favor of resistance to this execrable law.”

Such was the very general uprising of the people of Syracuse in opposition to the rendition of fugitives from slavery.

My own sentiments and feelings were very fully declared, a few days afterwards, from my own pulpit, and subsequently in Rochester and Oswego. I trust my readers will bear with a somewhat extended abstract of my sermon.

“If there be a God, almighty, perfectly wise, and impartially
just and good, his will ought to be supreme with all moral beings
throughout his universe. To teach otherwise,--to teach that we or
any of his moral offspring are bound or can be bound by any earthly
power to do what is contrary to _divine law_, is virtually Atheism;
it is to enthrone Baal or Mammon in the place of Jehovah. _And
this is just what the people of this country are now called upon
by our Federal Government to do._ The legislators of this Republic
have enacted a law which offends every feeling of humanity, sets
at naught every precept of the Christian religion, outrages our
highest sense of right. And now they and their political and
priestly abettors demand that we shall conform to the requirements
of this law, because it was enacted by the government under which
we live.

“Brethren, are any of you ready to bow and take this yoke upon
your necks, and do the biddings of these wicked men? I hope not.
You shall not be, if I can convince you that you ought not. The
iniquity of our country has culminated in the passage of this
infernal law. Fearful encroachments have successively been made
upon our liberties. This last is the worst, the most daring. If
we yield to it, all will be lost. Our country will be given up
to oppressors. There can be no insult, no outrage upon our moral
sense, which we shall be able to withstand; no spot on which we can
raise a barrier to the tide of political and personal pollution
that must ever follow in the wake of slavery. Our government will
become a despotism or a cruel oligarchy, and our religion will be
in effect, if not in name, the worship of Baal, which means ‘him
that subdues.’...

“This horrible law, which in the middle of the nineteenth century
of the Christian era the legislators of the most highly favored
nation on earth have had the effrontery to enact,--this law
peremptorily, under heavy fines and penalties, forbids us to give
assistance and comfort to a certain class of our fellow-men in
the utmost need of help,--those who have fled and are longing
to be saved from the greatest wrongs that can be inflicted upon
human beings,--_the wrongs of slavery_. And yet we are told
by many--many who profess to be Christians, even teachers of
Christianity, ah! Doctors of Divinity--that the pulpit may not
remonstrate against this tremendous iniquity, because, forsooth,
it has passed into a law. What, are we, then, to allow that there
is no authority higher than that of the earthly government under
which we live,--a government framed by our revered but fallible
fathers, and which we administer by agents of our own election,
who are by no means incorruptible? Has it come to this? Is this
the best lesson our Republican and Christian wisdom can teach the
suffering nations of earth? Nay, are we to submit to this human
authority without question? May we not so much as discuss the
justice of its demands upon us? Must even those men be silent who
were set in our midst for the defence of the Gospel,--the Gospel
of Him who was ‘anointed to preach to the poor, who was sent to
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, to
set at liberty them that are bruised?’ Such is the doctrine of our
politicians and of our politico-religious ministers. But a more
heartless, demoralizing, base, antidemocrat, and antichristian
doctrine could not be preached. I repudiate it utterly.... _The
pulpit has no higher function than to expound, assert, and
maintain the rights of man._ The assumption of Mr. Webster and his
abettors--that there is no higher law than an enactment of our
Congress or the Constitution of the United States--is glaringly
_atheistical_, inasmuch as it denies the supremacy of the Divine
Author of the _moral constitution_ of man....

“It is a matter of great interest to me personally, that my
attention was first powerfully called to the subject of slavery,
and my resolution to do my duty regarding it, was first roused by
Daniel Webster, when he was a _man_, and not a mere selfseeking
politician. The first antislavery meeting I ever attended was
one in which Mr. Webster took a conspicuous part. It was on the
3d of December, 1819, in the State House at Boston, called to
oppose the Missouri Compromise. Then and there generous, humane,
Christian sentiments respecting slavery were uttered by him and
others that kindled in my bosom a warmth of interest in the cause
of the oppressed that has never cooled. But the next year, on the
22d of December, 1820, a few days before I entered the pulpit as
a preacher, Mr. Webster delivered his famous oration at Plymouth.
It was an admirable exposition of the rise, characteristics, and
spirit of our free political and religious institutions. Towards
the close, having alluded to slavery and the slave-trade, he said,
with deep solemnity: ‘_I invoke the ministers of our religion, that
they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes. If the pulpit be
silent wherever or whenever there may be a sin bloody with this
guilt within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its
trust._’

