The Free Church Connection with the Slave Church: An Address Delivered in Arbroath, Scotland, on February 12, 1846
THE FREE CHURCH CONNECTION WITH THE SLAVE CHURCH: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN ARBROATH, SCOTLAND, ON 12 FEBRUARY 1846
Arbroath (Scot.) Guide, 14 February 1846. Other texts in Liberator, 3 April 1846; Foner, Life and Writings, 5 : 22–27 , misdated 13 February 1846.
When Douglass spoke in the Abbey Church on 12 February 1846, he addressed an Arbroath audience for the third time in as many days. According to the Arbroath Guide, the "utmost excitement prevailed" in the "densely crowded" building as Douglass began his lecture. Both the large audience and the prestigious meeting place underscored how rapidly Douglass had gained public support since his arrival only two days earlier. Douglass's persistent criticism of the Free Church of Scotland for having accepted money from American slaveholders had led to his exclusion from many Arbroath pulpits. Finding local churches closed to him on 10 February, Douglass spoke in Trades Hall before "hundreds of townspeople." James Anderson, a merchant and lay religious leader, interrupted the meeting in order to offer Douglass the use of Abbey Church, one of Arbroath's "largest and most commodious" structures, for his subsequent lectures. The Free Church controversy comprised the central theme of Douglass's remarks on 12 February. He sought particularly to refute charges recently published by a Free Church organ, Dundee's Northern Warder, that his efforts were secretly subsidized by the Established Church of Scotland. The Abroath Guide equated "Warder morality" with "Border morality" and applauded Douglass for exposing certain Free Church ministers as "aiders, abettors, and defenders of slavery." The "sensation" created by Douglass's speeches had, according to the Guide, "rarely if ever" been surpassed. Douglass to Richard D. Webb, 10 February 1846, Anti-Slavery Collection, MB.
Ladies and Gentlemen,—I have come hither this evening, in the spirit of candour and fair dealing, to discuss the subject which has now called us together. I am deeply sensible of the prejudice already excited against myself and friends for daring to call attention to the present connection of the Free Church of Scotland with the slave-holding churches of America. Much of this prejudice is owing to gross misrepresentations of our motives and objects by the Free Church paper at Dundee. The Warder having taken one false step, they adopt the common, though not the most Christian, mode of defending that step, by taking a dozen more in the same direction.
In rising to discuss this subject I wish to be distinctly understood. I have no war with the Free Church as such. I am not here to offer one word as to the right or the wrong of the organisation of that body. I am not here to say whether Drs. Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish, or any of the Free Church leaders, did right or wrong in separating from the Establishment. I want no false excuse to be made, or false statements to obtain. The Warder has dared to circulate the story that myself and friends are in the pay, and under the sanction of, opposing religious denominations.1The Dundee Northern Warder, a Free Church organ, was edited by James McCosh from 1841 to 1847. McCosh, who referred to abolitionists as "hired bravoes," was characterized by the Dundee Courier as having "staked his Christianity—his morals—his character as a journalist—his power as an intellectualist—on the Free Church's innocence in taking slave-money." McCosh, continued the Courier, has "Jesuitised desperately, and tortured Scripture cruelly, to prove the innocence of the Free Church in the matter of the slave-money." Dundee Courier, 10 February 1846, quoted in The Free Church And Slavery: Being a Series of Papers and Reports Reprinted From the Dundee Courier (Dundee, 1846), 8–9; R. M. W. Cowan, The Newspaper in Scotland: A Study of Its First Expansion, 1815–1860 (Glasgow, 1946), 150–51. As far as the charge is brought against me, I pronounce it an unblushing falsehood. I am here to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, to plead the cause of the perishing slave, and to arouse the energies, excite the sympathies, and obtain the aid and cooperation of the good people of old Scotland in behalf of what I believe to be a righteous cause—the breaking of every yoke, the undoing of heavy burdens, and letting the oppressed go free! Thank God! all religious denominations may work in this cause. The anti-slaveholders' platform is as broad as humanity, and as strong as eternal justice; all may stand upon it and work together, without violating any Christian principle. If fewer of the Free than of the Established Church2Church of Scotland. are to be found upon that platform, the fault is theirs, not mine. In a cause like
this he is a mean-spirited bigot who would refuse to labour because another is labouring in the same cause whose religious opinion happens not to agree with his own. In denouncing the present connection of the Free Church with the slave-holding churches of America, I have distinguished men of different denominations—of the Established Church, Free, and Dissenters—the Rev. John Angell James3John Angell James (1785–1859) was the pastor of Carr's Lane Chapel, an Independent Church in Birmingham, England. He championed many humanitarian causes, including temperance, peace, missionary activity in China, and antislavery. Boston abolitionists generally praised his readiness to rebuke American churchmen for their indifference to the cause of the slave. One of the leading advocates of union among evangelical Protestants, he also helped organize the International Evangelical Alliance, presided at its first meeting, and seemed willing to admit slaveholders to the conference. James served as chairman of the board of education for Spring Hill College in Birmingham and wrote several books on Christian duty and temperance. J. A. James to [anon.], 19 December 1839, in PaF, 5 April 1840; Evangelical Alliance, Report of the Proceedings of the Conference, Held at Freemasons' Hall, London, . . . 