American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) by Various

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The influence of slavery on our Government has received the profoundest
philosophical investigation from the pen of Richard Hildreth, in his
invaluable essay on _Despotism in America_,--a work which deserves a
place by the side of the ablest political disquisitions of any age.

Even the vigorous mind of Rantoul, the ablest man, without doubt, of
the Democratic party, and perhaps the ripest politician in New England,
added little or nothing to the store-house of antislavery argument. *
* * His speeches on our question, too short and too few, are remarkable
for their compact statement, iron logic, bold denunciation, and the
wonderful light thrown back upon our history. Yet how little do they
present which was not familiar for years in our anti-slavery
meetings! Look, too, at the last great effort of the idol of so many
thousands,--Mr. Senator Sumner,--the discussion of a great national
question, of which it has been said that we must go back to Webster's
reply to Hayne, and Fisher Ames on the Jay treaty, to find its equal in
Congress,--praise which we might perhaps qualify, if any adequate report
were left us of some of the noble orations of Adams. No one can be blind
to the skilful use he has made of his materials, the consummate ability
with which he has marshalled them, and the radiant glow which his genius
has thrown over all. Yet, with the exception of his reference to the
antislavery debate in Congress in 1817, there is hardly a train of
thought or argument, and no single fact in the whole speech, which has
not been familiar in our meetings and essays for the last ten
years. * * *

The relations of the American Church to slavery, and the duties of
private Christians, the whole casuistry of this portion of the question,
so momentous among descendants of the Puritans,--have been discussed
with great acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garrison, Goodell,
Gerrit Smith, Pillsbury, and Foster. They have never attempted to judge
the American Church by any standard except that which she has herself
laid down,--never claimed that she should be perfect, but have contented
themselves by demanding that she should be consistent. They have never
judged her except out of her own mouth, and on facts asserted by her
own presses and leaders. The sundering of the Methodist and Baptist
denominations, and the universal agitation of the religious world,
are the best proof of the sagacity with which their measures have been
chosen, the cogent arguments they have used, and the indisputable
facts on which their criticisms have been founded. In nothing have the
Abolitionists shown more sagacity or more thorough knowledge of their
countrymen than in the course they have pursued in relation to the
Church. None but a New-Englander can appreciate the power which church
organizations wield over all who share the blood of the Puritans. The
influence of each sect over its own members is overwhelming, often
shutting out, or controlling, all other influences. We have Popes here,
all the more dangerous because no triple crown puts you on your guard.
* * * In such a land, the Abolitionists early saw, that, for a moral
question like theirs, only two paths lay open: to work through the
Church; that failing, to join battle with it. Some tried long, like
Luther, to be Protestants, and yet not come out of Catholicism; but
their eyes were soon opened. Since then we have been convinced that, to
come out from the Church, to hold her up as the bulwark of slavery, and
to make her shortcomings the main burden of our appeals to the religious
sentiment of the community, was our first duty and best policy. This
course alienated many friends, and was a subject of frequent rebuke from
such men as Dr. Channing. But nothing has ever more strengthened the
cause, or won it more influence; and it has had the healthiest effect on
the Church itself. * * *

Unable to command a wide circulation for our books and journals, we have
been obliged to bring ourselves into close contact with the people, and
to rely mainly on public addresses. These have been our most efficient
instrumentality. For proof that these addresses have been full of
pertinent facts, sound sense, and able arguments, we must necessarily
point to results, and demand to be tried by our fruits. Within these
last twenty years it has been very rare that any fact stated by our
lecturers has been disproved, or any statement of theirs successfully
impeached. And for evidence of the soundness, simplicity, and pertinency
of their arguments we can only claim that our converts and co-laborers
throughout the land have at least the reputation of being specially able
"to give a reason for the faith that is in them."

I remember that when, in 1845, the present leaders of the Free Soil
party, with Daniel Webster in their company, met to draw up the
Anti-Texas Address of the Massachusetts Convention, they sent to
Abolitionists for anti-slavery facts and history, for the remarkable
testimonies of our Revolutionary great men which they wished to quote.
When, many years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts wished to send to
Congress a resolution affirming the duty of immediate emancipation, the
committee sent to William Lloyd Garrison to draw it up, and it stands
now on our statute-book as he drafted it.