“Thus solemnly charged by one whom I _then_ revered as a good man,
no less than as a great statesman, the following Sunday I commenced
preaching. Tremblingly alive to the weighty responsibilities I was
about to incur, I fully resolved that the pulpit which might be
committed to my charge should not be silent respecting slavery or
any other great public wrong....

“And now, that same Daniel Webster, who first roused me to feel
somewhat as I ought for the enslaved, has done more than any
other man to procure the enactment of a law, under the provisions
of which, if I do my duty, and by my preaching incite others to
do their duty, to those who are in danger of being enslaved, I
and they may be subjected to unusually heavy fines, or may be
thrown into prison as malefactors. Have I not, then, a personal
controversy with that distinguished man,--distinguished now, alas!
for something else than splendid talents and exalted virtues? If I
have gone wrong, did not Mr. Webster misdirect me? If I have done
no more than he solemnly charged all preachers to do, has he not
basely deserted and betrayed me? Verily, verily I say unto you, he
bound the burden of this antislavery reform, and laid it upon the
shoulders of others, but he himself has not helped to bear it,--no,
not with one of his fingers. Nay, worse, he has done all he could
to prepare the prison, and to whet the sword of vengeance for those
sons of New England who shall obey the injunction he gave them from
Plymouth Rock, that spot hallowed by all who truly love liberty and
hate oppression....

“Tell me, then, no more that the pulpit has nothing to do,--that
I as a Christian minister have nothing to do with politics, when
I see how politics have corrupted, yes, utterly spoiled the once
noble (we used in our admiration to say), godlike Daniel Webster!
If that man, with his surpassing strength of intellect and once
enlarged, generous views of the right and the good,--if he has not
been able to withstand the demoralizing influences of political
partyism, but has been shrivelled up into a mere aspirant for
office, basely consenting to any and every sacrifice of humanity
demanded by the oppressors of our country, and at last pledging
himself to sustain all the provisions of a law more ingeniously
wicked than the stimulated fears of the most cowardly tyrants ever
before devised,--I repeat, if such a man as Daniel Webster once was
has been corrupted and ruined by politics, shall I, a minister of
the Christian religion, fail to point out as plainly as I may, and
proclaim as earnestly as I can, the moral dangers that beset those
who engage in the strife for political preferment?...

“For one, I will not help to uphold our nation in its
iniquity,--no, not for an hour. If it cannot be reclaimed, let
it be dissolved. The declaration so often made by the professed
friends of our Union, that it cannot be preserved unless this
horrible law can be enforced, is unwittingly a declaration that
it is the implacable enemy of liberty,--an obstacle in the way of
human progress. If it really be so, it must be, it will be removed.
And he who attempts to prevent its dissolution will find himself
fighting against God. If such a law as this for the recapture of
fugitive slaves be essential to our Republic as now constituted,
let it be broken up, and some new form of government arise in its
stead. A better one would doubtless succeed. A worse one it could
not be, if the enslavement, continued degradation and outlawry of
more than three millions of our people, be indeed the bond of our
present Union....

