Is the Constitution Pro-slavery? A Debate Between Frederick Douglass, Charles C. Burleigh, Gerrit Smith, Parker Pillsbury, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and Stephen S. Foster in Syracuse, New York, on January 17, 1850
IS THE CONSTITUTION PRO-SLAVERY? A DEBATE BETWEEN
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, CHARLES C. BURLEIGH, GERRIT SMITH,
PARKER PILLSBURY, SAMUEL RINGGOLD WARD, AND STEPHEN S.
FOSTER IN SYRACUSE, NEW YORK, ON 17 JANUARY 1850
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 31 January 1850.
The “character of the Constitution of the United States” was, as Douglass
wrote in the North Star, the prime concern of the convention held between 15
and 19 January 1850, at City Hall in Syracuse. Called under the auspices of
New York supporters of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the convention
quickly decided to admit “abolitionists,” as the National Anti-Slavery Standard
put it, “of whatever latitude or longitude.” The crowds, so large that
some spectators were forced to stand, included many radical political
abolitionists and an assortment of curious Democrats and Whigs. Early in the
proceedings, Gerrit Smith and his Liberty party followers challenged resolutions
which put forward the Garrisonian view that the Constitution favored
slavery. With Garrison absent due to illness, Charles C. Burleigh and Smith
squared off in what began as a two-man debate on the Constitution during the
morning of the convention’s second day. Samuel R. Ward, Stephen S. Foster,
Parker Pillsbury, Charles Lenox Remond, and Douglass soon insinuated
themselves into the discussion. Although Smith’s position, embodied in a pair
of substitute resolutions, carried overwhelmingly in an informal polling of the
crowd on the evening of the second day, debate on the issue spilled over into
the third day, the proceedings of which are reproduced here. Douglass, a vice
president of the convention, argued for a staunch Garrisonian position. Because
of engagements in Rochester, he missed the initial day and the final two
sessions of the convention, which he regarded as less than productive in
winning over Smith’s following. Douglass admitted in the North Star that
“[t]hose who felt kindly disposed towards the American Anti-Slavery Society
before the holding of this Convention feel so still; we doubt if one convert
from the Liberty Party was made.” Gerrit Smith to Mr. Thomas, 30 January
1850, in Lib., 15 February 1850; NASS, 24 January, 7 February 1850; NS, 25
January 1850; ASB, 9 February 1850.
Third Day [17 January 1850]
MORNING SESSION
The PRESIDENT1Samuel J. May presided. NS, 25 January 1850. called to order.
HENRY BOX BROWN2The celebrated fugitive Henry “Box” Brown (1815-?) was born into slavery in Louisa County, Virginia. His parents later purchased their freedom. Mainly a house slave during his youth, Brown was removed from his birthplace and parents at about age fourteen and was taken to Richmond to work in the tobacco factory owned by the son of his recently deceased master. Brown became a skilled tobacco worker and apparently received wages, with which he tried to buy his wife and children out of bondage. Cheated out of the purchase money by his master and apprised that his spouse and children had been sold to a slave trader, Brown began seriously to contemplate flight. His innovative method of escape is described briefly in these proceedings, although the collaborator in his shipment was probably not James Smith but Samuel A. Smith, a Richmond shoe dealer who later served a jail term for abetting similar escapes. In Philadelphia, J. Miller McKim arranged for the transfer of the box containing Brown to an antislavery office where the fugitive delighted four members of the local vigilance committee by emerging, hand extended, and asking, “How do you do gentlemen?" before breaking into a hymn. Brown was soon a major attraction at antislavery meetings, speaking and singing in seven states. During 1850 he joined Benjamin Roberts, a black Bostonian, on a New England tour displaying a diorama depicting Brown's experiences. Shortly thereafter, Brown went to Great Britain where he enjoyed brief popularity as a Speaker and where he may have settled. William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, 1872), 81-86; NS, 15 June 1849; Lib., 31 May 1850; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 36-38, 66; Henry Box Brown, Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped Slavery in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide, ed. Charles Stearns (Boston, 1849). sang a song which has been written for him
(describing his escape in a box) to the tune of “Old Ned.” (Brown was in
March last, at Richmond, put in a box 3 feet long, 2 feet 6 inches wide, by a
free colored young man James Smith, and was sent by Express, as mer-
chandize, to Philadelphia. He was in the box 27 hours. The affair cost
Smith $900.)
(The Reporter will state, that in giving the remarks of Mr. Foster in
reference to Messrs. Giddings and Wilson, Mr. F[oster] applied their remarks
to all the out-and-out Anti-Slavery Organizations, and not by any
means to himself, any further than that he was a member of one of those
organizations. Giddings and Wilson said these Organizations generated the
steam which moved the Anti-Slavery car.)—REP[ORTER].
Prayer by Rev. S[amuel] R. WARD.
The PRESIDENT said not less than $100 should be raised to defray
expenses.
Mr. JACKSON3James Caleb Jackson (1811-95), originally from Manlius, New York, was a prominent physician and abolitionist editor. Prepared for college at Manlius Academy, Jackson gave up plans for higher education after the death of his father. On the advice of Gerrit Smith he settled in Peterboro, New York, in 1838. There he became an agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840 the American Anti-Slavery Society made Jackson its secretary. He assisted Nathaniel P. Rogers in editing the National Anti-Slavery Standard during pans of 1840 and 1841 and, loyal to Garrisonian views on politics, dissuaded New Yorkers from voting for the Liberty party in the 1840 elections. However, by 1841 Smith had convinced Jackson to edit a third-party paper and the latter had initiated the Madison County Abolitionist in cooperation with Luther Myrick. From 1842 until 1844, Jackson edited the Liberty Press in Utica and during the two succeeding years he operated the Albany Patriot as a voice of the Liberty party. Jackson was among those present at the founding of the Liberty League, a more radical offshoot ofthe Liberty party, at Macedon Lock, New York, in 1847. A long sickness between 1846 and 1848 curtailed Jackson's activities and piqued his interest in the medical profession. He became a physician in the late 1840s. During his last four decades, Jackson was most famous as a health expert and specifically as an advocate of hydropathy. His own water-cure center, the “Our Home Hygienic Institute,” founded in 1858 at Dansville, New York, was among the most celebrated in the East. Jackson, who opposed the use of tobacco, rum, and medicinal drugs, and championed dress reform, popularized his views on health as assistant editor of The Laws of Life, as a lecturer, and as the author of six books. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 69, 76, 117; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3 : 110n; NS, 31 March 1848; DAB, 9: 547. proposed that half an hour be devoted to the subject, and
close it up in a business manner. It was done.