How vigilantly, how patiently, did we watch the Texas plot from its
commencement! The politic South felt that its first move had been too
bold, and thenceforward worked underground. For many a year men laughed
at us for entertaining any apprehensions. It was impossible to rouse the
North to its peril. David Lee Child was thought crazy because he would
not believe there was no danger. His elaborate "_Letters on Texas
Annexation_" are the ablest and most valuable contribution that has
been made toward a history of the whole plot. Though we foresaw and
proclaimed our conviction that annexation would be, in the end, a fatal
step for the South, we did not feel at liberty to relax our opposition,
well knowing the vast increase of strength it would give, at first, to
the slave power. I remember being one of a committee which waited
on Abbott Lawrence, a year or so only before annexation, to ask his
countenance to some general movement, without distinction of party,
against the Texas scheme. He smiled at our fears, begged us to have
no apprehensions; stating that his correspondence with leading men at
Washington enabled him to assure us annexation was impossible, and that
the South itself was determined to defeat the project. A short time
after, Senators and Representatives from Texas took their seats in
Congress!

Many of these services to the slave were done before I joined his cause.
In thus referring to them, do not suppose me merely seeking occasion of
eulogy on my predecessors and present co-laborers. I recall these things
only to rebut the contemptuous criticism which some about us make the
excuse for their past neglect of the movement, and in answer to
"Ion's" representation of our course as reckless fanaticism, childish
impatience, utter lack of good sense, and of our meetings as scenes only
of excitement, of reckless and indiscriminate denunciation. I assert
that every social, moral, economical, religious, political, and
historical aspect of the question has been ably and patiently examined.
And all this has been done with an industry and ability which have left
little for the professional skill, scholarly culture, and historical
learning of the new laborers to accomplish. If the people are still in
doubt, it is from the inherent difficulty of the subject, or a hatred of
light, not from want of it. * * *

Sir, when a nation sets itself to do evil, and all its leading forces,
wealth, party, and piety, join in the career, it is impossible but that
those who offer a constant opposition should be hated and maligned, no
matter how wise, cautious, and well planned their course may be. We
are peculiar sufferers in this way. The community has come to hate its
reproving Nathan so bitterly, that even those whom the relenting part of
it are beginning to regard as standard-bearers of the antislavery host
think it unwise to avow any connection or sympathy with him. I refer to
some of the leaders of the political movement against slavery. They feel
it to be their mission to marshal and use as effectively as possible
the present convictions of the people. They cannot afford to encumber
themselves with the odium which twenty years of angry agitation have
engendered in great sects sore from unsparing rebuke, parties galled by
constant defeat, and leading men provoked by unexpected exposure. They
are willing to confess, privately, that our movement produced theirs,
and that its continued existence is the very breath of their life. But,
at the same time, they would fain walk on the road without being soiled
by too close contact with the rough pioneers who threw it up. They are
wise and honorable, and their silence is very expressive.

When I speak of their eminent position and acknowledged ability, another
thought strikes me. Who converted these men and their distinguished
associates? It is said we have shown neither sagacity in plans,
nor candor in discussion, nor ability. Who, then, or what converted
Burlingame and Wilson, Sumner and Adams, Palfrey and Mann, Chase and
Hale, and Phillips and Giddings? Who taught the _Christian Register_,
the _Daily Advertiser_, and that class of prints, that there were such
things as a slave and a slave-holder in the land, and so gave them some
more intelligent basis than their mere instincts to hate William Lloyd
Garrison? What magic wand was it whose touch made the todying servility
of the land start up the real demon that it was, and at the same
time gathered into the slave's service the professional ability, ripe
culture, and personal integrity which grace the Free Soil ranks? We
never argue! These men, then, were converted by simple denunciation!
They were all converted by the "hot," "reckless," "ranting," "bigoted,"
"fanatic" Garrison, who never troubled himself about facts, nor stopped
to argue with an opponent, but straightway knocked him down! My old
and valued friend, Mr. Sumner, often boasts that he was a reader of the
_Liberator_ before I was. Do not criticise too much the agency by which
such men were converted. That blade has a double edge. Our reckless
course, our empty rant, our fanaticism, has made Abolitionists of some
of the best and ablest men in the land. We are inclined to go on, and
see if, even with such poor tools, we cannot make some more. Antislavery
zeal and the roused conscience of the "godless comeouters" made the
trembling South demand the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Fugitive Slave
Law provoked Mrs. Stowe to the good work of "Uncle Tom." That is
something! Let me say, in passing, that you will nowhere find an earlier
or more generous appreciation, or more flowing eulogy, of these men and
their labors, than in the columns of the _Liberator_. No one, however
feeble, has ever peeped or muttered, in any quarter, that the vigilant
eye of the _Pioneer_ has not recognized him. He has stretched out the
right hand of a most cordial welcome the moment any man's face was
turned Zionward.