“Suppose that a considerable proportion of the States in this Union
were, or should become, idolatrous heathen. Suppose that they
worshipped Moloch, or some other false deity who delighted in human
sacrifices. And suppose that, to propitiate the people of those
States, and to secure the pecuniary and political advantages of a
continued Union with them, Congress should enact that the people
of the Christian States should allow those idolaters to come here
when they pleased and offer human sacrifices in our midst, or carry
away our children to be burnt on their altars at the South; would
Mr. Webster or Mr. Clay, or the editors of _The New York Observer_,
or _The Journal of Commerce_, or the Doctors of Divinity who have
endeavored to array the public on the side of wrong,--would even
they call upon us to obey such a law? I am sure they would not. And
yet I fain would know wherein such a law as I have supposed would
be any worse than this law which they are laboring to enforce....
Why, then, if it would be reasonable and proper, in the view of Mr.
Webster and his reverend abettors, to nullify a law requiring us to
permit human beings to be offered as burnt sacrifices,--why is it
not equally reasonable and proper for us to set at naught this law
which commands us to do something worse,--that is, to assist in
reducing human beings to the condition of domesticated brutes?...
Nay, further, I insisted that the Fugitive Slave Law violates
the religious liberty, interferes with the faith and worship of
Christians, just as much as the law I have supposed would do....
A law of the land requiring you, as this Fugitive Slave Law
does, to disobey the Golden Rule is, indeed, a far more grievous
encroachment upon your liberty of conscience than a law prescribing
to your faith any creed, or any rites and ceremonies by which you
must worship God....

“Fellow-citizens! Christian brethren! the time has come that is to
test our principles, to try our souls. I would not that any one
in this emergency should trust to his own unaided strength. Let
us fervently pray for wisdom to direct us, and for fortitude to
do whatever may be demanded at our hands, by the Royal Law,--the
Golden Rule....

“I would counsel prudence, although this evil day demands of us
courage and self-sacrifice.... We should spare no pains through the
press, by conversation, and by public addresses, particularly by
faithful discourses from the pulpits, to cherish and quicken the
sense of right and the love of liberty in the hearts of the people.
A correct public sentiment is our surest safeguard....

“Do you inquire of me by what means you ought to withstand the
execution of this diabolical law? It is not for me to determine
the action of any one but myself. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself,’ is the second great command which all should faithfully
try to obey. Every man and woman among you is bound, as I am, to do
for the protection or rescue of a fugitive from slavery what, in
your hearts before God, you believe it would be right for you to do
in behalf of your own life or liberty, or that of a member of your
family. If you are fully persuaded that it would be right for you
to maim or kill the kidnapper who had laid hands upon your wife,
son, or daughter, or should be attempting to drag yourself away to
be enslaved, I see not how you can excuse yourself from helping, by
the same degree of violence, to rescue the fugitive slave from the
like outrage....

“Before all men, I declare that you are, every one of you, under
the highest obligation to disobey this law,--nay, oppose to the
utmost the execution of it. If you know of no better way to do this
than by force and arms, then are you bound to use force and arms
to prevent a fellow-being from being enslaved. There never was,
there cannot be, a more righteous cause for revolution than the
demands made upon us by this law. It would make you kidnappers,
men-stealers, bloodhounds....

“It is known that I have been and am a preacher of the ‘doctrine
of non-resistance.’ I believe it to be one of the distinctive
doctrines of Christianity. But I have never presumed to affirm that
I possessed enough of the spirit of Christ,--enough confidence
in God and man,--enough moral courage and self-command to act in
accordance with the Gospel precept in the treatment of enemies.
But there is not a doubt in my heart that, if I should be enabled
to speak and act as Jesus would, I should produce a far greater
and better effect than could be wrought by clubs, or swords, or
any deadly weapons.... I shall go to the rescue of any one I may
hear is in danger, not intending to harm the cruel men who may
be attempting to kidnap him. I shall take no weapon of violence
along with me, not even the cane that I usually wear. I shall go,
praying that I may say and do what will smite the hearts rather
than the bodies of the impious claimants of property in human
beings,--pierce their consciences rather than their flesh....

“Fellow-citizens, fellow-men, fellow-Christians! the hour is
come! A stand must be taken against the ruthless oppressors of
our country. Resistants and non-resistants have now a work to do
that may task to the utmost the energies of their souls. We owe it
to the millions who are wearing out a miserable existence under
the yoke of slavery; we owe it to the memory of our fathers who
solemnly pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor to the cause of liberty; We owe it to the expectations, the
claims of oppressed and suffering men the world over; we owe it to
ourselves, if we would be true men and not the menials of tyrants,
to trample this Fugitive Slave Law under foot, and throw it
indignantly back at the wicked legislators who had the hardihood to
enact it.”