1846 (London, 1847), 297–98 (hereafter cited as Evangelical Alliance, Proceedings, 1846); R. W. Dale, ed., The Life and Letters of John Angell James, Including an Unfinished Autobiography (New York, 1861), 355–56, 360, 396–423, 512–13, 583; James MacBeth, The Church and the Slaveholder (Edinburgh, 1845), 33; Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, 180; S. May to J. B. Estlin, 26 September 1846, in Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 289; John Campbell, John Angell James, A Review of his History, Character, Eloquence and Literary Labours (London, 1860); DNB, 10 : 652–54. of Birmingham, Independent minister, Dr. Duncan,4John Duncan (1796–1870) was a professor of oriental languages at New College in Edinburgh, the theological institution of the Free Church. The son of a shoemaker from Aberdeen, Duncan studied at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Divinity Hall, Whitburn before leaving the Anti-Burgher Synod of the Secession Church to join the Church of Scotland. He was ordained in 1836 and sent to Budapest, Hungary, as a missionary to the Jews in 1840, the same year that the University of Glasgow awarded him an LL.D. In 1843 he joined the seceders from the Established Church who formed the Free Church of Scotland. During a debate in the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh in March 1845, Duncan questioned the propriety of soliciting contributions from slaveholding congregations. A year later, but not before Douglass made this speech, Duncan defended the Free Church's acceptance of money from southern slaveowners. Henry C. Wright, The Dissolution of the American Union . . . (Glasgow, 1845), 43; Free Church and Slavery, 4; Ewing, Free Church of Scotland, 54; Joseph Irving, comp., The Book of Scotsmen (1881; Paisley, 1922), 117; DNB, 6 : 167–68. Dr. Willis,5Michael Willis (1799–1879) was a Free Church minister known for his antislavery work in both Scotland and Canada. Born in Greenock and educated at the University of Glasgow (M.A., 1817; D.D., 1839) and the Divinity Hall of the Burgher Synod, Willis was ordained at Albion Street Secession Church, Glasgow, in 1821. Professor of Theology in the Burgher Synod Hall from 1835 until 1839, Willis signed the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission in 1843. During the early 1840s Willis was an active member of the pro-Garrisonian Glasgow Emancipation Society and in 1846 he served as president of the dissident Free Church Anti-Slavery Society. In both organizations he strongly attacked his denomination's policy of accepting donations from the American slave states. In 1845 Willis visited Canada as a deputy of the Free Church. Two years later he moved to Toronto to become Professor of Theology, and later principal of Knox College. Willis helped found the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society in 1851 and was elected its first president. He endorsed Dawn, the manual labor school for fugitive slaves, and promoted such black settlement schemes as the Elgin Society and the Refugee Home Society. In 1871 he returned to Scotland and died nine years later in Banffshire. Hew Scott, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, new ed., rev. (Edinburgh, 1915–28), 3 : 431–32; Ewing, Free Church of Scotland, 1 : 357; Acts and Proceedings of the Sixth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto, 1880), 339; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 281–83, 286; Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (New Haven, 1971), 220–21, 254–59, 261–62; Victor Ullman, Look to the North Star: A Life of William King (Boston, 1969), 98–100; William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America (Madison, Wis., 1963), 120. Dr. Ritchie,6Ordained in 1813 and awarded a D. D. by Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1829, the Reverend John Ritchie (1781–1861) was a leading figure in the United Secession—later United Presbyterian—church in Scotland. For most of his ministerial career he was associated with the small and unremarkable Hope Park (Anti-Burgher) Church in Edinburgh, notwithstanding his reputation as "the best extemporaneous orator . . . [and] the most distinguished dissenting minister in Scotland." Ritchie was active in behalf of many reform causes, including the temperance movement, the antigallows movement, the peace movement, and the anti-Corn Law campaign. He early joined the stuggle for emancipation in the British West Indies and in later years worked closely with the Glasgow Emancipation Society, helping to launch in 1844 the campaign to force the Free Church to "send back the money." In 1846 he served on the synodical committee which drew up the memorial that announced the United Secession Church's policy henceforth to withhold communion from any American church "which continues to admit SLAVE-HOLDERS to its fellowship." A contributor to Dalrymple's Secession Magazine, the organ of the Ultra-Calvinist party, and a thoroughgoing voluntarist, Ritchie threw himself into the controversies over the separation of church and state and the Atonement. In 1845, after fifteen years of tense relationships beginning with an admonition from his synod "to cultivate the things that make for peace," his presbytery suspended him for three months. In 1849 he resigned his office and thereafter preached only occasionally. Worcester (Mass.) Burritt's Christian Citizen, 10 June 1849; Robert Small, History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church from 1733 to 1900, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1904), 1 : 446–47, 2 : 71; Smith, Our Scottish Clergy, 2 : 15, 224–29; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 282, 286; Memorial and Remonstrance Respecting Slavery to the Churches of the United States of America by the Synod of the United Secession Church (Glasgow, 1846), 2, 7. and thirty-six ministers in Belfast, with a host of others, have nobly come forward and refused Christian fellowship to slave holders.