I do not mention these things to praise Mr. Garrison; I do not stand
here for that purpose. You will not deny--if you do, I can prove
it--that the movement of the Abolitionists converted these men. Their
constituents were converted by it. The assault upon the right of
petition, upon the right to print and speak of slavery, the denial of
the right of Congress over the District, the annexation of Texas,
the Fugitive Slave Law, were measures which the anti-slavery movement
provoked, and the discussion of which has made all the Abolitionists we
have. The antislavery cause, then, converted these men; it gave them a
constituency; it gave them an opportunity to speak, and it gave them a
public to listen. The antislavery cause gave them their votes, got them
their offices, furnished them their facts, gave them their audience.
If you tell me they cherished all these principles in their own breasts
before Mr. Garrison appeared, I can only say, if the anti-slavery
movement did not give them their ideas, it surely gave the courage to
utter them.

In such circumstances, is it not singular that the name of William Lloyd
Garrison has never been pronounced on the floor of the United States
Congress linked with any epithet but that of contempt! No one of those
men who owe their ideas, their station, their audience, to him,
have ever thought it worth their while to utter one word in grateful
recognition of the power which called them into being. When obliged, by
the course of their argument, to treat the question historically, they
can go across the water to Clarkson and Wilberforce--yes, to a safe
salt-water distance. As Daniel Webster, when he was talking to the
farmers of Western New York, and wished to contrast slave labor and free
labor, did not dare to compare New York with Virginia--sister States,
under the same government, planted by the same race, worshipping at the
same altar, speaking the same language--identical in all respects, save
that one in which he wished to seek the contrast; but no; he compared
it with Cuba--the contrast was so close! Catholic--Protestant;
Spanish--Saxon; despotism--municipal institutions; readers of Lope de
Vega and of Shakespeare; mutterers of the Mass--children of the Bible!
But Virginia is too near home! So is Garrison! One would have thought
there was something in the human breast which would sometimes break
through policy. These noble-hearted men whom I have named must surely
have found quite irksome the constant practice of what Dr. Gardiner used
to call "that despicable virtue, prudence." One would have thought, when
they heard that name spoken with contempt, their ready eloquence would
have leaped from its scabbard to avenge even a word that threatened
him with insult. But it never came--never! I do not say I blame them.
Perhaps they thought they should serve the cause better by drawing a
broad black line between themselves and him. Perhaps they thought the
Devil could be cheated: I do not!

* * * * *

Caution is not always good policy in a cause like ours. It is said that,
when Napoleon saw the day going against him, he used to throw away
all the rules of war, and trust himself to the hot impetuosity of his
soldiers. The masses are governed more by impulse than conviction, and
even were it not so, the convictions of most men are on our side,
and this will surely appear, if we can only pierce the crust of their
prejudice or indifference. I observe that our Free Soil friends never
stir their audience so deeply as when some individual leaps beyond the
platform, and strikes upon the very heart of the people. Men listen to
discussions of laws and tactics with ominous patience. It is when Mr.
Sumner, in Faneuil Hall, avows his determination to disobey the
Fugitive Slave Law, and cries out: "I was a man before I was a
Commissioner,"--when Mr. Giddings says of the fall of slavery, quoting
Adams: "Let it come. If it must come in blood, yet I say let it
come!"--that their associates on the platform are sure they are
wrecking the party,--while many a heart beneath beats its first pulse of
anti-slavery life.