The PRESIDENT said, that at the commencement of the Anti-Slavery
movement, it was quite common to take hundreds of dollars, at a meeting
numbering only a few. He had taken a $100 bill in a hat, in making a
collection for the Anti-Slavery cause—This is the spirit which succeeds.
The Convention had been an admirable one in all respects, and expenses
will be necessarily incurred, as every one well knows.
Mr. JACKSON, on request, made remarks, urging a liberal contribution.
The Convention, on suggestion, by a vote, expressed a desire to meet
this evening in the First Presbyterian Church. The Hon. ISRAEL HUNTINGTON4The delegate, not prominent in New York abolitionism, may have been Ezra A. Huntington, D.D. (1813-1901), who was at the time pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in Albany, where he served from 1836 until 1854. Educated at Union College and at Columbia College, Huntington joined the faculty of Auburn Theological Seminary in 1854. There he taught biblical criticism for nearly four decades and published numerous sermons and scholarly works. General Biographical Catalogue of Auburn Theological Seminary, 1818-1918 (Auburn, N.Y., 1918), 12.
said he would ascertain from the Trustees, whether the Convention
could meet there.
The PRESIDENT stated the popular vote of last night, and read all the
Resolutions before the Convention.
Mr. FAIRBANKS5The speaker is Calvin Fairbank (1816-98), a Methodist clergyman and celebrated abolitionist martyr who spent nearly seventeen years in Kentucky jails for aiding in the escape of slaves. Born in what is now Wyoming County, New York, Fairbank traced his conversion to abolitionism to his youthful experience of hearing the story of two escaped slaves with whom his family stayed during a quarterly meeting ofthe Methodist Church. He first helped in the flight of a slave in 1837 while taking a raft of lumber down the Ohio River. Fairbank soon afterwards becatne a principal in the Underground Railroad, ferrying fugitives from Kentucky and Virginia to Ohio. According to his own reckoning, Fairbank liberated forty-seven slaves. Ordained a Methodist elder in 1842, Fairbank enrolled in the preparatory department of the Collegiate Institute at Oberlin and shortly thereafter was arrested in Lexington, Kentucky, for his role in the escape of Lewis Hayden. At his trial Fairbank acted as his ownhh defense, lost, and received a fifteen-year sentence. He served from February 1845 until August 1849 before Govemor John J. Crittenden issued a pardon. Black Detroiters, some of whom Fairbank helped to free, welcomed his release by taking up a collection on his behalf. Three years later Fairbank was back behind bars. After settling in Oberlin, he had again begun rescue activities along the Ohio in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law. In November 1851 he was kidnapped in Jeffersonville, Indiana, while aiding three black fugitives and was transported to Kentucky for trial. Another fifteen-year sentence followed. Fairbank's second incarceration was a protracted ordeal. He remained jailed until April 1864 and received, by his own counting, over 35,000 strokes in repeated beatings. His second pardon may have resulted from Abraham Lincoln's intervention. Fairbank was hardly free long enough to pronounce his opinions on controversies within abolitionism but apparently followed Gerrit Smith in regarding the Constitution as an antislavery document. Fairbank spent the postbellum years in Ohio, Virginia, and New York, working for missionary and benevolent societies and as the superintendent of the Moore Street Industrial Institute in Richmond. Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (Ann Arbor, 1961 ), 314; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 149-50, 164; Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1898), 157-59, 236; Calvin Fairbank, Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times: How He “Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare “The Way" (Chicago, 1890), 12, 57-70; NS, 14 September 1849; FDP, 20 November 1851; Baltimore Ledger, 5 November 1878; DAB, 6: 247. did not believe the Constitution was a pro-slavery
instrument; and he hoped all would unite without reference to their views
on the Constitutional question.
Mr. DOUGLASS referred to the adoption of Mr. Smith’s substitute, last
evening, by a large majority, by a popular vote.6On the second day of the convention, Gerrit Smith spoke against the series of disunionist resolutions proposed by the business committee and by Parker Pillsbury. He concluded by offering two substitute resolutions. The first found the Constitution “not to be for slavery, but against slavery" and indeed "of powers adequate to overthrow every part of American Slavery." The second provided that a man voting according to the Libery League's principles "is, provided always that he acknowledges no pro-slavery church to be a church of Christ and no pro-slavery minister to be a minister of Christ. worthy of the name . . . Abolitionist." The audience, containing many Smith supporters and nonabolitionists who were not enrolled in the convention, called for a vote on the matter and overwhelmingly approved the substitute resolutions. Smith later admitted that the call for a vote was an “irregular proceeding" and that the vote did not represent the position of the convention. NS, 25 January 1850; Lib., 15 February 1850; NASS, 31 January 1850. He would not impugn that
vote. It is now to be settled by the Convention. He rejoiced it was so. This is
the QUESTION OF QUESTIONS, so far as the Anti-Slavery cause was concerned.
It is the only barrier between the different Radical Anti-Slavery
Organizations of the country.
I need not say after what passed last evening, that I am opposed to the
substitute. It takes a disunion ground, in anything but an honest way. No
disrespect intended: its supporters are sincere. Their position was radical
for disunion, as the position of Garrison. Under the sham of upholding the
provisions of the Constitution, they are waging a war against the Constitution.