I am not here alone; I have with me the learned and wise and reverend heads of the church to justify the position I have assumed. But with or without their sanction, I should stand just where I now do, maintaining to the last that man-stealing is incompatible with Christianity—that slave-holding and true religion are at war with each other—and that a Free Church should have no fellowship with a slave church;—that as light can have no union with darkness, Christ has no concord with Beelzebub; and as two cannot walk together except they be agreed, and no man can serve two masters,—so I maintain that freedom cannot rightfully be blended with slavery. Nay, it cannot, without stabbing liberty to the heart. Now, what is the character of those churches in America with which the Free Church is in full fellowship, and the Christianity of
which they indorse, in the most unqualified manner? In the language of Isaiah, "Their hands are full of blood."7Douglass paraphrases Isa. 1 : 15: "Your hands are full of blood." Their hands are full of blood. Allow me to state the case as it really exists.
At this moment, there are three millions of people, for whom Christ died, in the United States held in the most abject slavery—the most galling and degrading bondage—deprived of every privilege—mental, moral, social, and political—deprived of every right common to humanity—herded together like brutes—denied the institution of marriage—compelled to live in concubinage—left to be devoured by their own lusts—raised like beasts of the field for the market—mere chattels—things—property—deprived of their manhood—they are ranked with beasts—robbed of their identity with the human family—cut off from the race—loaded with chains—galled by fetters—scarred with the whip—burnt with red hot irons. They are living without a knowledge of God, groping their way from time to eternity in the dark, the heavenly light of religion shut from their minds. A mother may not teach her own child to read our Lord's Prayer, not even to spell the name of the God who made her. For it is a crime punishable with death to teach a slave to read. It is nothing that Christ died, it is nothing that God has revealed his will, for the black as well as the white man. It is nothing that Christ commands us to search the scriptures; it is a crime punishable with death, by American law, to teach a slave to do it.
Good God! what a system! A system of blood and pollution; of infidelity and atheism; of wholesale plunder and murder. Truly did John Wesley denounce it as the sum of all villainies, and the compendium of all crime. This, Christian friends, is but a faint picture of American slavery, and this is the system upheld and sustained by the entire church in the Southern States of the American Union. It is with such a church that the Free Church of Scotland is linked, and interlinked in Christian fellowship. It is such a church that the Free Church of Scotland are trying to palm off upon the world as being a Christian church. Thus making Christianity and slaveholding compatible, thus saying that man-stealing ought not to be a barrier to Christian communion, and lowering the standard of Christianity, so that the vilest thief, the foulest murderer, the most abandoned profligate, may claim to be a Christian, and to be recognized as such.
The Free Church, in vindicating their fellowship of slaveholders,
have acted upon the damning heresy that a man may be a Christian whatever may be his practice, so his creed be right. So he pays tithes of mint, anise, and cumin, he may be a Christian, though he totally neglect judgment and mercy. It is this heresy that now holds in chains three millions of men, women, and children in the United States. The slaveholder's conscience is put at ease by those ministers and churches. They tell him that slaveholding is quite consistent with a profession of religion, and thus sing his conscience to sleep.