These are brave words. When I compare them with the general tone of Free
Soil men in Congress, I distrust the atmosphere of Washington and of
politics. These men move about, Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by
many a cubit. There they lose port and stature. Mr. Sumner's speech
in the Senate unsays no part of his Faneuil Hall pledge. But, though
discussing the same topic, no one would gather from any word or argument
that the speaker ever took such ground as he did in Faneuil Hall. It
is all through, the law, the manner of the surrender, not the surrender
itself, of the slave, that he objects to. As my friend Mr. Pillsbury
so forcibly says, so far as any thing in the speech shows, he puts the
slave behind the jury trial, behind the habeas corpus act, and behind
the new interpretation of the Constitution, and says to the slave
claimant: "You must get through all these before you reach him; but, if
you can get through all these, you may have him!" It was no tone like
this which made the old Hall rock! Not if he got through twelve jury
trials, and forty habeas corpus acts, and constitutions built high
as yonder monument, would he permit so much as the shadow of a little
finger of the slave claimant to touch the slave! At least so he was
understood. * * *

Mr. Mann, in his speech of February 5, 1850, says: "The States being
separated, I would as soon return my own brother or sister into bondage,
as I would return a fugitive slave. Before God, and Christ, and all
Christian men, they are my brothers and sisters." What a condition! From
the lips, too, of a champion of the Higher Law! Whether the States
be separate or united, neither my brother nor any other man's brother
shall, with my consent, go back to bondage! So speaks the heart--Mr.
Mann's version is that of the politician.

This seems to me a very mistaken strain. Whenever slavery is banished
from our national jurisdiction, it will be a momentous gain, a vast
stride. But let us not mistake the half-way house for the end of the
journey. I need not say that it matters not to Abolitionists under what
special law slavery exists. Their battle lasts while it exists anywhere,
and I doubt not Mr. Sumner and Mr. Giddings feel themselves enlisted
for the whole war. I will even suppose, what neither of these gentlemen
states, that their plan includes not only that slavery shall be
abolished in the District and Territories but that the slave basis
of representation shall be struck from the Constitution, and the
slave-surrender clause construed away. But even then does Mr. Giddings
or Mr. Sumner really believe that slavery, existing in its full force in
the States, "will cease to vex our national politics?" Can they point to
any State where a powerful oligarchy, possessed of immense wealth, has
ever existed without attempting to meddle in the government? Even now,
does not manufacturing, banking, and commercial capital perpetually vex
our politics? Why should not slave capital exert the same influence?
Do they imagine that a hundred thousand men, possessed of two thousand
millions of dollars, which they feel the spirit of the age is seeking
to tear from their grasp, will not eagerly catch at all the support they
can obtain by getting the control of the government? In a land where the
dollar is almighty, "where the sin of not being rich is only atoned for
by the effort to become so," do they doubt that such an oligarchy will
generally succeed? Besides, banking and manufacturing stocks are not
urged by despair to seek a controlling influence in politics. They know
they are about equally safe, whichever party rules--that no party wishes
to legislate their rights away. Slave property knows that its being
allowed to exist depends on its having the virtual control of the
government. Its constant presence in politics is dictated, therefore,
by despair, as well as by the wish to secure fresh privileges. Money,
however, is not the only strength of the slave power. That, indeed, were
enough, in an age when capitalists are our feudal barons. But, though
driven entirely from national shelter, the slave-holders would have the
strength of old associations, and of peculiar laws in their own States,
which give those States wholly into their hands. A weaker prestige,
fewer privileges, and less comparative wealth, have enabled the British
aristocracy to rule England for two centuries, though the root of their
strength was cut at Naseby. It takes ages for deeply-rooted institutions
to die; and driving slavery into the States will hardly be our Naseby. *
* *

And Mr. Sumner "knows no better aim, under the Constitution, than to
bring back the government to where it was in 1789!" Has the voyage been
so very honest and prosperous a one, in his opinion, that his only
wish is to start again with the same ship, the same crew, and the same
sailing orders? Grant all he claims as to the state of public opinion,
the intentions of leading men, and the form of our institutions at that
period; still, with all these checks on wicked men, and helps to good
ones, here we are, in 1853, according to his own showing, ruled by
slavery, tainted to the core with slavery, and binding the infamous
Fugitive Slave Law like an honorable frontlet on our brows. The more
accurate and truthful his glowing picture of the public virtue of 1789,
the stronger my argument. If even all those great patriots, and all that
enthusiasm for justice and liberty, did not avail to keep us safe
in such a Union, what will? In such desperate circumstances, can his
statesmanship devise no better aim than to try the same experiment over
again, under precisely the same conditions? What new guaranties does he
propose to prevent the voyage from being again turned into a piratical
slave-trading cruise? None! Have sixty years taught us nothing? In 1660,
the English thought, in recalling Charles II., that the memory of that
scaffold which had once darkened the windows of Whitehall would be
guaranty enough for his good behavior. But, spite of the spectre,
Charles II. repeated Charles I., and James outdid him. Wiser by this
experience, when the nation in 1689 got another chance, they trusted
to no guaranties, but so arranged the very elements of their government
that William III. could not repeat Charles I. Let us profit by the
lesson. * * *