We want downright honesty, in dealing even with slaveholders.
We want to say to slaveholders, we admit your views of the Constitution,
but we war on that and on you. Mr. Smith’s substitute is disunion,
under another guise, and seeks it in a dishonest way. It will bring about
disunion in a covert way, without declaring that to be the object.
Does Mr. Smith suppose any Union in 1789 would have been secured,
on his construction of the Constitution? That they could not reclaim their
fugitives, and that slave insurrections could not be put down by the force of
the country? What was, has been, and is the Union? Is the Union the same
now as then? The pretension of the Liberty Party to uphold the Union, is to
pretend to uphold that which does not exist. The slaveholders know of no
such Union as that which Mr. Smith and the Liberty Party support.
I hold that to swear to support a constitution which requires us to put
down slave insurrections and send back fugitive slaves, is a sin. It is a sin to
swear to support that which is sin—which can require us to sin.
Mr. Ward asks us, who will alter the laws, if you can elect no one? I
refer him to the admission of Daniel O’Connell7O'Connell, elected to the House of Commons from Clare, Ireland, in 1828, did not appear to take his seat until May 1829. In the interim Parliament passed measures for Irish Catholic “emancipation" in the form of the Relief Bill, which provided that Catholics could legally sit in the legislature. The bill also eliminated the “oath of abjuration," a pledge objectionable to Catholics in that it required the abjuring of their loyalty to the pope as a requirement for office. O'Connell presented himself for seating under the terms of the new law, but the Commons, arguing that he won office under the terms of previous statutes, required the old oath. O'Connell refused to swear abjuration and, after lengthy debate, the Commons denied him a seat. He easily won a second election and took his place in Parliament, without taking the objectionable oath, in February 1830. Robert Dunlop, Daniel O'Connell and the Revival of National Life in Ireland (New York, 1900), 198-238; J. A. Hamilton, Life of Daniel O'Connell (Philadelphia, 1888), 76-96; DNB, 14:816-34. to the British Parliament.
He was a Catholic, and was required to abjure the Pope. He would not do it,
and the Parliament was compelled by public sentiment to admit him. Mr.
D[ouglass] referred to the law of this State allowing a man to whip his wife
with a switch as large as his thumb.8No such statute has been located. Is it of any consequence? No. The
moral sentiment of the people will regulate that. There are 5,000 free
colored persons in Maryland.9The figure is far too low and probably reflects a reporter's error. An account in the North Star gives the figure cited by Douglass as “more than sixty thousand." The census counted 74,723 freeblacks in Maryland in 1850. Ira Berlin, “Slaves Who Were Free: The Free Negro in the Upper South,1776-1861" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1970), 307; NS, 25 January 1850. How came they to be free? Was it the laws?
No. Public sentiment compelled or constrained their masters to free them. I
would rather lose my right arm, than to put a vote in an American ballot box,
to have another do that which I would not do myself.
Brother Ward believes that the Supreme Court has the power to decide
the laws, and that he is bound by its decision. This brings us to the point.
It’s all very well to talk of what is to be done by posterity. What is now to be
done? Are we to have no government, until the constitution is what it ought
to be? Are we to sin all the intermediate time?
A VOICE—Resist it.
Mr. DOUGLASS: That is revolution—insurrection—no government.
They must come on to our ground, while we are revolutionizing the gov-
ernment. If they will show me how I can get along in the meantime without
sin, I may come over to them. Here is a great gulf, Mr. Smith.
Mr. SMITH: Very easily bridged. (General laughter.)
Mr. DOUGLASS: I wish I could see it, if it is so; because I would like to
be there. I believe the slaves would be more than a match for the enslavers,
if left to themselves. LET THE UNION THEN BE DISSOLVED. I wish to
see it dissolved at once. It is the union of the white people of this country,
who can be summoned in their whole military power to crush the slave, that
perpetuates Slavery. Dissolve the Union, and they will raise aloft their
unfettered arms, and demand freedom, and, if resisted, would hew their
way to Liberty, despite the pale and puny opposition of their oppressors. In
view of the opposition of this union, I welcome the bolt, whether from the
North or the South, from Heaven or from Hell, which shall shiver this
Union in pieces. Did our Fathers think of holding on to the union with the
British? Did they look for theories or precedents to ascertain what were
their rights? No! they laid down the doctrines of equality, consent, and that
resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.10The actual motto “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" first appeared in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, 14 December 1775, as the concluding line of an epitaph written for John Bradshaw (1602-59), who presided over the commission that sentenced Charles I to death. Thomas Jefferson laterused it on his personal seal and believed that Benjamin Franklin had written the epitaph. Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, 1950-), 1:667-79; 16: xxxii; Carl Van Doren, ed., Benjamin Franklin's Autobiographical Writings (New York, 1945), 412-13. But after they had achieved
independence, they attempted to unite Liberty in holy wedlock with the
dead body of Slavery, and the whole was tainted. Let this unholy, unrigh-
teous union be dissolved.