It was obvious enough that some parts of the discourse were not relished by quite a number of my auditors. Several seemed to be seriously offended. It is therefore to be cherished among my many grateful recollections that, as I was coming down from the pulpit the late Major James E. Heron, of the United States Army, then one of the prominent members of our society, came up to me glowing with emotion, gave me his hand, and said, quite audibly: “Mr. May, I thank you. I was once a slaveholder. I know all about the Southern system of domestic servitude. I am intimately acquainted with the principles of the slaveholders, and the condition of their bondmen. You have never in my hearing exaggerated the wrongs and the vices inherent in the system. You cannot overstate them. And the bold attempt which is now making to subjugate the people of the Northern States to the will and service of the slaveholders ought to be resisted to the last.” He must have been heard by many. His words were repeated about the city, and his full indorsement of my antislavery fanaticism helped to make it much more tolerable, in the regards of some who were ready to revolt from it.

The Vigilance Committee appointed on the 4th of October, and the Association we formed on the 12th, to co-operate with that committee, and to bear mutually the expenses that might be incurred in resisting the law, kept the attention of our citizens alive to the subject. And their interest was quickened and their determination confirmed by the reports that came to us from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and many other places, of the preparations that were making to protect the colored people, and set at defiance the plan for their re-enslavement. The historian of our country, if he be one worthy of the task, will linger with delight over the pages on which he shall narrate the uprising of the people generally, in 1850 and 1851, throughout the Northern States, in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. There were not wanting fearless preachers who took up the arms of the Gospel and faithfully fought against the great unrighteousness. Only a few days after the infamous speech of Mr. Webster on the 7th of March, Theodore Parker addressed a crowded audience in Faneuil Hall, and exposed to their deeper abhorrence the atrocious provisions of the Bill which the Massachusetts senator had had the effrontery to advocate and pledge himself to maintain. On the 22d of September following he preached to his hearers in the Melodeon a thrilling discourse on “The Function and Place of Conscience in Relation to the Laws of Men,” which must have fired them all the more to stand to the death in defence of any human being who had sought, or should seek, an asylum in Massachusetts. And again on the 28th of November, 1850, the day of annual Thanksgiving, he delivered his comprehensive, deep-searching discourse on “The State of the Nation,” showing the reckless impiety of rulers who could frame such unrighteousness into law, and the folly of the people who could suppose themselves bound to obey such a law. Oh! if the ministers of religion generally, throughout our country, had said and done, before and after that date, a tithe as much as Mr. Parker said and did against the “great iniquity” of our nation, the slaveholders could never have gained such an ascendency in our Government, nor have become so inflated with the idea of their power, as to have attempted the dissolution of the Union, which it cost all the blood and treasure expended in our awful civil war to preserve. Mr. Parker was not indeed left alone to fight the battle of the Lord. Rev. Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, N. Y., Rev. G. W. Perkins, of Guilford, Conn., Rev. J. G. Forman, of West Bridgewater, Rev. Charles Beecher, Rev. William C. Whitcomb, of Stoneham, Rev. Nathaniel West, of Pittsburg, each spoke and wrote words of sound truth and great power, as well as those whose services I have acknowledged in another place, and others no doubt whose names have escaped my memory. But of the thirty thousand ministers of all the denominations in the United States, I believe not one in a hundred ever raised his voice against the enslavement of millions of our countrymen, nor lifted a finger to protect one who had escaped from bondage. And many, very many of the clergy openly and vehemently espoused the cause of the oppressors. Not only did the preachers in the slaveholding States, with scarcely an exception, justify and defend the institution of slavery, but there were many ministers in the free States who took sides with them. The most distinguished in this bad company were Professor Stuart, of Andover, Dr. Lord, President of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Bishop Hopkins, of Burlington, Vt., and Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston. But I must refer my readers to the books mentioned at the bottom of page 349, if they would know how “the orthodox and evangelical” ministers of the free States contributed their influence to uphold “the peculiar institution of the South.” And it must be left for the future historian of our Republic in the nineteenth century to tell to posterity how fearfully the American Church and ninety-nine hundredths of the ministers were subjugated to the will and behest of our slaveholding oligarchy. My purpose is to give, for the most part, only my personal recollections. And on this point, I am sorry to say, they are numerous and mortifying enough.

THE UNITARIANS AND THEIR MINISTERS.