Now, let us look at the circumstances under which this deed of Christian fellowship was consummated. The Free Church had just broken off from the Established Church, as they say, in defence of Christian liberty. They professed to bring off with them nearly all that was good, pure, and holy, from the Establishment. They proclaimed themselves the true exponents of the moral and religious sentiment of Scotland. Taking their word, they are the life, the soul, the embodiment of Christianity in this country. So good, pure, and holy are they, that they would almost feel themselves contaminated by a touch of a member of the Establishment. And so free are they, that they look upon those who remain in the church as mere slaves.
With all this profession of freedom and purity, they appointed a delegation to visit the slave-holding churches in the United States, to beg money to build churches and pay their ministers. The delegation went over three thousand miles of perilous deep. On their arrival at New York, they were beseeched in the name of the perishing slave not to go to the slave-holding churches of the south;8The Free Church of Scotland appointed five agents—Henry B. Ferguson, a merchant from Dundee, and the Reverends William Cunningham, George Lewis, Robert Burns of Paisley, and William Chalmers, son of Thomas Chalmers—to raise money in the United States. Shortly after the delegation arrived in New York, the executive committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society asked the delegates "not to weaken the hands of American abolitionists" by soliciting the "filthy lucre " of slaveholding Presbyterians. The deputation from Scotland ignored the entreaty and adhered to its plans to raise money in the South, visiting Charleston, Louisville, and Baltimore. Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to William Cunningham et al., 2 April 1844, in Lib., 26 April 1844, later reprinted in Letter of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to the Commissioners of the Free Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1844); Annie H. Abel and Frank J. Klingberg, eds., A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 1839–1858 (1927; New York, 1970), 181–82, 184, 190, 196–97; Garrison and Garrison, Garrison Life, 3 : 152–53; Shepperson, "Thomas Chalmers, the Free Church, and the South," 518; Rice, "Scottish Factor, " 274. that as sure as they went they would contaminate their own cause, as well as stab the cause of the slave. But reason gave way to avarice, purity yielded to temptation, and
the result is, the Free Church is now wallowing in the filth and mire of slavery, possessing the bad pre-eminence at this time of being the only church in Scotland that makes it a religious duty to fellowship menstealers as the followers of Jesus Christ. Now, you have the case before you.
The Free Church stands charged with fellowshipping slaveholders as followers of Christ, and of taking the wages of unrighteousness to build her churches and to pay her ministers. Are those charges true, or are they false? The Free Church admits these truths, but denies that she has done wrong. Then the question between us is as to the rightfulness of holding Christian fellowship with slaveholders, and taking the results of slaveholding to build churches and pay ministers. The Free Church say it is right; I say it is wrong; and you shall judge between us.
My first position is, that slavery is a sin, the vilest that ever saw the sun, and thus far the Free Church and myself are at agreement. If, then, slavery be a sin, those who hold slaves must be sinners. This seems to me to be the only rational and natural result to which we can come from such a premise. If lying, swearing, murder, adultery, and stealing be sin, then it is clear that the liars, swearers, murderers, adulterers, and thieves must be sinners. The argument in opposition to this is, that although lying, swearing, murder, adultery, and slaveholding be sin, yet liars, swearers, murderers, adulterers, and slaveholders may be, and are, followers of the meek and lowly Saviour; for, says Dr. Chalmers on this point, "DISTINCTION ought to be made between the character of a system and the character of the person whom CIRCUMSTANCES have implicated therewith."9Thomas Chalmers to Edinburgh Witness, 12 May 1845, reprinted in Letter of the Rev. Dr. Chalmers on American Slave-Holding; With Remarks by the Belfast Anti-Slavery Committee (Belfast, 1846) and in Hanna, Thomas Chalmers, 4 : 582–91. The Doctor would denounce slaveholding, robbery, and murder as sin, but would not denounce the slaveholder, robber, and murderer, as a sinner: he would make a DISTINCTION between sins and the persons whom CIRCUMSTANCES have implicated therewith; he would denounce the dice, but spare the sharper; he would denounce the murder, but spare the murderer; he would denounce the adultery, but spare the adulterer; for, says the Doctor, "distinction ought to be made between the character of a system and the persons whom circumstances have implicated therewith." "Oh! the artful Dodger."10John Dawkins, a character in Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, went by the sobriquet "The Artful Dodger." What an excellent outlet for all sinners! Let slaveholders
rejoice! Let a fiendish glee run round and round through hell! Dr. Chalmers, the eloquent Scotch divine, has, by long study and deep research, found that "distinction ought to be made between sin and the sinner"; so that, while slavery may be a heinous sin, the slaveholder may be a good Christian, the representative of the blessed Saviour on earth, an heir of heaven and eternal glory, for such is what is implied by Christian fellowship.