We are told of the wisdom and goodness of our ancestors. I know they
were slaveholders. This one fact is enough for me. Slaveholder! What is a
slaveholder? I wish I could portray him. He would not be a man driven by
poverty, distress, or passion, to rob and murder his victim. But he would be
a cold, hard, obdurate man, who had read his Bible and prayed, and then
reached his long, bony fingers into the cradle, and take an object newly
stamped with the image of its God, and sell it as a chattel! And he could
then take the mother of that blessed little being—fit to have her name
written on the Lamb’s Book of Life11Douglass alludes to a description of the “New Jerusalem" or “holy city" and its inhabitants as given in Rev. 21: 27: “And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”—and inflict upon her the severest
cruelties. Talk to me of the love of liberty of your Washingtons, Jeffersons,
Henrys.12George Washington (1732-99), first president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), third president of the United States, and Patrick Henry (1736-99), Virginia patriot, lawyer, and Revolutionary statesman. DAB, 7: 554-59, 10: 17-35, 19: 509-27. They were strangers to any just idea of Liberty! He who does not
love Justice and Liberty for all, does not love Liberty and justice. They
wrote of Liberty in the Declaration of Independence with one hand, and
with the other clutched their brother by the throat! These are the men who
formed the union! I cannot enter into it. Give me NO UNION WITH
SLAVEHOLDERS!13The Garrisonian rallying cry “NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!" was first raised prominently at the 1844 meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society where resolutions, penned by Garrison, adopting such a policy were carried by a 59 to 21 vote after bitter debate divided the delegates. The motto, often used by Garrison, attracted some sympathetic attention in Scotland and Britain and later appeared on the mastheads of the Anti-Slavery Bugle and the Liberator. At first it probably signified little more than an adherence to a belief that the Constitution was a proslavery document, that the Union ought therefore be dissolved, and that an immediate individual break from any complicity in the nation’s slaveholding was required. However, with the annexation of Texas and with pressure from political abolitionists to elaborate on his position, Garrison later associated the slogan with actual plans for secession. Merrill, Against Wind and Tide, 20414, 255, 269-75; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3: 118-21; Thomas, Liberator, 328-59, 374; Russell B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston , 1955), 143; Garrison and Garrison, Garrison Life, 3: 96-120. I wish to dissolve the union of these States, and to do
it in a direct way.
Mr. REMOND could not see the propriety of discussing the Resolutions
after the vote. And said he should move to lay the resolutions on the table
and move a substitute for the whole.
Mr. DOUGLASS said the vote last evening was an overwhelming reason
why he should speak again. It is no matter, if all the world is against me,
and I am right, if I do not agree with the present state, I shall agree with the
future state: for in the future, all will be right.
Mr. PILLSBURY14Parker Pillsbury. took some exceptions to the manner of things yesterday.
He went on to speak of the call of this meeting, and his objections to
the call. And also of the freedom of the Conventions of the American Anti-
Slavery Society, for all to speak; and of the uniform rule, that a speaker
could be interrupted, and an explanation made, while the idea was fresh
before all.
We were promised (continued Mr. P[illsbury]) that at the close of the
discussion, there should be a full, fair, open debate by the audience at
large. Instead thereof, two or three speakers were called upon by acclamation,
and the “question” called for in a clamorous manner, notwithstanding
the yeas and nays had been demanded.
The PRESIDENT explained that the roll was not sufficiently perfect to
take the yeas and nays. And that it was agreed that the popular vote should
be taken, and the decision by the Society afterwards. He did not think any
error was contemplated.
Mr. PILLSBURY did not impugn the motives of any one. He went on to
speak of the moral influence of politics. I would not trust the liberty of the
slave, in the hands of Gerrit Smith, as President of the United States. I
would trust myself under the roof of Gerrit Smith, as his private guest at
Peterboro. Politics destroyed men.
Mr. SMITH: What does my brother think of Bible politics? I do not
confound the Devil with God, nor American politics with Heaven.
Mr. PILLSBURY: We have heard about free soil. There was not enough
free soil in the country to build the Bunker Hill Monument upon. The
capstone was as pro-slavery as the “corner stone.” The very shaft was a
conductor of pro-slavery electricity towards heaven; and would, if possible,
ascend to a fixed Star, and make it a hunting ground for fugitive slaves.
Mr. PILLSBURY went on in a course of remark, in reference to Gerrit
Smith and the Liberty Party, which we do not report.
He [Pillsbury] said the principles of the American Society were all
open, and that their motto is— "‘No Concealment, No Compromise" —and
the American Society shall be reduced to one, before I abandon it. We are
branded all over the country as “No Government” men. I am not a no-government
man, even in the Liberty Party sense of the word. I do not
believe a government is of more divine appointment than an insurance or a
banking company. Men have entered into insurance against fire, death, &c;
and if I am to judge a tree by its fruits, I can find a hundred human
arrangements far more divine than the bloody and cruel systems in this
country called human governments.
The charge against the American Anti-Slavery Society, that it is a
no-government society, is not true. My motto is “No Union with Slaveholders.”
What the Constitution is, what the Liberty Party expounders think
it, I can support it; but not as it is now. And it can never be changed by the
Liberty Party at the rate it is now going on. And what shall we do in the
meantime? I see no refuge but in the doctrine—“No Union with Slave-
holders.”
Mr. P[illsbury] went on at length to review the proposition of Cass,
Foote, and Webster to dissolve the “Union” with Austria. The proposition
was born in high and honorable places. He drew a vivid picture of the
welcome which these men would give to Kossuth; asking him to swear that
if, among the sable Hungarians of this land, there should arise some Kossuth
to avenge the wrongs of his fellow-slave, the sword of Kossuth should
be drawn to drink his blood and annihilate him. This the brave Kossuth
must swear to, before he can enter our political church:—eternal hatred to
Liberty, eternal fealty to tyrants! This is our Constitution as now expounded
and administered.
What matters is that a handful of men take another view, when the
Courts, the government, and the people, say ours is the correct view of the
Constitution! What do Politicians know about “Bible Politics,” if any such
thing there be. Politicians meet what you say, as coming from politicians
like themselves. What this nation needs is honest men, those who will surrender
the right of suffrage, to promote the cause of truth. Our nation do[es]
not know what to do with an honest man. A rich man they respect; a poor
man despise; a learned man revere; a criminal hang; but they have no where
to put an honest man. (Roars of laughter.) Can one Whig chase a thousand
Democrats? Can two Democrats put ten thousand Whigs to flight? Can the
Liberty Party chase the Democratic Party from its strongholds?
S[amuel] R. WARD: Yes! They have done it!
Mr. PILLSBURY went on to insist, that by political action, the Liberty
Party was subject to be pierced through and through, by other political
parties; and through that, although the Liberty Party was now visible to the
naked eye by another Presidential election, it could not be discerned by one
of Herschel’s telescopes. Let DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION be in-
scribed on every Northern banner, and the hour of redemption to the slave
will be soon at hand.