If all I have said to you is untrue, if I have exaggerated, explain to
me this fact. In 1831, Mr. Garrison commenced a paper advocating the
doctrine of immediate emancipation. He had against him the thirty
thousand churches and all the clergy of the country,--its wealth, its
commerce, its press. In 1831, what was the state of things? There was
the most entire ignorance and apathy on the slave question. If men
knew of the existence of slavery, it was only as a part of picturesque
Virginia life. No one preached, no one talked, no one wrote about it. No
whisper of it stirred the surface of the political sea. The church heard
of it occasionally, when some colonization agent asked funds to send
the blacks to Africa. Old school-books tainted with some antislavery
selections had passed out of use, and new ones were compiled to suit the
times. Soon as any dissent from the prevailing faith appeared, every one
set himself to crush it. The pulpits preached at it; the press denounced
it; mobs tore down houses, threw presses into the fire and the stream,
and shot the editors; religious conventions tried to smother it; parties
arrayed themselves against it. Daniel Webster boasted in the Senate,
that he had never introduced the subject of slavery to that body, and
never would. Mr. Clay, in 1839, makes a speech for the Presidency, in
which he says, that to discuss the subject of slavery is moral treason,
and that no man has a right to introduce the subject into Congress.
Mr. Benton, in 1844, laid down his platform, and he not only denies the
right, but asserts that he never has and never will discuss the subject.
Yet Mr. Clay, from 1839 down to his death, hardly made a remarkable
speech of any kind, except on slavery. Mr. Webster, having indulged now
and then in a little easy rhetoric, as at Niblo's and elsewhere, opens
his mouth in 1840, generously contributing his aid to both sides, and
stops talking about it only when death closes his lips. Mr. Benton's
six or eight speeches in the United States Senate have all been on the
subject of slavery in the Southwestern section of the country, and form
the basis of whatever claim he has to the character of a statesman, and
he owes his seat in the next Congress somewhat, perhaps, to anti-slavery
pretentions! The Whig and Democratic parties pledged themselves just as
emphatically against the antislavery discussion,--against agitation and
free speech. These men said: "It sha'n't be talked about; it won't be
talked about!" These are your statesmen!--men who understand the present
that is, and mould the future! The man who understands his own time, and
whose genius moulds the future to his views, he is a statesman, is he
not? These men devoted themselves to banks, to the tariff, to internal
improvements, to constitutional and financial questions. They said to
slavery: "Back! no entrance here! We pledge ourselves against you."
And then there came up a little printer-boy, who whipped them into
the traces, and made them talk, like Hotspur's starling, nothing
BUT slavery. He scattered all these gigantic shadows,--tariff, bank,
constitutional questions, financial questions; and slavery, like
the colossal head in Walpole's romance, came up and filled the whole
political horizon! Yet you must remember he is not a statesman! he is
a "fanatic." He has no discipline,--Mr. "Ion" says so; he does not
understand the "discipline that is essential to victory"! This man did
not understand his own time, he did not know what the future was to
be,--he was not able to shape it--he had no "prudence,"--he had no
"foresight"! Daniel Webster says, "I have never introduced this subject,
and never will,"--and dies broken-hearted because he had not been
able to talk enough about it! Benton says, "I will never speak of
slavery,"--and lives to break with his party on this issue! Clay says it
is "moral treason" to introduce the subject into Congress--and lives to
see Congress turned into an antislavery debating society, to suit the
purpose of one "too powerful individual." * * * Remember who it was
that said in 1831: "I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not
excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard!" That
speaker has lived twenty-two years, and the complaint of twenty-three
millions of people is, "Shall we never hear of any thing but slavery?"
* * * "Well, it is all HIS fault" [pointing to Mr. Garrison]. * * * It
seems to me that such men may point to the present aspect of the nation,
to their originally avowed purpose, to the pledges and efforts of all
your great men against them, and then let you determine to which side
the credit of sagacity and statesmanship belongs. Napoleon busied
himself at St. Helena in showing how Wellington ought to have conquered
at Waterloo. The world has never got time to listen to the explanation.
Sufficient for it that the allies entered Paris.

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