When a man is received into the church, those who receive him say to the world, we believe this man to be a Christian, a representative of Christ, a member of his blessed body. This is most horrible doctrine, glossing over the awful sin. But there is another point in this little sentence of Dr. Chalmers; indeed, we have in this one sentence the key to the entire defence which the Free Church have made to the fellowshipping slaveholders as Christians. But to the point: He says that distinction should be made between the character of a system, and the character of the persons whom circumstances have implicated therewith. Yes, circumstances—the doctrine of circumstances. Who proclaims it? Dr. Chalmers. Yes, this doctrine, which has justly brought down upon the head of the infidel, Robert Owen,11Robert Owen (1771–1858) is generally considered the father of British Utopian socialism. Born in central Wales and apprenticed as a linen draper and shop clerk, Owen at an early age became a successful manager of a major cotton mill in Manchester and was later part owner of two other cotton mills in Chorlton, England. Around 1800 he and his partners purchased the New Lanark mills, the largest cotton factory in Scotland at that time. During the next quarter of a century New Lanark became widely regarded as a model factory community. In 1816 Owen proposed to establish communal "Villages of Cooperation" in order to relieve distress and suffering in England. He came to the United States in 1824 to establish the Utopian community of New Harmony in Indiana. After New Harmony failed, he became closely associated with the trade union movement in England. Owen founded many reform societies and journals during his long career. Late in life he turned to spiritualism. Owen's reform efforts were guided by the belief that because character was socially determined, only proper environmental influences were required to produce good and useful citizens. This was the doctrine of circumstances to which Douglass refers. The doctrine antagonized some American Garrisonians because it absolved man of sin and did not stress personal spiritual improvement. Owen angered British abolitionists with his advice not to disturb the tranquility of Jamaican sugar plantations, whose slaves, he said, were treated better than British industrial workers. He had earlier alienated British clergymen when he blamed estabished religion for most of the world's evils. Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings, ed. G. D. H. Cole, Everyman's Library (London, 1927), vii-xix; G. D. H. Cole, The Life of Robert Owen (London, 1930); Thomas, Liberator, 298, 313, 315; Garrison to Henry C. Wright, 1 April 1843, in Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3 : 145; DNB, 1 4 : 1339–46. the execrations of Christendom, is now proclaimed by the eloquent Scotch divine. The Doctor has been driven to this hateful dilemma by taking a false step, in fellowshipping slaveholders as Christians. This doctrine carried out does away with moral responsibility. All that a thief has to do in justification of his theft
is to plead that circumstances have implicated him in theft, and he has Dr. Chalmers to apologize for him, and recognize him as a Christian. A man thief, the worst of all thieves, has but to make this plea; nay, the Doctor makes the plea for him, and receives him to the bosom of the church as a Christian. Christ says "By their fruits shall ye know them." Dr. Chalmers says, no, "distinction is to be made between the character of the individual and the character of his deeds."
Now, my friends, I wish to ask, do Dr. Chalmers and the Free Church represent your sentiments on this subject?—(Here the audience loudly shouted, No!)—I am glad you speak out. I regret to find that such is the power of the Free Church in some parts of this country, and even here in Arbroath, that the Dissenters, who know the Free Church to be wrong, yet do not dare to speak out, for fear of the displeasure of that church. I am ashamed of such abolitionists, they are unworthy the name, being destitute of the spirit. They have not yet learned to value their principles. But the people will speak, they will speak in tones not to be misunderstood. They have already spoken, and, I trust, will continue to speak until they silence the arrogant pretensions of the Free Church, and cause her to send back that blood-stained money. I now propose three cheers, which shall be given in the following words:—Send back that money. (Here the audience joined with Mr. Douglas[s], making the welkin ring with 'Send back that money,' repeating it three times.)
Mr. Douglass read a compliment to Dr. Chalmers from the New Orleans Picayune, and also two advertisements of runaway slaves, from the same paper, showing that the slaveholders were highly pleased with the Doctor's position on the slave question. And after commenting on the character of the paper by which the Doctor was eulogized, he closed with an eloquent appeal to the Christian people of Scotland, to agitate the question of holding Christian fellowship with slaveholders, and to proclaim in the ear of the Free Church, 'Send back that money.' Oh! that the Free Church would send it back, and confess that they did wrong in taking it. Such a course would send slavery reeling towards its grave, as if struck by a bolt from heaven. Mr. Douglass sat down amid loud applause.