Mr. WARD obtained the floor, and denied that the Liberty Party were
covertly seeking a dissolution of the Union; or, that such was the natural or
inevitable tendency of the course of the Liberty Party. If there had been
nothing said about “covertly” and “dishonesty,” he would not have a
word to say on this point in reply to his friend Douglass.
Mr. DOUGLASS: It is the proposition I denounced as dishonest, not
those who advocate it. I maintain that the positions of the Liberty Party
carried out must result in disunion; while a support of the Union and the
Constitution is professed.
Mr. WARD: Then the matter is one merely of opinion between brother
Douglass and ourselves—and there I leave it.
(Mr. WARD continued: but as it was after the hour fixed by the rules for
adjournment, and after necessity requiring the presence of the Reporter at
the office, no sketch of his reply is given.) Adjourned.
AFTERNOON SESSION
Two o’clock, P.M.
The PRESIDENT called to order.
Song, by Henry Box Brown.
On motion, Resolved, That this Convention continue in session tomor-
row (Friday).
Mr. WARD resumed: He insisted that the friends of the Catholic Reform
Bill in England pursued mainly the same course as the American Anti-
Slavery Society and the Liberty Party.
Mr. Douglass calls us both Radical. What should the two "wings” do?
Promulge your Principles; and act consistently with those principles. Move
on as the two wings of the Anti-Slavery Cause, and give the slaveholders
“Jessie”! Or as the two wings of an eagle.
My friend states that freedom had been secured to slaves in Maryland,
without law. How can these men enjoy nominal liberty there? Because
there is a law authorizing the liberation of slaves. Toleration of negroes at
the South is owing to law. All we want is that every State in the union shall
be in harmony with the Federal Constitution.
My view is that the Constitution does not require the Federal Govern-
ment to do ought for Slavery. There has been more legislation for Slavery
than for all other interests; agriculture, education—-everything else.
If the Constitution did not make every man’s house his “castle”—I
would say, make a bonfire of the Constitution. I deny that such is not the
case. The substitute tells you the Constitution ought to be submitted to legal
rules of interpretation, and when so subjected is found to be against Slav-
ery.
We take the Constitution in its plain, common sense, obvious mean-
ing. Now, almost the words of the Declaration are enacted in the
Constitution—to be found in the fifth amendment. Truth in the Declara-
tion, and Good in the Constitution, are one.
As to the law of 1793. The very terms of the Constitution are hostile to
the idea of Slavery. No “service or labor” can be “due” from a slave. The
plain language of the Constitution is against Slavery. Wheaton 3, page 5, in
a decision of the Supreme Court, tells you that the meaning of the Constitu-
tion is to be found in its letter. Mr. W[ard] referred to Judge Harrington of
Vermont, who told the claimant of a slave that he must bring a bill of sale
from Almighty God, before he could substantiate his title.
Our friends say, take the broad and open ground of the Dissolution of
the Union. Then they will respect you. Well; may be it will do good. But I
have not heard that our friends have yet had much effect upon the South;
that they have frightened the chivalry very much.
We were asked, what should be done while we are securing a proper
interpretation of the Constitution?
But I ask them HOW they will dissolve the Union?—and I wait their
pleasure for a reply.
They infer that the Constitution is so and so—is so pro-slavery—
because Washington and other slaveholders made it. The only question,
is— What sort of a Constitution did they frame? What does it say? What are
its terms? Not a word has been brought forward here, to show that the
Constitution authorizes the recovery of fugitive slaves. It is all about the
character of those who made the Constitution, of the action of the Courts,
&c., &c. Mr. W[ard] illustrated by a case in Massachusetts, where it was
plead[ed] that the Senate did not intend the law should be as it read—and
the plea was ruled out. It was held good for nothing.
Mr. W[ard] went on to speak of the admitted purity of the Liberty
Party.
Mr. FOSTER wanted to know if the Liberty Party did not nominate John
P. Hale for the Presidency?
Mr. WARD: No sir. Men who called themselves Liberty party men
nominated John P. Hale.
Mr. DOUGLASS wished to know if the Executive Committee call a
Society together, and a large majority abandon their principles, if it was not
the Society who abandoned principles?15In October 1847 the Liberty party had chosen the Free Soiler John P. Hale as its 1848 presidential nominee, rejecting Smith by a vote of 103 to 44. The party ’s convention also voted down the explicitly antislavery platform positions introduced by members of Smith‘s Liberty League. Smith's followers supported neither Hale nor the Liberty party platform and instead backed Smith himself in a presidential campaign initiated by the Liberty League in 1848. After the Liberty partyjoined a coalition forming the Free Soil party at Buffalo in August 1848, the Liberty League adopted the title of Liberty party. Frederick J. Blue, The Free Soilers: Third Party Politics, 1848-54 (Urbana, Ill.,1973), 9-14; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 117-21, 136-37, 163—64.
Mr. WARD: No, sir! Those who remain true to principle are the Soci-
ety, be they few or many. It is principle, not numbers, or the action of
numbers which is the test.
DOUGLASS: But you have added on nineteen principles.
WARD: And so have I added on 19 pounds of flesh since I was sick; but I
am Sam. Ward still.
Mr. W[ard] continued:—Our position is—ARE YOU TRUE TO THE
SLAVE? That is our test. Judge Jay’s going for the Whigs does not com-
promise us.
Mr. FOSTER: But your men have mainly left you.
Mr. WARD: Where have they gone? Let us know.
Mr. FOSTER: They nominated John P. Hale.
Mr. WARD: Well, where then?
Mr. FOSTER: John P. Hale went with the Democracy.
Mr. WARD: Where did the Democracy go?
Mr. FOSTER: To Calhoundom.
Mr. WARD: To Calhoundom! And do you indeed call that the Liberty
Party? I thought I should find out where this Liberty Party is, of which you
complain. That, sir, is not the Liberty Party.
As to political parties. It is not true, that men who begin in politics on
just principles, can not go on correctly—must necessarily become corrupt.
Mr. W[ard] beautifully traced the political relations, from the hearthstone
ofthe family circle, to the extremest circle ofpolitical action. I do not know
that a nomination makes a pure man corrupt.
We are asked, can the Liberty Party be felt? Is it large enough? What is
the difference whether truths are uttered by five men or five thousand? I
deny the truth ofthe position that the American Anti-Slavery Society is the
only Society which has maintained its integrity, or has been at work. It is
not fact that the Liberty Party do[es] not labor in the cause.
It is not true that the Liberty Party does not maintain its integrity. In
1844, did not the Liberty Party maintain their integrity against all assaults?
Did we not maintain our integrity when John P. Hale was nominated? Did
not some of our friends go to Buffalo, and help to raise the Platform?—and
did we not remain true? Have not we maintained our integrity? Gerrit Smith
was called on last night to give to this cause, and he has long been in the
habit of doing so.
Mr. FOSTER: He does not give to the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Mr. WARD: To this Cause, sir.
Mr. FOSTER: Not to the Society.
Mr. WARD: To this Cause! To this CAUSE, sir! There are two wings to
this Cause.
Mr. W[ard] concluded by saying he should vote for the substitute
offered by Mr. Smith.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS thought that what might be called his side suf-
fered perhaps from a mixing up of matters. There might be a difference of
opinion as to the American Society being the only genuine Anti-Slavery
instrumentality. The Society is made up of those who believe Slavery is a
sin, and are in favor of its immediate abolition. It is a difficult matter for
any one man to represent that Society. I am far from awarding to that
Society all the credit of all that has been done. Up to 1840, it was a unit.
After the organization of the Liberty party, that [party] was energetic and
active in promulgating radical Anti-Slavery truth. But as it grew older and
stronger, there was a change, a gradual lowering of the standard, com-
menced with S. P. Chase,16Salmon Portland Chase (1808—73), U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was educated at Cincinnati College and Dartmouth College. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before beginning a legal career and settling in Cincinnati where he defended a number of fugitive slaves and also acted as legal counsel for abolitionist James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840 and presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party in 1848. A coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the U.S. Senate in 1849, where he remained until 1854, strongly opposing the Compromise of 1850 and favoring restriction of slavery by federal law. Joining the Republican party in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase became Governor of Ohio in 1855 and won reelection in 1857. After briefly resuming his U.S. Senate seat in 1861 he resigned to become Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury. Closely aligned with radical Republicans in Congress, Chase clashed repeatedly with William H. Seward and other cabinet members, and ultimately became the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the Republican party. After an abortive movement to nominate Chase for the presidency in 1864, he resigned from the cabinet in July, only to be appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court in October. Both before and after his appointment to the Court, Chase was a strong spokesman for black suffrage and the radical program of Reconstruction. A perennial aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination, Chase also sought the Democratic nomination in 1868 but attracted little support. Douglass here objects to Chase's agitation during the early 1840s to have the Liberty patty declare itself in favor of the simple withdrawal of federal support from slavery rather than for abolition and to Chase's championing of coalition politics with Free Soil forces during the 1848 elections. Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase's Political Career Before the Civil War,“ MVHR, 29: 517—40 (March 1943); Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 90; James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970), 116—18, 153—54; DAB, 4 : 27—34. and going to Dr. Bailey;17Gamaliel Bailey (1807—59) graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and worked as a doctor, teacher, sailor. and journalist before the debate at Lane Seminary in 1834 stirred his interest in slavery. In 1835 he served as secretary ofthe Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. The following year he joined James G. Bimey in editing the antislavery Cincinnati Philanthropist, a newspaper of which Bailey became sole editor in 1838. For most of the following two decades Bailey continued to edit publications opposing slavery or its extension. Under his management (1847—59), the National Era, based in Washington, DC, grew to a weekly circulation of over twenty-five thousand and was a leading voice of the Free Soil movement. Bailey's journalistic career was punctuated by mob attacks on his press in 1836, 1840, 1843, and 1848, but in each case he persisted. In linking Bailey with the jettisoning of abolitionist principles by the Liberty party, Douglass undoubtedly had in mind Bailey's persistent efforts to influence the party to bargain and coalesce with larger parties supporting the more popular free soil issue rather than abolitionism. Bailey, who opposed formation of the Liberty party but began to back it just prior to the 1840 elections, saw the group as a temporary expedient pressuring the major parties and supported the 1848 coalition of Liberty, Barnburner Democratic, and some Conscience Whig forces into one Free Soil party campaigning for Martin Van Buren in the presidential election. A month prior to the convention whose proceedings are reproduced here, Bailey's National Era had publicly refused to support Congressman Joshua Giddings's bill calling for a plebiscite on slavery in the District of Columbia on the grounds that Giddings's proposal for black suffrage in the referendum was too extreme. “A Pioneer Editor," Atlantic Monthly, 17: 743—51 (June 1866); Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings, 41, 66, 69, 96, 152—54, 169; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 45-46, 73—76, 83, 90—93, 152—54; Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830—1860 (New York, 1960), 78, 150, 194-95; DAB, 1: 496-97.
and from thence
decay and death ensued. Edmund Quincy18Edmund Quincy (1808—77), one of the most active and articulate Garrisonian reformers, was once described by Douglass as not only “one of the best in our ranks " but also “the least appreciated by the rest of [the] Abolitionists." A member of one of Boston's most distinguished families—his father, Josiah (1772-1864), was a congressman, mayor, and president of Harvard—Quincy had seemed destined for the relatively peaceful life of a scholar and author until the mob murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837 shocked him into joining the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He soon became one of Garrison's closest associates. He helped found the Non-Resistance Society in 1839, served as corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1844 to 1853, and was a vice president and member of the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society during the 1850s. A respected novelist and biographer—Whittier called his Wensley, a Story without a Moral (1854) “the most readable book of its kind since Hawthorne ‘s Blithedale Romance"—Quincy assisted Garrison and Maria Weston Chapman on the Non-Resistant and often edited the Liberator during Garrison's absences. He also edited or frequently contributed to the National Anti-Slavery Standard and the Liberty Bell. NS, 21 January 1848; Tribute of the Massachusetts Historical Society to the Memory of Edmund Quincy and John Lothrop Motley (Boston, 1877), 6; NCAB, 6: 93—94; DAB, 15: 306—07. admits that the only two sound
Anti-Slavery Organizations, are the American Society and the Liberty
Party. I do not subscribe to the resolution of Mr. Pillsbury, because I do not
believe it to be true, and because it hinders the discussion of the constitutional
question, which is THE QUESTION OF THE DAY, as far as Anti-
Slavery in this country is concerned.
Mr. FOSTER thought Mr. Douglass could not have read the resolution.
He says he cannot join the Liberty Party; therefore the Anti-Slavery party
must be the only party to which he can attach himself.
Mr. DOUGLASS continued: He thought the American Society had done
well, but as a member of that society, he could not indulge in so much
self-laudation.
(A personal explanation occurred here.)
He wished to address himself to the “bridge”19Douglass alludes to his own image of a “gulf” between his position and Smith's—and to Smith's reply—both found in the text of the morning session. to be passed over, till
we reach the spot where we are to have an Anti-Slavery interpretation of the
Constitution. My difficulty for four years has been, how could I, if I voted
in the meantime, get along without sin?
They all concede to the Supreme Court, the right to determine the
meaning of that instrument; and that is LAW to all intents and purposes.
Am I to obey or resist?
Mr. SMITH: Allow me a word. Is not your objection one which would
overturn all civil government? Suppose Justice in this city bring in a false or
corrupt judgment; would you overturn the government? No! turn out the
Justice. So of the Supreme Court. If a man takes my axe, and cuts off my
child’s head: shall I throw away the axe? No. A man takes my harrow, and
instead of loosening up my ground, roots up my growing corn, should I
destroy the harrow? No. So with the Government. You may have the wisest
and purest Constitution, and have it perverted. Your only security is in the
sentiment of the country.
Mr. DOUGLASS said: If I must obey the laws, as they are, I am not on the
other side of the gulf.
There has been a great deal of assumption on the part of the Liberty
party. To say that the constitution is Anti-Slavery, is an assumption against
an overwhelming array of testimony, and against the Constitution itself.
The clause supposed to refer to fugitive slaves, is to my mind “irresist-
ibly clear.” Let us look at it. What are the words? (Art. 4 section 2.)20The passage of the Constitution in question reads: “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. " The quoted and italicized words refer to an exchange of the previous day between Smith, who held that unmistakable clarity was required if a statute contrary to “right” was to be upheld as law, and C. C. Burleigh, who argued that Smith‘s defense of the Constitution was undermined if “[n]o matter how 'clear' it is, . . . wrong can be recognized as law." Both Smith and Burleigh alluded to the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in U.S. v. Fisher (1805) that “legislative expression” must be characterized by “irresistible clearness" in cases “where fundamental principles are overthrown" or where “rights are infringed." NASS, 31 January 1850; FDP, 23 November 1855.
Is not a slave a person? The very name “slave” implies “person. ” It is
to describe a being possessing personality, reduced to property. Is he
“held?” Yes. Does he “serve?” Yes. Does he “labor?” Yes. Under the
“laws” of those States? Yes. So far the slave is fitly, amply, completely
described.
Now it is supposed that there are persons held in some States, of a class
not held in other States. Here is a class held in some States by the LAWS
thereof; under those laws, they would be free but for this clause in the
Constitution of the United States.
Is there a man who does not know that this clause refers to fugitive
slaves?
It is said, nothing is “due” from the slave. But we are not under a
system of morality. There is a difference here between morality and law. It
is to be “due” according to the “laws” of the State.
Again, they are to be delivered up to the “party” claiming, not to the
State; forbidding the idea, that crime is referred to.
As to domestic violence or insurrection, it has not been shown that
there is anything in the Constitution of the United States, which would
allow the North to take part with the slaves in an insurrection.
They say the word “slave” is not in the Constitution. In the New
Testament a passage says, “Take, eat, this is my body, &c.”21Douglass draws the quotation from either Mark 14: 22, which reads, “And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body,“ or from Cor. 11: 24, reading “And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me." Upon this is
founded the doctrine of transubstantiation; while by others this doctrine is
rejected as an absurdity.
As to our dissolving the Union, on our plan, when six States, shall have
refused to elect Senators, this Union is dissolved. This is the opinion of
jurists. And it is the opinion of many, that any State has a right to secede. If
six can do it, we can do it better than you can, for on your plan it will require
three times six to bring about what you desire.
The only power, worth a snap of your finger is the POWER OF TRUTH.
Truth is the power of God; the power of God unto salvation. The grand
lever of the Almighty, to raise man from Slavery to freedom, from igno-
rance to intelligence; from vice to virtue. Here we stand, untrammelled by
politics with no barrier between us and our God—with no power but the
power of truth. Time was, when the power of the State was to be altered,
the only instrument thought of was the torch and the bayonet—no longer
ago than in the time of John Knox.22In leading the Scottish Reformation, Knox was involved in several violent confrontations. His speeches against papal and French influence during the regency of Mary of Guise led to the sacking of monasteries and the destruction of monuments in May and June of 1559. Later that year and in 1560, Knox and his followers battled French troops supporting the regency. With the aid of British allies, the Scottish reformers secured a treaty which provided for the withdrawal of foreign troops in July 1560. A month later the Scottish Parliament recognized the claims of Knox's church by adopting a confession of faith that he helped to author and by abolishing idolatry, the mass, and the authority of the bishop of Rome. DNB, 11:315—18. Recent events have shown that the true
way to reform, is not to burn the exterior, but to heap the coals of God’s
truth upon the hearts of men. Slavery is coiled up in the hearts of the
electors—and is deeper than the bottom of the ballot-box. It lives in human
selfishness, and nothing short of God’s truth can reach it. We must have an
Anti-Slavery literature; have an Anti-Slavery pulpit, with zeal in it. This
overrating the power of the American ballot has been the damning heresy of
Anti-Slavery efforts. Our purpose is to stamp our principles upon the hearts
of all men. This is the true ground.
Mr. BURLEIGH:23Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-78) was born in Plainfield, Connecticut, and received his early schooling at Plainfield Academy. He had begun to study the law when an attack he published on the Connecticut “Black Law" attracted the attention of abolitionist Samuel J. May. Through May he was offered the editorship of the Unionist, a new antislavery paper financed by Arthur Tappan. Burleigh was instrumental in protecting William Lloyd Garrison from a mob in Boston in October 1835, and shortly thereafter became a regular contributor to the Liberator. In the late 1830s Burleigh became one of the editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman, later the organ of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Active in a number of reform movements, Burleigh plunged into the Anti-Sabbatarian campaign after he was arrested in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1847 for selling antislavery literature on Sunday. In 1845 he published a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, condemning capital punishment. He participated in the woman suffrage conventions at Cleveland and New York in 1854, and the American Equal Rights Association meeting in New York in 1867. In the 1870s he joined his brother, William Henry, in the campaign for temperance reform. C. B. Galbreath, “AntiSlavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 30: 389—91 (October 1921); E[lizabeth] C[ady] Stanton et a1., eds., The History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (Rochester, N.Y., 1881-1922), 1: 148—51; DAB, 3: 284—85; ACAB, 1: 455. May I ask Mr. Smith whether he ever expects to
succeed with his party? I mean, even to elect your candidates to office, and
through them to change the action of the government?—or only to rouse up
the Church and State, as we intend to do, to proper action?
Mr. SMITH: I can answer only for myself. We may not do so; but it is
not impossible. We are grossly misrepresented; by profound ignorance, I
must presume. We have 2000 or 3000 in this State: some west; and not one
in New England. We are content—this handful of us—with realizing the
true idea of a righteous Civil Government in our own action and example.
We vote for no men but those we know to be true men of principle. WE
SUCCEED BY DOING RIGHT. Mr. S[mith] went on at length upon the
proposition that a man who was a rascal in politics was also a rascal in
religion. For as politics, as much as closet prayer, or attending the
sanctuary, or reading the Bible, was a part of religion, it could be no better
or worse than his religion. (We have not space to follow him.)
Mr. BURLEIGH: Mr. Smith has not answered the question. Do you
expect the party to which you belong, ever to elect its candidates?
Mr. SMITH: He could answer, that his idea of the Liberty Party, was to
set an example of a pure moral influence before all the other people of the
country in political affairs. I can exercise a moral influence in my political
action, as well as in my family relations. If my brother, Mr. FOSTER, will
go into a specification of the want of integrity of the Liberty Party, I will
answer him; but I cannot be guilty of the absurdity of defending those who
have gone out from us. It is too ridiculous, to ask a man to defend those
whose course he condemns; with whom he is in no manner associated.
(On motion, the Trustees of the First Presbyterian Church, were
thanked for the proffer of their Church, for this evening; but which, on
account of the fact, that the meetings are already held in the Hall, was
respectfully declined.)
Mr. C. E. ADAMS24The delegate, elsewhere identified as Charles E. Adams, may have been Charles Adams (1808—90), a minister and educator who advocated a radical antislavery position inside the Methodist Church. A native of New Hampshire. Adams received his higher education at Bowdoin. Between 1833 and 1838, he headed the Newbury Seminary in New Hampshire. Appointments as pastor at Massachusetts churches in Lynn, Boston, Lowell. and Cambridge followed. In addition, Adams served as principal at Wilbraham Academy in the early l840s and as a professor at Concord Biblical Institute in 1845 and 1846. He was secretary of the church's New England Conference from 1841 until 1852 and was a prominent antislavery spokesman at the General Conference in 1844. After 1853 Adams was transferred frequently, laboring in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. From 1858 until 1868 he presided over Illinois Female College. In the latter year Adams moved to Washington, D.C., where he lived the rest of his life. He preached irregularly and worked for the Post Office Department until about 1887. A prolific writer, Adams had authored, during the antebellum years, a significant article urging fellowship among the various Christian denominations and a pair of books on evangelism and theology. He later wrote biographies of Washington Irving, Daniel Webster, and Oliver Cromwell and also produced poetry and popular religious books. James Mudge, History of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1796—1910 (Boston, 1910), 164—65, 295; Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Fall Conferences of 1890 (New York, 1890), 401-02; Lewis McCarroll Purifoy, Jr., “The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and Slavery, 1844—1865" (PhD. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1965), 27—28; Milton B. Powell, “The Abolitionist Controversy in the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840-1864“ (PhD. diss. , State University of Iowa, 1963), 33, 62, 111; NASS, 24 January 1850. moved a re-consideration of the vote to hold over
to-morrow.
Mr. FOSTER said we had not begun to act on the important object of this
Convention which was, to see if all whose heart is for the slave, can stand
and act together, shoulder to shoulder. I think I have a plan by which this
can be done; that we can use the ballot, and obviate all objection. Mr.
F[oster] went on to speak of the exclusion of women from the ballot
box—that he would not support the government of this State, if it was free
from the general government, so long as his wife could not go with him to
the ballot-box.
Mr. SMITH said that so far as he was concerned, he saw nothing in the
way of a complete and glorious union. Let us have toleration. Let us
challenge the judgment and intellect of each other. Let us unite in the spirit
of love: and it will be a spectacle which will give joy to the angels in
heaven, which will fill the heart of the slave with unspeakable delight.
Mr. BURLEIGH said the division of the American Society was by the
secession of persons from that Society.
The motion for reconsideration was withdrawn.
Adjourned.